Anti-Wall Street protesters to join NY Halloween parade

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A man carries a cardboard replica of President Barack Obama at the Occupy Wall St. protests in New York's Zucotti Park October 24, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK | Tue Oct 25, 2011 6:36pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anti-Wall St protesters plan to join New York City's Halloween parade on Monday and although several people have been arrested at recent rallies for wearing masks, demonstrators will have a free pass for the holiday.

New York state has a law that bans masked gatherings and police have enforced the rule at protests by the Occupy Wall Street movement against economic inequality, which set up camp in a park in the city's financial district on September 17.

But the law, dating back to 1845, allows people to wear masks if it is for "a masquerade party or like entertainment."

"Exemptions for such occasions, including masquerade balls, are provided for under the statute," said New York Police spokesman Paul Browne when asked if police would enforce the law banning masked gatherings at the Halloween parade.

Occupy Wall Street has set up Occupy Halloween and said on its website, www.occupyhalloween.org, that protesters had been invited to join the 39th annual Village Halloween Parade.

Organizers of the parade, which attracts tens of thousands of onlookers and is broadcast live on local television, were not immediately available for comment.

Occupy Halloween urged protesters to organize costume-themed blocs, suggesting ideas such as Wall Street zombies, corporate vampires and V-masks -- the Guy Fawkes mask made popular by the graphic novel "V for Vendetta."

"For them to enforce that rule on Halloween would be downright un-American," said Occupy Halloween organizer Gan Golan said of the mask law. The parade is "another opportunity for us to be creative and let people see our message."

He could not say how many protesters they were expecting to join the parade.

Protesters say they are upset the billions of dollars in bank bailouts doled out during the recession allowed banks to resume earning huge profits while average Americans have had no relief from high unemployment and job insecurity.

They also believe the richest 1 percent of Americans do not pay their fair share in taxes.

New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said: "Behavior that falls within the (New York state mask law's) exemption cannot be criminalized simply because it has a political message."

(Editing by Todd Eastham)

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Chile's student protesters in for the long haul

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25 October 2011 Last updated at 00:05 GMT By Gideon Long BBC News, Santiago Chlie's main cities have seen repeated clashes between protesters and police Nearly six months after they began, Chile's student protests show little sign of running out of steam.

Indeed, if anything, they are gaining traction, partly because the students' demands resonate with those of demonstrators elsewhere in the world, from Wall Street to Athens.

Many students here say they now feel part of a wider, international expression of discontent with their rulers.

In Latin America, what has been dubbed the "Chilean Winter" has inspired others to challenge their education systems.

In Colombia, for example, students have been spotted waving Chilean flags during marches.

Last week, Chile's student leaders were in Europe to drum up support. They came back home with a message: "We are not about to give up."

'Red Camila'

The movement's leader is Camila Vallejo, a young communist and president of Chile's main students' union.

Camila Vallejo: Visible and vocal in publicising student demands

Photogenic and articulate, she has become a key figure, with some journalists comparing her to Sub-Comandante Marcos, the leader of Zapatista rebels in Chile, or even Che Guevera.

While those comparisons may be a little far-fetched for a 23-year-old geography student, "Comandante Camila" has galvanised the students and become a thorn in the government's side. She has thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook, and a growing fan club outside Chile.

The students are demanding a strictly not-for-profit education system that is free for everyone.

The government says that is unrealistic and that Chile can only afford to provide free education for the poorest 40% of its children. It also says there is no reason why the rich shouldn't pay.

The government has offered concessions like, for example, lowering the interest rates on student loans, but the students say this is simply tinkering with a dysfunctional system rather than overhauling it.

Earlier this month talks between the two sides broke down and there is no sign of a resolution.

Split costs

For better or worse, Chile's education system is one of the most privatised in the world.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), nearly 40% of all education spending comes not from the state but from households in the form of tuition fees. That is higher than in any other country in the OECD.

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Thousands of children have not been able to continue the process of learning normally”

End Quote Fernando Rojas Under-secretary for education Only 16% of higher education spending comes from public sources, compared with an OECD average of nearly 70%. Three-quarters of Chile's universities are privately owned.

The government says this private sector involvement should be welcomed, but the students argue that it effectively turns education into a commodity, governed by market forces.

Even at high school level, the private sector is pervasive. Less than half of Chile's high school pupils go to fully state-funded schools. The rest go to private schools (7%) or subsidised schools (48%), where costs are split between the state and parents.

Pupils have taken over hundreds of schools during this year's protests and barricaded themselves inside, refusing to allow the teachers in.

At some schools, the pupils have jammed chairs and desks into the railings to indicate that their school is under occupation.

At one occupied school, the Liceo Dario Salas in central Santiago, students set up camp inside, with mattresses laid out on the floors of the classrooms. They painted defiant revolutionary murals on the school walls.

"Ever since Chile returned to democracy we've seen how, little by little, they've sold off all of the services that we should have access to, and that includes education," one of the protesters, 17-year-old Fernanda Gonzalez, said.

"Education should be free for all. It should give us the chance to choose different careers and to have a better quality of live."

Missing lessons

But these sit-ins have had a devastating impact on the academic year. Some children have not been to school for months.

"Thousands of children have not been able to continue the process of learning normally," said Fernando Rojas, undersecretary for education.

"Even though it's a low percentage of our student population it is still a significant number of students, so it concerns us greatly."

Depth of feeling: A Senate meeting was interrupted last week by protesters

The other major concern for the government is public order. There have been about 40 student marches in Santiago since May and most of them have ended in violent clashes between masked youths, armed with stones and petrol bombs, and riot police with tear-gas and water cannon.

Nearly 2,000 people have been arrested although almost all were released without charge within hours.

Santiago's municipal government says the riots have caused at least $2m (£1.2m) of damage. Youths have ripped up street signs, paving stones and traffic lights to build barricades. In one incident, protesters forced passengers off a bus and set fire to it.

The next big challenge for the government will be to get its 2012 budget approved by parliament. It has earmarked $11.6bn for education spending, an increase of 7.2% from this year.

And yet the students say that is not enough and the centre-left opposition is threatening to block the budget.

The other big issue for the next few months will be tax reform. Last year, the government raised corporate tax rates to pay for reconstruction after the massive earthquake of February 2010.

In theory, those taxes should be reduced again over the next two years, but the students are urging the government to keep rates high and use the extra money to fund education.

The "Chilean Winter" has given way to spring. But there is little to suggest this conflict will be resolved before the end of the year and the onset of the southern hemisphere summer.

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Police taser man who swings knife near Albuquerque protesters

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n">(Reuters) - Albuquerque police tasered a man who lunged at four Occupy Albuquerque protesters while swinging a knife and later told police that their presence was disrespectful to a state university, police said on Saturday.

The man, 48-year-old Miguel Aguirre, approached at least four protesters on Friday near the University of New Mexico campus while carrying a 6- to 8-inch blade, according to police. He asked them: "Who wants to be first?"

Aguirre was later tasered and arrested, according to a police report. None of the protesters were injured.

The Albuquerque demonstration was part of a number of protests that have sprung up from the Occupy Wall Street movement that began last month in New York, protesting against jobs woes and wealth inequality.

Among the protesters Aguirre is accused of accosting were a pair who, hearing about a man armed with a knife, tried to explain to him that they wanted the protest to remain peaceful and to avoid any negative publicity.

Aguirre told police he had been on a days-long drinking binge and did not remember pulling a knife on the protesters, police said. He also told police the protesters were disrespecting the university and had no right to be there.

Aguirre was charged with aggravated assault, four counts of assault with a deadly weapon, and refusing to obey police, among other charges.

(Reporting by Mary Slosson; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

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Police arrest 19 Orlando protesters on trespass charges

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ORLANDO, Fla | Sat Oct 22, 2011 7:07pm EDT

ORLANDO, Fla (Reuters) - Police arrested 19 anti-Wall Street protesters in Orlando before dawn on Saturday on trespass charges for sitting in a city park after hours despite warnings to leave, police said.

Orlando Police Lieutenant Timothy Crews said police warned members of the Occupy Orlando group several times they would be arrested if they refused to leave the park when it closed. But protesters chose to remain in violation of the posted hours.

"They decided to make a stand on that issue," Crews said.

Crews and Shayan Elahi, a volunteer lawyer for the group, said the protesters remained calm and peaceful.

Those arrested face a first-degree misdemeanor charge punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Participants of Occupy Orlando, the local offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York last month to protest against economic inequality, have maintained a vigil in downtown Orlando since last Saturday.

Elahi said an average of 50 protesters normally walk on the sidewalk in shifts overnight, which is permitted.

(Reporting by Barbara Liston; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Cynthia Johnston)

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Man charged in U.S. for spying on Syrian protesters

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Syrian-born U.S. citizen Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid appears in Federal Court in Alexandria, VA in a courtroom sketch, October 11, 2011. Soueid was arrested and charged in Virginia with spying on anti-Syrian protesters in the United States and passing the details on to Damascus, U.S. prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Credit: Reuters/William Hennessy

By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:26pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Syrian-born U.S. citizen has been arrested and charged in Virginia with spying on anti-Syrian protesters in the United States and passing the details on to Damascus, U.S. prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid, 47, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was accused of acting as an agent of the Syrian intelligence service and collecting video and audio recordings of protesters against Syria and President Bashar al-Assad.

Soueid also was accused of recruiting others to collect information about protesters and sending materials to the Syrian embassy in Washington and to Damascus, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday.

In June, he flew to Syria where he met Assad in a group and also spoke with him privately, the 15-page indictment said. The charges did not reveal how Soueid's alleged activities became known to U.S. authorities.

The Syrian embassy in Washington issued a lengthy denial, saying that Soueid did not work for the Syrian government, never met with Assad, was never paid by Damascus and had not provided any information about U.S. protesters.

He was arrested on Tuesday on charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent operating in the United States, conspiracy, making false statements to FBI agents and lying on forms he filled out while buying a .40 caliber pistol.

"The ability to assemble and protest is a cherished right in the United States," U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said in a statement.

Soueid, who lives in Leesburg, Virginia, outside Washington, appeared briefly in federal court where a judge ordered him held pending a detention hearing slated for Friday. He had not yet retained a lawyer, according to prosecutors.

FBI INVESTIGATION

The United States has imposed sanctions on Assad and his government since the start of the crackdown that the United Nations estimates has killed at least 2,700 people.

A State Department spokeswoman said that it had complained previously about harassment of Syrians in the United States. "You see here the first fruits of the FBI's investigation," said the spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

Starting around March 2011, Soueid worked as part of a network of operatives in the United States, sending some 20 video and audio recordings of protests and conversations with protesters, according to the indictment.

In one instance, Soueid sent a coded message in April to the Syrian intelligence service via email that described a meeting of protesters in a Virginia suburb of Washington.

He also sent to his contact at the Syrian embassy in Washington a website link for protesters in the United States, the indictment said.

In addition, he sent contact details, including phone numbers and email addresses of the protesters, the charging document said.

He returned from his trip to Syria in July and was questioned and searched at Dulles International Airport. That prompted him to tell his Syrian contacts that he had changed procedures and also said that the incident at the airport would not stop him, according to the indictment.

About a month later, Soueid was confronted by FBI agents but he denied collecting information and sending it to the Syrian government, according to prosecutors. He was accused by Syrians and Syrian Americans in May in a private civil lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court of helping the Syrian government target their families back in the country.

The lawsuit also accused Syria and others of violating international law including killing and torturing them.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Philip Barbara and Sandra Maler)

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Wall Street protesters getting harder to ignore

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6 October 2011 Last updated at 00:20 GMT By Ian Pannell, BBC News, Washington DC The protests started three weeks ago in New York City and show no sign of losing momentum Is there something afoot on America's progressive left?

For more than three weeks hundreds, at times thousands, of people have gathered in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

But in recent days the protests have spread from coast to coast, north to south and even across borders.

Their movement is often amorphous. There is no hierarchy, no obvious leaders and their goals are varied; a reaction to what they see as corporate greed, to unemployment, poverty, debt, the environment, medical costs, low wages or the lack of them.

But just because it is difficult to pin down and label does not mean that it is a movement unworthy of attention.

Some have compared the protesters to a left-leaning version of the Tea Party movement or perhaps an American response to the 'Arab Spring'.

The truth is that it is still too early to know how lasting and influential it will be.

Political risks

There are certainly many of the usual suspects at these gatherings: trade unionists, environmentalists and anti-war protesters.

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The unemployment situation we have, the job situation, is really a national crisis”

End Quote Ben Bernanke Federal Reserve Chairman There is also something very different.

Talk to old hands like Ann Wright, a veteran of the armed and diplomatic services who is also a familiar face at progressive rallies and she marvels at the involvement of students and young people.

"It is a new generation, not old fogies like me," she says, adding that in the past it has been really difficult to get young people involved but that they are now leading events.

"I am 27-years-old with $100,000 (£64,654) in debt." It is one of hundreds of hand-written declarations on the website 'We Are the 99%'.

It is a gritty testimony from the have-nots who are now leading the charge against Wall Street, Congress and in some cases, the White House.

There was a small gathering in Washington DC today and although it was dominated by trade unionists there was also a group of young African-Americans from the north-east of the city.

They tell stories of economic disadvantage, of long-term unemployment and the social ills like drugs and prostitution that follow in their wake.

They insist that times are harder than they can remember and that they are ready to stand up and make their voices heard for the first time.

The protests resonate with young Americans, an unusual development, correspondents say

"The unemployment situation we have, the job situation, is really a national crisis."

Those are not the words of the protesters but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

It recognises the gravity of the state of the economy, the extent to which people are suffering and the political risks that carries.

Many of those now occupying colleges and streets are disillusioned with the Obama administration, although their greatest criticisms are reserved for Congress and the Republican Party.

In order to prove that they represent something lasting and important they will have to attract large numbers of followers and a real cross-section of American society from all parts of the country, not just the liberal coastal cities.

Then the challenge for this new movement (or movements) will be to translate the sound and fury into meaningful political pressure for the change they demand.

This may be a passing phase but the anger and the passion is getting harder to ignore by the day.

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