Video: Americans Arrested Violently at the Jefferson Memorial -- for Dancing

So now the Jefferson Memorial is a "protected area" per the Patriot Act?
May 29, 2011 | Alternet

Watch what happened today at the Jefferson Memorial in DC. CodePinker Medea Benjamin and others were arrested for "dancing," and others were body slammed for the crime of movement!

Since Congress reauthorized the Patriot Act, more acts of self expression may be deemed “protesting in a restricted area.”

"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."
~ Thomas Jefferson

Spain: Massive Crowds Defy Ban on Protests

Saturday, May 21, 2011 by the Associated Press
by Harold Heckle

Tens of thousands of people are defying a pre-election ban on demonstrations and protesting unemployment in squares around Spain in defiance of an order to quit at midnight.

The government avoided saying if it would order police to break up the crowds on Saturday, but at the stroke of midnight officers kept a discreet presence on the edges of the demonstrations.

Demonstrators kept quiet as city clocks chimed the beginning of a new day, many with sticky tape over their mouths in a gesture organizers said suggested they have things to say but were being gagged by the ban.

People are angry over Spain's high unemployment rate and what they see as the national political parties' ineptitude in dealing with a deep economic crisis. (sound familiar?--jef) Protesters built a camp in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square Sunday, a week ahead of nationwide elections. Since then good-natured, peaceful and colorful gatherings have sprung up and grown around the country under the banner of "Real Democracy Now."

Many protesters have said they were influenced by recent pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East and one popular chant is "Join us."

Friday was the last day for candidates to campaign for the election for municipal and regional government positions in much of the country. Citing the mandatory end of campaigning, the national election commission banned protests Saturday and on Sunday, voting day.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero did not say whether he would order police to break up demonstrations.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba was also cagey about how the government would deal with the protesters, although he said the police would not act to make things worse.

Initially he said the government will "enforce the law," but he then toned down this stance, saying "The police are not going to resolve one problem by creating another."

The ruling Socialist party is widely expected to suffer big losses at the polls, perhaps even in traditional strongholds, having been forced by the crisis to introduce austerity measures.

"They want to leave us without public health and public education. Half of our youth is unemployed and they have raised the age of retirement," said protester Natividad Garcia, who declined to give her age and profession.

The government is presiding over an economy struggling to overcome recession and create jobs to chip away at a 21.3 percent jobless rate, the highest in the eurozone.

In Spain, rallies called to urge people to vote one way or another are typically banned the day before an election, called "days of reflection."

The election commission was deeply divided this time, and upheld the ban by just a one-vote margin. The panel was convened to give a blanket ruling for all of Spain because provincial election bodies had issued contradictory rulings, with some allowing protests this week and some banning them, as was the case in Madrid.

Organizers of the protests say that they have no party affiliation, are not trying to affect the election outcome in any way, and are not even urging people to abstain from voting.

"Campaign posters are still going to be up, so why ban people from freely mingling to exchange ideas," said graphic designer Antonio Quiroga, 27.

The Domestic War on Protesters

It's Not Just Egypt
By BRAD THOMPSON

Recent weeks have seen waves of popular protest sweep through the Middle East in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan and notably the demonstrations in Egypt, which continue into their third week. The international response has included powerful expressions of support for the people of Egypt and their right to dissent against the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Here in the United States, this support has come largely at the grassroots level with public statements and demonstrations of solidarity, primarily organized by Arab- American communities.

The response from US government has cautiously paid lip service to some of the issues raised by the protesters. This is inconsistent with their actions, as the US has been a close political ally of Mubarak for years, giving billions of dollars in aid to his regime and had US diplomats supporting him during the protests. However, the unambiguous message we have heard from the political leaders of this country is the oft-repeated mantra that the United States supports universal human rights, particularly the rights to peaceful protest and free speech.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated at a news conference, "We urge the Egyptian authorities to allow peaceful protests and to reverse the unprecedented steps it has taken to cut off communications." President Obama has repeatedly made similar statements, at one point telling reporters, "I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters ... The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association. The right to free speech and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights and the United States will stand up for them everywhere."

These statements clearly assert the right to speak freely against the government, the right to protest in the street and opposition to police violence being used to suppress public demonstrations. The sentiment of these declarations should be embraced and supported. However, the unfortunate and disappointing reality is that the empty rhetoric from these political leaders about the right to dissent is remarkably inconsistent with the way protest is often handled in this country. I see a striking and stark contrast between the amplified declarations of the US commitment to human rights and the policies and practices of the government in this country. This disparity between words and actions about human rights issues has crystallized these recent weeks in regard to the US position on the right to protest.

While the US claims to uphold right to demonstrate around the world, there have been countless examples throughout the history of this country of protests being shut down by an overwhelming police presence. In recent years, it has become routine for police departments to use a host of tactics to limit and prevent mass demonstrations. These tactics have included mass arrests of demonstrators, preemptive arrests and trumped up charges against protest organizers and use of less-lethal munitions such as rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, Tasers, concussion grenades, Long Range Acoustic Devices, bean bag rounds and wooden bullets, to name a few.

One example I am intimately familiar with is from Chicago on March 20, 2003, the day

after the US military invaded Iraq, as spontaneous demonstrations erupted around the country. Here in Chicago, over 10,000 people gathered downtown and began marching through the streets and onto Lake Shore Drive. The protest was an immediate response to an emerging issue and there was not time to go through Chicago’s lengthy application process to get a march permit, so the demonstration lacked a paper permit.

The police both tacitly and explicitly allowed the protest to occur. However, hours into the demonstration, the march left the Drive and the numbers of protesters decreased. Police clad in riot gear surrounded and detained the crowd. The officers then began making mass arrests, using excessive force on a number of people and by the end of the night, nearly 550 people were taken into police custody, including some with bruises, broken bones and permanent nerve damage. I was one of the protestors who was violently arrested and was struck in the face by an officer in riot gear, cracking my nose and leaving a gash that needed stitches.

A class action lawsuit, Vodak v. City of Chicago, was filed after the incident, which I have been involved in as both a plaintiff and a legal worker. The suit is on behalf of the approximately 550 people who were falsely arrested, some spending two days in jail, along with 300 others who were detained on the street for over an hour and a half and forced to discard their signs and anti-war materials. After years of litigation, on the eve of trial Virginia Kendall, the federal judge presiding over the case, ruled in favor of the City of Chicago and determined that the police had the right to arrest the protesters because we did not have a permit. That decision was appealed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals where it was argued this past October, during which one of the judges stated, “It sounds like a police state, if a large crowd of peaceful people can all just be swept up and arrested by the police.” At the time of this writing, the class members and attorneys await the Appeals Court’s decision, which will determine whether the case can proceed.

This incident exemplifies the way in which police forces in the US clamp down on protest. I am highlighting it because it was just one example where I personally experienced the violent police suppression of protesters, and where I have watched as the City of Chicago has paid millions of tax dollars to a private law firm to defend itself and its violations of people’s rights. I have now even seen a Federal Judge find that the police were justified in using mass arrests to stop First-Amended protected activity. It is from that position that I find it outrageous that Obama and other politicians have the audacity to speak on the “universal human right” to protest publicly. The silence from Obama regarding the Chicago Police’s violation of the right to demonstrate is aggravated by the fact that he was a Chicago-based politician when the incident happened and throughout most of the litigation of the case.

I mention this example in Chicago not because it is exceptional, but rather because it demonstrates the use of mass arrests and police brutality that have become commonplace at large demonstrations in this country. We have seen similar responses, usually with even more police violence at the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, the Republican and Democratic Conventions in 2000 in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank in Washington DC in 2000 and 2002,

the Free Trade Area of the Americas Ministerial in Miami in 2003, the Republican Conventions in New York in 2004 and St. Paul in 2008, and the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh in 2009, among others.

The example of the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh demonstrates the inconsistency of the government’s claim to support the right to protest, along with their claims to support Internet freedom. The US calls to free speech have largely been in response to the Egyptian government shutting down the Internet in an attempt to limit the ability for protest organizers to use social media, such as Twitter and Facebook. While the US actions have differed from that of Egypt, their response to social media at the G-20 exposes the gap between their rhetoric and their practice.

As Obama and other heads of state met at the G-20 Summit, thousands of protesters took to the street against the political and economic policies of the twenty strongest governments. Police forces clad in riot gear and National Guard units patrolled the streets of Pittsburgh using a variety of tools to restrain the demonstrations, including tear gas, Long Range Acoustic Devices and canine units. One of the primary tools used by the activists to communicate was Twitter.

The Pennsylvania Police responded by arresting two of the tweeting activists, including Elliot Madison and charging him with felonies, including, "criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime." After being released and returning home, a few days later the FBI and other agents with the Joint Terrorism Task Force raided his home, seizing computers, books and boxes full of other personal items.

At the time of his arrest, Ryan Singel from Wired.com aptly commented, “If Madison were an Iranian using Twitter to coordinate government protests, he'd likely be considered a hero in the West. Instead, the self-identified anarchist...is now facing up to five years in prison for each count a grand jury cares to indict him on.” While the state charges in Pennsylvania were eventually dropped, Madison’s arrest has sent a chilling message to activists that using social media networks as protest organizing tools could bring criminal charges.

To be perfectly clear, articulating the ways in which police forces have repressed protests here in the United States is in no way an attempt to undermine or minimize the intensity of the repression and violence that has been experienced by the people of Egypt. The last thing I wish to do is negate the courage and strength that has been shown by countless Egyptians who have stood up in the face of police violence or make invisible the dozens of people who have been killed in the protests.

Rather, I wish to echo the millions of people around the world who are declaring their solidarity with the people of Egypt and emphasize that true solidarity means resisting oppression, police brutality and State repression from wherever you stand. From Pittsburgh to Sidi Bouzid, from Miami to Sana’a, from Suez to St. Paul, from New York to Amman, from Cairo to Chicago. We should allow the courageous spirit of resistance that has emerged in Egypt to inspire our work fighting for social justice in this country. We also must remind ourselves that the rights we have in this country are not provided to us by presidents, police or politicians and that they are only guaranteed when we exercise them. The fight against injustice must continue on all fronts in the courts, in our communities and in the streets.

"A Financial Coup d'Etat"

European Neoliberals Raise Ante in War on Labor; Fateful Struggle Will Set Course for a Generation
By MICHAEL HUDSON

Most of the press has described Europe’s labor demonstrations and strikes on Wednesday in terms of the familiar exercise by transport employees irritating travelers with work slowdowns, and large throngs letting off steam by setting fires. But the story goes much deeper than merely a reaction against unemployment and economic recession. At issue are proposals to drastically change the laws and structure of how European society will function for the next generation. If the anti-labor forces succeed, they will break up Europe, destroy the internal market, and render that continent a backwater. This is how serious the financial coup d’etat has become. And it is going to get much worse – quickly. As John Monks, head of the European Trade Union Confederation, put it: “This is the start of the fight, not the end.”

Spain has received most of the attention, thanks to its ten-million strong turnout – reportedly half the entire labor force. Holding its first general strike since 2002, Spanish labor protested against its socialist government using the bank crisis (stemming from bad real estate loans and negative mortgage equity, not high labor costs) as an opportunity to change the laws to enable companies and government bodies to fire workers at will, and to scale back their pensions and public social spending in order to pay the banks more. Portugal is doing the same, and it looks like Ireland will follow suit – all this in the countries whose banks have been the most irresponsible lenders. The bankers are demanding that they rebuild their loan reserves at labor’s expense, just as in President Obama’s program here in the United States but without the sanctimonious pretenses.

The problem is Europe-wide and indeed centered in the European Union capital in Brussels, where fifty to a hundred thousand workers gathered to protest the proposed transformation of social rules. Yet on the same day, the European Commission (EC) outlined a full-fledged war against labor. It is the most anti-labor campaign since the 1930s – even more extreme than the Third World austerity plans imposed by the IMF and World Bank in times past.

The EC is using the mortgage banking crisis – and the needless prohibition against central banks monetizing public budget deficits – as an opportunity to fine governments and even drive them bankrupt if they do not agree roll back salaries. Governments are told to borrow at interest from the banks, rather than raising revenue by taxing them as they did for half a century following the end of World War II. Governments unable to raise the money to pay the interest must close down their social programs. And if this shrinks the economy – and hence, government tax revenues – even more, the government must reduce social spending yet further.

From Brussels to Latvia, neoliberal planners have expressed the hope that lower public-sector salaries will spread to the private sector. The aim is to roll back wage levels by 30 per cent or more, to depression levels, on the pretense that this will “leave more surplus” available to pay in debt service. It will do no such thing, of course. It is a purely vicious attempt to reverse Europe’s Progressive Era social democratic reforms achieved over the past century. Europe is to be turned into a banana republic by taxing labor – not finance, insurance or real estate (FIRE). Governments are to impose heavier employment and sales taxes while cutting back pensions and other public spending.

“Join the fight against labor, or we will destroy you,” the EC is telling governments. This requires dictatorship, and the European Central Bank (ECB) has taken over this power from elected government. Its “independence” from political control is celebrated as the “hallmark of democracy” by today’s new financial oligarchy. This deceptive newspeak evokes Plato’s view that oligarchy is simply the political stage following democracy. The new power elite’s next step in this eternal political triangle is to make itself hereditary – by abolishing estate taxes, for starters – so as to turn itself into an aristocracy.

It is a very old game indeed. So it is time to put aside the economics of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and the Progressive Era, to forget Marx and even Keynes. Europe is ushering in an era of totalitarian neoliberal rule. This is what Wednesday’s strikes and demonstrations were about. Europe’s class war is back in business – with a vengeance!

This is economic suicide, but the EU is demanding that Euro-zone governments keep their budget deficits below 3 per cent of GDP, and their total debt below 60 per cent. On Wednesday the EU passed a law to fine governments up to 0.2 per cent of GDP for not “fixing” their budget deficits by imposing such fiscal austerity. Nations that borrow to engage in countercyclical “Keynesian-style” spending that raises their public debt beyond 60 per cent of GDP will have to reduce the excess by 5per cent each year, or suffer harsh punishment. The European Commission (EC) will fine euro-area states that do not obey its neoliberal recommendations – ostensibly to “correct” budget imbalances.

The reality is that every neoliberal “cure” only makes matters worse. But rather than seeing rising wage levels and living standards as being a precondition for higher labor productivity, the EU commission will “monitor” labor costs on the assumption that rising wages impair competitiveness rather than raise it. If euro members cannot depreciate their currencies, then they must fight labor – but not tax real estate, finance or other rentier sectors, not regulate monopolies, and not provide public services that can be privatized at much higher costs. Privatization is not deemed to impair competitiveness – only rising wages, regardless of productivity considerations.

The financial privatization and credit-creation monopoly that governments have relinquished to banks is now set to pay off – at the price of breaking up Europe. Unlike central banks elsewhere in the world, the charter of the European Central Bank (ECB, independent from democratic politics, not from control by its commercial bank members) forbids it to monetize government debt. Governments must borrow from banks, which are create interest-bearing debt on their own keyboards rather than having their national bank do it without cost.

The unelected members of the European Central Bank have taken over planning power from elected governments. Beholden to its financial constituency, the ECB has convinced the EU commission to back the new oligarchic power grab. This destructive policy has been tested above all in the Baltics, using them as guinea pigs to see how far labor can be depressed before it fights back. Latvia gave free rein to neoliberal policies by imposing flat taxes of 51 per cent and higher on labor, while real estate is virtually untaxed. Public-sector wages have been reduced by 30 per cent, prompting labor of working age (20 to 35 year-olds) to emigrate in droves. This of course is contributing to the plunge in real estate prices and tax revenue. Lifespans for men are shortening, disease rates are rising, and the internal market is shrinking, and so is Europe’s population – as it did in the 1930s, when the “population problem” was a plunge in fertility and birth rates (above all in France). That is what happens in a depression.

Iceland’s looting by its bankers came first, but the big news was Greece. When that nation entered its current fiscal crisis as a result of not collecting taxes on the wealthy, European Union officials recommended that it emulate Latvia, which remains the poster child for neoliberal devastation. The basic theory is that inasmuch as members of the euro cannot devalue their currency, they must resort to “internal devaluation”: slashing wages, pensions and social spending. So as Europe enters recession it is following precisely the opposite of Keynesian policy. It is reducing wages, ostensibly to “free” more income available to pay the enormous debts that Europeans have taken on to buy their homes and pay for schooling (hitherto provided freely in many countries such as Latvia’s Stockholm School of Economics), transportation and other public services. Manly such services have been privatized and subsequently raised their rates drastically. The privatizers justify this by pointing to the enormously bloated financial fees they had to pay their bankers and underwriters in order to get the credit to buy the infrastructure that was being sold off by governments.

So Europe is committing economic, demographic and fiscal suicide. Trying to “solve” the problem neoliberal style only makes things worse. Latvia’s public-sector workers, for example, have seen their wages cut by 30 per cent over the past year, and its central bankers have told me that they are seeking further cuts, in the hope that this will lower wages in the private sector as well, just as neoliberals in other European countries hope, as noted above.

About 10,000 Latvians attended protest meetings in the small town of Daugavilpils alone as part of the “Journey into the Crisis.” In Latvia’s capital city, Riga, Wednesday’s Action Day saw the usual stoppage of transportation and an accompanying honk concert for 10 minutes at 1 PM to let the public know that something was happening. Six independent trade unions and the Harmony Center organized a protest meeting in Riga’s Esplanade Park that drew 700 to 800 demonstrators, relatively large for so small a city. Another union protest saw about half that number gather at the Cabinet of Ministers where Latvia’s austerity program has been planned and carried out.

What is happening most importantly is the national parliamentary elections this Saturday (October 2). The leading coalition, Harmony Center, is pledged to enact an alternative tax and economic policy to the neoliberal policies that have reduced labor’s wages and workplace standards so sharply over the past decade. A few days earlier a bus tour drove journalists to the most visible victims – schools and hospitals that had been closed down, government buildings whose employees had seen their salaries slashed and the workforce downsized.

These demonstrations seem to have gained voter sympathy for the more militant unions, headed by the hundred individual unions belonging to the Independent Trade Union Association. The other union group – the Free Trade Unions (LBAS) lost face by acquiescing in June 2009 to the government’s proposed 10per cent pension cuts (and indeed, 70per cent for working pensioners). Latvia’s constitutional court was sufficiently independent to overrule these drastic cuts last December. And if the government does indeed change this Saturday, the conflict between the Neoliberal Revolution and the past few centuries of classical progressive reform will be made clear.

In sum, the Neoliberal Revolution seeks to achieve in Europe what the United States has achieved since real wages stopped rising in 1979: doubling the share of wealth enjoyed by the richest 1 per cent. This involves reducing the middle class to poverty, breaking union power, and destroying the internal market as a precondition.

Latvia’s Harmony Center program shows that there is a much easier way to cut the cost of labor in half than by reducing its wages: Simply shift the tax burden off labor onto real estate and monopolies (especially privatized infrastructure). This will leave less of the economic surplus to be capitalized into bank loans, lowering the price of housing accordingly (the major factor in labor’s cost of living), as well as the price of public services. (Owners of monopoly utility services would be prevented from factoring interest charges into their cost of doing business. The idea is to encourage them to take returns on equity. Whether or not they borrow is a business decision of theirs, not one that governments should subsidize.) The tax deductibility of interest will be repealed – there is nothing intrinsically “market dictated” by this fiscal subsidy for debt leveraging. This program may be reviewed at rtfl.lv, the Renew Task Force Latvia website.

No doubt many post-Soviet economies will find themselves obliged to withdraw from the euro area rather than see a flight of labor and capital. They remain the most extreme example of the Neoliberal Experiment to see how far a population can have its living standards slashed before it rebels.

But so far the neoliberals are fully in control of the bureaucracy, and they are reviving Margaret Thatcher’s slogan, TINA: There Is No Alternative. But there is an alternative, of course. In the small Baltic economies, pro-labor parties are pressing for the government to shift the tax burden off employees and consumers back onto property and financial wealth. Bad debts beyond the reasonable ability to pay must be scaled back. It may be necessary to let the banks go under (they are mainly Swedish), even if this means withdrawing from the Euro. The choice is between who will be destroyed: the banks, or labor?

European politicians now view this as being truly a fight to the death. This is the ideology that has replaced social democracy.