Report Finds Police Worldwide Criminalize Dissent, Assert New Powers in Crackdown on Protests

In a major new report, the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations details a global crackdown on peaceful protests through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report, "Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World," warns of a growing tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right — the right to protest — as a threat requiring a forceful government response. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain. The report’s name comes from a police report filed in June 2010 when hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Toronto to nonviolently protest the G-20 summit. A senior Toronto police commander responded to the protests by issuing an order to "take back the streets." Within a span of 36 hours, more than 1,000 people — peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights monitors and downtown residents — were arrested and placed in detention. We are joined by three guests: the report’s co-editor, Abby Deshman, a lawyer and program director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union; and Hossam Bahgat, an Egyptian human rights activist and the founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/10/report_finds_police_worldwide_criminalize_dissent

Occupy Second Anniversary Blast!

A manifesto for the year ahead.

Retirado de Adbusters

AFP PHOTO / ANGELOS TZORTZINIS

Hey all you still breathing out there,

On the second anniversary of OWS, here’s a manifesto to fill your lungs:

Look outside your window today and admire how permanent everything is.

Cars faithfully zoom in and out of traffic without end. Financial skyscrapers frame the streets, investing your dollars and cashing your paychecks with ease. People pour out of apartments on their way to the office, to visit friends, to look for work. The social order, all the basic interactions of the day, are predictable, normal, most likely the same as yesterday. The sheer rigidity of the political system is not in question.

Now imagine that it all snaps. That everything you know is turned upside down. The coffee shop is closed. The bank door is shut. People stop following even the most basic prompts.

Looking out the window today, we have that same feeling we had on September 16th, 2011, the day before those first courageous occupiers packed up their tents and made their move on Wall Street. Only this time, as we gaze beyond the glass, there is an assuring upward tilt on our otherwise steady lips. We now have a confidence in this generation that we didn’t have before. There are still curveballs that can shock the financial and psychological order. There is a growing conviction that the things that can happen, will happen. The world is still up for grabs.
Revolution is a Rhizome

What we experienced in 2011 is still reverberating around the globe. Most recently, in Turkey and Brazil, that feeling in the guts, that the future does not compute, is vibrant as ever. And because of that gnawing anxiety in the depths of an increasing mass of people, the new mode of activism, what Spanish journalist Bernardo Gutierrez calls a “new architecture of protest,” is spreading like a frenzy: what starts out as simple demands – don’t cut the trees, don’t raise the transit fair, don’t institute that corrupt judge – erupts into an all-encompassing desire to reboot the entire machine.

In the coming political horizon you can expect that wherever there is a crack, scandal, teacher strike or pipeline deception, you’ll find a hornet’s nest underneath. When you have a connected generation, all of their unique and individual demands are connected, too. Protest becomes a cornucopia, not a straight path. And the desire is not to destroy the system but to hack it, to re-code it, to commandeer it … to see revolution not as pyramid but as a rhizome … to see the system not as an unchanging text but as an ever changing language of computation, an algorithm.

More than ever we are seeing the actuality of the modern day truism, “we are all one.” Now, as we have the technology to organize – who cares if the NSA is listening in, in fact we welcome them to listen in and to be inspired – this first-ever global generation will be able to articulate itself more clearly, more viscerally, more intensely and at a frequency like never before.

Take a look out the window today. It wasn’t always this way. It won’t be this way forever.
A Generation Under Pressure

This generation is under pressure. Leading American pundits like David Brooks and Andrew Sorkin laugh us off as ungrateful kids and milquetoast radicals, people who just aren’t willing to work like the previous generation. But these folks just don’t get it. The engine light of humanity has turned on. But no mechanic of the old paradigm can fix it. We’re experiencing a global system failure like never before. But no programmer of the old language can re-write it. The Earth is getting sick. The culture is in terminal decline. Mental illness is the number one cause of lost workplace hours in America. What other indicator does one need? Rejection is not ungratefulness, it’s a beautiful and sincere longing for a sane and sustainable tomorrow. But as the valves are twisted tighter … well … you can see the result everywhere.

Last July, as hundreds of thousands of protesters were marching in cities throughout Turkey and Brazil, Adbusters creative director Pedro Inoue skipped work to join the magic in the streets. He sent us this testimony from the center of São Paulo, a portrait that became the backbone of one of our most spirited and hopeful publications yet. We’ve long been accused of being too negative … yet here our readers saw a bright light:

It’s something you feel when the lover in your arms is laughing and you feel like your heart is going to break because there couldn’t possibly be any more room for good inside. The high begins to float you away. We were walking to the governor’s house, taking time along the way to talk, look at people waving flags from apartment windows, listen to chants coming and going like waves in this sea of people. I looked into this kid’s eyes. He kept talking but I only remember those eight words.

“Man, what a beautiful world we live in,” he said.

I was mesmerized by the shine in his eyes. Sparks. Flashes. Pulses. Bursts of light. When the global revolution finally arrives … it’s going to shine everywhere like that.

The conditions that spurred on the Greek anarchists, the Arab Spring, the Spanish indignados, #Occupywallstreet, the Chilean student revolt, Pussy riot, the Quebec uprising, #idlenomore, Yo Soy 132 in Mexico, and the insurrections in Istanbul, Lima, Bulgaria and São Paulo have only worsened. Inequality is reaching obscene proportions in America and many other nations. There is an ever-greater concentration of wealth, ever-bigger banks, a steady increase of high frequency trading (HFT), derivative confusion and outbursts of rogue financial algorithms that send markets dipping and waning beyond any human control. $1.3 trillion in speculative financial transactions keep swirling around the planet every day. The stage is now set for a much more catastrophic market crash than 2008. And inside each and every one of us, the desire for real is growing:Real economy. Real democracy. Real possibilities. Real humanity. Realleadership. Real horizons. Real interactions. Real things. Real life.
Three Metamemes for the Future

Here at Adbusters, we see three big tactical breakthrough ideas, three metamemes, that have the power to veer this global trainwreck of ours from its date with disaster. Make no mistake, the crash is a brutal world – a barbarian reality. It’s a happening that none of us should seek out joyfully. Yet we cannot just go with the flow, sing with the speed and trust the inertia of our current economic doomsday machine.

The first thing we can do is call for a radical re-think of our global economic system. Unbridled neocon capitalism has been riding the back of humankind without opposition for nearly two generations now. It has provided no answer yet and it has no answer for the most pressing threat of the future, namely climate change. Economics students and heterodox economists must rise up in universities everywhere and demand a shift in the theoretical foundations of economic science. We have to abandon almost everything we thought we knew about the gods of progress, happiness and growth. We have to re-imagine industry, nutrition, communication, transportation, housing and money and pioneer a new kind of economics, a bionomics, a psychonomics, an ecological economics that is up to the job of managing our planetary household.

The second thing we can do is usher in a new era of radical transparency … to add the right to live in a transparent world as a new human right in the constitution of nations and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Current events in Syria are a perfect example of how secrecy by the major powers of the world leads to confusion and the possibility of catastrophic failure. Assad may get away with a type of murderous appetite not seen since WWII, for no reason other than the fact that America can no longer be trusted to tell the truth. Radical transparency is the only path towards a viable global democracy of the future.

The third thing we can do is take inspiration and learn lessons from a new tactical breakthrough in global activism – the revolution algorithm. The internet has reversed a centuries-old power dynamic. The street now has unprecedented power. Through hacking, rhizomatic organizing, viral memes, it can paralyze cities, bring whole countries to a standstill … protests and uprisings can spook stock markets into plunging 10% in a single day, as happened recently in Turkey, and, if we the people are angry and fired up enough, we can force even the most arrogant presidents and prime ministers to the democratic table.

In the 21st century, democracy could look like this: a dynamic, visceral, never-ending feedback loop between entrenched power structures and the street. In this new model, corporate power will be forever blunted by sustained and clearly articulated demands for new economic, political and environmental policies, for visceral debates and referendums on critical issues, for the revocation of the charters of corporations that break the public trust and for new laws and constitutional amendments on democratic fundamentals like secrecy, corporate personhood and the rules by which nations go to war. Every government department, every minister and the whole political establishment, right down to the think tanks, media pundits and CEOs, will be under the gun, on an almost daily basis, to bend to the ever changing pulse of the people.

As this second anniversary of Occupy passes, perhaps with raging flames, perhaps with only a few sparks, we can take solace in one thing: Our current global system – capitalism – is in terminal decline … and while its corpse is still twitching, our jobs, yours, mine, all of us, are to stay vigilant and to keep working on our own lives … We shy away from the megacorporations, we refuse to buy heavily advertised products, we meticulously seek out toxin-free information, we eat, travel, socialize and live as lightly as we can … we fight for our happiness … we build trust with each other and play the #killcap game at least once every day … and most important, we focus our eyes on the horizon and wait for our next moment to come.

What do Brazil, Turkey, Peru and Bulgaria have in common?

This year's protests have less to do with ideology and specific grievances than a new architecture of protest.

retirado de Aljazeera.

por Bernardo Gutierrez, em 7 de setembro de 2013


The protests in Bulgaria have much in common with protests in other countries [AFP]

Sao Paulo, Brazil - What influence did Istanbul's Gezi Park protest movement have on the uprising in Brazil? Can we explain the sudden emergence of mass demonstrations in Peru as being inspired by neighbouring Brazil? What do the anti-government, anti-establishment protest movements in these three countries - and in Bulgaria - have in common?

Analysts have searched for specific reasons to explain the recent revolts: Istanbul rose to protect Gezi Park from neoliberal enclosure; Brazilian citizens took to the streets to protest against the rising of the price of public transportation; Peruvians were outraged by corruption and a government that tried to impose its will on the country's constitutional court. Bulgaria's protests, which started this January, were spurred by anger at high electricity and water bills.

But does this really explain what has happened in recent months? The reasons listed above would imply that four almost disconnected rebellions took place simultaneously. And cause-and-effect logic cannot fully explain these protests, which fall largely outside the left-right axis.

Rather, what the movements have in common has less to do with ideology and specific grievances, than with a new architecture of protest. In all four countries, established groups such as unions and political parties were almost irrelevant. For instance, the calls for protest in Peru, which filled the capital's streets in July, were born [Es] in social networks, mailing lists and non-ideological groups. When a reporter suggested to human rights activist Rocio Silvia Santisteba that she was leading the Peruvian protests, she replied: "We convene. We do not lead."

read more...

Manuel Castells and the protests in Brazil

Spanish sociologist, Manuel Castells, says that the conduct of the crisis in Brazil shows that there is hope to reconnect institutions and citizens

by Daniela Maria

The Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, 68, was in Brazil attending a conference series when the protests for the reduction of tariffs by bus started, even shy, in São Paulo. One of today's leading experts in social movements in the age of the internet, not even him could imagine that the whole country would be taken by a wave of marches that would become the most important political manifestation of the Brazilian society in 20 years. "If they want real change, the critics on the internet are not enough. They must become visible, challenging the established order and force a dialogue, "said the sociologist. Castells has examined other similar movements, such as the Arab spring, Occupy, in the United States, Outraged (Indignados), in Spain, and now accompanies the defense from Taksim Square, in Turkey. With extensive and respected work on the role of new information and communication technologies, the sociologist says that the great strength of these movements is the absence of leaders and sees an exhaustion of the current model of representation. Author of 23 books, it throws in brief "Outrage and Hope-social movements in the age of the Internet" (Wharton School Publishing). 

Castells was professor at the University of Berkeley, Calif., for 24 years. He currently lives in Barcelona, Spain, where he spoke to ISTO É (a Brazilian main stream magazine) by email, and is a professor at the Open University of Catalonia and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, in the United States.

"The great strength of these movements is that they are spontaneous, free, a celebration of freedom.

The Occupy (OWS) left new values for Americans "

ISTOÉ (I.E) – You were in Brazil when the first protests occurred in São Paulo. Could imagine that they would take this ratio?

MANUEL CASTELLS- No one could. But what I imagined, and researched for several years, is that the crisis of political legitimacy and the ability to communicate via the internet and mobile devices leads to the possibility that spontaneous social movements arise at any time and in any place. Because there are always reasons for outrage everywhere.

I.E.-the Brazil has greatly reduced social inequality in recent years and has full employment. How to explain size discontent?

MANUEL CASTELLS-youth in São Paulo was explicit: "it's not just about cents, it's about our rights." It is a cry of "enough!" against corruption, arrogance, and sometimes the brutality of politicians and their police.

I.E.-it makes sense to continue in the streets if the problems of health and education cannot be resolved quickly, as the bus passes?

MANUEL CASTELLS-firstly, the movement wants to free transport, because it states that the right to mobility is a universal right. The transport problems that make life in cities a disgrace are the result of real estate speculation, which constructs the municipality irrationally, and local bad planning, because of the subservience of mayors and their staff to the interests of the real estate market, not of citizens. In addition, because of the mobilization, the President Dilma Rousseff is also proposing new investments in health and education. As it takes a long time to get results, it's time to get started quickly.

I.E.-the President Dilma acted properly to speak on TV to the nation, convene meetings with Governors, mayors and marchers to propose a Pact?

MANUEL CASTELLS-certainly, it is the first world leader watching, that listens to the demands of people on the streets. It showed that is a true democrat, but she's being stabbed in the back by traditional politicians. The statements of José Serra (former governor of São Paulo and leader of the opposition criticized the initiatives announced by the President) are typical of the lack of accountability of politicians and their misunderstanding about the right of people to decide. The political positions are not owned by politicians. They are paid by the citizens that elect. And citizens will remember who said what in this crisis when the election comes.

I.E.-how to compare the Brazilian with the movement that took place in the rest of the world?

MANUEL CASTELLS-there was a million people protesting in this way for weeks and months in countries around the world. In the United States, for example, more than a thousand cities were occupied between September 2011 and March 2012. The difference in Brazil is that a democratic President as Rousseff and a handful of truly democratic politicians, as Marina Silva, are accepting the right of citizens to express themselves outside the bureaucratic channels. This is the true meaning of the Brazilian Movement: it shows that there is still hope to reconnect the institutions and citizens, if there is good will on both sides.

ISTOÉ-what is crucial for the success of these movements summoned with the help of the internet?

MANUEL CASTELLS-The demands should reverberate for a large number of people, there shouldn´t  be politicians involved and that there should be no leaders handling. People who feel strong support to each other as a network of individuals, not as masses that follow any flag. Each one is its own movement. Police brutality also helps to spread the movement through images on the internet broadcast by mobile phones.

ISTOÉ-why so many protests end up in looting and depredations? How do I prevent marginal could well take advantage of the movement?

MANUEL CASTELLS-there is violence and vandalism in society. It is impossible to prevent them, although the movements everywhere try to control them because they know that violence is the most destructive force of a social movement. Sometimes, in some countries, supported by the police provocateurs create violence to delegitimize the movement.

I.E.-How the police should act?

MANUEL CASTELLS-Intervene selectively, carefully, professionally, only against the bullies and violent groups. Never, ever raise lethal weapons, and if contain not to hit indiscriminately on peaceful demonstrators. The police is one of the reasons why people are protesting.

I.E.-the absence of leaders weakens the movement?

MANUEL CASTELLS-on the contrary, this is the force of the movement. Everyone is their own leader.

ISTOÉ-But this does not preclude the negotiation with the political elite?

MANUEL CASTELLS-no, the proof of this is that the President Dilma Rousseff met with some representatives of the movement.

ISTOÉ-what is the great strength and a great weakness of these movements?

MANUEL CASTELLS-the great strength is that they are spontaneous, free, festive, is a celebration of freedom. The weakness isn't theirs, the weakness are stupidity and arrogance of the political class that is insensitive to autonomous demands of citizens.

ISTOÉ-In Brazil, political parties were banned the demonstrations and there are those who see in it the danger of a coup. It makes sense that concern?

MANUEL CASTELLS-there is no danger of a coup d ' état. The corrupt and undemocratic are already in power: they are the political class.

I.E.-how to solve the crisis of representativeness of class politics?

MANUEL CASTELLS-With political reform, with a Constitutional Assembly and a referendum. The President Dilma Rousseff is absolutely right, but, in this sense, it will be destroyed by their own base.

ISTOÉ-these manifestations articulated through social networks require a new form of citizen participation in the decision-making process of the State? Which is?

MANUEL CASTELLS-Yes, this is the new emerging political participation form everywhere. I analyzed this world in my most recent book.

ISTOÉ-what is there in common between contemporary social movements?

MANUEL CASTELLS-internet Networks, presence in the urban space, lack of leadership, autonomy, freedom from fear, as well as coverage of the whole of society and not just one group. Largely the movements are led by youth and are looking for a new democracy.

I.E.-the movement Occupy, in the USA, was defeated by the arrival of winter. That legacy left?

MANUEL CASTELLS-Left new values, a new consciousness to most Americans.

I.E.-The Spanish Outraged (Indigados) was there some victory?

MANUEL CASTELLS-many victories, especially with regard to the right to mortgage and housing evictions and a new thorough understanding of democracy in most of the population.

I.E.-That Parallels do you see between the Turkish and Brazilian movement?

MANUEL CASTELLS-are very similar. They are also powerful, but Turkey has an Islamic fundamentalist Prime Minister semi-fascist, and Brazil has a truly democratic President. This makes all the difference.

ISTOÉ-believes that this wave of protests will spread to other countries in Latin America?

MANUEL CASTELLS-there is a strong student movement in Chile, and embryos arising in Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay.

ISTOÉ-Countries that control the internet, like China, are free of these manifestations?

MANUEL CASTELLS-no, this is an error of the Western press. There are many demonstrations in China, also organized on the internet, such as the Guangzhou City (in the South), last January, by freedom of the press (the editorial of a newspaper was censored and this motivated the first demonstrations for freedom of expression in China in decades. At least 12 people have been arrested, accused of subversion).

I.E.-How do you see the future?

MANUEL CASTELLS-I don't like to talk about the future, but I believe that it will be brighter now because companies are awakening through these social movements network.