HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

By Nathan Schneider* –WagingNonviolence 

New York – Liberty Plaza (or Park or Square) looks an awful lot like Zuccotti Park again—aside from the damaged flower beds and a broken plastic peace sign lying in the gutter. At 1 in the morning, hundreds of police in riot gear stormed the plaza, shining floodlights and tearing down tents.

Source: WagingNonviolence

Sanitation workers loaded occupiers’ belongings into garbage trucks, including the books of the occupation’s library. LRAD sound cannons were on the scene, and as many as five police helicopters hovered high overhead, where airspace was closed to media aircraft.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Lee Suster* – SocialistWorker

The sleazy crook who dominated Italian politics for nearly two decades is gone–only to be replaced by an unelected “eurocrat” installed by bankers to make working people pay for Europe’s relentless financial crisis.

Mario Monti. Photo: ESMT | Wikimedia Commons

The comparable rate for German bonds is 2.25 percent. In other words, just to fund its operations, the Italian government must pay nearly three times the amount of interest that Germany does.

Italian government debt is already equivalent to 120 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), so the spiking interest rates have big international banks and European Union politicians worried that Italy won’t be able to repay its debts.