Demonstraties VS #4: Nu kan het nog.

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Occupy Wal Street ook in Europa
De protestbeweging Occupy Wall Street begon een week of twee geleden in New York met enkele tientallen demonstranten. De aanhang groeit razendsnel, niet alleen in New York, maar ook elders in de Verenigde Staten. Het protest breidt zich nu ook uit naar Europa. Het heeft Ierland al bereikt en ook Nederland komt aan de beurt.
Verenigde Staten: Occupy Wall Street

Op Wall Street in New York begon het drie weken geleden als een bescheiden protest van een kleine groep activisten. Inmiddels is de beweging enorm gegroeid. Vorige week demonstreerden zo'n 5000 mensen bij Wall Street: tegen zelfverrijking in de financiële sector en de ongelijke verdeling van de welvaart.

Vakbonden, studentenorganisaties en bewonersgroepen hebben zich aangesloten bij het protest. De demonstraties verspreiden zich nu ook over het hele land. Op dit moment zijn er in 25 Amerikaanse steden betogingen.
Ierland: Occupy Dame Street

Geïnspireerd door de betogingen in de VS demonstreert een kleine groep activisten sinds dit weekend ook in de Ierse hoofdstad Dublin. Ze hebben zich verzameld op Dame Street, voor de Centrale Ierse bank.

De groep is nog klein, volgens de Irish Times waren er dit weekend zo'n tachtig mensen. Enkele demonstranten bivakkeren in tentjes voor de bank.
UK: Occupy the London Stock Exchange

Op de Facebookpagina Occupy the London Stock Exchange wordt opgeroepen om komend weekend deel te nemen aan een demonstratie in het financiële district van Londen. Meer dan 3000 mensen hebben zich via Facebook al aangemeld voor de demonstratie.

Kai Wargalla, een van de oprichters van de Occupy Londen Facebookpagina, vertelde over de acties aan de Amerikaanse zender NBC: "De protesten op Wall Street zijn de inspiratie geweest. Het is nu tijd om hier te beginnen. We hebben mensen nodig die opstaan en zich uitspreken".
Nederland: Occupy Amsterdam

Ook in Amsterdam en Den Haag worden in navolging van Occupy Wallstreet acties georganiseerd. Op 15 oktober willen demonstranten het Amsterdamse beursplein bezetten. De aanmeldingen voor de actie stromen binnen. Via de Facebookpagina Occupy Amsterdam hebben ruim 1200 mensen zich al aangemeld.
Madrid-Brussel: Mars van de Verontwaardigden

Tachtig dagen geleden begon een groep jongeren in Madrid aan een 1600 kilometer lange 'Mars van Verontwaardiging'. Ze liepen van Madrid naar Brussel waar ze gisteren aankwamen. De mars komt voort uit de Spaanse studentenprotesten.

Die protesten begonnen al veel eerder dan de protesten op Wall Street en de 'mars van verontwaardigden' verbindt zich dus niet direct aan de Occupy Wall Street beweging. Maar het sentiment van beide bewegingen is hetzelfde - beide ingegeven door de economische crisis en gericht tegen de elite die de macht heeft.

De Spaanse jongeren die nu in Brussel bivakkeren hebben op 15 oktober een grote demonstratie gepland voor het Europees Parlement. Die dag wordt beschouwd als een wereldwijde actiedag. Op de site 15oktober.net is te zien dat er in meerdere steden in de wereld acties staan gepland in navolging van Occupy Wall Street.

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NY police arrest 80 Wall St. protesters

The New York police have arrested at least 80 people protesting against Washington's management of the American financial system as well as Wall Street practices.

The demonstrators took to the streets Saturday during the “Occupy Wall Street” protest and gathered near the New York Stock Exchange, the Associated Press reported.

The demonstrations, which began about a week ago, have brought hundreds of Americans to the most important US financial district, protesting against a number of economic issues, including bank bailouts, home loan crisis, and the widening gap between the very rich and those struggling in the aftermath of the US financial crisis.

"We've got a whole bunch of people sitting in Washington that can't figure it out," said Bill Csapo, a protest organizer.

As of June 16, 2011, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 395 banks have been seized by the US government. At least 46 US banks have failed in 2011 so far, compared to 157 in 2010, 140 in 2009, and 25 in 2008.

Another incident that provoked protesters into action was the Wednesday execution of Troy Anthony Davis, an African American, in the State of Georgia over his alleged role in the 1989 killing of an off-duty police officer.

His execution by lethal injection took place despite many legal holes in his case as well as Davis's insistence until his execution that he did not commit the alleged murder.

The police forces tried to corral the demonstrators using orange plastic nets at Manhattan's Union Square.

According to police sources, most of the arrests were made for blocking traffic, though one person has been charged with attacking an officer.

Protest spokesman Patrick Bruner has lambasted the police response as "exceedingly violent,” emphasizing that protesters sought to remain peaceful.

"They're being very aggressive ... half the people here have no idea what's going on ... I'm actually very ashamed to be a New Yorker," said Ryan Alley, a New York resident.

Statistics published by the Stolen Lives Project estimate that the number of cases in the United States relating to police brutality has reached thousands.

Most Americans that suffer abuse by the police do not report the case. Those who do file complaints, soon discover that police departments tend to be self-protective and that the general public tends to side with the police.

In 2010, there were at least 2,541 reports of misconduct and brutality perpetrated by US police.

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NAACP warns black and Hispanic Americans could lose right to vote


Civil rights group petitions UN over 'massive voter suppression' after apparent effort to disenfranchise black and Hispanic people

The largest civil rights group in America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is petitioning the UN over what it sees as a concerted efforted to disenfranchise black and Latino voters ahead of next year's presidential election.

The organisation will this week present evidence to the UN high commissioner on human rights of what it contends is a conscious attempt to "block the vote" on the part of state legislatures across the US. Next March the NAACP will send a delegation of legal experts to Geneva to enlist the support of the UN human rights council.

The NAACP contends that the America in the throes of a consciously conceived and orchestrated move to strip black and other ethnic minority groups of the right to vote. William Barber, a member of the association's national board, said it was the "most vicious, co-ordinated and sinister attack to narrow participation in our democracy since the early 20th century".

In its report, Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, the NAACP explores the voter supression measures taking place particularly in southern and western states.

Fourteen states have passed a total of 25 measures that will unfairly restrict the right to vote, among black and Hispanic voters in particular.

The new measures are focused – not coincidentally, the association insists – in states with the fastest growing black populations (Florida, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina) and Latino populations (South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee). The NAACP sees this as a cynical backlash to a surge in ethnic minority voting evident in 2008.

In that year, black and Hispanic voters turned out in record numbers, partly in a wave of enthusiasm for Barack Obama. More than 2 million extra black voters turned out over 2004, an increase of 15%.

Among Hispanics, the upturn was even more pronounced. Two million additional voters attended the polls – a rise of 28% on the previous presidential election.

The scale of the assault on voting rights is substantial, according to experts on electoral law. The Brennan Center for Justice, based at New York University law school, estimates that the new measures could bar as many as 5 million eligible voters from taking part in choosing the occupant of the White House next year.

The 14 states that have embarked on such measures hold two-thirds of the electoral college votes needed to win the presidency. Put another way, of the 12 battleground states that will determine the outcome of the presidential race, five have already cut back on voting rights and two more are in discussions about following suit.

Ethnic minority groups are not the only sections of society at risk of losing their voting rights. The Brennan Center warns that young voters and students, older voters and poor income groups are also vulnerable.

The NAACP says voting rights are being whittled down at every stage of the electoral process. First of all, the registration of new voters is being impeded in several states by moves to block voter registration drives that have historically proved to be an important way of bringing black and Hispanic people to the poll.

Four states – Florida, Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia – continue to withhold the vote from anyone convicted of a criminal offence. In Florida, offenders who have completed their sentences have to wait at least five years before they can even apply to restore their right to register to vote.

Across the US, more than 5 million Americans are denied the right to vote on grounds that they were convicted of a felony, 4 million of whom have fully completed their sentence and almost half of whom are black or Hispanic.

Other measures have reduced the ease of early voting, a convenience that is disproportionately heavily used by African-Americans. Even more importantly, 34 states have introduced a requirement that voters carry photo ID cards on the day of the election itself.

Studies have showed that the proportion of voters who do not have access to valid photo ID cards is much higher among older African-Americans because they were not given birth certificates in the days of segregation. Students and young voters also often lack identification and are thus in danger of being stripped of their right to vote.

In Texas, a law has been passed that prevents students from voting on the basis of their college ID cards, while allowing anyone to cast their ballot if they can show a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

Benjamin Jealous, the NAACP's president, said the moves amounted to "a massive attempt at state-sponsored voter suppression." He added that the association will be urging the UN "to look at what is a co-ordinated campaign to disenfranchise persons of colour."

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Crystal Cox, Oregon Blogger, Isn't a Journalist, Concludes U.S. Court--Imposes $2.5 Million Judgement on Her

A U.S. District Court judge in Portland has drawn a line in the sand between "journalist" and "blogger." And for Crystal Cox, a woman on the latter end of that comparison, the distinction has cost her $2.5 million.

Speaking to Seattle Weekly, Cox says that the judgement could have impacts on bloggers everywhere.

"This should matter to everyone who writes on the Internet," she says.

Cox runs several law-centric blogs, like industrywhistleblower.com, judicialhellhole.com, and obsidianfinancesucks.com, and was sued by investment firm Obsidian Finance Group in January for defamation, to the tune of $10 million, for writing several blog posts that were highly critical of the firm and its co-founder Kevin Padrick.

Representing herself in court, Cox had argued that her writing was a mixture of facts, commentary and opinion (like a million other blogs on the web) and moved to have the case dismissed. Dismissed it wasn't, however, and after throwing out all but one of the blog posts cited by Obsidian Financial, the judge ruled that this single post was indeed defamatory because it was presented, essentially, as more factual in tone than her other posts, and therefore a reasonable person could conclude it was factual.

The judge ruled against Cox on that post and awarded $2.5 million to the investment firm.

Now here's where the case gets more important: Cox argued in court that the reason her post was more factual was because she had an inside source that was leaking her information. And since Oregon is one of 40 U.S. states including Washington with media shield laws, Cox refused to divulge who her source was.

But without revealing her source Cox couldn't prove that the statements she'd made in her post were true and therefore not defamation, or attribute them to her source and transfer the liability.

Oregon's media shield law reads:


. No person connected with, employed by or engaged in any medium of communication to the public shall be required by ... a judicial officer ... to disclose, by subpoena or otherwise ... [t]he source of any published or unpublished information obtained by the person in the course of gathering, receiving or processing information for any medium of communication to the public[.]

The judge in Cox's case, however, ruled that the woman did not qualify for shield-law protection not because of anything she wrote, but because she wasn't employed by an official media establishment.

From the opinion by U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez:


. . . although defendant is a self-proclaimed "investigative blogger" and defines herself as "media," the record fails to show that she is affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system. Thus, she is not entitled to the protections of the law

Cox tells Seattle Weekly that she plans to appeal the ruling by proving her assertion that Obsidian co-founder Kevin Padrick is guilty of bankruptcy fraud--a statement that, as Cox is quite proud of, is abundantly advertised if one simply Googles Padrick's name and sees the dozens of Cox's posts that spring up about him.

At this point Cox says that she still has no plans to get a lawyer.

We think that's a bad idea.

UPDATE: Attorney Bruce E. H. Johnson, the man who wrote the media shield laws in Washington state, has weighed in on whether Cox's fate would fly here. Read more here.

Read the full opinion below:

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Idea of civilians using drone aircraft may soon fly with FAA

Drone aircraft, best known for their role in hunting and destroying terrorist hide-outs in Afghanistan, may soon be coming to the skies near you.

Police agencies want drones for air support to spot runaway criminals. Utility companies believe they can help monitor oil, gas and water pipelines. Farmers think drones could aid in spraying their crops with pesticides.

"It's going to happen," said Dan Elwell, vice president of civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Assn. "Now it's about figuring out how to safely assimilate the technology into national airspace."

Fox Business blasts The Muppets for brainwashing America's kids with anti-corporate, liberal agenda

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Dan Gainor, vicepresident van het Media Research Center, beaamt Bollings vermoeden. “Het is verbazingwekkend hoe ver de linksen gaan om kinderen tegen bedrijven op te zetten”, zegt de onderzoeker die tevens op de loonlijst staat van Fox. “In Gods naam, dit is een Muppet-film: het enige groene op het scherm zou Kermit de Kikker moeten zijn.”

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Wall Street protesters vow to reoccupy on movement's anniversary

Occupy Wall Street hopes call will re-energise movement after a series of evictions from New York to Los Angeles

Activists at Occupy Wall Street have issued a call to thousands of protesters across the US to reoccupy outdoor public spaces to mark the movement's three-month anniversary.

The Occupy movement has stalled in recent weeks after a wave of evictions swept away a raft of encampments, including the largest in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York. On Wednesday, it suffered a fresh blow as police in riot gear cleared Occupy San Francisco camp on the orders of the mayor, who had been sympathetic to protesters, while Occupy Boston lost legal protection against eviction.

Organisers said they hoped the call to reoccupy on the 17 December would galvanise and grow the movement.

Amin Husain, a press spokesman for OWS, said: "We know that occupation empowers people and eliminates fear. It permits individuals to assert themselves as political beings even although the system doesn't represent them."

"The question is not to make a splash, the question is how are we going to get the space to make that happen."

Sandy Nurse, one of the direct action committee responsible for the call, said: "The need for physical space is one of the top five priorities for direct action. My personal opinion is that people have gotten scared. They have gotten arrest fatigue. They are not willing to put their bodies on the line. But the call would re-galvanise the movement and remind it how powerful it is."

Citing the conference call by mayors across the US to deal with various encampments, Nurse said: "They have identified occupation as a threat to them – that's how powerful it is."

Eleven mayors participated in a conference call in November about Occupy protests in their cities, including those in New York, Denver and Portland, Oregon, but they denied any co-ordination of raids to clear encampments.

The need for a physical space has been on OWS's agenda since police raided Zuccotti Park in November. In a piece published this week in the first issue of Tidal, a magazine published by the Occupy movement, Judith Butler, academic and feminist theorist at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke of its importance.

Butler said: "When bodies gather together as they do to express their indignation and to enact their plural existence in public space, they are also making broader demands. They are demanding to be recognised and to be valued; they are exercising a right to appear and to exercise freedom; they are calling for a liveable life.

"These values are presupposed by particular demands, but they also demand a more fundamental restructuring of our socio-economic and political order."

At one point, the movement had more than 1,000 occupations, but now they have less than 100 – and that number is dwindling daily. With the onset of winter's plummeting temperatures – which was already driving people from Zuccotti Park before the eviction – and the hardening attitudes of city authorities against encampments, notwithstanding the dearth of public spaces in the US, seeking a place to camp is a massive challenge for activists.

Even within OWS, where the movement began, activists have a battle on their hands. In Zuccotti Park, the space's owners have imposed strictly enforced rules which no longer allow tents or sleeping bags, or allow people to lie down, which would make it impossible to set up camp.

The place they want to occupy on December 17, is Juan Pablo Duarte Square, a currently vacant lot on the corner of 6th and Canal Street in Soho, about 15 minutes walk' from Wall Street, named after the founder of the Dominican Republic.

But it has already proved controversial.

It is owned by the real estate branch of Trinity Episcopalian church in Wall Street, Trinity Real Estate, one of the largest real estate companies in New York.

Activists at OWS, which had previously counted Trinity church among their supporters, have repeatedly asked for the use of this space for a winter camp. But Trinity church has refused, drawing criticism from other church leaders and a handful of activists who went on hunger strike, pledging not to eat until the church allowed protesters on the site.

In a statement on its website, Trinity said it offered its continued support of the movement – including providing meeting space at church buildings – but not the use of its enclosed vacant lot at the city-owned Duarte Square, which it leases to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The property, Trinity said, is unsuitable "for large-scale assemblies or encampments."

For activists, the matter is simple: they need the space and the church should hand it over.

Husain said: "They're part of the 1% and they are choosing profit over God."

The church is also facing pressure from the religious community.

Reverend John Metz, of the Episcopalian Church of the Ascension, in Brooklyn, who describes himself as a "real mainstream church guy" said: "Trinity church is in a challenging position. They are a church with an enormous real estate holding. It's one thing to deliberate and review grants. It's another thing for a church to respond in real time to one of the largest movement for social change that this country has see for four decades.

"This is an opportunity to engage in mutual actions to transform a space, and make it a catalyst for the revitalisation of public squares that have all been eliminated in the United States, to create a space where the cause for social justice can be forwarded."

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Ex-Philly police captain arrested at NY Occupy rally is warned to not wear uniform at protests

PHILADELPHIA — A retired Philadelphia police captain arrested in uniform during Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City has received written warnings from police and union officials.

Philadelphia police Commissioner Charles Ramsey sent a cease and desist letter to retired Capt. Raymond Lewis, saying the police department supports his First Amendment rights but “those rights do not extend to the improper and/or illegal use of the official uniform.”

“It could give the mistaken opinion that somehow this is a statement being made by a member of the police department, and it’s not,” Ramsey said in telephone interview Thursday. “He has every right to protest. But wear something else.”

The November Occupy protest featured people complaining about economic inequality and what they called corporate greed.

Ramsey said it doesn’t matter whether it’s a demonstration for Occupy Wall Street or another cause, wearing a uniform in a non-professional capacity is unacceptable — and could even lead to charges of impersonating a police officer.

“It has nothing whatsoever to do with the specific issues they’re talking about,” Ramsey said. “Whether I agree or disagree with what they’re saying, that uniform can’t be caught up in that.”

Lewis said the Fraternal Order of Police union local has filed a grievance against him stemming from last month’s incident and provided a letter to that effect signed by the local’s recording secretary, Robert Ballentine. A message left for Ballantine seeking comment Thursday wasn’t immediately returned.

The Fraternal Order of Police letter, dated Nov. 25, states the grievance was submitted “based on Lewis’ comments and actions ... while dressed in a Philadelphia Police Captain’s uniform at the New York City Occupy Wall Street protest, which also resulted in his arrest.”

In a written statement, Lewis said he believes the Fraternal Order of Police is seeking to revoke his union membership and possibly his pension.

“I find it incredibly interesting,” Lewis said, “that there are former Philadelphia police officers who were convicted of crimes, and served prison sentences, that have NOT had their memberships or pensions revoked.”

The Fraternal Order of Police letter only said the union’s grievance committee would contact Lewis “as this matter progresses.”

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Op zaterdag 10 december 2011 11:26 schreef Scorpie het volgende:
Ah, de geweldadige inslag van de Occupiers komt weer naar boven.

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NY, California hitting up millionaires, again

Associated Press= ALBANY, New York (AP) — Hollywood moguls and Manhattan stock brokers are facing a slap by the Occupy Wall Street movement as California and New York again target high-wage earners to address a continued fiscal crisis in the states.

On Wednesday, with the urging of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York raised its top tax rate on single filers making $1 million and joint filers making $2 million, a rate just slightly under the 2008 income tax surcharge that expires Dec. 31.

Earlier this month in California, Gov. Jerry Brown said he, too, wants to avoid further cuts to education and social services by proposing a ballot initiative asking voters to increase taxes. That could hit Californians making over $250,000 a year.

"Occupy turned the political conversation on its head," said Richard Brodsky, a senior fellow at the Wagner School at New York University. "Time was austerity and tax cuts were the only acceptable place to be. Now, income inequality and the 99 percent dominate practical politics. OWS paved the way; Cuomo and Brown seized the moment."

There's no evidence of a national groundswell after more than a dozen states tapped their well-heeled residents for temporary income tax hikes from 2006-2009. But while most of those states let their temporary tax increases lapse as scheduled, New York and California this month went back to seeking revenue from the wealthy.

Despite the political rhetoric, there's less need in either state to act to make their tax brackets more fair. California and New York already have more progressive systems than most states, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation based in Washington, D.C.

"California and New York are historically not going to be the most fiscally conservative states," said Mark Robyn, an economist with the Tax Foundation. "To say they reflect the overall country's attitude to taxing the wealthy at a disproportionate rate, that might be tenuous."

California and New York are also among only four states, with Washington state and Missouri, to show deficits in a midyear survey by the National Conference of Legislatures, said the group's Mandy Rafool.

California faces a $3.7 billion shortfall for the current fiscal year and projected $12.8 billion deficit in 2013. New York learned of an unexpected $350 million deficit this year, and a higher projected deficit for the 2012-13 fiscal year of $3.5 billion.

But Rafool said there's no inkling more states will follow California and New York, although tax revenues are growing only slowly in most states.

"It's an election year and we're seeing that revenues are recovering, spending is stable," Rafool said. "This is better than in the last four years. It's still not good, but it's better."

She said she'd be surprised if other states follow New York and California.

Instead, the common thread is that each state's finances are worse than most other states, and their Democratic leadership has felt pressure from the Occupy Wall Street movement and other progressives.

In New York, an Occupy Albany movement has camped outside the state Capitol all fall. At first, Cuomo, a Democrat who ran as a fiscal conservative last year, tried to evict them, only to be stymied by the local Democratic district attorney and mayor. Occupy Albany called Cuomo "Gov. 1 Percent" for opposing a millionaire tax and saying it would drive employers out of state. The Occupy Wall Street movement claims that there is growing inequality between the wealthiest 1 percent of the population and the remaining 99 percent.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party that Cuomo heads and his progressive allies continued to push for a new millionaire tax to avoid more cuts to education and health care.

In November, Cuomo made a hard left and pushed for the millionaire tax increase passed Wednesday that includes a modest, but rare middle class tax break. The package also provided more spending for jobs programs.

"My job as governor is to make the best decision at the time to meet the needs of the state at the time," Cuomo said Wednesday.

"You're seeing it play out on college campuses," said the California state Senate's Democratic leader, Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento. "You're seeing it play out in different communities throughout California. There's a real sense that the pendulum in terms of the way we've had to deal with these budget deficits, has gone too far."

But while there may be an immediate payoff in cash and politics, the long-term wisdom of soaking the rich has long been questioned.

"As many states face increasingly large budget shortfalls that are often related to economic cycles, leaning on high-income earners and small businesses to pick up a disproportionate amount of the bill raises serious equity concerns and is bad for government revenue stability," said Scott Drenkard, an analyst with the Tax Foundation.

He notes many businesses, 94 percent of which file as individuals, and high-income earners have the most volatile income. If the economy continues to slip, they will have less revenue and that could further hurt businesses or prompt them to flee.

New York and California already share another distinction: They have experienced some of the greatest flight of taxpayers from 1999 to 2009 and have tax structures considered among the least attractive to businesses, according to the Tax Foundation.

"It reminds me of the Bob Dylan song, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing," said Doug Muzzio, a Baruch College politics professor in New York City. He said continuing fiscal crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement could force the same consideration elsewhere.

"Without any real evidence except for what I've seen here, I would think that the other states almost invariably will have to examine it," he said.

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http://www.occupydrones.com/

We have the coolest free drone videos and soon we hope to provide the planet with LIVE DRONE VIDEO FEEDS from YOUR drone designed from OPEN PLANS we want YOU TO CREATE AND WHICH WE WILL PUBLISH ON THIS WEBSITE!

Come on folks, these bankster fuckers spend TRILLIONS each year spying on us so we propose we OCCUPY THE AIRSPACE; and track these FUCKERS in real-time as they go about their criminal plans to destroy democracy, freedom and civil rights worldwide!

- Video -

Looks totally cool, legal fun to be having, bankster chasing these SCUMBAGS around the planet. They don't want to give you any peace, so let you decide to give them NONE either, whenever they are in your locality! It's simply a GREAT idea, is it not? We're simply asking interested parties worldwide to do just one thing right now: join in the Occupy Drones discussion - TOTALLY FREE - simply be one of the first people on the planet to get stuck in! CLICK THIS NEXT LINK TO SUBSCRIBE UNDER NO OBLIGATION WHATSOEVER:
http://groups.google.com/group/occupy-drones

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Is Apple Using Patents to Hurt Open Standards?

Opera developer Haavard Moen has accused Apple of repeatedly using patents to undermine the development of web standards and block their finalization.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry group that governs and oversees the development of web standards, requires that every specification it approves be implementable on a royalty-free basis, barring extraordinary circumstances that justify an exception to this rule. The specifications can contain patented technology, as long as royalty-free patent licenses are available.

Members of W3C—a group that includes representatives from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Opera—are required to disclose any patents that they hold that are relevant to each specification. Depending on how far the specification is through the standardization process, they have between 60 and 150 days to make this disclosure.

If royalty-free licensing is available, the specification can proceed as normal. Participation in the development of a particular specification obliges W3C members to offer royalty-free licensing for technology used in that specification. Nonparticipants can also voluntarily offer a royalty free license, but they are not obliged to.

If, however, there is no commitment to offer royalty-free licensing for the patents in question, a Patent Advisory Group (PAG) is formed. The PAG will then assess whether the patent is truly applicable to the specification, and if so, how best to address the issue. The PAG might then seek prior art to invalidate the patent, or it might recommend that the specification be modified, to work around the patent. It might even advise abandonment of the specification. Only in exceptional circumstances will it decide that the specification should stand, in spite of the lack of royalty freedom.

Without an appropriate patent grant, browser vendors—whether open source or proprietary—cannot implement the specification without opening themselves up to a lawsuit. Such specifications would be, at best, an extremely risky proposition for anyone seeking to develop a browser, and none of the major browser vendors would even consider implementing a specification with known unlicensed patents.

Haavard identifies three separate occasions, twice in 2009, and again in 2011, where Apple has disclosed patents and not offered royalty-free licensing. In the first 2009 patent claim, Apple said that it had a patent covering W3C’s “widget” specification. A PAG was formed, and determined that Apple’s patent was not relevant. In the second 2009 claim, Apple claimed to have two patents covering W3C’s widget security specification. A PAG was again formed. It decided that one patent was not relevant, and the other didn’t apply. With both 2009 claims, Apple waited until the last minute to disclose its patents.

Touch Events

This time, Cupertino is claiming to have three patents, and an application for a fourth, that cover some of W3C’s touch event specification. This time the disclosure was made with about a month left to go. Again, the lack of royalty-free licensing means that a PAG is likely to be formed.

This in turn will delay the development of the specification and cost W3C members further time and money. The PAG process is not quick; the widget security PAG did not deliver its verdict until October of this year.

Haavard’s conclusion is that there is a pattern of behavior here; that Apple is trying to disrupt the standards process with its patent claims. He references the touch specification in particular—this is plainly an area where Apple has lots of expertise and interest in the technology, but the company opted out of working on the specification. If Apple had worked on the specification, it would have had to disclose sooner and offer licensing, and Haavard believes that avoiding this commitment is why Apple refused to work on the specification.

Apple’s is acting within its rights. W3C obliges members to disclose patent claims, and Apple is duly disclosing them. However, it’s easy to be sympathetic to Haavard’s argument. The two prior PAGs that resulted from Apple’s refusal to offer royalty-free patent licenses delayed and inconvenienced W3C, but ultimately on both occasions the groups decided that Apple’s patent claims were irrelevant. If Apple was hoping to keep some technology to itself, it did not succeed.

Moreover, W3C doesn’t require patent-holders to give up their competitive advantage. It’s acceptable to W3C for the royalty-free patent licenses to only cover implementations of the W3C specifications; if Apple wants to permit the royalty-free use of its touch patents in HTML5 browsers, but nowhere else, this would be an option. Such terms would allow browsers to implement the standard but still keep the technology off-limits to, for example, Android. But Apple did not offer such terms before, and so it seems unlikely that it will offer such terms this time.

Further, the only likely result of this is that Apple’s patents simply get worked around. W3C’s aversion to royalties means that it’s unlikely that it would accept any non-free license (should Apple even offer one), and the importance of touch input to phones and tablets means that W3C is unlikely to abandon the specification altogether. There’s no win possible for Apple—just wasted time and money for those seeking to make the web a more effective, more open platform.

Indeed, the result might even constitute a loss for Apple; the prior art that PAGs can uncover could jeopardize the patents themselves. The PAG subjects the patents to a certain amount of scrutiny—scrutiny that could be avoided through provision of a suitable license.

Apple has thus far not responded to our request for comment.

Apple’s work on WebKit and with W3C has undoubtedly helped the web community. But actions such as this show the company’s approach to standards and intellectual property is, at best, inconsistent, and and worst downright unhelpful: if open standards and Apple’s IP interests conflict, it’s the IP interests that win out. This may be good for Apple, but it’s bad for the open web.

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Activists show up to 'retake' Congress



By plane, train and bus, thousands of activists are converging on Washington, D.C. this week to “Take Back Our Capitol.” Though the pilgrimage borrows the some of the language of the Occupy protests, and includes a contingent of those activists, the crowd hails largely from nonprofits and political organizations.

"We came to tell members of Congress that they should represent the 99 percent not just corporations and the 1 percent," said Colleen Bugarske, 59, a volunteer from West Los Angeles with MoveOn.org, a national nonprofit political advocacy group.

For R.L Miller — a blogger and mom who runs a law practice in Oak Park, Calif. — the experience seems to highlight what activists have said is wrong: that government is disconnected from the people.



PhotoBlog: Images from the Capitol Hill protest

She boarded a plane at 5 a.m. Monday to join the three days of political action in the nation's capital. On Tuesday, with about 15 other activists from the Los Angeles nonprofit Good Jobs LA and an allied group from New York, she showed up around 12:30 p.m. at the Washington office of Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., who represents Ventura County, where Miller lives. For about two hours, they knocked on the locked door every five minutes, trying to meet with Gallegly or at least schedule a meeting with him.

Staffers and other people came and went, but the door remained locked to activists standing in the hall. They were told, they said, that the Gallegly was not there — that he was on a flight into D.C. to take part in a vote. Later, however, he emerged from a side door and headed for the elevators with a security escort.

Before he could leave — and after proving to Gallegly that she lives in his district — Miller was able to ask him a question: “What are you doing for the poor and unemployed in our area?”

The congressman said he had given hundreds of toys to needy children over the weekend, said Miller and other activists. Then he wished them a merry Christmas.

"I said, 'I'm a constituent. Can I have a meeting with you this week?'" says Miller. To that, she says Gallegly replied: "I just gave you that meeting by wishing you a merry Christmas."

Then the elevator doors closed.

The activists remained stationed outside Gallegly’s office door after he left, but Miller’s repeated calls to his staff did not result in an appointment with the congressman.

Rep. Gallegly's office did not return calls from msnbc.com before the end of the business day Tuesday.

Miller noted that, by contrast, other congressional offices on the hallway appeared to be open for business. Some groups of activists were successful gaining entry to congressional offices — if not to have their concerns heard by representatives or staffers, then to hold sit-ins.

Miller said she had several concerns that she wanted to air. She wanted to ask him to support the renewable energy industry and to be more accessible to his constituents.

“I’ve lived in his district for 18 years,” she says. “He has been in Congress the whole time I’ve been there … He hardly shows his face around Ventura County.”

To be sure, many of the activists with Miller weren't from Gallegly's district.

“We’re standing in solidarity because … this is something that crosses state lines, something that affects all of us,” said Cara Noel, an activist who joined from United New York, a nonprofit that aids working-class people. “Because this is something we are all going through as part of the 99 percent. If people put (him) into office, they should be able to come and talk with him.”

quote:

Meet the Financial Wizards Working With Occupy Wall Street

High up in a Manhattan conference room on Sunday, a group of investment gurus discussed Occupy Wall Street. Should they support a set of tough-sounding financial reforms just proposed on the campaign trail by presidential candidate Jon Huntsman? Or was it reasonable to demand even deeper reforms? "This isn't enough," argued Cathy O'Neil, a former hedge fund quant who organizes the group, a branch of Occupy Wall Street known as the Alternative Banking Group. She proposed that the gathering of financial experts come up with improvements to Huntsman's plan and present them to Occupy Wall Street's General Assembly. Another OWS supporter, whose day job involves consulting for private equity firms, looked up from his laptop and smiled. "That's an excellent idea!"

quote:

Occupy activists face growing criticism after failed port shutdown bid

Unions join forces to condemn shutdown attempt as protesters say lack of success owed much to anti-union legislation

Occupy protesters were facing growing criticism over Monday's attempt to shut down the ports of America's west coast, with unions condemning the action that left hundreds of its members unable to work.

Terminals were effectively closed at Longview, Oakland and Portland, but plans to shut down the entire west coast failed after other protests saw relatively small turnouts.

Protesters have defended the attempted shutdown, claiming unions were unable to offer their support because they were "constrained" by anti-union legislation – and insisting they had the backing of rank-and-file workers.

The Occupy movement hoped to shut down the ports in support of an International Longshore and Warehouse Union battle in Longview, Washington, but the action never had the ILWU's backing, with senior union figures accusing protesters of being "arrogant, disrespectful and misguided" in the run-up to Monday.

Craig Merrilees, communications director at the ILWU, told the Guardian on Tuesday that in Oakland "three shifts of workers lost a day's pay, and many other port workers were in that situation".

"I'm sure the union president would want to emphasise that the cause of the 99% and the problem of corporate greed in America is a serious one, and efforts to address that are to be saluted and supported," he said.

"But it shouldn't happen at the expense of respecting the democratic structure and process of the ILWU and any other union."

Asked to what extent the shutdown had the support of ILWU members, Merrilees said it was hard to know, but pointed to the fact that Long Beach port – the second largest in the US – remained fully functional, with workers turning up to their shifts, despite Occupy LA and Occupy San Diego activists protesting there.

Occupiers argued that the lack of official union endorsement is because leaders have their hands tied. Protesters insist they had the backing of workers.

"Although we are working with and reaching out to rank-and-file port workers, we understand that labor unions are constrained under reactionary, anti-union federal legislation such as Taft-Hartley, passed during the cold war to reverse the gains of labor under the Depression-era Wagner Act, from taking job actions on the basis of solidarity or for political causes or demands," a statement on the Occupy The Ports website said.

However, unions' comments distancing themselves from the shutdown seem to have gone beyond adhering to legislative constraints.

In Vancouver the British Columbia Federation of Labour said it "does not support" the shutdown action, "or any action by the Occupy Vancouver group at Vancouver area ports that seeks to prevent our members from carrying out their assigned duties and working safely.

"[The federation] notes that the demonstration will not constitute a picket line as defined in the BC Federation of Labour's picket line policy."

In Oakland, the Alameda County Building and Construction Trades Council went even further, with its secretary-treasurer, Andreas Cluver, telling the San Francisco Chronicle that no union at the port was in support of the shutdown.

An open letter signed by five truck drivers pledged support for the Occupy port protests, and several union members served on planning committees for the action, but the lack of hard figures made it difficult to gauge true support for Monday's action.

The success of the port shutdown varied up and down the west coast. In Oakland, a city with a rich history of protest where thousands of protesters successfully shut down the port last month, the day went to plan, with Occupiers picketing the port in the morning and remaining in place for almost 24 hours.

Protesters in Portland shut three out of four terminals at the city's port, while at Longview – scene of the ongoing battle between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and terminal operator EGT which inspired Monday's shutdown – the terminal was also closed.

Attempts to shut down other west coast ports, however, were less successful. The Port of Seattle said there had been "minimum impact to cargo movement", although seattlepi.com said around 100 protesters had prevented traffic from entering during the afternoon.

Similarly, in Vancouver about 100 protesters delayed between 40 and 50 trucks, but the port did not close. Maxim Winther, acting as a spokesman for Occupy Vancouver was candid in his assessment of the event.

"Regarding turnout today, I think it's clear we need more time to educate the public and educate each other on what these issues are and to really find actions and issues that do galvanise the public," he told Canadian Business.

The majority of the comments on social networking sites seemed positive as the protests unfolded on Monday, although the backing did not seem unanimous, as it has for previous Occupy actions, with some discussion on the west coast port shutdown Facebook page over whether the action was the best move.

"While I agree with the idea behind the Occupy movement, you are proving nothing by shutting down the freeways and the port; all of which are "occupied" by working class people," wrote one commenter.

"Those corrupt individuals whom you oppose are not in the port or the waterfront. Please don't be so foolish. You are alienating a large portion of your base supporters."

That prompted the response: "Where is your solidarity? You just called the Occupy movement foolish. Corrupt individuals are in the port."

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The Return Of Debtor’s Prisons: Thousands Of Americans Jailed For Not Paying Their Bills

Federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the U.S. since 1833. It’s a practice people associate more with the age of Dickens than modern-day America. But as more Americans struggle to pay their bills in the wake of the recession, collection agencies are using harsher methods to get their money, ushering in the return of debtor’s prisons.

twitter:

AnonymousIRC twitterde op woensdag 14-12-2011 om 18:13:41 RT @OccupyElders US military is awake & aware. Make this viral. http://t.co/Airsn1mD #occupy #ows #anonymous reageer retweet

VET SOLDIER says the Military is waking up to - FEMA camps and NDAA Reality!

quote:

Revealed: huge increase in executive pay for America's top bosses

Exclusive survey shows America's CEOs enjoyed pay hikes of up to 40% last year – with one chief executive earning $145m

Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation.

America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington's attention on the pay packages of America's highest paid.

The Guardian's exclusive first look at the CEO pay survey from corporate governance group GMI Ratings will further fuel debate about America's widening income gap. The survey, the most extensive in the US, covered 2,647 companies, and offers a comprehensive assessment of all the data now available relating to 2010 pay.

Last year's survey, covering 2009, found pay rates were broadly flat following a decline in wages the year before. Base salaries in 2009 showed a median increase of around 2%, and annual cash compensation increased just over 1.5%. The troubled stock markets took their toll, and added together CEO pay declined for the third year, though the decrease was marginal, less than three-tenths of a percent. The decline in the wider economy in 2007, 2008 and 2009 far outstripped the decline in CEO pay.

This year's survey shows CEO pay packages have boomed: the top 10 earners took home more than $770m between them in 2010. As stock prices began to recover last year, the increase in CEO pay outstripped the rise in share value. The Russell 3000 measure of US stock prices was up by 16.93% in 2010, but CEO pay went up by 27.19% overall. For S&P 500 CEOs, the largest companies in the sample, total realised compensation – including perks and pensions and stock awards – increased by a median of 36.47%. Total pay at midcap companies, which are slightly smaller than the top firms, rose 40.2%.

GMI released a preliminary report on 2010 CEO pay earlier this year, before all the data was available. Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate at GMI, said that report had shown a significant bounce but he had expected a wider sample to dampen the effect.

"Wages for everybody else have either been in decline or stagnated in this period, and that's for those who are in work," said Hodgson. "I had a feeling that we would see some significant increases this year. But 30-40% was something of a surprise." Bosses won in every area, with dramatic increases in pensions, payoffs and perks – as well as salary.

Still, there are no bankers among this year's big winners. Three of this year's top 10 earners come from the healthcare industry. Top earner John Hammergren at McKesson, the world's largest healthcare firm, made $145,266,91 last year – most of it from stock options.

The rising stock markets were especially good to CEOs, said Hodgson. Stock options were the main area that drove these outsized awards. "They got the options, the market collapsed, then it came back – and all of a sudden they were in the money again," he said.

And there will be more to come. GMI, formerly known as the Corporate Library, is expecting a rash of massive stock option bonuses as many firms awarded their top executives big option deals when the stock markets hit their lows in 2007-2008.

"There's still a lot of money just waiting in the market," said Hodgson. He described the upcoming awards as a "bombshell" likely to dwarf this year's figures.

2010 was a great year to lose your job as a CEO. Four of the 10 highest paid CEOs were retired or departing executives. Ronald Williams, former head of Aetna, a health insurer, exercised 2.4m options for a profit of $50.4m. Aetna's stock price declined by 70% from when Williams assumed the role of CEO in February 2006 until his retirement. At pharmacy chain CVS, Thomas Ryan made a $28m profit on his options. During Ryan's 13-year tenure as CEO, CVS Caremark's stock price decreased almost 54%.

Omnicare's Joel Gemunder retired last August and received cash severance of $16m, part of a final-year pay package worth $98.28m. Adam Metz, the former boss of General Growth Properties, a real estate company that specialises in shopping malls, walked away with a $46m cash bonus in 2010. GGP executives received nearly $115m in bonuses from the firm as it emerged from bankruptcy.

But this year's top earner may have his biggest payday still to come. Hammergren is due a $469m payoff if McKesson changes ownership. "Boards make these decisions, but they don't work out what happens if they stay in the job," said Hodgson.

"If they had have done, one hopes, they would have looked at each other and said: 'This is ridiculous.'"

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Huis VS neemt omstreden defensiewet aan

Het Amerikaanse Huis van Afgevaardigden heeft gisteravond ingestemd met een omstreden nieuwe defensiewet. Daarin is onder meer vastgelegd dat personen die worden verdacht van het beramen van aanslagen voor het terreurnetwerk al-Qaeda, in hechtenis worden genomen door militairen, en niet door justitie zoals dat het geval is bij burgers.

De nieuwe wet staat toe dat het leger terreurverdachten onbeperkt in hechtenis houdt. Mensenrechtenadvocaten hebben hier fel tegen geprotesteerd. Ook de Democratische afgevaardigde Barbara Lee sprak er schande van: 'Het opgeven van Amerikaanse idealen zal ons niet veiliger maken.'

Er worden nieuwe drempels opgeworpen voor de sluiting van kamp Guantanamo Bay op Cuba. Zo wordt het verboden om terreurverdachten uit Guantanamo Bay over te brengen naar de Verenigde Staten. Tevens wordt het moeilijker Guantanamo-gevangenen over te dragen aan derde landen die bereid zijn hen op te nemen. De sluiting van Guantanamo Bay was een belangrijke verkiezingsbelofte van Obama.

President Barack Obama had gedreigd zijn veto te gebruiken tegen de nieuwe regels, maar is nu akkoord gegaan met een iets afgezwakte versie. Die is tot stand gekomen in onderhandelingen met de Senaat, waar de Democraten de meerderheid hebben.

De aangenomen wet voorziet tevens in nieuwe sancties tegen de Iraanse centrale bank en instellingen buiten Iran die daarmee samenwerken. Ook worden honderden miljoenen dollar aan hulp aan Pakistan bevroren totdat Islamabad de strijd tegen terrorisme opvoert.

De wet behelst 662 miljard dollar aan defensieuitgaven. Meegeteld is de reguliere begroting van het Pentagon en de oorlog in Afghanistan.

twitter:

AnonymousPress twitterde op zaterdag 17-12-2011 om 23:50:35 HISTORIC! NYPD cannot kettle the protesters, too many and spread out all over the street ► WITNESS LIVE http://t.co/dPfLE6H8 #OWS #Occupy reageer retweet

quote:

PREFACE

July 2003

The following report, “Civil Disturbance and Criminal Tactics of Protest Extremists”, was prepared in response to the increase of protest activity worldwide and the escalation of violence and property destruction that has occurred in the pastseveral years. Information regarding the unlawful operational and tactical activities was collected and interpreted by multiple agencies. The information presented is for law enforcement and public safety officials to assist in effectively managing civil disturbances and large-scale protests.

The information in this report is unclassified, however it is important that this document be safeguarded against unauthorized disclosure to non-public safety personnel and that it is only used in an official capacity. This report contains“For Official Use Only” information and is not suitable for release to the press or the public. The information is being provided for your agency’s use only and may not be released to other individuals or agencies. Destruction of this materialshould be handled in a manner consistent with the continued protection of the information.

quote:

Occupy protests trigger envy, ire in Generation X

Associated Press= NEW YORK (AP) — The generation that gave the term "slacker" new meaning is looking with measures of rivalry, regret and tart bewilderment at a movement its successor mobilized in the name of "the 99 percent."

For some members of Generation X, the cohort sandwiched between the Baby Boomers and the so-called Millennial age group of many Occupy Wall Street protesters, the demonstrations represent a missed opportunity in their own youth to take up the cause of combatting economic inequality.

But for others, the Occupy movement is at best a showy rehash of similar recessionist angst they weathered with self-sufficiency and little more public display of disaffection than grunge rock and goatees — and at worst a reflection of a younger generation with a whiny, overweening idea of its own importance.

"Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. "Generation X also graduated during a recession ... and actually had to pay for its own music," declared Mat Honan, 39, a San Francisco-based writer for the technology blog Gizmodo.

He said by phone that he's sympathetic to the protesters' complaints about the financial system but felt a "generational disconnect" after reading a New York magazine story that portrayed the demonstrations as a response to a distinctly Millennial plight.

With its "we are the 99 percent" slogan, Occupy doesn't particularly see itself as a youth movement. People of a range of ages have joined some of the demonstrations. And plenty of 20-somethings, as well as their elders, want no part of them.

But with concern about student loans and post-graduation job opportunities a frequent theme, the protests are often seen as having a youthful face, and the limited demographic data available point to a heavy under-30 presence.

The median age was 28 in a mid-October survey of 301 people at Occupy Wall Street's former base camp in New York's Zuccotti Park, said Costas Panagopoulos, the Fordham University political science professor who conducted it. Separately, Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen surveyed 198 people at the park in mid-October and found 49 percent were under 30.

Another 38 percent were between 30 and 50 — the bookends of Generation X, in some generational researchers' view. They define it as those born between 1961 and 1981, encompassing nearly 88 million Americans; others bracket it a bit differently, often as 1965 to 1981.

Still, there's a perception among some Gen Xers themselves that they're at a generational remove from the Occupy protests.

"Our moms and dads witnessed the great advances for women and minorities born from the rebellion of the '60s. ... We learned how to blow up digital aliens with a joystick. Occupy Wall Street, can we believe in you?" recession blogger Lynn Parramore wrote, praising the protests, on the left-leaning online news service AlterNet.

A Gen X apology to the Occupy Wall Street contingent, expressing regret for conceptual hand-me-downs ranging from implying that going to college begets a good job to "taking away every reason to go outside," has gotten more than 1.7 million online views on the humor site Cracked.com.

On the other hand, Washington-based economics writer John Tamny branded the young Occupiers' mindset "an obnoxious repeat of Gen X" on the financial news site Real Clear Markets.

Some Gen Xers, after all, entered the workforce — or tried to — during recessions in the early 1980s and '90s, only to benefit from economic growth later in those decades, noted Tamny, 42.

He said he agrees with the young Occupiers' criticism of corporate bailouts and understands their career fears. But "when I hear people say, 'They'll never have a chance' — oh, come on. That was supposed to be me and my friends, and we figured it out," he said.

Dubbed Generation X after Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel about anomie and irony among a group of underemployed, wary young adults, the post-Baby Boomers garnered a reputation for alienation, political apathy and do-it-yourself individualism.

A recent report from the University of Michigan's Longitudinal Study of American Youth characterizes Gen Xers now as "active, balanced and happy." But in the public imagination, they're the latchkey kids who grew up amid the rise of divorce and working moms and became the detached young adults of films such as Richard Linklater's 1991 "Slacker" and Kevin Smith's 1994 "Clerks": autonomous, mistrustful of norms and organizations, more focused on finding individual meaning than trying to influence societal institutions.

"The big zeitgeist as Xers came of age in the '80s and '90s was: 'You're a free agent' ... so I think Xers look on at something like Occupy Wall Street with a little bit of curiosity," said historian Neil Howe, a co-author of noted books about Generation X and what he describes as its more optimistic, team-oriented, structure-loving successors in the Millennial group, also called Generation Y.

If Occupy Wall Street is reverberating in a generational rift, participant Malcolm Harris, 22, isn't surprised. To him, the generation before his grew up with rebellion being marketed to them as commoditized cool in such forms as MTV, creating a counterculture of disengagement.

"Conviction about anything becomes nearly impossible in that sort of situation," says Harris, the managing editor of The New Inquiry, a culture and criticism site. "No wonder they missed out on protest."

Not that they missed out entirely. In one particularly visible demonstration, anti-apartheid students created campus shantytowns in the 1980s to urge colleges to pull investment money out of companies that did business in South Africa. Amid those and other demonstrations, the Senate overrode President Ronald Reagan's veto in 1986 to impose sanctions against South Africa over its now-gone system of white-minority rule.

Those demonstrations faded by the time Joaquin Torrans graduated from high school in 1990. To him, "it seemed like we didn't have any causes to fight for."

"What we did all sort of miss was this issue ... of wealth inequality" and its consequences for politics, said Torrans, 40, a union stagehand living in North Richland Hills, Texas. He supports the Occupy protests.

But to Henry Rice, 41, the Occupy demonstrations are a wrongheaded outgrowth of a culture that expects too much for free. If he espouses a generational identity, it's as a child of the Regan Revolution and its conservative values.

"Educated people in my generation may have legitimate concerns about lobbyists and the power of money, but to camp in a park with a bunch of misguided people — I don't think that," said Rice, of Virginia Beach, Va. A retired Navy chief petty officer, he's now a Navy civilian public affairs specialist and studying to become a social studies teacher.

At 36, Pete Dutro is part of both Generation X and Occupy Wall Street. He's a member of its finance working group.

"Twenty-somethings really are the catalyst," he says, but "my generation paved the way for them to do this."

The tattoo artist and business student sees echoes in Occupy of the anti-consumerist, self-empowering DIY — for "do it yourself" — ethic he absorbed through the punk-rock scene of the 1980s and '90s. And he sees plenty of Gen Xers themselves among the Occupy crowd.

"There are a lot of us who have gotten tired of being apathetic," he said

quote:

Welcome To The United Police States of America, Sponsored By Twitter

Imagine my surprise this morning when, without warning, my shiny new Twitter account (@d_seaman) was suspended and taken offline.

No more tweets for you. You now have 0 followers.

My crime? Talking too much about Occupy Wall Street (I'm not an Occupier, but as a blogger and journalist it strikes me as one of the most important stories out there -- hence the constant coverage), and talking too much about the controversial detainment without trial provisions contained in the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would basically shred the Bill of Rights and subject American citizens to military police forces. The same level of civil rights protection that enemy combatants in a cave in Afghanistan receive!

But no, my tweets were 'annoying our users,' according to Twitter's suspension notice.

Well, not so much: nearly everyone following me appreciated my coverage of this issue, when few others in the media have had an interest in the NDAA or the widespread Occupy turnouts all over the country last night.

If they didn't appreciate it, ignorant bliss is only an 'unfollow' away. So why was I suspended only for covering two very serious news stories, and offering my own brand of commentary? I wasn't harassing users. I wasn't spamming. I wasn't hawking affiliate or porn links or any of the trash that should get one swiftly suspended from Twitter. (I've received some spam direct messages already; funny that those aren't suspended, but I was.)

I have contacted Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter, and several tech journalists hoping to get some answers. I don't want to start a big thing -- I just want my account reactivated. This is America, not Iran, thanks in advance.

Also: it's worth questioning why #NDAA and #OWS, which are receiving consistently VERY high volumes of conversation/tweet traffic are not trending at all on Twitter, yet their featured 'worldwide trends' this morning include: Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, #myfavoritefood, and Kindergarten Cop.

UPDATE 1:19pm ET: I am apparently not the only user booted today for discussing NDAA and Occupy movement protests. See the screenshot below.

quote:

Occupy the classroom?

Economic instruction at the public level suffers from a lack of nuanced assertions, writes the author.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Early last month, a group of students staged a walkout in Harvard's popular introductory economics course, Economics 10, taught by my colleague Greg Mankiw. Their complaint: The course propagates conservative ideology in the guise of economic science and helps perpetuate social inequality.

The students were part of a growing chorus of protest against modern economics as it is taught in the world's leading academic institutions. Economics has always had its critics, of course, but the financial crisis and its aftermath have given them fresh ammunition, seeming to validate long-standing charges against the profession's unrealistic assumptions, reification of markets and disregard for social concerns.

Mankiw, for his part, found the protesting students "poorly informed". Economics does not have an ideology, he retorted. Quoting John Maynard Keynes, he pointed out that economics is a method that helps people to think straight and reach the correct answers, with no foreordained policy conclusions.

Indeed, though you may be excused for skepticism if you have not immersed yourself in years of advanced study in economics, coursework in a typical economics doctoral programme produces a bewildering variety of policy prescriptions depending on the specific context. Some of the frameworks economists use to analyse the world favour free markets, while others don't. In fact, much economic research is devoted to understanding how government intervention can improve economic performance. And non-economic motives and socially co-operative behaviour are increasingly part of what economists study.

As the late great international economist Carlos Diaz-Alejandro once put it, "by now any bright graduate student, by choosing his assumptions... carefully, can produce a consistent model yielding just about any policy recommendation he favoured at the start". And that was in the 1970s! An apprentice economist no longer needs to be particularly bright to produce unorthodox policy conclusions.

Nevertheless, economists get stuck with the charge of being narrowly ideological, because they are their own worst enemies when it comes to applying their theories to the real world. Instead of communicating the full panoply of perspectives that their discipline offers, they display excessive confidence in particular remedies - often those that best accord with their own personal ideologies.

Consider the global financial crisis. Macroeconomics and finance did not lack the tools needed to understand how the crisis arose and unfolded. Indeed, the academic literature was chock-full of models of financial bubbles, asymmetric information, incentive distortions, self-fulfilling crises, and systemic risk. But, in the years leading up to the crisis, many economists downplayed these models' lessons in favour of models of efficient and self-correcting markets, which, in policy terms, resulted in inadequate governmental oversight over financial markets.

In my book The Globalization Paradox, I contemplate the following thought experiment. Let a journalist call an economics professor for his view on whether free trade with country X or Y is a good idea. We can be fairly certain that the economist, like the vast majority of the profession, will be enthusiastic in his support of free trade.

Now let the reporter go undercover as a student in the professor's advanced graduate seminar on international trade theory. Let him pose the same question: Is free trade good? I doubt that the answer will come as quickly and be as succinct this time around. In fact, the professor is likely to be stymied by the question. "What do you mean by 'good'?" he will ask. "And good for whom?"

The professor would then launch into a long and tortured exegesis that will ultimately culminate in a heavily hedged statement: "So if the long list of conditions I have just described are satisfied, and assuming we can tax the beneficiaries to compensate the losers, freer trade has the potential to increase everyone's well-being". If he were in an expansive mood, the professor might add that the effect of free trade on an economy's growth rate is not clear, either, and depends on an altogether different set of requirements.

A direct, unqualified assertion about the benefits of free trade has now been transformed into a statement adorned by all kinds of ifs and buts. Oddly, the knowledge that the professor willingly imparts with great pride to his advanced students is deemed to be inappropriate (or dangerous) for the general public.

Economics instruction at the undergraduate level suffers from the same problem. In our zeal to display the profession's crown jewels in untarnished form - market efficiency, the invisible hand, comparative advantage - we skip over the real-world complications and nuances, well recognised as they are in the discipline. It is as if introductory physics courses assumed a world without gravity, because everything becomes so much simpler that way.

Applied appropriately and with a healthy dose of common sense, economics would have prepared us for the financial crisis and pointed us in the right direction to fix what caused it. But the economics we need is of the "seminar room" variety, not the "rule-of-thumb" kind. It is an economics that recognises its limitations and knows that the right message depends on the context.

Downplaying the diversity of intellectual frameworks within their own discipline does not make economists better analysts of the real world. Nor does it make them more popular.

quote:

Occupy. Resist. Produce.

Earlier in the month, I wrote about how Occupy Wall Street has been largely forced "underground" following the NYPD raid on Zuccotti Park, which in the long-term might actually be more advantageous for the group. Instead of sitting around like ducks in a barrel waiting for police to come and destroy them, OWS is now a moving, camouflaged target that is capable of sudden, dramatic actions like occupying foreclosed homes.

When I moderated an OWS panel at Netroots Nation New York this weekend, members of Occupy The Hood and OWS said that these kinds of pro-active occupations (occupying warehouses, closed schools, foreclosed properties, banks, etc.) are the future of Occupy.

Nelini Stamp, one of the original Occupiers and the woman who announced to Zuccotti Park that Mayor Bloomberg had stood down from his plans to evict protesters for the Oct 14 park cleaning, said she imagined a day when OWS would occupy closed factories.

Such plans truly represent actual anarchist philosophy, not the property damaging hooligan cartoon character deemed "anarchist" largely by the media. As Noam Chomsky explained, "A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production and the wage slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer."

The tagline "Occupy. Resist. Produce" for Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis's 2004 film "The Take" served as a premonition of things to come in the United States.

The documentary takes place in Argentina in the wake of a dramatic 2001 economic collapse. Factories are now ghost towns. There is mass unemployment. In the wake of Neoliberalism ruin, workers at the Forja auto plant join a daring new movement to occupy bankrupt businesses and create jobs after the leaders of their country fail to do so.

"Armed only with slingshots and abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale," The Take's website reads.

OWS has already began to join the tradition of occupying and resisting at 702 Vermont Street in East New York, and Boston seems set to be the next large Occupy presence to adopt the same tactic.

. Observers say the tent encampments were just the beginning and the movement will have to enter another phase of organizing if it’s to accomplish policy changes. Some demonstrators say the movement will become floating — occupying warehouses, banks, closed schools and foreclosed properties, which Occupy groups around the country have already done.

Occupy now, as it always has, finds itself in a difficult position.

Part of the movement's power has always resided in its broad appeal and refusal to condense its message into a ten-point policy plan. While solely focusing on foreclosed homes or abandoned schools might limit the movement's appeal, the group stands to gain more favorability among mainstream Americans, who perhaps need clearly defined actions to really understand what Occupy is all about.

On the plus side, occupying abandoned factories is deeply symbolic on a multitude of levels. Occupiers would still be able to focus on foundational messages of job creation, healthcare access, fighting foreclosures and addressing the central failures of hyper-Capitalism.

Picking smart occupation targets would help limit damage inflicted by OWS's biggest criticism: that the movement is scattered and has no real platform. Of course, this notion is misguided. OWS stands for something -— many huge, broad things — because there are many huge things wrong with the country right now. But such broad criticisms overwhelm a plethora of Americans. Where to start if everything is so extremely fucked?

By occupying a foreclosed home, or abandoned school, or closed factory, OWS could help focus those sweeping critiques into one easy-to-understand microcosm. Families need shelter. Children need schools. Workers need to work. These things are universally understood and valued.

If there was any doubt this better-focused strategy can win Occupy mass appeal, those fears were put to rest when the New York Post, famous for belittling Occupy and everything it does, gave the group a favorable write-up for its occupation of a foreclosed home in East New York.

In the shockingly balanced article calmly titled, "Protesters help family Occupy foreclosed home," Jennifer Bain and Josh Saul detail how protesters helped move a mother and two children into a vacant home at 702 Vermont Street. There are no screaming accusations of anarchist hooligans or damage to property or any of the usual Post hysteria. Quite simply, protesters preemptively defeated any such allegations by picking a wise occupation target and sympathetic recipients.

While rushing to potentially soul-crushing jobs, it's easy to see how suits viewed the campers at Zuccotti as being the "dirty hippie" characters of Bill O'Reilly's nightmares. I simply lost count of how many times I heard a business person angrily shout "get a job!" at the Occupiers. As though finding a job is as easy as waking up in the morning. As though many of the protesters haven't been searching for a job for several months. However, that unfair characterization of Occupy is understandable given that camping in Zuccotti was a largely passive, albeit groundbreaking, act.

Switching gears and occupying factories, schools, and foreclosed homes is not only a way to take the movement underground and make it more easily defendable, but also a way to open up Occupy to extended mainstream appeal.

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UN Envoy Sharply Criticizes US for Repressive Actions Against OWS Protesters

The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded — sometimes violently — by local authorities.

Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. “special rapporteur” for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.

“I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order,” he said Thursday. “But on the other hand I also believe that the state — in this case the federal state — has an obligation to protect and promote human rights.”

“If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights,” he continued.

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US Citizen Convicted of Providing ‘Material Support’ to Terrorists

The defense claimed the verdict was an assault on First Amendment rights to free speech

An American citizen from a Boston suburb was convicted on Tuesday on terrorism charges, but the charges were loosely defined and the verdict may represent a significant blow to free speech rights.

Federal prosecutors claimed that Tarek Mehanna, 29, traveled to Yemen in 2004 with the hope of training as a terrorist and going on to fight American soldiers in Iraq. He failed to find any training camps, but returned home and allegedly promoted al Qaeda by writing about violent jihad against U.S. foreign policy on the Internet.

Mehanna and his lawyers instead claimed that he traveled to Yemen to receive training to become an Islamic scholar and that his writings on the Internet amounted to free speech.

“The charges scare people,” said J. W. Carney Jr., Mehanna’s lawyer and told reporters they would appeal. “The charges scared us when we first saw them. But the more that we looked at the evidence, the more that we got to know our client Tarek, the more we believed in his innocence.”

Post 9/11, the government has convicted many people on charges of “material support” to terrorists. But free speech advocates insist these are suffocating First Amendment rights and may grow to be even broader in the future.

Mehanna’s lawyers requested a jury instruction on First Amendment issues which included three points of instruction. The first reminded the jury of the right to hold views they regard as appalling. The second emphasized special protection for speech concerning public issues.

And the third explained the material support statute Mehanna was charged with, and makes clear: “To constitute a crime, the material support must be provided at the direction of the terrorist group, or in coordination with the terrorist group, or as a service provided directly to the terrorist group at its request. The statute does not prohibit someone from vigorously promoting and supporting the political goals of the group. This is considered independent advocacy, and is protected by the First Amendment.”

“The ACLU of Massachusetts,” read a statement by executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU Carol Rose, ”is gravely concerned that today’s verdict against Tarek Mehanna undermines the First Amendment and threatens national security.”

“Under the government’s theory of the case, ordinary people–including writers and journalists, academic researchers, translators, and even ordinary web surfers–could be prosecuted for researching or translating controversial and unpopular ideas. If the verdict is not overturned on appeal, the First Amendment will be seriously compromised.”

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OWS Fights Back Against Police Surveillance by Launching "Occucopter" Citizen Drone

In response to constant police surveillance, violence, and arrests, Occupy Wall Street protesters and legal observers have been turning their cameras back on the police.

_{December 22, 2011 |}

The police may soon be watching you in your garden picking your vegetables or your bottom. As police plans for increasing unmanned aerial surveillance take shape, there is a new twist. Private citizens can now buy their own surveillance drones to watch the police.

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Pool is attempting to police-proof the device: "We are trying to get a stable live feed so you can have 50 people controlling it in series. If the cops see you controlling it from a computer they can shut you down, but then control could automatically switch to someone else."

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Occupy Vancouver Picks Up the Tab

The media's latest attempt to undercut the message of Occupy movements all across the globe is by touting the "cost" of these protests. Many sources are reporting that Occupy movements are costing cities hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime because apparently it takes an entire precinct to make sure that 50 people don't sleep through the night.

When an internal city memorandum stated that Occupy Vancouver had cost its city nearly a million dollars in taxpayer money, the organizers did something brilliant: they broke down the cost of what they were doing for the city of Vancouver.

According to a recent press release from Occupy Vancouver member Eric Hamilton-Smith: "...over 37,000 meals were served, $672,000 of primary medical care was provided, and 30 people were housed for 37 days at a time when beds at primary shelters were not available." This assessment puts the overall price tag of benefits to the community at over one million dollars, approximately matching the "cost" attributed to the protests, as well as picking up the tab for services that would have been stuck to the community-at-large.

According to a Vancouver Sun article, with the average bed at a shelter costing $83/night, the movement has accounted for over $90,000 in housing services. The Sun notes that with the average soup meal kitchen meal costing $3.50, the 37,000 meals served by Occupy Vancouver accounted for over $129,000 in social services.

This is absolutely brilliant, and I suggest that all other Occupy movements take note of this.

Occupy Vancouver has proven that they are a tangible benefit to its own community in terms that even the most cross-eyed, close-minded, right-wing-funded dunderhead can understand: dolla dolla bills (Canadian, y'all.)

Occupy Wall Street, as well as other Occupy movements, may want to take stock (no pun intended, no pun achieved) of the benefits and services they are offering and place a reasonable monetary value on them. These numbers could be very important when it comes to defending the relevance of the Occupy movement as a whole; and make no mistake, the Occupy movement is going to have to vigorously defend its existence on multiple fronts for an indefinite amount of time.

Let me pre-empt a myopic critique of this plan of attack right here:"That's pretty ironic that you want to put a cash value on these things when the whole Occupy Wall Street thing is against money to begin with!"

No. And you can close your mouth if you're just breathing.

Two points:

1) The Occupy movement isn't against the concept or existence of money, you dolt. There has been much written about its purpose. If you would like my take, you can check this out. If you won't click that because I just called you a dolt, I apologize. I just have very little patience for ignorance. (Actually, I'm not really sorry. If you're old enough to read this, you should know better than to ignore things like the deliberate destruction of the global economy. If you don't think so, you probably just got some Chunky Monkey on your monitor, there.)

2) The Occupy movement is very big, and needs to have many tentacles, just like the financial-legislative complex that it is fighting against. There is not one simple model of change to be adopted in this fight; the new model to be adopted must be the adoption of many models. (Yeah, I know, it's like Noam Chomsky in the background of a Pink Floyd album cover.) One of these models must be the ability to express oneself in the native language of the unconscionable elite that populate our global community of Psychopathic Multi-Nationals Gone Wild and their opening band: Fuck the People, I'm Already Elected.

A well-oiled protesting machine must adopt many tactics, and assessing the value of providing services to a community must be one of them. Instead of fighting the "cost" issue, Occupy movements should proudly declare the "cost" of the services they are providing for their respective cities.

How much does a soup kitchen meal cost in Los Angeles? What is the daily cost to run a library in Portland? How much does a massive clean-up of Zuccotti Park cost? How much does a night in a homeless shelter cost the city of Atlanta? These are only a few ways that these protests are actually picking up social and civic services and alleviating taxpayer burden by subsidizing some of the costs associated with running a city.

There are many other services currently being provided, and many more that will come. I'm sure it won't be too long before an Occupy movement creates a Planned Parenthood, drug rehabilitation, or a domestic abuse education tent facilitated by qualified, licensed volunteers. Perhaps there are some out there already.

It would behoove Occupy movements all across the world to assess what services they offer and to evaluate the material benefit they offer their community. This is not only key information when justifying the movement itself, but it also throws down the gauntlet by clearly showcasing the valuable act of providing services that enhance a city.

As an extra bonus, such an evaluation would also prove to be a source of unflappable encouragement for those protestors thanklessly working for the social betterment of an antagonistic world filled with uninformed water-cooler chatter, villainizing media pundits and hostile civic and federal authorities.

This small bit of unified focus will prove to reap large benefits for the Occupy movement down the road, at the type of cost usually reserved for maniacal Wal-Mart holiday stampedes.