Anti-Wall St protesters march through New York
Inspired by the grass-roots Occupy Wall Street movement, protests started in Asia and Europe and rippled around to the United States and Canada. Demonstrations were held in dozens of cities including Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Toronto.After weeks of intense media coverage, the size of the U.S. protests have been smaller than Group of 20 meetings or political conventions have yielded. Such events often draw tens of thousands of demonstrators.In New York, organizers said the protest grew to at least 5,000 people as they marched to Times Square in midtown Manhattan from their outdoor headquarters in the financial district. The movement began when protesters set up camp in a Lower Manhattan park on September 17.”It’s not every day that you get to be at the most significant uprising in a generation,” Occupy Wall Street said on its Facebook page. Protesters said they did not have any police permits for the New York demonstrations.Banging drums, the protesters chanted, “We got sold out, banks got bailed out” and “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street” as they marched, staying on the sidewalks as directed by police.Some were disappointed the New York crowd was not larger.”People don’t want to get involved. They’d rather watch on TV,” said Troy Simmons, 47, who joined demonstrators as he left work. “The protesters could have done better today. … People from the whole region should be here and it didn’t happen.”The Times Square mood was akin to New Year’s Eve, when the famed “ball drop” occurs. In a festive mood, protesters were joined by throngs of tourists snapping pictures, together counting back from 10 and shouting, “Happy New Year.”Another 5,000 marched through Los Angeles and gathered peacefully outside City Hall.Police said three people were arrested in Times Square after pushing down police barriers and five men were arrested earlier for wearing masks. Police also arrested 24 people at a Citibank branch in Manhattan, mostly for trespassing.Citibank was not immediately available for comment.At about 8 p.m., police arrested another 42 people for blocking the sidewalk. Protesters complained they had no place to go with a wall of police in riot gear in front of them and thousands of demonstrators behind them leaving Times Square.PROTEST MESSAGEThe protest arrived in Times Square at a time when the area was crowded with tourists and Broadway theatergoers.The Occupy Wall Street movement has been gathering steam over the past month, culminating with the global day of action on Saturday. The protests worldwide were mostly peaceful apart from Rome, where the demonstration sparked riots.But it was unclear whether the movement, which has been driven using social media, would sustain momentum beyond Saturday. Critics have accused the group of not having a clear message.The protesters say they are upset that 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 and want a more equitable economic system.”These protests are already making a difference,” said Jordan Smith, 25, a former substance abuse counselor from San Francisco, who has been at the New York park for 10 days. “The dialogue is now happening all over the world.”In Toronto, about 2,000 people gathered peacefully and started to set up a camp in a park. In Washington, Miami, Chicago and Boston hundreds of protesters marched through the streets.”I am going to start my life as an adult in debt and that’s not fair,” student Nathaniel Brown told Reuters Television. “Millions of teenagers across the country are going to start their futures in debt, while all of these corporations are getting money fed all the time and none of us can get any.”“TAX WALL STREETIn Miami about 500 protesters turned out carrying posters that read “People not profits„ “This is the 2nd American Revolution” and “Heal America, tax Wall Street.”In Los Angeles, Michael Goodblatt, 29, a doctor at UCLA Medical Center, was at the protest with a group of doctors. He said they had all seen first hand how people had suffered during the recession.”These are our people and we want to show our support because this affects everyone,” Goodblatt said.Hundreds of people have been arrested at rallies in New York. Hundreds more have also been arrested from Boston and Washington to Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego and Austin, Texas.On Friday, a showdown between protesters and police was averted when the private owner of the publicly accessible Zuccotti Park, Brookfield Office Properties, postponed a cleanup. The Occupy Wall Street movement feared the cleanup was a ruse to remove them from the area.
UPDATE 1-Greek protesters walk off the job, block property tax
* Rebels in ruling party oppose austerity measuresBy Yiorgos Karahalis and Renee MaltezouATHENS, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Greek protesters halted public
transport in Athens on Thursday and moved to disrupt collection
of an unpopular new property tax in a growing wave of opposition
to harsh new austerity measures demanded by international
lenders.With the beleaguered Socialist government of Prime Minister
George Papandreou fighting to push new cuts through parliament,
protests have strengthened ahead of a planned general strike on
Oct. 19 which is expected to shut down much of the country.On Thursday, protesters occupied the printing offices of
Greek power utility PPC < DEHr.AT >, in a bid to stop
the production of electricity bills which will be used to
collect the tax on homes and other property.”We came here because we cannot allow electricity to be cut
to hundreds of thousands of poor citizens, because this is what
will happen with the law this government voted,” Nikos
Fotopoulos, president of GENOP-DEH union, told Skai television.Elsewhere, the ancient Acropolis, Greece’s most famous
monument, was closed to tourists for a second day as workers in
the archaeological service barred the entrance and Athens was
hit by strikes by garbage collectors and hospital workers.Thousands of bus drivers and metro staff marched on
parliament, angry at steep pay cuts and the growing threat of
redundancy in the traditionally protected public sector but the
protests went beyond the mass of lower paid workers.Lawyers refused to appear in court, doctors were due to
rally outside the health ministry, while a group of patients
suffering from kidney cancer rallied outside the finance
ministry, which was occupied by striking officials.The protests come as euro zone leaders scramble to put
together a new rescue plan to stave off bankruptcy and stop the
crisis spreading out of control with growing expectations that
banks will have to take steeper losses on their bond holdings.International lenders are demanding further painful reforms
but unions say the belt-tightening hurts only the poor and
middle-class and will drag Greece’s stricken economy further
into recession.”We are fully aware that this is very tough,” the European
Commission chief inspector for Greece, Matthias Mors, told the
daily Kathimerini in an interview.”But I would say that we are at a critical moment, where
Greece has to convince the international community and the other
euro area members that it is willing and able to reach the
objectives that it has committed itself to,” he said.RECESSIONAnalysts say Papandreou’s government, trailing in opinion
polls, will be able to push through parliament a package of new
austerity measures in time for a European Union summit on Oct.
23. But discontent is growing and the government is straining to
keep even its own deputies in line.”I have no intention of voting against the bill, but no one
can stop me criticising it,” said Leonidas Grigorakos, a deputy
in the ruling PASOK party. “What is taking place has no
precedent, society is in turmoil, there is huge insecurity. We
politicians must say where the country is heading.”Greece, trapped in deep recession and fighting to control a
public debt expected to reach 162 percent of gross domestic
product this year, has struggled to get on top of a crisis which
many economists now predict will end in default.Inspectors from the EU, the International Monetary Fund and
the European Central Bank “troika” ended a review of Greece’s
progress on a first, 110-billion-euro bailout plan on Tuesday.They gave the green light for the euro zone and the IMF to
release an 8-billion euro aid tranche Greece needs to keep
paying its bills past November but said Athens needed to take
more determined action on reform in addition to more cuts.But the bitter opposition aroused has squeezed the
government hard and made it much more difficult to implement
what amount to the deepest and most painful cuts in Greece’s
postwar history.The fact that much of the impact of the cuts will fall on
public servants has complicated implementation of the plan as
workers likely to be affected themselves resist cooperating.Tax officials are due to go on strike next week while
Thursday’s occupation of the PCC printing site could hit
collection of a property tax that will hurt many ordinary people
in a country with a high level of home ownership.PPC’s management said the bills would be printed anyway, in
another venue and at a greater cost but protesters said they
would continue their protest.
EU approves Irish support for Quinn Insurance
Ireland’s High Court last week cleared the takeover of
Quinn’s Irish general insurance activities by a joint venture of
U.S. insurer Liberty Mutual and state-run Anglo
Irish Bank , with Liberty owning a 51 percent stake in
the venture.Quinn’s non-viable UK operations will be wound downThe Irish state’s Insurance Compensation Fund will pay 738
million euros to Liberty, some 320 million of it immediately.”The administrators of Quinn Insurance have worked out a
plan that provides for a viable future for the healthy parts,
ensured an adequate burden sharing by the shareholders and
limited the distortions of competition,” the EU’s Competition
Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement.
