LIVE: NYC Stands Down as Thousands Crowd Zuccotti - March on Wall Street | LiveBlog + LiveStream

3:45 am - Barricades have been set up around Zuccotti as a core group huddles in the rain, prepared to lock arms with the many thousands preparing to arrive and form several rings around the perimeter. They are prepared for the NYPD to move in and clear the area. They are waiting to peacefully defend their right to assemble. For the right to air their grievances against an economic system propped up by a corrupt leadership which, for too long, has ignored them with deafening silence.

This post – the LiveBlog and the comment thread – will stand as one of many testimonies to what is about to transpire. Let us mark this moment together and stand in solidarity with those in Zuccotti by witnessing it as a community.

The LiveBlog will scroll from the bottom, with the most recent
entries located at the end of this post.

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Thousands of Egyptian protesters clash with police

Protesters take to the streets of Cairo to demonstrate against political repression and unemployment under President Hosni Mubarak. It is unclear if the protests in Egypt will mimic those in Tunisia, leading to revolt against the government.

Egyptian protesters rush police and battle tear gas in demonstrations against the political repression and unemployment that have defined three decades of rule by President Hosni Mubarak. (Mohammed Abed, AFP/Getty Images / January 25, 2011)

Reporting from Cairo —

Thousands of Egyptian protesters inspired by the revolt in Tunisia rushed police and battled tear gas Tuesday in demonstrations against the political repression and unemployment that have defined three decades of rule by President Hosni Mubarak.

Groups of protesters marched through downtown Cairo, crossing bridges and outflanking riot police as the crowds headed for a square a few blocks from the parliament building. Security forces, which had shown unusual restraint early in the day, swung batons and clashed with demonstrators amid chants of "Freedom" and "Down with Mubarak."

The protests were larger than any Egypt has seen in years. But it was unclear if the country's opposition could mimic Tunisia and capitalize on sustained public pressure to threaten one of the region's most entrenched police states. More than 80,000 people signed up on Facebook to attend the rallies but the number in the streets was far fewer.

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Ironically it is a National Holiday to Honour the Police in Egypt today. And apparently Twitter has just been disabled in Egypt. Tom

Could the Global Meltdown Spark a Great Revolution?

By Ben Protess, Christian Science Monitor. Posted August 4, 2009.

A look at mass protests during the past 500 years reveals surprising clues.

For the first time in generations, people are challenging the view that a free-market order -- the system that dominates the globe today -- is the destiny of all nations. The free market's uncanny ability to enrich the elite, coupled with its inability to soften the sharp experiences of staggering poverty, has pushed inequality to the breaking point.

As a result, we live at an important historical juncture -- one where alternatives to the world's neoliberal capitalism could emerge. Thus, it is a particularly apt time to examine revolutionary movements that have periodically challenged dominant state and imperial power structures over the past 500 years.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which laid the foundation for liberal democratic elections and the expansion of the free-market system throughout the world, revolution and protest seemed to lose some of their potency.

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