Mayor Bloomberg versus First Amendment and Occupy Movement
A post just up on Firedoglake details the astoundingly repressive tactics that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg used while evicting the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park last night.
Excerpt:
The Brooklyn Bridge and almost all subway trains leading to Wall Street were closed over night. Counter-terrorism agents were on the scene. An LRAD sonic cannon was used. The NYPD blocked the airspace over the park to news helicopters. One journalist told a cop that she was press, and was told back, “Not tonight.” Even residential buildings around Zuccotti were locked down. This was real police state stuff.
The post also links to a report that several city mayors across the US had participated in a conference call earlier to coordinate the eviction sweep of Occupy movements in their cities.
Read full Firedoglake post here.
The guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution is a bedrock concept of democracy in the country. Last night, Mayor Bloomberg simply spit all over it.
Links you may have missed: July 3, 2011
Cherish Pat Metheny (boomitude.com) – exquisitely performed (video above)
Alien encounters ‘within twenty years’ (Guardian)
China and Europe: Who benefits? (Aljazeera) – video of interview with three Europe-China experts. Good insight and overview.
Polish PM Donald Tusk: New EU visionary? (NoseMonkey)
It Takes a Village (Spiegel Online International)
Row over Plans to Turn Tuscan Village into Millionaires’ Paradise (Corriere della Sera) – Italian version below
E’ polemica sul borgo toscano che diventerà un’enclave per milionari (Corriere della Sera) – English version above
Emiliano Salinas: A civil response to violence (TEDtalks) – son of former Mexico president creates stir with talk about Mexico’s growing violence
Who Gives a F*ck About an Oxford Comma? Plenty of Us, Apparently. (FISHBOWLLA)
The revolution will be translated: Global Voices’ citizen-powered site experiments with English-second (Nieman Journalism Lab)
Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the hotel maid turns into a PR battle (Guardian) – don’t miss paragraph five – it’s key to the whole mess
Costs of War (Watson Institute – Brown University) – new report described as “first comprehensive accounting of the costs of the US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan”
How to. . . listen to the dawn chorus (Guardian) — if you enjoy bird song
Links you may have missed: May 26, 2011
Quatuor Artemis _ Beethoven, Op.135 “Lento assai, cantante & tranquillo”.mov – (video above)
Greenpeace Takes a Stand Against Facebook’s Unclean Ways (AgencySpy) – with video
Schwarzenegger and DSK: When Powerful Men Cross Lines (ProPublica)
A Lesson for the Bigoted Right (London Review of Books) — commentary on Italy’s local elections last week
Bob and Roberta Smith: ‘It’s important to undermine and subvert things’ (Guardian)
A reporter’s view on the news industry’s broken commenting system (10,000 Words)
Hollywood shuns intelligent entertainment. The games industry doesn’t. Guess who’s winning? (Guardian)
La politica estera americana e la promozione della democrazia (Epistemes) – Italian only
India’s unwanted girls (BBC)
Teaching Happiness: The Prime Minister of Bhutan Takes on Education (The Solutions Journal)
The Netherlands To Enact Law That Ensures Net Neutrality (GigaOM)
What sector of their society do Americans have the most confidence in?
The U.S. military, according to a recent Harvard University study. The national survey gave those in uniform a ranking of 3.15 out of a maximum possible rating of 4. Who scores the lowest among the twelve sectors listed? The press, with 2.26, ranking just below the White House which got a 2.43. (Note: graph values: 2 = not much; 3 = moderate amount; 4 = great deal)
The September 2007 study was based on interviews with 1,207 adults in the U.S., according to the report (“A National Study of Confidence in Leadership,” by the Center for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2007). The annual study (begun in 2005) primarily seeks to measure Americans’ confidence in leadership, and is conducted in collaboration with the weekly news magazine U.S. News & World Report.
For a brief summary of the findings, go here (“Study: More Than 60% Don’t Trust Campaign Coverage,” by Joe Strupp, Editor & Publisher, Nov 28, 2007) where I first read about this survey.
In its introduction, the Harvard report states that more than 75 percent of those surveyed believe there is a leadership crisis in the country, with 50 percent describing their confidence in their leaders as “not much” or “none at all.” A related question asked whether the U.S. has worse leaders today than twenty years ago. In response, 63 percent said they believed today’s leaders are worse, 12 percent said the quality of leadership is the same, and 7 percent said they weren’t sure.
In an exhibition of that famed Yankee optimism, however, almost eight in ten of those surveyed said they were confident that the next president — whether Democrat or Republican — will be good for the country, according to the study.
