US police use military weapons to crack down

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez (Democracy Now)

(Democracy Now, Aug. 14, 2014) Armed with military-grade weaponry from war on Iraq, Missouri police crack down on protests over Michael Brown shooting

One Billion Rising for Justice

The Missouri town of Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, looks like a war zone as police fire tear gas, stun grenades, and smoke bombs at civilians.

They claim to be attempting to break up a fifth night of protests over the police shooting of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown, [who was apparently executed by police, shot in the back in revenge after an altercation]. At least 10 people were arrested on Wednesday, including St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, who has been posting video online of the protests and who appeared on Democracy Now! earlier this week.

 

All-white jury acquits cop of video beating

An earlier protest faced a heavy Caucasian police response, with police in riot gear stationed by a massive armed vehicle in the street -- using weapons left over from the U.S. war on Iraq. Journalists from The Washington Post and Huffington Post were roughed up and arrested last night then released without charges [once they learned their lesson that police will not tolerate anyone exposing their crimes in a time of "crisis"].

Our racism kills; protests ensue

They were detained while filing reports from a McDonald’s restaurant. Ferguson police have refused to release the name of the officer who shot unarmed teen Brown, citing fears for his safety. But the name is known in the community and has been reported without confirmation. He executed the teen in broad daylight in front of witnesses who know his name.]

They have also requested demonstrators to limit their protests to "daytime hours." [Apparently this would save on police overtime costs.] DN! goes to St. Louis to speak with a very reticent Patricia Bynes, Democratic committeewoman of Ferguson township. Bynes has been out in the streets of Ferguson every night documenting the protests on Twitter.

Protests coming to Los Angeles

L.A. skyline pre-climate chaos (buzzfeed)

The killings and beating of African and Latin American youth continues throughout the U.S., particularly in Los Angeles, where police severely brutalized another unarmed mentally ill man, this time in Compton. On account of this, and in unity with Ferguson, citizens will march on the LAPD on Sunday.

Barry Montgomery, 29, was arrested in July after [police claim] he attempted to punch an LA County Sheriff’s Dept. deputy, according to the agency. But family members and the president of the Compton branch of the NAACP gave a much different account: Montgomery was playing basketball alone around 9:25 pm at Enterprise Park when he was approached by deputies, handcuffed, dragged from the court and into a bathroom, where he was severely beaten....Montgomery suffered a fractured eye socket, broken nose, and fractured ribs in the 25-minute beating, Simpson Gibson said. He was hospitalized... (as reported by L.A.'s new right wing newspaper, The L.A. Register, which brags "refreshingly not liberal").

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Protests rage in Venezuela

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; BBC.co.uk

Mr. Lopez's wife is calling for the release of her husband at marches attended by thousands.

 

Venezuela country profile (BBC)

Anti-government protesters in Venezuela have erected barricades in the capital, Caracas. They placed burning rubbish and furniture on main roads in an attempt to bar access to the city.

 

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles had earlier asked his supporters not to follow a call for a "national blockade" circulated on social media.

 

Nat'l hero led independence from Spain (AFP)

The blockades are the latest in a series of opposition protests in which 13 people have died. There have been reports of similar blockades in the cities of Maracaibo and Valencia.

Protesters also banged pots and pans in the early hours of the morning to show their opposition to the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

They say they will continue with their wave of protests, which started more than two weeks ago, until Mr. Maduro resigns. More than 130 people have been injured and an opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, has been arrested on charges of inciting violence. More

 

Anti-government protesters erect barricades in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas (AFP).

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The war to come in Kiev, Ukraine (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; BBC.co.uk; FEMEN.org; Los Angeles Times  UPDATED

There have been sporadic clashes through the day, as BBC's Duncan Crawford reports.

Putin says it's time for a police state in Kiev, and Ukraine president says sir, yes, sir!

 

Protesters momentarily get the upper hand.

Paramilitary police clashed with anti-government protesters in the center of Kiev on Feb. 18. State-sanctioned violence has left at least 100 citizens dead. Police snipers shot at protesters heads to bring them down with single wounds to the head; phalanxes of police have been firing shotguns into crowds; undercover police have been executing citizens; and military-armed police are firing deadly cannon-like rubber munitions at stone-throwing protesters near Ukraine's parliament.

Mind your own business, America!

Police also attacked civilians with smoke bombs and water cannons after protesters hurled paving stones as they sought to get closer to the heavily-fortified parliament building. Reports state that protesters have captured 64 police agents. See extensive coverage at KyivPost.com, but be forewarned it is sympathetic to murderous police and government shot callers.
 

FEMEN activist/topless protester for Kiev

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has fired the head of the armed forces, Col. Gen. Volodymyr Zamana, according to the president's website.

  Reports

The move comes after the most intense violence in [former Soviet state] Ukraine's three-month crisis turned the capital of Kiev into a battle zone against civilians.

Ukraine is "going West," joining European Economic Union over Russia (femen.org)

 

Earlier the state security service announced it was launching a nationwide "anti-terrorist" [terrorist = protester] campaign, to deal with a growing "extremist threat."

 

F you, dictator Putin (femen.org/en)

There was a suggestion the armed forces could be deployed for the first time [to help the paramilitary police kill more civilian civil rights protesters]. Col. Gen. Zamana has been replaced by the commander of Ukraine's Navy, Admiral Yuriy Ilyin, by presidential decree, President Yanukovych's website said. [One military man for another, that ought to lead to peace and calm.] More + VIDEO

• Live news (BBC) - Pictures - Crisis explained - Timeline

Ukrainian protest fires burn in capital of Kiev after police kill protesters (BBC)

 

This war began long ago

You don't talk like that, young lady!

(FEMEN.org) KIEV, Ukraine - "Ukraine is not Alina." FEMEN has long protested Russian Dictator Putin's intervention in the affairs of the Ukraine. FEMEN fought against electoral fraud during the elections to the Duma. In 2012 at polling station where operatives were "stealing for Putin!" FEMEN activists tried to take the voice of Putin during Russian presidential voting. "Putin is the Apocalypse"! In 2013 in Germany FEMEN said, "F*ck you, Putin!" As for Kiev at the Russian Embassy, it's "Forward Russia. More

Pussy Riot beaten and whipped in Sochi
August Brown (AP/latimes.com, Feb. 19, 2014)

Pussy Riot in Sochi in balacavas (latimes.com)

Mere days after police detained them in Sochi, Russia, Nadya Tolokonnikova, Masha Alyokhina, and other members of Pussy Riot were attacked by whip-wielding Cossacks in Sochi today, according to reports.
 

According to The Guardian (UK) and other outlets, members of the punk feminist activist group had assembled in their iconic bright balaclavas [knitted face scarves] in an area about 20 miles from the site of the Winter Olympics.
 

Senator McCain meddling for US

As they prepared to play a new song, "Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland," they were surrounded by plainclothes security officers.

There were also surrounded by uniformed Cossacks with whips, who were enlisted as an informal security force during the Sochi Games.
 
Cossacks, an equestrian-focused rural Russian culture,  have re-emerged as a symbol of conservative and militaristic values during Putin's presidency [a.k.a. dictatorship]. More

Deadliest Day in Ukraine Protests
Victoria Butenko and Carol J. Williams (latimes.com, Feb. 18, 2014)

Hundreds of thousands of protesters in streets

KIEV, Ukraine - At least nine people were killed yesterday [Feb. 17th] in the deadliest day of the 3-month-old Ukrainian political crisis.

[Paramilitary police attacked] demonstrators and later stormed their encampment at Kiev's Independence Square, the Maidan, local and international media reported.

Live television coverage carried by the Russia-24 news channel and nine live-streaming video cameras at the protest site and relayed by Ukrainian opposition broadcasters showed fiery explosions illuminating the grimy tent city in the capital after demonstrators ignored a [threat] from police to clear the square.

Ukrainians see their president as "traitor"

[WHY? It seems Russian Dictator or Presisenty Putin has ordered Ukraine's President. Yanukovich to severely crack down on Ukrainian demonstrators -- with military weaponry, forces, snipers, and plain clothes assassins -- to stop drawing attention to the plight of Ukraine and away from nearby Sochi, where Russia is trying to host a glorious Winter Olympics.]

Clouds of smoke from fires and tear gas could be seen wafting over the chaotic scene, eerily backlit with an orange glow from the multitude of blasts, burning sandbags, and smoldering debris.

Protest action in Moscow (Denis Bochkarev)

[Paramilitary police] forces began moving against the protesters' camp with water cannons and stun grenades after giving them 15 minutes' warning to leave.

But thousands of protesters remained in the square despite the caustic gas engulfing the nerve center of the uprising against President Viktor Yanukovich. More

Full coverage
(Los Angeles Times)

At least two dead as Ukraine protests rage: The crowd, many wearing helmets and brandishing homemade shields and wooden sticks, responded with a roar.

  
Ukraine uprising erupts in killings, arson, raids
He also accused two top U.S. diplomats -- Victoria Nuland, who oversees European affairs at the State Department... before Tuesday's violent eruption.

Ukrainians see worrisome nationalistic elements among protesters
...oppose the revolution spreading like wildfire across the country," he said. "We can take any ministry, any court, any agency in Kiev today, and no one can prevent us."

Ukraine president offers prime minister post to opposition leader
...year driver from the town of Obukhov near Kiev, said as [he] set fire to a piece of cloth in the neck of a beer bottle that was flung toward the police a second later. 

Ukraine protesters reject deal with president
...ground floor of the Agriculture Ministry next to Independence Square [Maidan] and captured the building, the UNIAN information agency reported. 

Ukraine demonstrators clash with riot police
...I decided not to go to Grushevsky [Street] because by our presence we can only aggravate the provocation which is taking place there now."
Why is John McCain meddling in Ukraine?

Ukraine: Demonstrators flood Kiev for EU deal

Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Oksana Grytsenko in Kiev (Nov. 24), Shaun Walker and Oksana Grytsenko (theguardian.com, Dec. 15, 2013); FEMEN.org/en

The biggest demonstrations since the "Orange Revolution" are continuing in the Ukraine after Pres. Viktor Yanukovych allegedly aborted a trade deal with the European Union under Russian pressure to stick with the former USSR. 

Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have flooded the streets of Kiev in the biggest anti-government protest since the 2004 Orange Revolution to demand President Viktor Yanukovych reverse a decision not to sign a key pact with the European Union. 

Ukrainian Nordic beauty, human-deva hybrids?

The rally, which may herald the most serious challenge to Yanukovych's authority since he came to power in 2010, ended with scuffles with police outside government offices.

Police [reacted] with teargas. Ukraine was to have signed a historic free trade and association deal with the EU at this week's Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. EU officials said Ukraine's abrupt U-turn came as a result of Kremlin pressure.

Riot police clash with Ukrainians near the cabinet building in Kiev (Alexey Furman/EPA)

 

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, wants Kiev to join a Moscow-led customs union. [Allegedly] an estimated 45% of Ukraine's population support closer ties with the West instead.

 

Ukraine president is unpopular

"We want to be in Europe" said 46-year-old Liudmyla Babych, a saleswoman from Kiev, holding a placard reading, "Mr. President – the Ukrainian nation will not forgive you this treason."

 

The protesters marched through the streets of Kiev as part of a nationwide day of protest chanting the slogans "Out with the gang!" and "Ukraine is Europe" and singing songs popular during the Orange revolution. Tens of thousands of people held a peaceful meeting on... More

Who rules the Ukraine, people or gov't?

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

FEMEN stands against dictators in Ukraine

That was the headline in November. By the middle of December, the sides had grown in intensity. The police and politicians are conservatives, the people radicals for change -- greater trade and affiliation with the West. The EU versus RU (Russia, or what's left of the USSR), who will win the hearts and minds of the Ukrainians?

Oops, it's already been won by the EU. That will not stop Vlad Putin from putting inordinate pressure on its president to remain a Russian ally -- even if it means a massive and bloody police state intervention. Paramilitary police and secret forces are already on the scene beating civilians, deploying teargas, and planning for a major crackdown. People can simply not be allowed the delusion that their voice matters. When it comes to governing a modern "democracy," what matters most is what those tricky enough to rig elections decide. 

Ukraine protesters return en masse to central Kiev for pro-EU campaign

Shaun Walker and Oksana Grytsenko (theguardian.com)

Kiev, Dec. 15, 2013 (theguardian.com)

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians brave freezing weather to demand EU integration despite suspension of negotiations on the agreement due to Russian interference.
 
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians braved freezing temperatures and aggressive [paramilitary] policing to return to central Kiev on Sunday to demand political change, sending a message to authorities that the crisis over the government's failure to sign an EU integration pact is unlikely to end soon.

With the news that the EU has suspended negotiations on the agreement likely to further inflame the mood, at least 200,000 people packed into Independence Square, known as the Maidan, to hear music and speeches from the trio of Ukrainian politicians who have attempted to lead the spontaneous outpouring of anger. More