9 November 2011

WSWS 9 November 2011

By wsww reporters

The Occupy Los Angeles encampment

The Occupy Los Angeles movement has entered its second month. Several hundred protesters remain encamped next to city hall.

While the protest remains centered around concerns over economic injustice and rising levels of inequality both in the US and internationally, the lack of politics and demands has allowed the movement to be infiltrated by various Democratic party elements. 

Members of the Los Angeles City Council along with Democratic Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, have freely mingled among the protesters encouraging them, in the words of City Council Eric Garceti, to “stay as long as you like.”

The move was hailed by the leadership of Occupy LA along with an attendant promise by the city council to institute a banking reform bill which was nearly dead on arrival. Soon after the bill was announced, the city treasurer announced that enacting the bill would result in tens of millions of dollars in breach of contract penalties with the banks.

Soon after, the city council reneged on its promise to allow protesters to stay “as long as they liked,” citing concerns that the cost of resodding city property would cost tens of thousands of dollars.

During the past several weeks, the United Teachers of Los Angeles union has held a fraudulent “Occupy LAUSD” action in parallel with Occupy LA, which has drawn a contingent of the latter around the union’s bankrupt perspective of holding only the Los Angeles Unified School District accountable for school cutbacks and layoffs. The union’s aim is to exonerate the Democratic Party, which in recent years has launched the largest attack on public education in US history, of any responsibility. 

Last Saturday, a bank transfer march and rally was held by the Good Jobs LA coalition, a group led by the Service Employees International Union and other pro-Democratic party outfits. The group describes itself as “a grassroots organization of neighbors coming together, block-by-block to reclaim the American Dream for working families by holding wealthy corporations accountable to pay their fair share, create good jobs, and invest in the future of our communities.”

The aim of the event was to persuade protesters and passersby to close accounts at large banks and transfer their funds to smaller lending institutions and credit unions. At the close of the march, several prominent Democratic and pro-Democratic party functionaries spoke at city hall. Among them were Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under Clinton, and Robert Scheer, the prominent ex-radical journalist who recently supported the candidacy of reactionary Kentucky “Tea Party” congressman Rand Paul.

Remarks made by Reich, now professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, centered around denunciations of the large banks while making no mention of the billions in public funds made available to them with no strings attached under the Obama administration. Scheer cynically advised protesters to make appeals to more progressive layers within the Democratic Party. At one point, he claimed that the problem with the presidency of Clinton was that in the “Battle of the Bobs,” Reich and former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, it was Rubin who won out in the end.

The aim of all these speakers and organizations is to channel protesters back into the Democratic Party fold by fostering the illusion that through contained protest actions, the ruling elite can somehow be pressured to change course, enact better legislation, select more socially-minded individuals to do its bidding, etc. Workers and students must reject all attempts by the Democratic Party to make such inroads, whether they are made directly or indirectly through the trade unions and ex-left organizations which support them.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to several protesters encamped at Los Angeles City Hall last Saturday.

“Corporations own everything,” commented Thaddeus Ressler, a writer and Army veteran. “There’s nobody to lobby for the people, but there are plenty of lobbyists for the corporations and the banks.”

Juan Cortes spoke about his reasons for attending the Occupy LA protest. “I am here because I am one of the victims of the banks. They took my house and I want to see how we can unite with those who have lost their jobs so we can take actions against the banks. I want us to take back what they stole from us.

“Congress is corrupt. I am on board 100 percent with the fact that there’s not going to be any justice via the election of this or that Republican or Democrat.”

Rose Contreras, a hot dog vendor, said, “The truth is that a lot of us small business people along with working people are facing a critical situation. We have to fight for everyone’s welfare. And this fight is a world fight.

“The rich aren’t thinking about the plight of the poor. It’s as if we didn’t exist. If it wasn’t for the poor, they wouldn’t have any wealth at all. We’re the ones who do the work for them.”

Sander Hicks, a carpenter and independent publisher, has also been to the Occupy Oakland encampment where more than 50 protesters were brutally arrested by police less than two weeks ago. “I’ve researched Obama,” Sander said. “His ties to Wall Street are easier to understand when you realize that he’s a progressive in name only. He represents mainstream politics as usual.”

Sander

Jay is a journalism student at the University of Southern California and a former veteran. “I'm here doing research for my class. I’m definitely in favor of the Occupy Wall Street protests because I know that it stands for a re-evaluation of the social system.”

Jay: “I’m also a veteran,” Jay added. “I fought in Iraq. The war was obviously made up—it was all about markets. I felt exploited and still do. I take loans and I use the GI Bill, but tuition is a big concern nonetheless. The thing that concerns me the most is that I have to go into debt to get an education only to find afterwards that there are no opportunities.”

JC works as a web designer and entrepreneur. “I’m here to add my support for the movement. The fact that he hasn’t come out to address the people and our concerns should prove to everyone that political faith in him is a fallacy. George Bush promised us war and we got war. Obama promised us hope and change, and we got war and poverty instead.”

The Socialist Equality Party and International Students for Social Equality will be holding a public meeting this coming Sunday, November 13 to discuss the Occupy Wall Street and the way forward for workers and youth. For more information on the Los Angeles meeting, click here. Details on other meetings across the country can be found here.

Related articles:

Occupy protesters face more arrests, threats to encampments

Three occupations continue in Maine

49 million Americans in poverty, Census study finds

Previous articles:

Growing anger over police attack on wall street protesters (wsws)

Occupytogether: the best among us by chris hedges (+ video)

En direct de new york: les indignés de wall street (livestream)

Les indignés de wall street: manifestations et occupation (vidéos) + dossier wall street 

Url of this article:

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-occupy-los-angeles-obama-promised-us-hope-and-change-and-we-got-war-and-poverty-instead--88346127.html

22 octobre 2011

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-chavez-reagit-a-la-mort-de-kadhafi-video-1-37--87007428.html

Réseau Voltaire 14/10/11

Répondant à l’appel du collectif « La Syrie est ma patrie », plus d’un million de personne ont manifesté le 12 octobre 2011 sur la place des Sept Fontaines et dans les quartiers alentour à Damas. 

Les participants entendaient apporter leur soutien au président Bachar el-Assad pour faire face à l’agression étrangère contre le pays. Ils voulaient aussi remercier la Chine et la Russie pour avoir sauvé le pays de la destruction en opposant leur veto au Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU. 

Selon les gouvernements occidentaux et leur presse, le gouvernement syrien réprime actuellement une révolution populaire. Les affrontements auraient déjà coûté la vie à plus de 3 000 civils. Selon le gouvernement syrien et ses médias, des groupes armés étrangers, soutenus à l’extérieur par les Occidentaux et à l’intérieur par des extrémistes islamistes, tentent de déstabiliser le pays. Les affrontements auraient coûté la vie à plus de 700 civils et plus de 800 militaires et policiers. Le 4 octobre, l’Allemagne, la France, le Portugal et le Royaume-Uni ont échoué à faire adopter par le Conseil de sécurité des Nations Unies une résolution légalisant sous trente jours une guerre contre la Syrie. La Chine et la Russie ont dénoncé l’appétit des Occidentaux après leur intervention en Libye. 

Lire aussi:

La Syrie réelle toujours là contre la Syrie virtuelle

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-un-million-de-manifestants-pro-regime-a-damas-86551919.html

Oct 2 2011

    TruthDig.com via Countercurrents
  

    There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the
    wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the
    ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of
    despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
  

    To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger,
    where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a
    commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it
    is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal. Ask Tim DeChristopher.
  

    Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you. They are terrified this will spread. They have their long phalanxes of
    police on motorcycles, their rows of white paddy wagons, their foot soldiers hunting for you on the streets with pepper spray and orange plastic nets. They have their metal barricades set up on
    every single street leading into the New York financial district, where the mandarins in Brooks Brothers suits use your money, money they stole from you, to gamble and speculate and gorge
    themselves while one in four children outside those barricades depend on food stamps to eat. Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the
    financial markets. They disseminate the lies that pollute our airwaves. They know, even better than you, how pervasive the corruption and theft have become, how gamed the system is against you,
    how corporations have cemented into place a thin oligarchic class and an obsequious cadre of politicians, judges and journalists who live in their little gated Versailles while 6 million
    Americans are thrown out of their homes, a number soon to rise to 10 million, where a million people a year go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills and 45,000 die from lack of
    proper care, where real joblessness is spiraling to over 20 percent, where the citizens, including students, spend lives toiling in debt peonage, working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, a
    world devoid of hope, a world of masters and serfs
  

    The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money
    themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in
    misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters.
    Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines,
    subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes,
    the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.
  

    Who the hell cares? If the stocks of ExxonMobil or the coal industry or Goldman Sachs are high, life is good. Profit. Profit. Profit. That is what they chant behind those metal barricades. They
    have their fangs deep into your necks. If you do not shake them off very, very soon they will kill you. And they will kill the ecosystem, dooming your children and your children’s children. They
    are too stupid and too blind to see that they will perish with the rest of us. So either you rise up and supplant them, either you dismantle the corporate state, for a world of sanity, a world
    where we no longer kneel before the absurd idea that the demands of financial markets should govern human behavior, or we are frog-marched toward self-annihilation.
  

Click here to access OCCUPY TOGETHER, a hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St.
  

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York
    Times. He is the author of many books, including:War Is A Force That Gives Us
Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion:
    The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-occupytogether-the-best-among-us-by-chris-hedges-85696868.html

Internationalnews 

 2 oct 2011

Il n'est pas facile de trouver ces nouvelles, même dans les médias portugais. Samedi 1er octobre, les policiers qui avait pour ordre de briser la manifestation ont fini par la rejoindre, et un document de revendications a été remis au ministère de l'Intérieur.

Mise à jour du 1er Octobre 2011

Suivez EN DIRECT nuit et jour les actions des indignés de Wall Street qui occupent Liberty Park depuis le 17 septembre. Un mouvement aut-organisé qui ne cesse de grandir, et qui est maintenant rejoint par les organisations de masse. 

DAY 14

"Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. It began in America on September 17 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City." Site: OccupyWallSt

Related:

Les indignés de Wall Street: Manifestations et Occupation (vidéos)

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-en-direct-de-new-york-les-indignes-de-wall-street-livestream--85542535.html

30 septembre 2011 Mise à jour du 1er octobre (liens en bas de page) 12h36

Cet article sera mis à jour régulièrement.

"It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY"

L'occupation de Wall Street, le coeur financier de la planète, se poursuit depuis le 17 septembre. Plusieurs dizaines de milliers de personnes, principalement des jeunes, qui se relaient ou campent sur place (délaissant université ou entreprise), y auraient déjà participé. Elle est organisée par OccupyWallSt, l'organisation anti-consumériste Adbusters et Anonymous. Samedi dernier, 80 manifestants ont été arrêtés, souvent de façon brutale. Cette occupation  des "indignés de Wall Streeet" est soutenue par des personnalités comme Medea Benjamin, Susan Sarandon, le PR Cornell West et Michael Moore (qui avaient appelé à voter Obama en 2008 - ils n'avaient pas lu son programme...). 

Black out médiatique quasi total sur ce mouvement qui ne cesse de prendre de l'ampleur et planifie une extension aux autres quartiers financier de la planète: Londres, Milan, San Francisco, Paris... Quand la presse mainstream en parlé, c'était pour dénigrer ce mouvement et le minimiser. Voir aussi: 80 "indignés" de Wall Street arrêtés à New York - LeMonde.fr ,   Les New Yorkais se rebiffent contre Wall Street. Le Guardian de Londres semble avoir mieux rendu compte du mouvement Occupy Wall Street: the protesters speak | World news | guardian.co.uk

Pr Cornell West

Related:

En direct de New York: les indignés de Wall Street (LiveStream)

'We the 99% are fed up with the greed and corruption of the 1%.

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet

'Occupy Wall Street' Protest Updates | The Daily Call

As Occupy Wall Street Gains Momentum – Harsh Critic of Protesters Recants in the Mainstream:http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/672975/as_occupy_wall_street_gains_momentum%2C_a_harsh_critic_recants_in_the_mainstream/#paragraph3Officer’s Pepper-Spraying of Protesters Is Under Investigation:http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/police-department-to-examine-pepper-spray-incident/?hp

Dans la presse mainstream:

How Anonymous emerged to Occupy Wall Street | Ayesha Kazmi‎ - The Guardian

wsws

By a reporting team 
29 September 2011

The arrests and police brutality unleashed against scores of peaceful “Occupy Wall Street” protesters last Saturday, after they had marched some two miles from their informal encampment in the financial district to Union Square in lower Manhattan, has provoked widespread anger.

There is particular outrage over the unprovoked use of pepper spray against a group of women protesters, an action captured on videotape and by still photography, posted on the Internet and witnessed around the world.

A number of different videos were taken of the incident. According to the Guardian newspaper in Britain, another eyewitness photographed the protest and posted a close-up image of the badge of the high-ranking police officer who used the pepper spray against the protesters. He was soon identified as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, a veteran NYPD commander.

It also turns out that Bologna is a defendant in lawsuits against the New York cops arising out of protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention, which was held in New York. 1,800 people were arrested at that time, many of them held incommunicado and under appalling conditions. A suit was filed against Bologna and another officer in 2007, and is expected to come to trial next year.

The Guardian also reports that activists have posted Bologna’s home address and telephone number online. An unnamed police official confirmed that he had been correctly identified, claiming, “he did his job and now he’s concerned for the safety of his family.” The chief spokesman for the New York police, Paul J. Browne, defended the use of the pepper spray. An account in the New York Times, however, quotes the NYPD’s patrol guide as allowing the use of the spray only under certain conditions, including “when a member reasonably believes it is necessary to effect an arrest of a resisting suspect,” and that it should “not be used in situations that do not require the use of physical force.”

The video clips of the incident clearly demonstrate that the senior police officer used the pepper spray not to overcome resistance or to effect an arrest, but rather to punish his victims. Bologna carried out an unprovoked attack—unless the expression of political views and verbal protest over police brutality is considered justification—and simply walked away. As New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer put it, he “looked as if he were spraying cockroaches.”

The eyewitness who shot one of the videos of the incident, Jeanne Mansfield, wrote an account for the Boston Review: “A white-shirt, now known to be NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, comes from the left, walks straight up to the three young girls at the front of the crowd, and pepper-sprays them in the face for a few seconds, continuing as they scream, ‘No! Why are you doing that?!’ The rest of us in the crowd turn away from the spray, but it’s unavoidable. My left eye burns and goes blind and tears start streaming down my face.”

Another video, posted on the web site Daily Kos Wednesday, appeared to show a second incident in which Bologna used his canister of pepper spray against someone videoing the protest. As in the first instance, he is seen pushing his way through the crowd, spraying his intended victim and then quickly retreating back into the police ranks.

Outrage over Bologna’s actions prompted Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to announce Wednesday that the incidents were being referred to the Civilian Complaints Review Board and the NYPD’s Internal Affairs unit, both of which routinely whitewash police brutality. Kelly said that he did not know what “precipitated that specific incident”, but cited what he termed the “tumultuous conduct” of the demonstrators.

The city’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has said nothing about the incidents or the other arrests.

The Mayor hired retired CIA official David Cohen to be the top police counterintelligence official nearly ten years ago, and the police have, under Cohen’s tutelage, brought back the methods of the Red Squad of the early and mid-20th century.

Along with the stepped-up spying being conducted against political dissidents and Muslim immigrants who are tarred with the “anti-terror” brush, the New York City Police Department has steadily encroached on the right of assembly and peaceful protest. When protesters have secured permits for their activities, they have found themselves “kettled” behind barricades, virtually imprisoned, unable to come and go as they please and to speak to bystanders or passersby.

Then again, as New York Civil Liberties Union spokesman Christopher Dunn told the press, some groups may not want to negotiate with the police before exercising their right of assembly, and “that’s certainly their prerogative.” In these cases, however, as in the case of the Wall Street protesters on September 24, they are treated as lawbreakers, subject to immediate arrest when the police unilaterally decide that it is warranted.

The latest actions of the police, including the deployment of dozens of high-ranking officers, identified by their white shirts, are an expression of the escalating tensions in the city and indeed around the world, especially in the context of the deepening crisis of joblessness and the austerity that is impoverishing many millions of families.

Bloomberg himself warned less than two weeks ago that there would be “riots” in the streets if something is not done about chronic unemployment. New York’s financial elite and their servants in City Hall and One Police Plaza are worried not so much about the relatively small number of Wall Street protesters, but about the possibility that millions may find the road to political struggle against the bankrupt system that is producing little but misery for the vast majority.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to a number of those gathered at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the center of the “occupy Wall Street” protest.

Karly, 24, a college graduate, lives in Bergen County, New Jersey. Her father is an electrician at Verizon who was recently on strike. She came out to the protest for the day with a friend.

“I’ve been looking for a full-time job for a year and not able to find one. I’m living with my parents and just got hired part-time/seasonal at Barnes and Noble. I’m over my head with mounting student loans and not able to even start paying them back.

“I’m really pleased to see so many people from all over coming together to start to fight back. I graduated with a degree in foreign languages and would like to find a job as a teacher. Our governor, Chris Christie, has gone on the attack against education and teachers, and foreign language departments have been especially hard hit. Who needs to speak a foreign language right? That’s their attitude toward education. I speak three languages - I have degrees and skills and can’t even find a real job.

“At Barnes and Noble there are many others like me who are college grads who’ve had to settle for part time work at wages that we were all making as high school students. Many of the people who lost their jobs when Borders closed down are now coming over to our stores to take whatever they can get. We’re even competing with older retirees coming in for work because they can’t afford to actually retire.

“My father’s job as an electrician at Verizon is in danger. They went on strike but nothing was really resolved. We’re a household of five and we all have to do whatever we can to work and contribute—he knows his job is not secure. He’s working a lot of overtime right now, they’re actually being forced to by the company, but he feels like he has to work as much overtime as possible right now because tomorrow he might not have a job. It upsets me so much because I see how much he needs to work just to make ends meet.

“It makes me so angry that these corporations behave like they have absolute power over the workers. It’s okay for Verizon to pay nothing in corporate taxes and turn around and cut jobs, healthcare and pensions for working families. Who are you at the top that you think this is okay? They still have their corporate jets and go anywhere they want for weekends—I can’t even remember the last time my parents went on vacation.

“I was never on the Obama bandwagon myself. I remember I was in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) the day he was elected and everyone was sitting around with their “Hope” t-shirts like he was God. I was very skeptical that he was really going to be any different. You don’t really see those t-shirts around much anymore do you? They’re probably all at Goodwill.

“I think all student loan debts should be wiped off the books in this country. If the wealthiest people don’t want to pay taxes then why should we have to be held to massive student loans?

Lejla, 18, a college student in Boston, came down to the protest with her mother.

“I’m aware of the economic crisis from my parents who have been involved in fighting against the fraudulent foreclosures by the big banks—they've been speaking out—trying to make people aware of these massive crimes that they are getting away with and driving people from their homes.

“Two-thirds of corporations don’t any corporate taxes in this country. Can you imagine if me or my parents didn’t pay their taxes? They’d end up in jail. It’s the law. And multi-billionaires get away scot-free.

“I’ve heard of people getting arrested here for writing on the sidewalk with chalk. And this while Wall Street bankers who have driven people to ruin and even suicide are sitting up there with champagne looking down through their windows and laughing at us. There’s actually youtube videos of it.

“I’m so angry that so many people’s lives are being ruined unnecessarily in this country. There doesn’t have to be problems like homelessness, unemployment and the uninsured. It could be fixed—there's plenty of money. It’s just all being hoarded at the top.”

Senka Huskic works as an administrator at Boston University Law School. She had come from Boston and was returning to help set up a bank protest there."For me, we don’t have a government, we just have corporations that run the government,” she said . “We have elections, but the people who win the elections don’t represent us because they are bought by the rich.

“Early in American history there was a struggle against the banks. Now they are taking away everything. All the foreclosures are continuing. Do you know how many people have committed suicide as a result of these foreclosures?

“They audited my mortgage, and it is a total fraud. The banks have been using 75,000 fraudulent documents to foreclose on the homes of people like me. One part of my mortgage was in a mortgage securities tranche that is now owned by a French corporation. Hundreds of other pieces were sold elsewhere by the banks. They made money hand over fist until the housing market collapsed, and the banks brought on an economic crash. None of the banks can prove they own the mortgage of people like me, but unless you have the money to hire a lawyer, they will foreclose on you anyway.

“Obama is with them I hate to say. Look how he picked all his advisors from Wall Street. Why didn’t he pick any middle class advisors? The Wall Street advisors advised him to bail out the banks, and he did. They have so many tax loopholes, they don’t pay taxes.

“I was angry at Obama first when the information about all the fraudulent papers the banks were using to foreclose people out of their homes came out a year ago, and then he refused to institute a moratorium on foreclosures. But now I realize the politicians are against us, and we have to do it ourselves. I don’t want a mortgage modification anymore. I have stopped paying, and I want to see these criminal bankers in jail.

“I am terribly afraid of war. I came from the former Yugoslavia, and I don’t want to see any more wars. But I think there will be more.”

Gillian Cipriano came to Liberty Plaza Park with a sign that identified her as a college graduate who was unemployed. She explained: “I am a nurse. I have graduated with my RN certificate in March, and I’ve been looking for a job ever since. This has to do with the financial crisis. And maybe if the corporations weren’t making huge contributions to deliver the politicians, things might be different.

“My Mom is a nurse, and she has helped me try to get a job. I have been to the HR (Human Resources) offices of over 100 hospitals and other medical facilities like nursing homes. None of them would even give me their phone numbers to call. They say when they find something, they will call me. I haven’t gotten one single call since March.

“I think it is really sad what is happening to health care. I have already had trouble myself with the insurance companies. The insurance companies run the health care industry. When you spend three hours waiting in a doctor’s office, it is because the doctor has to see more and more people to have enough patients to make a living salary because what the insurance companies are paying doctors to treat a patient is disgraceful.

“It is a sin that Medicare and Medicaid are being cut. The whole thing is shameful. People should be getting free quality health care because it has to do with the welfare of the people. It should be paid for by taxes. If the politicians weren’t giving tax breaks to the corporations and banks, and weren’t funding so many wars, they would have the money to put into healthcare and public services.”

Alan Rosenberg, a self-employed art historian, said that he had come to the park to protest against growing inequality.

“I write about art,” he said, “but it is hard to make a living on that. I feel that people like me should be able to make a decent living, instead of just hardly getting by. There is something wrong with the fact that there are people who have billions, and make millions every year to add to their billions, while there are people like me who make a contribution and can’t get decently remunerated.

“One percent of the population controls billions of dollars while working people like factory workers, office workers, and small businessman are lucky to be getting by.”

related:

New York City police arrest scores at anti-Wall Street protest

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-growing-anger-over-police-attack-on-wall-street-protesters-wsws-85488428.html

Témoignage enregistré lors de la manifestation à Paris du 3 septembre 2011 contre la guerre de l'OTAN en Libye. Ibrahim travaillait à Tripoli dans une entreprise de développement pour l'Afrique avant l'agression de l'OTAN. Il parle des conditions de vie en Libye sous Kaddafi: éducation gratuite, système de santé gratuit, eau gratuite, prêts gratuits, allocation de vie, denrées alimentaires subventionnées par l'Etat dans les magasins... Il rappelle le rôle décisif d'Al Jezeera, la chaîne du Qatar, dans la propagande de guerre occidentale.

"Il n'y aura plus de sécurité en Libye pour les Français". 

ThePlot911 on Sep 14, 2011

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-temoignage-d-un-libyen-vivant-en-france-video--84461098.html

G8 GENOVA (luglio 2001) :

Filmati sulla violenza fascista delle forze del DISordine !

Un long week-end de manifestations très mal organisées qui ne pouvaient que finir mal et sonner le glas du mouvement altermondialiste.