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The art of protest is being redefined in Copenhagen. Yes, tens of thousands marched peacefully on Saturday, and some opted for sticks and stones. But another group, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, has embraced the bicycle as a symbol and medium for a new kind of environmental protest.On Wednesday morning, hundreds of bikers will swoop toward the building hosting the UN negotiations over climate change. This activist cavalry aims to divert enough police from the Bella Center to enable other protesters to successfully storm the fences cocooning negotiators and launch an alternative "people's summit" on climate change.
PITTSBURGH -- A relatively small and peaceful group of about 500 protesters, most demanding new jobs programs, marched through city streets in the first full day of demonstrations targeting the Group of 20 economic summit later this week.The turnout was less than the 1,500 expected, and some protest groups blamed the city delays in issuing permits and the promised threefold expansion in the city's police force for the small turnout. Protestors were also critical of comments made by President Barack Obama in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, downplaying the effectiveness of mass protest on abstract issues such as global capitalism.
Citizen Initiative for Constant Light mobilized 30 million people in Turkey to turn off and on their lights to demand that the government act against corruption. The action resulted from public outrage after a car crash openly revealed connections between government, police and the mob. Turkey is a secular nation with a tradition of democracy. But it also has a tradition of human rights abuse. The influence of corruption extends throughout society through local patronage systems undeterred by any investigative reporting from a mass media industry, which is itself complicit in the corruption. As a result, the corruption issue has historically sparked only apathy and hopelessness in Turkish civil society.
Otpor was formed on October 10, 1998 in response to repressive university and media laws introduced earlier that year. In the beginning, Otpor's activities were limited to University of Belgrade.In the aftermath of the NATO airstrikes against FR Yugoslavia in 1999 regarding the Kosovo War, Otpor began a political campaign against the Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević. This resulted in nationwide police repression against Otpor activists, during which nearly 2000 were arrested, some beaten. During the presidential campaign of September 2000, Otpor launched its "Gotov je" (He's finished) campaign which would galvanize national discontent with Milošević and eventually result in his defeat. Some students who led Otpor used Serbian translations of Gene Sharp's writings on nonviolent action as a theoretical basis for their campaign.Otpor became one of the defining symbols of anti-Milošević struggle and his subsequent overthrow. By aiming their activities at the pool of youth abstinents and other disillusioned voters, Otpor contributed to one of the biggest turnouts ever for the September 24, 2000 federal presidential elections.Having succeeded in persuading a large number of the traditional electorate to abandon Milošević was another one of the areas where the smear-proof Otpor played a key role. Milošević had in the past succeeded in persuading the public that his opponents were spies and traitors, but on this occasion, it backfired, as the beatings and imprisonments during the summer of 2000 further cemented the decision to vote against the regime in many voters' minds Tens of thousands of people have protested in London against President Bush and the war on Iraq. Organisers claim 200,000 joined the demonstration, although police put the numbers closer to 100,000. The protest was overshadowed by the bombs in Turkey, but was described as good-natured and non-violent. Meanwhile Mr Bush carried on with his engagements, which culminated in a banquet for the Queen at the US Ambassador's residence in Regents Park. Like something out of an old world spy novel, a popular politician is poisoned in an attempt to ruin his chance at victory and install a ruthless opponent. Welcome to the ORANGE REVOLUTION.Steve York's riveting documentary chronicles what led to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine surrounding the 2004 election between Viktor Yushchenko, the people's choice, and Viktor Yanukovych, the government crony. With Yushchenko's mysterious near-fatal poisoning and a fishy assassination attempt on Yanukovych, the people cry foul and take to the streets when Yanukovych is proclaimed the winner of the election. At demonstrations in Kiev, the crowd quickly swells to many thousands as musicians and a disfigured struggling Yuschenko take the stage to protest corruption and fraud.With insightful political interviews and a sweeping lens capturing the power of thousands demanding change, York's ORANGE REVOLUTION will make you believe in the power of the collective voice and our ability to make a difference.
Thousands of South Koreans protested in Seoul on Tuesday against imports of American beef. The demonstrations against Mr. Lee started more than a month ago when students began protesting his government's decision in April to resume imports of American beef despite widespread fears of mad cow disease.
SYDNEY, Sept 4 (Reuters) - The first APEC protest was staged in Sydney on Tuesday, hours before U.S. President George W. Bush was due to arrive for a summit of 21 Asia-Pacific leaders, but police and media far outnumbered activists.Chanting "Bush go home", "Out of Iraq" and "Go Back to Texas now", about 100 protesters staged a peaceful but noisy demonstration outside Sydney's main railway station.Ringed and photographed by police, protesters waved anti-Iraq war and anti-Bush posters, while a tall black and white skeleton puppet danced as rush-hour commuters headed home."We cannot sit on the sidelines while a warmonger like George Bush comes to our country," protest organiser Alex Bainbridge told the "Stop Bush 2007" rally.But within an hour most protesters had dispersed.Australian police said they expect violent protests during the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit week and have launched the nation's biggest ever security operation.Authorities have erected a 5-km (3-mile) security fence across the central business district to isolate the leaders in the Sydney Opera House and nearby hotels. A total of 5,000 police and troops are patrolling the city centre.Protesters plan a major rally on Saturday, the first day the leaders meet, but police have refused to issue a march permit."Our intelligence tells us there is an intent to act violently," New South Wales (NSW) state Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said.COURT ACTIONPolice took court action on Tuesday to stop the march. The court adjourned the case until Wednesday, saying protesters had insufficient time to prepare for the case.Police said they are not opposed to a march but reject the protesters' planned route, which passes the U.S. Consulate in Sydney, but is several city blocks from the summit venue."We are not going to be intimidated," said Bainbridge who is organising the "Stop Bush Coalition" march on Saturday, promising 20,000 protesters will take to the streets."We cannot stop defending our democratic rights, defending our civil liberties," Bainbridge said.With Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin attending the APEC summit, protesters also plan to demonstrate against human rights abuses in China, nuclear proliferation and global warming.Police warned Sydney residents to avoid protests."Be aware of the mob rule mentality. Don't be enticed by those that would seek to have you get involved in an unlawful act," Scipione told a news conference.Members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is outlawed in China, staged a candle-lit protest when Hu arrived in the outback mining state of Western Australia on Monday and plan similar protests in Canberra and Sydney, following Hu throughout his Australian trip.Sydney school students plan to walk out of classrooms on Wednesday to protest against Bush and the Iraq war, but authorities have warned children not to join in any protests."Our very strong message to school kids and to their parents is that tomorrow is a school day -- you're expected to be at school," said NSW deputy premier John Watkins.
Carrefour boycott,Non-violent protest against France from Qingdao China. Patriotic students shouted, "Carrefour, closed!" To protest the French government's unfriendly to the Chinese peopleCarrefour has been rolled into a campaign mixed up with both boycott and anti-boycott.We hope you are able to boycott Carrefour at least on 1 May, to deliver, by the empty Carrefour that day, one message to the western world: Chinese shouldn’t be humiliated! Chinese people shouldn’t be insulted!The boycott against Carrefour is going to spreading all over the country, and we anticipate your presence! Thank you. Carrefour, the French retail giant, is the newest target on the list of what cyber-nationalists in China hate and aim at. Cell phone text messages calling on boycotts are popping up, over 5000 net cafes in China, as Daqi.com summed up, have been rife with posts against Carrefour, and quite a few radical netizens have already made the slogans into practice.The boycott is supposed to be caused by the recent grief and violence the Olympic torch relay suffered from in France and the saying that a big shareholder of Carrefour, LVMH group, has donated money to the Dalai Lama.The Olympic torch relay that just ended in Paris is not as peaceful as most of Chinese know about. Let’s see what French and its government have done when Chinese carried the torch, a symbol of peace and friendship into their territory.1. Before the relay, a French TV station called on people to protest on street for the reason that they “don’t want Chinese flags flaunting all over”.2. The torch was forced to extinguish for 4 times under the violent disruptions of Tibet separatists.3. The French police in charge of security simply stood by to see the separatists snatching the torch, and striking the disabled torch carrier.4. At where the torch went by, hordes of French waved the flag of separatists, clamoring “Free Tibet’, “Shame on China” to protest against China.5. Groups of young men even scrambled the Chinese students’ Five-star flags and tore them up, two sides in conflict.6. When the sacred fire passed by the City Hall of Paris, the banners and slogans of pro-Tibet independence were hung out and all the alderman put on the pro-separatism badges, a behavior that made the planned ceremony there cancelled.7. The major media in France reviewed the torch relay with such headlines— Fiasco in Paris(Figaro) and A Slap on ChinaAnd it’s not unusual to see such comments tightly following up the petition.Completely boycott Carrefour.Furthermore, QQ groups all over China were set up to recruit boycott activists. A list shows that places including Chongqing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, more than 20 areas totally, have joined this cyber campaign, during which netizens can communicate by the IM tool to make the whole protest more organizational. In fact at Kunming, a city in southern China, netizens have extended their slogans to the realityby protesting in front of the local Carrefour. The banner reads:Support Olympic, oppose Tibet-independence; boycott French products and Carrefour!The following pictures show the protest in the city of Wuhan. Notice that the banner has exactly the same word as that in Kunming. This time the rivaling voice doesn’t fade as years ago when the appeal of boycotting Japan products was at climax. Even on Tianya.com, a well-known marketplace of bold clamors and patriotism, the petitions of anti-boycott don’t shy away.In Tianya, netizen Lepel said in his post “you are so unwise to boycott Carrefour, or, you think us too unwise”,I feel it so ridiculous when hearing that so many people are organizing a boycott against Carrefour. I bear great sorrow for their blindness, which is as much stupid as the boycotts against Japanese, American and all western products long time ago. Do you have to isolate China from the world again? Reviewing the anti-Japan activity years ago, I wonder what we commons have really got the campaign. When the tension between the governments came to ease, the anti-Japan action that slightly crossed the line got a crackdown….and we have not yet learnt a lesson from that, and now we are going to have anti-France.Fine, with the boycott, you would simply favor advantage to all other supermarkets and let people go further and spend more for daily shopping. Anything else?Someday in the future when a new French president comes into power or the policy gets changed, everything will just go back to “Long live China-France friendship”, sooner or later. At that time, won’t it be laughable to look back at what we are doing now?Boycott Carrefour? Come on! You are actually boycotting the Chinese manufactures, Chinese workmen there and the country of our own, because Carrefour pays tax to our government!!! Are you able to boycott Paris mayor? BS. Why should I boycott? Our dynasty (allusion to the ruling party-translator) has not yet called on, and perhaps soon they will talk greatly on the China-France friendship.In history, it used to fight hard with Vietnam, but what about now? Friendly conversation and fellowship between us two peoples! Who care about those soldiers died there? F…Ten years ago when the Chinese embassy was bombed by U.S army I was even more indignant that the “patriotic young men” today. Our city is taking pain to introduce the Carrefour in, every official extremely busy on that plan. What should I do? Boycott? Then I will be clashing with our party and country.Anti-Japan anti-France anti-German anti-Korea anti-Taiwan anti-Italy anti-Australia anti-Vietnam anti-Britain anti-U.S…anti-world…anti-universe.But NO anti-autarchy and corruption. So tragic men.This is called “the government digs holes, and zealous youngsters plant trees”.Finally, an analogy might reveal how a lot of people view this patriotic action.The patriotic youngsters are the condom of the party— discarded right after orgasm.The points of the two camps diverge sharply. Rumors have been heard that Carrefour is going to make considerable discounts on 1 May to counteract the planned boycott. And it has announced that it will always be the friend of Chinese. But even not so, the chances of a successful boycott campaign is doubted, as the predominant public opinion years ago for a boycott over Japan didn’t make a good shot, while today the each side is equally strong. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/16/chinacarrefour-under-boycott-threat/
Tens of thousands of demonstrators crowded downtown streets today calling for the resignation of Serbia's President as the first effects of United Nations sanctions were being felt. The President, Slobodan Milosevic, criticized the sanctions imposed on Saturday, saying Serbia was not responsible for the fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which continued today. "This is the price we have to pay for supporting Serbs outside Serbia," Mr. Milosevic said early this morning after he cast his vote in elections for the Yugoslav Parliament. "As far as the accusations that we have committed aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina are concerned, surely every citizen of Serbia knows that they are ridiculous. We have not committed any aggression against Bosnia." Election Boycotted Mr. Milosevic appeared tired as he voted today. All major opposition parties were boycotting the elections in Serbia and Montenegro, the only remaining Yugoslav republics, and the Serbian Orthodox Church denounced the vote. Polls opened just hours after the United Nations Security Council imposed the economic sanctions. [ Bush Administration officials Sunday expressed deep reluctance to use military force to enforce the sanctions, saying Washington's immediate goal was to force the Serbian-backed military to lift its two-month blockade of Sarajevo. Administration officials said they wanted to assess the effects of the embargo before taking any further steps to punish Yugoslavia. Page A8 ] The first outward signs of the embargo were lines forming at gasoline stations in the Belgrade area and the disruption of air links. Flights Are Canceled This morning, hundreds of stranded travelers milled around Belgrade Airport watching the word "Canceled" click up next to one departing flight after another on the large black timetable. Within hours, only flights for Paris, Copenhagen, Moscow and London were left and it was unclear whether they would actually depart. Yugoslavia also has been disqualified from the European soccer championship in Sweden as a result of the United Nations embargo. The peaceful demonstrators, many dressed in black, took over downtown Belgrade streets for about three hours this afternoon, unfurling a mile-long black banner along the city's main shopping thoroughfare before protesting outside the television station, the hub of the Serbian Government's propaganda network. Demonstrators jeered and shouted "Slobo Must Go!" outside the republic's Presidency Building, referring to President Milosevic. The demonstration was the largest anti-Government gathering in Serbia since violent protests in March 1991 brought Yugoslav Army tanks to Belgrade streets. Bombing of Belgrade "I am against the war and the regime that has sucked our sons into war," said a Yugoslav Airline flight attendant, laid off last week after 30 years on the job because of the cancellation of the airlines' landing rights by the United States and Canada. "I want to show the world that all Serbs are not the same," she said. "We all expect to be bombed, and we remember when the Americans bombed Belgrade in 1944." Slobodanka Karic, a 50-year-old health worker, said, "It's only a matter of time before the armed conflict comes to Belgrade. The international community should stop all the armed attacks by all sides, and then the Communists must be removed." The demonstrators scoffed at today's elections, calling them a "farce." Reports on Turnout Election officials reported only a 38 percent turnout at Serbian polling stations at 2 P.M., and by evening were asserting that 60 percent of the electorate had voted. In Montenegro, turnout reports ranged from 6 to 60 percent. About 7.3 million people are eligible to vote. Final results are not expected until Wednesday. Western diplomats said a weak turnout would not necessarily be interpreted as a vote of no confidence in Mr. Milosevic, who rose to power through the Communist Party's apparatus and has deflected criticism and held power by appealing to Serbian nationalism and controlling the republic's large enterprises and most influential media. Serbia's main opposition parties, the Serbian Renewal Movement, Democratic Party and Serbian Liberal Party called for the boycott because they said the Government pushed through the country's new Constitution without adequate discussion, allowed only a short period for campaigning and refused to end its virtual monopoly on the country's main television channel. 'Duty to Liberate Serbia' The leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, Vuk Draskovic, said: "The Serbs' enemies are not in London, New York, Paris or Moscow. They are right here in Belgrade. It's our duty to liberate Serbia." "The Serbian people are not guilty," Mr. Draskovic said. "Sanctions are needed against the regime, not the people." The Serbian Orthodox Church denounced the Serbian and Yugoslav Governments last week, disassociated itself from the new Constitution and the elections and called for the formation of a government of national salvation. Only the renamed Communist Party of Serbia and Montenegro, two ultra-nationalist parties, and several dozen tiny political groups ran candidates. Successor to Old Yugoslavia The elections were scheduled after the new Yugoslavia was formed on April 27 in an attempt to claim the status of the successor to the Yugoslav Federation as well as its assets. Government leaders say the elections are important because they will allow the Yugoslav Government to begin functioning normally again after huge gaps were torn in the Legislature and administration by the secession of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. Officials of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo today won agreements from Serbian leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina's government for a new cease-fire scheduled to begin on Monday at 6 P.M. local time, an official in Sarajevo said. The cease-fire agreement provides for the evacuation of a besieged Yugoslav Army barracks in the city center. Bosnian Serb forces this morning continued their bombardments of Sarajevo, while Yugoslav Army and Bosnian Serb forces also shelled the historic port city of Dubrovnik, lobbing about 17 shells into the walled Old Town. More than 2,300 people have been killed and 7,700 wounded since the Serbs began their military campaign to seize most of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The fighting has driven well over 700,000 people from their homes. If any New Yorker were to become the theoretician for a new secessionist movement, it figured to be Kirkpatrick Sale.Mr. Sale, 70, was a campus rabble-rouser at Cornell in the 1950s long before Berkeley made being one fashionable, a model for a character in Richard Fariña’s classic ’60s novel, “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me,” a writer who worked briefly with his college pal Thomas Pynchon on a musical called “Minstral Island.” For half a century, he’s written more or less from the left on issues of decentralization, the environment and technology — in praise of Luddites, envisioning with dread the rise of the Sun Belt, lambasting Christopher Columbus as a despoiler of the American Eden and predicting environmental doom in a way that is making him at the moment look more prescient than cranky.And though he once described the personal computer as the devil’s work (its efficiencies producing more “social disintegration, economic polarization, and environmental devastation”), there he was Tuesday at his modern Adirondack-style house in the woods looking in delight at the inbox on his laptop.“Look at this,” he said. “There are 177 more messages from people who want to get on our mailing list. There’s nothing that has brought right and left together like this.”“This” was the Second North American Secessionist Convention, held Oct. 3 and 4 in Chattanooga, and attended by 15 delegates representing 25 states, plus 40 sympathetic observers. It followed, amazingly enough, the First North American Secessionist Convention, held the year before in Burlington, Vt.In this country, secession has not had the greatest odor since the 1860s, when it produced a movement now seen as racist, violent and a loser. But the spirit of Mr. Sale and his pro-secession Middlebury Institute actually has more to do with Vermont.There, a group called the Second Vermont Republic has become a small-bore local phenomenon, with its call for a “genteel revolution,” opposed to “the tyranny of Corporate America and the U.S. government,” and committed to “the peaceful return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic and more broadly the dissolution of the Union.” Hence those “U.S. Out of Vt!” T-shirts. Similarly, the language of the convention’s Chattanooga Declaration decries excess corporate and governmental power, says that the deepest issues of the time go beyond left and right and declares that liberty can survive only if political power is returned to local communities and states. “The American Empire is no longer a nation or a republic,” it says, “but has become a tyrant aggressive abroad and despotic at home.”Even those ill-disposed toward the idea of an independent Vermont, Hawaii or Alaska or to the new Confederacy envisioned by the League of the South might see some logic here. Back in 1981, the journalist Joel Garreau published “The Nine Nations of North America,” mapping out how economics, geography and culture really made it more logical for the United States, Canada and Mexico to be nine nations than three. Mr. Sale argues that the big theme of contemporary history, from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the evolution of the United Nations from 51 nations in 1945 to 192 now, is the breakup of great empires. And some on both left and right agree that the only cure for a federal government that’s too big and too powerful is to make it less big and less powerful.His relentlessly bleak vision is that catastrophic events, long term (collapsing dollar, out-of-control oil prices, climate change) and short term (Iraq, Katrina, government-sanctioned torture), will produce the downsizing of America, secession movement or no.“The virtue of small government is that the mistakes are small as well,” he said.Still, he concedes, there are a few roadblocks. Another 177 e-mail messages might feel like a revolution, but in that big, bad, computer-fueled world it’s just another tiny blip in the din. Local control might look fine in green, crunchy Vermont but perhaps looks less fine if it meant Southern states maintaining segregated schools and water fountains through the ’60s. Who is going to pay your Social Security, build interstate highways or finance NASA? And just how to make secession happen — legally and geographically — is, he concedes, still a work in progress. One option might be state by state, but then there are those Neo-Confederates in the South, or advocates of independent New England, Cascadia (Washington, Oregon, British Columbia) or New Acadia (Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and the four Atlantic provinces of Canada).Mr. Sale was asked what nation he’s prepared to live in.“I’d like the Hudson Valley,” he said. “I’d even include New York City, the whole Hudson watershed. It would be rich in resources and culturally unified. That’s the whole point of secession. If you want to leave a nation you think is corrupt, inefficient, militaristic, oppressive, repressive, but you don’t want to move to Canada or France, what do you do? Well, the way is through secession, where you could stay home and be where you want to be.”Of course, there might be problems here, too. What about the poor orphaned folks in distant Buffalo or Rochester or the vast empty acres upstate? What if the city didn’t want to join and wanted to be its own smug Cosmopolitania instead? Where would the Bronx, the one borough on the mainland, end up?Oh, well, life’s difficult.“You would call it Hudsonia,” he said, warming to the thought. “That’s the thing about secession. It fires up the imagination like nothing else.”
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Three years after the start of the Iraq war, one thing New York police do not lack is experience in dealing with protesters - so when they were called to a disturbance at the military recruitment centre in Times Square last October, it sounded like just another routine demonstration.Instead, they found 18 elderly women, many in their 80s and one aged 90, blocking the entrance and demanding to enlist in place of young men. They called themselves Grandmothers Against The War, and after they ignored polite requests to move on, police had no option but to arrest them, making sure the handcuffs weren't too tight, and cart them off - complete with canes and walking frames - to the holding cells.They were finally acquitted yesterday, after a trial that caught New Yorkers' imagination, even as it seemed to agonise the prosecutors saddled with the job of arguing that the "peace grannies", as they became known, should be jailed.At the height of the proceedings, Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist who became a celebrity for camping for months outside George Bush's Texas ranch after her son was killed in Iraq, showed up to lend her support.The women are part of a growing network of American anti-war groups made up of senior citizens, including the Raging Grannies of Tucson, Arizona, and Grandmothers for Peace International, who use the positive social stereotype attaching to grandmothers - and the reluctance of the authorities to come down too hard on them - to further their cause.Banners held by sympathisers outside the Manhattan courtroom read "Arrest Bush, Free the Grannies" and "Can't whip the insurgents? Whip Grannies!""I'm very happy," Joan Wiles, 74, who founded Grandmothers Against The War two years ago, said yesterday. "Our goal was to put the war on trial, and I think we did that. Mission accomplished."Ms Wile, a former cabaret singer and songwriter who wrote the original music to Lynn Redgrave's 1975 film The Happy Hooker, said she had protested only twice before in her life: once in the 1980s for nuclear disarmament, and then in 2000 in the Million Mom March, which demanded tighter gun control.Their experience in detention, where they were kept two to a cell for several hours before being released, had been "very unpleasant", she said. But the arresting officers, who in some cases had to hoist the protesters delicately up from the ground in Times Square, had been "absolutely darling".Their profile got a significant boost when the case was taken on by Norman Siegel, a veteran New York civil liberties lawyer. "I think the grannies really resonated with the public," he said. "First, everybody has a grandmother. And second, these are very accomplished women who are incredibly passionate, intelligent, witty and charming. My strategy was to put every one of them on the stand so that the judge and the public could see who they were: people of conscience."That strategy led to amusing scenes in the courtroom, in which it sometimes seemed as if the youthful judge and prosecutors were being cross-examined by the defendants.One defendant, Judy Lear, was asked by district attorney Amy Miller if she really would have moved out of the way had someone wanted to enlist that day. "I'm a very polite person," she responded sternly. Ms Miller hastened to agree. "I'm sure you are," she said.The peace grannies intend to march with Ms Sheehan in a demonstration in New York today, and plan a second demonstration in Washington on Mother's Day, May 14 in the US.Prosecutors insisted that the case was a simple public order matter that should not have been turned into a civil liberties issue. But Mr Siegel was blunt: "Once they decided they were going to put the grannies on trial," he told the Guardian, "I said: 'Look. Let's put the war on trial.'"It was a matter of some frustration for Ms Wile that the women had technically won their case, which was tried without a jury, not on arguments connected to the right to protest, but on whether or not they had been blocking the recruiting-centre door. She refused to be drawn on what other factors might have swayed his decision. "The judge was charming and funny," Ms Wile said. "Whether he was influenced by the fact that we were grandmothers, I couldn't say."
Dec 9th 2006: Several actions against furs took place on the 9th and the 10th December by initiative of Alliance For Animal Rights ( http://aar.org.ru ). Actions were dated for The International Day of Animal Rights and were a part of campaign against fur auction "Soyuzpushnina".On the 9th December in St-Petersburg were hold 2 actions of protest against fur trade. Activists had visited fur stores at the Nevsky prospect. Not all activists could enter the first store, security had barred way to the other part of activists, but they unfold a transparency at the entrance and scanned slogans. Those who had broken through in the store were spreading and scattering leaflets against furs and were scanning slogans by own strength and with a help of a megaphone. Security guards behaved aggressively and tried to strike blows rushed, but activists did not begin involving in fight and have left.The second store did not meat animal defenders with such aggression, all could freely enter and to give out to each customer and shop assistant on a leaflet. Was also used the megaphone, wit the help of which was messaged the object of the visit and were scanned slogans against furs. Security did not offer any resistance. Only stockman tried to push one of entered activists out to the door, but it wasn't effective. Some customers given a leaflet decided to leave the store. We hope they will now never again pay the death trade. When it became boringly, when all leaflets had been spreaded and had been told all what was necessary to tell, the animal defenders decided to leave. So both actions had passed successfully, no one had suffered or been arrested during them.
In November 2003, a revolution took place in Georgia - a revolution of a kind the turbulent region had never seen before. Not one person was injured, not a drop of blood was spilled. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest against the flawed results of a parliamentary election. The demonstrators demanded the resignation of Eduard Shevardnadze, a man who had ruled Georgia for more than 30 years in total, as its Soviet-era Communist Party boss and its longest-serving post-independence president. Mr Shevardnadze told protesters they risked causing a civil war and he deployed hundreds of soldiers on the streets of Tbilisi. At that point, student demonstrators decided to give red roses to the soldiers. Many soldiers laid down their guns. Parliament stormed "People were kissing the police and military, it was really spectacular," said Giorgi Kandelaki, a 21-year-old student. Constitutional changes have boosted Mr Saakashvili's powers "And the roses of course which people had with them, which Misha carried with him into the parliament hall, that was the moment when people said that it was a rose revolution." Misha is Mikhail Saakashvili, the US-educated 35-year-old firebrand who, on 23 November, led the demonstrators to the parliament building. Along with thousands of his supporters he forced his way through the thick wooden doors of the parliament chamber where Mr Shevardnadze was inside, giving a speech. Mr Saakashvili held a long-stemmed red rose above his head and shouted "Resign!" He waved the rose in the face of Georgia's 75-year-old president. Mr Shevardnadze's bodyguards rushed him out of the parliament building by a back door.
That was the moment that power changed hands in Georgia. In January 2004, Mr Saakashvili was elected president. The following month, the Georgian parliament passed constitutional amendments which strengthened the presidency at the parliament's expense, and gave the country a cabinet and a prime minister for the first time. Then in March 2004, Mr Saakashvili's National Movement-Democratic Front won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.
In the first year after the revolution, dozens of former government officials were jailed on corruption and embezzlement charges. Their assets were confiscated and their savings moved to state coffers. One of Mr Saakashvili's two main allies in the Rose Revolution, Zurab Zhvania, became prime minister. The other, Nino Burjanadze, remained in her position as speaker of the weakened parliament.
Here’s an excellent example of pwnage: when the white supremacist group VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK tried to host a hate rally in Knoxville, Tennessee, they were foiled by … clowns! Unfortunately for [VNN] the 100th ARA (Anti Racist Action) clown block came and handed them their asses by making them appear like the asses they were. Alex Linder the founder of VNN and the lead organizer of the rally kicked off events by rushing the clowns in a fit of rage, and was promptly arrested by 4 Knoxville police officers who dropped him to the ground when he resisted and dragged him off past the red shiny shoes of the clowns. http://www.volunteertv.com/home/headlines/7704982.html “White Power!” the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”. “White Power!” the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily. “White Power!” the Nazi’s tried once again in a doomed and somewhat funny attempt to clarify their message, “ohhhhhh!” the clowns yelled “Tight Shower!” and held a solar shower in the air and all tried to crowd under to get clean as per the Klan’s directions. At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!” The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!” http://www.neatorama.com/2007/09/03/clowns-kicked-kkk-asses/
Protest and Persuassion
Protest and Persuassion
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