Tag Archives: Times Square

December 20, 2012 · 11:33 AM

FL pastor Terry Jones Drowned Out In Times Square By NYC Crowd Singing ‘All You Need Is Love’

Compelled to share this…

Democratic Underground

From Huffington Post:

Anti-Islam, Quran-burning pastor Terry Jones Drowned out in Times Square

New Yorkers are famously terse, not known for patience or excessive diplomacy — and certainly not for loud public displays of love.

So when anti-Islam, Quran-burning pastor Terry Jones showed up in Times Square last year, spewing anger and sporting a T-shirt that read, “Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Islam I Learned On 9/11,” the results were certain to be dicey.

But a surprisingly touching video of that event, posted Monday by the New York Times just in time for the holiday season, shows humanity outweighs Jones’ rage.

The video, filmed on Sept. 10, 2011, but only recently published, begins predictably: Jones standing in the square, advocating intolerance and hate. Several passersby attempt to argue with him to no avail. Soon a man begins reading out loud, then singing, “All You Need Is Love,” the iconic classic by The Beatles.

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November 6, 2012 · 8:20 AM

Whatever it takes, get out and vote!

Whatever it takes, get out and vote!

Whatever it takes, get out and vote!

I’m glad I voted last week because the rain is relentless here in my little town in the suburbs of Atlanta.  I hope many of our TFC friends have done the same, but if not, whoever is your choice in this Presidential Election…please vote…

Salon

A week has passed since Hurricane Sandy struck, and the short subway ride uptown this morning almost seemed normal, except for the bigger crowds getting on at Penn Station and Times Square — commuters from outside Manhattan where wind and storm surge water damage were so much worse and all too often deadly. Overheard conversations were filled with stories of how people had coped.

I live in Greenwich Village and thought I was ready for the worst — hatches battened down with emergency food, water, batteries, flashlights, transistor radio, etc. I’ve stayed put through 9/11, blackouts, blizzards, even other hurricanes. Nonetheless, I wasn’t prepared for the electricity and heat leaving us for five nights. I thought for sure they would be back the next day. Or the next … or the next…

But we were stuck in that trendy new Manhattan neighborhood — SoPo, as in “South of Power” — and when a friend and colleague offered shelter, warmth and electricity on the upper West Side, the invitation was gratefully accepted. From that outpost (for the most part, life went on as usual once you got above 34th Street and Herald Square), we watched unfold the disaster and accompanying tragedies and acts of heroism and community.

We also watched people vote. Or try to vote, in Ohio and Florida, where lines were long and attempts to suppress the right to cast a ballot are ongoing. Or in flood-stricken New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie announced that people can vote via email as if they’re casting an absentee ballot from overseas — but still need to download the ballot, print, fill it out and fax or scan it back to the board of elections; a task not easy to accomplish even under the best of conditions.

Continue reading…

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October 24, 2011 · 3:33 AM

Occupy movement spins off OccupyMARINES and Occupy Police

Sounds like a plan to me…

The Raw Story

The Occupy Wall Street movement has recently expanded beyond merely occupying parks and other physical territory and is staking out a new realm of metaphorical occupations that includes both OccupyMARINES and Occupy Police.

The inspiration for OccupyMARINES came when Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas confronted police officers who were threatening to arrest OWS protesters in Times Square on October 15,yelling, “Stop hurting these people, man! … How do you sleep at night? There is no honor in this!”

According to Business Insider, members of the new movement began by reaching out to other former marines but “have now called on veterans of other branches of the military to lend their support to help ‘talk sense’ to police and recruit them into supporting the Occupy movement.”

It remains to be seen how successful the group will be and how many veterans it will attract, but it appears to be growing rapidly and gaining support from other progressive organizations. Its webpage, which is credited as “proudly donated by The Pirate Party of New York,”announced on Sunday that the umbrella groupVelvet Revolution will be acting as its fiscal sponsor to accept donations.

A second organization, Occupy Police, has already been spun off “for police in support of the 99%.” The first posting at its website, dated October 21, states, “We are in open Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and all Occupy movements across the nation. We’re starting off Day 1 with a mass e-mail to all police departments throughout the US. We want them to know that they ARE part of the 99% and to get involved with the movement. We openly support positive communication between Police/People and we encourage you to do the same.”

Both groups have Facebook pages, located at OccupyMARINES and Occupy Police.

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October 19, 2011 · 12:27 AM

Hedges: ‘Corporations have carried out a coup d’état in my country’

That is the absolute best description of what’s going on in America that I’ve heard to date…

The Raw Story

In an interview published Monday, taken in Times Square during Saturday’s global day of protests, Pulitzer-winning writer Chris Hedges explained his view of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and why he’s supporting it.

“I spent 20 years overseas, I’m a war correspondent,” he said. “I came back and realized that corporations have carried out a coup d’état in my country.”

Hedges wrote for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News and The Christian Science Monitor, and was part of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, for a series of articles examining the terrorist attacks on the United States and profiling the al Qaeda network.

“I covered the street demonstrations that brought down Milošević, I’ve covered both of the Palestinian intifadas, and once movements like this start and articulate a fundamental truth about the society that they live in, and expose the repression, the mendacity, the corruption and the decay of structures of power, then they have a kind of centrifugal force, you never know where they’re going.”

He went on: “What happens, and it’s true in all of these movements as well, is the foot soldiers of the elite, the blue uniform police, the mechanisms of control, finally don’t want to impede the movement. At that point, the power elite is left defenseless. So, where’s it going? No one knows. Even the people most intimately involved in the organization don’t know. All of these movements take on a kind of life and color that in some ways is finally mysterious. The only thing I can say, having been in the middle of similar movements, is that this one is real … And this one could take ‘em all down.”

Hedges went on to say that large segments of the blue uniform police largely agree with the 99 Percent movement, and that many other police are frustrated because protesters aren’t breaking windows, which they “know how to handle.” He added that the protesters’ “non-hierarchical structure” for decision making is “brilliant,” and suggested that he had nothing he could possibly teach them.

Finally, addressing an individual standing off-camera, Hedges concluded: “For me, I got kids. It’s not about me anymore. It’s about my childrens’ generation. I think my passion for what you are doing — I would even use the word love — comes from the fact that I look as you as fighting on behalf of my little three-year-old, and when I … On Friday morning, of course I was up to find out what happened … And I did what I do now, which is to start crying. God bless you all.”

This video was published to YouTube on Monday, Oct. 17, 2011.

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October 18, 2011 · 12:32 AM

Keith Olbermann Interviews Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas on Current TV

Keith and Shamar Thomas – a Marine Corps veteran who attended the Occupy Times Square protest on Oct. 15 and confronted police officers for using excessive force on protesters – discuss what the Occupy movement means to him and the potential for other veterans to get involved.

Thomas, for whom military service is a family affair, pointed out that riot police were not necessary in Times Square. “I’ve been in battle. There was no battle going on.” Thomas wants to inspire other veterans to support the movement: “This is our time – in our generation – to change the greed that is in America.”

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October 17, 2011 · 1:42 PM

Video: Veteran Protests Heavy-Handed Police Tactics in NYC: “This is not a war-zone!”

Now this is speaking truth to power: veteran confronts police on their heavy-handed tactics.

Think Progress

On Saturday, Occupy Wall Street demonstrators occupied Times Squares when thousands flooded the iconic location to protest economic inequities. After a number of demonstrators refused to leave the streets there, police responded with heavy-handed tactics to arrest them.

Now, video has emerged of an apparent U.S. military veteran speaking out against these police tactics. The man, who identified himself as Sgt. Shamar Thomas, explained that he spent fourteen months in Iraq and that his parents served in the military as well. “This is not a war zone. It doesn’t make you tough to hurt these people!” protested Thomas to police officers. “There is no honor in that.” The crowd gave the man a hearty applause.

Watch it:

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September 26, 2011 · 7:46 AM

The Phony Solyndra Scandal

Image representing Solyndra as depicted in Cru...

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The New York Times – Joe Nocera

If Brian Harrison and W. G. Stover, the two Solyndra executives whotook the Fifth Amendment at a Congressional hearing on Friday, ever spend a day in jail, I’ll stand on my head in Times Square.

It’s not going to happen, for one simple reason: neither they, nor anyone else connected with Solyndra, have done anything remotely criminal. The company’s recent bankruptcy — which the Republicans are now rabidly “investigating” because Solyndra had the misfortune to receive a $535 million federally guaranteed loan from the Obama administration — was largely brought on by a stunning collapse in the price of solar panels over the past year or so.

The company’s innovative solar panels, high-priced to begin with, became increasingly uncompetitive in the marketplace. Solyndra didn’t have enough big commercial customers to create the necessary economies of scale. And although Harrison and Stover remained optimistic up to the bitter end — insisting six weeks before the late-August bankruptcy filing that the company was going to be fine — they ultimately failed to raise additional capital that would have allowed Solyndra to stay in business.

The Republicans are trying to make that optimism appear sinister, but if we’ve learned anything from the financial crisis, it is that wishful thinking in the face of a collapsing market is not a crime. Otherwise, Richard Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, would be wearing prison garb.

Continue reading here…

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October 6, 2010 · 3:58 AM

Times Square bomber gets life sentence

MSNBC Nightly News

‘Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun,’ Shahzad says in court.

As the would-be Times Square bomber was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday, intelligence officials warn that Pakistan’s training camps could be preparing as many as 100 Westerners to launch terror plots in Europe. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports.

 

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May 3, 2010 · 12:31 AM

CNN: Police may have video of possible car bomb suspect

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New York (CNN) — Law enforcement officials are examining video that may have captured the image of a suspect in the attempted Times Square car bombing, New York’s police commissioner said Sunday.

The video “shows a white male in his 40s, in Shubert Alley, looking back in the direction of West 45th Street,” Commissioner Ray Kelly told a news conference, adding that the man looked around in a “furtive manner.”

“He also was seen shedding a dark-colored shirt, revealing a red one underneath. He put the darker one into a bag that he was carrying,” he said.

The video was captured about a half block from where police said a Nissan Pathfinder containing bomb-making materials was found Saturday evening on West 45th Street in the city’s iconic Times Square area.     More>>>

Earlier Reports on Car Bomb

Read more about the discovery of the car bomb

iPhone Reports capture evacuations

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