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Occupiers from across the northeast revel outside Republican debate
On an unseasonably warm New Hampshire night, Occupiers from across the northeast danced and chanted to a band marching through the little streets of Saint Anselm College before Saturday’s ABC News/Yahoo! debate.
In a parking lot nearby, Eric Lawson and four other members of Occupy Boston were hastily assembling a 10-foot tall wooden elephant, struggling to mount it on a wheeled base. Lawson, a molecular biologist, said about 60 people had come up from Boston, and dozens from other areas of the northeast, to protest the G.O.P. primary candidates, and that they had used the elephant in a parade earlier in the day. http://tinyurl.com/6vpdrs2 Twitter fights to reveal more Subpoenas, this time from the DOJ against Wikileak volunteers – Google and Facebook implicated in government snooping by their silence Last night, Birgitta Jónsdóttir – a former WikiLeaks volunteer and current member of the Icelandic Parliament – announced (on Twitter) that she had been notified by Twitter that the DOJ had served a Subpoena demanding information “about all my tweets and more since November 1st 2009.” Several news outlets, including The Guardian, wrote about Jónsdóttir’s announcement. What hasn’t been reported is that the Subpoena served on Twitter – which is actually an Order from a federal court that the DOJ requested – seeks the same information for numerous other individuals currently or formerly associated with WikiLeaks, including Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp, and Julian Assange. It also seeks the same information for Bradley Manning and for WikiLeaks’ Twitter account. And the key question now is this: did other Internet and social network companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) receive similar Orders and then quietly comply? It’s difficult to imagine why the DOJ would want information only from Twitter; if anything, given the limited information it has about users, Twitter would seem one of the least fruitful avenues to pursue. http://tinyurl.com/7na3ov2 More questions about suppression of citizen journalists in wake of Global Revolution raid Last Monday, the headquarters of Global Revolution TV, the livestream that puts out video for Occupy Wall Street content, was raided by New York City building inspectors. Despite having paid $2,000 a month for rent on their apartment and studio space at 13 Thames St. in Bushwick for two years, Vlad Teichberg and his pregnant wife Nikky suddenly found themselves at 8 p.m. on the day after New Year’s, with guns allegedly pointed at their faces as cops and firefighters accompanied the Inspectors who deemed their floor unlivable. They were forced to leave. The next day, Mr. Teichberg and six of the Global Revolution operatives were arrested for trespassing and (Mr. Teichberg was also held for 30 hours and charged for assaulting his landlord) when they tried to go back into their own home and retrieve papers from their apartment. It does strike us as odd that the police would arrest Mr. Teichberg and the Global Revolution crew-and only those individuals-for living in a commercial space that was being leased out to a whole building’s worth of residents. And here are some more questions: Why was Global Revolution’s floor the only one served an eviction notice? Wouldn’t the bigger issue be that the landlord, Mr. Wing Chow was illegally leasing “”imminently perilous to life” commercial space as Bushwick lofts and artist studios? Why was the surprise building inspecting check performed on a national holiday, with police and firefighters in tow, and why were none of the other floors’ residents evacuated if the building had indeed been zoned as commercial instead of residential. Failed New York Times executive’s $15 million golden parachute package ignites revolt among Times staff Feeling betrayed by the paper’s greedy executive class, over 500 current and former Times staffers – including reporters and editors – have signed a sharply-worded open letter to the paper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.:
When a failed CEO receives a $15 million golden parachute at the exact moment when Times foreign correspondents who put their lives on the line covering war are having their pensions frozen, isn’t it worthy of comment? And what of the moral implications of a company that extracts ever more concessions from its unions while holding executives to no apparent standard? “I feel that the gap between what Janet Robinson will be leaving with, and what we are being offered, is simply wrong,” wrote the paper’s domestic correspondent Tamar Lewin in a collection of open letters to management. The paper’s staff plans an emergency meeting to be held on January 9, a meeting at which they will discuss their next move.
By far, the laziest, most vapid articles annually published during this post-holiday season are lists of the past year’s top 10 words and aphorisms. Admittedly, the sloth of such an endeavor tempts me. But as a new dad obsessed with my 1-year-old son’s future, I think I’ve got a more worthy list to add to the pile – one of current words and phrases that my kid may never know because they might end up as relics of a lost vernacular. http://tinyurl.com/88k434l After conference, South Dakota professor shoots down prominent Yale economist’s optimism about the financial class [Robert] Shiller was not subject to the “mic check” interruption that the Occupy movement uses to disrupt some public officials’ speeches. But some thought he was taking too rosy a view of the benefits of the financial system and the public’s willingness to view financial executives sympathetically. Reynold Nesiba, an economics professor at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said: “The financial innovations that he’s so proud of – I think lots of Americans have seen financial innovations as subprime mortgages that charge them higher rates of interest and provide pre-payment penalties. People at higher incomes have been mostly well served by financial innovation, but for large segments of the population has become more sophisticated ways of preying on the working class.” Billionaire’s $5 million donation to pro-Gingrich group singlehandedly ‘breathes new life’ into his campaign A Las Vegas billionaire has contributed $5 million to an independent group backing Newt Gingrich, breathing new life into the former House Speaker’s struggling campaign for the GOP presidential nomination and casting renewed attention on the role of such groups in the 2012 contest. http://tinyurl.com/8a36fvr Foundation Aids Children of Imprisoned or otherwise Persecuted US Activists The Rosenberg Fund for Children is a public foundation that provides for the educational and emotional needs of the children of targeted activists and targeted activist youth in the United States. We make grants to institutions to provide services to our individual beneficiaries at no or reduced cost. Most of our grants provide for educational programs and/or equipment such as computers, therapy, cultural classes and summer programs. We have four guiding principles: 1) All people have equal worth; 2) people are more important than profits; 3) society must function within ecologically sustainable limits; 4) and world peace is a necessity. If activists are targeted in the process of promoting one or more of these principles, their children are eligible for our support. Targeting could include being arrested, imprisoned, physically attacked, fired, blacklisted or harassed. Economics professor says Occupy movement needs to democratize corporations Richard Wolff, a New York City economics professor who hosts a weekly radio program, urged members of Occupy Marin Saturday to occupy corporations and democratize them. “The Occupy movement is the first movement in 50 years to put the economic question right up front from the beginning, and that is an enormous contribution,” he said. Wolff, who earned a doctorate in economics at Yale University, is steeped in Marxian economic theory. Wolff said that for most of his adult life his criticism of capitalism fell on deaf ears; to question the nation’s economic system was taboo. “To do that was to be called, dare I say it? a Red, a Commie – everyone had to wave the flag,” he said. Now, however, due to the ongoing economic crisis, Wolff said he is suddenly a hot commodity. “I’ve done more public speaking and appeared on more radio and television programs in the last two years than in the previous 40 years of my life,” he said. “I cannot meet the invitations I now get.” http://tinyurl.com/84xzphs PA teachers union members vote to work for free ‘as long as we are individually able’ after drastic austerity cuts The Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania suffered a serious setback when Gov. Tom Corbett (R) slashed $900 million in education funds from the state budget. The cuts landed hardest on poorer districts, and Chester Upland, which predominantly serves African-American children and relies on state aid for nearly 70 percent of its funding, expects to fall short this school year by $19 million. Faced with such a shortage of funds, the school district informed its staff that it will not be able to pay their salaries come Wednesday. So the teachers decided to work for free. http://tinyurl.com/7g27tk7 Occupy joins coalition to protest in support of farmworker rights in Florida Participants will meet on January 14th and march to the Publix grand opening in a solidarity picket. We will gather at 12 Noon at the Pier Pavilion on the west end of Vilano Road on Vilano Beach in St Augustine. Since the 1990s, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has been struggling for fair wages and humane treatment for the farm workers in Immokalee, Florida who pick the tomatoes we eat every day. Farm workers earn the same money as they did in the late 1980_s and a penny-a-pound more would bring them up minimum wage. There have been ten cases of literal slavery in the fields prosecuted here in Florida, one in St Johns County. http://tinyurl.com/7wqw34s Orlando: Jail for using chalk on sidewalk? City needs to erase this error Has your child ever written in chalk on the sidewalk? If so, little Joey or Janie is a criminal. So says the city of Orlando, which recently arrested – and jailed – one of the Occupy Orlando protesters for writing in chalk in front of City Hall. Forget murderers and thieves. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and police Chief Paul Rooney are using their resources – and your money – to go after a 25-year-old who was brandishing a writing utensil. One that washes away with the rain. http://tinyurl.com/7qew975 Occupy protesters in Vegas plan to take over foreclosed homes The Occupy Wall Street movement is preparing to take over Las Vegas’ foreclosure-ravaged neighborhoods. Southern Nevada Occupy leaders said protesters planned to gather at foreclosed homes across the Las Vegas valley on Saturday to urge Wall Street banks to negotiate with mortgage borrowers. http://tinyurl.com/7vh2vft Occupy Dallas protesters promote ‘Transfer Tuesday’ Occupy Dallas protesters gathered in downtown’s Pegasus Plaza on Saturday afternoon to speak out against large corporate banks and urge passers-by to transfer their accounts to community credit unions and local financial organizations. The group of about 20 demonstrators held signs and greeted pedestrians and drivers at the intersection of Main and Akard streets, site of both a major bank and a credit union. The event was a promotion for the group’s first Transfer Tuesday, set for this week and aimed at persuading Americans to shift their money to smaller institutions. http://tinyurl.com/87tt8f4 |