Return of Namibian skulls highlights German colonial brutality

Deutsche Welle, 30 Sep 2011 

There are 7,000 skulls from
Namibia in German collections

A Berlin hospital is returning to Namibia 20 skulls that were stolen by colonial Germany, after a brutal repression of an uprising at the start of the 20th century. Some say the gesture does not go far enough.

It is a gruesome sight for those visiting the big auditorium in Berlin's Charite hospital. There are 20 human skulls on the podium. Only two of those are on display, the rest are packed in cardboard boxes, surrounded by flower arrangements.

The skulls are the remains of Namibians who died a horrific death at the hands of German colonial forces. And although skulls are not an unusual sight in medical lectures, they still leave you feeling uneasy.

For German scientists these skulls have a highly symbolic meaning. "It's the first time that we've returned a sizeable stock of skulls from a university," said Thomas Schnalke, head of the Charite's Medical History Museum.

"These skulls were collected in Namibia in a highly dubious ethical context between 1904 and 1908 and then prepared and sent off to Berlin for research purposes," he added.

German colonial forces brutally
crushed the uprising

They belong to victims from the Herero and Nama tribes in the former colony of German South-West Africa. Under pressure from Berlin, the German colonial government brutally repressed an uprising by indigenous people.

An apology

At the beginning of the 20th century, Berlin was a major hub for anthropological research. The Namibian skulls were sent to the German capital for racial analysis, according to the Charite's research.

"In this case, scientists took advantage of the political circumstances and that was wrong," Schnalke said.

"The Charite hospital would like to apologize, or rather ask for forgiveness, from the Namibian people, and we'd like to return the skulls that we have been able to identify."

A delegation of 73 representatives from Namibia, among them senior representatives of the Herero and Nama victims' associations, traveled to Berlin to receive the skulls. The handover reignited the debate about Germany's colonial past.

Calls for recognition of genocide

In 2004, then Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul finally issued the apology many in Namibia had been waiting for - an apology for the brutal repression of the Herero uprising. Since then, the Foreign Ministry has repeatedly emphasized its commitment to improving bilateral relations with Namibia, but for many in Namibia, it does not go far enough.

Muinjangue calls for victims'
groups to be involved

The handover of the skulls has been accompanied by debates, news conferences and a church service. The Left Party and various NGOs have called on the German government to recognize the murder of Herero and Nama people during the uprising as genocide.

'We want to be part of the process'

In addition to that, Utjiua Muinjangue, chairwoman of the Herero Victims' Asociation, has called for a change in attitudes.

"We want to be part of the process. There must not be a discussion without us. The German government has never spoken directly to those affected, to hear about our feelings and to give us a platform so we can be heard," she said.

She also says the money from Germany is not serving its purpose.

"Whatever the German government is paying the Namibian government in terms of money, we regard that as a payment between two countries. That's not the kind of compensation we have in mind."

The dispute is likely to continue and remain in the public eye, not least because there are roughly 7,000 Namibian skulls still in German collections, according to the Charite.

"We want to set an example and set a precedent on how to deal with future demands for returning those human remains," Schnalke said.

The Foreign Ministry has said that the Charite would act as a consultant in this matter, emphasizing that all parties had already worked well together on this occasion.

Author: Kay-Alexander Scholz / ng

Editor: Nancy Isenson

UK hacking like Watergate scandal, Bernstein says

Reuters, by Peter Griffiths, LONDON, Thu Sep 29, 2011

Carl Bernstein gestures during an interview in his apartment in
New York June 1, 2007. (Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

(Reuters) - The phone hacking scandal that engulfed Rupert Murdoch's media empire could turn out to be Britain's "Watergate" with fallout that lasts for decades, former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein said on Thursday.

The American journalist, who helped win his newspaper a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the 1970s crisis that brought down U.S. President Richard Nixon, said there were "striking" parallels between the two cases.

They both involved allegations of corruption at the highest levels and have fueled the public's loss of trust in national institutions, particularly the government, he said.

"The parallels are really striking. Both are shattering cultural moments of huge consequence that are going to be with us for generations," he told a debate in London organized by the Guardian newspaper.

Bernstein said he had always resisted the temptation to compare other important events to the Watergate scandal since he reported on the 1972 burglaries at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington.

"But this is for real and the parallels are remarkable," he added. "It is about a sensibility that corrupted a free institution and the consequences of that are so far-reaching."

News Corp has been rocked by the scandal since July when it was revealed that people employed by one of its British newspapers had hacked into the mobile phone messages of murder victims as well as celebrities and politicians.

The events have exposed awkward links between the media and senior politicians and police. British Prime Minister David Cameron has spoken of the need for a new relationship between politicians and media owners and the country's most senior policeman has resigned.

However, while Nixon became the first serving U.S. president to resign and a number of his officials were prosecuted, Cameron has so far emerged largely unscathed from the crisis.

The Conservative leader has been criticized for hiring a former Murdoch newspaper editor as his media chief, but Cameron has apologized for that decision and has rejected suggestions that his judgment is flawed.

Bernstein said the hacking scandal had damaged the reputation of Britain's politicians, regulators and media. The same pattern has been repeated in other countries, although often for different reasons.

"Our institutions have lost the trust of the people," he said.

"If there is a single thing going on today, from the Middle East to New York to Greece, Britain, all over the world, it's a loss of trust in our institutions."

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

JPMorgan's Dimon's aggressive style may hurt bank cause

Reuters, by Rachelle Younglai and Philipp Halstrick, WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT,  Thu Sep 29, 2011

Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co., poses for
 a portrait in his office in New York, in this photo taken December 22, 2010.
(Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson)

(Reuters) - Masters of the universe are not always so masterful after all.

JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon's squabble with the head of the Bank of Canada over bank regulation managed to achieve only one thing -- angering the central banker.

Once viewed as a star for helping the U.S. government prop up the now-defunct Bear Stearns during the 2008 financial crisis, Dimon is in danger of becoming a pariah among global regulators.

At a meeting last week between the world's most powerful bankers and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, Dimon tried to tell the central banker that banks were suffering under the weight of all the new bank rules. But his aggression drove a red-faced and visibly angry Carney out of the room, according to people familiar with the encounter.

Dimon referred to new global bank liquidity rules as "cockamamie nonsense," according to one of the attendees at the closed-door meeting held by the Institute of International Finance on Friday.

Dimon also said the rules did not bear any relation to financial reality and that they were constructed by regulators, academics and people who did not have any market experience, the attendee said.

Major banks have lashed out at the slew of new rules being implemented in response to the financial crisis. They contend higher capital standards and other new regulations will impede their ability to lend and hurt the already-fragile economy, although their arguments appear to be falling on deaf ears with regulators.

Another person at the meeting said Dimon acted very aggressively and complained about a plan from the Basel committee of global regulators to force the world's biggest banks to hold up to 2.5 percent in extra capital.

Carney, who spent more than decade at Goldman Sachs before becoming Canada's central banker, was calm at first and tried to appease Dimon, responding: "I hear what you are saying. I don't think it will surprise you that I am taking a different view. These are reasonable responses to the financial crisis," one of the attendees recalled.

But Dimon grew increasingly aggressive, prompting Bank of Nova Scotia CEO Rick Waugh to jump in to try to smooth relations, the source said.

The outspoken Dimon has already blasted the new international bank rules as anti-American and went a step further at the meeting. "I have called it anti-American. The only reason I am calling it anti-American is because I am American. I also think it's anti-European," the attendee recalled him saying.

In the end, an agitated Carney left in the middle of Dimon's tirade. Other chief executives such as Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein and Deutsche Bank's Josef Ackermann looked stunned, the sources said.

Ackermann tried to explain why Carney left abruptly, saying the central banker was on a tight schedule.

Some bankers were shaking their heads. "It was Dimon's style that astonished all bankers, not the content," said one banker familiar with the meeting. Another voiced concern that Dimon's anger hurt his message. Others said they thought Dimon's comments were appropriately delivered.

Once singled out by President Barack Obama for running a well-managed bank, Dimon has become increasingly more vocal in his opposition to the new bank rules. For over a year, he has fought the administration privately and publicly over the Dodd-Frank regulation bill.

In June, Dimon took U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to task and said new financial regulations could jeopardize the country's economic recovery and job creation.

At the time, he was praised for speaking out. But Dimon may have exacerbated the already-tense relations between the banking community and its financial supervisors with his latest exchange, first reported by the Financial Times.

On Monday, Dimon called Carney to put his comments in context, a source close to Dimon said. Dimon told the central banker that he had the utmost respect for him and that he thought the world of him, the source said.

But that was too late for Carney, who is rumored to be in line to become the next head of the Financial Stability Board -- a body of international regulators that makes policy recommendations to the Group of 20 economies.

The Bank of Canada and JPMorgan both declined to comment.

Two days after the encounter, Carney rejected bankers' complaints in a public speech to the IIF, a lobby group for global banks.

"If some institutions feel pressure today, it's because they have done too little for too long rather than being asked to do too much too soon," Carney said on Sunday.

"While the worsening global economic outlook has implications for bank performance, it does not provide a rationale for delaying the implementation of Basel III (bank capital rules,)" he said.

(Additional reporting by Louise Egan in Ottawa, Lauren LaCapra in New York and CameronFrench in Toronto; Writing by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Russian priest calls for schools to ban classic novels that 'justify paedophilia'

Moscow orthodox church spokesman says Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel García Márquez 'romanticise perverted passions'

guardian.co.uk, Associated Press in Moscow, Wednesday 28 September 2011

Russian priest Father Vsevolod Chaplin, spokesman for the Moscow
 patriarchate, called for novels by Nabokov and García Márquez to be
banned. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

A senior Russian Orthodox official claimed that novels by Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel García Márquez justify paedophilia and said they should be banned in the nation's high schools.

Father Vsevolod Chaplin's demand that Russia's government investigate and limit the use of the books was his church's latest attempt to impose religious norms in a country that once rejected religion altogether.

Chaplin, who heads the public relations department for the Moscow patriarchate, discussed Nabokov's Lolita and García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude on Ekho Moskvy radio, accusing both of "justifying paedophilia".

The priest later elaborated in comments carried by Interfax, saying the authors' works should not be included in high school curriculums as they "romanticise perverted passions that make people unhappy".

"Obviously, the popularisation of these novels in schools will not make our society more morally happy," he was quoted as saying.

Mikhail Shvydkoi, a Kremlin envoy for international cultural co-operation, disagreed, saying such action by authorities would badly hurt Russia's image.

Nabokov, who left his native Russia shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, published Lolita in English in 1955. The book, which describes a relationship of a middle-aged intellectual with his 12-year-old stepdaughter, was briefly banned in several European countries, Argentina and South Africa – as well as several library systems and public schools in the US.

Nabokov translated the book into Russian in 1967, but that work – along with the rest of his writings – was banned in the Soviet Union as pornography.

Unlike Lolita, García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was published in the Soviet era – despite numerous references to incest and sex with minors.

The Colombian novelist was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982.

The Russian Orthodox church has called for tighter controls on the content of television and radio broadcasts and said Russian women should observe an "Orthodox dress code" by wearing longer skirts and non-revealing clothes.

The church has experienced a revival since the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union in 1991. It now claims more than 100 million followers in Russia and tens of millions elsewhere, but polls have shown that only about 5% of Russians are observant believers.

Church and state are officially separate under the post-Soviet constitution, but Orthodox leaders seek a more muscular role for the church, which has served the state for much of its 1,000-year history.

Some non-religious Russians complain that the church has tailored its doctrine to suit the government, which has justified Russia's retreat from western-style democracy by saying the country has a unique history and culture.

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Russian region bans ‘gay propaganda’

Russian region bans ‘gay propaganda’

RT.com, 28 September, 2011

 

Gay pride parade (RIA Novosti / Andrey Stenin)

The country’s Arkhangelsk region has adopted a draft law banning all events promoting homosexuality, among them Gay Pride marches.

The draft was put forward by local activists, intellectuals and religious groups. They hope the law will protect the moral well-being of Russian children and put an end to what they consider to be the popularizing of homosexuality among the under-aged.

Russian authorities have always been strictly against Gay Pride parades. Gay rights activists have been applying for permission to hold a parade in Moscow for several years without success. The bans are warmly supported by the Russian Orthodox Church.

“All priests know that the souls of those who suffered through sinful homosexual experience are empty and desperate,” said Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Russian Orthodox Church PR department. “And it is this insecurity in a minute-long pleasure that forces these spiritually unhealthy people to hold marches and other public demonstrations.”

In July 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the decision to repeatedly ban Gay Pride parades in 2006, 2007 and 2008 was unlawful. Russia has paid €30,000 in compensation to gay activists. Still, the parades are being banned due to the “negative response they provoke among Russians.”

Russian gay rights activists, in response, have planned their demonstrations for the next hundred years – they have submitted their requests “to help mass cultural and educational activities from 2012 to 2112.”

They say the aim is to expose what they call the “absurdity” of the laws which the authorities use to deny them the right to conduct their events.

The legal loophole the activists are trying to exploit stipulates that applications to hold a demonstration should be filed to local authorities no less than 45 days before the event. The law does not prohibit filing requests earlier.

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"The Akashic System" – Jul 17, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Religion, The Humanization of God, Benevolent Design, DNA, Akashic Circle, (Old) Souls, Gaia, Indigenous People, Talents, Reincarnation, Genders, Gender Switches, In “between” Gender Change, Gender Confusion, Shift of Human Consciousness, Global Unity,..... etc.)  New !

Russian priest calls for schools to ban classic novels that 'justify paedophilia'

New Human Rights Logo Chosen

Jakarta Globe, September 28, 2011

In this photo provided by the Human Rights Logo Initiative, Predrag Stakic,
from Serbia, is interviewed during an event where his logo, seen in this image,
 was presented as the universal logo for human rights Friday Sept. 23, 2011
in New York. (AP Photo/Human Rights Logo Initiative, Tina Fineberg) 

           

Berlin. Internet voters have chosen a new human rights logo, designed by a freelance graphic designer from Serbia.

Some 25 percent of online voters chose 33-year-old Pedrag Stakic's submission after an international jury that included five Nobel Peace Prize winners had narrowed the contest down to 10 finalists.

Stakic said in a statement released Tuesday that he combined two universal symbols — a hand and a bird — for his design symbolizing a "free, just and peaceful world."

The campaign, organized by the German Foreign Ministry, started in May to find a logo to serve as a universal and recognizable symbol for human rights.

It received more than 15,000 submissions from 190 countries. The open-source logo is available on the website www.humanrightslogo.net for download and use.

 AP

Family dynasty behind BMW admits to using 50,000 slave labourers during Nazi era

Daily Mail, by Allan Hall,  27th September 2011

• Guenther Quandt was a member of the Nazi party and benefited from its 'Aryanisation' programme by taking over Jewish firms
• His wife, Magda Behrend Rietschel, later divorced him and married Joseph Goebbels, with whom she died in Hitler's bunker in 1945
• Quandt factories employed 50,000 slave labourers to churn out weapons and ammunition for the Nazis during World War Two, making the family very rich
• Family still retains majority of shares in luxury car maker

Family secret: Guenther Quandt, whose family
now owns BMW, used slave labourers during
World War Two in his weapons factories in
Germany

The dynasty behind the BMW luxury car marker has admitted, after decades of silence, using slave labour, taking over Jewish firms and doing business with the highest echelons of the Nazi party during World War Two.

Gabriele Quandt, whose grandfather Guenther employed an estimated 50,000 forced labourers in his arms factories, producing ammunition, rifles, artillery and U-boat batteries, said it was 'wrong' for the family to ignore this chapter of its history.

He spoke out after an in-depth study by Bonn-based historian Joachim Scholtyseck, commissioned by the family, that concluded Guenther Quandt and his son Herbert were responsible for numerous Nazi injustices.

It found Guenther acquired companies through the Nazi programme of 'Aryanisation' of Jewish-owned firms.

Herbert Quandt was 'part of the system', son Stefan Quandt said after the conclusion of the three-year study - forced on the family by public outrage over a German TV documentary - compiled using company files from the 12-year period of the Third Reich.

The Quandt family bought into BMW 15 years after the War.

The study shows Guenther became a Nazi Party member on May 1, 1933, a month after Adolf Hitler achieved supreme power in Germany.

But he had long used a network of party officials and Wehrmacht officers to build up contacts for lucrative state contracts.

Married to Magda Behrend Rietschel, Guenther was divorced by her in 1929 although they remained on friendly terms.

She went on to marry the 'poison dwarf' of the Nazi party, the propaganda maestro Joseph Goebbels, and would die with him - after murdering their six children - in Hitler's bunker in 1945.

The company grew rich in the Nazi era. In 1937, Hitler bestowed on Guenther the title Wehrwirtschaftsführer - leader of the armament economy - and his business supplied weapons using slave labourers from concentration camps in at least three factories.

Family ties: Herbert Quandt, Guenther's son, was also aware that slave labour
 was being used in the family's factories. Right, Adolf Hitler and his propaganda
minister Joseph Goebbels. Guenther Quandt divorced Magda Behrend Rietschel,
who went on to become Goebbels' wife (pictured right)

Hundreds of these labourers died.

An execution area to murder those who displeased their masters was found in one of his plants in Hannover and the study mentions the fate of a Polish man who was hanged at another plant in front of 50 other inmates.

The study showed that the Quandt firms also used Russian POWs as slave labourers and that Guenther and Herbert knew about them, detailing their dispersion among their empire from the company HQ in Berlin.

Herbert even employed Ukrainian slaves on his weekend retreat outside the Reich capital.

Guenther was described as an 'opportunist' who enthusiastically helped the regime to rid Berlin industries of Jewish workers before the start of the war.

This was despite his numerous contacts with Jewish bankers in the years before the Nazis began their climb to power.

Admission: Stefan Quandt, pictured with his
mother Johanna, has said his family - including
father Herbert - was 'part of the Nazi system'

He was also 'unscrupulous' in his take-overs of Jewish firms which were forcibly sold for a pittance to loyal German industrialists such as himself.

'The family patriarch was part of the Nazi regime', judged the historian in the 1,200 page study. 

'The Quandts connected themselves inseparably with the crimes of the National Socialists.'

The Quandts were pressured into commissioning the study after a 2007 TV documentary in Germany entitled The Silence Of The Quandt Family.

Five days later, as the press headlines about a fortune built on blood piled up, the reclusive family announced its full backing for the research project.

At the time it said: 'The accusations that have been raised against our family have moved us.

'We recognize that in our history as a German business family, the years 1933 to 1945 have not been sufficiently cleared up.'

BMW, of which the Quandts became major shareholders 15 years after the war, was not implicated in the documentary.

'We were treated terribly and had to drink water from the toilets. We were also whipped,' said Takis Mylopoulos, a forced labourer who worked in Quandt's Hannover plant.

In 1946 Guenther Quandt was arrested and interned. To the surprise of many, he was judged to be a 'Mitlaufer', or fellow traveller -  namely someone who accepted the Nazi ideology but did not take an active part in crimes.

He was released in January 1948.

Business interests: The BMW factory in Cowley, Oxfordshire. The
 Quandt family still owns the majority of shares in luxury car
manufacturer BMW

One of the prosecutors in the Nuremberg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, now says that if today's evidence against him had been presented to the court at the time,'Quandt would have been charged with the same offences as the directors of IG Farben' - the makers of the gas used to murder the Jews at Auschwitz.

Quandt was able to re-install himself in the supervisory boards of various German firms such as Deutsche Bank. He also became an honorary citizen of the University in Frankfurt in 1951.

He died on holiday in Cairo on December 30, 1954.

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Big Four auditors face massive shake-up

Reuters, by Huw Jones, LONDON, Tue Sep 27, 2011

(Reuters) - The "Big Four" global auditors could be broken up, leaving them susceptible to takeovers if radical European Union plans to boost competition go ahead, a UK auditing official said on Tuesday.

EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier is due to publish a draft law in November to curb what he sees as a conflict of interest when auditors check the books of and supply lucrative consultancy services to the same customer.

Auditors, KPMG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and PwC, audit nearly all big companies in the world, often serving the same clients for decades.

A copy of Barnier's draft law seen by Reuters proposes that auditors be banned from offering consultancy services to the companies they audit, or even banned from consulting altogether -- a move that could force the firms to split their operations.

"Breaking up the Big Four audit firms would make them more susceptible to be taken over by emerging Chinese firms," a UK audit official said on Tuesday on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivities involved.

Barnier's spokeswoman said he has made it clear that the audit sector displayed clear failings during the crisis, giving banks a clean bill of health just before they were rescued.

He has trailed his plans for a year and the industry had hoped they would be watered down by the time he formally proposed them next month.

"To reinforce independence and professional skepticism, the prohibition of the provision of non-audit services to the audited entities and even the prohibition of the provision of non-audit services in general would effectively address this issue," the draft said.

"Better audits and more informative audit reports will enhance confidence in the markets while also informing stakeholders of any problems with regards to any particular entity," the draft added.

The EU plans go much further than the United States, another major base for the Big Four, where the standard setter PCAOB is mulling requiring firms to switch auditors regularly, but has stopped short of recommending audit-only firms.

BREAK UPS

Deloitte said it supports improving audit quality but rejects joint audits, mandatory rotation and tendering, and a complete ban on non-audit services.

Rolf Nonnemmacher, co-chairman of KPMG Europe, said the reform goes as far as a breakup of the best performing firms.

"The implementation of these proposals would lead to a massive reduction in quality of audits, to the detriment of companies. In addition this would impose high costs on companies," Nonnemmacher said.

Ernst & Young had no immediate comment, while PWC said there was no evidence that the radical measures would improve audit quality.

However, auditor Grant Thornton, which along with peer BDO has tried to end the stranglehold of the Big Four, welcomed Barnier's plans.

"While we believe there could be some implementation issues, we still applaud what the Commissioner is attempting to achieve," a Grant Thornton spokesman said.

Accounting officials believe the Big Four would be forced to choose between auditing or consultancy.

"It would certainly mean a different profession," said Michael Izza, chief executive of the UK accounting body ICAEW.

The ACCA, another UK accounting body, said it was unclear whether imposing extensive rules and curbs was the best way to promote independence and skepticism.

The European Parliament, which will have the final say with EU states, has broadly backed the plans.

Auditing industry officials estimate that 28-30 percent of global revenues come from statutory audits, with about 18 percent from non-audit services provided to the same audit client. This means that about half of total revenues is earned from providing consultancy services to clients which are not being audited as well.

Britain, as home to the Big Four's European base, is likely to oppose some of Barnier's more radical proposals though its Office of Fair Trading said in July a full-blown competition probe into the sector is warranted.

Accounting officials say such a probe would become redundant if Barnier's draft makes it onto the statute book.

"If I was the UK Competition Authorities I would be inclined to leave this up to Europe. It's not a UK issue, it's actually a global issue," the auditing official said.

Other elements of the draft regulation include:

• Regular dialogue between auditors and their regulators about the firms they audit, a move aimed largely at banks;
  
• A company would have to change or "rotate" auditors every nine years to end the custom of decades-long auditing by the same firm;
  
• A ban on covenants whereby banks insist that a company receiving a loan must be audited by one of the Big Four;
  
• Introduction of "joint audits," so that the Big Four share auditing work with smaller rivals. Would apply to companies whose balance sheet is above 1 billion euros;
  
• The European Securities and Markets Authority to play a coordinating role in supervising auditors in the EU;
  
• Making international auditing standards mandatory.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Additional reporting by Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck in Brussels, Kathrin Jones in Frankfurt and Dena Aubin in New York; Editing by Erica Billingham and Helen Massy-Beresford)

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Police crack down on 'Occupy Wall Street' protests

New York police accused of heavy-handed tactics as 80 anti-capitalist protesters on 'Occupy Wall Street' march are arrested

Guardian.co.uk, 25 Sep 2011

YouTube footage of protesters being pepper-sprayed

The anti-capitalist protests that have become something of a fixture in Lower Manhattan over the past week or so have taken on a distinctly ugly turn.

Police have been accused of heavy-handed tactics after making 80 arrests on Saturday when protesters marched uptown from their makeshift camp in a private park in the financial district.

Footage has emerged on YouTube showing stocky police officers coralling a group of young female protesters and then spraying them with mace, despite being surrounded and apparently posing threats of only the verbal kind.

NYPD officers strung orange netting across the streets to trap groups of protesters, a tactic described by some of them as "kettling" – a term more commonly used by critics of a similar tactic deployed by police in London to contain potentially violent demonstrations there.

The media here in New York has been accused of being slow off the mark to cover the demonstrations, which have been going on for more than a week. The Guardian was one of the first mainstream news organisation to give detailed coverage to the protests – here are some links to our earlier coverage.

• This is a gallery of photographs taken by John Stuttle last weekend.
• Karen McVeigh visited the camp in Zuccotti Park on Monday
• Later in the week, Paul Harris recorded video interviews with some of the protesters.

Now, however, the local media has paid more attention – almost certainly because Saturday's protest became disruptive, bringing chaos to the busy Union Square area and forcing the closure of streets.

The NewYork Times quoted one protester, Kelly Brannon, 27, of Ridgewood, Queens:

"They put up orange nets and tried to kettle us and we started running and they started tackling random people and handcuffing them. They were herding us like cattle."

The scenes are showing signs of attracting high-profile criticism. Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was director of policy planning, at the State Department from 2009 to 2011, said on Twitter: "Not the image or reality the US wants, at home or abroad," linking to a picture of a police officer kneeling on a protester pinned to the ground.

Here's an extract from a Reuters report, which said the demonstrators were protesting against "bank bailouts, the mortgage crisis and the US state of Georgia's execution of Troy Davis".

• At Manhattan's Union Square, police tried to corral the demonstrators using orange plastic netting. Some of the arrests were filmed and activists posted the videos online.
  Police say the arrests were mostly for blocking traffic. Charges include disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. But one demonstrator was charged with assaulting a police officer. Police say the officer involved suffered a shoulder injury.
  Protest spokesman Patrick Bruner criticized the police response as "exceedingly violent" and said the protesters sought to remain peaceful

And this is a fuller take from Associated Press.

• The marchers carried signs spelling out their goals: "Tax the rich," one placard said. "We Want Money for Healthcare not Corporate Welfare," read another.
  The demonstrators were mostly college-age people carrying American flags and signs with anti-corporate slogans. Some beat drums, blew horns and chanted slogans as uniformed officers surrounded and videotaped them.
  "Occupy Wall Street," they chanted, "all day, all week."
  Organizers fell short of that goal. With metal barricades and swarms of police officers in front of the New York Stock Exchange, the closest protesters could get was Liberty Street, about three blocks away.
  The Vancouver-based activist media group Adbusters organized the weeklong event. Word spread via social media, yet the throngs of protesters some participants had hoped for failed to show up.
  "I was kind of disappointed with the turnout," said Itamar Lilienthal, 19, a New York University student and marcher.

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