Amid China's Broiling Growth, a Quiet Tiananmen Square

BEIJING -- In the 25 years since tanks rumbled across Tiananmen Square and brutally put paid to mass expressions of discontent here, the Chinese capital has been transformed. With a tip of the hat to Milan Kundera, one might think of Beijing these days as the city of spending and forgetting.

"Beijing differs vastly from what it was in 1989," reports The Wall Street Journal. "Where bicycles once dominated the city, luxury cars now clog its roadways. Well-heeled residents dress in international designer brands and the city has become a major destination for global commerce despite a slowing Chinese economy."

Rwanda Genocide Anniversary: 20 Years Later, Flame Stirs Memories

NYARUBUYE, Rwanda (AP) — Rows of human skulls sit in glass cases near the red brick Catholic church here. Some are cracked in half; holes are punched in others. Hundreds of arm and leg bones lie nearby. To the left is a table of tools: rusty shovels, hoes, pipes, and a machete — the weapons of genocide.

Down the hill 10 miles (15 kilometers), thousands of Rwandans gathered under spittles of rain to watch the arrival of a small flame, symbolic fire traveling the country as Rwanda prepares to mark 20 years since ethnic Hutu extremists killed neighbors, friends and family during a three-month rampage of violence aimed at ethnic Tutsis and some moderate Hutus.

FED up? Hundred years of manipulating the US dollar

Monday 23 December marks the 100th Anniversary of the creation of the Federal Reserve System - the Central Bank of the United States of America.

The mainstream media are keeping remarkably quiet about this key milestone.

No doubt, they know only too well that growing millions of workers inside and outside the US are realizing that a century of central banking monopoly in the hands of a private clique of usurer banksters is enough. More than enough!

Newtown Plans Quiet Anniversary Of School Shooting

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — Church bells tolled in Newtown on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the shooting massacre that killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and President Barack Obama called on Americans to help prevent future violence in a radio address on the tragedy.

The bells rang 26 times as names of each of the victims were read at St. Rose of Lima church in Newtown, one of several houses of worship that held private services Saturday for a community still grieving the deaths of 20 children and six educators.

Breaking Up With Occupy

Sandy Nurse seemed to have lost what tolerance she once had for long meetings. Even though the basement of the DeKalb Library in Brooklyn was air-conditioned on an especially sticky July day, and even though the meeting’s agenda was only partly finished, she told the handful of other eco-activists there that she was sorry, but she had to go build some compost bins, and she left.

Nurse never really looked all that happy in meetings. As one of the earliest members of Occupy Wall Street’s Direct Action Working Group—as well as one of the last—she attended a lot of them, including a lot of quite horrible ones. She could often be seen sitting at the far end of the oblong circle, away from the fray but guiding it nonetheless with her formidable evil eye. Where she would come alive was in the streets, leading marches through the winding canyons of the Financial District or tricking the cops with an unexpected reversal of course to get the march to where it wasn’t supposed to go: Wall Street.

50 Years After March on Washington, Tens of Thousands Say Struggle for MLK’s "Dream" Continues

Tens of thousands of people gathered in the nation’s capital on Saturday to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, originally held on August 28, 1963. People filled the National Mall as speakers reflected on the progress in achieving the goals outlined by the event’s most famous speaker, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. We spend the hour featuring highlights from Saturday’s event, with voices including 13-term Georgia Rep. John Lewis, the only surviving speaker from the 1963 march; Rev. Jesse Jackson; Rev. Al Sharpton; Julian Bond, former chair of the board of the NAACP and one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; the AFL-CIO’s Arlene Holt Baker; professor and author Michael Eric Dyson; and Medgar Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams. "This is not the time for nostalgic commemoration, nor is this the time for self-congratulatory celebration," King’s son, Martin Luther King III, told the crowd. "The task is not done. The journey is not complete. We can and we must do more. Paramount to Martin Luther King Jr.’s fervent dream was a commitment that African Americans gain full economic opportunity and not be confined to basic mobility from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. Today, with 12 percent unemployment rates in the African-American community and 38 percent of all children of color in this country living below the level of poverty, we know that the dream is far from being realized."

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Source: democracynow.org/
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Seeing 'New Jim Crow' Placards Seized by Police & More From the March on Washington

I spent eight hours today amongst thousands at the March on Washington, and the people present were some of the most remarkable, resilient people I have ever had the privilege to be around. The number-one face on T-shirts, placards, and even homemade drawings was not President Obama or even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was Trayvon Martin. I also witnessed homemade signs calling for jobs programs, speaking out against the school closures and in solidarity with those overseas victimized by US militarism. The people at this march are the face of resistance to what Dr. King called the “evil triplets of militarism, materialism and racism.”

John Lewis Speech: 1963 March On Washington Speaker Urges Crowd To Fight For Voting Rights

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) urged the crowd at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington Saturday to fight for the Voting Rights Act in the wake of a June Supreme Court decision gutting its core provision.

"I gave a little blood on that bridge in Selma, Alabama for the right to vote," he said, referring to Bloody Sunday in 1965 when police beat him and hundreds of other peaceful protesters. "I am not going to stand by and let the Supreme Court take the right to vote away from us."

Racial Equality: Not Yet A Reality Report Finds

WASHINGTON -- Has the U.S. achieved Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a colorblind society? Fewer than half of all Americans say the country has made substantial progress in the past 50 years toward racial equality, a new poll shows.

Despite a heightened sense of racial progress immediately following the 2008 election of the first black president, Americans' views of black progress have waned.

The study, released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, offers a mixed picture of progress five decades after King made his historic "I Have a Dream" speech calling for racial equality. The center is a Washington-based research organization.

Time to March on Washington—Again

They carried signs that demanded “Voting Rights,” “Jobs for All” and “Decent Housing.” They protested the vigilante killing of an unarmed black teenager in the South and his killer’s acquittal. They denounced racial profiling in the country’s largest city.
 
This isn’t 1963 but 2013, when so many of the issues that gave rise to the March on Washington fifty years ago remain unfulfilled or under siege today. That’s why, on August 24, a broad coalition of civil rights organizations, unions, progressive groups and Democratic Party leaders will rally at the Lincoln Memorial and proceed to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the march and dramatize the contemporary fight. (President Obama will participate in a separate event commemorating the official anniversary on August 28.) The Supreme Court’s decision gutting the Voting Rights Act in late June and the acquittal of George Zimmerman less than three weeks later make this year’s march “exponentially more urgent” with respect to pressuring Congress and arousing the conscience of the nation, says Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, a co-sponsor of the march.

Oka, 23 years on

Nothing has changed. But everything has changed.

That was the refrain at a gathering for the 23rd anniversary of the Oka Crisis and protest of recent oil company representatives in Oka and Kanehsatà:ke.

Nothing has changed in the way natives are treated by the federal government, but everything has changed for people involved in the struggle for indigenous rights, activists told the crowd.

Ten years of same-sex marriage in Ontario

Ten years ago, the Ontario Court of Appeal said “yes” to same-sex marriage, granting me the right to marry the man I love. That changed everything.

Like most homosexuals, I grew up in a heterosexual family. I imagined that one day I would have a family of my own based on love, one of the values my parents had successfully passed on to me.

Brixton Riots 1981 Anniversary: Does Margaret Thatcher's Legacy Still Live On?

Thirty-two years ago today, protesters and police clashed violently on the streets of Brixton, South London, in a confrontation that injured 325 people and left 30 buildings gutted by flames.

To the largely Afro-Caribbean demonstrators it was a "show of strength" against police brutality, high unemployment and institutionalised racism.

To Margaret Thatcher this notion was ridiculous. The acts were simply "criminal".

On 45th Anniversary of His Death, Martin Luther King Jr. on the Power of Media and the Horror of War

Forty-five years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of his hotel room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was in Memphis to march with sanitation workers demanding a better wage. We air part of a speech he gave to the National Association of Radio Announcers the previous year in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. King spoke about the power of the media and the horrors of war in Vietnam.

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Source: Democracy Now!
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The Iraq invasion 10 years on, was it worth it?

We will never, ever agree on Iraq. Not even those of us who spent time there in the 10 years since the U.S.-led invasion, and smelled its decline up close.

Each of us wanders with our own frightful version of Iraq's war in our minds, a unique view of its success or failure, distorted by time and muddied by our unreliable memories.

We can ask ourselves: Was that invasion 10 years ago this month worth it? But the answer isn't obvious.

One year later: Vigils across the U.S. mark anniversary of Trayvon Martin's death

On Tuesday there were protests in a number of U.S. cities, marking one year since the killing of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year-old African-American, in Sanford, Florida.

The Stop Mass Incarceration Network, which originally criticized the quick release of George Zimmerman after Martin's death last year, issued a call to protest on the one year anniversary, stating: "Trayvon's parents heroically stood up and called for justice for Trayvon, and in response people poured into the streets all across the country. This is the only reason Zimmerman was re-arrested and charged for his crime."

This Is 'Roe' at 40

Just two years ago, as Roe v. Wade headed into its late thirties, it seemed to be losing its luster. States were hacking away at abortion rights, passing ninety-two new restrictions in 2011 alone—nearly triple the number of any other year on record. Americans appeared ready to tolerate all manner of barriers to abortion access, from parental notification laws and restrictions on late-term procedures to laws crippling the ability of clinics to provide care by subjecting them to absurd requirements (such as having five-foot-wide hallways, as one Virginia law demanded). These new burdens added to the weight of a decades-long and alarmingly successful campaign by the right to stigmatize women seeking abortions and to persecute abortion providers. As a result, 87 percent of US counties lack an abortion provider, and several states have only a clinic or two staffed by a doctor who flies in from another state. “It’s never been this frightening before,” one longtime clinic worker recently told The Washington Post.

The 13th anniversary of the Battle in Seattle

Several days of powerful social movement protests against the WTO began 13 years ago today in Seattle.

This is a photo of me marching with Jo Dufay (the Council of Canadians co-ordinator of campaigns then), Tony Clarke just behind us, and many others. About a week before the WTO ministerial, I said in a Toronto Eye Weekly news article, “It’s profoundly anti-democratic. It’s about shifting power and public control away from governments and into the hands of corporations, CEOs and their shareholders, and the basic drive for profits. There is every indication from the WTO that they don’t care what civil society or the general public has to say.”

It's Long Past Time to Admit: The Military Solution in Afghanistan Has Failed

Sunday, October 7, marks the 11th anniversary of the Afghanistan war, now the longest war in U.S. history. This date provides an opportunity to take stock of what a tragic calamity this war is over a decade after its start, and to examine, once again, why military solutions are not effective in solving deep, systemic complexities of a country like Afghanistan.

Most immediately, the conditions look more dire than ever. The failed troop surge that started in 2009 is over. America officials are giving up hope for reconciliation with the Taliban. More Americans and NATO soldiers are dying from rising insider attacks at the hands of Afghan soldiers, leading to talk of a possible early NATO withdrawal. The arbitrary exit date from Afghanistan is still set for the end of 2014, though no one in Washington can explain the plan for a gradual drawdown or really any strategy for ending the war at this point.

On Afghan War 11th Anniversary, Vets Confront Mental Health Crisis, Soldier Suicides and Violence

On the 11th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, we take a look at the invisible wounds of war here at home. Since the war began on Oct. 7, 2001, less than a month after the Sept. 11th attacks, at least 2,000 U.S. soldiers have died. Some 2.4 million U.S. soldiers have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the psychological toll of the wars is mounting. Last year, the Veterans Administration treated almost 100,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and soldier suicides reached an all-time high this year. In Colorado Springs, the commanders at Fort Carson have come under scrutiny for its handling of mental health concerns, with a 2010 joint NPR-ProPublica investigation finding that as many as 40 percent of Fort Carson soldiers had mild brain injuries missed by Army health screenings. Meanwhile in 2009, the Colorado Springs Gazette published a startling series called “Casualties of War,” written by our guest, investigative reporter Dave Philipps. His book, "Lethal Warriors: When the New Band of Brothers Came Home,” shows how a wave of violence swept across Colorado Springs when the 506th Infantry Regiment, known as "the Band of Brothers,” returned home from their first tour in Iraq. We are also joined by Georg-Andreas Pogany, a retired Army sergeant who is now an independent veterans’ advocate and investigator, and Graham Clumpner, an Afghanistan War veteran and Colorado regional organizer for Iraq Veterans Against the War. Democracy Now! is on the road, broadcasting from Colorado Springs, the home of five major military installations — Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, the U.S. Air Force Academy, Schriever Air Force Base and the Cheyenne Mountain Air Station.

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Source: Democracy Now!
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