Free Republic

Female G20 protestors sue Toronto police for $1.4MILLION after they were 'profiled for having hairy legs' A group of women is suing the Toronto police, saying they were profiled and arrested for having hairy legs during the G20 summit in 2010. The women are part of a $1.4 million lawsuit filed by seven friends, men and women, who were locked up during the protests against the gathering of world leaders. The lawyer for the friends, who had traveled to Toronto from their hometown to take part in the demonstrations, said police use of 'hairy legs' as a cause for detention...

BERKELEY – Times are tough on Telegraph Avenue, the notoriously countercultural and once-thriving street leading to the heart of the University of California campus here. The five-block stretch of Telegraph that ends at the southern edge of campus gained its legacy from the protests and social upheaval of the Sixties. It was the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in 1964 and a hub of protest during the Vietnam War. About 40 percent of students polled by a campus group last year said they get food on Telegraph and half said they visit less than once a month for any...

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee today asked President Obama to make seven senior, high-profile administration officials available to be interviewed regarding national security leaks. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) wants his committee to be able to interview National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, Vice Presidential National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, Director for Counterterrorism Audrey Tomason, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan, and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism James Clapper

There's high anxiety under the redwoods in Monte Rio as more than 2,000 wealthy men begin arriving today for their annual retreat — to be greeted by an unknown number of people protesting their presence along the tranquil Russian River. But it's not the plutocrats and power brokers of the Bohemian Club who have Monte Rio residents and merchants on edge. It's the demonstrators, who haven't always been polite, or good for business. "There have been some really nice people, and some jerks," said Suzi Schaffert, who has run the Rio Theater since 1993. "I don't know what we're in...

Ten thousand more people are expected to be on hand in the Nevada desert for this year's Burning Man festival after federal officials increased the event's attendance cap. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management issued a special recreation permit to the nonprofit behind Burning Man, San Francisco-based Black Rock City LLC, that allows 60,900 people to attend the arts festival, up from 50,000 last year. Officials announced the increase on Tuesday.

There’s no mistaking that Berkeley enjoys an outsized reputation for a city of only 113,000 people. While people from the redder parts of the country may think of Berkeley and San Francisco as liberal twins, the East Bay college town has a progressive flavor that leaves its big-city neighbor lying in the middle of the road. For this slideshow, Allen Matthews, Katie Dowd, John King and Dave Curran and Kitty Luce came up with the captions. Gate photo editor Douglas Zimmerman shot or found the illustrations....(SLIDE SHOW AT LINK)

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — An Occupy Wall Street protester says police gave demonstrators little warning before kicking them out of a New York City park overnight and that officers beat several of them during the arrests.</p> <p>The protester, Chris Casuccio, was at Manhattan's Zuccotti Park on Saturday, where demonstrators chanted and held impromptu meetings to mark the six months since the movement against economic inequality.</p>

...For a Canadian mining company, these same hills look like a billion dollars worth of buried silver. In a stark collision of cultures, the famously mystical Huichol are trying to stop a $100 million, 15-year mining project from starting this year. Their struggle comes as indigenous people from Alaska to the Amazon are rallying to protect not just their environment but also their cultures from decay. This raises a tough question: How do you protect a cosmic portal? “For them the whole mountain is a temple, and the gold and silver below the ground are there for a reason —...

This health hazard and social menace is what the Left regards as America's next great political cause? As the tents were coming down at McPherson Square, the dead rats and mice being retrieved, the urine and feces and filthy bedding disposed of by District of Columbia employees dressed in hazardous-materials suits like their contemporaries at Fukushima, I thought of the left-wing press. You see, I read the left-wing press. Not the urban throwaway rags, but I read the Nation, the Progressive, the American Prospect, and more -- I read them all. They have been raving for months about the exciting...

HONOLULU -- Occupy Honolulu protesters are now occupying the sidewalks around Thomas Square after the city came in late Thursday night and drew up new boundaries. The rules state that no one is allowed to remain in city parks after 10 p.m. Around 10:30 p.m. Thursday, protesters were told to leave. Honolulu police came through the camp and ordered the protesters to start breaking down. Two people were arrested. One of them was a woman who refused to move her things and leave the park.

(12-12) 07:27 PST OAKLAND -- A group of protesters have succeeded in stopping a line of big-rigs from entering the Port of Oakland this morning during their march to shutdown the busy cargo terminal. Organizers have pledged to march to the port and shutdown the terminal, one of the busiest on the West Coast. Some unions, including the one representing Oakland teachers, are supporting the day-long strike while others, like the longshoremen's union, say shutting down the port will harm hard-working stevedores and truck drivers. Carrying signs saying "Shutdown Wall St. on the Waterfront" about 200 protesters marched the three...

The Occupy Movement has given us reporters plenty of fodder for good stories -- some informative and others entertaining. And while it appears Occupy SF has ceased to exist as a camp since police raided the encampment on Wednesday, there are still plenty of amusing stories to tell. For instance, this San Francisco guy is desperate to reoccupy the Financial District, which is why he is looking for someone to help him set up his tent -- and occupy it with him. So he did what any normal searching San Franciscan would do: He posted an ad on Craigslist. Although...

Now this might well take a lot of caj*nes as they say.But I propose the following.

It was in jest two months ago when I began calling the Occupy crowd “dirt smelly hippies.” Sadly, the phrase is now accurate. In Portland, Oregon, the city shutdown two parks for two weeks to clean up after these pigs left. 70 dump-truck loads of trash were hauled away. Now in Santa Cruz, California, Occupy Santa Cruz protesters left behind 200 pounds worth of human feces near the Veterans Memorial Building, a community center. Occupy San Francisco had a similar problem with the Ferry Building as these animals are too stupid and uncivilized to act as if they are potty...

Women may be the 51%, but the Occupy camps and General Assemblies look as gender-imbalanced as Congress. "I'm called 'that white b*tch who gets everything she wants' at the GA's," says Elise Whitaker, 21, adopting a bit of a defiant posture. She's been at Occupy LA since the second week of the encampment. A now former-assistant director for indie films, Whitaker is good looking in a vaguely familiar, probably-an-actor kind of way. She looks like just the type who moves to Los Angeles every day to "follow their dreams," but she's sleeping in a tent at City Hall. She tells...

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-16-2011/occupy-wall-street-divided

UPDATE 11.25am: OCCUPY Melbourne protesters have supplied drugs to homeless children and wards of the state as young as 12, a charity group says. The Salvation Army's Major Brendan Nottle said two 16-year-old girls were also invited to the home of activists in their late 20s and early 30s, while another 16-year-old was given marijuana to smoke. "We've had young people actually coming to our workers, as young as 12 and 13, and saying that they’ve been down at Occupy Melbourne," said on 3AW this morning. "They’ve been making statements to our workers around them being allowed to sniff glue...

Occupy Wall Street had the liberal arts majors camped out in tents — down by the river — protesting the idea of having to pay back their student loans. So where are the science and business majors? They traded in their dorms for life in foreclosed McMansions out in California. They are living large, enjoying the Jacuzzi and vino as they work toward degrees for which there is a market after college — at annual starting salaries that in some cases are double what a liberal arts student can expect. From CNBC: “The finances of subdivision life are compelling: the...

Police in riot gear surrounded New York City's Zuccotti Park late Tuesday evening, and distributed fliers to the Occupy Wall Street protesters camped out there for weeks ordering them to evacuate the grounds while maintenance is carried out. CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston reports the police fliers informed the anti-Wall Street demonstrators that they would be allowed to return to the park after the maintenance was conducted. The nature of the work, and how long it might take, were unclear. Live video from the WCBS news helicopter showed police surrounding the park, but there was no confrontation between police or...

BERKELEY, Calif. — Goodbye, city park, hello, college green. As city officials around the country move to disband Occupy Wall Street encampments amid growing concerns over health and public safety, protesters have begun to erect more tents on college campuses. “We are trying to get mass numbers of students out,” said Natalia Abrams, 31, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and an organizer with Occupy Colleges, a national group coordinating college-based protesters. Though only a handful of colleges have encampments, tents went up last week at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and here at the University of California,...