Occupy Everywhere! Revolution 2012 builds momentum as over a quarter of a million people demonstrate in Montreal, prompting the Canadian government to ban people from gathering in public.
Protests that began in opposition to tuition fees in Canada have exploded into a political crisis with the mass arrest of hundreds of demonstrators amid a backlash against draconian emergency laws.
More than 500 people were arrested in a demonstration in Montreal on Wednesday night as protesters defied a controversial new law - Bill 78 - that places restrictions on the right to demonstrate. In Quebec City, police arrested 176 people under the provisions of the new law.
Demonstrators have been gathering in Montreal for just over 100 days to oppose tuition increases by the Quebec provincial government. On Tuesday, about 100 people were arrested after organisers say 300,000 people took the streets.
But what began as a protest against university fee increases has expanded to a wider movement to oppose Bill 78, which was rushed through by legislators in Quebec in response to the demonstrations. The bill imposes severe restrictions on protests, making it illegal for protesters to gather without having given police eight hours' notice and securing a permit.
Comment: As much as the corporate media would like to keep the incredible revolutionary momentum in Canada constrained to the issue of student tuition fees, it is clear that this has gone way beyond that now. Each new piece of draconian legislation introduced by western 'democrazies' to deal with the rebellions only prompts more people to get out on the streets.
© Roni Schutzer/AFP/Getty ImagesHundreds demonstrate in the impoverished Hatikva neighborhood of south Tel Aviv against the African migrant community.
Dozens of African asylum seekers were injured as race riots broke out in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night.
Thousands of protesters joined politicians to protest against the arrival of an estimated 60,000 asylum seekers in Israel in recent years. But after inflammatory speeches the demonstration broke out into violence.
Witnesses reported seeing men and women being beaten and shops and properties being attacked. Police said nine people were arrested.
The protesters were addressed by politicians including Miri Regev and Danny Danon of the ruling Likud Party. According to the Israeli newspaper
Ha'aretz, Regev described the asylum seekers as a "cancer in our body," and promised to do everything "in order to bring them back to where they belong".
Wall Street bankers could have averted the global financial crisis, so why didn't they? In this exclusive extract from his book Inside Job
, Charles Ferguson argues that they should be prosecuted
© Eric Thayer/Reuters/Corbis 'When did Wall street know there was a bubble and that they could game it?'
ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, operating it for 30 years and causing cash losses of $19.5bn. Shortly after the scheme collapsed and Madoff confessed in 2008, evidence began to surface that for years, major banks had suspected he was a fraud. None of them reported their suspicions to the authorities, and several banks decided to make money from him without, of course, risking any of their own funds. Theories about his fraud varied. Some thought he might have access to insider information. But quite a few thought he was running a Ponzi scheme.
Goldman Sachs executives paid a visit to Madoff to see if they should recommend him to clients. A partner later recalled: "Madoff refused to let them do any due diligence on the funds and when asked about the firm's investment strategy they couldn't understand it. Goldman not only blacklisted Madoff in the asset management division but banned its brokerage from trading with the firm too."
© Alamy
Companies engaged in financial crime may be able to negotiate plea bargains under legislation being put forward by the Ministry of Justice. Under the new law companies that self-report could see prosecutions deferred pending payment of a fine and agreements to change working practices.
RTWed, 23 May 2012 16:14 UTC
Illegally downloading songs off the Internet has become a common trend around the globe, but a student at Boston University was specifically targeted for the practice. Joel Tenenbaum was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for sharing 30 songs and now has to cough up a total of $675k. He joins us with more on his ongoing case against the RIAA, which the US Supreme Court decided this week not to hear.
RTThu, 24 May 2012 16:09 UTC
First there was the housing bubble, but now a new crisis has emerged in America. The student debt bubble has now accumulated over $1 trillion in student loan debt and, starting July 1, Federal Pell Grants are set to be cut for thousands of student across the US. Sarah Jaffe, associate editor for AlterNet.org, joins us with her take on student debt.
Obama administration under fire for granting access to Hollywood film-makers in apparent violation of official policyThe
Obama administration is under fire for granting Hollywood film-makers clandestine access to the Navy Seal team that killed
Osama bin Laden in apparent violation of official policy.
Oscar-winning director
Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal were given unprecedented information about the 2011 raid to help them make
Zero Dark Thirty, a forthcoming film about the event.
Documents released under freedom of information laws showed the Pentagon and
CIA divulged secret information about the commando unit, known as Seal Team Six, which killed the September 11 mastermind.
Corporate news blackout as Obama appoints John Brennan as the sole person in charge of designating people to be assassinated.
John Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism advisor was a name that you did not see on the Mainstream media today as they continue to run stories that serve to distract the masses from stories that matter.
Most recently he publicly spoke about the drone program calling it moral and ethical and just.
According to reports from the Associated Press, John Brennan has now seized the lead in choosing who will be targeted for drone attacks and raids after Obama delegated him as the sole authority to designate people for assassination under the United States top-secret assassination program.
Yes, if it such a secret program then why is the Associated Press running a story on it? Because it is only a "top-secret" matter of National Insecurity when the public and organizations such as the ACLU request more details on it than is revealed int the propagandized reports the public is fed through the corporate media.
While this story deserves to have been put before the eyeballs of every U.S. citizens it was merely a side note ran by the Associate Press that didn't make corporate news headlines anywhere.
These look like scenes from a Bond film or perhaps the start of World War Three.
Dressed in full combat gear with guns raised, members of the Special Operations Forces (SOF) looked like they were on serious business as they swooped on Tampa, Florida, in boats, assault vehicles and helicopters.
But fortunately for the thousands of bystanders there was no need to be frightened - it was a 'mock' assault as part of a training exercise.
© UnknownDon't shoot! Spectators watch with cameras as a demonstration by special operations troops on an Army MH-60 Blackhawk near the Tampa Convention Center draws crowds yesterday
took place at the Tampa Convention Center yesterday, when 14 SOF members from the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force showcased their combat skills in a half-hour demonstration.
Representing
10 different nations, they roared through the water in two inflatable boats and leaped ashore using Humvees and all-terrain vehicles.
Others jumped from the rear of a helicopter directly into the water.
Jonathan Cable & Steven Johnson
ReutersThu, 24 May 2012 10:04 UTC
The shadows over the global economy darkened this month as the euro zone's private sector contracted, U.S. manufacturing growth slowed and China's once-booming factories faltered, surveys showed on Thursday.
In Europe, a downturn that started in smaller states on the euro zone's periphery is now taking root in the core countries of Germany and France, where tepid growth had been the main ballast of support for the euro area economy.
"We are very much in a period of weakening global growth. It doesn't quite feel like 2008 yet but the danger is we could get there quicker than we think," said Peter Dixon at Commerzbank.
The euro zone composite PMI, comprising the services and manufacturing sectors, fell to 45.9 from April's 46.7, its lowest reading since June 2009 and its ninth month below the 50-mark that divides growth from contraction.
Comment: The economy has been in shambles since 2007. Is it Greece's fault? How about the Bankrupt United States, it's wars, lack of investment in infrastructure? Could less wars of deception have helped if Joe Public were to have an income and purchased good/services that were imported or homegrown vs. his Tax Dollars buying more bullets, missiles, bombs..?
Could it be the constant strain on our brains from the fear-mongering (War on Terror™), war profiteering and sabre rattling of the Western World that is pushing the economy over the edge? Could it be the hyper inflated cost of fuel that has and is tightening the spending of the average household? There are many factors pushing and pulling at peoples wallets and purses, and it's the persons who control the economic strings that are ruining the World Economy, and it's evident, to those paying attention, that it's intentional.
The economic crimes against people are not just in Greece, or the United States..
The real statistics on the economy are kept out of mainstream news. 5 years into the current Depression and the people with Jobs and money still don't consider the economy as bad as during the Great Depression. Others going without, losing their homes, jobless, know this to be a much worse situation. And yet somehow the illusion of an economy limps along. And it is this illusion that is milking the last of the middle class into complete economic loss.
Here's a recent sample of how it works:
Shareholders Weren't Invited to the Real Party -and it works well. Sadly, yet intentionally, the mainstream media doesn't want to talk about the puppetry, war, price fixing/gouging etc.. that are really causing the Great Global Economic Depression.
Comment: As much as the corporate media would like to keep the incredible revolutionary momentum in Canada constrained to the issue of student tuition fees, it is clear that this has gone way beyond that now. Each new piece of draconian legislation introduced by western 'democrazies' to deal with the rebellions only prompts more people to get out on the streets.