http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201028.htmlquote: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.
quote: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.
twitter:OccupyWallStNYC twitterde op vrijdag 15-07-2011 om 17:04:22Sept 17. Wall St. Bring Tent. http://t.co/txbf6zB #OCCUPYWALLSTREET reageer retweet
Ze hebben het politieke discours verandert:quote:Op zaterdag 14 juli 2012 23:23 schreef Bleekvoort het volgende:
Hebben ze daar al wel iets bereikt in tegenstelling tot het kansloze gebeuren in Nederland?
President Obama puts focus on economic inequality
quote:
quote:WHAT WE’RE DOING:
Part I of #whilewewatch recorded the events that started on September 17, 2011 but since the movement continues, so does the documentary. As the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street nears, the grievances of the occupiers continue to go unanswered. They want to impact the 2012 election so we want to follow them to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions where they will continue their protest. To do this, we need YOUR help to cover traveling costs, film equipment, crew, eight weeks of editing, legal expenses, music rights, social media, and mainstream media file footage. Besides traveling to the conventions, we will be filming in New York up until the movement’s one year anniversary. We are also looking to conduct follow-up interviews with OWS leaders Priscilla Grim, Jesse LaGreca, Tim Pool, and Justin Wedes as well as interview prominent members of the community such as Cornel West, Tom Morello, Tom Brokaw, Pete Hamill, and Ben Cohen.
quote:ABOUT #whilewewatch Part 1:
A gripping portrait of the Occupy Wall Street media revolution, #whilewewatch is the first definitive film to emerge from Zuccotti Park with full access and cooperation from the masterminds behind the #OccupyWallStreet movement.
The #OccupyWallStreet media team had to contend with a critical city government, big corporations, hostile police, and unsympathetic mainstream media to tell their story. They endured rain, snow, grueling days, and uncomfortable nights - to inspire the world to take action. Fueled with little money, they relied on the power of social media: setting up Wi-Fi hotspots, sending out live video streams, and promoting international participation. As the film unfolds, we witness the birth of a new era of direct journalism.
WATCH THE FULL MOVIE ON SNAGFILMS: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/while_we_watch
Nee. Die Ameriteven houden van Obama.quote:
Komt het volk eindelijk in opstand tegen het Obama regime?
quote:Overcoming the fear.
The 'Davis Dozen' show Occupy the way forward.
One of the most inspiring recent actions against banks was pulled off by a group of students and faculty at the University of California, at Davis (UC Davis). Every day for two months, they sat in front of the entrance of a U.S. Bank branch in their student union. Last February the bank closed its doors and left the UC Davis campus for good. But, in a gesture intended to send a chill down the spine of student activists, a dozen of them — dubbed the ‘Davis Dozen’ — are now being criminally charged and face potential sentences of up to 11 years in jail and $1-million in fines. Will this scare students enough to stop an escalation of bank occupations on campus? Or will the systemic corruption recently revealed at the heart of global banking spur students everywhere on?
Samara Steele sends this dispatch from Davis:
quote:Justice Department Sues Telecom for Challenging National Security Letter
Last year, when a telecommunications company received an ultra-secret demand letter from the FBI seeking information about a customer or customers, the telecom took an extraordinary step — it challenged the underlying authority of the FBI’s National Security Letter, as well as the legitimacy of the gag order that came with it.
Both challenges are allowed under a federal law that governs NSLs, a power greatly expanded under the Patriot Act that allows the government to get detailed information on Americans’ finances and communications without oversight from a judge. The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs and been reprimanded for abusing them — though almost none of the requests have been challenged by the recipients.
After the telecom challenged its NSL last year, the Justice Department took its own extraordinary measure: It sued the company, arguing in court documents that the company was violating the law by challenging its authority.
That’s a pretty intense charge, according to Matt Zimmerman, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the anonymous telecom.
“It’s a huge deal to say you are in violation of federal law having to do with a national security investigation,” says Zimmerman. “That is extraordinarily aggressive from my standpoint. They’re saying you are violating the law by challenging our authority here.”
The government’s “Jabberwocky” argument – accusing the company of violating the law when it was actually complying with the law – appears in redacted court documents that were released on Wednesday by EFF with the government’s approval. Prior to their release, the organization provided them to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the case Tuesday night. The case is a significant challenge to the government and its efforts to obtain documents in a manner that the EFF says violates the First Amendment rights of free speech and association.
It’s only the second time that such a serious and fundamental challenge to NSLs has arisen. The first occurred in 2004 in the case of a small ISP owner named Nicholas Merrill, who challenged an NSL seeking info on an organization that was using his network. He asserted that customer records were constitutionally protected information.
But that issue never got a chance to play out in court before the government dropped its demand for documents.
With this new case, civil libertarians are getting a second opportunity to fight NSLs head-on in court.
NSLs are written demands from the FBI that compel internet service providers, credit companies, financial institutions and others to hand over confidential records about their customers, such as subscriber information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses, websites visited and more.
NSLs are a powerful tool because they do not require court approval, and they come with a built-in gag order, preventing recipients from disclosing to anyone that they have even received an NSL. An FBI agent looking into a possible anti-terrorism case can self-issue an NSL to a credit bureau, ISP or phone company with only the sign-off of the Special Agent in Charge of their office. The FBI has to merely assert that the information is “relevant” to an investigation into international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.
The lack of court oversight raises the possibility for extensive abuse of NSLs under the cover of secrecy, which the gag order only exacerbates. In 2007 a Justice Department Inspector General audit found that the FBI had indeed abused its authority and misused NSLs on many occasions. After 9/11, for example, the FBI paid multimillion-dollar contracts to AT&T and Verizon requiring the companies to station employees inside the FBI and to give these employees access to the telecom databases so they could immediately service FBI requests for telephone records. The IG found that the employees let FBI agents illegally look at customer records without paperwork and even wrote NSLs for the FBI.
Before Merrill filed his challenge to NSLs in 2004, ISPs and other companies that wanted to challenge NSLs had to file suit in secret in court – a burden that many were unwilling or unable to assume. But after he challenged the one he received, a court found that the never-ending, hard-to-challenge gag orders were unconstitutional, leading Congress to amend the law to allow recipients to challenge NSLs more easily as well as gag orders.
Now companies can simply notify the FBI in writing that they oppose the gag order, leaving the burden on the FBI to prove in court that disclosure of an NSL would harm a national security case. The case also led to changes in Justice Department procedures. Since Feb. 2009, NSLs must include express notification to recipients that they have a right to challenge the built-in gag order that prevents them from disclosing to anyone that the government is seeking customer records.
Few recipients, however, have ever used this right to challenge the letters or gag orders.
The FBI has sent out nearly 300,000 NSLs since 2000, about 50,000 of which have been sent out since the new policy for challenging NSL gag orders went into effect. Last year alone, the FBI sent out 16,511 NSLs requesting information pertaining to 7,201 U.S. persons, a technical term that includes citizens and legal aliens.
But in a 2010 letter (.pdf) from Attorney General Eric Holder to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), Holder said that there had “been only four challenges,” and those involved challenges to the gag order, not to the fundamental legality of NSLs. At least one other challenge was filed earlier this year in a secret case revealed by Wired. But the party in that case challenged only the gag order, not the underlying authority of the NSL.
When recipients have challenged NSLs, the proceedings have occurred mostly in secret, with court documents either sealed or redacted heavily to cover the name of the recipient and other identifying details about the case.
The latest case is remarkable then for a number of reasons, among them the fact that a telecom challenged the NSL in the first place, and that EFF got the government to agree to release some of the documents to the public. The organization provided them to the Wall Street Journal, before releasing them on its web site, with the name of the telecom and other details redacted. The Journal, however, using details left in the court records, narrowed the likely plaintiffs down to one, a small San-Francisco-based telecom named Credo. The company’s CEO, Michael Kieschnick, didn’t confirm or deny that his company is the unidentified recipient of the NSL.
The case began sometime in 2011, when Credo or another telecom received an NSL from the FBI.
EFF filed a challenge on behalf of the telecom (.pdf) in May that year on First Amendment grounds, asserting first that the gag order amounted to unconstitutional prior restraint and, second, that the NSL statute itself “violates the anonymous speech and associational rights of Americans” by forcing companies to hand over data about their customers.
Instead of responding directly to that challenge and filing a motion to compel compliance in the way the Justice Department has responded to past challenges, government attorneys instead filed a lawsuit against the telecom, arguing that by refusing to comply with the NSL and hand over the information it was requesting, the telecom was violating the law, since it was “interfer[ing] with the United States’ vindication of its sovereign interests in law enforcement, counterintelligence, and protecting national security.”
They did this, even though courts have allowed recipients who challenge an NSL to withhold government-requested data until the court compels them to hand it over. The Justice Department argued in its lawsuit that recipients cannot use their legal right to challenge an individual NSL to contest the fundamental NSL law itself.
“It was eye-opening to us that they followed that approach,” Zimmerman says.
After heated negotiations with EFF, the Justice Department agreed to stay the civil suit and let the telecom’s challenge play out in court. The Justice Department subsequently filed a motion to compel in the challenge case, but has never dropped the civil suit.
“So there’s still this live complaint that they have refused to drop saying that our client was in violation of the law,” Zimmerman says, “presumably in the event that they lose, or something goes bad with the [challenge case].”
Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle declined to comment on the case.
The redacted documents don’t indicate the exact information the government was seeking from the telecom, and EFF won’t disclose the details. But by way of general explanation, Zimmerman said that the NSL statute allows the government to compel an ISP or web site to hand over information about someone who posted anonymously to a message board or to compel a phone company to hand over “calling circle” information, that is, information about who has communicated with someone by phone.
An FBI agent could give a telecom a name or a phone number, for example, and ask for the numbers and identities of anyone who has communicated with that person. “They’re asking for association information – who do you hang out with, who do you communicate with, [in order] to get information about previously unknown people.
“That’s the fatal flaw with this [law],” Zimmerman says. “Once the FBI is able to do this snooping, to find out who Americans are communicating with and associating with, there’s no remedy that makes them whole after the fact. So there needs to be some process in place so the court has the ability ahead of time to step in [on behalf of Americans].”
It remains to be seen, however, whether that issue will finally get its day in court.
quote:Seattle woman weds corporation to protest corporate personhood
Seattle resident Angela Vogel was given state permission to proceed with a planned wedding after officials in King County, Washington this week signed off on a marriage license between the beautiful bride-to-be and one Mr. Corporate Person: a one-and-a-half-month-old corporation established earlier this year. Jeff Reifman, a Seattle-based technologist and writer, is listed on Corporate Person’s official papers as its registered agent.
King County Executive Dow Constantine authorized a marriage license between Vogel and Corporate Person this week, and the bride and groom just couldn’t be happier.
“I’m incredibly excited,” Vogel tells reporters from Seattle’s The Stranger. “I’m drinking.”
Mr. Person — well, Mr. Reifman — adds to the Washington Bus blog that it wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to have his corporation legally permitted to wed a human, but if the US justice system can allow big businesses the same rights as people under the Citizens United ruling, frankly, it only makes sense. And if you think otherwise, take it up with Mitt Romney.
“I was really thrilled and the ceremony was wonderful,” Reifman tells Washington Bus. “It was a little difficult to get them to do it, but they took my money and they provided a marriage license. We talked to them about the Supreme Court offering corporate personhood.”
“The Supreme Court has said that corporations are persons with equal protections under the Fourteenth Amendment, which means they have all the same rights as you or me (unless you happen to be gay or lesbian).So a corporation has just as much right to marry a woman that I have to marry a woman,” Reifman adds.
quote:
Op 
Alleen wel lastig om de sexe van een bedrijf te bepalen.
quote:
quote:The bride and corporation exchanged vows in a ceremony proceeded over by Rev. Rich Lang, who is both a pastor and columnist.
“Corporate Person and Angela, may your children become sacrifices in war for greater market gain, may your wealth be without end, may your desire for more always be insatiable,” Rev. Lang wished the couple. “May you begin every day in expectation of profit, and end every night resting secure in each other’s bank accounts. May your continuous lies never be revealed, may your lawlessness never be held accountable, may your theft be forgiven, and may you own this nation lock, stock and barrel until freedom is no more.”
Reifman is behind an initiative in Seattle that, if passed, would strike down the corporate personhood guarantees created under last year’s Supreme Court ruling between Citizens United and Federal Election Commission. When America’s top justices signed off on the decision, corporations were guaranteed some of the same constitutional rights assigned to the American public.
"If they were to reject the license, they would be facing a lawsuit from Corporate Person, and the city shouldn't waste money defending yet another lawsuit," Reifman adds.
Only moments after Reiman made that statement, however, the City of Seattle came down hard and now might actually have some legal hoops to hop through. In a statement made to the Stranger after the certificate was signed, Cameron Satterfield of the Department of Executive Services revealed that the city is already attacking the happy couple.
"King County Records and Licensing Division reviewed today’s events and determined that the clerk accepted the marriage application in error. After checking with the Washington State Department of Health, and pursuant to RCW 26.04.130, we have voided the license and will refund the $64 application fee,” Satterfield explains.
quote:Wealth doesn't trickle down – it just floods offshore, new research reveals
A far-reaching new study suggests a staggering $21tn in assets has been lost to global tax havens. If taxed, that could have been enough to put parts of Africa back on its feet – and even solve the euro crisis
The world's super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad – a sum larger than the entire American economy.
James Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has conducted groundbreaking new research for the Tax Justice Network campaign group – sifting through data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private sector analysts to construct an alarming picture that shows capital flooding out of countries across the world and disappearing into the cracks in the financial system.
Comedian Jimmy Carr became the public face of tax-dodging in the UK earlier this year when it emerged that he had made use of a Cayman Islands-based trust to slash his income tax bill.
But the kind of scheme Carr took part in is the tip of the iceberg, according to Henry's report, entitled The Price of Offshore Revisited. Despite the professed determination of the G20 group of leading economies to tackle tax secrecy, investors in scores of countries – including the US and the UK – are still able to hide some or all of their assets from the taxman.
"This offshore economy is large enough to have a major impact on estimates of inequality of wealth and income; on estimates of national income and debt ratios; and – most importantly – to have very significant negative impacts on the domestic tax bases of 'source' countries," Henry says.
Using the BIS's measure of "offshore deposits" – cash held outside the depositor's home country – and scaling it up according to the proportion of their portfolio large investors usually hold in cash, he estimates that between $21tn (£13tn) and $32tn (£20tn) in financial assets has been hidden from the world's tax authorities.
"These estimates reveal a staggering failure," says John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. "Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people.
"This new data shows the exact opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich."
In total, 10 million individuals around the world hold assets offshore, according to Henry's analysis; but almost half of the minimum estimate of $21tn – $9.8tn – is owned by just 92,000 people. And that does not include the non-financial assets – art, yachts, mansions in Kensington – that many of the world's movers and shakers like to use as homes for their immense riches.
"If we could figure out how to tax all this offshore wealth without killing the proverbial golden goose, or at least entice its owners to reinvest it back home, this sector of the global underground is easily large enough to make a significant contribution to tax justice, investment and paying the costs of global problems like climate change," Henry says.
He corroborates his findings by using national accounts to assemble estimates of the cumulative capital flight from more than 130 low- to middle-income countries over almost 40 years, and the returns their wealthy owners are likely to have made from them.
In many cases, , the total worth of these assets far exceeds the value of the overseas debts of the countries they came from.
The struggles of the authorities in Egypt to recover the vast sums hidden abroad by Hosni Mubarak, his family and other cronies during his many years in power have provided a striking recent example of the fact that kleptocratic rulers can use their time to amass immense fortunes while many of their citizens are trapped in poverty.
The world's poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have fought long and hard in recent years to receive debt forgiveness from the international community; but this research suggests that in many cases, if they had been able to draw their richest citizens into the tax net, they could have avoided being dragged into indebtedness in the first place. Oil-rich Nigeria has seen more than $300bn spirited away since 1970, for example, while Ivory Coast has lost $141bn.
Assuming that super-rich investors earn a relatively modest 3% a year on their $21tn, taxing that vast wall of money at 30% would generate a very useful $189bn a year – more than rich economies spend on aid to the rest of the world.
The sheer scale of the hidden assets held by the super-rich also suggests that standard measures of inequality, which tend to rely on surveys of household income or wealth in individual countries, radically underestimate the true gap between rich and poor.
Milorad Kovacevic, chief statistician of the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, says both the very wealthy and the very poor tend to be excluded from mainstream calculations of inequality.
"People that are in charge of measuring inequality based on survey data know that the both ends of the distribution are underrepresented – or, even better, misrepresented," he says.
"There is rarely a household from the top 1% earners that participates in the survey. On the other side, the poor people either don't have addresses to be selected into the sample, or when selected they misquote their earnings – usually biasing them upwards."
Inequality is widely seen as having increased sharply in many developed countries over the past decade or more – as described in a recent paper from the IMF, which showed marked increases in the so-called Gini coefficient, which economists use to measure how evenly income is shared across societies.
Globalisation has exposed low-skilled workers to competition from cheap economies such as China, while the surging profitability of the financial services industry – and the spread of the big bonus culture before the credit crunch – led to what economists have called a "racing away" at the top of the income scale.
However, Henry's research suggests that this acknowledged jump in inequality is a dramatic underestimate. Stewart Lansley, author of the recent book The Cost of Inequality, says: "There is absolutely no doubt at all that the statistics on income and wealth at the top understate the problem."
The surveys that are used to compile the Gini coefficient "simply don't touch the super-rich," he says. "You don't pick up the multimillionaires and billionaires, and even if you do, you can't pick it up properly."
In fact, some experts believe the amount of assets being held offshore is so large that accounting for it fully would radically alter the balance of financial power between countries. The French economist Thomas Piketty, an expert on inequality who helps compile the World Top Incomes Database, says research by his colleagues has shown that "the wealth held in tax havens is probably sufficiently substantial to turn Europe into a very large net creditor with respect to the rest of the world."
In other words, even a solution to the eurozone's seemingly endless sovereign debt crisis might be within reach – if only Europe's governments could get a grip on the wallets of their own wealthiest citizens.
quote:US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s
Associated Press= WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.
The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.
Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.
Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.
In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.
"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.
He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.
"I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.
Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget," she said.
The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.
The analysts' estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.
Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.
Demographers also say:
—Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels — 15 percent to 16 percent — will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.
—Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.
—Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.
—Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.
—Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.
Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.
"I've always been the guy who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.
Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses.
"You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.
The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama's stimulus package.
An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it is now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.
A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn't expected to be released until after the November election. Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.
Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose "cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help reduce the budget deficit.
Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax credits for the poor.
The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job.
His unemployment aid has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.
Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn't decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic problems. "They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said, adding, "I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where else I can go."
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Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Lakewood, Colo., Ken Ritter and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami and AP Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
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Online:
Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov
National Association of State Budget Officers: http://www.nasbo.org
quote:
quote:Shocking video has emerged which depicts police officers firing rubber bullets into a rioting crowd which includes women and children.
The footage also shows a police dog rushing in to the fray and nearly knocking over a mother who was pushing her baby in a stroller.
The violent scenes came in the wake of an incident where a 24-year-old man was shot dead after running away from police, two of whom have now been suspended.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.u(...)n.html#ixzz21SXsIdpd
quote:Anaheim protesters clash with riot police over shooting of unarmed man
Violence erupts during fourth night of protests after death of Manuel Angel Diaz, who was shot by police on Saturday
Protesters clashed with police in Anaheim, California on Tuesday during the fourth night of demonstrations following the shooting death of an unarmed man.
Police fired pepper-spray projectiles and rubber bullets after some 500 people had gathered at city hall. Shop windows were smashed by some protesters and there were 24 arrests, police said.
Manuel Angel Diaz was shot dead by police on Saturday afternoon in Anaheim. Officers have admitted Diaz was not carrying a gun when he was killed.
The violence broke out after protesters demonstrated outside a meeting at city hall to discuss Diaz's shooting. Police prevented people from attending the meeting when it became too crowded, before issuing a dispersal order at about 9pm.
NBClosangeles.com reportedreported that "within minutes" protesters were fleeing the area as police fired pepper balls at the crowd. Police also used batons to clear protesters, some of whom threw objects and chanted at the police, according to reports.
Fires broke out as the evening progressed, while officers with shotguns guarded shops after protesters smashed the windows of at least six stores. A witness told Reuters that protesters had thrown chairs through the windows of a Starbucks.
Anaheim police spokesman Sergeant Bob Dunn said 20 adults and four minors were arrested. He said a police officer, two members of the media and some protesters were injured, but no one was taken to hospital.
One man who was in the crowd, Geoffrey Giraffe, wrote on Twitter that a man had been shot in the head by a rubber bullet while retreating from police. He posted a picture which showed a man bleeding from a cut to the back of his head.
An Anaheim resident who lives close to where the protests took place told the Guardian she could hear sirens and helicopters all afternoon and into the night.
"I was very concerned, since I live near and shop in the shopping center which had broken windows," said the woman, who did not want to be named. She said she was forced to stay in as "many of the major streets near my house were blocked off", however she added that the protests "seemed to be disorganised".
Police say Diaz, 25, had fled from officers who approached him as he stood by a car in an alley with two other men. Police said he was a known gang member but have admitted he was not carrying a gun when he was killed. Video footage showed officers standing over his body.
Residents have accused police of racial profiling, and Diaz's mother, Genevieve Huizar, filed a civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the police department on Tuesday. The suit alleges that the unarmed Diaz was shot execution style with a shot to the back of the head after he had already been shot in the leg, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Another man, Joel Mathew Acevedo, was shot and killed after he fired at an officer on Sunday night, police said. The police union has issued a statement defending the officers involved in the shootings. It said both men killed were gang members who had criminal records. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the agency is conducting a review to determine whether a civil rights investigation is warranted.
Diaz and Acevedo's deaths bring to five the number of people killed by police shootings in Anaheim this year. There have been eight shootings in the city this year involving the police, according to officials.
quote:Accusations of Police Misconduct Documented in Lawyers’ Report on Occupy Protests
During Occupy Wall Street protests New York police officers obstructed news reporters and legal observers, conducted frequent surveillance, wrongly limited public gatherings and enforced arbitrary rules, a group of lawyers said in a lengthy report issued on Wednesday.
The group, called the Protest and Assembly Rights Project, which included people involved with the law clinics at New York University School of Law and Fordham Law School, said that they had cataloged hundreds of instances of what they described as excessive force and other forms of police misconduct said to have taken place since September, when the Occupy Wall Street movement began.
Although the report referred to some well-known events, including Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna’s use of pepper spray, it also detailed specific instances of alleged misconduct that had not appeared in news reports.
For instance, the report described a cafe employee stepping out of his workplace on Sept. 24 and using a camera to document arrests near Union Square before being confronted by a senior officer. The report went on to state: “Video then shows the officer grabbing the employee by the wrist, and flipping him hard to the ground face-first, in what was described as a ‘judo-flip.’ The employee stated that he was subsequently charged with ‘blocking traffic’ and ‘obstructing justice’.”
In a more recent episode, Sarah Knuckey, a law professor and one of the report’s authors, said she witnessed a police commander grab a man who was complaining of an injured shoulder while being arrested during a student march on May 30. Ms. Knuckey said that the commander repeatedly shoved the man’s shoulder while handcuffing him, then cursed and accused him of lying, when he shouted in pain. Shortly afterward, Ms. Knuckey said, emergency medical technicians determined that the man had a broken clavicle.
The report complained that there had been “near-complete impunity for alleged abuses” and said that the conduct amounted to a “a complex mapping of protest suppression.”
There have been hundreds of gatherings and marches and more than 2,000 arrests in New York City since the Occupy protests began last fall. During that time, Ms. Knuckey said, many police officers had acted in an exemplary fashion. But, she added, multiple episodes of intimidation had created a pattern of disturbing and unlawful behavior.
A police department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The report’s authors said that senior members of the police department cited continuing litigation in declining to talk with them.
In May, an assistant deputy commissioner in the police department’s legal bureau wrote to the authors, saying that the Police Department considered its actions lawful and added that the police “had accommodated on an almost daily basis since last fall numerous large groups of demonstrators and marchers, all with virtually no cooperation, notice or advance planning from Occupy Wall Street representatives.”
In addition to detailing 130 instances of what was described as excessive or unnecessary force, the report said that officers often stopped news reporters or legal monitors from witnessing such events.
The report also describes instances in which the authors say officers have chilled First Amendment expression through near constant surveillance with video cameras and by sometimes questioning protesters about political activities. The report also described a common practice of preventing protesters from gathering in areas that are open to the public, like parks, plazas and sidewalks.
“Attempts by protesters to understand the basis for the closure, or obtain clear directions from the police are most often ignored or answered perfunctorily,” the report stated. “Sometimes queries are answered with an arrest threat or an arrest.”
The authors called for the city to establish an inspector general to oversee the police department, a review of the city’s response to the protests, the prosecution of officers found to have broken laws and the creation of new guidelines for policing protests. If the city did not respond, the authors said, they would ask the United States Department of Justice to investigate their complaints.
quote:Hundreds protest against Anaheim police
(CBS/AP) In the ninth consecutive day of protests more than 200 people gathered outside Anaheim Police Department headquarters Sunday, to demonstrate against recent officer-involved shootings and to issue a call for community peace.
The Orange County Register reports a separate group of about 100 people silently marched along a two-mile stretch of a main thoroughfare.
Nine people were arrested in the mostly-peaceful demonstrations. Sgt. Bob Dunn says most of those arrested face minor charges including failure to disperse and blocking traffic.
This was in marked contrast to protests last weekend and Tuesday, when tensions were extremely high and dozens were arrested. Police shot crowds with bean bags and rubber bullets last Saturday and accidentally released a police dog on one man.
Sunday's demonstrations occurred just hours before an evening memorial service for Manuel Diaz, a 25-year-old man who was shot dead July 21.
The fatal shooting touched off days of violence, and preceded another police shooting the next day, when police shot to death Joel Acevedo, a suspected gang member they say fired at officers following a pursuit.
Last Tuesday, more than 20 businesses were damaged when protest turned to riot. Windows were broken at police headquarters and City Hall, and scores of protesters threw rocks and bottles at police cruisers.
Sunday's protest began around noon outside Anaheim police headquarters.
KCAL correspondent Bobby Kaple reports police were ready for the crowds, noting, "They are in battle gear."
The police presence was heavy. Many were on horseback and there were tactical units on several key rooftops.
quote:DHS gears up for civil unrest prior to presidential elections
The Department of Homeland Security has ordered masses of riot gear equipment to prepare for potential significant domestic riots at the Republican National Convention, Democratic National Convention and next year’s presidential inauguration.
The DHS submitted a rushed solicitation to the Federal Business Opportunities site on Wednesday, which is a portal for Federal government procurement requisitions over $25,000. The request gave the potential suppliers only one day to submit their proposals and a 15-day delivery requirement to Alexandria, Virginia.
As the brief explains, “the objective of this effort is to procure riot gear to prepare for the 2012 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, the 2013 Presidential Inauguration and other future similar activities.”
The total amount ordered is about 150 sets of riot helmets, thigh and groin protectors, hard-shell shin guards and other riot gear.
Specifically, DHS is looking to obtain:
- “147 riot helmets” with “adjustable tactical face shield with liquid seal”
- “147 sets of upper body and shoulder protection”
- “152 sets of thigh and groin protection”
- “147 hard-shell shin guards” with “substantial protection from flying debris, non-ballistic weapons, and blows to the leg” and “optimized protective design for severe riot control or tactical situations.”
- “156 forearm protectors”
- “147 pairs of tactical gloves”
The riot gear will be worn by Federal Protective Service agents who are tasked with protecting property, grounds and buildings owned by the federal government.
The urgency of the order can be explained by the fact that there is a growing anticipation that many demonstrators will travel to the Republican National Convention (RNC), scheduled for August 27-30 in Tampa Bay, Florida, and Democratic National Convention (DNC), planned for September 3-6 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The RNC itself, for example, will have free speech zones, which will serve as containment quarters for the protesters by not allowing them to leave the designated areas and cause trouble.
Another recent DHS move to gear up was back in March of this year, when it gave the defense contractor ATK a deal to provide the DHS with 450 million .40 caliber hollow-point ammunition over a five year period.
On top of that, the DHS has recently purchased a number of bullet-proof checkpoint booths and hired hundreds of new security guards to protect government buildings.
Het artikel gaat verder.quote:[UPDATE: VIDEO PROOF] Was There a Police Plant at the Anaheim Protests Who Threw Bottles at Officers to Incite a Riot?
ORIGINAL POST, JULY 27, 10:26 A.M.: Facebook is currently abuzz with members of Kelly's Army who were at the Anaheim protest on Tuesday alleging that they caught a police plant.
According to onlookers, a blonde woman was shouting pro-police slogans in front of City Hall, at one point flashing her wrist and showing off a tattoo that seemed to be a badge number. But an hour later, they claim the same woman was seen yelling anti-police slogans and throwing water bottles at the police.
Witnesses tell the Weekly she was parading in front of the police line outside of City Hall, saying "These are good cops. You don't know the hard work they do. They're getting rid of gangsters."
Afterward, though, onlookers claim she began throwing bottles later that night. Multiple people saw her, and there's apparently video of the same woman playing the part of anarchist.
No one at the scene knew who this woman was.
"Prior to our friend...exposing her as a cop in front of national cameras, she was inciting a group of Anaheim protesters by throwing a water bottle and chanting aggressive orders pretending to be a protester," someone wrote on Facebook. "Had others followed her lead, and had [members of Kelly's Army] not called her out and kept the peace, 20 cops in riot gear would have been unleashed on the crowd. She had her badge # tattooed on her wrist.. Not only is she a provocateur she has really shitty taste in tats."
HA!
quote:UC Davis pepper-spray officer fired despite being cleared by internal panel
University police chief rejects internal affairs findings and fires John Pike, 39, for ignoring orders to use minimum force
The campus police officer who pepper-sprayed students during an Occupy protest at the University of California, Davis, has been fired despite being cleared of wrongdoing by an internal affairs investigation.
The university dismissed Lt John Pike on Tuesday, it has emerged, eight months after video footage of his use of the spray on seated students triggered worldwide indignation.
The incident on November 18, in which Pike appeared to casually use the spray on students who posed little or no threat, was viewed millions of times on the internet and put huge pressure on the university.
Authorities put the officer on paid leave pending investigations into his conduct and this week terminated his $110,000-a-year contract.
"The needs of the department do not justify your continued employment," UC Davis police chief Matthew Carmichael said in a leaked letter.
But in an unexpected development the Sacramento Bee reported that an internal affairs investigation concluded Pike, 39, who served on the campus force for 11 years, had acted reasonably. The 76-page report by a Sacramento law firm and private investigator hired by UC Davis interviewed at least 27 police officers, including Pike, plus chancellor Linda PB Katehi and other university leaders.
"For reasons detailed in this report, we conclude that Lieutenant Pike's use of pepper spray was reasonable under the circumstances," it states. "The visual of Lieutenant Pike spraying the seated protesters is indeed disturbing. However, it also fails to tell other important parts of the story."
The report, dated March 1, said Pike repeatedly warned students who had gathered on the quad to protest against rising tuition costs that they would be sprayed if they did not disperse, and that "the police officers were fully encircled by protesters who had locked arms and would not let the officers exit".
It concluded that Pike voiced serious concerns about plans to remove the protesters and wanted the operation called off.
Asked by investigators about perceptions of his "nonchalant demeanor" as he sprayed the students, Pike replied: "I take my job very seriously. Any, any … any application of force … umm … for me it's not a … it's not a thrill ride … it's not 'woo hoo, this is gonna be fun, I get to hurt somebody.' That's not it."
His goal was "to gain compliance, so that I can get my troops out of there, my suspects out of there, and get a job done," he told investigators.
"So, if that's a critique, that I did my job in a manner-so-factly that I looked relaxed, well, then, maybe let's say that I'm relaxed because I'm professional."
Spraying was "appropriate" and "prevented further escalation" of the incident, he said. "Grappling [with students] would have escalated the force, whereas pepper spray took 'the fight out of them."
Other officers endorsed the view that they were under threat. Students have disputed that, saying the protest was peaceful.
A review of the report by a separate panel comprising a UC Davis police captain and the campus chief compliance officer was more critical of Pike.
In recommendations issued on April 2 it found some of Pike's actions "were not reasonable and prudent", that he lost "perspective on the operation as a whole" and showed "serious errors of judgment and deficiencies of leadership". It urged an "exonerated finding" and punishment ranging from demotion to a suspension of at least two weeks.
However, Carmichael, who took over the campus police earlier this year, rejected both reports. In a letter dated April 27, according to the Sacramento Bee, he accused Pike of ignoring orders to use minimum force and said he would be fired.
quote:Did the NYPD Break International Law in Suppressing Protest?
A report by a group of civil and human rights attorneys released Wednesday morning paints the clearest picture yet of the New York City police department's aggressive tactics and over-policing, all of which resulted in the systemic suppression of the basic rights of Occupy protesters.
The report, which chronicles events from late September 2011 up to July of 2012, extensively documents numerous ways in which the NYPD acted with excessive force, attempted to intimidate and harass members of the press, expelled activists from public space due to the content of their speech, and ultimately concludes that authorities broke international law in their handling of Occupy Wall Street.
The executive summary states, in plain language:
"The abusive practices documented in this report violate international law and suppress and chill protest rights, not only by undermining individual liberty, but also by causing both minor and serious physical injuries, inhibiting collective debate and the capacity to effectively press for social and economic change, and making people afraid to attend otherwise peaceful assemblies."
The authors of the report make several recommendations. First, they call for the city to enact a new, public protest policy, to be created in coordination with civil rights groups like the ACLU. Second, that Mayor Bloomberg establish an independent review of the policing of Occupy Wall Street since September 2011. Third, that New York State create an independent inspector-general to oversee the NYPD, and, if the state fails to do that, the report calls for the U.S. Department of Justice to step in to investigate the NYPD.
"The report calls for investigations and prosecutions of officials, and for new protest policing guidelines that ensure the NYPD respects core civil liberties and human rights," said Sarah Knuckey, Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law and Research Director of Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law, one of the report's main authors. "If these things are not done, the U.S. Department of Justice needs to step in and investigate official misconduct, and bring charges where appropriate."
The authors have filed the report – which focuses primarily on New York City, though subsequent reports will focus on other cities – with the DOJ, as well as with the United Nations as a formal complaint. They have also submitted it to the mayor's office, the NYPD, and the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB).
Many involved with Occupy will be familiar with much that's in the report, but its sheer scope makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And for international authorities who may be less well-acquainted with the less covered – though equally important – aspects of police repression, the report will likely prove a valuable tool.
"[This report] should serve as a wake-up call to the sleepwalkers who have not yet realized that the serious problems with the way New York City has been exercising its police powers are a real public health emergency that we have to deal with head-on and collectively, in a comprehensive and sustained way," Gideon Oliver, president of the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, told AlterNet.
Most shocking is the section titled "use of force", and the accompanying 36-page table that documents 130 incidents of violence police committed against Occupy activists. The list of incidents by its very nature couldn't be exhaustive, but is intended to show the wide range of force police used against activists. Some of the incidents are quite serious; punching, over-hand swinging of batons, and "intentionally applying very hard force to the broken clavicle of a handcuffed and compliant individual." Reading through the table leaves one with a dizzying sense of brutality, as ten months of condensed violence flash before one's eyes.
On October 14, the report states, an officer approached a protester, and punched him, knocking him to the ground. In an interview, the protester said, "I was walking away from him, I was not walking toward him . . . I was going away. I didn't say anything [to the officer]." On December 17, an ordained priest was punched in the temple by an officer, causing him to seek emergency treatment. There were several injuries on March 17 and 18, when Occupy activists attempted to reestablish an encampment in Zuccotti Park. The report lists many other serious uses of force, as well as scores of instances of shoving, pushing, and physically intimidating Occupy protesters.
The report documents seven known incidents of police using pepper spray, including the infamous Anthony Bologna fiasco. I can personally confirm that police used pepper spray on November 15, the night of the paramilitary style raid on the encampment.
Police used batons to attack protesters, but the weapons list doesn't stop there. The research team writes of instances in which barricades, or parts of barricades, have been used as weapons against protesters. On several occasions – November 17, January 1, March 17 and 21 – police picked up barricades and used them to shove crowds backward. A legal observer said the NYPD were using the barricades as a "weapon," while another observer said in an interview, "It wasn't just 'defending' or keeping the barricades in place – it was aggressive and using the barricades against people."
The report concludes, "the evidence strongly suggests that police use of force was unnecessary and disproportionate, in violation of international law."
The authors also document many instances of the police violating the freedom of the press. Again, this isn't news to journalists who have covered Occupy Wall Street, but to see all of the incidents together paints a grim picture of press freedoms in New York City. The most explicit example of press repression happened on November 15, the night of the eviction from Zuccotti Park. The report states there are at least ten confirmed cases of journalists being arrested either at the eviction or at protests the following day. That is a staggering number.
Citing the remarkable work of Josh Stearns of Free Press, who has kept a tally of journalists arrested covering Occupy actions around the country, the report claims that there have been "at least 85 instances of police arrests of journalists in 12 cities across the country, including at least 44 in New York City on 15 different dates." The chilling effect these arrests can have is clear. As a photographer said in an interview to the research team, "You never know what is going to happen. You might get hurt. You might get arrested. Just trying to get pictures."
I was one of those reporters, arrested while documenting an Occupy action on December 12. The officer turned to me and asked if I had official NYPD-issued press credentials, and when I said I didn't, he threw me to the ground and arrested me. (Official NYPD credentials are obtained by submitting examples of recent spot news reporting to the police's Deputy Commissioner, Public Information for review, a process that in some cases can take years to successfully navigate--and notably, requires reporters to do their work without credentials before they can be obtained. Credentials are only required to cross police lines, not to confirm that a reporter is "legitimate".)
This report is, significantly, not the first time lawyers have called for an independent position to be created to oversee the NYPD. As I reported for AlterNet, a federal lawsuit (in which I am a co-plaintiff) filed by civil rights attorneys claims that the NYPD is so out of control that they are incapable of policing themselves. Though Occupy isn't in the news as much as it once was, this report does the important work of reminding the public about the clear, potentially illegal, suppression the NYPD engaged in when dealing with Occupy Wall Street. And, just as importantly, it serves as a preview of what could happen in the future if the police aren't brought under control.
quote:NYPD will not back cop in Occupy pepper-spray lawsuit
The New York Police Department will not defend a 29-year veteran of the force being sued by Occupy Wall Street protesters, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The department’s rare move means Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna could be personally liable for damages that are awarded to Chelsea Elliott of Brooklyn and Jeanne Mansfield of Massachusetts, who sued him and the NYPD in February, as well as the city and other unidentified officers.
The suit accuses the city of not training its officers correctly, following an incident in September where Bologna was caught on video pepper-spraying several protesters who had seemingly already been contained behind orange plastic netting. The run-in became an early flashpoint in the Occupy movement.
In October, Bologna was stripped of 10 vacation days for “using pepper spray outside of department guidelines.” The women’s attorney, Aymen Aboushi, said the visibility it gained after being posted online was reflected in the NYPD’s distancing itself from Bologna.
“If it wasn’t on video, I think it would be another he said-she said case,” Aboushi said.
The NYPD Captains Endowment Association, of which Bologna is a member, will now cover the costs of his defense, but he is also asking the department to reverse its decision, according to his lawyer, Louis La Pietra.
“He wasn’t doing this as Anthony Bologna, mister,” La Pietra said. “He was doing this as Anthony Bologna, deputy inspector, NYPD.”
A New York University report last month blasted the NYPD for escalating tensions and harassing protesters, lawyers and journalists during the early Occupy protests in Zuccotti Park last November.
quote:New York Times complains to police over treatment of photographer
Photographer Robert Stolarik claims officer 'slammed' camera into his face before he was dragged to floor, kicked and arrested
The New York Times has complained to the city's police department after one of its photographers said he was assaulted by officers who arrested him on Saturday.
Robert Stolarik, a freelance photographer, claimed a New York Police Department (NYPD) officer "slammed" his camera into his face before he was dragged to the ground, kicked and arrested.
Stolarik was on assignment with two other reporters in the Bronx when he was stopped by police on Saturday evening.
Police ordered Stolarik to stop taking pictures of a teenage girl being arrested. When he refused, an officer reputedly grabbed Stolarik's camera and dragged him to the ground.
Stolarik claimed he was then kicked in the back and received scrapes and bruises on his face, legs and arms as a result of the arrest. He was charged with obstructing government administration and of resisting arrest.
The New York Times reported that a video of the arrest taken by another journalist showed Stolarik face down on the pavement beneath a huddle of about six police officers.
A spokeswoman for the New York Times told MediaGuardian: "In our view, Robert Stolarik, a freelance photographer working on behalf of The New York Times, was doing nothing more than his job when he was roughed up and arrested.
"This action is not in keeping with the agreement we have had with the NYPD and we plan to notify them of our distress about this today."
The NYPD said that Stolarik "violently resisted being handcuffed" and that an officer was cut on the hand during the arrest.
The police claimed that Stolarik "inadvertently" struck an officer in the face with his camera when he refused to leave the scene and stop taking photographs. A spokesman for the NYPD said the force had no further comment to make on Monday.
It is the third time since December the paper has written to the force about its treatment of Stolarik, who covered the Occupy Wall Street protests for the New York Times.
George Freeman, a lawyer for the New York Times, added: "This is an incident where it seemed the photographer was doing his job taking photographs, and the police overeacted and attempted to intimidate him and block him, leading to his arrest."
Stolarik is scheduled to appear in court in November.
quote:The Koch Brothers Go After Zach Galifianakis and ‘The Campaign’
In The Campaign, out this weekend, Will Ferrell plays an incumbent Congressman who’s running what’s supposed to be an uncontested race, when a pair of wealth brothers by the name of Motch put up a genial dummy, played by Zach Galifianakis, to run against him. Unsurprisingly, Galifianakis confirmed that the brothers, played in the movie by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow, are meant to be a stand-in for the real-life industrialists and right-wing political funders Charles and David Koch, and mentioned in a recent interview that he found the pair “creepy.”
Other public figures might consider the movie, and Galifianakis’ uneasiness about their influence to be a tribute to their effectiveness. But the Kochs don’t seem to be taking it that way. Phillip Ellender, Koch Industries’ president for government affairs, issued a statement on the brothers’ behalf, saying:
. Last we checked, the movie is a comedy. Maybe more to the point is that it’s laughable to take political guidance or moral instruction from a guy who makes obscene gestures with a monkey on a bus in Bangkok…We disagree with his uninformed characterization of Koch and our beliefs. His comments, which appear to be based on false attacks made by our political opponents, demonstrate a lack of understanding of our longstanding support of individual freedom, freedom of expression, and constitutional rights.
While the Koch brothers have become a staple of political coverage, it’s taken longer for them to become fixtures in popular culture, and Ellender’s response suggests they’re not enjoying the attention. This summer, they’ve made an appearance by name in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom, when anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) attacked guests on his show who were members of Tea Party groups for not being aware of who their funders were. His coverage earned a rebuke from network owner Leona Lansing (a scenery-munching Jane Fonda), who cautioned Will’s producer against further coverage of the Kochs less they pull their brands’ advertisements from the company. declared “I got where I am by knowing who to fear,” she said. “They drop Brinks trucks on people they disagree with.” It was a weirdly sinister portrayal, in contrast to the lighter satire The Campaign is expected to offer up.
But as long as the Koch brothers are making heavy investments in political campaigns and grass-roots organizing, they’re probably going to keep popping up in movies and television, at least until someone gets the idea of painting casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as a malevolent power behind the throne, which will probably take Adelson deciding to support someone more credible than Newt Gingrich. Until then, Charles and David Koch might as well enjoy the spectacle of liberals fearing them, and the debate over which one of them Aykroyd and Lithgow are each meant to be.
quote:Brookfield Allegedly Urges Cops To Have "Zero Tolerance" For OWS At Zuccotti Park
Since Zuccotti Park was raided and cleared last November, a seemingly arbitrary set of rules enforced by Brookfield Properties and the NYPD have made entering and enjoying the public park akin to being subjected to a TSA screening. This document, allegedly distributed by Brookfield to the phalanx of security guards it employs to mind the park, specifically identifies those rules and acknowledges the "fluid situation" that exists in balancing the rights of park patrons with the interests of a multibillion dollar corporation, and seemingly suggests that security personnel "remind" any "resistant" police officers that their Chief of Department is expecting their cooperation.
The alleged memo instructs the "tour supervisor" to "identify and make introduction to the highest ranking member of the NYPD" stationed at the park. Here is the passage that suggests that security employees "remind" NYPD officers of their duty to obey the highest-ranking uniformed officer in their department:
. NYPD supervisors that prove to be resistant to enforcing the rules of the park should be reminded that Chief Esposito has agreed to this set of rules and wanted them to be enforced with zero tolerance.
In this video, Chief Esposito can be seen shoving Occupy Wall Street protesters onto the sidewalk during a demonstration in Lower Manhattan.
The rules stated in the alleged memo (which aren't much of a surprise to anyone who has visited the park since the raid) go beyond the set of regulations upheld by a Manhattan Supreme Court Justice last fall and stipulate that patron may only bring "ONE BLANKET…(or "Snuggie")" into the park, and that "the establishment of a "Library," "Kitchen," etc, is prohibited." Musical instruments, except drums, are permitted, and if they are in a carrying case "the case must be open and visual inspection to confirm it is an instrument (rules regarding instruments are in flux)."
According to a livestreamer who witnessed NYPD personnel reading the document, the paper was allegedly given in error to a patron of the park by a Brookfield employee. We've reached out to Brookfield and the NYPD for comment, and will update when we receive any additional information. The entire document is below.
quote:Open Letter from Anonymous regarding #opAnaheim
Subject: Flash mob this Saturday, August 18, 2012
Dear Citizens of Anaheim,
This is Anonymous from Operation Anaheim.
As you were chanting outside city hall, “THE WORLD IS WATCHING” to the police, we watched youtube videos of citizens being shot in Anaheim, and then saw a mother with child being attacked by a police canine.
When we saw that, we were outraged. We started working as a collective to help you fight these racist cops. In solidarity with Anaheim, we have been working online, trying to bring awareness to this issue. We have also sent food to protesters on the ground, and will continue to support you during future protests.
When we saw the paramilitary police force respond to peaceful protesters, we were shocked.
When we saw youtube videos of children describing being shot by police, we were disgusted. ( http://gg.gg/fp0)
In complete solidarity with you all, we understand that your community has been terrorized by the police and paramilitary forces that have been called in to suppress your protests. Because of the past few stressful weeks, in a planned meeting with our on-the-ground informants, we would like to help the community unwind.
We’re now calling on the citizens of Anaheim, and outlying areas to assemble for a flash mob on their streets, away from the police. We’re calling for the citizens of Anaheim and their supporters to take a night off and relax, please. On Saturday, August 18, 2012 at 5pm, please leave your home and head into the streets and try to find others. March down your sidewalks looking for for other people in your community. Start to gather in a decentralized fashion using Twitter, texting and phones to gather everyone to a single spot decided by the rule of mass mob.
Please bring drums, boomboxes, drinks, and share your stories over a peaceful evening where there is no other call to action against the police. Take the night off and build your community.
We encourage all supporters in the area surrounding Anaheim to join in solidarity with the residents of Anaheim.
We continue to stand with you, Anaheim. We will be posting news on our Twitter @opAnaheim or email us at opanaheim@yandex.com .
Local 99% groups to alert:
@OccupySD / http://www.sandiegooccupy.org/forum
web@Occupylosangeles.org / http://occupylosangeles.org/?q=forum
email to mexicamovement@sbcglobal.net
http://nationalbrownberets.com/contactus.html
In solidarity,
We are Anonymous Operation Anaheim and the 99%.
Together we are legion,
We do not forgive,
We do not forget,
Anaheim,
Expect to party with us.
quote:Occupier charged with terroristic felony for protesting in front of bank
A protester belonging to an Occupy Wall Street group in rural Pennsylvania is being charged with felony attempted bank robbery and a terrorism-related charge for holding signs up during a demonstration at a local Wells Fargo branch.
David C. Gorczynski, 22, was charged on Tuesday with attempted bank robbery and terroristic threatening, both felonies, as well as one misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. Police detained him after he walked into an Easton, PA Wells Fargo branch with a sign that read “You’re being robbed” and another that said “Give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob a country.”
Gorczynski was at the Wells Fargo bank as part of a demonstration led by Occupy Easton, the small Pennsylvania town’s OWS offshoot.
Easton is located around 60 miles outside of Philadelphia and has a population of only 26,800 according to the 2010 census.
The Express-Times reports that police were alerted to the branch after a bank teller hit an alarm that alerted the authorities.
"I think our guys did what they had to do in this instance," Easton police Chief Carl Scalzo tells the paper. "At the end of the day, if we get a report of a panic alarm at a bank, we're going to respond accordingly."
Chief Scalzo adds that Gorczynski’s First Amendment right to protest freely can’t trump any allegations that he may have been behind something more sinister.
"We can't allow the perceived idea of protesting to be a defense to criminality," Scalzo says in response to reports that the suspect was simply demonstrating Wall Street corruption. "People have to understand if they want to protest, there's a line."
Mary Catherine Roper of the American Civil Liberties Union tells the paper that the charges seem “overzealous . . . especially given the clear political nature of the statements.”
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli tells The Express-Times, “I'm very on top of this" and claims he is investigating whether or not the charges were justified.
“He is not the criminal. If the police were truly there to protect and serve the taxpayers, the banksters would be arrested and this man would be called a hero,” the Occupy Easton group responds on Facebook.
Gorczynski was released on $10,000 bond after a defense and bail fund established online helped bring in enough money to buy his freedom after his arrest.
quote:WIKILEAKS: Surveillance Cameras Around The Country Are Being Used In A Huge Spy Network
The U.S. cable networks won't be covering this one tonight (not accurately, anyway), but Trapwire is making the rounds on social media today—it reportedly became a Trending hashtag on Twitter earlier in the day.
Trapwire is the name of a program revealed in the latest Wikileaks bonanza—it is the mother of all leaks, by the way. Trapwire would make something like disclosure of UFO contact or imminent failure of a major U.S. bank fairly boring news by comparison.
And the ambitious techno-fascists behind Trapwire seem to be quite disappointed that word is getting out so swiftly; the Wikileaks web site is reportedly sustaining 10GB worth of DDoS attacks each second, which is massive.
Anyway, here's what Trapwire is, according to Russian-state owned media network RT (apologies for citing "foreign media"... if we had a free press, I'd be citing something published here by an American media conglomerate): "Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology—and have installed it across the U.S. under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.
Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community.
The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented. The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing."
So: those spooky new "circular" dark globe cameras installed in your neighborhood park, town, or city—they aren't just passively monitoring. They're plugged into Trapwire and they are potentially monitoring every single person via facial recognition.
In related news, the Obama administration is fighting in federal court this week for the ability to imprison American citizens under NDAA's indefinite detention provisions—and anyone else—without charge or trial, on suspicion alone.
So we have a widespread network of surveillance cameras across America monitoring us and reporting suspicious activity back to a centralized analysis center, mixed in with the ability to imprison people via military force on the basis of suspicious activity alone. I don't see how that could possibly go wrong. Nope, not at all. We all know the government, and algorithmic computer programs, never make mistakes.
Here's what is also so disturbing about this whole NDAA business: "This past week's hearing was even more terrifying. Government attorneys again, in this hearing, presented no evidence to support their position and brought forth no witnesses. Most incredibly, Obama's attorneys refused to assure the court, when questioned, that the NDAA's section 1021 – the provision that permits reporters and others who have not committed crimes to be detained without trial – has not been applied by the U.S. government anywhere in the world after Judge Forrest's injunction. In other words, they were telling a U.S. federal judge that they could not, or would not, state whether Obama's government had complied with the legal injunction that she had laid down before them. To this, Judge Forrest responded that if the provision had indeed been applied, the United States government would be in contempt of court."
If none of this bothers you, please don't follow me on Twitter, because nothing I report on will be of interest to you. Go back to watching the television news network of your choice, where you will hear about Romney's latest campaign ads, and whether Obamacare will increase the cost of delivery pizza by 14 to 16 cents.
quote:
quote:I. The Bottom Line: TrapWire's Role In International Intelligence Too Important To Stay Cloaked
II. Introduction
III. What Does TrapWire Do?
IV. Who Uses TrapWire?
V. Who/What Is TrapWire?
VI. Stratfor and TrapWire's Troubling Revolving Doors
quote:Bloomberg unveils new crime-fighting system for New York
NEW YORK (CNN) — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Wednesday, August 8th a new crime monitoring system — developed with Microsoft — designed to allow law enforcement to better collect data and review the city in real time, using a collection of cameras, license-plate readers and other resources.
“This new system capitalizes on new powerful policing software that allows police officers and other personnel to more quickly access relevant information gathered from existing cameras, 911 calls, previous crime reports and other existing tools and technology,” Bloomberg said Wednesday.
The Domain Awareness System is said to allow authorities to review live video feeds and quickly check suspect arrest records, while expanding New York City’s radiation detection equipment and enlarging its existing database.
The project also has raised questions among civil rights activists concerned over the extending reach of law enforcement in New York.
But Bloomberg touted both its ability to increase public safety as well as its possible financial returns.
“Because the NYPD built the system in partnership with Microsoft, the sale of the product will generate revenue for the cty that will fund more new crime-prevention and counter-terrorism programs,” he said.
quote:Trapwire surveillance system exposed in document leak
Papers released by WikiLeaks show US department of homeland security paid $832,000 to deploy system in two cities
It sounds like something from the film Minority Report: a CCTV surveillance system that recognises people from their face or walk and analyses whether they might be about to commit a terrorist or criminal act. But Trapwire is real and, according to documents released online by WikiLeaks last week, is being used in a number of countries to try to monitor people and threats.
Founded by former CIA agents, Trapwire uses data from a network of CCTV systems and numberplate readers to figure out the threat level in huge numbers of locations. That means security officials can "focus on the highest priorities first, taking a proactive and collaborative approach to defence against attacks," say its creators.
The documents outlining Trapwire's existence and its deployment in the US were apparently obtained in a hack of computer systems belonging to the intelligence company Stratfor at the end of last year.
Documents from the US department of homeland security show that it paid $832,000 to deploy Trapwire in Washington DC and Seattle.
Stratfor describes Trapwire as "a unique, predictive software system designed to detect patterns of pre-attack surveillance and logistical planning", and cites the Washington DC police chief mentioning it during a Senate committee hearing. It serves "a wide range of law enforcement personnel and public and private security officials domestically and internationally", Stratfor says.
Some have expressed doubts that Trapwire could really forecast terrorist acts based on data from cameras, but Rik Ferguson, security consultant at Trend Micro, said the software for such systems had existed for some time.
"There's a lot of crossover between CCTV and facial recognition," he said. "It's feasible to have a camera looking for suspicious behaviour – for example, in a computer server room it could recognise someone via facial recognition or your gait, then can identify them from the card they swipe to get in, and then know whether it's suspicious if they're meant to be a cleaner and they sit down at a computer terminal."
The claims might seem overblown, but then the idea that the US could have an international monitoring system seemed absurd until the discovery of the Echelon system, used by the US to eavesdrop on electronic communications internationally.
Trapwire has not yet commented on the leak.
quote:"Anti-Occupy" law ends American's right to protest
Last year’s “occupy movement” scared the government. On March 8, President Obama signed a law that makes protesting more difficult and more criminal. The law is titled the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act, and it passed unanimously in the Senate and with only three “no” votes in the House. It was called the "Trepass Bill" by Congress and the "anti-Occupy law" by everyone else who commented.
The law “improves” public grounds by forcing people - protestors - elsewhere. It amends an older law that made it a federal crime to “willfully and knowingly” enter a restricted space. Now you will be found guilty of this offense if you simply “knowingly” enter a restricted area, even if you did not know it was illegal to do so. The Department of Homeland Security can designate an event as one of “national significance,” making protests or demonstrations near the event illegal.
The law makes it punishable by up to ten years in jail to protest anywhere the Secret Service “is or will be temporarily visiting,” or anywhere they might be guarding someone. Does the name Secret tell you anything about your chances of knowing where they are? The law allows for conviction if you are “disorderly or disruptive,” or if you “impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.” You can no longer heckle or “boo” at a political candidate’s speech, as that would be disruptive.
quote:Wall Street Tightens Grip on Public Water as Local Residents Suffer
Investment bankers and other major financial players are increasingly swooping in on public water utilities and other municipal services in cash strapped towns to the detriment of local residents, according to a new report released today by advocacy group Food & Water Watch. Vulture capitalists are increasingly facilitating the privatization of public infrastructure, taking control of public utilities while skimping on services and causing steep price hikes -- all the while making massive profits.
According to the report, private equity firms show up to hurting municipalities as hired financial advisers and subsequently push through privatization deals. Massive profits are made in the process, as such advisers stand to make great financial gains through these deals. Following privatization, local residents are continually denied sufficient services and face steep consumer price hikes in the under-regulated process.
“Like Wall Street’s manipulation of the housing market in the previous decade, private equity firms and investment bankers are increasingly looking to cash in on one of our most essential resources—water,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “These deals are ultimately a bum deal for consumers, who will end up paying the price through increased water bills and degraded service.”
The report titled, Private Equity, Public Inequity: The Public Cost of Private Equity Takeovers of U.S. Water Infrastructure reveals that as of January 2012, private equity players had raised $186 billion through 276 infrastructure funds. And private equity firms are armed with more than $100 billion for infrastructure worldwide.
Key findings also include:
. Major financial firms are promoting large, complex and risky privatization deals, which essentially act as high-interest credit cards to finance budget shortfalls and infrastructure projects. Cash-strapped governments lack the bargaining power and know-how to properly negotiate these deals.
. Private equity takeovers tend to be highly leveraged and risky.
. Private equity players are notorious tax avoiders and evaders. In the last five years, for example, the Carlyle Group made more than $4 billion in profit but paid an effective income tax rate of only 2 percent.
. Private equity takeovers restrict transparency and accountability.
"When municipalities privatize their drinking and wastewater systems to fill budget shortfalls, private equity firms have greater bargaining power to negotiate more lucrative deals. Many local governments, especially cash-strapped ones, are ill-equipped to evaluate proposals from multinational finance firms or to negotiate a fair contract, making them vulnerable to expensive, unnecessary deals," Food and Water Watch writes today.
“Private equity players aren’t investing in water out of a sense of civic responsibility. Their first and foremost motivation is profits, which has already proven incompatible with delivering an essential resource to consumers,” added Hauter.
quote:Twitter argues fourth amendment defence over judge's Occupy order
Site appeals against court request to hand over details of tweets relating to Occupy activist charged with disorderly conduct
Twitter has lodged an appeal against a New York judge's decision that it must hand over detailed information related to an Occupy Wall Street protester charged with disorderly conduct.
In July, Twitter was ordered to hand over almost three months' worth of messages and other details related to the account of activist Malcolm Harris. Harris was among the hundreds of protesters accused of disorderly conduct during a protest on Brooklyn bridge last October.
Prosecutors have argued that Harris's tweets show he knew he should not have been on the bridge. He has filed his own appeal, arguing that the judge's ruling would hand over details of where he was and who he spoke to, as well as his tweets, and falls "so far outside the realm of a legitimate ruling that we are entitled to a pre-trial appeal".
Twitter has argued that the posts belonged to Harris and, as such, it would be violating his fourth amendment right against unreasonable searches if it were to disclose the communications without first receiving a search warrant.
The case has evolved into a closely watched legal scrap over the extent of the US authorities' right to access information from social networks. Twitter has previously resisted attempts by the US authorities to access the account of Icelandic MP and former WikiLeaks associate Birgitta Jónsdóttir.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a motion with the court in support of Twitter. ACLU attorney Aden Fine said: "Under the first and fourth amendments, we have the right to speak freely on the internet, safe in the knowledge that the government can't get information about our speech without a warrant and without satisfying first amendment scrutiny.
"We're hopeful that Twitter's appeal will overturn the criminal court's dangerous decision, and reaffirm that we retain our constitutional rights to speech and privacy online, as well as offline."
The New York district attorney's office issued a subpoena to Twitter in January calling on the firm to hand over "any and all user information, including email address, as well as any and all tweets" for the period in question.
Last month Manhattan criminal court judge Matthew Sciarrino rejected most of Twitter arguments that the authorities were infringing Harris's constitutional rights, and said that Twitter owned his messages.
Sciarrino said he would review all the material that he ordered turned over and would pass on "relevant portions" to prosecutors.
quote:We Don’t Need No Stinking Warrant: The Disturbing, Unchecked Rise of the Administrative Subpoena
When Golden Valley Electric Association of rural Alaska got an administrative subpoena from the Drug Enforcement Administration in December 2010 seeking electricity bill information on three customers, the company did what it usually does with subpoenas — it ignored them.
That’s the association’s customer privacy policy, because administrative subpoenas aren’t approved by a judge.
But by law, utilities must hand over customer records — which include any billing and payment information, phone numbers and power consumption data — to the DEA without court warrants if drug agents believe the data is “relevant” to an investigation. So the utility eventually complied, after losing a legal fight earlier this month.
Meet the administrative subpoena (.pdf): With a federal official’s signature, banks, hospitals, bookstores, telecommunications companies and even utilities and internet service providers — virtually all businesses — are required to hand over sensitive data on individuals or corporations, as long as a government agent declares the information is relevant to an investigation. Via a wide range of laws, Congress has authorized the government to bypass the Fourth Amendment — the constitutional guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that requires a probable-cause warrant signed by a judge.
In fact, there are roughly 335 federal statutes on the books (.pdf) passed by Congress giving dozens upon dozens of federal agencies the power of the administrative subpoena, according to interviews and government reports. (.pdf)
“I think this is out of control. What has happened is, unfortunately, these statutes have been on the books for many, many years and the courts have acquiesced,” said Joe Evans, the utility’s attorney.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that federal officials from a broad spectrum of government agencies issue them hundreds of thousands of times annually. But none of the agencies are required to disclose fully how often they utilize them — meaning there is little, if any, oversight of this tactic that’s increasingly used in the war on drugs, the war on terror and, seemingly, the war on Americans’ constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable government trespass into their lives.
That’s despite proof that FBI agents given such powers under the Patriot Act quickly began to abuse them and illegally collected Americans’ communications records, including those of reporters. Two scathing reports from the Justice Department’s Inspector General uncovered routine and pervasive illegal use of administrative subpoenas by FBI anti-terrorism agents given nearly carte blanche authority to demand records about Americans’ communications with no supervision.
When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, perhaps the nation’s most liberal appeals court based in San Francisco, ordered Golden Valley to fork over the data earlier this month, the court said the case was “easily” decided because the records were “relevant” to a government drug investigation.
With the data the Alaska utility handed over, the DEA may then use further administrative subpoenas to acquire the suspected indoor-dope growers’ phone records, stored e-mails, and perhaps credit-card purchasing histories — all to build a case to acquire a probable-cause warrant to physically search their homes and businesses.
But the administrative subpoena doesn’t just apply to utility records and drug cases. Congress has spread the authority across a huge swath of the U.S. government, for investigating everything from hazardous waste disposal, the environment, atomic energy, child exploitation, food stamp fraud, medical insurance fraud, terrorism, securities violations, satellites, seals, student loans, and for breaches of dozens of laws pertaining to fruits, vegetables, livestock and crops.
Not one of the government agencies with some of the broadest administrative subpoena powers Wired contacted, including the departments of Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, would voluntarily hand over data detailing how often they issued administrative subpoenas.
The Drug Enforcement Administration obtained the power under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and is believed to be among the biggest issuers of administrative subpoenas.
“It’s a tool in the toolbox we have to build a drug investigation. Obviously, a much, much lower threshold than a search warrant,” said Lawrence Payne, a DEA spokesman, referring to the administrative subpoena generically. Payne declined to discuss individual cases.
Payne said in a telephone interview that no database was kept on the number of administrative subpoenas the DEA issued.
But in 2006, Ava Cooper Davis, the DEA’s deputy assistant administrator, told a congressional hearing, “The administrative subpoena must have a DEA case file number, be signed by the investigator’s supervisor, and be given a sequential number for recording in a log book or computer database so that a particular field office can track and account for any administrative subpoenas issued by that office.”
After being shown Davis’ statement, Payne then told Wired to send in a Freedom of Information Act request, as did some of the local DEA offices we contacted, if they got back to us at all. “Would suggest a FOIA request to see whether you can get a number of administrative subpoenas. Our databases have changed over the years as far as how things are tracked and we don’t have access to those in public affairs unfortunately,” Payne said in an e-mail.
He said the agency has “never” been asked how many times it issued administrative subpoenas.
Amy Baggio, a Portland, Oregon federal public defender representing drug defendants for a decade, said DEA agents “use these like a doctor’s prescription pad on their desk.” Sometimes, she said, they issue “hundreds upon hundreds of them” for a single prosecution — often targeting mobile phone records.
“They are using them exponentially more in all types of federal criminal investigations. I’m seeing them in every drug case now,” Baggio said. “Nobody is watching what they are doing. I perceive a complete lack of oversight because there isn’t any required.”
A typical DEA investigation might start with an informant or an arrested dealer suspected of drug trafficking, she said. The authorities will use an administrative subpoena to get that target’s phone records — logs of the incoming and outgoing calls — and text-message logs of the numbers of incoming and outgoing texts. Then the DEA will administratively subpoena that same information for the phone numbers disclosed from the original subpoena, and so on, she said.
Often, Baggio said, the records not only show incoming and outgoing communications, they also highlight the mobile towers a phone pinged when performing that communication.
“Then they try to make a connection for drug activity and they do that again and again,” Baggio said. “They used a subpoena to know that my client used a phone up in Canada, but he said he was playing soccer with his kids in Salem.” That client is doing 11 years on drug trafficking charges, thanks to an investigation, Baggio said, that commenced with the use of administrative subpoenas.
The FBI was as tight-lipped as the DEA about the number of administrative subpoenas it issues.
Susan McKee, an FBI spokeswoman, suggested that some of the bureau’s figures for how many administrative subpoenas it has issued, for as many years back as possible, “may be classified.”
In a follow-up e-mail, McKee offered the same advice as the DEA.
“I am sorry the statistics you are looking for are not readily available. I would suggest that you explore the FOIA process,” she said.
If all of those statistics are classified, that would be very odd. The FBI is required to report annually how often they use the terrorism and espionage-specific administrative subpoenas known as National Security Letters to target Americans.
In all, the bureau has reported issuing 290,000 National Security Letters directed at Americans in the past decade.
But those aimed at foreigners are not required to be accounted for publicly. Likewise, FBI anti-terrorism requests for subscriber information — the name and phone numbers associated with phone, e-mail or Twitter accounts for example, aren’t included in that tally either, regardless if the account holder is an American or foreigner.
All of which means that, even in the one instance where public reporting is required of administrative subpoenas, the numbers are massively under-reported, according to Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“I think it’s ridiculous they won’t release the real numbers,” she said. Richardson speculated that the government has “something to hide.”
Some of the stranger statutes authorizing administrative subpoenas involve the Agriculture Department’s power to investigate breaches of the Floral Research and Consumer Information Act and the Fresh Cut Flowers and Fresh Cut Greens Promotion and Information Act. The Commerce Department has administrative subpoena power for enforcing laws relating to the Atlantic tuna and the Northern Pacific halibut. It also has those powers when it comes to enforcing the National Weather Modification Act of 1976, requiring “any person to submit a report before, during, or after that person may engage in any weather modification attempt or activity.”
In a 2002 government report, the Commerce Department said it had not used its administrative subpoena powers to enforce the National Weather Modification Act “in the recent past.” (.pdf) Susan Horowitz, a Commerce Department spokeswoman, urged Wired to send in a FOIA in a bid to obtain data surrounding how often it issues administrative subpoenas.
Lacking in all of these administrative subpoenas is Fourth Amendment scrutiny — in other words, judicial oversight. That’s because probable cause — the warrant standard — does not apply to the administrative subpoena. Often, the receiving party is gagged from disclosing them to the actual targets, who could, if notified, ask a judge to quash it.
And even when they are challenged in court, judges defer to Congress — the Fourth Amendment notwithstanding.
In one seminal case on the power of the administrative subpoena, the Supreme Court in 1950 instructed the lower courts that the subpoenas should not be quashed if “the inquiry is within the authority of the agency, the demand is not too indefinite and the information sought is reasonably relevant.”
In the mobile age, one of the biggest targets of the administrative subpoena appears to be the cellphone. AT&T, the nation’s second-largest mobile carrier, replied to a congressional inquiry in May that it had received 63,100 subpoenas for customer information in 2007. That more than doubled to 131,400 last year. (AT&T did not say whether any of the subpoenas were issued by a grand jury. AT&T declined to elaborate on the figures.)
By contrast, AT&T reported 36,900 court orders for subscriber data in 2007. That number grew to 49,700 court orders last year, a growth rate that’s anemic compared to the doubling of subpoenas in the same period.
In all, the nation’s mobile carriers reported that they responded to 1.3 million requests last year for subscriber information. Other than AT&T, most of the figures that the nine mobile carriers reported did not directly break down the numbers between warrants and subpoenas.
In a letter to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts), AT&T said it usually always positively responds to subpoenas except when “law enforcement may attempt to obtain information using a subpoena when a court order is required.” While there is much confusion as to when a court order is needed, they are generally required for wiretapping and sometimes for ongoing locational data.
Markey’s office did not respond for comment.
Many, including Baggio, charge that the government’s use of administrative subpoenas is often nothing less than a “fishing expedition.” And the courts don’t seem to mind.
In the Golden Valley case, the San Francisco federal appeals court said the outcome was a no-brainer, that Congress had spoken.
“We easily conclude that power consumption records at the three customer residences satisfy the relevance standard for the issuance of an administrative subpoena in a drug investigation,” the court ruled.
The decision seemingly trumps a Supreme Court ruling in 2001 that the authorities must obtain search warrants to employ thermal-imaging devices to detect indoor marijuana growing operations. Ironically, the justices ruled that the imaging devices, used outside a house, carry the potential to “shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy.”
Rewind to 1996, when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the drug-trafficking conviction of a man arrested aboard an Amtrak train in December 1993. A DEA agent issued an administrative subpoena demanding Amtrak hand over passenger lists and reservations for trains stopping in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the agent was based.
The agent reviewed the reservation information looking for passengers who paid cash, booked sleeping cars, and purchased tickets on the day of departure, “all of which in his experience suggested possible drug trafficking,” the appeals court said, in upholding the challenged subpoena.
Hilman Moffett was found to be carrying 162 pounds of baled marijuana in his luggage.
In one high-profile case, the Securities and Exchange Commission used the administrative subpoena power to help unwind the Enron financial scandal in 2003.
And a decade ago, the Justice Department used administrative subpoenas to investigate a Cleveland, Ohio, podiatrist for an alleged kickback scheme with two medical testing labs. The subpoenas sought the doctor’s professional journals, copies of his and his children’s bank and financial records, files of patients who were referred to the labs in question, and his tax returns.
In another example, a judge sided with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in 2007, ordering publisher McGraw-Hill to turn over documents concerning data used in one of its publications to calculate the price of natural gas as part of the government’s probe into a price-manipulation scandal.
Records obtained by a federal agency don’t have to stay with that agency or be destroyed, either. Some of them may be transferred to other agencies if “there is reason to believe that the records are relevant to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry of the receiving agency,” according to a Justice Department Criminal Resource Manual.
The records can be transferred to state agencies, too.
But the states may not need the federal government’s assistance. They have an undetermined number of statutes authorizing the issuance of their own administrative subpoenas. For instance, most every state has that authority when it comes to investigating child-support cases. (.pdf)
Consider the Boston case in which Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley issued an administrative subpoena in December demanding “subscriber information” for several alleged members of Anonymous as part of an investigation into who sabotaged Boston police’s website and released officers’ e-mails.
A Suffolk County judge in February sided with Conley’s administrative subpoena that ordered Twitter to hand over IP addresses of accounts identified as “Guido Fawkes,” “@p0isAn0N,” and “@OccupyBoston.”
Christopher Slobogin, a Vanderbilt Law School scholar who has written extensively on administrative subpoenas, said the power of the administrative subpoena was born at the turn of the 20th century, when the U.S. began developing the regulatory state.
Administrative subpoenas initially passed court muster since they were used by agencies to get records from companies to prosecute unlawful business practices, he said. Corporations weren’t thought to have the same privacy rights as individuals, and administrative subpoenas weren’t supposed to be used to get at private papers.
When the Supreme Court upheld that the Federal Trade Commission’s administrative subpoena of internal tobacco company records in 1924, Justice Wendell Holmes limited the power to companies, writing that anyone “who respects the spirit as well as the letter of the Fourth Amendment would be loath to believe that Congress intended to authorize one of its subordinate agencies to sweep all our traditions into the fire and to direct fishing expeditions into private papers.”
But times have changed.
“In some ways, they were a good thing if you were liberal,” Slobogin said of the administrative subpoena. “But they have migrated from corrupt businesses to people suspected of crime. They are fishing expeditions when there is no probable cause for a warrant.”
Het artikel gaat verder.quote:The 99% Take on the Republican National Convention
Despite mixed feelings about Obama, protesters fight Mitt Romney, the 'King of the 1%'
Politics is an elaborate chess match, and in St, Petersburg one small strike was staged against the Republican National convention on Aug. 26 that revealed the thrust of President Obama’s 2012 re-election strategy.
As panicky Republicans cancelled the first day of the convention on Monday because of Tropical Storm Isaac, the focus on Sunday was the “RNC Welcome Event” at Tropicana Field. These days no major convention event is complete without a counter-protest, and in downtown St. Petersburg nearly 500 people gathered Sunday to march to the sports stadium and voice their displeasure at what they derided as “the world’s largest cocktail party .”
Given the spitting rain and gusts, the turnout was better than expected. And given the months of police and press hype that a mob of mayhem-wreaking anarchists would crash the RNC, the protest rally around Mirror Lake seemed more like a festive Sunday in the park.
A couple of hundred people milled about as Dave Rovics belted out crowd pleasers like “ I’m a Better Anarchist than You .” A handful of buses pulled up and disgorged more protesters who came from far away as Miami, New York city and Wisconsin. The rally and protest was organized by the Florida Consumer Action Network , a local grassroots organization focused on public policy issues.
Few anarchists were in evidence, apart from a scrum of fidgety black-clad youth who melted into the rally after drawing stares. It felt like an Occupy-related event with a giant puppet of Romney tagged with a “King of the 1%,” and chants of “We are the 99%.”
Grabbing attention with his preacher’s cadence, Rev. Manuel Sykes, president of the St. Petersburg NAACP, announced, “I’m here to stop the corporate takeover of America.” Sykes castigated “our leaders [who] want to privatize Social Security, Healthcare, Education and Prisons.” He blasted Mitt Romney for wanting “to enrich the 1%.” And he described the November presidential ballot in epic terms: “We’re not just fighting for the 2012 election. We’re fighting for the future of America as we know it.”
On the fringes off the rally, next to a pack of camouflage-clad sheriff’s deputies, a pungent, hippie-looking gentleman with a Ron Paul 2012 sign dangling around his neck and a video camera taped to his helmeted head, taunted the crowd. “Do any of these hippies here supporting Obama know that Obama has dropped two times as many bombs as Bush?”
His words stung one observer who yelled back that “Obama has to do the bidding of Washington.”
The exchange captured the conflicting mindset of the Democratic base. Romney, Ryan and the right are painted, not unfairly, as extremists who will hurtle America back to the dark ages. But Obama, despite sitting in the Oval Office, is seen as powerless.
The weather and fear mongering no doubt cut down on the turnout, but one community organizer clued me in to another factor. The organizer, who wished to remain anonymous, said “A lot of people I work with don’t have hope in national politics. There was an element of fear about the RNC, ‘Can I even go outside with all the street closures and restrictions?’ There is definitely animosity toward Republicans, a lot of ‘Fuck these guys,” but my members also questioned what was going to be accomplished by going out in front of the barricades. I heard a lot of ‘It’s not going to change nothing.’”
quote:TrapWire tied to anti-Occupy Internet-spy program
How do you make matters worse for an elusive intelligence company that has been forced to scramble for explanations about their ownership of an intricate, widespread surveillance program? Just ask Cubic, whose troubles only begin with TrapWire.
Days after the international intelligence gathering surveillance system called TrapWire was unraveled by RT, an ongoing investigation into any and all entities with ties to the technology has unturned an ever-increasing toll of creepy truths. In only the latest installment of the quickly snowballing TrapWire saga, a company that shares several of the same board members as the secret spy system has been linked to a program called Tartan, which aims to track down alleged anarchists by specifically singling out Occupy Wall Street protesters and the publically funded media — all with the aid of federal agents.
Tartan, a product of the Ntrepid Corporation, “exposes and quantifies key influencers and hidden connections in social networks using mathematical algorithms for objective, un-biased output,” its website claims. “Our analysts, mathematicians and computer scientists are continually exploring new quantification, mining and visualization techniques in order to better analyze social networks.” In order to prove as such, their official website links to the executive summary of a case study dated this year that examines social network connections among so-called anarchists, supposedly locating hidden ties within an underground movement that was anchored on political activists and even the Public Broadcasting Station [.pdf].
“Tartan was used to reveal a hidden network of relationships among anarchist leaders of seemingly unrelated movements,” the website claims. “The study exposed the affiliations within this network that facilitate the viral spread of violent and illegal tactics to the broader protest movement in the United States.”
Tartan is advertised on their site as a must-have application for the national security sector, politicians and federal law enforcement, and makes a case by claiming that “an amorphous network of anarchist and protest groups,” made up of Occupy Oakland, PBS, Citizen Radio, Crimethinc and others, relies on “influential leaders,” “modern technology” and “illegal tactics” to spread a message of anarchy across America.
“The organizers of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy DC have built Occupy networks through online communication with anarchists actively participating in the movements’ founding,” the executive summary reads. On the chart that accompanies their claim, the group lists several political activism groups and broadcast networks within a ring of alleged anarchy, which also includes an unnamed FBI informant.
Although emails uncovered in a hack last year waged at Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, suggested that Occupy groups had been under private surveillance, the latest discovery of publically available information implies that the extent to which the monitoring of political activists on American soil occurred may have extended what was previously imagined.
Things don’t end there, though. While the TrapWire tale is still only just beginning, the Ntrepid Corporation made headlines last year after it was discovered by the Guardian that the company was orchestrating an “online persona management” program, a clever propaganda mill that was touted as a means “to influence regional and international audiences to achieve U.S. Central Command strategic objectives,” according, at least, to the Inspector General of the US Defense Department [.pdf]. The investigation eventually revealed that the US Central Command awarded Ntrepid $2.76 million worth of taxpayer dollars to create phony Internet “sock puppets” to propagate US support.
One year later, the merits of Tartan’s analytics are now being brought into question, but so are the rest of the company’s ties. A trove of research accumulated by RT, Project PM founder Barrett Brown, PrivacySOS.org and independent researchers Justin Ferguson and Asher Wolf, among others, has linked Tartan with an even more unsettling operation.
Margaret A. Lee of Northern Virginia is listed on several websites as serving on the Ntrepid board of directors as secretary, a position she held alongside Director Richard Helms, CFO Wesley R Husted and President Michael Martinka. And although several parties are going to great lengths to deny the ties, a paper trail directly links Lee and company to Abraxas — and thus Cubic — and, of course, TrapWire, the very surveillance system that is believed to be blanketing the United States.
According to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s State Corporation Commission, TrapWire Inc. was registered to Margaret A Lee on March 7, 2009. Other publically available information reveals that, at least at one point, Wesley Husted served as chief financial officer for TrapWire, Inc., where Richard H Helms held the title of CEO.
Various sources have since claimed that Helms, a former CIA agent that once ran the agency’s European division, has severed ties with TrapWire, yet the other connections remain intact.
In RT’s earlier research in the TrapWire case, it was revealed that TrapWire’s parent company, Cubic Corporation, acquired an online identity masking tool called Anonymzer in a 2010 merger, and also controls the fare card system at some of the biggest public transportation systems in the world. According to the latest findings, Cubic’s control extends beyond just that, though. Under their Ntrepid branch, Cubic controlled an operation that spied on political activists with FBI informants and attempted to link them to crimes across America.
Whether or not the TrapWire system was implemented in such operations is unclear, and Cubic continues to maintain that they are not involved with the surveillance network.
Last week, Cubic Corporation issued a press release claiming, “Abraxas Corporation then and now has no affiliation with Abraxas Applications now known as Trapwire, Inc.”
“Abraxas Corp., a risk-mitigation technology company, has spun out a software business to focus on selling a new product,” the article reads. “The spinoff – called Abraxas Applications – will sell TrapWire, which predicts attacks on critical infrastructure by analyzing security reports and video surveillance.”
Not only does a 2007 report in the Washington Business Journal insist that the companies are practically one in the same, though, but a 2006 article in the same paper reveals that Abraxas had just acquired software maker Dauntless. Researchers at Darkernet have since linked Lee, Husted and Helms to the Abraxas Dauntless Board of Directors as well.
Justin Ferguson, the researcher who first exposed TrapWire two weeks ago, has noted that Lee, Helms and Husted were listed on Abraxas Dauntless’ filings with Virginia as recently as December 2011. They also are all present on the TrapWire filings dated September 2011 and the latest annual filing made with the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations on behalf of Ntrepid.
Nevertheless, in a conversation this week with Project PM’s Barrett Brown, Cubic Corp. Communication Director Tim Hall dismisses this ties again.
“There is no connection at all with Abraxas Applications and Trapwire and or Ntrepid,” Hall allegedly insists, according to audio uploaded to YouTube.
Brown, on his part, says he has obtained Cubic’s 2010 tax filings that show that Ntrepd, like Abraxas, is “wholly owned” by Cubic.
quote:Apple granted a patent to wirelessly disable cameras on iphones in certain locations
Apple was granted a patent last week that will enable it to wirelessly disable the camera on iphones in certain locations, sparking fears that such techniques could be used to prevent citizens from communicating with each other or taking video during protests or events such as political conventions and gatherings.
The camera phone has revolutionized the flow of information in the digital age. Any time a major event takes place, news networks and video websites are immediately inundated with footage and photographs from the scene.
That could all change in the future however, with a flick of a switch, according to U.S. Patent No. 8,254,902, published on Tuesday, titled, “Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device.”.
In other words, an encoded signal could be transmitted to all wireless devices, commanding them to disable recording functions.
Obviously, the way this will be applied will depend on what is determined to be a sensitive area by the relevant authorities.
To put it bluntly, the powers that be could control what you can and cannot document on your wireless devices according to their own whims.
Given that the major technology companies are set to make wireless connectivity a major feature of the latest cameras, this development does not bode well for photographers and citizen journalists who are already experiencing a major crackdown on their first and fourth amendment rights.
Michael Zhang at Tech site Peta Pixel notes:
If this type of technology became widely adopted and baked into cameras, photography could be prevented by simply setting a geofence around a particular location, whether its a movie theater, celebrity hangout spot, protest site, or the top secret rooms at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California.
quote:Feds Say Mobile-Phone Location Data Not ‘Constitutionally Protected’
The Obama administration told a federal court Tuesday that the public has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in cellphone location data, and hence the authorities may obtain documents detailing a person’s movements from wireless carriers without a probable-cause warrant.
The administration, citing a 1976 Supreme Court precedent, said such data, like banking records, are “third-party records,” meaning customers have no right to keep it private. The government made the argument as it prepares for a re-trial of a previously convicted drug dealer whose conviction was reversed in January by the Supreme Court, which found that the government’s use of a GPS tracker on his vehicle was an illegal search.
With the 28 days of vehicle tracking data thrown out of court, the feds now want to argue in a re-trial that it was legally in the clear to use Antoine Jones’ phone location records without a warrant. The government wants to use the records to chronicle where Jones was when he made and received mobile phone calls in 2005.
“A customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records that were never in the possession of the customer,” the administration said in a court filing Tuesday (.pdf). ”When a cell phone user transmits a signal to a cell tower for his call to be connected, he thereby assumes the risk that the cell phone provider will create its own internal record of which of the company’s towers handles the call. Thus, it makes no difference if some users have never thought about how their cell phones work; a cell phone user can have no expectation of privacy in cell-site information.”
The government’s position comes as prosecutors are shifting their focus to warrantless cell-tower locational tracking of suspects in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling (.pdf) in Jones’ case that law enforcement should acquire probable-cause warrants from judges to affix GPS devices to vehicles.
Just after the Jones decision, the FBI pulled the plug on 3,000 GPS-tracking devices.
Jones, as one might suspect, wants the court to find that the feds should get a probable cause warrant for phone records, too.
“In this case, the government seeks to do with cell site data what it cannot do with the suppressed GPS data,” Jones’ attorney Eduardo Balarezo wrote (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle.
The government does not agree.
“Defendant’s motion to suppress cell-site location records cannot succeed under any theory. To begin with, no reasonable expectation of privacy exists in the routine business records obtained from the wireless carrier in this case, both because they are third-party records and because in any event the cell-site location information obtained here is too imprecise to place a wireless phone inside a constitutionally protected space,” the administration wrote the federal judge presiding over the Jones re-trial.
Just as the lower courts were mixed on whether the police could secretly affix a GPS device on a suspect’s car without a warrant, the same is now true about whether a probable-cause warrant is required to obtain so-called cell-site data. During the investigation, a lower court judge in the Jones case authorized the five months of the cell-site data without probable cause, based on government assertions that the data was “relevant and material” to an investigation.
“Knowing the location of the trafficker when such telephone calls are made will assist law enforcement in discovering the location of the premises in which the trafficker maintains his supply narcotics, paraphernalia used in narcotics trafficking such as cutting and packaging materials, and other evident of illegal narcotics trafficking, including records and financial information,” the government wrote in 2005, when requesting Jones’ cell-site data.
That cell-site information was not introduced at trial, as the authorities used the GPS data instead.
The Supreme Court tossed that GPS data, along with Jones’ conviction and life term on Jan. 23 in one of the biggest cases in recent years combining technology and the Fourth Amendment.
“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search,’” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the five-justice majority.
That decision, the Obama administration claimed, is “wholly inapplicable” when it comes to cell-site data.
The administration noted that the high court said the physical act of affixing a GPS device to a vehicle amounts to a search and generally requires a warrant. “But when the government merely compels a third-party service provider to produce routine business records in its custody,” the government wrote, “no physical intrusion occurs, and the rule in Jones is therefore wholly inapplicable.”
[ Bericht 1% gewijzigd door deelnemer op 06-09-2012 23:19:34 ]
quote:Chicago braces for 30,000-teacher walkout as contract talks dissolve
Union and mayor Rahm Emanuel at an impasse as strike threatened for Monday an awkward situation for Obama
A bitter dispute between Chicago public school teachers and mayor Rahm Emanuel may escalate into a strike on Monday in a showdown over education reform that has national implications.
Nearly 30,000 public school teachers and support staff represented by the Chicago Teachers Union have vowed to walk off the job starting at 12.01am on Monday if an impasse in contract talks with the city is not broken.
Emanuel, former White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama and a speaker at this week's Democratic national convention, has made reform of Chicago's troubled public schools a top priority. Emanuel cut short his trip to the convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, to deal with the teacher crisis.
Earlier this year, he pushed through a longer school day, but the union is opposed to other proposed reforms, including tougher teacher evaluations tied to student test scores and giving principals wide latitude in hiring.
The union also wants more than the 8% pay raise over four years that Chicago is offering. The school district says it cannot afford concessions as it is running a large budget deficit and major credit rating agencies have downgraded its debt rating.
The threatened walkout, the first in Chicago in 25 years and one of the largest labor actions nationwide in recent years, comes at an awkward time for Emanuel's former boss, President Barack Obama, who spent much of his adult life in Chicago and owns a house in the city.
Obama and his fellow Democrats facing voters on November 6 are counting on unions such as teachers to get out the vote around the country in a close election.
Chicago's public school system, the third-largest in the country behind New York and Los Angeles, has more than 400,000 students enrolled.
Both sides in Chicago agree the city's public schools need fixing. The city's fourth-grade and eighth-grade students lag national averages in a key test of reading ability, according to the US department of education.
Until Emanuel forced through a longer school day, which began last week, Chicago elementary and middle school students received instruction for fewer hours a year than any of 30 major cities studied by the National Center on Time and Learning, an education reform group.
Emanuel, a tough negotiator called a bully by the teachers union, wants to close schools, expand non-union charter schools, and let corporations and philanthropies run some schools. He also wants principals to be able to hire whom they want, and he wants to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers.
The union wants to shrink class sizes and increase education funding. It is suspicious of efforts to erode job protections such as tenure, teacher autonomy and seniority. It believes charter schools – which are taxpayer-funded but not subject to all public school regulations – undermine public education.
"What Emanuel represents is a new breed of urban mayors, pushing for a whole system of school improvements … responding to public demand," said Kenneth Wong, director of the Urban Education Policy Program at Brown University.
As the strike deadline approached, union president Karen Lewis told local radio on Friday she was heartened that a top school board official attended the talks on Thursday for the first time and seemed to understand the teachers' concerns.
"Both sides remain far apart on core issues such as job security, compensation and how to give our students a better day," union spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin said in a statement.
The two sides met on Friday and the union said it was ready to continue the talks through the weekend.
The city of Chicago has allocated $25m for a strike contingency fund. It would be used to provide breakfast and lunch to students in the district – 84% of whom qualify for free and reduced-price meals at school – and to pay for four hours of supervision at some schools, other public facilities and churches.
The plan has prompted concern from some parents and the union about the well being of the children and how low-income kids would be supervised in neighborhoods which have seen a sharp rise in gang-related murders in recent months.
"It [the contingency plan] sounds like a train wreck," the union statement said, adding that those supervising children had received little training.
We weten waar dat geld gebleven is:
quote:
quote:Why Chris Hedges Believes That Serious Revolt Is the Only Option People Have Left
Chris Hedges, a former New York Times reporter, has become perhaps the foremost media scribe and most prolific advocate of a need for revolutionary change in our current institutional oppression and control of the government by the oligarchical and political elite. Hedges writes with a reporter's detail, a prophet's eloquence and a compelling sense of urgency. This is evident in his latest book, which visits the "sacrifice zones" of America.
quote:FBI begins installation of $1 billion face recognition system across America
Birthmarks, be damned: the FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reached a milestone in the development of their Next Generation Identification (NGI) program and is now implementing the intelligence database in unidentified locales across the country, New Scientist reports in an article this week. The FBI first outlined the project back in 2005, explaining to the Justice Department in an August 2006 document (.pdf) that their new system will eventually serve as an upgrade to the current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America .
“The NGI Program is a compilation of initiatives that will either improve or expand existing biometric identification services,” its administrator explained to the Department of Justice at the time, adding that the project, “will accommodate increased information processing and sharing demands in support of anti-terrorism.”
“The NGI Program Office mission is to reduce terrorist and criminal activities by improving and expanding biometric identification and criminal history information services through research, evaluation and implementation of advanced technology within the IAFIS environment.”
The agency insists, “As a result of the NGI initiatives, the FBI will be able to provide services to enhance interoperability between stakeholders at all levels of government, including local, state, federal, and international partners.” In doing as such, though, the government is now going ahead with linking a database of images and personally identifiable information of anyone in their records with departments around the world thanks to technology that makes fingerprint tracking seem like kids' stuff.
According to their 2006 report, the NGI program utilizes “specialized requirements in the Latent Services, Facial Recognition and Multi-modal Biometrics areas” that “will allow the FnewBI to establish a terrorist fingerprint identification system that is compatible with other systems; increase the accessibility and number of the IAFIS terrorist fingerprint records; and provide latent palm print search capabilities.”
Is that just all, though? During a 2010 presentation (.pdf) made by the FBI’s Biometric Center of Intelligence, the agency identified why facial recognition technology needs to be embraced. Specifically, the FBI said that the technology could be used for “Identifying subjects in public datasets,” as well as “conducting automated surveillance at lookout locations” and “tracking subject movements,” meaning NGI is more than just a database of mug shots mixed up with fingerprints — the FBI has admitted that this their intent with the technology surpasses just searching for criminals but includes spectacular surveillance capabilities. Together, it’s a system unheard of outside of science fiction.
New Scientist reports that a 2010 study found technology used by NGI to be accurate in picking out suspects from a pool of 1.6 million mug shots 92 percent of the time. The system was tested on a trial basis in the state of Michigan earlier this year, and has already been cleared for pilot runs in Washington, Florida and North Carolina. Now according to this week’s New Scientist report, the full rollout of the program has begun and the FBI expects its intelligence infrastructure to be in place across the United States by 2014.
In 2008, the FBI announced that it awarded Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions, one of the Defense Department’s most favored contractors, with the authorization to design, develop, test and deploy the NGI System. Thomas E. Bush III, the former FBI agent who helped develop the NGI's system requirements, tells NextGov.com, "The idea was to be able to plug and play with these identifiers and biometrics." With those items being collected without much oversight being admitted, though, putting the personal facts pertaining to millions of Americans into the hands of some playful Pentagon staffers only begins to open up civil liberties issues.
Jim Harper, director of information policy at the Cato Institute, adds to NextGov that investigators pair facial recognition technology with publically available social networks in order to build bigger profiles. Facial recognition "is more accurate with a Google or a Facebook, because they will have anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen pictures of an individual, whereas I imagine the FBI has one or two mug shots," he says. When these files are then fed to law enforcement agencies on local, federal and international levels, intelligence databases that include everything from close-ups of eyeballs and irises to online interests could be shared among offices.
The FBI expects the NGI system to include as many as 14 million photographs by the time the project is in full swing in only two years, but the pace of technology and the new connections constantly created by law enforcement agencies could allow for a database that dwarfs that estimate. As RT reported earlier this week, the city of Los Angeles now considers photography in public space “suspicious,” and authorizes LAPD officers to file reports if they have reason to believe a suspect is up to no good. Those reports, which may not necessarily involve any arrests, crimes, charges or even interviews with the suspect, can then be filed, analyzed, stored and shared with federal and local agencies connected across the country to massive data fusion centers. Similarly, live video transmissions from thousands of surveillance cameras across the country are believed to be sent to the same fusion centers as part of TrapWire, a global eye-in-the-sky endeavor that RT first exposed earlier this year.
“Facial recognition creates acute privacy concerns that fingerprints do not,” US Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) told the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law earlier this year. “Once someone has your faceprint, they can get your name, they can find your social networking account and they can find and track you in the street, in the stores you visit, the government buildings you enter, and the photos your friends post online.”
In his own testimony, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Alessandro Acquisti said to Sen. Franken, “the convergence of face recognition, online social networks and data mining has made it possible to use publicly available data and inexpensive technologies to produce sensitive inferences merely starting from an anonymous face.”
“Face recognition, like other information technologies, can be source of both benefits and costs to society and its individual members,” Prof. Acquisti added. “However, the combination of face recognition, social networks data and data mining can significant undermine our current notions and expectations of privacy and anonymity.”
With the latest report suggesting the NGI program is now a reality in America, though, it might be too late to try and keep the FBI from interfering with seemingly every aspect of life in the US, both private and public. As of July 18, 2012, the FBI reports, “The NGI program … is on scope, on schedule, on cost, and 60 percent deployed.”
quote:Chicago teachers' strike continues as Emanuel scrambles to settle dispute
Unions and school board fail to reach a settlement over pay and conditions as teachers' walkout heads into second day
A strike by thousands of teachers in Chicago, the third-largest US school district, headed into its second day Tuesday, creating a political headache for Mayor Rahm Emanuel just as the former chief aide to President Barack Obama takes on a larger role in his former boss's campaign.
The walkout by 26,000 teachers and support staff forced hundreds of thousands of parents to scramble for a place to send children and created an unwelcome political distraction for Emanuel. In a year when labor unions have been losing ground nationwide, the implications were sure to extend far beyond Chicago, particularly for districts engaged in similar debates.
City officials acknowledged that children left unsupervised especially in neighborhoods with a history of gang violence might be at risk, but vowed to protect the nearly 350,000 students' safety.
The two sides resumed negotiations Monday but failed to reach a settlement, meaning the strike will extend into at least a second day.
Chicago school board president David Vitale said board and union negotiators did not even get around to bargaining on the two biggest issues, performance evaluations or recall rights for laid-off teachers. Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis said that was because the district did not change its proposals.
"This is a long-term battle that everyone's going to watch," said Eric Hanuskek, a senior fellow in education at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. "Other teachers unions in the United States are wondering if they should follow suit."
Thousands of teachers and their supporters took over several downtown streets during the Monday evening rush. Police secured several blocks around district headquarters as the crowds marched and chanted.
The strike in Obama's hometown quickly got caught up in election-year politics, as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Chicago teachers were turning their backs on thousands of students and accused Obama of siding with the striking teachers.
Obama's top spokesman said the president has not taken sides but is urging both the teachers and the city to settle quickly.
The strike's timing seems inopportune for Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff whose city administration was already wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some city neighborhoods before he agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for Obama's re-election.
Emanuel and the union officials have much at stake. Unions and collective bargaining by public employees have recently come under criticism in many parts of the US, and all sides are closely monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute as election day.
The union had vowed to strike Monday if there was no agreement on a new contract, even though the district had offered a 16% raise over four years and the two sides had essentially agreed on a longer school day. With an average annual salary of $76,000, Chicago teachers are among the highest-paid in the nation, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.
But negotiators were still divided on job security measures and a system for evaluating teachers that hinged in part on students' standardized test scores.
The strike in a district where the vast majority of students are poor and minority put Chicago at the epicenter of a struggle between big cities and teachers unions for control of schools.
Romney, who has been critical of public employee unions, said he was disappointed by the Chicago teachers' decision to walk out of negotiations and sides with parents and students over unionized teachers, in a statement released Monday hours before he was set to land in Chicago for fundraisers.
"Teachers unions have too often made plain that their interests conflict with those of our children, and today we are seeing one of the clearest examples yet," Romney said.
Emanuel, who said he would work to end the strike quickly, struck back at Romney's statement.
"While I appreciate his lip service, what really counts is what we are doing here," he told reporters. "I don't give two hoots about national comments scoring political points or trying to embarrass … the president."
Obama political aides in Chicago also criticized Romney for seeking political advantage and pointed to Romney's repeated campaign statements that class sizes do not impact students' education.
"Playing political games with local disputes won't help educate our kids, nor will fewer teachers," campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was monitoring the situation in his hometown but was not eager to take on a role in the dispute.
"We hope that both sides are able to come together to settle this quickly and in the best interests of Chicago's students," Carney told reporters.
About 140 schools were being kept open between 8.30am and 12.30pm so the children who rely on free meals provided by the school district can eat breakfast and lunch, school district officials said.
The school district asked community organizations to provide additional programs for students, and a number of churches, libraries and other groups plan to offer day camps and other activities.
Police chief Garry McCarthy said he would take officers off desk duty and deploy them to deal with any teachers' protests as well as the thousands of students who could be roaming the streets.
Union leaders and district officials were not far apart in their negotiations on compensation, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis said. But other key issues remain unresolved, she said.
Lewis said among the issues of concern was a new evaluation that she said would be unfair to teachers because it relied too heavily on students' standardized test scores and does not take into account external factors that affect performance, including poverty, violence and homelessness.
She said the evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs within two years. City officials disagreed and said the union has not explained how it reached that conclusion.
Obama has urged accountability in teachers moves that union leaders have opposed. For instance, Obama's administration has favored pilot programs that challenge current practices, rewarding schools who try new approaches and has pushed for longer school days.
Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, is a former head of Chicago public schools who pushed for changes that unions opposed.
quote:Occupy Wall Street invites you, the 99%, down to the Financial District for three days of education, celebration and resistance.
On #s17 Follow the Money, All Roads Lead to Wall Street
Last September 17th, as part of a wave of global protest, people from across the country raced to the heart of New York’s financial district to occupy Wall Street. In the face of big banks foreclosing on our homes, killing our jobs, buying up our democracy, and turning our environment into just another toxic asset, you showed up, and we became the 99%.
On September 15-17th, join us in this fight for our world – this fight for our lives.
For years, people all over the world have been crippled by the corporate greed of the 1%. They built their bonuses out of stolen pensions of teachers, civil servants, and our neighbors. We pay for their welfare. They bet and borrow against our future. We drown in debt. So who is really in debt to whom? Now our elected representatives want us to embrace austerity–work harder for less, retire later (if at all), and say goodbye to our fundamental labor protections. They’re betting on our obedience. They’re betting wrong.
Join us for three days of education, celebration and resistance to economic injustice with permitted convergences and assemblies, concerts, and mass civil disobedience.
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quote:[New York, NY] Judge Katherine Forrest ruled yesterday that the so-called “indefinite detention” provision (subsection 1021) of the fiscal 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) violates the Constitution and issued a permanent injunction against its application.
quote:REPORT: Obama Has Appealed Yesterday's Indefinite Detention Ruling
This sent a chill down my spine. In the midst of my interview with Tangerine Bolen, a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the NDAA's indefinite detention provisions & coordinator of StopNDAA.org, she received an email from her lawyer to inform her that the Obama administration has already appealed yesterday's historic court ruling. That court ruling found indefinite detention to be unconstitutional, and issued a permanent block of that provision. Listen to the full interview directly below.
For a man who doesn't want the ability to order the military to abduct and detain citizens - without charge or trial - it is quite odd that his administration is appealing yet again.
And, as stated in the interview, I would love to speak with someone from the administration on-record about this and hash it out. Why do you need this power?
Read more: http://www.businessinside(...)2012-9#ixzz26OFA3TxG
quote:Occupy Wall St activists to surround NYSE in effort to regain impetus
Group, which struggled to maintain momentum after initial flurry last autumn, to celebrate one-year anniversary on Monday
Activists plan to mark the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street on Monday by descending on New York's financial district in an attempt to rejuvenate a movement that has failed to sustain momentum after initially sparking a national conversation about economic inequality.
The group, which popularized the phrase "We are the 99%," will attempt to surround the New York Stock Exchange and disrupt morning rush hour in lower Manhattan, according to a movement spokeswoman.
Monday's protests will cap a weekend of Occupy seminars, music and demonstrations in New York, said Linnea Paton, 24, an Occupy Wall Street (OWS) spokeswoman. Demonstrations are also planned in other US cities, other OWS organizers said.
The grassroots movement caught the world by surprise last fall with a spontaneous encampment in lower Manhattan that soon spread to cities across North America and Europe.
Occupy briefly revived a long-dormant spirit of US social activism, and drew enduring attention to economic injustice.
But the movement's colorful cast of theatrical demonstrators struggled through last winter to sustain the momentum that first drew attention to its patchwork of economic grievances – including corporate malfeasance on Wall Street, crippling student debt and aggressive bank foreclosures on American homes.
On Sunday, organizers will provide live music, including a Foley Square concert featuring Tom Morello, guitarist for the rock band Rage Against the Machine.
At 7am Monday, some protesters will try to surround the NYSE, while others will engage in a loosely choreographed series of "sit-ins" at intersections throughout the financial district, according to OWS's website.
The tactics are designed to undermine New York police efforts to contain protesters on the narrow, winding streets of the financial district.
Last year's demonstrations featured the spectacle of activists breaking into sudden dashes down one narrow street or another, pursued by visibly frustrated police and television reporters tripping down cobblestone streets.
Sound permits for Sunday's events have been secured, Paton said, but OWS has not sought permits for Monday's protests - which last fall led to mass arrests and clashes between police and protesters. Occupy Wall Street maintains about $50,000 in its bail fund, several organizers said.
NYPD spokesman Paul Brown confirmed that no OWS demonstration permit applications were submitted, but said police will be prepared for demonstrations.
"We accommodate peaceful protests and make arrests for unlawful activity," he said.
Brown said that based on previous experience with OWS, the NYPD expects that "a relatively small group of self-described anarchists will attempt unlawful activity and try to instigate confrontations with police by others while attempting to escape arrest themselves … we expect most demonstrators to be peaceful."
New York police have made a total of 1,852 Occupy arrests as of September 12 according to Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance's office, including the arrest of 700 protesters who spilled into the roadway while marching across the Brooklyn bridge last October.
On Friday, Twitter was ordered by a New York judge to turn over the tweets of one of the protesters arrested on the bridge. That case has emerged as a closely watched court fight over law enforcement access to users' social media content.
Six weeks after the Brooklyn bridge arrests, citing public health concerns, New York authorities entered the Manhattan OWS camp and dispersed protesters. The movement has never regained its initial momentum.
http://www.ustream.tv/occupyeye
Streaming audio live from jail:
http://www.ustream.tv/cha(...)18&utm_medium=social
quote:Occupy Wall Street anniversary marred by arrests and weakening support
Activists determined to mark one-year landmark but tension with police and divided opinion give the day a sense of deja vu
Occupy Wall Street's one-year anniversary began with early morning protests at New York's financial centre, but the demonstrations were marred by numerous arrests as activists marched around lower Manhattan.
On 17 September 2011 hundreds had answered a call from Adbusters, the Canadian activist magazine, sparking demonstrations against failing financial systems and the influence of money in politics that spread around the globe. Thousands of protesters took to streets and encampments before high-profile police crackdowns in New York and Oakland signalled a lull that lasted through the winter and beyond.
But Occupy protesters were determined to come out in force to mark the movement's birthday, with protests over the weekend set to culminate in Monday's encircling of Wall Street.
People were gathering near Zuccotti park at 7am, and by 7.30am there were 300-400 people stationed opposite the famous former encampment, far fewer than in the movement's heyday, when more than 10,000 people regularly came out in support. It was a beautiful, warm September's morning, just like the days last autumn when protesters kicked off demonstrations that were reported across the globe. The nature of the protests were similar, too, as protesters attempted to "shut down" Wall Street, while their failure to achieve that goal also had a sense of deja vu.
The group at Zuccotti Park was set to be one of four meeting points around lower Manhattan, with the separate demonstrations intending to surround the city's iconic financial centre.
As it turned out, Wall Street remained open, although there was some disruption.
A large police presence nullified protesters' attempts to access Wall Street, with officers arresting dozens of people in the early actions. A repeated theme of the detentions was police rushing forward to seize people identified as agitators. By about 5pm, 150 people had been arrested in New York, a significant number for demonstrations attended by comfortably fewer than a thousand people. At the end of the night, close to 200 arrests had been made.
Only people with work ID cards were allowed on to the street, with financial workers, many disgruntled, having to negotiate the crowd.
"You know, I was just thinking it's getting a little tiresome," said one besuited man with a thick grey moustache. "I just had to walk half a mile to get into my building."
There were signs, however, that Occupy Wall Street still has mainstream support. "I think they're exercising what everyone is feeling – even though we have to go to work we're still supporting what they're protesting," said 50-year-old Gabriel Adeniyi, who was watching the procession close to Wall Street, where he works as an underwriting specialist for a trust company.
"The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer."
While people may empathise with the cause, however, there was a sense of frustration among some onlookers. One man who gave his name as Bill summed it up: "They've been around, I have some sympathy, but their message is really unfocused."
The game of cat and mouse with police was quite deja vu inducing, as protesters roamed the streets, changing course as officers appeared in front of them and being ordered to "keep on the sidewalk" repeatedly.
After the morning's excitement, protesters retired to Bowling Green park in lower Manhattan, then Battery Park, in pre-planned moves, before eventually marching to Zuccotti Park, which was surrounded by barriers, but private security personnel were allowing people in.
Once there, the celebratory aspect of Monday's events came to the fore as the "drummers' circle", which antagonised so many a local resident, was revived, while elsewhere a brass band and a lone bagpiper played. There were costumes too – a large, ghoulish Statue of Liberty that was a common sight in 2011, as well as a more topical "Bain Capital", a reference to Mitt Romney's former employers. The costume was based on the Batman comic book figure, outlandishly large with one particularly bulky hand labelled "Mitt's fist".
Later in the afternoon there were marches from Zuccotti towards Wall Street, and more sporadic arrests, including the independent journalist John Knefel, whose detention was described as "completely unprovoked" by his journalist sister Molly Knefel. The detention of journalists again brought back memories of last fall, when the NYPD on occasion arrested journalists wearing NYPD credentials.
This was a smaller protest than last year, however, and there was some frustration.
"Honestly? It's a bit dead," said Jefferson Moighan, who had travelled from an hour outside New York City to attend. Moighan was involved in Occupy in October and November 2011, he said, but his participation had dwindled since then, and he was unimpressed with both numbers and tactics.
"We planned too much in advance, so police know what we're doing," he said.
Kevin Limiti, a 22-year-old from Long Island, was more optimistic, describing the day as "extremely empowering", but he too was frustrated by the actual nature of the protests. "It's just hard to do anything with police up your ass. We don't seem like we get the chance to protest freely."
There was common agreement among protesters, however, that there was still a need to draw attention to the kind of issues that brought people to the streets a year ago.
"Our problems aren't solved, our problems are plaguing our society," said Kanene Holder, an educator living in Harlem who has been a part of Occupy since the early days.
"The reason Occupy started was because our systems were so broken," she added, citing the influence of money in government following the Citizens United ruling, a common Occupy gripe. "It doesn't matter how you protest your government, or demand what you think you deserve. Do it."
quote:Occupy Tea Party
OTP declaration of Occupation.
Imagine a time in this country when you could say you were proud to be an American without it sounding ironic. A time when hard work was all it took to be a success. A time when your government was some benevolent guardian, rather than a pervert peeping in your windows. That is no fantasy. It existed. We are citizens who remember that America, and we would like it back.
We feel our future and our freedom are being taken from us. And we don't feel that's right or fair. We are set up to become a lost generation, and we will not sit back and let it happen. We have witnessed the bankers destroying the global economy, after making billions off their deceit. The tea party was formed partially due to the TARP bailouts, which they were told were 800 billion dollars. What they didn't know at the time was that the Federal Reserve had decided on another 16 *trillion* dollars without bothering to tell us. Trillions of which, they gave to themselves. Trillions of which, they gave to their friends in foreign banks. While America's economy collapsed.
Over 90% of our senate ratified the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Within that document are provisions that allow the capture, torture and imprisonment of American citizens without charge or trial. Those provisions were struck down as unconstitutional by Obama Appointee Judge Kathrine Forest. Obama himself is currently demanding those provisions be reinstated, and has filed an emergency injunction to overturn her decision.
Of further interest is the NDAA2013, legalizing and standardizing the use of propaganda on American citizens by the government. Because apparently even our thoughts can't be trusted without government intervention.
On this day, September 17th, 1787, in Philadelphia, our founding fathers ratified our constitution. They warned us that the greatest threat to this document was greed and corruption. That corruption has festered like a cancer, infecting the values we were built upon. And we have decided that it's high time it's stopped.
We, members of both occupy and the tea party have decided that we have far more in common than the media has led us to believe. We have decided that there are many problems members of both parties have recognized and that the time has come they were dealt with. To that end, many of us have decided to join forces and discuss these common problems. Having identified those problems we will demand that the government recognize and fix them immediately. So far, we have agreed on the following.
1. We demand an immediate end to government corruption. No more lobbyists, no exceptions. It's legalized bribery and we will no longer tolerate it. No more PACS, SUPERPACS or any other kind of money in involved in politics. If you wish to invest in a candidate you believe in, you may do so, but only anonymously. There has been a system attempted where large donations were broken up so it was impossible to know who donated and when. If anyone wanted to donate to a judicial candidate they could do so whenever and wherever they wanted. But they were distributed at random points to the candidate, in random amounts. No one donated when they realized it was impossible to buy influence.
2. We demand an immediate end to all government infringements on the bill of rights. No trapwire. No NDAA. No Stellar wind. No nothing. The bill of rights are the rules our government was bound to abide by. And they have been breaking them left and right. Quietly, but they have been breaking them. You can hear it in Obama's speech. "My job is to make America safe." No, No it is not Mr President. Your job is to keep America free. We will no longer tolerate you infringing on the rules we made for you. And no longer will we sit idle while you rewrite them.
3. An end to the federal reserve, which is a private bank. They stole 16 trillion dollars (Nearly two times everything America makes in a year.) and gave it to themselves and foreign banks. Please. Explain to us why they're not in jail. Is it the numbers? Steal a few hundred bucks go to jail, but steal a few trillion and there's just no penalty? Is it the bribes? It's the bribes, isn't it?
4. We will no longer tolerate banks gambling with our money. Or gambling at all. Therefor we demand the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall act. These people have destroyed the global economy, damaging the lives of billions because we all subscribe to the economic system they control. And their control has led to what has to be the largest robbery in the history of the planet.
5. We will tolerate no more propaganda, or a media run by the advertizing industry. Caring nothing for informing us; only interested in keeping us compliant while American jobs are shipped overseas. We demand, in accordance to the media's agreement with the government, that they require one hour of news a night with the added statement that they no longer be allowed to advertize in any form during that hour. We want the news. Not the commercials. The advertizing is driving the content as stuffed shirts and talking heads race to see who can come up with the best line of sensationalist BS. They only care about getting the viewers, and care nothing for actually informing them. They are every bit as much to blame for this mess as anyone.
These solutions will naturally cause some situations as many of these cancers are deeply integrated within our government. There is a lot of damage that will need to be repaired. This cancer will take chemo to cure, and it's going to suck. But it has to be done.
Ending the lobbying industry means putting out of work literally thousands of people who have been barely scraping by making seven figures. The prostitution and strip club industries will take a massive hit. (Not to imply that all lobbyists are corrupt, lying sycophants. It's 98%, 99% tops.) And frankly there's no way the used car industry or legal system can handle that many applicants at once. But we will persevere regardless. These people bribe our government officials professionally. And that's got to stop.
Ending the federal reserve and fixing the banks isn't as simple as popping down to Bank of America and telling the executive who bought a seventy *thousand* dollar desk with your taxpayer money to pack it. Or going down to Ben Bernanke's office and telling him that he's fired for jacking up inflation to the point where poor people can barely afford to survive, let alone get out of poverty. If you want to know why we're paying 4$ a gallon for gas, he's the reason why. Print 16 trillion dollars without telling anyone, inflation skyrockets, meaning the value of a dollar plummets. It's not that gas is more expensive. It's that the value of the dollar is being destroyed. And this is one of the men destroying it. Every time he prints money, his friends make a killing, and 99.9999% of the country has to pay more and more to survive. He's decided to print another 400 billion over the coming months, but don't tell anyone because that's a secret.
People, it *can* be fixed. By standing together once again as Americans, we feel that any upheavel is a small price to pay for restoring the ideals our nation was founded on. A corrupt system often never sees its own corruption.
Our intent is not to harm anyone. Our intent is to ensure that the economic system that these corrupt individuals outright destroyed is allowed to be restored. And that once again individuals can have pride in their jobs, knowing for certain that the only thing between them and a bright and hopeful future is a good and honest work. We want a nation with an educational system that once again produces the smartest people on earth. A world where soldiers are honored as heroes rather than enforcers of a dictatorship. A world with a police force that can be respected as protectors of the peace rather than shock troops for the people paying off our government.
We are forming something new here, and both the left and the right have been heavily inundated with propaganda for years. We are effectively speaking two different languages. Because of this we are going to demand open and honest communication, tolerance, and politeness of all those participating. Understand that we have all been *lied* to.
Our intent is to foster communication between the left and the right in America, (both on and off line) to find policies and practices that appeal to both sides, then to demand that both parties in our government act on those policies. We will attempt to field candidates, once this platform has been further refined. We will meet together and through openness and honesty, discuss what else we all feel needs to be done to fix our nation. We will ignore the media, and if we want to know the "other side's" opinion on something, we will freaking ask them. And if we don't understand why they would feel that way, we will have them explain their viewpoint until we do. Kind of like how the government is *supposed* to function.
Over the next weeks and months we will be building a communication network designed to encourage everyone to discuss their real and honest viewpoints. We also think it would be very nice to start seeing some joint occupations, or rallies; but that may have to wait until more of the misunderstandings between the left and right have been resolved. We are going to focus on ignoring the mainstream media, because the job they've done has been appalling. Instead we will focus on verified and accurate information from independent sources. When in doubt, ask each other. We all have some very hard truths we are going to have to recognize, as we have been being lied to for a very, very long time. We will stand together, as American citizens, regardless of politics, religion, race or creed. A melting pot. That's what America's always been best at. It's time we got that back.
We will have no violence, no bickering and no fighting. We will be peaceful, polite and obey the law, beyond the exciting new ones outlawing the first amendment. We will not rest and we will not stop until the US government once again respects the will of its citizens. We want our country and our planet back.
What can you do? Stop believing your media for a start. Question everything. Listen to each other regardless of your politics. There are dire signs and warnings we all need to be aware of. Share your ideas and stop letting them divide us along stupid party lines. You don't have to agree on everything, nor will you. But that's ok. If you don't agree on a topic, move on to something else. Politely. As we progress we will find more and more issues we agree on, slowly field candidates for office and put pressure on our elected representatives to remind them that they work for *us*, not the other way around. Organize a massive bi-partisan write in campaign. March outside the homes and offices of these people until they finally realize that we will no longer tolerate their greed and lies. Everyone deserves a voice, but we must make sure what's said is true and accurate. Do not let them divide you any longer. We are all Americans.
Therefor, we, citizens of America, conservatives, liberals, democrats and republicans are proud to stand together. We hereby announce the Occupy Tea Party. We cordially invite all members of both movements to participate, along with any individual concerned about retaining their freedom and the sovergnity of the Bill of Rights. However, we would ask that they do so politely and while conducting themselves with honor, tolerance and integrity. We are not socialists, we are not anarchists, we are not racists, we're not hippies or rednecks. We are concerned citizens who have had enough of the government we put in power ignoring our voices.
The people, united, will never be defeated. There is no problem this country has that we can not solve, provided we work together.
Expect us.
quote:Secretive TrapWire company's affiliations revealed
Just discovered documentation concerning the TrapWire secret surveillance system suggests that the San Diego-based Cubic Corporation did have a direct connection with the program, despite repeated attempts to dismiss allegations of their involvement.
Although Cubic has gone on the record on several occasions to refute claims that they have at one time or another been directly tied to the Abraxas Applications, the Northern Virginia company believed to have developed TrapWire, a post published this week on the PrivacySos.org blog discusses evidence that links the two firms to one another. Cubic has repeatedly insisted that it has no link to TrapWire, a widespread, international surveillance and intelligence system brought to light in emails distributed by WikiLeaks, but new revelations expose a relationship between the two that was documented on a federal website as recently as February of last year.
As RT unraveled the TrapWire saga earlier this year, investigations into both Cubic and Abraxas revealed a number of associations among the two. In an August 13, 2012 press release, Cubic came forth and admitted to acquiring Abraxas Corp in December of 2010, but insisted, “Abraxas Corporation then and now has no affiliation with Abraxas Applications now known as Trapwire, Inc.” The latest revelation directly discredits that claim.
PrivacySos reports that a website maintained by the US Homeland Security Department’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) includes TrapWire as a product for sale to law enforcement agencies and first responders. It’s there that the background and operational concept of the system are described in detail and direct curious customers to AbraxasCorp.com for more information. When a link to the URL is clicked, the banner at the top of the developer’s homepage described Abraxas as “A Cubic Company.” On the FEMA page, the product information is detailed as provided directly by Abraxas Applications
"The Products Section includes commercially available product information that has been uploaded directly and voluntarily by the manufacturer,” the FEMA page acknowledges.
If that is indeed the case, either the federal government is hosting falsified information about TrapWire to prospective customers, or else the program was overseen to a degree by Cubic as previously suspected. If it’s the latter, then the August 13 statement was a downright lie.
On the PrivacySos post, published Tuesday, its acknowledged that Cubic has previously been confirmed as operating fare systems for major mass transit programs and Anonymizer, an IP-masked tool described by its publicists as “the leader in consumer online anonymity solutions.”
“If the government's facts are correct, the Abraxas Corporation was managing sales for the TrapWire system at least as recently as February 2011 – meaning Cubic had its hands on both highly sensitive private information on millions of ordinary people and a networked surveillance system sold to governments,” PrivacySOS notes.
In addition to the press release that attempted to distance Cubic from TrapWire, activist and Project PM founder Barrett Brown uploaded a phone call to YouTube he alleged to be between himself and Cubic Corp. Communication Director Tim Hall. In the clip, published August 21, Mr. Hall denied his company’s involvement with TrapWire and also insisted that Cubic has never been tied to Ntrepid, a separate corporation that was awarded $2.76 million worth of taxpayer dollars to create phony Internet “sock puppets” to propagate US support.
“There is no connection at all with Abraxas Applications and Trapwire and or Ntrepid,” the man perpetrated to be Hall explains in the clip. Research into the entities, however, led to the discovery of Abraxas Corporation’s tax filings from late 2011, and with it, a common bond: TrapWire Inc. was registered in 2009 to a Margaret A Lee from Virginia, who also served on the Ntrepid board of directors.
“Since the government's intelligence and data management contracting operations are so secretive and opaque, we may never know what's really going on – whether Cubic in fact operates transit data systems, so-called IP anonymizers and surveillance systems sold to governments,” the PrivacySOS post reads. “[It] doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. That's because we know more than enough to be convinced that we need a mass movement for privacy in the United States, whether or not these connections are real.”
quote:Occupy activists commandeer anti-Occupy Wall Street rally
Protest backed by billionaire Koch brothers fizzles out as Occupiers match numbers and attend with host of satirical signs
A conservative rally billed as an opportunity to "stand up to Occupy Wall Street extremists" fell flat on Thursday when it was co-opted by members of Occupy Wall Street.
Supporters of Americans for Prosperity, a Tea Party-esque group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, gathered at the Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan to demonstrate against both Occupy Wall Street and President Obama.
But almost half of the sparse crowd were Occupy Wall Street protesters, smartly dressed and bearing signs parodying Americans for Prosperity's ultra-conservative message.
"My sign says: 'I'm dreaming of a white president, just like the ones we used to have,'" said Stan Williams, a labour organiser and member of the Occupy movement.
"There were some people, with my sign especially, who said why are you bringing race into it," said Williams, who is black. "But there were about five or six people who said: 'That's a great sign.'"
Warren Bancroft, co-founder of the satirical group Americans for Inequality, whose Facebook page describes the organisation as a "group of concerned citizens who cherish America's history of vast inequalities", was drawing approving nods from the Americans for Prosperity crowd as he loudly criticised the Occupy movement, arguing that "inequality plays a positive role".
"We're committed to reversing the narrative of inequality in this country," Bancroft said. "For the last year it's been dominated by the problems of inequality and the perils of inequality, but the truth is if you look at economic history, inequalities signal incentives to everyone in a dynamic market economy."
The dozen or so Americans for Prosperity supporters were almost matched in number by attendees pretending to be from Americans for Prosperity. Among other Occupy signs in the crowd were "Let them eat cake," and "I hate libraries", while a woman dressed in business attire had a piece of cardboard bearing the message "Every man for himself" – the quote attributed to Jesus Christ.
"There's a tradition of this," said a woman called Frances, an Occupy demonstrator who did not want to give her last name.
"There was a group called Billionaires for Bush that would dress up and they would come to demonstrations, and they would do a little skit about how they were billionaires and how they were very happy with the Bush tax cuts and the wars for oil.
"There's a tradition of street theatre and this was a little bit of street theatre."
Not all the parodists were necessarily affiliated with Occupy, however, with the Americans for Prosperity rally seemingly acting as a dog whistle for satire.
"I'm sick of the Occupy Wall Street protests … I'm sorry that I was born to a certain family and that I make more money than you. Maybe you should go and get a job," said a man who gave his name as John Wilker, who was clad in business attire and insisted he worked in the financial district.
"These are true patriots here. They're fighting the good fight to still make sure Americans such as myself are still given the opportunities that we've had for decades and decades and decades."
Wilker said he was not a part of the Occupy movement, but he and his companion Robert Stetson appeared to be engaging in the 'street theatre' Frances had mentioned.
"I think it's fine that the 1% earns far more than the 99%, that's how it should be. There should be a group of people that has worked hard, that has been able to set themselves apart. It's America," Stetson said. He and Wilker, like the Occupy infiltrators, were repeatedly questioned by the green T-shirt wearing Americans for Prosperity, rather derailing the rally and distracting from speakers.
The event had been organised as part of the group's "Failing Agenda" bus tour across the US. Americans for Prosperity has three coaches crossing the country, drawing attention to what it sees as Obama's failings on the economy, and Steve Lonegan, the organisation's New Jersey state director had described its stop outside the Rockefeller Center in New York as having an anti-Occupy theme.
But after Lonegan kicked off the rally just after 10.30am, summarising Obama's "failing agenda" and describing the need to "return ourselves to free market capitalism", bickering swiftly broke out in the crowd as Americans for Prosperity supporters sensed they were being infiltrated.
A red-haired Americans for Prosperity supporter was among the more vocal. "I built my own business, OK? Nobody gave it to me. I built it. What about you, who paid for your shoes? Who paid for your shoes?," she inquired as she tailed an Occupier bearing a "Let them eat cake" sign through the crowd.
"I was letting her know that my family, my mother – a single mother – had to support us," the red-haired woman told the Guardian. "That my mother took care of us and she was very poor. That when I was a little girl, we had to eat oatmeal, and our desert was a piece of toast with a little sugar on it. I let her know that my family had nothing and we boot-strapped our way up on our own."
quote:Moeten we occupy mainstream maken?
Occupy als mainstream global brand? De rillingen lopen me over de rug, in eerste instantie, wanneer ik Thomas Wehner dit hoor suggereren. Maar twintig minuten later denk ik, ja, dit zou weleens de volgende stap kunnen zijn. Occupy moet worden als Greenpeace: één logo, één boodschap, één ‘gevoel’
Wehner is een ontspannen pratende Duitser van begin veertig, met halflang haar en een marketingachtergrond. Sinds enige maanden zit hij bij Occupy Money Frankfurt, een afsplitsing van de kampeerders van Occupy rondom de Europese Centrale Bank. Occupy Money bestaat uit advocaten, experts, professoren, consultants en, stiekem, bankiers. Ze bouwen een expertise centrum over de financiële sector ter voorbereiding van een serie van ‘interventies’.
We zitten op de bovenste verdieping van Galeria Kaufhof in het centrum van Frankfurt, met een prachtig uitzicht over de beurs en alle wolkenkrabbers (ik ben een week in Frankfurt om de verschillen met Londen te onderzoeken). Wehner heeft ook ene ‘Thomas Occupy’ meegenomen, een goedlachse, gepensioneerde zakenman van in de zestig die de pr doet, en Hajo Köhn, een consultant van in de zestig die de club heeft opgericht.
De drie heren hebben nog nooit in een Occupy-tent geslapen, en zijn dat ook niet plan. De kampen zijn een goede manier geweest om media-aandacht te krijgen, zeggen ze, maar er is meer nodig, veel meer. Hajo Köhn zegt het simpel: „we moeten Occupy mainstream maken”. Zoals een echte marketingman betaamt heeft Wehner de analogie paraat: „Occupy moet worden als Greenpeace: één logo, één boodschap, één ‘gevoel’.”
Greenpeace voert regelmatig spectaculaire acties tegen walvisvaarders of oliemaatschappijen. Dat brengt media aandacht en daarmee donaties, lidmaatschap en status. Tegelijkertijd, maar veel minder zichtbaar heeft Greenpeace een leger aan experts die een zware lobby voeren bij politici, ambtenaren en het bedrijfsleven.
Oprichter Köhn zegt het zo: „Het komt erop aan de middenklasse te verdedigen tegen de financiële sector.” En het gaat erom Occupy toe te snijden op de Duitse realiteit. „Wij hebben niet zo’n inkomenskloof als in de VS, en het idee van ‘wij zijn de 99 procent’ maakt hier niks los. Het is een mooie slogan, maar hij slaat nergens op.” ‘Occupy Thomas’ knikt: „Er zijn nog steeds veel te veel mensen die de banken vertrouwen, die denken dat de bank het beste wil voor jou. Maar de bank wil het beste voor zichzelf.”
Eigenlijk ben ik zelf een goed voorbeeld van hoe Occupy als mainstream brand zou kunnen werken, zegt Wehner. Als twintiger was hij flink rechts, en lachte met zijn collega’s op de afdeling marketing van een grote multinational om de Groenen. „We noemden ze sokkenbreiers”, herinnert hij zich grinnikend. Maar een half jaar geleden ging Wehner met vrouw en kinderen kijken bij het tentenkamp van Occupy Frankfurt, waar die dag werd gevierd dat het zes maanden oud was. Bezoekers was gevraagd iets te eten mee te nemen en het werd een enorm gezellige dag. Een krant nam een foto van Wehner’s familie, en de volgende dag werd hij keer op keer aangesproken door mensen in zijn buurt: goed dat je dat doet. „Ik ging beseffen hoeveel steun er is voor Occupy onder de gegoede burgerij. Maar voordat ze donateur worden, moet Occupy eerst professionaliseren. Ik denk dat het moment daarvoor rijp is.”
Oprichter Köhn ziet ook een toekomst voor zijn stad Frankfurt: „Als de ECB het Europese bankentoezicht op zich neemt, wordt Frankfurt de toezichthoudershoofdstad. Al die bankiers die hun baan gaan verliezen de komende jaren kunnen daar gaan werken. Combineer dat met ons laboratorium en denktank en Frankfurt heeft een toekomst.
quote:This video is part of the Anonymous leak from the #N15 #OWS raid and eviction. Det. Pierre is filming a clearing of the sidewalk of Broadway and Cortland just North of Zuccotti/Liberty Park
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quote:Members of the hacktivist group Anonymous have released sixty hours of footage of the raid by the New York Police Department against Occupy Wall Street on November 15, 2011. The footage posted is from the NYPD’s Technical Assistance Research Unit (TARU), a surveillance unit that is regularly present at political demonstrations to film police actions.
quote:To use a term writer Glenn Greenwald has used, this act of forcible radical transparency was couched as a response to the NYPD’s decision to deny freedom of the press during the raid. The right people have to view this footage, according to Anonymous, stems from the fact that the police would not let people film or record what was unfolding the day of the raid so, in order for the public to see the truth of what happened, obtaining and releasing the NYPD’s own footage had to be done for the sake of freedom and liberty.
Incredibly, NYPD chief spokesperson Paul Browne, whose job it is to lie and spin what the NYPD does in the city in order to prevent controversy or scrutiny, told Politicker:
. It was not ‘leaked,’ and does not show any misconduct by police. Contrary to the narrator’s account, there were scores of protesters who took video with no attempts by the police to confiscate it…I saw one protester standing near me who videotaped the same opening scene in the YouTube video of officers sawing a chain that two protesters used to chain themselves to a tree in the park. Further, the west side of Zuccotti Park on Church Street was lined with television news personnel and satellite trucks, many of whom filmed events that night.
First, Browne referred to the clip online, not the eleven gigabyte torrent online with video from Detective Pierre, Detective Lombarid, Detective Rivera, Detective Cannizzaro, Detective Livingston, Detective Bellinger, Detective Cruz, and Detective Sciacca. Each were TARU officers recording video at the scene.
Second, Browne suggested to Politicker the footage was “not ‘leaked’ by the police, but possibly by someone suing us” and that it was “not much of a leak since it’s part of the court record.” If the footage was indeed “leaked” by someone with either of the lawsuits against the NYPD, that would mean someone was taking steps that could seriously compromise these efforts. The “leak” would only be able to come from individuals with suits, such as the Occupy Wall Street Library or four New York City lawmakers and several journalists.
quote:Third, Browne wildly claims there was no misconduct by police and no effort to confiscate any video from members of the press. But Free Press’ Josh Stearns put together a Storify documenting journalist arrests that shows this could not be more untrue.
According to Stearns, November 15 was the “single worst day for journalist attacks and arrests to date.” NPR freelancer Julie Walker was arrested. She had NYPD credentials dangling around her neck. Jared Malsin, working for the New York Times‘ Local East Village identified himself as press, showed his credentials but was still handcuffed and arrested. Jennifer Weiss, videographer and journalist for Agence France Presse, and Karen Matthews and Seth Wenig of the Associated Press were arrested.
Patrick Hedlund, DNAinfo.com news editor and Paul Lomax, freelance photographer, were both arrested. So, too, was Doug Higginbotham, “a freelance video journalist working for TV New Zealand” who Stearns writes, was surrounded by police and “arrested as he was ‘standing on top of a phone booth trying to get a wide shot of the scene.’”
The New York Times reported on the NYPD-enforced media blackout. Members of the media said, “They were shoved by the police.” They shared how the NYPD had not distinguished between protesters and members of the press and had even put a New York Post reporter in a “choke-hold.” Gabe Pressman, president of The New York Press Club, wrote a letter to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, stating, “The brash manner in which officers ordered reporters off the streets [on the night of the eviction] and then made them back off until the actions of the police were almost invisible” was “outrageous.”
quote:There's something happening here
Steven Ashby is a professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Teachers go on strike in Chicago and Lake Forest. Chicago symphony musicians walk out. Machinists walk picket lines in Joliet, and Wal-Mart warehouse workers stop working in Elwood. Gov. Pat Quinn gets chased from the state fair by angry government workers, and talk of a state workers strike is rumbling.
"There's something happening here. What it is, ain't exactly clear," wrote Stephen Stills in a 1968 song that came to symbolize the 1960s as a decade of social movements and rapid change.
The same words aptly describe labor relations in the United States today. It seems, as 1960s icon Bob Dylan sang in 1964, "the times they are a-changin'."
In February 2011 we witnessed the Wisconsin workers' uprising. When Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature passed unprecedented anti-union legislation that also deeply cut social services, hundreds of thousands of people came to the state capital to protest, and several thousand occupied the Capitol for two weeks.
That movement ended with the governor beating a recall effort. Similar legislation in Ohio, though, was overturned when, instead of a recall, organizers turned to a referendum and won 61 percent of the vote in support of workers' rights.
Then in September 2011 the Occupy Wall Street movement erupted and rapidly spread to hundreds of cities across the country. Tens of thousands of previously uninvolved young people took to the streets — and tents—– to protest the Great Recession and income inequality, and made "1 percent" and "the 99 percent" part of our national discourse. That movement dissipated as winter weather hit and police tore town tent cities.
Things turned quiet again, leading pundits earlier this year to suggest that Wisconsin and Occupy were blips on an otherwise quiet labor relations landscape.
Then the Chicago Teachers Union strike happened. What was most notable was that this was not a typical strike of recent years, where a small number of strikers passively picket a site and the real action is going on at the bargaining table. Instead, the CTU mobilized nearly all of its 26,000 members in daily mass rallies and marches, and drew in large numbers of supporters.
Historical change is often best understood by looking at turning points — key moments when history began to dramatically change. Three citywide labor strikes in 1934 ended a period of relative passivity and heralded the country's largest and most successful worker uprising. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott initiated the nation-changing civil rights movement.
So are Wisconsin, Occupy and the CTU strike another turning point that future historians will see as the beginning of a new mass workers' movement demanding social change?
If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on it. One key ingredient in the making of historical turning points is that people begin to view street protests as normal instead of weird. Instead of viewing a mass march on TV or the occupation of a building as strange and scary, many people watch those same events and think to themselves, "Good for them. That's what it takes to get anything done in this country. Maybe I'll join them."
You could feel that if you picketed or marched with the Chicago teachers — the constant horn honking in solidarity, the waves and smiles of people from building windows or porch stoops, even the nods of approval from police officers.
Another ingredient in the making of historical turning points is the creation of hope. Occupy and Wisconsin inspired hundreds of thousands of people — but neither succeeded in making change. But the Chicago teachers strike was a clear victory for the union.
Teachers nationwide watched this strike closely and drew hope. The success of the seven-day CTU strike will undoubtedly encourage teachers unions across the country to stand their ground and escalate their efforts to defend public education.
And unionists across the country noted that the foundations for the teachers' victory were laid over the past two years, as the CTU launched a "contract campaign" to educate, organize and mobilize its members. Every school established an organizing committee. Every member was talked to, their concerns discussed, their activism encouraged. In May the union put 6,000 teachers in the streets of downtown Chicago. In June the union overcame a unique anti-CTU law, Senate Bill 7, and turned out 92 percent of its members to nearly unanimously give the leadership strike authorization.
And during the strike, nearly all of the 26,000 teachers participated in enthusiastic, daily marches; picketed daily at schools; and met regularly to discuss strike issues and actions. They were joined by sizable numbers of supporters who came as a result of two years of the union building strong ties with community and parent organizations, and honing the message that the union fought first and foremost to defend a quality public education for every student.
This is the template for successful organizing. This is the soup from which hope emerges.
quote:Court declares 92 Occupy Chicago arrests unconstitutional
A judge in Cook County, Illinois on Thursday dismissed over 90 cases against Occupy Chicago activists on the grounds that they violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Judge Thomas Donnelly declared that the city’s park curfew law that was used to arrest activists in Grant Park last October was “unconstitutional both on its face and as applied and all complaints in this case are dismissed with prejudice,” according to the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG).
“The Occupy Chicago demonstrators were subject to constantly changing rules and regulations that ended in a directive that they had to be constantly moving in order to protest,” the judge explained in his 37-page opinion (PDF). “Viewed in isolation the rules and regulations appear reasonable, but viewed in the larger context of the Occupy movement’s presence in Chicago, they give rise to the inference that the City was attempting to discourage this particular protest.”
“The police would promulgate a rule; when the protesters would comply, the police would change the rule,” he added. “These facts, together with the clear pattern of selective enforcement of the Curfew, support a finding that the city intended to discriminate against the Defendants based on their views.”
NLG attorney Sarah Gelsomino, who represented the activists, said that Donnelly “made the right decision by declaring the city’s ordinance unconstitutional and by dismissing the remaining cases brought by the city against activists legitimately engaged in free speech.”
Chicago Law Department spokesperson Roderick Drew told the Chicago Tribune that the city would appeal the ruling.
Raw Story (http://s.tt/1oxS9)
Fototwitter:AnonymousPress twitterde op maandag 01-10-2012 om 23:07:41WTF? -> @Walmart has brought out a fully armed private security force, resembling that of #NATO #walmartstrikers http://t.co/TClu5bX8 reageer retweet
quote:Occupy activists fight with Ben & Jerry’s founder over The Illuminator
Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are at odds with one of the co-founders of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company after both parties failed to find common ground with how to use a piece of machinery that has become an icon of the protest movement.
Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s agreed to help out the Occupy cause back in January by vowing to contribute as much as $65,000 to be used towards developing and operating a vehicle that would light up the skyline of Lower Manhattan with messages synonymous with the movement. With the assistance of his generous contribution, a Ford Econoline van was modified into a mobile message machine powerful enough to project “We are the 99 percent” and other slogans across the city.
That was the plan, at least. Sadly, it wasn’t exactly the way the cookie dough crumbled.
Although Cohen and company managed to “The Illuminator” project off the ground, a rift has since driven the ice cream king apart from the occupiers, a group he suggests have co-opted the project he has financially backed to use it to advertise other left-leaning ideals that aren’t necessarily synonymous with OWS.
Not before long, Cohen became concerned over how The Illuminator wasn’t just lighting up New York with Occupy slogans, but was being used to advertise an array of other causes, including issues involving Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks whistleblower site and Russian punk band Pussy Riot. When he wasn’t willing to have his van used for other lines of activism, Cohen objected and a custody battle over the vehicle ensued.
“He didn’t want to have to bother with the messy part of being in a democracy,” Mark Read, the activist who claims to have initially proposed The Illuminator idea, tells DNAInfo.com.
“He’s a 1 percenter,” Read, 46, adds to the website, “telling the 99 percent, ‘I’m your boss.’”
As the disagreement between parties heated up, the Occupiers agreed to abandon ownership of the Illuminator effective October 1.
“After we put in all those hours and put ourselves at risk as activists, we had [Cohen], who had not been in the van, come in and critique us,” Read says. “To a person, I think we all feel kind of betrayed and disappointed.”
Now Cohen has once again assumed control over the cargo van, but that doesn’t mean upcoming OWS demonstrations will be without a big, generator-powered, electrical advertising machine. Occupiers have opened up a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign to collective funds for The Illuminator 2.0, a ramped-up re-do of the old Cohen van that they hope to use this season — without fearing repercussions from any future ice cream investors.
“We are the 99%, and we will be our own superhero,” OWS says in a statement to DNAInfo
#occupysesamestreet
quote:Supreme Court Terminates Warrantless Electronic Spying Case
The Supreme Court closed a 6-year-old chapter Tuesday in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s bid to hold the nation’s telecoms liable for allegedly providing the National Security Agency with backdoors to eavesdrop, without warrants, on Americans’ electronic communications in violation of federal law.
The justices, without comment, declined to review a lower court’s December decision (.pdf) dismissing the EFF’s lawsuit challenging the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping program. At the center of the dispute was 2008 congressional legislation retroactively immunizing the telcos from being sued for cooperating with the government in a program President George W. Bush adopted shortly after the September 2001 terror attacks.
After Bush signed the legislation and invoked its authority in 2008, a San Francisco federal judge tossed the case, and the EFF appealed. Among other things, the EFF claimed the legislation, which granted the president the discretion to invoke immunity, was an illegal abuse of power.
The New York Times first exposed the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping of international phone calls to and from Americans in 2005. A former AT&T technician named Mark Klein later produced internal company documents suggesting that the NSA was surveilling internet backbone traffic from a secret room at an AT&T switching center in San Francisco, and similar facilities around the country. Klein’s evidence formed the basis of the now-dismissed suit, Hepting v. AT&T.
Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s legal director, said the group was “disappointed” with the outcome because “it lets the telecommunication companies off the hook for betraying their customers’ trust.”
The Bush administration, and now the President Barack Obama administration, have neither admitted nor denied the spying allegations — though Bush did admit that the government warrantlessly listened in on some Americans’ overseas phone calls, which he said was legal.
But as to widespread internet and phone dragnet surveillance of Americans, both administrations have declared the issue a state secret — one that would undermine national security if exposed.
After six years of legal jockeying, the merits of the allegations have never been weighed in the litigation. But some portions of them still might.
That’s because litigation on the surveillance program continues. After U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker tossed the case against the telcos, the EFF sued the government instead. Walker dismissed that case, too, ruling that it amounted to a “general grievance” from the public and not an actionable claim. But a federal appeals court reversed, and sent it down to a trial judge in December.
Judge Margaret McKeown, of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that the EFF’s claims “are not abstract, generalized grievances and instead meet the constitutional standing requirement of concrete injury. Although there has been considerable debate and legislative activity surrounding the surveillance program, the claims do not raise a political question nor are they inappropriate for judicial resolution.”
A hearing on that case is scheduled next month in San Francisco federal court.
The Obama administration is again seeking it to be tossed, claiming it threatens to expose state secrets and would be an affront to national security. When the state secrets doctrine is invoked, judges routinely dismiss cases amid fears of exposing national security secrets.
On Monday, President Obama said that in the presidential contest with Republican challenger Mitt Romney: ”We haven’t talked about what’s at stake with respect to civil liberties.” One might say that hasn’t been heard in the courts, either, under Obama’s tenure.
quote:Walmart targeted as workers' group plans day of action on Black Friday
Walmart dismiss as 'publicity stunt' campaign group's attempt on busiest shopping day to push for improved conditions
Workers' rights groups behind a series of strikes at Walmart stores across the US are now targeting Black Friday for the next stage of a campaign they say is aimed at improving labour conditions and stopping alleged retaliation against their members.
In recent weeks, a wave of small walkouts have hit Walmart stores in at least 28 locations in 12 different states, as a union-supported campaign group, Making Change at Walmart, and other organisations agitate for improved wages, more flexible hours and an end to what they say are punishments – such as reduced shifts – handed out to workers seeking to organise themselves.
On a conference call with journalists hosted by MCW's director, Dan Schlademan, numerous Walmart workers who have taken part in strike actions outlined plans to try and disrupt Walmart's operations on November 23, the day after Thanksgiving and traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year in the US.
Colby Harris, a full-time Walmart worker in Dallas, said that the action would involve demonstrations, strikes, leafleting and flashmob protests at stores all over the US. "We are going to do everything it takes to make sure change is made," Harris said. Fellow Walmart worker Evelin Cruz, who works at a store in California, said that workers would see to educate the millions of shoppers who flock to stores to snap up bargain goods as part of the holiday celebrations. "We are in this process because Walmart does not want to come to terms with what is going on in their stores," she said.
Union groups and other labour-sympathetic organisations have long seen Walmart – the biggest private employer in the world – as a major target. They say the firm pays low wages, does not offer enough benefits and is an implacable opponent of organised labour. Walmart insists that the protesters are a tiny minority of its 1.4 million workers in America, and that it pays solid wages at a time of economic hardship.
Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman said that operations across the country had not been affected by the strike. "All of our stores are open. They are completely staffed up, and they are taking care of our customers," he said.
Fogleman added that the protests appeared to be a platform for labour unions to try to enter Walmart's workforce. "The unions have wanted to organise Walmart for years. This is just a publicity stunt," Fogleman said.
The recent strikes have been organised by a group called Our Walmart, which is closely linked to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Our Walmart, which has not sought union recognition from Walmart, is trying to organise thousands of employees to lobby and protest for higher wages and improved benefits.
The Black Friday action was decided upon by leaders of OUR Walmart on Tuesday night at a gathering in Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, where the group is protesting senior Walmart executives. At the same time, pro-labour groups have taken out adverts in five local Arkansas newspapers featuring portraits of senior company figures and calling for them to improve labour conditions.
On Black Friday, Our Walmart is set to get support from various national bodies, including the National Consumers League, the National Organisation of Women (NOW) and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. "We are standing in solidarity with with the workers who walking off the job," said Terry O'Neill, the president of NOW, who promised her organisation's members would take action on the day, too.
quote:Third anarchist jailed for refusing to testify before secret grand jury
A third self-described anarchist from the Pacific Northwest has been jailed by federal officials for refusing to speak before a secretive grand jury that the accused have called a politically-motivated modern-day witch-hunt.
Leah-Lynn Plante, a mid-20s activist from Seattle, Washington, was ushered out of court by authorities on Wednesday after refusing for a third time to answer questions forced on her by a grand jury — a panel of prosecutors convened to determine if an indictment can be issued for a federal crime.
Plante was one of a handful of people targeted in a series of raids administered by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force on July 25 of this year which the feds say were in conjunction with an investigation into acts of vandalism that occurred during May Day protests in Seattle nearly two months prior. As part of their probe, search warrants were issued at multiple residences of activists in the area, including Plante’s, demanding that dwellers provide agents with “anti-government or anarchist literature” in their homes and any flags, flag-making material, cell phones, hard drives, address books, and black clothing.
“As if they had taken pointers from Orwell’s 1984, they took books, artwork and other various literature as ‘evidence’ as well as many other personal belongings even though they seemed to know that nobody there was even in Seattle on May Day,” Plante recalls in a post published this week to her Tumblr page.
Only one week after the raid, Neil Fox of the National Lawyers Guild told Seattle Times that raids like this are create a “chilling effect” by going after lawful, constitutionally-allowed private possessions.
“It concerns us any time there are law-enforcement raids that target political literature, First Amendment-protected materials,” Fox said.
This week Plante still maintains her innocence, now she has reason to believe that the raid that has left her suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome may have been more than an investigation into an activity, but an ideology. Plante says a Freedom of Information Act request she filed in the months after her apartment door was broken down by armed officials reveals that the grand jury investigating her was first convened in March, two months before the vandalism she is being accused of even occurred.
“They are trying to investigate anarchists and persecute them for their beliefs. This is a fishing expedition. This is a witch hunt,” she says this week.
On the day of her third meeting with the grand jury on Wednesday, Plante wrote on her blog that she’d almost certainly be jailed on charges of contempt for refusing once again to testify about herself but said she was willing to face the consequences for exercising her right to remain silent.
“I do not look forward to what inevitably awaits me today, but I accept it,” she writes. “My convictions are unwavering and will not be shaken by their harassment. Today is October 10th, 2012 and I am ready to go to prison.”
Hours later, her Tumblr was updated with a note authored by one of her supporters confirming that Plante “was thrown into prison for civil contempt” after her court date. Plante is now the third anarchist to be imprisoned in the last month for refusing to answer questions about their belief and behavior before a grand jury.
Last month, Plante spoke openly about the grand jury before refusing their questioning for only her second time. “I believe that these hearings are politically motivated,” she wrote in a September 16 statement. “The government wants to use them to collect information that it can use in a campaign of repression. I refuse to have any part of it, I will never answer their questions, I will never speak.”
“While I hate the very idea of prison, I am ready to face it in order to stay true to my personal beliefs. I know that they want to kidnap me and isolate me from my friends and my loved ones in an effort to coerce me to speak. It will not work. I know that if I am taken away, I will not be alone.”
Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik, a fellow anarchist from the Seattle area, was taken into federal custody on September 28 for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury, a decision she said was based on humanity and her First Amendment protections.
“I cannot and will not say something that could greatly harm a person’s life, and providing information that could lead to long term incarceration would be doing that,” Olejnik wrote before being booked. “Icannot and will not be a party to a McCarthyist policy that is asking individuals to condemn each other based on political beliefs.”
On the No Political Repression blog, a support of Olejnik writes that she was prohibited from taking notes during her time on the stand, during which she says she resisted questioning.
Days before her imprisonment began, Matt Duran was also jailed for contempt. According to his attorneys, Duran was not only imprisoned by placed in solitary confinement, denied intimate contact with his lawyer, denied visitor requests forms, personal dietary requirements and sunlight an fresh air.
quote:
quote:Historically, the United States has enjoyed higher social mobility than Europe, and both left and right have identified this economic openness as an essential source of the nation’s economic vigor. But several recent studies have shown that in America today it is harder to escape the social class of your birth than it is in Europe. The Canadian economist Miles Corak has found that as income inequality increases, social mobility falls — a phenomenon Alan B. Krueger, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has called the Great Gatsby Curve.
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Het artikel gaat verder.quote:There was a story over at NBC’s The Grio three days ago noting that at one Florida polling location, in a heavily black neighborhood, the number of people who voted early was suddenly “revised” from 2,945 to 1,942 – that’s a 34% decrease.
At first, polling officials blamed it on a “computer glitch.” Uh huh. And what glitch would that be?
The local supervisor of elections (SOE) didn’t inspire a lot of hope when speaking about another, smaller, change to the early voting numbers at another polling location:
quote:Jury says journalist arrested while videotaping police is not guilty
A jury acquitted a Florida photojournalist who was arrested on January 31 while documenting the eviction of Occupy Miami protesters. The police accused Carlos Miller, author of a popular blog about the rights of photojournalists, of disobeying a lawful police order to clear the area. But another journalist testified he had been standing nearby without incident.
After Miller's January arrest, the police confiscated his camera and deleted some of his footage, including video documenting his encounter with the police. That may prove to be an expensive mistake. Miller was able to recover the footage, which proved helpful in winning his acquittal. He says his next step will be to file a lawsuit charging that the deletion of the footage violated his constitutional rights.
"I was questioning their orders. That's what I do"
The one-day trial occurred on Wednesday. In a Thursday interview, Miller told us that the prosecution accused him of "being antagonistic to police because I was questioning their orders." However, he said, "that's what I do. I know my rights. I know the law."
During the trial, Miller's attorney, Santiago Lavandera, admitted that Miller used some coarse language with the police officers at one point during the evening. But he stressed that it wasn't the job of a journalist to meekly obey police orders.
"When you’re a journalist, your job is to investigate," Lavandera told the jury. "Not to be led by your hand where the police want you to see, so they can hide what they don’t want you to see. As long as you are acting within the law, as Mr. Miller was, you have the right to demand and say, ‘no, I’m not moving, I have the right to be here. This is a public sidewalk, I have the right to be here.’"
Miller told us the jury deliberated for only about half an hour before returning a verdict of "not guilty." He said his case was helped by the footage he recovered from his camera. That footage, he told us, clearly showed that there were other journalists nearby when he was arrested.
One of them was Miami Herald reporter Glenn Garvin, who testified in Wednesday's trial. According to Miller, when Garvin saw Miller being arrested by Officer Nancy Perez, "he immediately thought he was going to get arrested, so he asked Nancy Perez if it was alright for him to be standing there and she said, yes, he was under no threat of getting arrested."
There's a history of confrontations between Miller and the police, and Miller said the police had singled him out for that reason. An e-mail disclosed during the trial showed the police had been monitoring Miller's Facebook page and had sent out a notice warning officers in charge of evicting the Occupy Miami protestors that Miller was planning to cover the process.
Constitutional challenge
Now that Miller doesn't have a jail sentence hanging over his head, he's planning to turn the tables on the Miami-Dade Police Department. He plans to file a lawsuit arguing the deletion of his footage by the police violated his constitutional rights.
According to Miller, such incidents are disturbingly common around the country. As camera-equipped cell phones have proliferated, ordinary Americans have increasingly used the devices to document how police officers do their jobs. And he said he heard of numerous incidents in which the police confiscate these devices and delete potentially embarrassing footage.
Miller told us most victims don't stand up for their rights in court. In many cases, people are happy simply to have the police drop the charges against them. But Miller isn't so easily cowed.
If Miller files his lawsuit, he will join a handful of other plaintiffs who have gone to court to vindicate their rights to record the activities of police officers. Judges in Massachusetts and Illinois have held it unconstitutional to arrest people for recording the activities of police. A Baltimore man has sued the police for deleting his footage from his cell phone. The Obama administration filed a brief in the case arguing that deleting such footage violates the Fourth Amendment.
Miller points out that if an ordinary citizen deleted footage relevant to an alleged crime, he could be charged with destruction of evidence, a felony. He believes that police officers should also be held accountable when they seize cameras and delete footage.
quote:15 States including Texas have filed a petition to secede from the United States
As of Saturday November 10, 2012, 15 States have petitioned the Obama Administration for withdrawal from the United States of America in order to create its own government.
States following this action include: Louisiana, Texas, Montana, North Dakota, Indiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon and New York. These States have requested that the Obama Administration grant a peaceful withdrawal from the United States.
These citizen generated petitions were filed just days after the 2012 Presidential election.
Louisiana was the first State to file a petition a day after the election by a Michael E. from Slidell, Louisiana. Texas was the next State to follow by a Micah H. from Arlington, Texas.
The government allows one month from the day the petition is submitted to obtain 25,000 signatures in order for the Obama administration to consider the request.
The Texas petition reads as follows:
The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government’s neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it’s citizens’ standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government.
As of 12:46 am, Sunday, signatures obtained by Louisiana, 7,358; Texas, 3,771; Florida, 636; Georgia, 475; Alabama, 834; North Carolina, 792; Kentucky, 467; Mississippi, 475; Indiana, 449; North Dakota, 162; Montana, 440; Colorado, 324; Oregon, 328; New Jersey, 301 and New York, 169. Many more States are expected to follow.
A petition is not searchable at WhiteHouse.gov until 150 signatures have been obtained. It is the originator's responsibility to obtain these signatures.
The Texas petition can be reviewed and/or signed by clicking here.
quote:
quote:Last March, in a speech he delivered at a gathering orchestrated by In-Q-Tel, the venture-capital incubator of the Central Intelligence Agency, David Petraeus, the Agency’s director, had occasion to ruminate on “the utter transparency of the digital world.” Contemporary spooks faced both challenges and opportunities in a universe of “big data,” but he had faith in the “diabolical creativity” of the wizards at Langley: “Our technical capabilities often exceed what you see in Tom Cruise movies.” In the digital environment of the twenty-first century, Petraeus announced, “We have to rethink our notions of identity and secrecy.”
For those of us who have been less bullish about the prospects of radical transparency, the serialized revelations that have unfolded since Friday—when Petraeus, who left the military as a four-star general, resigned from the C.I.A. because of an affair—are, to say the least, honeyed with irony. In the decade following September 11, 2001, the national-security establishment in this country devised a surveillance apparatus of genuinely diabolical creativity—a cross-hatch of legal and technical innovations that (in theory, at any rate) could furnish law enforcement and intelligence with a high-definition early-warning system on potential terror events. What it’s delivered, instead, is the tawdry, dismaying, and wildly entertaining spectacle that ensues when the national-security establishment inadvertently turns that surveillance apparatus on itself.
quote:But our spymasters should give some thought as well to how it feels to be thoroughly and mercilessly laid bare at the hands of a legal and technological surveillance apparatus that is their own creation.
[ Bericht 6% gewijzigd door Papierversnipperaar op 14-11-2012 16:53:08 ]
quote:Walmart hit by walk-outs in build-up to 'Black Friday' disruptions
Workers plan week of action ahead of major shopping day in response to perceived greed from the retail giant
Strikes and protests aimed at disrupting the retail giant Walmart during next week's Black Friday sales events began on Thursday with walk-outs at a number of stores and the promise of more actions in the lead-up to what is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year.
The news comes amid controversy about plans by Walmart and other large chains to open on Thanksgiving evening, kicking off Black Friday a day early. It also comes as another strike has hit part of Walmart's warehouse supply chain in southern California.
At least 30 workers from six different Seattle-area Walmarts have gone on strike, organisers and Walmart staff from the OUR Walmart group said. The group, which is not a union but has close ties with the labour movement, is seeking to protest what it says is low pay, too few hours and retaliation by managers against workers who speak out.
Seattle Walmart worker Sara Gilbert said she had taken the decision to go on strike to protest the fact that she could only make around $14,000 dollars a year. Despite working as a customer service manager, she said, her family remained reliant on food stamps and other benefits. "I work full time at the richest company in the world," she said.
The Seattle strike is aimed at kickstarting a series of protests in the run-up to Black Friday, when more than a thousand separate demonstrations ranging from walk-outs to leafleting to flash mobs are planned. So far they are set to hit Walmart stores in Illinois, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Washington DC.
But organisers say they expect it eventually to be country-wide. "You are going to see unprecedented activity starting now and going into the holiday season. This is going to continue this year and next year," said Dan Schlademan, director of the union-backed Making Change at Walmart group which is helping organise the effort.
Members of OUR Walmart are demanding better wages, better access to benefits and an end to what they say is retaliating against their members who protest or organise. Last month the group helped organise one of the biggest sets of protests to ever hit the retailer when workers held strikes at more than 12 different stores, earning national headlines across the US.
Walmart has said that the complaints of OUR Walmart members represent only a tiny fraction of its huge workforce of 1.3 million people. "There have been a very small number of associates raising concerns about their jobs," said Walmart spokesman Steve Restivo. "When our associates bring forward concerns, we listen. Associates have direct lines of communication with their management team and we work to understand their concerns," he added.
But the Black Friday protests are only one of several areas of controversy to hit Walmart in recent months. The company has also been struck by a series of strikes and protests in its warehouse supply chain, some of which is outsourced to third party logistics firms and staffing agencies.
Those outside companies have been accused by some campaigners of poor safety standards, meagre wages and also retaliating against workers who complain. A group of warehouse workers at a Walmart supply chain warehouse in southern California have also launched a strike action this week following a previous protest in September.
Some 30 workers held a picket outside a huge warehouse in Mira Loma, California, saying that previous strikers had been sacked or had their hours reduced. Javier Rodriguez, a forklift driver at the facility, said managers had drastically cut his hours after the last protest. "This is the form of retaliation that they use for me. It makes it hard to earn enough to feed my family and run my car," he said.
The strike on Thursday saw six supporters of the protest, including a pastor, arrested after sitting down in the middle of a road in front of the warehouse.
"This isn't just for warehouse workers. Your efforts benefit all working people," Reverand Eugene Boutilier told a group of supporters before being handcufffed by local police.
The warehouse is run by logistics giant NFI but supplies goods only to Walmart. An NFI spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment but the firm has said previously that it adheres to all legal labour standards.
Meanwhile in Illinois, workers at another Walmart supply chain warehouse near the small town of Elwood filed charges to a state labour relations board alleging unfair practises by four different firms involved in the running and staffing of the warehouse. They also relate to claims of retaliation against workers who had previously gone on strike to protest an alleged practise of "wage theft" where employees are not paid for all the time they work.
quote:Walmart Strike Memo Reveals Confidential Management Plans
Walmart launched a large-scale response this week to a series of unprecedented labor strikes, according to a confidential document obtained by The Huffington Post.
The seven-page internal memo, issued Oct. 8, is intended for salaried employees only, and contains instructions on how to respond to strikes by hourly workers that spread to 28 Walmart stores in 12 cities earlier this week. The strikes were the first by Walmart retail employees in the company’s 50-year history.
The memo makes clear that Walmart, the world's largest private employer, views the labor protests as a serious attack, a message that runs contrary to the company's public comments that the strikes are mere "publicity stunts," as Walmart's vice president of communications David Tovar told The Huffington Post Tuesday.
"As you know,” the memo opens, “activists or union organizers have been trying for years to stop our Company’s growth and to damage our relationship with our customers and members. One of the activists’ or union organizers’ tactics is to try to disrupt the business by urging our associates to participate in a walkout or other form of work stoppage.”
The majority of the memo is aimed at instructing managers not to violate workers' legal right to engage in concerted activity, or non-union labor organizing. Managers are directed not to “discipline” employees who engage in walkouts, sit-ins or sick-outs.
Legal experts said the confidential memo shows an unprecedented level of caution from a company that has taken harsh stances towards employee attempts to organize in the past.
“Walmart probably has in mind that the Obama NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] often sides with unions over management,” said Lance Compa, a labor law professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial Relations in Ithaca, N.Y. “So they’re being extremely cautious.”
The memo is peppered with Walmart management jargon, offering a window into the secretive corporate culture built by founder Sam Walton. Managers are reminded over and over of the acronym TIPS (Threaten Intimidate Promise Spy) when dealing with potential labor organizing by hourly-wage "associates." The widely used human resources term serves to remind managers that they cannot, by law, threaten or intimidate workers who organize, promise them benefits if they stop organizing, or spy on their activities.
What managers can legally do, however, is what Walmart calls FOE -- offer workers Facts, Opinions, and Personal Experiences about labor organizing. Walmart offers a sample opinion that says, "I don't think a walkout is a good way to resolve problems or issues." According to Compa, this is a boilerplate tactic for companies looking to discourage unionizing without breaking the law.
The historic retail worker strikes began last Friday in Los Angeles, when 60-some people walked off work, and they quickly spread across the country. Earlier in September, workers at warehouses owned by Walmart in Illinois and California also went on strike.
Striking workers are demanding that Walmart end retaliatory practices against employees who attempt to organize by Nov. 23, Black Friday. If not, they will strike again on the biggest shopping day of the year, according to Colby Harris, a Walmart worker from Dallas, who participated in Tuesday’s strike.
Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman said the strikes were largely publicity stunts. "We've seen the unions hold these made for TV events outside our stores for about ten years now," he told HuffPost, "and they want the publicity to help further their political and financial agendas. There is a very small number of associates raising these concerns, and they don't represent the views of the vast majority of our 1.3 million associates."
According to Compa, the memo reflects Walmart's concern over the 20-some charges of unfair labor practices that Walmart workers filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over the past 8 weeks in concurrence with the strikes.
The charges include dozens of allegations from employees who claim they were subjected to harassment, cut hours and other disciplinary actions when Walmart higher-ups learned that they supported OUR Walmart, the United Food and Commercial Workers-backed worker group that organized the recent strikes. If the NLRB sides with the workers, Walmart may eventually be forced to pay a huge settlement in back pay, the specific amount of which would vary for each individual case.
Fogleman said the company has "very strict policies against retaliation. If an associate feels that they have been retaliated against, we want to know that. That allows us the opportunity to look into it and take appropriate action."
Politics may also play a role in the company's newfound caution. Top positions at the NLRB are appointed by the president, and Democrats have traditionally been more sympathetic to labor organizers.
Notably, the leaked memo lacks many of Walmart’s famously tough labor policies.
In the past, internal Walmart documents instructed managers to remind employees that they could be permanently replaced if they went on strike, as well as provided talking points on the false guarantees unions make to workers, according to a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch that examined 292 NLRB charges against Walmart. The new document bears no mention of replacing employees.
At one point, Walmart is even more cautious than the law requires. The document does not instruct managers to evict employees conducting a sit-in on company property, as is within their legal right, according to Compa, who also serves as a consultant to Human Rights Watch.
Still, a few of the strategies that made Walmart famous as a union-buster rear their heads in the document. Tacked onto the end of the memo is a definition of the term, “Coaching By Walking Around” (CBWA), or “when managers walk through their facility or department everyday just to visit with associates,” as Walmart explains it. While it may sound benign, the verb "to coach" in Walmart lexicon also means to discipline employees. According to workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Walmart managers have used CBWA as a surveillance tactic to monitor and deter labor organizers.
Have you worked at Walmart? The Huffington Post wants to know about your experience. Email us. Information will remain confidential.
Fogleman, the Walmart spokesman, defended the CBWA, saying that management uses it as a tool to "remain engaged with everyone working for them and with environment. It helps foster the channels of open dialogue that set us apart as an employer."
It remains to be seen whether the new directives will have a long-term impact on Walmart managers. "I think it's one thing to get a piece of paper, but in practice that's not what people have experienced in these stores," said Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a nonprofit workers rights group. Gupta cautions that one document is unlikely to alter five decades of anti-union corporate culture. “What I worry about is that our experience with Walmart management is they say they'll respect workers, and then their actions tell a different story."
Walmart also could have ulterior motives for considering workers rights, such as covering itself in upcoming Unfair Labor Practice proceedings. “Walmart could say, in effect, 'Look, it says right here, we told our supervisors ‘don’t retaliate’ –- so we must be innocent,” said Compa, the law professor. Compa noted that this is a possible motivation for Walmart to have put such “extremely circumspect” manager instructions down on paper at a time like this.
For Dan Schlademan, director of the UFCW’s Making Change at Walmart campaign, the motives of the memo are less important than its overall effect on workers. "I've been doing this work for 20 years, and I've never seen a document like this.”
"What's important about this piece of paper is that it solidifies what people saw for the first time during the strikes, which is that Walmart employees were able to walk out in protest, and the next day were able to return to work. For many of them, that was amazing to see."
SEE THE WALMART DOCUMENT HERE.
quote:Walmart strikes result in arrests as store claims Black Friday sales success
Nine protesters detained in California as protest group co-ordinates action across US on busiest shopping day
Police arrested nine people outside a California Walmart late on Friday, at a protest that was part of a nationwide series of walk-outs and demonstrations against labour conditions at the retail giant. The protests were held to mark Black Friday, the busiest shopping day in the American calendar. Organisers claimed that at least 1,000 actions took place across 46 states.
The biggest protest seemed to be in Paramount, California, where more than 1,500 people gathered in the streets to chant protest songs in opposition to what they say are low wages that keep Walmart workers in poverty. Organisers have also complained of retaliation by the company against people who speak out.
The nine people arrested refused to leave the street and were peacefully detained, said Captain Mike Parker of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Three of those arrested were striking Walmart workers, said OUR Walmart, which is organising the protests and is backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers' Union. The others were local community supporters.
Protests were staged all over the country and attracted some high-profile supporters. In Florida, congressman Alan Grayson joined a picket line, as did congressman George Miller in California. Demonstrations hit Walmart outlets in major cities across America.
In recent months the company has also been hit by strikes and protests in its US-based supply chain in Southern California and Illinois, where much work is outsourced to third parties which are accused of paying low wages and operating in unsafe conditions.
Despite the unrest, Walmart said it had experienced its best Black Friday ever and that the majority of protesters were not Walmart workers. Certainly the protests did not disrupt trade at the nation's Walmart stores when they controversially opened late on the Thanksgiving holiday itself, or in the early hours of Friday morning. There were the usual scenes of long lines, crowded checkouts and shoving and pushing as shoppers battled to snap up bargain buys.
"We had very safe and successful Black Friday events at our stores across the country and heard overwhelmingly positive feedback from our customers," said Bill Simon, Walmart's US president and chief executive officer.
Protesters vowed to keep the protests going into the holiday season. Dan Schlademan, director at lobby group Making Change at Walmart, said: "This has been an amazing moment but we are just at the starting point of what we are doing."
Mary Pat Tifft, an OUR Walmart member and 24-year associate who led a protest on Thursday evening in Kenosha, Wisconsin, said: "For Walmart associates this has been the best Black Friday ever. We stood together for respect across the country."
Others agreed. "Our voices are being heard," said Colby Harris, an OUR Walmart member and three-year associate who walked off the job in Lancaster, Texas, on Thursday evening. "And thousands of people in our cities and towns and all across the country are joining our calls for change at Walmart. We are overwhelmed by the support and proud of what we've achieved so quickly and about where we are headed."
quote:Oakland officials sued by war veteran who alleges neglect after Occupy arrest
Kayvan Sabeghi says he was left in a jail cell with a ruptured spleen for 18 hours after being beaten by police at Occupy rally
A war veteran who claims he was falsely arrested, beaten, and almost died due to neglect in an Oakland prison has launched legal action against the jail, claiming his pleas for help were ignored.
Kayvan Sabeghi, 33, was arrested during an Occupy rally in Oakland, California, in November last year. Video footage shows him being beaten with batons and he suffered a lacerated spleen which his attorney Dan Siegel says almost killed him after he was left without treatment for 18 hours in prison.
Siegel estimated damages in the case will be upwards of $1m but said his main aim was to change the practices at the jail. "The greater concern that he has is that there be some changes at the jail. It's a big problem that the county has privatised health services in a public jail and that the company that's doing it is more concerned about making money than providing quality care."
A private company, Corizon, is hired by the prison authorities to take care of the medical needs of prisoners at Glenn Dyer. Corizon is named as one of the defendants in the suit, along with the county of Alameda, Sheriff Gregory Ahern and an officer at the county sheriff's office.
On arrival at the prison Sabeghi told medical officers that he had been beaten by police and he offered to show them his injuries.
Corizon staff are accused of refusing to look at Sabeghi's injuries.
The suit claims that his condition deteriorated and that despite showing severe distress and vomiting, Sabeghi did not receive treatment for 18 hours and was mocked by prison guards who dismissed his suffering as heroin withdrawal symptoms. It further claims that one officer filmed Sabeghi as he lay on the floor in agony and vomiting.
By the time his friends posted his bail, at 2pm the following day, he was so ill he could not lift himself from the concrete floor of his cell. Four hours later his friends came to the prison to get him out and an ambulance was called.
"There are a lot of people taken to jail who have substantial medical problems," said Siegel. "There are a lot of people with drug and alcohol problems and they need to be adequately cared for … When you have guards who ridicule people with health problems, that's a setup for failure. Maybe there are some who exaggerate their symptoms but I think they should all be checked out and if someone continues to complain, they should be given the benefit of the doubt. At least get a doctor."
The suit further claims that a medical staffer did take Sabeghi's blood pressure but reported, wrongly, that he was a diabetic and alcoholic and sought no further treatment for him.
But the authorities in Oakland have rejected the claims. Sgt JD Nelson, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, denied any mistreatment and insisted video footage would show officers promptly assisting Sabeghi and arranging an examination. "As his condition worsened, we got an ambulance there," Nelson said.
Yet Siegel responded that it was clear to other prisoners that Sabeghi was in genuine distress and they asked guards to get help but were ignored.
He added: "Contrary to what the sheriff department's spokesperson said, it was not the case that they responded with any urgency. They only took it seriously when his friends bailed him out and he was unable to leave.
"He came close to dying. His doctors said so. He had a ruptured spleen and he was bleeding internally, which is why he got progressively weaker."
Sabeghi served tours as a ranger in Afghanistan and Iraq and is no longer in the army. On his return to civilian life he ran a bar in Oakland for a time but has since given that up.
He has said he was not participating in the Occupy rally the day he was arrested, but merely trying to get home when he was confronted by police in riot gear. When he refused to change direction he was beaten.
Video footage posted on YouTube shows him receiving a number of blows with police batons before being arrested. He was not charged with any crime.
quote:FBI Spy files says Occupy wall street protesters are Terrorist
With no surprise, Anonymous has come out with yet another leak exposing FBI's bligrint behavior twards amarican citizins and there civl liberties. A leak involving "FBI's Spy files" was tweeted today by "@AnonymousIRC" a popular twitter user account with over 285 thousand followers. FBI is aperently taking an interest in finding ways to suppress citizens' freedom and liberties by conducting secret investigations on large numbers of people with little to no grounds of suspicion other then the petty excuse like using big words such as suspected "Terrorist" activity as a means to trample on civle rights.
For those of you who don't know or may have been sleeping under a rock, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is the name given to a protest movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district.
In the text the "FBI Spy files" stated:
"Referencing the demonstrations of the 2011 Arab Spring events, the Day of Rage' desires to mimic the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests which have occurred in the Arab world. The overall goal of the Day of Rage' protests is to conduct unorganized protests in major metropolitan areas with special attention on banking and financial institutions. [...] While Day of
Rage' does not condone the use of violence during the events, their website provides activists with information and training on "direct action, civil disobedience, how to deal with violence, and jailhouse solidarity", suggesting that violence and/or illegal activity is expected by event organizers."
I love how they word this to slant the investigations there way. Makes me mad and laugh at the same time. For example they associated "2011 Arab Spring events" with "revolutionary wave." Essentially calling the protesters terrorist. When in they are doing what our founding fathers would have done in the face of debt slavery.
But wait it gets better the phrase "information and training on "direct action, civil disobedience" is reference to "violence and/or illegal activity."
You can't make this stuff up.
The definition of "Civil Disobedience" is:
"The refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest."
I love how the FBI totally twisted and manipulated this whole investigation like they where trying to satisfy the status quo. According to the FBI's logic they can do what ever they want. Even if it means disregarding citizens right to privacy all in the name of "National Security" and fending off the evil "terrorist" boogeyman.
As of October of 2011 A request was filed and granted on behalf of the "Freedom of information act" to show that the FBI was investigating Occupy Wall Street protesters posted on MuckRock News.
While Terrorism in the United States can be a reality like the 9/11 incident, the sad reality is our government openly supports Terrorism, as admitted buy Obama recently. The United States government is creating a blow back and using fear as a weapon to expand social and political influence, just like al Qaeda terrorist, whom Obama now openly supports. Because of the blow back caused by the United States over "nation building" our government has made its country a target to major terrorist groups it has created. The sad part is, the United States created these monsters. The US and its western allies give them money to create Terrorism and destabilization in regions such as Syria and libya. Then, after the terrorist are finished being 1984 pawns, the United Sates government fights them in some kind of twisted hero vs villain game while using main stream news to make there actions look noble and just .
The united states government seems to be more invested in preventative crime rather then the right to due process. Currently, Protesters are being targeted as "Urban Terrorist" and many fear being harassed by the united states government, who is supposed to be protecting the peoples' constitution.
I like how the United Sates founding father, Benjamin Franken, phrased it when he said:
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
Maybe next we will see law enforcement raiding little girls lemonade stands. Oh wait, this already happened. Oh well, at least this story further exemplifies how tyrannical this government really is. Good job big government, democracy could not be more safe with out you.
Het artikel gaat verder.quote:Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy
New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent
It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.
The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).
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quote:Shaquille Azir, ex-con, bank robber, forger, passer of bad checks, and FBI informant, first visited Occupy Cleveland the night the activists were evicted from their camp. The young men were homeless, looking for a cause and a paycheck. At best they were failed gutter punks.
It took months of convincing by Azir to get the plot in motion. After the camp folded, Azir gave the penniless Occupy activists construction jobs, and plied them with beer while they worked. He sent them home, according to a Rolling Stone magazine account, with more beer, weed and prescription drugs. At first, the activists rebuffed Azir's arms-dealer friend, who was an FBI agent. Azir continued to press them.
When the Occupiers waffled, Azir pushed back. Eventually, Stevens and the others gave in. "They were kind of hooked into this guy," Stevens' attorney, Terry Gilbert, told HuffPost. "When Occupy disbanded, it took a chunk of meaning out of their lives -- to the point where they were kind of dangling out there with nothing to do. They were disaffected. ... One day it's all over and it's like where do I go now. That's when they started really working on these kids -- the FBI."
After the activists attempted to set off the fake bombs, agents swooped in on April 30. Four of the five defendants, including Stevens, pleaded guilty. The fifth defendant's case has been delayed for a psychological evaluation.
quote:The paranoia of the superrich and superpowerful
[This piece is adapted from "Uprisings", a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to US Empire, Noam Chomsky's new interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian's, the answers Chomsky's.]
quote:The main founder of contemporary IR [international relations] theory, Hans Morgenthau, was really quite a decent person, one of the very few political scientists and international affairs specialists to criticise the Vietnam War on moral, not tactical, grounds. Very rare.
He wrote a book called The Purpose of American Politics. You already know what's coming. Other countries don't have purposes. The purpose of America, on the other hand, is "transcendent": to bring freedom and justice to the rest of the world. But he's a good scholar, like Carothers. So he went through the record. He said, when you study the record, it looks as if the United States hasn't lived up to its transcendent purpose.
But then he says, to criticise our transcendent purpose "is to fall into the error of atheism, which denies the validity of religion on similar grounds" - which is a good comparison. It's a deeply entrenched religious belief. It's so deep that it's going to be hard to disentangle it. And if anyone questions that, it leads to near hysteria and often to charges of anti-Americanism or "hating America" - interesting concepts that don't exist in democratic societies, only in totalitarian societies and here, where they're just taken for granted.
twitter:KitOConnell twitterde op zondag 03-02-2013 om 21:32:33Our zine library at Austin City Hall. Come share some revolutionary literature. #oatx #ows #f3 #OccupyAustin http://t.co/9ExlJ16u reageer retweet
quote:
quote:For a people to be free, they must first be honest with themselves, their government, and the world at large. History is filled with stories of free nations that fell under the spell cast by their governments who exploited the threat of terror.
In fact, numerous presidents in American history already have used various specific threats to sidestep their Constitutional restraints. Today we are entering a nebulous world where our "enemy" cannot be defined, has no particular allegiance to one country, and is able to adopt new leaders at will. Rather than encourage a sense of resilience and independence in its citizens, America has chosen to amplify the terror threat in order to concentrate power in the hands of the State. The very first signpost on this historically familiar road to tyranny is an atmosphere of hate, suspicion, and vindictiveness. It first begins as an outwardly directed aggression and then rather abruptly turns inward upon itself.
The good news is that freedom is won and lost in our hearts and minds. It is for this reason that we must state the obvious: we have clearly passed through the first "atmospheric" stage of approaching dictatorship, and have now entered the second -- the open behavior of a dictatorship in the United States.
It will never be announced on the evening news, and it is not likely to continue under an authoritarian leader in the mold of a Stalin, Hitler, or Mao. Likewise, it is not to say that Barack Obama is the first dictator of The United States, but rather is part of a continued expansion of executive power that is now so great that by all measures America can no longer be called a Land of the Free ruled by We the People. We stand no chance of reversing this forced march by false democracy until we understand where we are headed, who is leading us there, and for what purpose.
quote:Occupy Denied Day In Court
It took more than a year for Suffolk County prosecutors to come to their senses. With Nemo bearing down on New England and the media buried in storm coverage, the DA's office quietly dropped all charges against more than two dozen Occupy Boston protesters, whose cases — as the Phoenix has previously reported — have been kicked through a legal labyrinth, their right to a speedy trial denied.
These 27 cases were the final remnants of the mass arrests that took place during separate incidents in Dewey Square and on the adjoining Rose Kennedy Greenway in late 2011. Over 100 of the demonstrators took plea deals; but the rest, refusing to concede guilt, chose to fight their cases — five of which were scheduled to commence at trial this month. "So why," asked a headline on the Occupy Boston Radio blog, "aren't we celebrating?"
Put simply, it could have been infinitely more fruitful for Occupiers to proceed in court. Through the discovery process and via other legal maneuvers, their National Lawyers Guild (NLG) attorneys had begun to pry open the Pandora's box of authoritative shenanigans that have enshrouded these charges since day one. At trial, the city would have likely been made to produce everything from surveillance videos that show police misconduct to evidence of deliberate press suppression. With the Occupy charges vacated, that white whale may now be impossible to catch.
In a press release issued hours after prosecutors absolved the Hub Occupiers, NLG-Massachusetts Executive Director Urszula Masny-Latos explained the bittersweetness of what she describes as an "unscheduled, unilateral action." "Defendants and their NLG lawyers spent months working to prepare a case that could potentially embarrass the City, and set valuable precedent that would reaffirm the constitutional rights of free speech and assembly," wrote Masny-Latos. "[Suffolk County prosecutors] have employed yet another way to trample upon those who voice dissent."
The NLG has an admittedly radical agenda, and had requested loads of documents and cop recordings from the Greenway showdowns. But the prosecution of the Occupiers had reeked of political pugilism from the start; the NLG was just making lemonade. There's also the issue of how plausible these charges ever were — some protesters were slapped with "disturbing the peace" for occupying public space; others, all of them male, were cited for "resisting arrest." Masny-Latos says the NLG is "exploring various legal options" to keep these Occupy cases in the court system; meanwhile, after 14 months of stalling proceedings and dodging full compliance on discovery, the DA's office — at least in its own mind — has wiped its hands of this mess.
Reached by the Phoenix, DA spokesman Jake Wark said that the Occupy Boston cases are unprecedented — that he can't think of a comparable trespassing case, with multiple defendants, ever going to trial. Wark also told the Globe that advancing the prosecution would consume even more valuable resources that could be used to litigate violent crime — this in the wake of so much frustrating pre-trial rigmarole, and despite the fact that Suffolk could have made this move a year ago. Whatever their official reasoning might be, though, it's obvious that the DA's office understands the ridiculousness of the situation, and as such we can count these dismissals as an admission that the Occupy Boston defendants shouldn't have faced heat in the first place. But with that small win aside, after so much time and tedium, the DA's sketchy, sudden gesture is hardly consolation for denying us a First Amendment legal precedent, or for depriving us of whatever dirt the NLG was sure to dredge up at trial.
quote:
quote:In the first jury trial stemming from an Occupy Wall Street protest, Michael Premo was found innocent of all charges yesterday after his lawyers presented video evidence directly contradicting the version of events offered by police and prosecutors.
Premo, an activist and community organizer who has in recent months been a central figure in the efforts of Occupy Sandy, was one of many hundred people who took part in a demonstration in Lower Manhattan on December 17 of 2011, when some protesters broke into a vacant lot in Duarte Square in an attempt to start a new occupation.
After police broke up the action in Duarte Square, hundreds of protesters marched north,
playing a game of cat and mouse with police on foot and on scooters, who tried to slow and divide the column of marchers. At 29th Street near Seventh Avenue, police finally managed to trap a large number of marchers, kettling them from both sides of the block with bright orange plastic netting. After holding the crowd in the nets for some time, a few people managed to escape, and police rushed in to the crowd with their hands up. In the commotion, Premo fell to the ground and attempted to crawl out of the scrum. (Covering the march, I was also kettled on this block for a time, though I only witnessed Premo's arrest from a distance.)
quote:Even more importantly, the Democracy Now video also flipped the police version of events on its head. Far from showing Premo tackling a police officer, it shows cops tackling him as he attempted to get back on his feet.
After watching the video, the jury deliberated for several hours before returning a verdict of not guilty on all counts.
This isn't the first time someone arrested during an Occupy Wall Street march has gone free after video evidence undercut prosecutors storyline and sworn police testimony. Photography student Alexander Arbuckle was acquitted in May after a livestreamer's footage showed police weren't telling the truth about his arrest.
Speaking after yesterday's verdict, Maurus said the case highlighted the significance of having the press, livestreamers and professional video journalists, present during demonstrations.
"That was really important," Maurus said. "Without that evidence, this would have been a very different case. There are many, many cases that don't have so much video evidence to challenge the police version of events, but in this case, we did."
For Premo, being found innocent affirms something even more fundamental:
"The biggest thing for me coming out of this," he told the Voice, "is not being discouraged by the attempts of New York City to quell dissent and prevent us from expressing our constitutional rights."
On Twitter and Facebook, Premo celebrated his not-guilty verdict by quoting the lawyer Elizabeth Fink: "There is no justice in the American justice system, but you can sometimes find it in a jury."
Update: Here's the video shot by Jon Gerberg, then freelancing for Democracy Now, that was central to Premo's acquittal:
quote:Latest 'Occupy' Movement Targets Goldman Sachs
From the people that brought you Occupy Wall Street, comes a new chapter in American financial follies. This one targets Goldman Sachs in particular.
The Vancouver-based magazine Adbusters put out an email alert to their followers on Thursday announcing the start of what they defined as a “game” to shut down Goldman offices worldwide. “Points will be awarded for speed, spectacle, courage, and innovation,” the Adbusters email said.
The target: three Goldman offices in Canada and four in the United Kingdom; 8 in China; two in Madrid and 19 scattered across the United States.
The Occupy Wall Street movement began in 2011. Its creator, Kalle Lasn, told Forbes in an interview in October that he was inspired by Arab Spring protesters to do something similar in the U.S.
quote:A top Bank of England official has said the Occupy movement has played a key role in financial reformation.
In his speech Mr Haldane gave what many will see as a surprising endorsement to the group.
"Occupy has been successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason: they are right," he said in his speech.
He went on to say that both Barclays and Lloyds were seeking to change their "sales-oriented culture" and return to their Quaker roots.
"There is the quiet, but unmistakable, sound of a leaf being turned," he said.
"If I am right and a new leaf is being turned, then Occupy will have played a key role in this fledgling financial reformation.
"You have put the arguments. You have helped win the debate. And policymakers, like me, will need your continuing support in delivering that radical change."
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quote:Koch Brothers Exposed is a hard-hitting investigation of the 1% at its very worst. This full-length documentary film on Charles and David Koch—two of the world’s richest and most powerful men—is the latest from acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, Rethink Afghanistan). The billionaire brothers bankroll a vast network of organizations that work to undermine the interests of the 99% on issues ranging from Social Security to the environment to civil rights. This film uncovers the Kochs’ corruption—and points the way to how Americans can reclaim their democracy.
What can you do to fight back? Get the film. Host a screening. Tell your friends. Get the Koch brothers out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
10 Shocking Facts on the Kochs
Koch Industries, which the brothers own, is one of the top ten polluters in the United States — which perhaps explains why the Kochs have given $60 million to climate denial groups between 1997 and 2010.
The Kochs are the oil and gas industry’s biggest donors to the congressional committee with oversight of the hazardous Keystone XL oil pipeline. They and their employees gave more than $300,000 to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2010 alone.
From 1998-2008, Koch-controlled foundations gave more than $196 million to organizations that favor polices that would financially enrich the two brothers. In addition, Koch Industries spent $50 million on lobbying and some $8 million in PAC contributions.
The Koch fortune has its origins in engineering contracts with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union.
The Kochs are suing to take over the Cato Institute, which has accused the Kochs of attempting to destroy the group’s identity as an independent, libertarian think and align it more closely with a partisan agenda.
A Huffington Post source who was at a three-day retreat of conservative billionaires said the Koch brothers pledged to donate $60 million to defeat President Obama in 2012 and produce pledges of $40 million more from others at the retreat.
Since 2000, the Kochs have collected almost $100 million in government contracts, mostly from the Department of Defense.
Koch Industries has an annual production capacity of 2.2 billion pounds of the carcinogen formaldehyde. The company has worked to keep it from being classified as a carcinogen even though David Koch is a prostate cancer survivor.
The Koch brothers’ combined fortune of roughly $50 billion is exceeded only by that of Bill Gates in the United States.
The Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs accused Koch Oil of scheming to steal $31 million of crude oil from Native Americans. Although the company claimed it was accidental, a former executive in this operation said Charles Koch had known about it and had responded to the overages by saying, “I want my fair share, and that’s all of it.”
[ Bericht 34% gewijzigd door deelnemer op 19-04-2013 03:19:40 ]
quote:No charges for NYPD cops filmed punching, pepper-spraying Occupy protesters
Two New York City Police officers will not face charges after the Manhattan District Attorney decided that widely circulated videos of them punching and pepper-spraying protesters amounted to insufficient evidence that they had done so.
Anthony Bologna, the now-infamous NYPD inspector, was filmed in September 2011 spraying a group of female Occupy Wall Street protestors who had already been isolated and immobilized by a screen held by other officers. The video, which received well over a million views online and was skewered on late night television, became emblematic of the brutality endured by OWS demonstrators who found themselves on the receiving end of aggressive police tactics.
In the same statement, quietly issued on the Friday that came at the end of the heavy news week that included the Boston Marathon bombings, the District Attorney’s Office announced no charges would be filed against Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardonna. Cardonna was filmed in October 2011 punching protestor Felix Rivera-Pitra seemingly without provocation.
“The District Attorney’s Office has concluded, after a thorough investigation, that we cannot prove these allegations criminally beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Erin M. Duggan, the chief spokeswoman for District Attorney Cy Vance. “We have informed the Police Department, the complainants, and the City of our decision.”
Cardonna was not disciplined by the NYPD for his actions, while Bologna was stripped of 10 vacation days and reassigned to a post on Staten Island. Bologna is also being sued in a civil court by the nonviolent women he pepper-sprayed, where he’ll be represented by city lawyers, according to DNA Info.
“It was clear from the evidence that their actions were not justified,” a “source with knowledge of the prosecutor’s decision” told Gothamist. “These two were on-duty members of law enforcement, reacting during a chaotic scene that included much more than the short video clips that most people have seen.
Shortly after the second incident the NYPD claimed that Rivera-Pitra had tried to elbow Cardonna before the police officer lunged at him. Rivera-Pitra, whose earring was torn off in the assault, later came forward to advise Cardonna to get tested for HIV.
While some media outlets have implied that the DA’s refusal to pursue both officers indicates professional favoritism, law experts said the decision could be based on the difficulty of prosecuting cops in American courts. Former Manhattan prosecutor Thomas J. Curran, speaking to The New York Times, admitted that it’s difficult for prosecutors to convict police personnel because using force is “part of their job.”
“The use of force would have to be a complete departure from any legitimate police activity,” said Curran, who now practices as a defense lawyer. “You’d have to show an intent to assault, and you have to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, as opposed to using force as allowed pursuant to police activity. It’s very difficult to do.”
But that refusal to hold police accountable is what still surprised Kaylee Dedrick nearly two years after she was pepper-sprayed by Inspector Bologna. Dedrick’s lawyer told the Times that the DA’s decision was “cowardly and despicable.”
“Part of me expected that he wouldn’t be prosecuted, but I’m still pretty shocked, with all the evidence against him,” Dedrick said.
quote:AP boss condemns US government for 'unconstitutional' phone seizures | World news | guardian.co.uk
Gary Pruitt tells CBS Justice Department grab sends message that 'if you talk to the press, we are going to go after you'
The Obama administration's decision to seize phone records from the Associated Press was "unconstitutional" and sends a message that "if you talk to the press, we are going to go after you", the news agency's boss Gary Pruitt said Sunday.
AP revealed last week that the Justice Department had obtained two months' worth of phone records of calls made by reporters and editors without informing the organisation in advance. The move was an apparent effort by US officials to identify the source of a story about the CIA foiling an alleged terrorist plot by an al Qaida terrorist affiliate in Yemen.
News of the seizure has caused a political firestorm and comes amid a widening scandal into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of Tea Party groups over their tax exemptions and the White House's handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack last year.
Speaking on CBS's Face the Nation, Pruitt, AP's president and chief executive officer, said the government's seizure of the phone records was "unconstitutional" and was already clearly harming the press's ability to do its job.
"We don't question their right to conduct these sort of investigations. We just think they went about it the wrong way. So sweeping, so secretly, so abusively and harassingly and over-broad that it constitutes, that it is, an unconstitutional act," he said.
"We are already seeing some impact. Already officials that would normally talk to us and people we talk to in the normal course of newsgathering are already saying to us that they are a little reluctant to talk to us. They fear that they will be monitored by the government. We are already seeing that. It's not hypothetical," said Pruitt.
The government investigation was seemingly triggered by an AP exclusive about a joint US-Saudi spy operation that had foiled a plot involving an improved version of the "underwear" bomb that failed to detonate properly on a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day 2009. AP agreed to delay publication after officials cited national security concerns.
Pruitt said he would normally expect dialogue with government officials ahead of any decision to ask for or demand records relating to the news organisation's activities. Those requests would usually be subject to negotiation and if an agreement could not be reached, they would be put before a judge, he said.
In this case, the Justice Department has claimed it made every reasonable effort to obtain the information through alternative means, as is required by law. "Because we value the freedom of the press, we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws," it said in a statement.
Pruitt said he had not received any explanation as to why AP had not been consulted ahead of the seizure. "I really do not know what their motive is. I know what the message being sent is, it's that if you talk to the press, we are going to go after you," he said.
Pruitt said the Justice Department had acted "as judge jury and executioner, in secret".
If the government restricts the "news gathering apparatus" then "the people of the United States will only know what the government wants them to know. And that's not what the framers of constitution had in mind when they wrote the first amendment," Pruitt said.
The White House has denied knowledge of the Justice Department's move. It comes as officials face mounting criticism over an IRS investigation into Tea Party groups. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that the IRS controversy demonstrated a "culture of intimidation" by the administration.
Bron: www.guardian.co.uk
quote:US government targeted Fox News reporter as 'co-conspirator' in spying case | World news | guardian.co.uk
Washington Post reports FBI sought phone records and emails of James Rosen as part of spying case against goverment official
The Obama administration has investigated a reporter with Fox News as a probable "co-conspirator" in a criminal spying case after a report based on a State Department leak.
The Justice Department named Fox News's chief Washington correspondent James Rosen "at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator" in a 2010 espionage case against State Department security adviser Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. The accusation appears in a court affidavit first reported by the Washington Post.
Kim is charged with handing over a classified government report in June 2009 that said North Korea would probably test a nuclear weapon in response to a UN resolution condemning previous tests. Rosen reported the analysis on 11 June under the headline 'North Korea Intends to Match UN Resolution With New Nuclear Test'.
The FBI sought and obtained a warrant to seize all of Rosen's correspondence with Kim, and an additional two days' worth of Rosen's personal email, the Post reported. The bureau also obtained Rosen's phone records and used security badge records to track his movements to and from the State Department.
Rosen has not been charged with a crime in the case. Kim was indicted in August 2010 on charges of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, one of a batch of six cases in which the Obama administration began to use the first world war-era spying law to prosecute suspected government whistleblowers.
Even in cases of historic import in which the Espionage Act was used to prosecute whistleblowers, notably the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, the government did not, in spite of strenuous efforts, find grounds to prosecute the media for publishing the results of a leak. The government has not charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for the publication online of an unprecedented amount of classified material. However, Assange, who has taken refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, has said he expects to be charged.
The government has prosecuted and even imprisoned journalists in leak cases in the past for the journalists' refusal to disclose a confidential source. In such cases, notably the 2005 Judith Miller case, journalists have been charged with contempt of court.
Instead of relying on the threat of a contempt charge to get journalists to divulge their sources, the Obama administration has used warrantless wiretapping and dragnet records seizures to identify who is talking to whom.
Last week it emerged that the Department of Justice had seized phone records for more than 20 lines used by the Associated Press, in possible violation of regulations governing such seizures. There have been no reports of the government accusing journalists of criminal activity in that case.
Bron: www.guardian.co.uk
quote:"Citizen Koch" tells the story of the landmark Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court that opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions from corporations. It focuses on the role of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity in backing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has pushed to slash union rights while at the same time supporting tax breaks for large corporations. The controversy over Koch's influence on PBS comes as rallies were held in 12 cities Wednesday to protest the possible sale of The Tribune newspaper chain, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, to Koch Industries, run by David Koch and his brother Charles.
Park Avenue: money, power and the American dream
[ Bericht 20% gewijzigd door deelnemer op 31-05-2013 02:24:37 ]
quote:"End the Fed" Pamphleteers Near Liberty Bell Handcuffed and Cited
Interesting video that went up on YouTube a couple of days ago (the date of the incident uncertain) of two pamphleteers handing out "End the Fed" flyers near the Liberty Bell---Oh the irony!--who are handcuffed on the ground and eventually ticketed by park police. Their flyers were also taken by the park police.
According to the female of the pair of pampheteers, the ticket was for "interfering with agency function" and "failure to obtain a permit."
My 2009 Reason feature on the "End the Fed" movement.
The full video, in which the videographer does a great job being a consistent thorn in the side of the huge pack of park police, and a bystander wonders what sort of lesson in liberty is being taught to her son, there by the Liberty Bell:
[ Bericht 18% gewijzigd door deelnemer op 01-06-2013 02:17:23 ]
quote:Blockupy Frankfurt tries to prevent access to the European Central Bank
Protesters are trying to block access to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt to show their anger at how the debt crisis is being handled.
The action has been organised by Blockupy a European version of the Occupy Movement.
The group is blaming the ECB and institutions like Deutsche Bank for austerity measures in southern Europe, which are causing hardship for many people in countries like Spain and Greece. Blockupy will spend the day trying to disrupt the workings of these institutions.
quote:Frankfurt 'Blockupy' protesters target ECB, banks, airport
Anti-capitalist demonstrators from the Blockupy movement paralysed Germany's financial center on Friday, cutting off access to the European Central Bank and Deutsche Bank's headquarters.
Protesters against Europe's austerity policies, estimated by police at 1,500 but by Blockupy at 3,000, descended in the early hours on Frankfurt's financial district to disrupt business at institutions they blame for a deep recession in euro zone countries such as Spain and Greece.
Riot police, showered with stones and paint bombs, used pepper spray to prevent the protesters breaking into the ECB. Several protesters were injured and police made some arrests, though they gave no numbers.
"The aim of this blockade is to prevent normal operations at the ECB," said Blockupy spokesman Martin Sommer, adding that some people who had tried to come to work had been sent home by the protesters.
Demonstrators brandished signs with slogans such as "Humanity before profit" and some held up inflatable mattresses with the slogan "War Starts Here" written on them.
bron
[ Bericht 59% gewijzigd door deelnemer op 01-06-2013 02:28:45 ]
quote:Trans-Pacific Partnership
Last year, a leaked chapter from the draft agreement outlined how the Trans-Pacific Partnership would allow foreign corporations operating in the United States to appeal key regulations to an international tribunal. The body would have the power to override U.S. law and issue penalties for failure to comply with its rulings.
Een eerdere toelichting op de Trans-Pacific Partnership
quote:The Obama administration is facing increasing scrutiny for the extreme secrecy surrounding negotiations around a sweeping new trade deal that could rewrite the nation's laws on everything from healthcare and internet freedom, to food safety and the financial markets.
[ Bericht 6% gewijzigd door deelnemer op 08-06-2013 00:39:51 ]
[ Bericht 21% gewijzigd door deelnemer op 10-06-2013 17:25:37 ]
quote:Occupy Oakland protesters awarded $1m over police violence during arrests | World news | guardian.co.uk
12 activists to split compensation, including $500,000 for one woman who suffered permanent hearing loss during protests
Victims of excessive police force at one of the most violent flashpoints of the Occupy protests have received a $1m compensation settlement.
The US district court in San Francisco made the award to a group of 12 protesters who complained of brutality during in confrontations with police in Oakland, California, in 2011.
The payouts come in the wake of criticism from independent experts who said the police department was under-resourced and ill-prepared to deal with the protests.
The lawsuits detailed how police reacted to the protesters when they tried to reclaim a camp which had been cleared earlier that day. Suzi Spangenberg and Sukay Sow said they were injured by flashbang grenades thrown by officers. Spangenberg, a 52-year-old seminarian was awarded $500,000 in compensation, while Sow, who suffered chemical burns to her foot, received $210,000.
Spangenberg said on Wednesday: "I was in the middle of telling OPD I loved them when they threw explosives at me. The loud explosion caused permanent hearing loss and unrelenting ringing in my ears. As a result, I can only sleep 2 hours at a time which has had a serious impact on my life, including adversely impacting my graduate school studies, when I graduate, and when I will be ordained.
"It is my hope that there will never be cause for this type of lawsuit again, and the city can instead focus its resources on supporting the marginalized and those most in need of resources, which is what we were protesting for."
Scott Campbell claimed he was filming a police line outside city hall on 3 November when officer Victor Garcia shot him in the groin with a bean bag fired from a 12-gauge shotgun.
He received $150,000. Other plaintiffs will receive between $20,000 and $75,000.
The protesters were represented by San Francisco attorney Rachel Lederman who said she was "pleased with the result".
She told the San Francisco Chronicle: "This is really a good decision by the city and the police department to take some responsibility for the fiasco of their ill-planned response to Occupy Oakland and to take responsibility by compensating some of the people who were the most seriously injured."
Brooke Anderson, 33, was awarded $20,000. She recounted her ordeal to the Guardian on Wednesday: "I was there on October 25 to support the protest and we were there for several hours singing and chanting. It was a really peaceful protest. Towards the end of the evening the police officers moved towards us with metal barriers and I was knocked to the ground. I tried to get up and leave but I was held by police officers who twisted my arm behind my back in a very painful position.
"I was crying and screaming and my friends asked police to let go and several of them were hit and arrested."
Supporters of the protesters created this video, which contains footage of Anderson's arrest:
Anderson was held for about 15 hours in a cell with 40 other women and one toilet. "It was so crowded we had to take turns sitting down," she said.
Lederman, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said the purpose of the lawsuit was to stop the Oakland police department's "dangerous and illegal repression of political protest and the city government's tolerance of repeated, pervasive police misconduct."
"The same officers shot longshoremen and protesters with so-called less lethal munitions during a peaceful antiwar picket at the Port of Oakland in 2003," she told the Guardian.
"At that time, the city and police also agreed to stop those practices and adopt a model policy for constitutional policing of demonstrations, but OPD chose to scrap all that and repeat the same mistakes as soon as they were faced with large protests."
Anderson said her brief experience of incarceration prompted her to donate part of her $20,000 payout to a charity that promotes prisoners' rights. She added: "I felt strongly the Occupy movement was a movement of the 99% who saw their families lose their jobs, their homes, healthcare and rights. You shouldn't get attacked and jailed for exercising your democratic right to protest. I have been back at the protests and I will continue to speak out but we fear these police actions are intended to deter us from exercising our right to protest."
Oakland police has come in for severe criticism in recent years. Former Baltimore police commissioner Thomas Frazier completed a report on their handling of the Occupy protests that painted a picture of an under-resourced department in disarray.
He was later appointed by a judge as a consultant to push through police reforms after it was revealed officers had framed and beaten drug suspects in one of the city's most impoverished neighbourhoods. After several years the court-mandated reforms had not been carried out so Frazier was given the task of overhauling the department.
"These settlements are an important victory for democracy," said Bobbie Stein, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys. "We are hopeful that with these settlements, and the reform process under the watch of the new compliance director, we will achieve a culture shift in the Oakland police department and end the brutalization and wrongful arrests of activists and people of color in Oakland.
"While we remain optimistic, we are mindful of the 10-year history of broken promises, and we will be watching carefully and ready to take further action if necessary."
Bron: www.guardian.co.uk
quote:
quote:“Did the FBI ignore, or even abet, a plot to assassinate Occupy Houston leaders?” asks investigative reporter Dave Lindorff at WhoWhatWhy. “What did the Feds know? Whom did they warn? And what did the Houston Police know?”
Bron: www.truthdig.com
quote:Paul Kennedy of the National Lawyers Guild in Houston and an attorney for a number of Occupy Houston activists arrested during the protests said he did not hear of the sniper plot and expressed discontent with the FBI’s failure to share knowledge of the plan with the public. He believed that the bureau would have acted if a “right-wing group” plotted the assassinations, implying that the plan could have originated with law enforcement.
“[I]f it is something law enforcement was planning,” Kennedy said, “then nothing would have been done. It might seem hard to believe that a law enforcement agency would do such a thing, but I wouldn’t put it past them.”
quote:Obama signs anti-protest Trespass Bill — RT USA
Only days after clearing Congress, US President Barack Obama signed his name to H.R. 347 on Thursday, officially making it a federal offense to cause a disturbance at certain political events — essentially criminalizing protest in the States.
RT broke the news last month that H.R. 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, had overwhelmingly passed the US House of Representatives after only three lawmakers voted against it. On Thursday this week, President Obama inked his name to the legislation and authorized the government to start enforcing a law that has many Americans concerned over how the bill could bury the rights to assemble and protest as guaranteed in the US Constitution.
Under H.R. 347, which has more commonly been labeled the Trespass Bill by Congress, knowingly entering a restricted area that is under the jurisdiction of Secret Service protection can garner an arrest. The law is actually only a slight change to earlier legislation that made it an offense to knowingly and willfully commit such a crime. Under the Trespass Bill’s latest language chance, however, someone could end up in law enforcement custody for entering an area that they don’t realize is Secret Service protected and “engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct” or “impede[s] or disrupt[s] the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.”
The Secret Service serves as the police that protects not just current and former American presidents, but are also dispatched to monitor special events of national significance, a category with a broad cast of qualifiers. In the past, sporting events, state funerals, inaugural addresses and NATO and G-8 Summits have been designated as such by the US Department of Homeland Security, the division that decides when and where the Secret Service are needed outside of their normal coverage.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund tells the International Business Times that the Trespass Bill in its current form “means it's easier to prosecute under 'knowingly,'” instead of both knowingly and willfully, “which is an issue because someone could knowingly enter a restricted but not necessarily realize they are committing a crime.” Speaking with IB Times, Verheyden-Hilliard tries to lay to rest claims that the Constitution will be crippled by the Trespass Bill, but acknowledges that it does indeed allow law enforcement to have added incentive to arrest protesters who could be causing a disturbance.
"[HR 347] has been described as a death knell for the First Amendment, but that isn't supported by the facts," Verheyden-Hilliard adds. "This has always been a bad law."
Gabe Rottman of the American Civil Liberties Union adds to IB Times, "Bottom line, it doesn't create any new violations of the law.” So far, however, it has raised awareness of the levels that the US government are willing to go to in order to make it harder to express ones’ self.
Under the act, protesting in areas covered by Secret Service could land a demonstrator behind bars, and the thing about the Secret Service (in case you couldn’t tell by their name), is that they don’t always make it clear where they are. You could even say that the service they provide, at times, is kept secret.
Presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are now officially covered under Secret Service protection, making it a federal offense to disrupt a campaign stop. That means whether it’s by way of a glitter bomb protest or causing a disturbance on the same Holiday Inn hotel floor that Santorum is staying in, doing such could cause a bit of a legal battle for the persons involved.
Although the G-8 Summit originally scheduled for Chicago this spring would have made much of the Windy City a protected area where crimes could easily be tacked on to arrested protesters, the event was moved this week to the presidential retreat at Camp David. In turn, many have suggested that the White House is only going out of their way to limit protesting rights. While a Chicago summit would have meant the Trespass Bill could have been enforced in the same area where thousands of demonstrators were expected to protest, moving the event to a heavily fortified rural location will instead deter protesters from likely coming close atto the meeting at all.
And before you forget, the president can now detain you for getting too close to his front yard, order your assassination if the country considers you a threat and lock you away for life with no charge if you’re alleged to be a terrorist. You, on the other hand, can’t yell obscenities at Newt Gingrich without risking arrest.
quote:
Het artikel gaat verder.quote:The myth that Walmart doesn’t actively discourage employees from unionizing was dealt a blow today when Occupy Wall Street leaked the actual scripts Walmart uses to teach managers how to discourage employees from forming a union.
The Walmart company line has always been that the stores aren’t unionized, because employees don’t want a union. In 2011 Walmart’s Northeast Communications Director Steve Restivo said, “I think our associates, time and again, have recognized that it’s not a better deal for them. I think we’ve got a pretty good track record, and I can point to some examples, where our associates have turned down the opportunity to join a union, time and time again. I mean, the organizing effort is fairly aggressive. We have a clear and open line of communication with our associates. Our associates recognize that they appreciate that, and they know that the wages and benefits they receive are extremely competitive in the industry.”
The truth is that Walmart aggressively pressures and threatens employees to prevent them from unionizing. The proof of this behavior came today as Occupy Wall Street released the scripts that Walmart instructs their managers to use in order to keep the unions out.
quote:
quote:The attacks were accompanied by threatening emails sent anonymously to those persons JTRIG could identify. When the digital smoke cleared and the attacked servers recovered, chat room participation had dropped 80 percent according to the GCHQ's own documents. The attacks came immediately before a nation-wide crackdown on the Occupy movement, which was later found to be coordinated by a non-profit group called the Police Executive Research Foundation (PERF), which has a board comprised of big-city police chiefs in the United States and Great Britain. The temporary disruption of Anonymous appears to have been done in advance of a wave of brutality against protestors to keep hackivists from organizing online.
quote:
quote:An Occupy Wall Street activist is due to go on trial in New York on Monday, almost two years after she allegedly assaulted a police officer.
Cecily McMillan, 25, faces up to seven years in jail after being charged with assault in the second degree, a Class D felony in New York. Police allege that McMillan elbowed an officer in the head during a protest in lower Manhattan in March 2012.
McMillan’s attorney, Martin Stolar, told the Guardian that while there was “no question” the officer was struck below the eye by McMillan’s elbow, he planned to argue that no crime had been committed.
“The question for the jury is whether she intentionally assaulted him,” Stolar said. “We’re going to present evidence that indicates: No1 that she had no idea it was a police officer behind her and No2 that she reacted when someone grabbed her right breast.”
Stolar said it was being grabbed from behind that prompted McMillan to throw the elbow.
“That does not constitute a crime. That constitutes a bit of over-policing and an accident as a result of that.”
Protesters gathered at Zuccotti Park on 17 March 2012, to mark six months since the start of the Occupy protests. More than 70 people were arrested as demonstrators attempted to “reclaim” the space, which had served as a hub for Occupy Wall Street until the encampment was evicted in November 2011.
Although McMillan was active in Occupy Wall Street, Stolar said she was not part of the demonstration on 17 March.
“On that particular night she happened to be meeting friends,” he said. “By the time she got down [to Zuccotti Park] to meet her friends the police had decided to clear the park, so she was getting out of the park just like she had ordered everybody else to do.”
McMillan, a student at the New School and a union organiser, has declined to discuss the case while it is ongoing. At the time of the incident, reports suggested she was handled roughly during her arrest. In the days following she told the media she had suffered bruising and had been hospitalised.
“I am innocent of any wrongdoing, and confident I will be vindicated,” McMillan said in a statement in March 2012. She said she had a “long-standing personal commitment to non-violence”.
“She’s very upset about the fact she’s been living behind the eight-ball on this for two years,” Stolar said. “It’s anxiety of living under the cloud of being falsely accused and looking at the prospect of seven years in jail. That doesn’t make anybody happy.”
The case was due to begin on Thursday 6 February, but was postponed while a judge was appointed. Jury selection is due to begin on Monday.
quote:Inequality After Occupy
When the media became aware of the protest centered at Wall Street during the fall of 2011, a predictable line of questioning immediately appeared - whatever in the world are they protesting? Of course, everyone who came near Zuccotti Park knew exactly why the protesters were there. Given the scale of the economic crisis, Main Street's bailout of Wall Street, and ongoing oligarchy, the "only surprise [was that it took] so long for the citizenry to take to these particular streets." The graphic polarization of their chant - "We Are the 99%" - made it all the more clear.
In the years since the destruction of the occupations, this critique of inequality has only broadened and deepened in the U.S. Occupy should claim credit for getting it on the map, while political iterations old and new have been keeping it there. Today, the fight against inequality is taking greater institutional shape, and seemingly exerting more leverage, in places inspired by Occupy but moving beyond its initial tactics.
Studying Occupy Wall Street in New York from its inception and through 2012, my colleagues and I traced the "enduring impact" of OWS through various measures, including the ongoing movement participation of core participants and the proliferation of "Occupy after Occupy" efforts - what journalist Nathan Schneider described as a "productively subdivided movement of movements."
Joining most observers, we noted that Occupy's impact was most easily traced in the extent to which it had shifted the discourse in the United States. "Income inequality" was suddenly in the headlines. We included a graph that showed how frequently the phrase was invoked by the media pre-, during, and post-Occupy. We found that news mentions of "income inequality" rose dramatically with the outset of Occupy, and in the aftermath remained substantially higher through the end of 2012 (up about a third from pre-Occupy levels).
I ran the numbers again this week, and I have to admit I was surprised by the results.
As we'd seen before, in the year after Occupy's peak, the numbers stayed higher: 30-50 percent of the pre-Occupy discussion. But beginning in the fall of 2013, the numbers reached Occupy levels again, and this time rising to over 2,000 mentions of the phrase "income inequality" in December 2013 - over 50 percent more than Occupy's peak.
Of course, I shouldn't have been surprised to see this rise. The occupations have gone away, but neither the crisis nor the resistance has disappeared. Low-wage and precarious workers are at the forefront of the fights today, and they are keeping inequality in the spotlight. This past fall and winter we've seen fast food strikes and the "Fight for $15"; other minimum wage fights around the country; Walmart workers demanding $25,000 a year; university adjuncts organizing and striking. Workers, unionists and Occupy veterans, through traditional labor and "alt-labor" organizations are elevating the fight and pushing for concrete change. Tailing these developments, figures from President Obama and Gap Inc. are now simultaneously pushing for (highly inadequate) wage increases.
Media attention to inequality reflects recent electoral shifts as well. Mayors who ran left were decisively elected in New York, Seattle, and Boston. (Occupations existed all over the country, but it would be interesting to probe the relationship between those Occupations and new electoral outcomes. Certainly, these three cities were home to sustained and popular occupations in fall 2011.) Labor's candidates and initiatives did well overall, in the 2013 local election cycle; and in Seattle, Occupy activist and socialist Kshama Sawant was elected to the City Council. While many of the core Occupy activists eschewed electoral politics, we nevertheless see the outlines of their critique emerge in race after race.
As important as Occupy's inspiration has been as the carrot encouraging these new movements and electoral shifts, the ongoing crisis that working people are experiencing and the desperate straits that unions and other progressives find themselves in provide the stick. Labor, in particular, has been working hard to shift course for many years. Occupy's eruption was a major shot in the arm, but many of the campaigns we see today have their roots pre-Occupy.
However, the energy and audacity in today's movements are fueled in part by the experience of Occupy (and the organizers who started the occupations and emerged from them). Direct action and prefigurative practices inform many of the efforts that contribute to today's groundswell, such as the strikes and walkouts. But unions are also exploring worker cooperatives, community groups and activists are forestalling foreclosures through occupations, and activists are tying collective student debt refusal to the demand for free higher education.
The Occupy activists we spoke with two years ago echoed each other, saying that the movement needs to "take the long view" and remember that change doesn't happen overnight. I haven't spoken with enough of those activists today to know their assessment of the fights they see and are participating in today. They are not out there, all day, all week, occupying Wall Street - and it wasn't enough when they were. The scale of necessary social transformation remains daunting, and questions of both strategy and power loom large.
But all day, and all week, more people are talking about inequality and directly fighting against it. And workplace by workplace, franchise by franchise, ordinance by ordinance, council member by council member, co-op by co-op, the struggle continues.
[Penny Lewis is an Assistant Professor at the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, School of Professional Studies, CUNY. She is also the author of Hardhats, Hippies and Hawks, The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory.]
quote:The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it
The Bank of England's dose of honesty throws the theoretical basis for austerity out the window
Back in the 1930s, Henry Ford is supposed to have remarked that it was a good thing that most Americans didn't know how banking really works, because if they did, "there'd be a revolution before tomorrow morning".
Last week, something remarkable happened. The Bank of England let the cat out of the bag. In a paper called "Money Creation in the Modern Economy", co-authored by three economists from the Bank's Monetary Analysis Directorate, they stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong, and that the kind of populist, heterodox positions more ordinarily associated with groups such as Occupy Wall Street are correct. In doing so, they have effectively thrown the entire theoretical basis for austerity out of the window.
To get a sense of how radical the Bank's new position is, consider the conventional view, which continues to be the basis of all respectable debate on public policy. People put their money in banks. Banks then lend that money out at interest – either to consumers, or to entrepreneurs willing to invest it in some profitable enterprise. True, the fractional reserve system does allow banks to lend out considerably more than they hold in reserve, and true, if savings don't suffice, private banks can seek to borrow more from the central bank.
The central bank can print as much money as it wishes. But it is also careful not to print too much. In fact, we are often told this is why independent central banks exist in the first place. If governments could print money themselves, they would surely put out too much of it, and the resulting inflation would throw the economy into chaos. Institutions such as the Bank of England or US Federal Reserve were created to carefully regulate the money supply to prevent inflation. This is why they are forbidden to directly fund the government, say, by buying treasury bonds, but instead fund private economic activity that the government merely taxes.
It's this understanding that allows us to continue to talk about money as if it were a limited resource like bauxite or petroleum, to say "there's just not enough money" to fund social programmes, to speak of the immorality of government debt or of public spending "crowding out" the private sector. What the Bank of England admitted this week is that none of this is really true. To quote from its own initial summary: "Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits" … "In normal times, the central bank does not fix the amount of money in circulation, nor is central bank money 'multiplied up' into more loans and deposits."
In other words, everything we know is not just wrong – it's backwards. When banks make loans, they create money. This is because money is really just an IOU. The role of the central bank is to preside over a legal order that effectively grants banks the exclusive right to create IOUs of a certain kind, ones that the government will recognise as legal tender by its willingness to accept them in payment of taxes. There's really no limit on how much banks could create, provided they can find someone willing to borrow it. They will never get caught short, for the simple reason that borrowers do not, generally speaking, take the cash and put it under their mattresses; ultimately, any money a bank loans out will just end up back in some bank again. So for the banking system as a whole, every loan just becomes another deposit. What's more, insofar as banks do need to acquire funds from the central bank, they can borrow as much as they like; all the latter really does is set the rate of interest, the cost of money, not its quantity. Since the beginning of the recession, the US and British central banks have reduced that cost to almost nothing. In fact, with "quantitative easing" they've been effectively pumping as much money as they can into the banks, without producing any inflationary effects.
What this means is that the real limit on the amount of money in circulation is not how much the central bank is willing to lend, but how much government, firms, and ordinary citizens, are willing to borrow. Government spending is the main driver in all this (and the paper does admit, if you read it carefully, that the central bank does fund the government after all). So there's no question of public spending "crowding out" private investment. It's exactly the opposite.
Why did the Bank of England suddenly admit all this? Well, one reason is because it's obviously true. The Bank's job is to actually run the system, and of late, the system has not been running especially well. It's possible that it decided that maintaining the fantasy-land version of economics that has proved so convenient to the rich is simply a luxury it can no longer afford.
But politically, this is taking an enormous risk. Just consider what might happen if mortgage holders realised the money the bank lent them is not, really, the life savings of some thrifty pensioner, but something the bank just whisked into existence through its possession of a magic wand which we, the public, handed over to it.
Historically, the Bank of England has tended to be a bellwether, staking out seeming radical positions that ultimately become new orthodoxies. If that's what's happening here, we might soon be in a position to learn if Henry Ford was right.
quote:Trial of Occupy activist struggles to find jurors impartial to protest movement
• Series of potential jurors voice opposition to Occupy Wall Street
• Cecily McMillan, 25, faces seven years in prison for assault
It is the most important question being asked of dozens of New Yorkers lined up as potential jurors for the trial of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street activist accused of assaulting a police officer: what do you think of her protest movement?
Unfortunately for those keen on the swift procession of justice, a series of Manhattan residents who presented themselves at the criminal courthouse this week declared that they strongly disagreed with it – and could not promise to be impartial about one of its members.
“I’m involved in Wall Street things. I’m on the Wall Street side, not their side,” George Yih, one of a group of prospective jurors whose names were plucked from a tombola by the clerk, said under questioning from Judge Ronald Zweibel on Wednesday. “They can protest all they want, but they can’t brainwash my mind.”
Yih was removed from a shortlist for the panel that will decide if McMillan, 25, assaulted Officer Grantley Bovell by striking him with her arm at Zuccotti Park in March 2012. McMillan denies the felony charge and says that she was reacting to having one of her breasts grabbed from behind. She faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.
But Yih’s remarks were only the first in a succession of criticisms against the anti-capitalist movement made throughout the day by other would-be jurors. Each said that he or she had ties to a finance industry that holds about one in nine jobs in New York City and pays more than a third of the total wages earned annually in Manhattan.
And as one after the other was rejected – either by McMillan’s attorneys, state prosecutors, or the judge – a jury selection process that the defence had hoped would be completed in one day reached the end of a second with only seven of the 12 jurors’ seats filled.
“For 20 years, my occupation has been, in some fashion, on Wall Street,” said Jason McLean, who said he was an equity trader living in Murray Hill with his wife, who was also an equity trader. “Everything I believe – my morals – are kind of the antithesis of what they represent.” He concluded: “I don’t know that I could be completely objective.”
“I like to think of myself as fair,” Alan Moore, who said his wife worked on Wall Street as a bond strategist for Credit Suisse, told the judge. “But in terms of Occupy Wall Street in general, I would give less credibility to that group than average.” Even to a witness in court? “Yeah,” said Moore. “They seem to be people moving a little outside regular social norms and regular behaviour. Therefore I don’t give them the same level of respect as people who follow the line.”
Requests by McMillan’s attorneys to exclude both McLean and Moore from the jury were granted by the judge, despite being challenged by Erin Choi and Shanda Strain, the assistant district attorneys representing New York. Even they, however, conceded that Mary Malone – an Upper East Side resident who previously worked for a bond fund and said: “I have really strong feelings about Occupy Wall Street and the people involved” – and Peter Kaled, a corporate finance worker from the Upper West Side who said that one of his friends had policed Zuccotti Park at the height of the protests, should not make the cut.
However, as they prepared to bring a case that will also test the credibility of officers whose conduct while arresting dozens of protesters on that March evening two years ago attracted sharp criticism from civil liberties groups, the pair of state prosecutors had their own reasons for rejecting prospective jurors.
They had an African American man excluded after he said that a grievance relating to a past run-in with the NYPD could affect his view of the officers expected to testify against McMillan. Patrick Grigsby, an Upper West Side actuary, was similarly banished after expressing mistrust of Bovell when informed that the cop was disciplined by bosses for having five parking and speeding tickets fixed as part of the so-called “Bronx ticketing scandal” of 2011.
McMillan’s lawyers said after the trial was adjourned until Friday that they remained confident the court would “find people that fit the profile” of impartial peers. “We’ve seen people saying they can’t be fair on Occupy, and we’ve seen people who say they can’t be fair on the cops,” Martin Stolar, her lead attorney, said outside court. “A surprising number of people are actually willing to say that they can’t be fair,” said Rebecca Heinegg, his co-counsel.
A fresh air of optimism had blown into the 11th-floor courtroom with the day’s final pool of 60 potential jurors an hour earlier. Yet when Zweibel asked if any of them thought that they could not be “fair and impartial” in considering the trial at hand, a young woman in the second row instantly threw up an arm and was summoned to a sidebar meeting with the judge and attorneys. “I worked at Deutsche Bank,” she could be heard whispering, before being excused.
quote:
quote:Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics – which can be characterized
as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic Elite Domination, and two types of
interest group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism – offers different predictions about which sets of actors havehow much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented.
A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors,
but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against
each other within a single statistical model. This paper reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business
interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens
and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide
substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
quote:City Will Pay $55,000 To Settle Case of Occupy Livestreamer Josh Boss, Tackled By High-Ranking NYPD Chief
Occupy Wall Street is still proving expensive for the city of New York, who keep having pay out large sums of money to Occupy protesters who were over-enthusiastically arrested by the NYPD. In April 2013, the city paid $365,000 to settle claims over the destruction of the OWS library, and civil rights attorney Wylie Stecklow of Stecklow Cohen & Thompson says he's settled six or seven other Occupiers' claims for unlawful arrests. The latest came just yesterday, when the city agreed to pay $55,000 in the case of Josh Boss, who was livestreaming a December 2011 march when he was thrown to the ground and kneed by Chief Thomas Purtell, then the commanding officer of the Manhattan South Patrol Division, which oversees all marches and protests in the city.
"Purtell is the most senior officer we've ever seen in a physical unlawful arrest," Stecklow tells the Voice. "He got hands on."
Boss was filming the march on the evening of December 17, 2011. As the marchers crossed the street, so did he, camera in hand. Footage of the incident shows that he was in a crosswalk when Purtell came running at him, flung him to the ground, and put his knee on Boss's chest. "Kick his ass, Tom!" another officer can be heard saying in the background.
The video shows Boss lying motionless for the duration of the arrest. Nontheless, Purtell tells him, "Don't resist."
"I'm not resisting anything! I was trying to cross the street." Boss replies. And then, a moment later, "Is that knee on my face really necessary, officer?"
"Oh, I kinda think it is," Purtell replies.
Stecklow's firm released two video segments showing the arrest from various angles:
Boss was cuffed with two pairs of plastic ziptie handcuffs. His attorneys say his backpack, filled with video equipment, rested heavily on the double cuffs, cutting off his circulation. (Audio from the video segments shows that after he was arrested, another officer eventually loosened his cuffs, remarking, "His hands are turning blue.") He was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and held for five hours. The charges were eventually dropped, and he sued the NYPD for false arrest, excessive force, and nerve damage to his wrists.
Purtell has denied making an overly brutal arrest. The video released by Stecklow shows a later interview with the officer, evidently conducted by someone with the law firm. "You don't know what you're talking about. He was not struck in the face," Purtell says. "He was not injured. What's perceived on the video is not what happened."
Stecklow says that the arrest was disturbing not just for its brutality, but because of the presence of at least 20 younger officers around Purtell: "This is what we've seen time and time again. They're training the junior officers. What are they learning? When a guy is laying prone on the floor, yell, 'Stop resisting!' so you have reason to use force and make a bad arrest."
The attorney adds that these settlements are "unfortunate," in that they come out of taxpayer money. "It falls on all of us taxpayers instead of the individual officers. I'm not happy about that," he says. "I believe that if even ten percent of the payout money came out of the police pension fund, there'd be a sharp decline in the number of these type of incidents." The same would be true, he adds, if protesters were allowed to sue the officers who witnessed their unlawful or brutal arrests but did not intervene.
"The majority of police officers are good," Stecklow says. "They want to help. And if we put pressure on the majority to intervene, again, we can start to reduce these kinds of incidents."
Purtell was once demoted in 2003, after he led a mistaken raid on a woman's apartment. The woman, 57-year-old Albert Spruill, died after a concussion grenade was thrown into her home by police. According to a New York Times report, the Chief Medical Examiner ruled that Spruill "died from the stress and fear caused by the detonation of the concussion grenade and from being handcuffed."
Although Purtell was reassigned to the Housing Bureau for a time, he worked his way up to Manhattan South, and has received two promotions since the Josh Boss arrest. He's now head of the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau. A Times story from February claims that he's being considered for yet another promotion, to replace either the current chief of detectives or the head of the Internal Affairs Bureau.
quote:
quote:Cecily McMillan was on Monday afternoon found guilty of deliberately elbowing Officer Grantley Bovell in the face in March 2012. After a trial lasting more than four weeks, the jury of eight women and four men reached their verdict in about three hours.
Judge Ronald Zweibel ordered that McMillan, 25, a graduate student at the New School, be detained. He rejected a request from her lawyers for bail.
quote:McMillan's conviction is the most serious of the dozens against members of the protest movement, which sprung up in the autumn of 2011. Hers is believed to be the last of more than 2,600 prosecutions brought against members of the movement, most of which were dismissed or dropped.
quote:Protesters set up camp at net neutrality rally outside FCC headquarters
Occupy-style protest against proposed 'open internet' rules that protesters say will give control of the web to major corporations
Protesters set up camp outside the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) on Wednesday to fight plans they say will create a two-tier internet and hand control of the web to major corporations.
The rally – reminiscent of the Occupy-style rallies that started in 2011 – started outside the FCC’s Washington headquarters at noon with protesters from Fight For the Future, Popular Resistance and others unfurling banners reading “Save the Internet”.
Protesters then announced they intend to camp out outside the FCC until 15 May when the regulator is expected to announce new rules for the internet that will formalise plans for higher speed internet for those able to pay for it. On Wednesday Google, Facebook and Amazon joined around 100 other technology companies in signing a letter to the FCC rejecting "individualised bargaining and discrimination" for internet traffic.
"[The FCC must] take the necessary steps to ensure that the internet remains an open platform for speech and commerce," the letter says.
Public interest groups have become increasingly concerned that the new rules will end “net neutrality” – the concept that all internet traffic should be treated equally on the web. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has defended his plans for what he calls the “open internet”.
The future of net neutrality has effectively been in limbo since a federal court struck down most of the FCC’s open internet order in January in a case brought by Verizon. The loss paved the way for fast lanes that have the major broadband providers have lobbied hard for, and for which they plan to charge extra to their biggest users.
"We don’t have armies of paid lobbyists at our disposal but we can not let the freedom of the internet be hijacked by giant monopolies,” said Evan Greer of Fight For The Future.
More than a million people have now signed petitions to the FCC calling for them to enshrine net neutrality rules and prevent a tiered system.
A group of 86 organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Free Press and Reddit, are asking the FCC to reclassify broadband companies as "telecommunication services", which would give the commission the authority to impose net neutrality rules on them.
Wheeler has said the FCC’s new rules will protect net neutrality.
“The Internet will remain like it is today, an open pathway,” Wheeler wrote in a FCC blogpost in April. “If a broadband provider (ISP) acts in a manner that keeps users from effectively taking advantage of that pathway then it should be a violation of the Open Internet rules.”
Critics charge, however, that cable firms will successfully challenge any new rules to tie their hands unless the FCC’s regulatory control over them is increased and point out cable firms have already effectively created a two-tier system. After the FCC lost to Verizon in January, a tiered system has already started to emerge with Netflix and others striking deals for a faster service with cable firms.
“The internet is as necessary to our society as shelter and water, people should have equal access to it,” said Greer. “We have seen an unbelievable amount of support from people since these new rules emerged. It may seem technical but it affects everyone’s life and people are not going to just stand by and let this happen.”
quote:http://cms.fightforthefuture.org/save-internet/
We're camping out day and night on the FCC's doorstep to defend net neutrality and keep the Internet free from discrimination and "slow lanes"
The FCC is proposing new rules that will be great for Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, but terrible for the rest of us. This agency has been surrounded by corporate lobbyists for too long. Help us surround FCC headquarters with people who love the Internet and want to keep it open.
quote:Join us at the FCC!
445 12th St SW, Washington, DC
We have food, coffee, and wi-fi
All day, all night, until May 15
quote:In the Breaking Bad city, trust in the trigger-happy police has broken down
Albuquerque's people are struggling with poverty, mental illness and drugs – and have had enough of a police force that has killed 25 in four years
The bloodstains have faded but bullet holes remain etched in the peach-coloured wall where Mary Hawkes, a troubled 19-year-old, died in a blast of gunfire. Two crosses, a teddy bear, some candles, plastic flowers and polystyrene cups – she liked her soda – formed an improvised shrine on the pavement this week.
A poster showed an image of her hugging a dog, and messages read: "RIP Mary. God bless U and your family"; "Never forgotten"; "She was never unloved"; and "Beautiful girl lost. Don't shoot to kill." Municipal workers have painted over other messages, which accused the Albuquerque police department of murder.
The killing happened at 5.50am on 21 April. The sun had yet to rise over the Sandia mountains – this city on the edge of the Chihuahuan desert was still in darkness. Hawkes was pounding down Zuni Street, pursued by officers who suspected her of earlier stealing a truck.
"I heard sirens. I thought it was an ambulance," said Maria Gonzalez, 45, who lives in a trailer on the other side of the wall. "Then I heard shots. I told my husband to duck. We didn't know what was happening."
According to police, Hawkes stopped and pointed a handgun at an officer who was closing in on foot. He fired, killing her on the spot. Yellow tape sealed the scene, little yellow cones marked the bullet casings, a yellow sheet covered the corpse and Mary Hawkes officially became the 24th person shot dead by the APD since 2010. This week a swat team killed Armand Martin, a 50-year-old US Air Force veteran, after a standoff at his home. He became number 25.
For a city with a population of 555,000 it is a remarkable figure, one that is fanning fears that the police have become a militarised, out-of-control cross between Robocop and Dirty Harry. In a chaotic civic revolt last week, protesters briefly seized city hall and attempted a citizens' arrest of the police chief.
"When are they going to quit killing people and start taking them into custody?" said one of the protesters, Ken Ellis, whose son, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, was gunned down in 2010. "They have to address this issue. They can't sweep it under the rug anymore."
The hit TV series Breaking Bad depicted Albuquerque, a usually sleepy city dwarfed by the vast New Mexico sky, as home to fictitious meth-fuelled drug wars. Lethal police violence, however, is real. No officer has been prosecuted for unlawful killing, yet the city has paid $24m in legal settlements to victims' relatives.
Last month the US department of justice issued a 46-page report that detailed a pattern of excessive force, including a policy of shooting at moving vehicles to disable them, and officers being allowed to use personal weapons instead of standard-issue firearms. "Officers see the guns as status symbols," it said. "APD personnel we interviewed indicated that this fondness for powerful weapons illustrates the aggressive culture."
Concern about police heavy-handedness is spreading. Elsewhere in New Mexico this week state police killed Arcenio Lujan, 48, outside his home after he allegedly pointed a rifle. Dozens marched on police headquarters in the Texas town of Hearne after an officer shot dead a 93-year-old woman, Pearlie Golden, who allegedly brandished a gun. Las Vegas and Los Angeles have also been rocked by anger at police shootings.
Police and sheriff departments in towns and hamlets from Iowa to Connecticut have fuelled anxiety by snapping up the Pentagon's offer of mine-resistant ambush-protected armoured personnel vehicles, behemoths known as MRAPs, back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Albuquerque was leading the backlash even before activists chased councillors from the city chamber in Monday's fleeting "coup d'etat", a simmering campaign centred in the aptly nicknamed War Zone. Only a few miles from the shiny offices, hotels and cafes of downtown, where tourists munch Breaking Bad-themed doughnuts with blue icing, is a landscape of trailer parks, fast-food joints, taco stands, pawn shops, gas stations, peeling paint and bleached facades. Stand at a bus stop long enough and you will be asked for cigarettes and change, or offered drugs and knock-off clothing. The broken teeth speak volumes about poverty. The nickname is a product of decades of domestic beatings, gang feuds and drunken brawls.
In a fit of Orwellian marketing in 2009, the city renamed this sprawl of Latinos, Asians and other ethnic minorities the "international district". The name didn't stick. A year later locals noticed that police, never gentle, were becoming increasingly lethal. Confrontations that in the past might have ended in handcuffs instead ended with municipal tableaux of death: yellow crime scene tape, cones and sheets.
"My son was unarmed. They were watching him. They didn't give him a chance," said Mike Gomez, whose son Alan, 22, was shot in the doorway of his brother's home in May 2011. "When they take away a family member it leaves a hole in your heart. All you have left is the past." Police said they thought he was armed and holding hostages. The city accepted no liability but paid the family about $900,000 in a settlement.
There are no official figures but, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, three-quarters of those shot by the APD had psychological problems. Many were homeless, or living on the margins.
"Every time I see them I get on the floor. I'm scared of them," said Michael Clarke, 48, who lives at the Albuquerque Rescue Mission, a shelter. "They're taking people out left, right and centre over stupid stuff. They see a shining pin, they shoot."
The APD did not respond to an interview request. A policeman at a Family Dollar grocery store, which had just been robbed, shook his head when approached. "No way, bro. All this stuff you guys in the media are giving us – no way can I talk."
Some locals praised the police for keeping a semblance of order in a fraught environment. "It's a tough job. A lot of these people have mental and addiction problems. They're very unpredictable," said one shelter worker, who declined to be named.
New Mexico is the second-poorest state in the US, according to census figures, and hovers at or near the bottom for jobs, nutrition and healthcare. Fatalities from drug overdoses are twice the national average. Many officers have resigned from the police over low morale and pay cuts, and their replacements, critics say, are not vetted or trained properly. They also say police videos of shootings – taken from cameras on lapels or helmets – were often incomplete or absent.
In 2011, detective Byron "Trey" Economidy prompted an outcry after shooting Jacob Mitschelen in the back after stopping him for a traffic offence. Reporters discovered that he listed his occupation on Facebook as "human waste disposal". He was suspended for four days. Mitschelen's family accepted a settlement of $300,000.
On it went, a cycle of killing, protest and payout, with little response from the Police Oversight Commission, city council or mayor. "We had a breakdown in the checks and balances. The establishment turned its head away," said Joe Monahan, an Albuquerque-based political blogger.
After the department of justice began investigating in 2012, however, that began to change. In February police chief Ray Schultz was replaced by a respected outsider, Gorden Eden. After the DOJ report, the APD banned the use of personal guns and the practice of shooting to disable moving cars. Other reforms are expected.
The changes have not placated activists, who stepped up their campaign since a video surfaced in March showing police pumping bullets into James Boyd, a mentally ill homeless man. And on Monday activists attempted the symbolic arrest of Eden and occupied councillors' seats. "A symbolic coup d'etat", Andres Valdes, a veteran activist, said with satisfaction.
At a tense but more orderly session on Thursday, activists took turns to speak from the podium, then turned their backs on the councillors and raised fists in silent protest. Security guards and police escorted them out as one broke into the civil rights song Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round. Leading the protest, Ellis displayed a photograph of his late son, Kenneth, who had held a gun to his own head during a standoff with police which came to an end when a detective shot him in the neck.
One councillor, Rey Garduño, issued something close to a mea culpa. "For four years they have been telling us to act and we have done nothing," he told colleagues. Turning to Ellis, he added: "I'm sorry this has happened to you."
quote:Operation American Spring: Ret. Colonel Creates March On Washington, May 16, 2014
Harry Riley, COL, Ret. is calling upon millions of patriots to march upon Washington D.C. to remove Obama, Biden, Reid, McConnell, Boehner, Pelosi, and Attorney General Holder from Office.
He has termed it “OPERATION AMERICAN SPRING – Beginning Of Tyranny Housecleaning” and it’s due to commence May 16, 2014.
There are 3 primary phases to the plan:
Phase 1 – Field millions, as many as ten million, patriots to assemble in a peaceful, non-violent, physically unarmed
Phase 2 – At least one million of the assembled 10 million to stay in D.C. as long as it takes to see Obama, Biden, Reid, McConnell, Boehner, Pelosi, and Attorney General Holder removed from office.
Phase 3 – Politicians with the principles of a West; Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, Lee, DeMint, Paul, Gov Walker, Sessions, Gowdy, Jordan, to comprise a tribunal to convene investigations and recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees who have violated the Constitution
God bless Colonel Riley and all patriots in this historic effort to restore our country!
One can easily see why this administration fears and loathes veterans. It’s patriots like Colonel Riley that can undo their tyrannical agenda.
Let’s make 2014 the year we take our country back!
quote:Occupy activist Cecily McMillan sentenced to three months in prison
McMillan to also serve five years' probation for deliberately elbowing a New York police officer at a protest in 2012
An Occupy Wall Street activist has been sentenced to three months in prison for assaulting a police officer as he led her out of a protest.
Cecily McMillan, who had been facing a maximum sentence of seven years, was told on Monday morning by Judge Ronald Zweibel that she "must take responsibility for her conduct".
"A civilised society must not allow an assault to be committed under the guise of civil disobedience," said Zweibel at Manhattan criminal court. However, he added: "The court finds that a lengthy sentence would not serve the interests of justice in this case."
McMillan, 25, received a three-month sentence to be followed by community service and five years of probation. Having been remanded at Riker's Island jail for the past two weeks, she will receive credit for time served.
McMillan was earlier this month found guilty of deliberately elbowing Officer Grantley Bovell in the face at Manhattan's Zuccotti Park in March 2012.
Following her conviction, nine of the 12 jurors in her trial wrote to Zweibel, asking him not to send her to prison and to show her leniency. Their letter was followed by similar requests from members of the New York city council and prominent pop musicians. Two members of Pussy Riot, the Russian punk activist group, visited McMillan at Rikers and also wrote to the judge.
McMillan's support team also delivered a petition to Zweibel and Cyrus Vance, the district attorney, bearing what they said were 43,000 names of other people asking that she not be sent to prison.
quote:
quote:The following documents, distributed by people working with counterterrorism and intelligence-sharing offices known as “fusion centers,” are a selection from among about 4,000 pages of unclassified emails and reports obtained through freedom of information requests by lawyers at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, who represent Occupy participants. The documents, which they provided to The New York Times, offer details of the scrutiny of the Occupy protests in 2011 and 2012 by law enforcement officers, federal officials, security contractors and others.
quote:Cop who punched Occupy Wall Street protester gets tax-free disability pension
Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona has been granted three-quarters tax free disability pension of roughly $120,000 a year for injuries suffered during his violent encounter with Felix Rivera-Pitre n the Financial District in October 2011.
A NYPD cop caught in a violent confrontation with an Occupy Wall Street protester has been granted a tax-free disability pension for injuries suffered during the confrontation, the Daily News has learned.
Video captured Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona, punching Felix Rivera-Pitre during a demonstration in the Financial District on Oct. 14, 2011.
The NYPD said Rivera-Pitre, then 37, was the instigator and tried to elbow Cardona.
Roy Richter, head of the Captains Endowment Association, said other video shows Cardona caught in a headlock and that Cardona was trampled and hurt so badly he suffered back injuries and needed hip replacement surgery and operations on both knees.
This week, sources said, the NYPD pension board granted Cardona, 50, a three-quarters tax free disability pension — roughly $120,000 a year.
Neither Rivera-Pitre, nor Cardona, were charged in the incident, but Rivera-Pitre, an artist, filed a lawsuit and settled for $55,000.
Ron Kuby, his lawyer, was incredulous to learn about Cardona’s pension.
“What’s his disability?” Kuby asked. “He hurt his fist when he punched Occupy Wall Street protesters? If he went out on a psychological disability that would have been appropriate.
“At least he’s off the force.”
Rivera-Pitre, living in a commune in Tennessee, could not be reached for comment.
quote:
quote:Harvard Professor Larry Lessig, friend of the late hactivist Aaron Swartz and a longtime advocate for net neutrality and ending political corruption, has been on a tear. This winter, he led the New Hampshire Rebellion, a 185-mile walk across the freezing Granite State intended to draw attention to the problem of money infecting everything our government does. He recently celebrated his birthday with likeminded activists in California, where he joined the March for Democracy, a 480-mile hike through the state in protest of what the group calls America's current "plutocracy"-based government.
Now Lessig is talking the talk as well as walking the walk—he's starting a Super PAC to end them all, a sort of Kickstarter campaign he hopes will raise enough unregulated cash to oust some of the entrenched assholes who run Congress with an eye toward making themselves rich. He plans on collecting $12 million by November in order to unseat a handful of legislators who are particularly in the thrall of big money, and intends to seriously step up his game come the 2016 election and radically change what Washington looks like—potentially complicating the ascent of Wall Street favorite Hillary Clinton. I called up Lessig to find out whether this is different from all those other lofty bipartisan reform projects that seem to inevitably flame out.
quote:Occupy Protesters Arrested For Satirizing Police Repression Reach $22,000 Settlement
NEW YORK -- Two Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested in May 2012 over a piece of street theater meant to satirize the New York Police Department have reached a $22,000 settlement with New York City, they announced on Tuesday.
Bicycling activists Keegan Stephan and Barbara Ross were arrested as they were protesting the NYPD's practice of arresting Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who filmed the police at work. Dressed as comic exaggerations of cops, they were melodramatically ordering fellow bicyclists with the cycling collective Time's Up! to stop filming them.
"This was during the height of the suppression of Occupy Wall Street. The police were cracking down, especially on filming the police, so this was a theatrical way to draw attention to the fact that it is totally legal to film the police," said Stephan.
The joke went downhill when actual police officers showed up. Initially, Stephan and Ross were told they were being arrested for impersonating police officers. The charges against them were later downgraded to reckless endangerment and eventually dropped.
Their arrests were caught on tape:
"It was blue Dickies and a blue Dickies jacket, and I pasted the letters 'NYPD' on the back. ... I don't think anyone seeing me in a double-long cycle, covered in cardboard, was going to think I was a police officer," recalled Stephan. Just two months earlier, Stephan noted, Lt. Daniel J. Albano of the police department's legal bureau had actually complimented Ross on wearing the same costume.
Stephan and Ross sued the city for false arrest. They received the monetary offer in March. The settlement continues a pattern under New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) of making peace with former Occupiers over the large-scale arrests during the movement's heyday.
New York City Law Department spokesman Nick Paolucci said in a statement that "settling this case was in the best interest of all parties."
The counterfeit cops were represented by the law firm Stecklow Cohen & Thompson, which had previously hired Stephan to publicize a $583,000 settlement in a separate lawsuit against the NYPD.
"It really is echoing these last few settlements for Occupy Wall Street," said Stephan of his own settlement. "The police need to stop falsely arresting people who are exercising their First Amendment rights. If we have skilled lawyers on our side, they're going to have to keep paying, and the people of New York are going to have to demand that they stop doing this."
Stephan, an organizer with the street safety group Right of Way, noted the irony of being charged with "reckless endangerment" for riding his bike when the city rarely brings such charges against motorists who kill pedestrians.
He said that after legal fees, his share of the settlement works out to about $7,500. His plans for the money: "I'm gonna buy a new bicycle and keep giving 'em hell."
Het artikel gaat verderquote:The end of capitalism has begun | Books | The Guardian
Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian
The red flags and marching songs of Syriza during the Greek crisis, plus the expectation that the banks would be nationalised, revived briefly a 20th-century dream: the forced destruction of the market from above. For much of the 20th century this was how the left conceived the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism. The force would be applied by the working class, either at the ballot box or on the barricades. The lever would be the state. The opportunity would come through frequent episodes of economic collapse.
Instead over the past 25 years it has been the left’s project that has collapsed. The market destroyed the plan; individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity; the hugely expanded workforce of the world looks like a “proletariat”, but no longer thinks or behaves as it once did.
If you lived through all this, and disliked capitalism, it was traumatic. But in the process technology has created a new route out, which the remnants of the old left – and all other forces influenced by it – have either to embrace or die. Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism.
As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.
Postcapitalism is possible because of three major changes information technology has brought about in the past 25 years. First, it has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. The coming wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all.
Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot last. By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely.
Related: British capitalism is broken. Here’s how to fix it | Will Hutton
Third, we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. The biggest information product in the world – Wikipedia – is made by volunteers for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3bn a year in revenue.
Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swaths of economic life are beginning to move to a different rhythm. Parallel currencies, time banks, cooperatives and self-managed spaces have proliferated, barely noticed by the economics profession, and often as a direct result of the shattering of the old structures in the post-2008 crisis.
You only find this new economy if you look hard for it. In Greece, when a grassroots NGO mapped the country’s food co-ops, alternative producers, parallel currencies and local exchange systems they found more than 70 substantive projects and hundreds of smaller initiatives ranging from squats to carpools to free kindergartens. To mainstream economics such things seem barely to qualify as economic activity – but that’s the point. They exist because they trade, however haltingly and inefficiently, in the currency of postcapitalism: free time, networked activity and free stuff. It seems a meagre and unofficial and even dangerous thing from which to craft an entire alternative to a global system, but so did money and credit in the age of Edward III.
New forms of ownership, new forms of lending, new legal contracts: a whole business subculture has emerged over the past 10 years, which the media has dubbed the “sharing economy”. Buzzwords such as the “commons” and “peer-production” are thrown around, but few have bothered to ask what this development means for capitalism itself.
I believe it offers an escape route – but only if these micro-level projects are nurtured, promoted and protected by a fundamental change in what governments do. And this must be driven by a change in our thinking – about technology, ownership and work. So that, when we create the elements of the new system, we can say to ourselves, and to others: “This is no longer simply my survival mechanism, my bolt hole from the neoliberal world; this is a new way of living in the process of formation.”
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The 2008 crash wiped 13% off global production and 20% off global trade. Global growth became negative – on a scale where anything below +3% is counted as a recession. It produced, in the west, a depression phase longer than in 1929-33, and even now, amid a pallid recovery, has left mainstream economists terrified about the prospect of long-term stagnation. The aftershocks in Europe are tearing the continent apart.
The solutions have been austerity plus monetary excess. But they are not working. In the worst-hit countries, the pension system has been destroyed, the retirement age is being hiked to 70, and education is being privatised so that graduates now face a lifetime of high debt. Services are being dismantled and infrastructure projects put on hold.
Even now many people fail to grasp the true meaning of the word “austerity”. Austerity is not eight years of spending cuts, as in the UK, or even the social catastrophe inflicted on Greece. It means driving the wages, social wages and living standards in the west down for decades until they meet those of the middle class in China and India on the way up.
Meanwhile in the absence of any alternative model, the conditions for another crisis are being assembled. Real wages have fallen or remained stagnant in Japan, the southern Eurozone, the US and UK. The shadow banking system has been reassembled, and is now bigger than it was in 2008. New rules demanding banks hold more reserves have been watered down or delayed. Meanwhile, flushed with free money, the 1% has got richer.
Neoliberalism, then, has morphed into a system programmed to inflict recurrent catastrophic failures. Worse than that, it has broken the 200-year pattern of industrial capitalism wherein an economic crisis spurs new forms of technological innovation that benefit everybody.
That is because neoliberalism was the first economic model in 200 years the upswing of which was premised on the suppression of wages and smashing the social power and resilience of the working class. If we review the take-off periods studied by long-cycle theorists – the 1850s in Europe, the 1900s and 1950s across the globe – it was the strength of organised labour that forced entrepreneurs and corporations to stop trying to revive outdated business models through wage cuts, and to innovate their way to a new form of capitalism.
The result is that, in each upswing, we find a synthesis of automation, higher wages and higher-value consumption. Today there is no pressure from the workforce, and the technology at the centre of this innovation wave does not demand the creation of higher-consumer spending, or the re‑employment of the old workforce in new jobs. Information is a machine for grinding the price of things lower and slashing the work time needed to support life on the planet.
Related: Occupy was right: capitalism has failed the world
As a result, large parts of the business class have become neo-luddites. Faced with the possibility of creating gene-sequencing labs, they instead start coffee shops, nail bars and contract cleaning firms: the banking system, the planning system and late neoliberal culture reward above all the creator of low-value, long-hours jobs.
Innovation is happening but it has not, so far, triggered the fifth long upswing for capitalism that long-cycle theory would expect. The reasons lie in the specific nature of information technology.
...
We’re surrounded not just by intelligent machines but by a new layer of reality centred on information. Consider an airliner: a computer flies it; it has been designed, stress-tested and “virtually manufactured” millions of times; it is firing back real-time information to its manufacturers. On board are people squinting at screens connected, in some lucky countries, to the internet.
Seen from the ground it is the same white metal bird as in the James Bond era. But it is now both an intelligent machine and a node on a network. It has an information content and is adding “information value” as well as physical value to the world. On a packed business flight, when everyone’s peering at Excel or Powerpoint, the passenger cabin is best understood as an information factory.
But what is all this information worth? You won’t find an answer in the accounts: intellectual property is valued in modern accounting standards by guesswork. A study for the SAS Institute in 2013 found that, in order to put a value on data, neither the cost of gathering it, nor the market value or the future income from it could be adequately calculated. Only through a form of accounting that included non-economic benefits, and risks, could companies actually explain to their shareholders what their data was really worth. Something is broken in the logic we use to value the most important thing in the modern world.
The great technological advance of the early 21st century consists not only of new objects and processes, but of old ones made intelligent. The knowledge content of products is becoming more valuable than the physical things that are used to produce them. But it is a value measured as usefulness, not exchange or asset value. In the 1990s economists and technologists began to have the same thought at once: that this new role for information was creating a new, “third” kind of capitalism – as different from industrial capitalism as industrial capitalism was to the merchant and slave capitalism of the 17th and 18th centuries. But they have struggled to describe the dynamics of the new “cognitive” capitalism. And for a reason. Its dynamics are profoundly non-capitalist.
During and right after the second world war, economists viewed information simply as a “public good”. The US government even decreed that no profit should be made out of patents, only from the production process itself. Then we began to understand intellectual property. In 1962, Kenneth Arrow, the guru of mainstream economics, said that in a free market economy the purpose of inventing things is to create intellectual property rights. He noted: “precisely to the extent that it is successful there is an underutilisation of information.”
You can observe the truth of this in every e-business model ever constructed: monopolise and protect data, capture the free social data generated by user interaction, push commercial forces into areas of data production that were non-commercial before, mine the existing data for predictive value – always and everywhere ensuring nobody but the corporation can utilise the results.
If we restate Arrow’s principle in reverse, its revolutionary implications are obvious: if a free market economy plus intellectual property leads to the “underutilisation of information”, then an economy based on the full utilisation of information cannot tolerate the free market or absolute intellectual property rights. The business models of all our modern digital giants are designed to prevent the abundance of information.
Yet information is abundant. Information goods are freely replicable. Once a thing is made, it can be copied/pasted infinitely. A music track or the giant database you use to build an airliner has a production cost; but its cost of reproduction falls towards zero. Therefore, if the normal price mechanism of capitalism prevails over time, its price will fall towards zero, too.
For the past 25 years economics has been wrestling with this problem: all mainstream economics proceeds from a condition of scarcity, yet the most dynamic force in our modern world is abundant and, as hippy genius Stewart Brand once put it, “wants to be free”.
There is, alongside the world of monopolised information and surveillance created by corporations and governments, a different dynamic growing up around information: information as a social good, free at the point of use, incapable of being owned or exploited or priced. I’ve surveyed the attempts by economists and business gurus to build a framework to understand the dynamics of an economy based on abundant, socially-held information. But it was actually imagined by one 19th-century economist in the era of the telegraph and the steam engine. His name? Karl Marx.
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The scene is Kentish Town, London, February 1858, sometime around 4am. Marx is a wanted man in Germany and is hard at work scribbling thought-experiments and notes-to-self. When they finally get to see what Marx is writing on this night, the left intellectuals of the 1960s will admit that it “challenges every serious interpretation of Marx yet conceived”. It is called “The Fragment on Machines”.
In the “Fragment” Marx imagines an economy in which the main role of machines is to produce, and the main role of people is to supervise them. He was clear that, in such an economy, the main productive force would be information. The productive power of such machines as the automated cotton-spinning machine, the telegraph and the steam locomotive did not depend on the amount of labour it took to produce them but on the state of social knowledge. Organisation and knowledge, in other words, made a bigger contribution to productive power than the work of making and running the machines.
Given what Marxism was to become – a theory of exploitation based on the theft of labour time – this is a revolutionary statement. It suggests that, once knowledge becomes a productive force in its own right, outweighing the actual labour spent creating a machine, the big question becomes not one of “wages versus profits” but who controls what Marx called the “power of knowledge”.
In an economy where machines do most of the work, the nature of the knowledge locked inside the machines must, he writes, be “social”. In a final late-night thought experiment Marx imagined the end point of this trajectory: the creation of an “ideal machine”, which lasts forever and costs nothing. A machine that could be built for nothing would, he said, add no value at all to the production process and rapidly, over several accounting periods, reduce the price, profit and labour costs of everything else it touched.
Once you understand that information is physical, and that software is a machine, and that storage, bandwidth and processing power are collapsing in price at exponential rates, the value of Marx’s thinking becomes clear. We are surrounded by machines that cost nothing and could, if we wanted them to, last forever.
In these musings, not published until the mid-20th century, Marx imagined information coming to be stored and shared in something called a “general intellect” – which was the mind of everybody on Earth connected by social knowledge, in which every upgrade benefits everybody. In short, he had imagined something close to the information economy in which we live. And, he wrote, its existence would “blow capitalism sky high”.
Marx imagined something close to our information economy. He wrote its existence would blow capitalism sky high
quote:FCA chief’s departure means it’s back to business as usual for the banks | Business | The Guardian
Martin Wheatley’s resignation is another victory for the increasingly bullish banks – George Osborne has capitulated again
It’s job done as far as Britain’s banks are concerned. The departure of Martin Wheatley as the head of the City’s watchdog marks a triumph for the forex fiddlers and the Libor manipulators, but a defeat for the rest of us. The clock has been turned back eight years to the bad old days when the last Labour government ensured that what the banks demanded, the banks got.
George Osborne was, of course, full of praise for Wheatley as his resignation was announced. The outgoing head of the Financial Conduct Authority was “brilliant”. He was “passionate” about defending the interests of consumers. A bit too passionate, it seems.
Wheatley’s tough approach prompted complaints from the financial sector. The chancellor could not set foot in the City of London or Canary Wharf without being lobbied by a banker or an insurer telling him that the FCA’s zero-tolerance approach to financial malfeasance was threatening to drive business away from the UK. Unspoken, but doubtless lurking in the background, was the warning that donations for the Conservative party were on the line as well. The City wanted Wheatley out.
Osborne’s capitulation means the rehabilitation of the banking sector is now pretty much complete. For a while after the financial crash that they caused, the banks decided to lie low. They were suitably penitent about the mistakes that had been made, merely noting that punitive measures against such a big export-earning sector would be a mistake.
Over the years, though, the bullishness has returned. HSBC felt confident enough to warn during the election campaign that the “regulatory and structural” reforms imposed following the crash had forced it to consider moving its HQ out of London. In this context, “regulatory and structural” meant the government’s bank levy and Wheatley’s regime at the FCA.
Osborne got the message. In his budget earlier this month, the chancellor announced that he was reducing the bank levy and making it applicable only to a bank’s UK operations. Experts estimate that for HSBC, which does most of its business outside the UK, this will mean its payments to the exchequer are reduced from £1bn a year to £300mn. Ker-ching.
Now Wheatley has gone as well, taking the decision to quit immediately after Osborne said his contract would not be renewed next year. The message from Whitehall could not be clearer. Goodbye to big fines. It’s back to business as usual.
Bron: www.theguardian.com