#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot Sandy Brought the Police and Occupy Together, but for How Long? http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13332-occupy-and-the-police-neednt-be-enemies-as-sandy-showed Ninety-nine people arrested during Occupy Wall Street's 17 September anniversary actions had their court dates last week. They trooped into the courthouse accompanied by green-hatted legal observers and National Lawyers Guild representatives, and faced the judge. Their charges mostly boiled down to “being part of a public protest”. Molly Crabapple – artist, journalist, and illustrator – was one of those arrested that day. “I was plucked off the sidewalk during a protest on the anniversary of Occupy, and didn't know what I was accused of until after 11 hours in jail,” she explains. “I was let off with a…http://www.twitpic.com/bmo28h
#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot Alliance says TPPA would lock in a corporate power grab http://alliance.org.nz/2012/12/08/alliance-says-tppa-would-lock-in-a-corporate-power-grab/ The Alliance Party says the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) could lock New Zealand into a future where economic and political decisions are made by and for a small elite. Negotiators having been working on this trade deal since 2007 and met in Auckland this week to have another go at hammering out an agreement. Alliance Party co-leader Kay Murray says we should not be so naïve as to imagine that anything good for New Zealanders will come out of the TPPA. “This agreement has very little, if anything to do with trade. It is a corporate power grab.” Ms Murray says big multinational com… Fiona Bernard: This is true for the U.S., for all countries. These so-called “trade” treaties are nothing less than the elimination of democracy and transfer of control of the world over to a group of Wall Street criminals. What people need to do, in every state, every country, is work together to shut down everything. If Greece would stop paying Wall Street and the bankers, and Spain, Ireland and Portugal would follow, what will Wall Street do? Particularly if the people in Michigan start randomly sitting in on freeways, stopping transportation, shutting down workplaces, impeding the function of business to extract money from all of us — what will Wall Street do? Drone everyone?http://www.twitpic.com/blq4h9
#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot Boehner fails “bogusity” test http://www.jimhightower.com/node/7906 One pretty good rule in making public policy proposals is this: If you're going to cite a source in support of your plan, first confirm that your source actually does support your plan. Republican budgeteer, John Boehner, recently put a new deficit reduction proposal on the table, asserting that it incorporated the numbers of a plan put forth earlier by budget expert Erskine Bowles, a Democrat. Aha, gloated the GOP leader to Barack Obama as he plopped down this bit of budgetary bipartisanship – Gotcha! Uh… not quite. Bowles promptly retorted that his numbers were not really a plan, but were simply “back-of-the-envelope” ideas, addin…http://www.twitpic.com/blgl5r
#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot Eric Cantor reportedly holding up Violence Against Women Act over protections for Native Americans http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/07/1168063/-Eric-Cantor-reportedly-holding-up-Violence-Against-Women-Act-over-protections-for-Native-Americans The saga of trying to get the Violence Against Women Act reauthorized has been going on for months now, and the Huffington Post is reporting that, in negotiations between Vice President Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, it's come down to one sticking point: Cantor doesn't want to strengthen protections for Native American women. To recap, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill that strengthened protections for several groups. Rather than taking up that bipartisan bill, House Republicans passed their own version of the bill, excluding or weakening protection…http://www.twitpic.com/bkaay6
#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot Occupy Protesters Take Over SF Wells Fargo Branch To Denounce Foreclosures http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/12/06/occupy-protesters-take-over-sf-wells-fargo-branch-to-denounce-foreclosures/ SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – Occupy demonstrators and housing advocates briefly took over a Wells Fargo Bank branch in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood Thursday as part of a protest denouncing foreclosures. Around 11 o’clock, one protester distracted security while three dozen more invaded the bank on the corner of 3rd Street and Galvez Avenue to string yellow foreclose tape all over the interior and shut it down. KCBS’ Doug Sovern Reports: To avoid arrest when about two dozen police officers arrived, the group then staged a noisy rally outside. Chiropractor David Lewis described how he and…http://www.twitpic.com/bjpluw
#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot LANSING, MI – About a half dozen people who were protesting against right-to-work legislation were arrested outside the Senate chamber shortly after 12 p.m. today. The protesters, who are among an estimated 3,000 union members and others demonstrating against right-to-work bills at the Capitol, were arrested for impeding the flow of pedestrian traffic, said Michigan State Police Inspector Gene Adamczyk. He said the protesters were trying to push their way into the Senate chamber and laid down in a common walk way. They were asked to move and did not, so two troopers responded with CS gas, or mace, he said. “They have a right to protest, we want to keep them safe, but the people who work here and the little kids that are coming here for tours have an expectation to be safe also,” Adamczyk said. “We’re here to protect both sides.” Union members and others in the Senate gallery applauded and cheered for those who were arrested as they were brought through the Senate floor. (see video below of police leading out some protesters in handcuffs). Around the same time, police blocked all access to the capitol, citing pockets of density that threatened the “structural intergrity” of the building. “It was a state police decision in unison with Capitol Facilities, who manages this building” said Adamczyk. Adamczyk told MIRS that police are concerned that people are congregating in one area, which could compromise the building's structure. “As soon as the State Police believe it is safe to let people in again, the building will be reopened,” MIRS wrote. Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer motioned to recess pending a lawsuit that she says has been filed by Democratic chair Mark Brewer to force the building open. Dozens were shut out, including United Auto Workers President Bob King, AFL-CIO President Karla Swift and American Federation of Teachers President David Hecker. — via MLIVEhttp://www.twitpic.com/bjqfn4
#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot Occupy Sandy: A Movement Moves to Relief http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/nyregion/where-fema-fell-short-occupy-sandy-was-there.html ON Wednesday night, as a fierce northeaster bore down on the weather-beaten Rockaways, the relief groups with a noticeable presence on the battered Queens peninsula were these: the National Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Police and Sanitation Departments — and Occupy Sandy, a do-it-yourself outfit recently established by Occupy Wall Street. This stretch of the coast remained apocalyptic, with buildings burned like Dresden and ragged figures shuffling past the trash heaps. There was still no power, and parking lots were awash with ruined cars. On Wednesday morning, as the winds picked up and FEMA closed i…http://www.twitpic.com/biwqmj
#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot “Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever. So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?” We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know. And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there. It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.” – Bill Murrayhttp://www.twitpic.com/bijvl9
#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot Syrian Internet Is Off The Air http://www.renesys.com/blog/2012/11/syria-off-the-air.shtml Starting at 10:26 UTC on Thursday, 29 November (12:26pm in Damascus), Syria's international Internet connectivity shut down. In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet. We are investigating the dynamics of the outage and will post updates as they become available. Update (15:45 UTC) Looking closely at the continuing Internet blackout in Syria, we can see that traceroutes into Syria are failing, exactly as one would expect for a major outage. The primary autonomous system for Syria is the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment; all of t…http://www.twitpic.com/bhmsdn
#union #iww #ows #p2 #tlot #tcot Austerity without end http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/pers-n29.shtml The media has largely ignored the main message from Monday’s meeting of euro zone finance ministers: that the Greek people confront years, if not decades, of austerity. In comparison, the issues headlined by the media—whether Greek debt falls below 120 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 or in 2022; whether lending rates are lowered or a debt haircut is imposed—were of a marginal and largely hypothetical nature. They boiled down to the question of how many food scraps one allows the victim, in order to exploit him as long as possible, before he eventually dies. Despite their differences on a number of issues, the assembled finance…http://www.twitpic.com/bhlw45