North America

Occupy Wall Street, now in its fourth week in Liberty Plaza is
inspiring others across the U.S.A. and the world. As of this writing,
there are occupations in more than 1550 cities worldwide, with
more than one hundred in the U.S. alone, despite the fact that
the movement is much more recent in the U.S. than in Europe.

New York–Daily protests and an ongoing park occupation in the financial district of New York City are gaining growing national attention as an expression of anger against Wall Street greed–and now the brutality of police against demonstrators, after the NYPD savagely attacked a march rom the encampment to Union Square on September 24.

New York, October 3, 2011– The stakes went up for the Occupy Wall Street protest movement this weekend after police escalated their repression with the arrest of over 700 peaceful protesters during a march across the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1.

Around 4 PM, people started to gather at Foley Square, just a few blocks from City Hall. Their goal: to march to Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti Park). The Unions took the initiative to organize the rally in support of Occupy Wall Street, after last week’s police brutality. They had arrested over 800 people, had violently tackled many, and used pepper spray on the protesters.

In the midst of the current stampede to slash federal spending, U.S. Congress might want to take a look at two unnecessary (and dangerous) “national security” programs that, if cut, would save the United States over a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade.

The US Air Force is standing down its plan to launch a nuclear-capable missile on the United Nations International Day of Peace. It’s a very small step, but it is a step in the right direction. It’s possible that the Air Force planners didn’t know about the International Day of Peace or even that there is such a day.

Nonviolence is a beautiful theory but it doesn’t work in the real world, critics have long argued. It is—they maintain—passive, weak, utopian, naïve, unpatriotic, marginal, simplistic, and impractical. In spite of these widely-held assumptions, however, people around the planet go on building one nonviolent people-power movement after another.

Message from Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard

Thousands of students and pupils in education establishments around the world are preparing themselves for the “runthisway” project, a project getting people running to promote peace and nonviolence. Social movements around the world have sprung up this year and many have chosen non-violent means to achieve their aims. This initiative aims to support this trend.

Article written by Nathan Schneider

It’s a foregone conclusion that revenge ties itself in a logical knot. It’s a cycle that churns until everyone bound up in it is dead. With the 10th anniversary of 9/11 in mind, philosopher Simon Critchley rehearses this fact eloquently in his latest at his New York Times forum, The Stone.