This @CHAPOTRAPHOUSE discussion with Adam Curtis is outstanding. Again: watch HyperNormalisation on YouTube. https://t.co/z9TwEdrHPz— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 27, 2016
I'm sure they can appeal to the Supreme Court, delaying complying until Trump has installed another Scalia.A federal judge has ordered the FBI and other federal agencies to turn over any potential evidence they spied on Occupy Philadelphia protesters.
The FBI, CIA and National Security Agency have 60 days to comply with the order from Senior U.S. District Judge Berle M. Schiller. The order follows another right-to-know case that revealed the FBI was monitoring Occupy Wall Street activities in New York and spinoff efforts from Florida to Alaska.
Gazette
I'll believe it when I see it.An anarchist group may be planning to use Halloween as cover for a plan to ambush police in cities across the country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly said in a bulletin to local police departments.
The New York Post reported Monday that the National Liberation Militia has encouraged supporters to create a disturbance to attract law enforcement and then attack them, the paper reported, citing the FBI. The group calls the ambush a "Halloween Revolt."
The paper reported that the NYPD is monitoring the threat.
Fox
(If you haven't seen the movie Battle in Seattle starring Woody Harrelson, Charlize Theron and Ray Liotta, have a look at it. Trailer)The “Halloween Revolt,” according to the federal law enforcement agency, is planned by the National Liberation Militia, a group reportedly from Eugene, Oregon, and said to be responsible for violence in Seattle during the World Trade Organization conference in 1999.
Infowars
In 2007 during the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in Montebello, Canada, police were exposed acting as anarchists and caught trying to incite violence and rioting.
Denver cops were found to have used undercover detectives to instigate violence against police during the 2008 Democratic National Convention and during the G20 in Pittsburgh provocateurs were used to stir up trouble.
Black Bloc anarchists were also used to disrupt and discredit the Occupy movement.
I can’t imagine why.[R]esearchers at UC Berkeley [...] studied clashes between police and activists during the Occupy movement three years ago, found that protests tend to turn violent when officers use aggressive tactics, such as approaching demonstrators in riot gear or lining up in military-like formations.
Recent events in Ferguson, Mo., are a good example, the study's lead researcher said.
[...]
"Everything starts to turn bad when you see a police officer come out of an SUV and he's carrying an AR-15," said Nick Adams, a sociologist and fellow at UC Berkeley's Institute for Data Science who leads the Deciding Force Project. "It just upsets the crowd."
SFGate
But, ask the Ferguson police chief – that’s no “show of force.”But finding the appropriate balance between being too aggressive and not aggressive enough hasn't been easy.
[...]
This week's protests in Oakland, to show solidarity with Ferguson activists, have been peaceful. Officers have restricted where marches can take place but have kept their distance.
Oakland police officials declined to be interviewed for this story.
[...]
In San Francisco, officials say they try to use force sparingly.
"We don't use tear gas. We don't use rubber bullets or dowels in crowd control," said police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza. "San Francisco is a professional protest city. We have protests here all the time. Our department is well versed in facilitating First Amendment rights."
[...]
During the Occupy protests [...] police in some cities deployed officers in small clusters rather than in skirmish lines. Such cities tended to see fewer clashes between demonstrators and police, the researchers said.
Adams' team is still evaluating its findings and is incorporating other factors to determine whether they influence crowd behavior, including city rules for holding protests, an area's political makeup and local demographics. They expect to publish their findings by the end of the year.
“I understand the anger and fear that the citizens of Ferguson are feeling, and our officers will respect both of those,” said Johnson, who has been the head of the highway patrol’s troop in the region since 2002.
WaPo
A United States military veteran who was critically injured by the police during an Occupy Wall Street protest in October 2011 will be awarded $4.5 million by the city of Oakland, California
[...]
Olsen was with around 1,000 other demonstrators that evening who had decided to protest the local police department’s recent clearing of Occupy activists from an encampment they established in a city park. During a march through downtown, Olsen was hit in the head with a non-lethal projectile fired by an unknown police officer and quickly admitted to an area hospital in critical condition where he was diagnosed with a fractured skull, broken neck vertebrae and swelling of the brain.
The marine served two tours in Iraq between 2006 and 2010, and then joined the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. He was employed as a systems administrator in the San Francisco Bay area at the time of the 2011 protest.
[...]
One of Olsen’s attorneys, Jim Chanin, told the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday that it’s "a very sad day, not only for Scott, who's going to have to start his life all over, but for the city of Oakland, which has been hit with yet another unnecessary lawsuit with a very large settlement that could have been used for the public good while Scott went on with his life, without his injury."
Speaking to Democracy Now! this week, Olsen said, “It has been a very stressful experience having to deal with it. So, for that reason alone, I’m happy that it’s over.”
RT
And perhaps now we are beginning to see why America was allowed to have a black president. A (half) black man who came pretty much out of nowhere, known nationally by only a few voters before his meteoric,sudden rise to power. If you take away material support from the impoverished black masses, you are going to have to placate them with something else.When the details of the deal began to emerge, it became obvious that the agreement was yet another frontal assault on the working class and the poor that has characterized state policies over the last three decades. For the millions of people knocked to their knees by the economic crisis created by the robber barons of finance capital, the neoliberal fiscal priorities of the budget obliterated any hope that they would get relief from the insecurities and fears of living in an economy that seems aligned against them.
Not only was there no plan to use the power of the state to create or stimulate jobs, but the Christmas gift to the 1.3 million long-term unemployed left out of the deal was the elimination of their unemployment benefits on December 28.
The deal does not raise real revenue by closing tax loopholes for wealthy. It does not restore food stamps cuts for the 47 million receiving this assistance or cuts to Medicare and other vital public services like special education programs, Head Start and nearly $2 billion slashed from housing aid.
And because the deal lacks mechanisms for raising revenues, it places the burden for funding the deal squarely on the backs of working people by requiring federal workers to take another hit on their wages and benefits. This hit to federal workers is in addition to the increase in taxes that all workers experienced in January 2013 when the payroll tax cut was rescinded while the $4 trillion in Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were allowed to continue for another decade.
Furthermore, while poll after poll demonstrated that the public was no longer in favor of costly military adventures around the world and wanted to see a reduction in military expenditures, Congressional representatives still increased military spending by $20 billion.
[...]
Obama, the quintessential neoliberal technocrat, calls these kinds of agreements “compromises.” But [...] the interests of working people and the poor are the interests usually compromised in those agreements.
Black Agenda Report
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.RT reported earlier this year that Davis was pursuing a workers’ compensation settlement in the aftermath due to psychiatric problems that he allegedly began suffering from after his behavior made him an Internet superstar—namely depression and anxiety.
[...]
The deal reached between UC Davis and Pike’s attorneys will award him a larger settlement than any of those targeted in the attack.
RT
What is excessive about that?A jury has cleared the city of Portland, Oregon and two police officers of using excessive force during an Occupy protest in November 2011, when a demonstrator was struck in the throat with a baton and sprayed with pepper spray into her open mouth.
RT
I’m sure.According to Kenneth Kreuscher, [one of defendant Elizabeth] Nichols' attorneys, officers went beyond their orders to secure a bank branch during the Occupy Portland protest.
David Landrum, the lead attorney for the city of Portland, countered that the protest was unruly and officers simply responded to a threat. In a court motion, city attorneys wrote that Nichols “actively, physically resisted lawful police instructions to move off the sidewalk” and “aggressively moved as if to attack” the police.
Dozens of police officers have been injured in Belfast after clashes broke out during protests against a rally marking the anniversary of the introduction of imprisonment without trial in Northern Ireland.
About 26 police officers were injured, five requiring hospital treatment, when they were attacked with missiles by crowds in the city centre, police said.
al Jaeera
Ill-prepared. Indeed.Victims of excessive police force at one of the most violent flashpoints of the Occupy protests have received a [total] $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.
Guardian
Five Eyes. Yes, it really is a monster.New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA’s Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Raw Story
Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis – or all three.
Just last month, unilateral changes to US military laws formally granted the Pentagon extraordinary powers to intervene in a domestic “emergency” or “civil disturbance”:
“Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.”
[...]
Department of Homeland Security documents released in April prove a “systematic effort” by the agency “to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations” linked to Occupy Wall Street, according to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).
Similarly, FBI documents confirmed “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector” designed to produce intelligence on behalf of “the corporate security community.” A PCJF spokesperson remarked that the documents show “federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”
In particular, domestic surveillance has systematically targeted peaceful environment activists including anti-fracking activists across the US, such as the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, Rising Tide North America, the People’s Oil & Gas Collaborative, and Greenpeace.
[...]
The Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations in coming years. The revelations on the NSA’s global surveillance programmes are just the latest indication that as business as usual creates instability at home and abroad, and as disillusionment with the status quo escalates, Western publics are being increasingly viewed as potential enemies that must be policed by the state.
[More] than 2,500 people from throughout the South and across the U.S. filled the streets of Charlotte on Sun., Sept. 2 for the March on Wall Street South. The demonstration confronted the banks and corporations headquartered in Charlotte that are wreaking havoc on communities throughout the country, and raised a people’s agenda for jobs and justice as the Democratic National Convention convenes here.
[…]
Beginning today, Occupy Chicago will join with activists around Chicago and take a stand. We will highlight the contradictions between President Obama's promise of “hope and change” and his actual policy decisions during a four day occupation of his campaign headquarters.
Occupy Wall Street
I'm sure that's why she was there. Looking for a man like him.[The] marchers were confronted by a small groups of Westboro Baptist Church protestors with a loud speaker and some definite opinions on liberals’ supposed lack of patriotism, same sex marriage and women’s suffrage.
[...]
After the camera cut off, one protestor encouraged his comrades to leave the Westboro people alone “with their imaginary sky being,” and the Westboro speaker told one woman, “If you’re looking to get a man like me, you need to dress a lot differently.”
Raw Story
In case you can't remember November, go here.The infamous “Pepper Spray Cop” who attracted widespread criticism toward a California college last year is off the beat permanently, The Sacramento Bee reports.
A spokesperson for the University of California-Davis, where John Pike was captured pepper-spraying a group of seated protesters last November, said Pike was no longer employed with the school as of Tuesday, but did not specify whether Pike was fired or if he resigned, citing campus privacy rules. Pike and his supervisor, campus police chief Annette Spicuzza, had been on paid administrative leave since the Nov. 18 incident. Spicuzza resigned in April, saying she did not want it to become a “defining moment” in her career. According to The Bee, Pike’s 2010 salary was reportedly just over $110,000.
“This whole time we were paying him, and he’s just sitting on his ass?” one student asked KOVR-TV.
Raw Story
The post-1980 period had it’s ups and downs, but throughout it all the quiet little-noticed phenomenon was that the rich were back, and getting richer, and then VASTLY richer, and then UNFATHOMABLY richer. This was bound to lead, as it always does, to an economic crisis, which it did. But when the smoke cleared, there was no reckoning. The wealthy, instead of feeling a tiny amount of responsibility and remorse, instead felt THEMSELVES to be the aggrieved party! People didn’t WORSHIP them quite as much as they had come to enjoy and expect.
[...]
The ability of workers to get significant wage increases is long gone. The ability of a small fraction of people to finagle a jackpot for themselves, and keep it, is welded firmly into place. The political system is beyond the self-correcting stage. Welcome to now.
Tom Toles
