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Why the Middle East will never be the same again

Robert Fisk September 21, 2011 Robert Fisk

Source: The Independent

The Palestinians won’t get a state this week. But they will prove – if they get enough votes in the General Assembly and if Mahmoud Abbas does not succumb to his characteristic grovelling in the face of US-Israeli power – that they are worthy of statehood. And they will establish for the Arabs what Israel likes to call – when it is enlarging its colonies on stolen land – “facts on the ground”: never again can the United States and Israel snap their fingers and expect the Arabs to click their heels. The US has lost its purchase on the Middle East. It’s over: the “peace process”, the “road map”, the “Oslo agreement”; the whole fandango is history. read more

(Photo courtesy of Waging Non Violence)

A Surprise Morning March on Wall Street

Nathan Schneider September 20, 2011 Nathan Schneider

Source: The Indypendent

(Photo courtesy of Waging Non Violence)

In the newly-renamed Liberty Plaza, the place that hundreds of protesters have come to call home for the last three days, nothing is quite predictable. At around 6:15 in the morning, those of us sleeping on the plaza’s hard, cold surface got the call to wake up, and someone called for a General Assembly meeting at 7. After people groggily packed up their bedding and lined up for dumpster-dived bagels, the meeting began. Its purpose was a run-down of the day’s events. Committees that were meeting the night before had decided to have marches to Wall Street at 9, 11:30, and 3:30. But then somebody came to the front and announced through the “people’s microphone”—those around him echoed one phrase at a time so others could hear—that he was heading off to march now. Wall Street bankers were walking to work as we were sitting there! He ran off and, immediately, one or two hundred others followed. They marched around the plaza, chanting “Occupy Wall Street! / All Day! All Week!” and then set off heading south on Broadway. The first weekday demonstration of the occupation had begun. read more

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#OccupyWallStreet: Searching for Hope in America

Allison Kilkenny September 19, 2011 Allison Kilkenny

Source: The Nation

Adbusters, the nonprofit, anti-consumerist organization, made the first call for an occupation of Wall Street back in July when they posted an article on their website titled “#OCCUPYWALLSTREET.” The rallying cry proposed a massive occupation of Wall Street—some 20,000 individuals—a “fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain.” The group declared: “It’s time for democracy not corporatocracy.”

Adbusters latched on to the idea of an American Tahrir, also adopting the concept of new media protest at the genesis of the movement, even opting to include Twitter’s now-famous hashtag in its branding campaign. read more