Democracy in Italy

#OpItaly : February 13 Countdown To Democratic Process that Can Only End With Berlusconi Resignation ; Will #OpCityHall Or #OpCityCouncil Be Next ?

News is spreading on the Internet that the combined impact of WikiLeaks documents and Anonymous will soon bring reform to the Italian government.

Although Prime Minister Silvio has weathered many corruption scandals, he has not been held accountable, ''because of his remarkable control of Italian television and the press.'' But the international mood is changing.

''Outsiders may find it easy to group all Italians as Berlusconi sympathizers or as passively resigned to their predicament. But there are many Italians who are fighting against him and the effect he has had on Italy,'' wrote Clare Watters in an opinion-editorial featured in The New York Times.

While we always hear international chatter about undemocratic leaders, as with the recent democratic revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, we can safely bet that change will next come to Italy.

Look no further than here : Operation Italy Part 2 PRESS RELEASE English.

St. Vincent's Activist Get Out of Jail ; Give Press Conference

Why Are They Closing St. Vincent's Hospital ?

Four community activists were released from jail on Wednesday, following their arrest on Tuesday for having staged a sit-in at the former site of St. Vincent's Hospital, reported the Hedz-Up Report. Ms. Katz and the other activists were each charged with criminal trespass, but all they were trying to do was to bring a new hospital to the Lower West Side of Manhattan. Following is video of the a part of the press conference, where Evette Stark-Katz, one of the activists who was arrested, made a public statement.

Why Are They Closing St. Vincent's Hospital? (Pt. 18) - Arrest & Release (Clip 1) from g. sosa on Vimeo.

Mike Bloomberg John Haggerty hold the bull!

Four Activists Were Arrested at Sit-In at St. Vincent's Hospital

This morning, NYPD arrested four activists, who protested the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital. Politicians, on whose watch the hospital closed, remain at-large.

Watch a YouTube video of the protesters, as they were taken into police custody. While they were being put into the back of the police van, the activists shouted : "Land-lock St. Vincents ; Trauma 1 now !"

A group called Hands Off St. Vincent's held a sit-in Tuesday morning at the shuttered medical center. At approximately 10:30 a.m., four activists were arrested. It is not known how many other activists took part at the demonstration.

Among the protesters, who were arrested, were LGBT civil rights activists Iana Di Bona and Alan Bounville. Following is the statement from a press release, which was distributed to the media, by one of the group's members :

New York, NY – On February 8, at 10:30 am, four former patients and impassioned community members entered the building at the location of the closed down Saint Vincent's Hospital. These activists then sat on the ground, unfurling a banner that read, "Guilty : Neglect !" and began to chant - refusing to move. Saint Vincent's personnel closed off that section of the building - currently operating as a Credit Union - and refused entry to members of the credit union as well as persons employed within the building. Two hours after their arrival, the four activists were arrested and taken away by the police.

For 284 days, 1.3 million New Yorkers have been without a hospital in the West Village. Since St. Vincent’s illegal closure on April 30, 2010, the community has been laden with false promises, patronized with a bogus needs assessment and forced, with tragic consequences, to seek emergency or medical care at already overcrowded uptown or East-side hospitals.

“Everyday that passes is critical,” said Iana Di Bona, one of the arrested activists, “Our elected officials have the ability to turn things around, yet they do nothing. It is so important to speak out and to continue to pressure and hold them accountable to service the needs of our community.”

Commitment for a New Village Hospital by the people of the West Village and all of New York City has not wavered. Any politician not actively working to get a new hospital is a target. That is a promise the St. Vincent’s Hospital Community Activists intend to keep.

Before the sit-in took place, it appears that the activists held a "peoples trial" of politicians, on whose watch St. Vincent's closed. According to the description of the YouTube video, an unidentified Hands Off member made the following statement : "We hold the elected officials responsible for betraying their very own constituency."

On her blog, the artist and political commentator Suzannah B. Troy broke the news of the activists getting arrested at St. Vincent's. Ms. Troy made the observation that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn recently pushed through a new smoking ban in public parks as a sign of their concern for public health, but Ms. Troy questions their commitment if politicians have made no commitment to save city hospitals from closing.

Christine Quinn, Ms. Slush and Intimidation wants to be Mayor! by Suzannah B. Troy

http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/quinn_cash_U8m3A7r3ur4ZUF5FrZfpsK

Christine Quinn, Ms.Slush and Intimidation, aka as Mike Bloomberg's mini-me will never be mayor. I am waiting for an App, a NY Post ticker of how much corrupt politicians lawyers are costing tax payers. Here legal team must be working over-thttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEaki2DQ0_wime. I hope she gets a subpoena so she has to explain under oath how she brushed aside 2 investigations in to CityTime and if she used intimidation to prevent a 3rd? Quinn also pushed the great lie we needed Mike for a third term to help the economy. Look at the list of her campaign donors -- that is who she helped. She is all talk but her actions speak louder and she belongs in jail. The slush $ investigations are moving slower than a turtle in molasses.

p.s. Page 6 keeps doing phony p.r.. for Quinn just like the do for guess who's love life which is a big farce...gee wonder what that is all about?

Bloombo Dicto Hosni Bloomberg

Maybe after #OpEgypt and #OpItaly, we'll have #OpCityHall or #OpCityCouncil ?

After Mayor Michael Bloomberg insulted parents who heckled Chancellor Cathleen Black, Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers union, compared Mayor with Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, reported The New York Post.

Ms. Black's ''Awwwwwww'' moment came when she mocked parents, who were going to desperate measures to save several schools from closing, and her insensitive mocking and juvenile immaturity has inflamed the anger of parents and has shocked the conscious of even some school officials. In response to the despair of parents, Mayor Bloomberg has predictably unleashed a ridiculous backlash against Ms. Black's critics.

Mayor Bloomberg, who subverted a public referendum to run for a third term as mayor, went on to say that angry parents were acting unpatriotic. "This is not democracy -- letting people yell and scream. That's not freedom of expression," Mayor Bloomberg said. "That's just trying to take away somebody else's rights. And if we want to attract good people to come and work for the public, you don't do this."

Under his tight fist of ''mayoral control'' over the school system, Mayor Bloomberg wields totalitarian control over the Panel for Educational Policy, which votes to close schools ; the Panel operates under the appearance of independence, but in reality the Panel is ''entirely undemocratic'' and takes its ''marching orders only from Bloomberg,'' according to the Post Mr. Mulgrew noted that if the Panel doesn't vote the way that the Mayor wants, he retaliates against them. ''The last time they voted against him, he fired them,'' Mr. Mulgrew said.

Even The New York Times Agrees : the ''Fix'' Was In.

Meanwhile, at a meeting on Thursday night, where more schools were voted to be closed, City Councilmember Charles Barron said, “You will let us scream until we get hoarse, and then we know what will happen — you’ll shut all our schools down.”

''The closing of struggling schools has been a key piece of Mr. Bloomberg’s agenda, and his eight-person majority has stood behind him, phasing out more than 100 schools, often replacing them with small schools and charter schools,'' reported The Times.

Update on Christine Quinn

While Mayor Bloomberg spent the week closing schools, firing teachers, and getting rid of classrooms and school lunches, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn was using NYPD as enforcers against activists outside a fundraiser for her presumed candidacy for Mayor in 2013.

Christine Quinn Avoids Public Audit of St. Vincent's Hospital Closing

The City Council Sneaker Investigates the Very Idea That Wal-Mart Will Open a Store in New York City, but She Won't Investigate Why St. Vincent's Hospital Closed ?

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn called Wal-Mart a ''union-busting, tax-evading, wage-correcting, job-destroying, civil-rights-abusing, food-stamps-denying multinational corporation.'' But Speaker Quinn won't investigate the shady and rapid closing of St. Vincent's Hospital.

If Comptroller John Liu were to launch an investigation into St. Vincent's Hospital, he could count on the support of a few hundred thousand New Yorkers, who live in the former St. Vincent's catchment area, who have been left with no hospital in the Lower West Side of Manhattan. That area also happens to coïncide with what would be considered Speaker Quinn's strongest base of support, if she were to run for mayor of New York in 2013.

At Quinn Protest, A Use of City Resources for Campaign Activities ?

Is Speaker Quinn using city resources, and police,
for campaign activities ?

At a political fundraiser on the evening of Feb. 2, 2011, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn deployed a large team of police officers. Three peaceful protesters, myself included, gathered to hold up a banner, asking for a new hospital for the Lower West Side of Manhattan, to replace St. Vincent's. Police told us to move, and one officer pushed me to get me to move, even though we were on a public sidewalk and not blocking traffic. Plus, there were no barricades, to indicate that there was a restricted zone. Is Speaker Quinn using city resources, and police, for campaign activities ? Who is instructing NYPD to intimidate protesters ?

David Kato : Vigil and March in NYC to Demand Hate Crimes Investigation

NYC vigil and march in memory of David Kato on Thursday, February 3

Last Wednesday, Ugandan gay activist David Kato was beaten to death in a brutal hate crime. Even after David was deliberately marked as a target in a newspaper’s controversial campaign that called for gays to be executed, police in Uganda are refusing to investigate David’s suspicious murder as an act of homophobia.

Here in New York, the LGBT community and our allies are outraged at the continuation of human rights violations against David, even after his death, and against LGBT people everywhere.  We invite all New Yorkers to participate in a vigil and march on Thursday, February 3.

For more information about the vigil and march, please visit the Facebook page. The vigil will begin at 4 pm at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (885 Second Avenue), and, from there, mourners will begin a march that will pass in front of the United Nations Headquarters and end at the Uganda Mission to the United Nations (336 East 45th Street).

Date : Thursday, February 3, 2011
Start Time : 4 p.m.
Meeting Place : 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (885 Second Avenue), New York City
Please Bring : Signs and Banners to remember David Kato

David’s life work was to courageously fight for the human rights of LGBT people in Uganda. In the time leading up to his murder, David had been working to defeat the widely controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda.  Under the proposed bill, some LGBT people would become subject to the death penalty.  In David’s name, we demand that the Ugandan government abandon this bill.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced in the Ugandan Parliament by David Bahati, who is associated with ‘’The Family,’’ a fringe group of right-wing politicians and businessmen, who inject their fundamentalist beliefs into government matters, including civil rights and reproductive freedoms. Mr. Bahati reportedly first proposed the idea of executing gays during The Family's Uganda National Prayer Breakfast in 2008.

We stand up to the bigotry of and interference by groups, like The Family. We also join others in calling for the Ugandan government to recognize LGBT equality as a universal human right, to fully investigate all hate crimes, and to take action against institutions, which create campaigns that are only meant to incite discrimination and violence against LGBT people.

The campaign against LGBT Ugandans was being lead by other social and cultural institutions, including the media. It is unacceptable that a newspaper would publish a list of LGBT people and mark them as targets for death. As we hold our vigil and march near the United Nations, we also ask the U.N. to continue to put pressure on the Ugandan government to thoroughly investigate David’s killing, as well as to investigate and prosecute any institution, which is responsible for advocating for the execution, discrimination, or harassment of LGBT people.

We ask everyone to join us in this vigil to demand that all cultural- and government-sanctioned discrimination and violence against LGBT persons come to an end.

Egypt And The U.S. : Interference With The Internet #LeakSpin

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak :
The Countdown To Regime Change

The right to Internet access is so critical to citizens' participation in their own governments that the revolution taking place in Egypt has implications for the United States. Tonight, U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the bloody crackdown on the protests in Egypt.

From The New York Times :

Mr. Obama also said that Egyptian officials should "reverse the actions that they have taken to interfere with the Internet, cellphone service, social networks that do so much to connect people in the 21st century." He added, "going forward, this moment of volatility has to be turned into a moment of promise."

In a 2007 editorial ABC News online, Internet access was described as an important underpinning to democracies. When the governments of Burma and China restricted Internet access, the consequences to freedoms were indisputable. ''Democratic governments understand the connection between human rights and Internet freedom. They have been quick to condemn the Internet crackdown in Burma and China and the lack of Internet freedom in much of the world,'' wrote Leslie Harris.

Remember that before the Egyptian government suspended Internet access inside its country, ''President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States ... .''

Remember that before the Egyptian government shut down cellphone service, President Obama ordered the Justice Department to obtain a secret court order to demand that Twitter turn over, among other things, the ''subscriber names'' of the five individuals associated with WikiLeaks, an act that would blatantly deny subscribers their rights to due process.

Earlier today, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made a statement to express her request that the Egyptian government restore Internet access.

''Mrs. Clinton also urged the government 'to reverse the unprecedented steps it has taken to cut off communications,' referring to its decision — apparently unprecedented — to cut off all Internet services in the country, as well as mobile phone networks in some areas,'' reported The Times.

For the U.S. government to actualise the exceptionalism that we know it to have, and for the U.S. government to truly support democracy in Egypt, it must be more honest about the dishonesty of the Egyptian government (''GOE''). Today, WikiLeaks published new U.S. Embassy cables, including one that gave some perspective into the inside information available to the U.S. government.

''The GOE has not begun serious work on trying to transform the police and security services from instruments of power that serve and protect the regime into institutions operating in the public interest, despite official slogans to the contrary.''

#CableGate, #LeakSpin, #09CAIRO79

Egypt Takes Actions To Shut Down The Internet

Egypt Uprising : Government Shuts Down The Entire Internet

''Confirming what a few have reported this evening: in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet,'' reported the blog, AnonOps Communications. In a separate media report, it was confirmed that internet services and cell phone text messaging have been cut across the African country to prevent the organizers of the protests from further connection, AFP reported on Friday.

Courageous Egyptian Protesters

من مظاهرات يوم الغضب - شاب شجاع جدا

A courageous Egyptian protester stops an armoured truck bearing a water cannon on protesters on what appears to be Qasr al-Ayn Street in Cairo, Egypt.

Similar to the Tiananmen Square hero from the 1989 protests, in Cairo today a hero-protester stood in front of an armoured truck.

BREAKING : Wal-Mart Shooting

''A shoot-out in front of a Wal-Mart in Washington state left two people dead and two sheriff's deputies wounded Sunday afternoon,'' the Associated Press has reported.

One of the dead was a man who shot at deputies, said Scott Wilson of the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office. The other victim was a young woman who died after she was taken to a Tacoma hospital, he said. ...

Wilson said details were sketchy, but the sheriff's office received a call about a suspicious person at the store in Port Orchard. He said the man ran and started shooting when three deputies tried to talk to him. The deputies, including the two who were wounded, returned fire. ...

The store was immediately locked down, and customers weren't being allowed to leave. ...

Michael Moore Discusses WikiLeaks On Rachel Maddow Show

On the December 21, 2010, episode of the Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel sat down with Michael Moore in front of a live audience at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, to discuss U.S. Embassy cables that discussed the documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. Their interview also included the subject of WikiLeaks.

Keith Olbermann Ends MSNBC Show

Updated : MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract.

From The Huffington Post :

Keith Olbermann and MSNBC have ended their contract, according to a statement from MSNBC. The last episode of "Countdown" will air this evening, Friday, January 21.

MSNBC's statement reads as follows:

''MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract. The last broadcast of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC's success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.''

It has been reported that Mr. Olbermann's contract was being terminated midway through a four-year deal worth an estimated $30 million. Rumours on the internet indicate that Mr. Olbermann was fired as a consequence of Comcast's acquisition of NBC.