Latest developments in the Occupy protests

Some of the latest developments in the Occupy protests taking place in cities across the world:

CALIFORNIA

Police clashed with protesters in Oakland after thousands of demonstrators shut down one of the nation's busiest shipping ports, escalating a movement whose tactics had largely been limited to marches, rallies and tent encampments since it began in September.

An Occupy Oakland protester waves a flag next to
a bonfire in Oakland, Calif., Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011.
(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The confrontation began after protesters started a large bonfire in the middle of a downtown street. Dozens of police in riot gear moved in on hundreds of protesters as the flames leapt more than 15 feet in the air from several large metal and plastic trash bins that had been pushed together.

The clash and subsequent standoff came only hours after thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters shut down one of the nation's busiest shipping ports late Wednesday.

Meanwhile, an Occupy Los Angeles march and rally is winding down. The more than hour-long march through downtown Los Angeles ended with a rally Wednesday night in front of LA Police Department headquarters. About 80 people who remained taped flyers onto a wall outside the building with names of people they say were victims of police brutality.

WASHINGTON

Several hundred Occupy Seattle demonstrators protested in the rain Wednesday night outside a hotel where JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was invited to speak.

Police used pepper spray to clear a side entrance so Sheraton Seattle Hotel patrons could enter or leave, The Seattle Times reported.

Six protesters were arrested Wednesday afternoon for criminal trespass and obstructing at a Chase Bank branch in a Seattle neighborhood.

Police also used pepper spray on that earlier crowd when at least 10 officers were physically assaulted while putting the arrested protesters in a paddy wagon, police spokesman Jeff Kappel said. At least two officers suffered minor injuries, he said.

ENGLAND

A lawyer for protesters camped outside London's St. Paul's Cathedral said Wednesday that authorities have offered to let the tent city stay until next year, as the leader of the world's Anglicans backed a so-called Robin Hood tax on financial transactions as one way to alleviate the global economic crisis.

The loosely organized demonstration against capitalist excess, inspired by New York's Occupy Wall Street movement, has wrong-footed both city and church officials since it began last month, defying pleas to leave and the threat of legal action.

Authorities have suspended legal bids to remove the tents. On Wednesday John Cooper, a lawyer for the protesters, said that local government had offered the protesters a deal "to stay on site until the new year," then leave on an agreed date.

IOWA

Iowa City approved a request from anti-Wall Street protesters for larger tents.

The protesters said they received a donated 10-person tent designed to withstand arctic weather. The City Council decided to allow two such tents, subject to approval by the fire department.

Protesters have been in College Green Park since Oct. 7 as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

MARYLAND

City officials say they're cutting power to outlets in the downtown Baltimore park where Wall Street protesters have been living for the last month.

Mayoral spokesman Ian Brennan said Wednesday the city is taking this step to alleviate a public safety hazard at McKeldin Square near the Inner Harbor. He said a city official visited earlier this week and found fire and electricity hazards.

MASSACHUSETTS

Members of the Occupy Boston movement, students from area colleges and union workers marched through downtown Boston to protest the nation's burgeoning student debt crisis.

The protest started at Occupy Boston's Dewey Square tent city Wednesday and stopped outside Bank of America offices and the downtown Harvard Club before moving to the Statehouse.

Protesters said higher education has gotten too costly, in part because of onerous, high-interest loans. They say total student debt in the U.S. increases by $1 million every six minutes and will reach $1 trillion this year, potentially undermining the economy.

Some called for complete forgiveness of student debt; others said government should more heavily subsidize state colleges and universities.

MINNESOTA

Protesters who have occupied a government plaza in Minneapolis for nearly a month will face new restrictions.

Hennepin County officials said Wednesday they will begin winterizing the plaza. They said protesters will have to consolidate their possessions and can't leave them unattended anymore or they'll be taken. The number of portable toilets is being cut from seven to three, and starting Friday no more signs will be allowed.

NEW YORK

About 100 military veterans marched in uniform Wednesday from the Vietnam Veterans Plaza near Wall Street through Manhattan, joining the Occupy Wall Street protest.

They were fired up by what they called brutality against a Marine veteran in Oakland, Calif., whose skull was fractured.

Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas, who went toe to toe recently with officers policing activists in Times Square, said soldiers who risked their lives have the right to protest an economy that gives them a slimmer chance of finding jobs than most Americans.

OREGON

If an Iraq War veteran's injury during a California protest comes to stand as a symbol of the Occupy Wall Street movement, protesters in Portland also hope it draws attention to what they say is the city's problem with police violence.

Scott Olsen, whose skull was fractured when police moved in on an Oakland encampment, has become a symbol for protesters in Portland, where the police bureau has recently been accused of excessive force in dealings with the city's black and mentally ill populations.

WISCONSIN

A photographer from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who was among three people arrested Wednesday at a rally connected to the Occupy Wall Street movement was not part of the protest and was only doing her job, the newspaper said.

The Journal Sentinel said Kristyna Wentz-Graff texted the newsroom to say she was being arrested. Two others were also arrested.

Milwaukee police say all three ignored officers' repeated commands to clear the street, and that the three were released from custody within two hours. The Milwaukee city attorney is expected to review the cases.

The paper issued a statement Wednesday saying Wentz-Graff did not ignore the commands of any of the officers and should not have been arrested.

Source: The Associated Press

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Latest by AnonOps: Protesters worldwide have joined the "Occupy Wall Street"

Protesters worldwide have joined the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in a cry of rage against bankers, financiers and politicians they accuse of ruining global economies and condemning millions to poverty and hardship through greed.

Dozens of cities across the world - from Tokyo to Alaska via London, Frankfurt and Washington - are holding demonstrations on Saturday, in a show of solidarity with the rallies that began last month in downtown New York.

In depth coverage of US financial crisis protests

"On October 15th people from all over the world will take to the streets and squares ... to initiate the global change we want," proclaimed the website United for #GlobalChange.

"We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen. It's time for us to unite; it's time for them to listen."

Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city, saw the day's first demonstration, when at least 1,000 people, including children, gathered at City Square.

"We face similar problems with our democracy here in Victoria and Australia as people face in most other developed nations," the Occupy Melbourne website said. "Our democracy is unwell."

In Sydney, about 2,000 protesters including representatives of Aboriginal groups, communists and trade unionists, protested outside the central Reserve Bank of Australia, at Martin Place in the central business district time.

'Occupy Asia'

Demonstrations of various sizes took place in Asia, namely in Japan's Tokyo, the Philippines' Manila, Taiwan's Taipei, South Korea's Seoul and China's Hong Kong.

Several protests and rallies were held simultaneously in various locations at the Japanese capital.

Hundreds of demonstrators marched to the headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to show dissatisfaction over the handling of the nuclear disaster triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Despite heavy rains in Seoul, the South Korean capital, members of more than 30 civic groups congregated outside the Financial Services Commission in Yeouido, the city's financial district.

Activists wearing Guy Fawkes masks staged performances to express their frustration with the growing income gap in Seoul, and chanted "We are the 99 per cent" - one of the seminal slogans of the Wall Street movement.

In Manila, about 100 members of Bayan, an alliance of various left-wing groups in the Philippines, marched to the US embassy, waving banners that read: "Down with US imperialism" and "Philippines not for sale", broadcaster APTN reported.

They took Saturday's occupy protest to voice support for the New York movement and to express their cricism of US troop presence in the country's south.

One man was seen carrying a placard that read: "Genuine people's democracy lives in the streets."

In Hong Kong, more than 200 people gathered at Exchange Square Podium in the city’s central shopping and business district.

Some pitched tents to stay overnight at the site while others later migrated to the HSBC building nearby.

Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, saw a smaller turnout of near 100 people than the expected 1,500, at the city's landmark skyscraper Taipei 101, home to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

#GlobalChange

The Occupy South Africa website announced "Operation Ubuntu", a Nguni word used to describe unity for a common purpose through an African worldview that people can only find fulfilment through interacting with other peoples.

Protests are scheduled in the country's major cities of Capetown, East London, Durban and Johannesburg for later on Saturday.

Greek protesters aligned with Spain's "Indignant" movement called an anti-austerity rally in Athens' Syntagma square, the focal point of many demonstrations during Greece's financial meltdown.

Cath Turner reports on Wall Street activists' defiance

In Germany, the financial centre of Frankfurt and the European Central Bank was expected to be a focus of marches called by the Real Democracy Now group.

"What is happening in Greece now is the nightmare waiting other countries in the future," Real Democracy said in a statement.

"Solidarity is people's weapon."

In Britain, about 4,000 people have signalled their intent to attend a peaceful demonstration that will start at noon today in the City of London -- a leading international financial centre -- under the banner "Occupy the Stock Exchange", according to organisers.

In the United States, the founding "Occupation Wall Street" movement has urged more people and cities to join them on Saturday.

There have also been calls for occupations similar to that in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park to take place in dozens of US cities.

In Houston, Texas, protesters plan to tap into anger at big oil companies.

Alert for violence

The protests are billed as peaceful. But in a sign of what may happen, a group of students stormed Goldman Sachs' offices in the Italian city of Milan on Friday.

The students managed to break into the hall of the Goldman Sachs building in the heart of Milan's financial district.

The protests were quickly dispersed but red graffiti was daubed on its walls expressing anger at Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, and saying "Give us money".

Demonstrators also hurled eggs at the headquarters of UniCredit, Italy's biggest bank.

Italian police were on alert for thousands to march in Rome against austerity measures planned by Berlusconi's government.

Source: AnonOps

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#fuckyouwashington hashtag takes Twitter by storm

Most suddenly-popular Twitter hashtags refer to events or celebrities that currently are in the news. But every once in a while, one erupts out of nowhere to capture the mood of the Twitterverse.

The hashtag #fuckyouwashington is currently making the rounds in just that fashion. As explained in a post at tagdef.com, "Thousands of tweets erupted in a matter of hours on #Jul23 protesting the US's failed debt ceiling talks and general policies. Spurred by @JeffJarvis . Seen by some as part of #WorldRevolution or #USRevolution."

A second post helpfully adds, "Our discontent with the way things operate. It's gross."

Although the tag may have been inspired by the current impasse over raising the debt ceiling, it seems to have released a much wider sense of frustration. Within a few hours, message boards like Democratic Underground were gathering some of the best tweets using the tag.

"#FuckYouWashington For Forgetting WHO you represent, Families, Elderly,Moms,Kids, WORKERs..NOT the CoporatePigs who you cater to...#ShameOnU" one reads.

"#fuckyouwashington for sending our soldiers on 6, 7, 8 tours to combat zones yet thinking it's too much to ask the richest to pay taxes" say another.

And @YourAnonNews -- a Twitter account associated with Anonymous -- tweeted, "#FuckYouWashington for thinking activists are the same as terrorists."

Other tweets gathered by CBSNews blasted Washington for everything from the handling of last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill to the criminalization of marijuana to going after WikiLeaks while not holding Bush administration officials accountable for turture.

Jarvis is a journalism professor at the City University of New York, an expert on new media, and the author of What Would Google Do? Late on Saturday evening, he tweeted, "OK, my fellow citizens, it's up to you now," as though he felt content with what he had accomplished, but since then he has continued to promote use of the tag in his own tweets.

On Sunday morning, Jarvis retweeted a message from AnonyOps -- another account associated with Anonymous -- saying, "@jeffJarvis you've started a shit storm. Nice going." That seems to sum up much of the current feeling.

A current Twitter feed of posts using the tag can be found here.

Source: The RAW Story

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More gunfire, arrests reported in Syrian crackdown

BEIRUT (AP) — Residents of the southern Syrian city of Daraa braved sniper fire Tuesday to pull the bullet-riddled bodies of the dead from the streets and hide them from security forces, a day after a brutal government crackdown on the popular revolt against President Bashar Assad, witnesses said.

As heavy gunfire reverberated through Daraa, a Syrian human rights group said authorities detained dozens of people across the country, mainly in several Damascus suburbs, including the town of Douma and in the northern coastal city of Jableh.

This video image taken from amateur video released by Sham News Network, a Syrian Freedom group, shows a man throwing an object at a tank in Daraa, Syria Sunday April 24, 2011. An eyewitness says at least five people have been killed in the southern Syrian city of Daraa during a security crackdown. Syrian troops in armored vehicles and tanks stormed the southern town of Daraa early Monday April 25, 2011 and opened fire. It was the latest bloodshed in a five-week uprising against President Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime. (AP Photo/Sham News Network via APTN) AP HAS NO WAY OF INDEPENDENTLY VERIFYING THE AUTHENTICITY OF THIS VIDEO

A relentless crackdown since mid-March has killed more than 400 people across Syria, with 120 dead over the weekend, rights groups said. That has only emboldened protesters who started their revolt with calls for modest reforms but are now increasingly demanding Assad's downfall.

The Syrian army, backed by tanks and snipers, launched a deadly raid before dawn Monday on Daraa, where the uprising began more than a month ago, and on the towns of Douma and Jableh. At least 22 people were killed in Daraa.

World leaders expressed concern at the mounting bloodshed, with the United States starting to draw up sanctions against Assad, diplomats hoping to send a strong signal to Damascus from the United Nations, and the prime minister of neighboring Turkey telephoning the Syrian leader to urge restraint.

The assault on Daraa appeared to be part of new strategy of crippling, pre-emptive action against any opposition to Assad, rather than reacting to demonstrations.

It took more than a day for residents of Daraa to start pulling many of the bodies off the streets of Daraa, with rooftop snipers and army forces firing on people who dared to leave their homes. One man, Zaher Ahmad Ayyash, was killed as he tried to retrieve the bodies of two brothers, Taysir and Yaser al-Akrad, said a resident, who asked to be identified only as Abdullah for fear of reprisal.

The corpses were hidden away after they were retrieved from the streets, Abdullah said, suggesting that residents might face reprisal if troops discovered they had taken the bodies. As he spoke on the phone, gunfire popping in the background.

"We can't bury the dead in the cemetery because it's occupied by Syrian soldiers," said Abdullah. "We are waiting to find another place to bury them."

Snipers also targeted water tanks on rooftops in Daraa — the last source of clean water for many desperate residents of the parched region of 300,000 people, Abdullah said.

Even as the military crackdown intensified, Abdullah said there was quiet, defiant resistance. He said some soldiers were disobeying orders and allowing residents to pass through military checkpoints.

Palestinian refugees — generally the most hardscrabble of all Syrian residents — smuggled flour, water, bread and canned food into town. "We are so grateful to them," the resident said.

Earlier in the day, another resident said Syrian special forces were in the streets of the impoverished city, and tanks had opened fire in the city.

"We are being subjected to a massacre," another resident screamed over the telephone above the sound of gunfire. "We have been without electricity for three days. We have no water."

The witness, contacted via a Jordanian cell phone, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, as did other witnesses and residents contacted across Syria.

Scenes similar to those in Daraa took place in Jableh, with residents hiding their dead from Friday's assault and then furtively burying them in private plots of farmland — some as late as Tuesday — out of fear that the families of those killed might be arrested, a resident said. Also like Daraa, gunmen had shot holes in water storage tanks on rooftops in a form of punishment, he added.

In a continuation of the crackdown, hundreds of people were arrested Tuesday, he said.

Syria has banned nearly all foreign media and restricted access to trouble spots since the uprising began, making it almost impossible to verify the dramatic events shaking one of the most authoritarian, anti-Western regimes in the Arab world.

In Douma, which saw an intense crackdown Monday, houses were raided again at dawn Tuesday, with forces detaining anyone suspected of participating in demonstrations. Soldiers at sandbagged checkpoints also held men deemed suspicious. Phone service was cut off, a resident said.

The streets of Douma were almost empty, with schools and most shops closed and uncollected garbage piling up. Security was heavy, with agents at checkpoints asking people for their identity cards.

Another resident said authorities closed the private Hamdan Hospital after ordering all families of patients there to take them home. No reason was given for the closure, and three doctors there were detained, the resident said.

In the seaside city of Banias, divided between Sunni Muslims and Alawites — the sect of the ruling Assad family and many key officials — thousands of men and women gathered in the streets for a demonstration, according to three residents. With the noise of chanting in the background, they said they wanted to show support for Daraa.

Life was almost back to normal in the central city of Homs, except for intense security, a witness said. A few hundred people demonstrated there Monday in support of Daraa, the witness said

Daraa has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the past five weeks as the uprising gained momentum. Recently, the city has absorbed many rural migrants who can no longer farm after years of drought.

The White House has stepped up its condemnation of Assad's regime, but stopped well short of demanding his ouster. U.S. officials said Washington has begun drawing up targeted sanctions against him, his family and his inner circle to boost pressure on them to halt the repression.

Washington was conferring with European countries and the United Nations about options.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain also was working with other members of the U.N. Security Council "to send a strong signal to the Syrian authorities that the eyes of the international community are on Syria." The U.N. will discuss Syria later Tuesday.

In Rome, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed concern over the crackdown. Sarkozy said the current situation was "unacceptable."

The United States told all its nonessential staff and the families of all its embassy workers to leave the country, but kept the facility open for limited services. It also advised all Americans to defer travel to Syria and advised those already in the country to leave. On Sunday, Britain urged its citizens to leave Syria.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Assad and urged him to show "restraint." Turkey's ambassador met Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar to express "deep concern and sorrow" over the many lives lost, the prime minister's office and the Turkish media reported.

The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, who provided the death toll of more than 400 people since the uprising began last month, said that figure did not include those killed in the raids on Daraa and the Damascus suburb of Douma. It also did not include the number of Syrian troops killed, he added.

Abdul-Rahman couldn't provide a precise figure for those arrested Tuesday because it was difficult to get through to Daraa after authorities cut telephone service in the city 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Damascus, near the Jordanian border.

The uprising was touched off by the arrest of teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a wall, with protesters inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.

Last week, Assad fulfilled a key demand by abolishing nearly 50-year-old emergency laws that had given the regime a free hand to arrest people without cause. But he coupled the concession with a stern warning that people would no longer have an excuse to hold mass protests, and any further unrest would be considered "sabotage."

When protesters defied his order and held demonstrations Friday — the main day for rallies around the Arab world — they were met with a gunfire, tear gas and stun guns.

The attack on Daraa was by far the biggest in scope and firepower. Video purportedly shot by activists showed tanks rolling through streets and grassy fields with soldiers on foot jogging behind them.

State-run television quoted a military source as saying army units entered the city to bring security "answering the pleas for help by residents of Daraa."

Syria has a pivotal role in most of the flashpoint issues of the Middle East — from the Arab-Israeli peace process to Iran's widening influence. Instability has thrown into disarray the U.S. push for engagement with Damascus, part of Washington's hopes to peel the country away from Hamas, Hezbollah and Tehran.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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