Are the worldwide protests helping or hurting? That is the question.

As Alexander Haig once stated "they can protest all they want so long as they pay their taxes". This statement is pretty telling in my opinion.

Now accompany that statement with the question, has protesting and hitting the streets really brought any change in policy, banking, wars etc.? Unfortunately, the answer clearly is no.

Let us take a look at some examples:

The Civil Rights Movement

The civil rights movement was a political movement for equality. Between 1950 and 1980 the movement took the form of campaigns of civil resistance.

The aim was to achieve change by means of nonviolent forms of resistance. But the campaign of "nonviolent forms of resistance" was accompanied, or followed, by civil unrest. In some cases armed rebellion.

When one thinks "civil rights movement" a few things probably comes to mind right away. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, sit-ins, and the hosing of black demonstrators, just to name a few.

I have a lot of respect for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and the numerous students that stood tall against oppression.

I want to make clear that I am questioning the effectiveness of demonstrating/protesting to bring about change. I am in no way saying that these individuals are "dumb" for the actions they took against oppression.

The police state's framework for suppressing information and opinion arguably threatens all forms of independent thought and appears poised to intensify as the "war on terror" continues. As the recent emergence of US plans for indoctrination in reeducation camps reveals, Western governments' actual enemy is the capacity for a people to exercise critical thought en route to intervening in and altering political-economic processes.

Public opinion - defined by 19th century English political thinker William MacKinnon as "that sentiment on any given subject which is entertained by the best informed, most intelligent, and most moral persons in the community" - is fundamentally at odds with police state prerogatives also exemplified in recent US Department of Homeland Security documents.

The technocratic mindset of agencies such as the DHS and Federal Bureau of Investigation that oversee federal, state, and local policing procedures seeks to short-circuit and quell dissent by identifying transgressive thought that deviates from an assumed normalcy, then interlinking it with perceived threats or violent actions against the state. In a grand governmental exercise of Freudian-style projection, the DHS's usage of inflammatory terms such as "terrorist" and "extremist" are routinely utilized to emphasize the nature and degree of various activist groups' alleged deviant ideologies. This practice proceeds in light of the fact that most every "terrorist" act within the US since 9/11 has been carefully guided by the FBI or, as was the case with the initial "underwear bomber, Western intelligence agencies likely working in concert.

A November 2011 DHS document, "Domestic Terrorism and Homegrown Violent Extremism Lexicon", is the agency's recent codification of terms intended to instruct and aid government officials in recognizing "threats of terrorism against the United States by facilitating a common understanding of the terms and conditions that describe terrorist threats to the United States [sic]."

Then, in a fashion that will be familiar to those who understand the tactics of groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, an untenable array of activist pursuits spanning the political spectrum - "Anarchist Extremists", "Animal Rights Extremists", "Anti-Abortion Extremists", "Environmental Rights Extremists" - are libelously lobbed together and defined alongside designations including "Racist Skinhead Extremists", "Homegrown Violent Extremist", "Radicalization", and "Terrorism".

Under cover of the night around twelve police cars stopped five journalists when they were heading back to where they are staying in Chicago during the NATO summit. All five have been covering protests against the NATO summit for the past few days.

The five journalists included Luke Rudkowksi, who streams as @Lukewearechange, Tim Pool, who streams as @Timcast, Jeoff Shively (@Jiraffa), Dustin & Jess. They are known for their work livestreaming and tweeting out regular coverage of Occupy protests.

Rudkowski of We Are Change managed to record the Chicago police approaching the journalists in the car. The police have their guns drawn. They shout, "Hands! Hands! Get your hands up!" And then, "F**kin' hands!" Then Pool's voice can be heard saying, "We're being raided. For folks who are watching, we are being raided by the CPD right now as we speak."

There is some trouble with the door. The door is locked and the police are knocking on the windows of the car. The door is opened. A police officer can be heard telling one of the journalists, "Put your coffee down so you don't burn your crotch."

Police officers ask a journalist, who I presume is Rudkowski, if he has anything on him. He then is told to leave the camera on the seat of the car.

The video cuts and then we see Shively and Rudkowski recounting what happened. They say police are following them. They add the police would not explain why they were stopped, they were pulled over by unmarked police cars and Rudkowski and Dustin were cuffed together.

Binyamin Netanyahu reignites row over fate of thousands of African migrants in Israel

The Israeli prime minister has stoked a volatile debate about refugees and migrant workers from Africa, warning that "illegal infiltrators flooding the country" were threatening the security and identity of the Jewish state.

"If we don't stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state," Binyamin Netanyahu said at Sunday's cabinet meeting. "This phenomenon is very grave and threatens the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity." Israel's population is 7.8 million.


His comments follow media reports of rising crime, including two gang rapes, in southern Tel Aviv, where many African migrants are concentrated. However, Micky Rosenfeld, spokesman for the Israeli police, said the overall crime rate in Israel had fallen. There had been one alleged rape of a teenage girl connected to the migrant community, for which three suspects were in custody, he added.

Militarized Chicago - Next month in Baltimore they're going to celebrate the War of 1812. That's what we do with wars. We say they're the last resort. We say they're hell. We say they're for the purpose of eliminating themselves: we fight wars for peace. Although we never keep peace for wars. We claim to wage only wars we have been forced into despite all possible effort to find a better way. And then we celebrate the wars. We keep the wars going for their own sake after all the excuses we used to get them started have expired. The WMDs have not been found. Osama bin Laden's been killed. Al Qaeda is gone from the country where we're fighting it. Nobody's threatening Benghazi anymore. But the wars must go on! And then we'll celebrate them. And we'll celebrate the old ones too, the ones that were fought here, the ones that were in their day not quite so heavily painted as last resorts or humanitarian missions.

Last year Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee persuaded Congress to create an Iraq-Afghanistan Wars holiday. It's on our calendars now along with Loyalty Day (formerly May Day), Veterans Day (formerly Armistice Day), Memorial Day, Yellow Ribbon Day, Patriots Day, Independence Day, Flag Day, Pearl Harbor Day, and of course September 11th, among many others. Last week there was an Armed Forces Spouses Appreciation Day. The military holiday calendar is like the Catholic saints' days now: there's something every day of the year.

But there's no celebration of the times we avoided war. We claim to prefer peace to war, but we don't make heroes of those presidents or Congresses who most avoided war. In fact, we erase them. Our history books jump from war to war as if nothing happened in between. Nobody celebrates 1811, only 1812. Even the peace movement doesn't celebrate the past decade's prevention, thus far, of a war on Iran.

A private door opens from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in central Jerusalem directly into a long, modestly furnished, half-paneled room decorated with modern paintings by Israeli artists and a copy of Israel's 1948 declaration of independence. It contains little more than a long wooden table, brown leather chairs and a single old-fashioned white projector screen.

This inner sanctum at the end of a corridor between Netanyahu's private room and the office of his top military adviser, is where one of the decade's most momentous military decisions could soon be taken: to launch an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program.

Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening.

Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure, saying it needs the fuel for its civilian nuclear program. The West is convinced that Tehran's real objective is to build an atomic bomb - something which the Jewish state will never accept because its leaders consider a nuclear armed-Iran a threat to its very existence.


Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were "ready" and the option was "fully available".

On Wednesday 16 May, at about 4pm, the republic of the United States of America was drawn back - at least for now - from a precipice that would have plunged our country into moral darkness. One brave and principled newly-appointed judge ruled against a law that would have brought the legal powers of the authorities of Guantánamo home to our own courthouses, streets and backyards.

US district judge Katherine Forrest, in New York City's eastern district, found that section 1021 - the key section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - which had been rushed into law amid secrecy and in haste on New Year's Eve 2011, bestowing on any president the power to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial, "facially unconstitutional". Forrest concluded that the law does indeed have, as the journalists and peaceful activists who brought the lawsuit against the president and Leon Panetta have argued, a "chilling impact on first amendment rights". Her ruling enjoins that section of the NDAA from becoming law.

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated explosives in an Afghan district close to the border with Pakistan, killing at least 10 people including children, officials said on Saturday.

The attack comes one day ahead of a NATO summit in Chicago, where the coalition intends to spell out its role in Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.

"The bomber blew himself up in a crowded market and it was powerful," said Sardar Mohammad Zazai, police chief of eastern Khost province.

He said the assailant was heading for a police checkpoint in the Ali Sher district along the border with Pakistan's "lawless tribal areas".

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed six children, one civilian adult and three policemen.

Eleven years into the NATO-led war against the Taliban, the Islamist group holds large sway in Afghanistan's restive south and east, where they enjoy enormous popular support.

Afghan security officials have said they expect this year's summer fighting season to be bloody as the third phase of a security handover from NATO to Afghan forces gets underway.

Several bomb blasts have struck a professional institute in the southern Italian city of Brindisi, killing one student and injuring seven. The three blasts hit as students arrived for morning lessons at the institute.

Local authorities report that the incendiary devices were planted in a trash bin opposition the professional institute Morvillo Falcone.

One of the injured has died in hospital while another has been transferred to nearby Perrino for emergency surgery.

"I was opening the window when I felt the force of the blast. I saw children thrown to the floor, blackened by the explosion, their books on fire. A truly terrifying scene. Who could've have done such a thing?" said a witness of the blast to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The explosions went off at around 8am local time (06:00 GMT), causing widespread panic among the students arriving at the school.

At least it's on the record: Most House Republicans support the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens.

During Thursday's floor debate over the latest national defense authorization act, the House GOP brought out their long knives for Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who, in their view, had collaborated on a nefarious plot to undermine national security. Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) accused the lawmakers of wanting to "coddle terrorists," while Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) warned that under an amendment they'd introduced, "as soon as a member of Al Qaeda sets foot on US soil, they hear you have the right to remain silent." National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who has never heard of a same-sex marriage supporting, pro-financial regulation liberal who wasn't secretly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote that their proposal was the result of "libertarian extremists" teaming up with liberals with an "obsession" with giving "more rights" to "mass murderers."