NEW YORK (AP) — A protest against embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh outside a luxury hotel in New York got heated Sunday when demonstrators saw him leave the building, with one charging toward him and another throwing a shoe.
"Everybody is living in fear of this guy at home, but here, he's getting good treatment!" said Yemeni immigrant Nasser Almroot, a Brooklyn grocer.
The dozen angry protesters were kept behind police barricades across the street from the Ritz-Carlton hotel, which was teeming with security guards, both inside and on the sidewalk where Saleh passed.
The 69-year-old leader is visiting the United States for medical treatment.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh waves to people protesting his presence in the United States as he exits his hotel in New York, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. Saleh arrived in the United States on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012, for treatment of burns he suffered during an assassination attempt in June. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights organization says it has documented the deaths of hundreds of anti-government protesters in confrontations with Saleh's security forces, and while they are not opposed to Saleh receiving care in the United States, the organization wants assurances that concerned governments will insist on prosecution for those responsible for last year's attacks. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
He exited the hotel on Central Park South on Sunday afternoon and waved and smiled sardonically toward the yelling protesters — even blowing them a kiss. Suddenly, one of them tried to charge across the street but was restrained by police, who wrestled him to the ground.
"He can't help it, the killer is here," Almroot said.
As the man bolted out, a shoe flew in Saleh's direction. Showing the sole of a shoe is an insult in Arab culture, because it is on the lowest part of the body, the foot. To hit someone with a shoe is seen as even worse.
Saleh got into his car and his motorcade left for an unknown destination.
Since he arrived in New York about a week ago, the Yemeni president has kept a low profile.
His presence, however, has been controversial.
On Sunday, the protesters hoisted placards bearing photos of Yemenis badly bloodied and brutally killed during his government's yearlong crackdown on anti-Saleh demonstrations.
Saleh signed a deal in November to transfer power to his vice president in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
An election is scheduled for Feb. 21 to select his successor in a nation mired in poverty and divided among powerful tribes and political factions.
While Saleh has been an anti-terrorism ally of Washington, the United States has not officially welcomed a leader accused of killing hundreds of people during an uprising against his 33-year rule.
Saleh traveled to the United States with permission for a private visit.
In June, he was badly injured in an attack on his presidential palace — an assassination attempt after which he spent months in Saudi Arabia being treated for massive burns from the explosion that ripped through his palace mosque as he prayed.
A world-renowned burn center is in Manhattan, at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Hospital officials have not confirmed whether Saleh was a patient there.
NEW YORK (AP) — The sound of insistent drumming bounces off the sides of nearby office towers announcing the location of the Occupy Wall Street home base long before its inhabitants are otherwise seen or heard.
David Crosby, left, and Graham Nash perform at the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011 in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Turn a corner in Zuccotti Park and you're likely to run into a drum circle or find someone strumming a guitar. Maybe it's an amateur trying to keep spirits up, or it could be the real deal — recording artists such as David Crosby and Graham Nash.
Music and musicians are woven into the fabric of the Occupy Wall Street protest, much as they were in movements, confrontations and protests of the past, from the American Revolution to slavery to the Civil War, suffrage movement, labor movement, civil rights movement and Vietnam War. But no defining anthem such as "We Shall Overcome" or "Which Side Are You On" has yet emerged for the protesters who have taken on corporate America.
"Every successful progressive social movement has a great soundtrack. The soundtrack (for Occupy Wall Street) is just as democratic and grass roots as the movement," said singer Tom Morello, who was given an MTV online music award for his performance of "The Fabled City" at Zuccotti Park last month. A clip of the performance has spread widely online.
Morello, who performs solo as The Nightwatchman and was a member of Rage Against the Machine, has also brought his guitar and sung at Occupy demonstrations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Nottingham and Newcastle, England. Just before midnight Wednesday, he performed near a darkened kitchen area at a demonstration in London.
He has also volunteered to contribute to an album of protest songs that Occupy Wall Street is putting together as a fundraiser this winter.
If Occupy Wall Street has no anthem yet, it's partly due to how a new generation experiences music: through personalized iPod playlists streaming through headphones instead of communal singalongs.
True to a movement that claims to speak for the 99 percent of Americans who aren't super-rich, Occupy Wall Street embraces many forms of expression. Musicians across several generations and styles have given their support.
"The more the merrier as long as you're going to bring in positive vibrations for the movement," said Kanaska Carter, a singer-songwriter who traveled from her home in Canada to camp out at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street. She helped arrange Morello's appearance and is shown in the video clip of his performance, standing near him holding a guitar.
Crosby and Nash's manager sent an email to Occupy Wall Street's website asking if the musicians could perform. Crosby quietly came a few days earlier to check out the scene, worried that cold weather would make it difficult for him to play guitar, said Beth Bogart, who helped show him around. The day of their visit was warm, however. Because police don't allow amplification, the performance was decidedly old school. The audience heard only as far as the singers' voices could project.
Bogart couldn't hear Crosby and Nash, but "you could just see the energy," she said. "When the whole audience started singing you could see their spirit lifted. It really was a good vibe."
Among the first New York performers was Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, an indie rock cult favorite who played a long set. Rapper Talib Kweli performed and so did Michael Franti. A 92-year-old Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, veterans of the labor, peace and civil rights movements, sang "We Shall Overcome." Sean Lennon and Rufus Wainwright offered an irony-drenched version of Madonna's "Material Girl."
Kanye West and Katy Perry walked through Zuccotti, but didn't perform.
Then there are those drums, beaten steadily by about a dozen people who call themselves Pulse. Police and protesters have limited the hours of drumming to help neighbors work and occupiers sleep.
An Internet-connected, do-it-yourself culture allows people beyond those at Occupy demonstrations to join in. They can write their own songs and spread them on Twitter or YouTube. The band Atari Teenage Riot has made a new video for its song "Black Flag" that includes clips from Occupy demonstrations sent in by fans, said Shannon Connolly, vice president for digital music strategies at MTV. While she's staying in Zuccotti Park, Carter has written movement-inspired songs "Stand Up to Wall Street" and "Game of Chess" that she's put on her websites.
"The movement is not waiting for superstars to grace it with their presence," Morello said. "It's not waiting for a Diane Warren-penned anthem featuring Rihanna and Drake."
Occupy Wall Street's nature as a sometimes unfocused expression of dissatisfaction plays into the diversity, too, said Amy Wlodarski, a music professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.
"There's no centralized musical figure because there isn't a coherent value that is going to be communally expressed in song," she said.
Yet from the earliest days of America, music has been a cornerstone of protests and conflicts and movements. Music provided a voice for the disenfranchised and stirred people to fight injustice. The Revolutionary War produced "The Liberty Song." ''Follow the Drinking Gourd," with its escape directions for fleeing slaves, was the anthem of the underground railroad, while "Battle Hymn of the Republic" gave support to Union soldiers during the Civil War. Women fighting for the right to vote in the early 1900s had "Suffrage Song." There was even a protest song about lynching, the jazz-infused "Strange Fruit."
The labor and peace movements created some of the more enduring music, with such artists as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. "We Shall Overcome" was born during a strike in 1945. Based on an early 20th century gospel song, it became the theme of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Meanwhile, anti-war sentiments flared in such songs as "All Along the Watchtower," ''Blowin' in the Wind," "Give Peace a Chance" and "What's Going On?"
Socially conscious music never went away. Such artists as Bruce Springsteen, OutKast and Bonnie Raitt continue to take on injustice. Others also give voice to social issues from the economy to anti-war to the environment to abuse. "We Are the World" galvanized anti-hunger efforts. Rappers such as Public Enemy and N.W.A. offered messages from the streets. Steve Earle puts a string of progressive causes to music and Neil Young recorded a disc of opposition to the Iraq War.
The more current protest music is not noticed as much as the music of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s because music is increasingly a more individualized experience. People rarely gather at each other's homes and pump up the volume on their stereos for a shared listen of a hot album. Instead, friends might burn a CD for a buddy or share a download of a tune.
But if Occupy Wall Street needs a song to call its own, Texas songwriter James McMurtry's seething "We Can't Make it Here," written in 2004, is a virtual blueprint for the movement. It tumbles with images about damage done to the country through corporate greed and political neglect. McMurtry knew he had something the first time he played a version of the song, then unreleased, during a visit to an Austin radio station.
"I had some really nasty emails on my website before I had even gotten home," he said.
Hopeful that things might change, McMurtry stopped performing what is probably his best-known song when Barack Obama was elected. He has since started playing it again. McMurtry said he's going to make "We Can't Make it Here" available for free on his website in a gesture of solidarity, and is encouraging fans to make their own videos to accompany it.
"I'd be glad to let them use that song," he said. "Whatever helps."
Morello, who has done what amounts to a tour of Occupy demonstration sites, considers it his job as a musician to "keep steel in the backbone and wind in the sails of people who are standing up for economic justice."
"I've been down there a couple of times," said MTV's Connolly. "There's always music. It's sort of a thread that runs through it."
The People Solidarity Movement from Bangladesh gives solidarity to the global occupy Wall Street movement by holding a protest. Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of demonstrations all over the world. Dhaka, October 19th 2011
Activists chant and wave placards and banners supporting the global movement against the banks, and corruption.
People Solidarity Movement from Bangladesh gives solidarity to occupy Wall Street movement. Activists chant anti capitalism slogan and demanding socialism. They congratulate all people who join such a movement.
Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of demonstrations in New York City based in Zuccotti Park on Wall Street. Initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters, the protests were inspired by the Arab Spring movement, especially Cairo's Tahrir Square protests, and the Spanish Indignants.
The participants are mainly protesting social and economic inequality, corporate greed, as well as the power and influence of corporations, particularly from the financial service sector, and lobbyists over government. By October 9, similar demonstrations were either ongoing or had been held in 70 major cities and over 600 communities in the U.S., including the estimated 100,000 people who demonstrated on October 15. Internationally, other "Occupy" protests have modeled themselves after Occupy Wall Street, in over 900 cities worldwide.
Activists chant and wave placards and banners supporting the global movement against the banks, and corruption.
In mid-2011, the Canadian-based group Adbusters Media Foundation, best known for its advertisement-free anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest corporate influence on democracy, address a growing disparity in wealth, and the absence of legal repercussions behind the recent global financial crisis. According to the senior editor of the magazine, “[they] basically floated the idea in mid-July into our [email list] and it was spontaneously taken up by all the people of the world, it just kind of snowballed from there. They promoted the protest with a poster featuring a dancer atop Wall Street's iconic Charging Bull. Also in July, they stated that, "Beginning from one simple demand – a presidential commission to separate money from politics – we start setting the agenda for a new America." Activists from Anonymous also encouraged its followers to take part in the protest which increased the attention it received calling protesters to "flood lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street"
Activists chant and wave placards and banners supporting the global movement against the banks, and corruption.
One month ago today about 2,000 people rallied in Lower Manhattan and marched up Broadway. Stopping at Zuccotti Park an estimated 150 stayed the night and began an encampment. Renaming the space “Liberty Square,” we kicked off a protest against bank bailouts, corporate greed, and the unchecked power of Wall Street in Washington. In the last month, the message of “We are the 99%” has won the hearts and minds of over half of Americans (according to a recent Time survey) and is gaining ground globally, with 1500 protests in 82 countries this past Saturday (October 15).
“I am here to celebrate the 30th day of this protest against corporate power,” said Karanja Gacuca from Liberty Square, a former Wall Street analyst who now organizes with Occupy Wall Street. “Concerned about the egregious Wall Street bonuses — particularly after the industry accepted a tax-payer bailout and the middle class continues to be squeezed — I believe it's time for a fairer system that provides health care, education, and opportunity for all, and rejects corporate influence over government.”
BEIRUT (AP) — Tens of thousands of Syrians shouting "We want freedom!" carried slain protesters through the streets Saturday as opposition figures meeting in Turkey called for a united front to bring down the 40-year ruling dynasty of the Assad family.
Lebanese protesters shout slogans as they carry banners in Arabic that read:" you are in heaven my son," center, "the martyr Hamza el-Khatib," left, and " Daraa mass graves," right, during a rally in solidarity with Syrian anti-government protesters in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Friday, July 15, 2011. Syrian security forces fired on protesters in the capital and other major cities Friday, killing at least 14 people as hundreds of thousands gathered for some of the largest anti-government rallies since the uprising began in March, witnesses and activists said. (AP Photo)
Syrian security forces killed at least 28 people Friday during the largest protests since the uprising began more than four months ago, activists said. Hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets nationwide, but they were met with gunfire and tear gas.
"The regime has kidnapped the entire state, and we want it back," said Haitham al-Maleh, one of Syria's most prominent dissidents, who led Saturday's opposition conference in Istanbul. The 80-year-old lawyer spent years in Syrian prisons for his political activism.
Syria's crackdown on the protests has led to international condemnation and sanctions. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that President Bashar Assad had dashed hopes of reform.
"What's happening in Syria is very uncertain and troubling because many of us had hoped that President Assad would make the reforms that were necessary," she said in Istanbul. "The brutality has to stop, there must be a legitimate sincere effort with the opposition to try to make changes."
"Yesterday we witnessed the largest demonstrations to date in Syria, an effort to try to convey directly to the government the pent-up desire of the Syrian people for the kind of reforms that they have been promised," she added.
Activists say the government's crackdown has killed some 1,600 people since March, most of them unarmed protesters. But the regime disputes the toll and blames a foreign conspiracy for the unrest, saying religious extremists — not true reform-seekers — are behind it.
Saturday's conference was an attempt to form a unified movement that can offer a realistic alternative to Assad, whose supporters argue that he is the only force who can guarantee stability in a region bedeviled by civil wars and religious strife.
Although Assad's regime is shaken, he still draws from a significant well of support from the middle classes, business community and religious minorities.
Still, the uprising appears to be gaining momentum.
Witnesses told The Associated Press that tens of thousands from Damascus and the suburbs held funerals for slain protesters Saturday, carrying the bodies overhead on stretchers and shouting "God is Great!" and "We want freedom!"
Like most witnesses in Syria, they spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Witnesses also said security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters in the eastern border town of al-Boukamal near Iraq's border, killing at least one protester and wounding others.
State-run Syria TV contested that, however, and said gunmen killed two police officers in al-Boukamal and armed groups stormed a police headquarters and confiscated weapons.
The government has banned most foreign media and restricted local coverage, making it difficult to independently confirm accounts on the ground.
A small group of activists in Damascus also took part in Saturday's opposition meeting, but they had to join by telephone. The opposition had planned to hold dual meetings in Damascus and Istanbul, but the location in Syria was besieged by security forces on Friday, forcing them to scale back their plans. Activists say 14 protesters were killed Friday in the Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun, where the conference was to be held.
Opposition figure Mashaal Tammo, addressing the conference by phone from Damascus, said Assad had lost his legitimacy to rule and called on him to step down.
"The existence of the regime is no longer justified," he said.
Source: The Associated Press
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