Revolution 99% Update: Mind, Body and Soul; The Activist WMD
Why the Police in Michael Premo’s Occupy Wall Street Trial Are Unlikely To Face Perjury Charges
Many of the readers who commented on last week’s story about Michael Premo, the Occupy Wall Street protester who beat his criminal charges last week thanks to video evidence, wanted to know: Would the police officer whose testimony was contradicted by the video face any consequences? Would he be charged with perjury?
The short answer is: Don’t hold your breath.
But that’s not to say that a closer look at Premo’s trial doesn’t reinforce the impression that the police testimony against him looks a lot like perjury.
In the initial complaint, Premo’s arresting officer, Ron Vincent, described a version of events recounted to him by a second officer — the one who actually handled Premo’s physical arrest — who he referred to as the “informant:”
“When informant was attempting to place the defendant under arrest defendant twisted defendant’s body, refused to place defendant’s hands behind defendant’s back, and pushed informant with defendant’s hands, causing deponent [sic] to fall…. Defendant’s above described conduct caused informant to suffer a fractured wrist and substantial pain.” More…
World Naked Bike Ride protests everything in Australia
Australians braved their bike seats in the nude this weekend in protest of a whole list of issues that plague our world.
The World Naked Bike Ride is a yearly demonstration about problems that participants feel are best represented by a hoard of naked bodies peddling the streets. What isn’t, really?
The mission statement on the event’s website describes the scope of its purpose.
We face automobile traffic with our naked bodies as the best way of defending our dignity and exposing the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians plus all the negative effects of oil, cars, war, consumerism and non-renewable energy.
A longer description adds to the list body image, health problems and everyday violence. Clearly, the message here is that getting naked will save the world. More…
Protests of logging could be new crime in Oregon
Bills would create felony, allow loggers to file suit
GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A tree farmer serving in the Legislature wants tougher penalties on people who chain themselves to equipment and block roads to stop logging on state forests.
“There’s been a 30-year reign of terror by these people having no respect for the rights of others,” Rep. Wayne Krieger, R-Gold Beach, said Friday. “If they want to do civil disobedience, they can do that. It’s part of the Oregon Constitution, and the federal. But when they go beyond that and start chaining themselves to trees, locking themselves to equipment, and laying down in the road, and in any way they impede access, then they have gone over the line.”
His bill (HB 2995) would create a new felony charge of interference with state forestland management, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $25,000 fine. A companion bill (HB 2596) would allow loggers to sue protesters for lost income plus $10,000 up to six years after a protest.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jeff Barker, D-Aloha, said HB 2995 won’t pass out of committee until it is rewritten to not impair the right to protest. “There seem to be some pretty clear constitutional violations in it,” he said. “I asked him to try to rework that to make some sense out of it.” More…
Toronto mayor dismisses protest by anti-poverty activists
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says anti-poverty activists who have taken refuge inside Metro Hall are waging “nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt.”
A few dozen protesters with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty – which last month staged an hours-long sit-in outside the mayor’s office – set up a makeshift shelter inside Metro Hall on Thursday.
The group has said Toronto’s homeless shelter system is in crisis.
MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY
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- Asking mayor’s opponent to pay his costs would be ‘embarrassment’ to justice, lawyers say
- Mayor Ford says he won’t ask city to foot legal bill
Here’s What Happens In France When Corrupt Companies Fire People
Because when companies fire people, their profits go up. And the prevailing ethos of American capitalism is that bigger profits are better. Period.
(This is a shortsighted view, even from a business perspective, because one company’s wages are other companies’ revenues, so by cutting wages you’re kneecapping economic growth. But American shareholders have become so obsessed with near-term profitability that they don’t care about anything else.)
Other countries have different attitudes about capitalism. More…
Activists are lying to stir protests: Lying Saudi official
Saudi Arabia on Thursday accused online activists of using social media to stir up protests, banned in the kingdom, by distributing “false information” about the number of people detained.
2011–2013 Saudi Arabian protests – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Concern over the fate of the kingdom’s thousands of security detainees, who the government says are Islamist militants, has prompted demonstrations, culminating in the arrest of 161 people at a protest last week in the central city of Buraidah.
The accusation, delivered during a news conference in Buraidah, underscored the government’s concerns over the impact of reports distributed via social media that many long-term detainees have not been brought to trial, and that police treated women protesters disrespectfully.
Last week’s protest was the latest in a string of demonstrations by relatives of detainees in the capital Riyadh and Qassim Province.
In January more than 100 Wahhabi clerics wrote to King Abdullah, pressing him to address the issue swiftly, a significant step given the paramount role of religion in Saudi society and top clerics’ backing of the protest ban.
“There are people who misuse the social networking and try to send false information,” Maj. Gen. Mansour Turki, the Interior Ministry’s security spokesman, said. More…
Bulgarian Self-Immolator behind Memorial ‘Pussy Riot’ Makeover
Varna man, Plamen Goranov, who passed away last Sunday after setting himself on fire, has been behind the decoration of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship memorial in the Black Sea city of Varna with colorful hoods, his friends revealed.
The makeover, which happened in August 2012, was believed to be a protest against the controversial two-year sentences received by three Russian band Pussy Riot members
The hoods were placed overnight on the statues of the memorial, one of the tallest in the Balkan country.
Also in August, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were found guilty of what the court claimed was “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”
The trio performed an anti-Kremlin “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in late February 2012.
Goranov, 36, an avid amateur photographer and mountain climber, took the drastic action of self-immolation on February 20, amid a wave of massive protests across the country against poverty, economic stagnation and corruption. More…
Thousands gather for Tokyo anti-nuclear protest 2 yrs post-Fukushima
Thousands of protesters demonstrated in the Japanese capital on Saturday, rallying against the continued usage of nuclear power in the country. Nearly two years after the Fukushima disaster, people seek to change the pro-atomic agenda of the new PM.
Around 13,000 people gathered, waving signs that read “Let’s save the children” and “No nukes.” Some also used it as an opportunity to gather support for the rescue of animals still in the ‘no-go’ high-radiation zone.
Participants have taken to occupying Tokyo’s public spaces, such as parks, on national holidays, and have specially assembled outside the parliament building in the city every Friday evening in an attempt to get their voices heard, reportedly drawing in a very diverse cross section of society, including both commuter ‘salarymen’ and housewives. More…
Protests fail to stop traffic on the Suez Canal
A fire on the quay side at Port Said has failed to disrupt shipping on the Suez Canal. Protesters also untied speedboats hoping they would drift into the waterway and disrupt passing vessels. Officials reported ships were passing as usual.
The protests were sparked by a court ruling which confirmed death sentences handed down to 21 local soccer fans for their part in a stadium riot last year.
“The Security Commander of Port Said, the Interior minister, the Governor More…
Protests in Slovenia continue despite government’s fall
(Reuters) – Thousands of Slovenians protested against corruption and the political elite in the center of Ljubljana on Saturday, demanding a snap election after the conservative government of Janez Jansa was ousted last week.
Slovenia is struggling to avoid an international bailout, and parliament last week nominated budget expert Alenka Bratusek of the center-left Positive Slovenia to form a new government.
Jansa’s coalition was brought down in part by street protests of a kind not seen since Slovenian independence in 1991, driven by spending cuts and allegations of government corruption.
Saturday’s march, whose organizers put participation at 10,000 and police at 5,000, was comparable with some of the largest so far, despite being held in pouring rain.
“We are not right and we are not left but we are the people who are sick of you,” said a banner held by one protesters in the capital of the small Alpine state. More…
