Shell Rig Malfunctions at Posh Party (the Yes Lab Strikes Again)

This was a send-off for Shell's arctic rigs at the Seattle Space Needle. The actual rigs were visible outside the window. Incredibly, there was a malfunction of the model rig that was supposed to pour drinks for guests.

Per HuffPo,

The device which sprayed Rainey's face was a model of Shell's drill rig, the Kulluk, which is set to soon depart Seattle for the Arctic. The Kulluk was built-in 1983 by Mitsui, the same company that, two decades later, built the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon. . . .

* * * * *
[T]he Yes Lab [also] sent out a press release on Shell's behalf, threatening [legal action against the activists and] attacking . . . the activists' brand-new ArcticReady.com website [, which looks like a Shell site, and] which includes a social media ad generator and a dangerously addictive children's video game called Angry Bergs. The fake Shell release generated additional media coverage.

Earlier this year, Shell obtained a legal injunction stopping any Greenpeace activist from coming within 1km of any Shell vessel. To thank the company, Greenpeace teamed up with the Yes Lab to plan a promotional advertising campaign for Shell's Arctic drilling efforts, which Shell prefers to keep quiet. Besides the ill-fated ceremony and the website, the campaign includes a number of other elements that will shadow Shell's summer Arctic destruction campaign.

(More at HuffPo and YouTube. For more Yes Men or Yes Lab actions, click on those labels below.)

A Few Recent Headlines

Been out of town; so, in cased you missed these (more re- each item at the headline link) . . .

1. Don't Forget to Sign Up for the "Do Not Kill" List

A number of sources (including the Wall Street Journal) report that someone has used the White House's "We the People" website to start a petition asking it to create a "Do Not Kill" list similar to the "Do Not Call" list that has been reasonably successful against telemarketers. This follows the New York Times report that every week or so, a bunch of National Security People get together to flip through some PowerPoint slides and "recommend to the President who should be the next to die." The President, who you may recall won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, then personally approves names on the "kill list" for execution targeted killing by drone.

Sign the "Do Not Kill" Petition here. (For more on the "Kill List," see here and links therein.)

2. Occupy Buffalo Helps Convince City to Divest from JPMorgan Chase

City Comptroller Mark J.F. Schroeder has agreed to transfer $45 million . . . from a JPMorgan Chase account to local bank First Niagara Financial Group after Occupy Buffalo raised concerns about leaving the money at JPMorgan, the Buffalo News reports. The move comes with a number of benefits, including a higher interest rate and more local branches that make it easier for employees to cash paychecks . . . .

“It also sends a crystal-clear message to JPMorgan Chase that the City of Buffalo is not happy with their business practices," Schroeder told Buffalo News.

3. Collateral Damage in the War on Protesters: Neighbors of the NATO3 Cuffed, Held at Gunpoint

The . . . officer came up to me and told me he had a hard time believing I wasn’t associated with the people downstairs. His quote exactly was that I had ‘hateful revolutionary things’ in my house. He asked me why I had so many red-colored things (Olli got similar accusations because he was wearing his red work uniform). They were commenting about the red color – I have red curtains and my brother’s an artist, so all his paintings are hanging up, and they found that very suspicious and were trying to say it was part of some kind of conspiracy.

* * * * *
“They acted like asking for a warrant and a lawyer was unreasonable . . . ” Ben said, “but they didn’t seem to realize that they had kidnapped us in our own home. We were handcuffed on the ground in our own living room."

4. The US Government Is Running a Massive Spy Campaign on Occupy Wall Street

The US Dept. of Homeland Security finally released some docs in response to repeated Freedom of Information Act requests by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. Although the docs are partially blacked out,

[Per the PCJF's Director, "t]hese documents show not only intense government monitoring and coordination in response to the Occupy Movement, but reveal a glimpse into the interior of a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people."

* * * * *
In particular, the role of the “Fusion Centers,” a series of 72 federally-funded information hubs run by the NOC, raises questions about the government’s expansive definition of “Homeland Security.”

Created in the wake of 9/11, the Fusion Centers were founded to expedite the sharing of information among state and local law enforcement and the federal government, to monitor localized terrorist threats, and to sidestep the regulations and legislation preventing the CIA and the military from carrying out domestic surveillance (namely, the CIA ban on domestic spying and the Posse Comitatus Act).

5. Speaking of JPMorgan Chase . . . the bank's risk committee lacks any members who've actually worked at a bank or as risk managers; one of them was on AIG’s governance committee in 2008.

6. Congressmen Seek to Lift Propaganda Ban

An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.

The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the independent Broadcasting Board of Governors . . . . The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.

The bi-partisan amendment is sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State.

7. US E-Voting System Cracked in Less than 48 Hours

Researchers at the University of Michigan have reported that . . . . "Within 48 hours of the system going live, we had gained near complete control of the election server", the researchers wrote in a paper that has now been released. "We successfully changed every vote and revealed almost every secret ballot." The hack was only discovered after about two business days – and most likely only because the intruders left a visible trail on purpose.

(Yes, electronic voting and/or tabulation is still a very, very bad idea.)

The Yes Lab Strikes Again, in Dallas

Re- the Trans-Pacific Partnership "trade" agreement:



From the Yes Lab's press release:

DALLAS PARTY ENDS BADLY FOR U.S. TRADE REPS AND FEDERAL AGENTS
Dozens of rogue "delegates" disrupt Trans-Pacific Partnership gala with "award," "mic check," mass toilet paper replacement

* * * * *
Two dozen rogue "delegates" disrupted the corporate-sponsored welcome gala for the high-stakes Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations yesterday with a fake award ceremony and "mic check." Other activists, meanwhile, replaced hundreds of rolls of toilet paper (TP) throughout the conference venue with more informative versions, and projected a message on the venue's facade.

The first action began when a smartly-dressed man approached the podium immediately after the gala's keynote speech by Ron Kirk, U.S. Trade Representative and former mayor of Dallas. The man (local puppeteer David Goodwin) introduced himself as "Git Haversall," president of the "Texas Corporate Power Partnership," and announced he was giving Kirk and other U.S. trade negotiators the "2012 Corporate Power Tool Award," which "Haversall's" partner held aloft.

The crowd of negotiators and corporate representatives applauded, and "Haversall" continued: "I'd like to personally thank the negotiators for their relentless efforts. The TPP agreement is shaping up to be a fantastic way for us to maximize profits, regardless of what the public of this nation—or any other nation—thinks is right."

At that point, the host of the reception took the microphone back and announced that the evening's formal programming had concluded. But Mr. Haversall confidently re-took the microphone and warmly invited Kirk to accept the award.

Kirk moved towards the stage, but federal agents blocked his path to protect him from further embarrassment. At that point, a dozen well-dressed "delegates" (local activists, some from Occupy Dallas) broke into ecstatic dance and chanted "TPP! TPP! TPP!" for several minutes until Dallas police arrived.

Fifteen minutes later, another dozen interlopers from Occupy Dallas interrupted the reception with a spirited "mic-check." Outside, activists projected a message on the hotel, and throughout the night, delegates discovered that hundreds of rolls of custom toilet paper had been installed in the conference venue.

The activists disrupted the gala to protest the hijacking of trade negotiations by an extreme pro-corporate agenda. "The public and the media are locked out of these meetings," said Kristi Lara from Occupy Dallas, one of the infiltrators. "We can't let U.S. trade officials get away with secretly limiting Internet freedoms, restricting financial regulation, extending medicine patents, and giving corporations other a whole host of other powers allowing them to quash the rights of people and democracies, for example by offshoring jobs in ever new ways. Trade officials know the public won't stand for this, which is why they try to keep their work secret—and that's why we had to crash their party."

There is mounting criticism of the U.S. role in pushing the negotiations forward in secrecy, despite the public's overwhelming disagreement with TPP goals. ("Buy American" procurement preferences are supported by over 85% of Americans, but U.S. trade negotiators are preparing to accept a ban on such preferences. Two weeks ago, 69 members of Congress sent a letter to President Obama asking him not to accept that ban.)

Many are calling the Obama administration duplicitous: while the administration publicly hypes a plan to revitalize American manufacturing and create jobs in the U.S., U.S. trade officials push for new "investor rights" that would make it easier for American companies to lay off domestic workers and open plants overseas.

"The TPP has been branded as a trade 'negotiation' by its corporate proponents, but in reality it's a place for big business to get its way behind closed doors," said Pete Rokicki of Occupy Dallas. "This anti-democratic maneuver can be stopped if the public gets active—just look at the movement that killed the ill-advised SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) law a few months ago. That's why Obama's trade officials lock the public, the press and even members of Congress from the trade negotiation process."

"We're really happy to know that even in their most private moments, US trade reps are reminded that a vast majority of the public stands opposed to corporate-friendly, closed-door trade deals like the TPP," said Sean Dagohoy from the Yes Lab, who assisted in the actions.

Here's a summary of the provisions of the TPP; more at Public Citizen Global Trade Watch.

UPDATE: F.w.i.w., some people are starting to notice that maybe there's a problem with allowing 600 megacorps to write our treaties while everyone else including Congress is kept in the dark.

TPP Negotiations in Dallas this Week

If you liked PIPA and SOPA, you'll probably love the TPP. But only the participating governments and a handful of multinational corporate insiders know for sure, since the negotiations have been conducted in secret – secret, that is, from the public, though not from the corporate insiders who are basically writing the treaty. Thirty-two legal academics from participating countries have written to protest the shut-out; see here. And Occupiers and others have planned a rally and other actions; see, e.g., here.

Meanwhile, here's an educated guess about what just a few of the proposed treaty's provisions probably include (from Public Knowledge):

• Criminalizing Small Scale Copyright Infringement. Under the TPP, downloading music could be considered a crime. Your computer could be seized as a device that aids this offense and your kid could be sent to jail for downloading. Some of these rules are part of US law. The TPP makes them worse and also imposes similar rules on other countries that don’t have them.

• Kicking People Off the Internet. The TPP would encourage your ISP and the content industry to agree to institute measures such as three strikes—which kicks you off your internet connection after three accusations of copyright infringement—and deep-packet-inspection—which is akin to the USPS opening your mail. While we can not be sure exactly what is in the TPP, these examples are derived from a copy of the TPP’s IP chapter that leaked in February last year, the provisions that were reported to be part of earlier drafts of ACTA, and previous free trade agreements that the US has signed.

• Protecting Incidental Copies. The TPP would provide copyright owners power over “buffer copies.” These are the small copies that computers need to make in the process moving data around. With buffer copy protection the number of transactions for which you would need a license from the copyright owner would increase a great deal. One impact of this could be that the music you stream from services such as Pandora could get much more expensive when rights holders demand higher license fees to compensate them for the “additional” copies.

• Locking out the Deaf and Blind. The TPP would prevent the blind from reading DRM protected ebooks and the deaf from inserting closed captioning onto DRM protected DVDs. In the US, the Copyright Office has made rules in the past that allows the blind to break this DRM. But the continuation of these rules is not a guarantee. And the other TPP countries could fail to make similar rules.

And it's believed there's much more, e.g., provisions that would bar developing countries from buying generic drugs, etc.

As Zachary, OWS-NY librarian put it, "[p]owerlessness is what happens when you sit behind your desk and do nothing. Powerlessness is signing an online petition, or commenting on an article, or forwarding an e-mail."

Occupy the Regulatory / Investigatory System

From the Washington Post:

Occupy Wall Street has moved. Its new address: 60 Wall Street.

There, inside a soaring public atrium, dreadlocked teens trade shoulder massages near the evening meditation circle. A young man holds up a sign: “You’re a Federal Reserve $lave.” The dinnertime crowd buzzes over free plates of rice and beans while listening to an improvised, profanity-laden operetta about the evils of agro-giant Monsanto. But amid the din, there’s a small group holding a quieter, and far wonkier, conversation.

* * * * *
After much discussion, the group agreed that the Volcker Rule’s earlier definition of clearing agencies, which banks use for exchanging futures contracts, was “clear and tough and good,” but decided that it was worth double-checking section 17(a) of questions that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission raised about it.

It may sound like technical gobbledygook to an outsider, and, indeed, a few newcomers to Occupy the SEC seem befuddled by the group’s headlong dive into the finer distinctions between proprietary trading and market-making. But the meeting is a glimpse into one of the most surprising iterations of the free-wheeling, anarchic movement: fighting the man through the tedious and Byzantine regulatory process.

More at the WaPo link above.

From truthout:

“How can we help? How can we help? How can we help?”

It’s not your average protest slogan, but it’s what the group chanted today as it marched from Zuccotti Park to 120 Broadway, which houses the office of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The AG chairs President Obama’s task force to investigate the routine fraud and abuse that characterized Wall Street during the Bush-era inflation of the housing bubble and precipitated the 2008 financial crash and subsequent recession. According to a Schneiderman-penned Daily News Op-Ed, though, the task force has only been furnished with “[m]ore than 50 attorneys,” whereas the Enron investigation alone required over 100, and the Savings and Loan crisis took over 1,000. Wall Street occupiers today, under the banner The May Fourth Committee for Equal Justice Under the Law, offered to fill that void.

* * * * *
Alexis Goldstein, a former net developer and business analyst at three large Wall Street firms, echoed that sentiment. “In January,” she told the crown. “President Obama appointed a financial fraud task force co-chaired by five people to investigate mortgage fraud. He touted it proudly in the State of the Union. But since the task force was created, we’ve seen zero prosecutions brought against the banks who committed securities fraud, conducted robo-signing, and illegally foreclosed on homes. We’ve seen no one thrown in jail following the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

Austin Guest brought a calculator, a pocket protector and news clippings. “I’m good at investigating,” he told me. “Frankly, it doesn’t seem very difficult. People are on record committing fraud. I’m very capable of using Google and a printer.”

More at the truthout link above.

Tim Poole Streaming from May Day Demos in NYC

. . . at http://www.ustream.tv/timcast. At this moment, masses of police are confronting even greater masses of Occupiers at Veterans' Plaza, and police are announcing that the park closed at 10PM and that people "will not be arrested if [they] leave within the next 5 min."

* * * * *

Protesters left the plaza for the street and are now marching on the sidewalks, to the extent there's room, and in the street to the extent there isn't. Police just knocked a guy onto the ground who was trying to walk away from them and then struck him repeatedly with a steel baton, in front of 3,400 current viewers. Tim says three federal lawsuits were filed against the NYPD yesterday.

Numerous arrests are taking place. It seems the police drag someone they want to arrest into the street and get him on the ground, while insisting that other protesters stay on the sidewalks, which makes it more difficult to film the arrest.

Police raided various activists' homes last night; more on that at Gawker.

Bursts of vandalism were reported in some cities; however, despite all the arrests of peaceful protesters, the police apparently didn't manage to arrest any of the vandals. There were reports that the police actually seemed to be escorting the vandals, and many suspect they were infiltrators planted to try to discredit the protesters; see, e.g., this.

Some coverage and photos of the day's demonstrations at The Guardian and HuffPo.

* * * * *

Protesters are now heading to Zucotti.

May 1st: General Strike

More info here.

And just in time: if you missed the 99% non-violent action training, you can take it online here.

New Project

Provisionally called the OccuLibrary, instigated by me and Lizzy Wetzel.  Blog at OccuLibrary.blogspot.com.

Occupiers & Others Preparing for General Strike May 1; Noam Chomsky Endorses 99% Spring

Back in the 70's, experts believed that the improvements possible through technology would increase worker productivity to the point that the 40-hour work week would inevitably shrink to 35 or less, and that we'd all have more leisure while enjoying the same or a better standard of living.

Part of that prediction came true: worker productivity in the U.S has exploded since then. Yet instead of having more leisure and greater wealth, our inflation-adjusted incomes have actually dropped, even while our work week has increased to 50 hours and more, and even though, in most families now, both parents work.

What happened? If you read this blog, you already have an idea (e.g., see here or here).

May 1, a holiday in many countries, is the annual commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, when Chicago police fired on workers during a General Strike for the eight-hour workday. Now, OWS, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Chicago, Occupy Oakland, other General Assemblies, Labor organizers, immigrants’ rights groups, artists, faith leaders, and others are preparing for a General Strike on May 1, calling for all of us to take the day away from school and the workplace, to show that we will not continue to accept corporate and governmental systems that exploit the many in order to enrich the few.

More info on the May 1 General Strike here and here.

"99% Spring" is a congruent but separate effort – see my previous post here; more here, here, and here – which has now been endorsed by Noam Chomsky:

Find a Non-Violent Action Training Event Near You

One concern w.r.t. activist efforts during the last few years is that it seems that few of us fully understand just what our rights of free speech and peaceable assembly really include and what to say or do when others try to stop us from exercising them. Also, how could those rights be affected by recent legislation (see, e.g., this, this, or this)?

I personally believe that, the more people who understand the answers to these questions, the better off we'll all be. I hope to receive answers at one of the events being organized per the following from National People's Action, re- an effort called the "99% Spring":

During the week of April 9-15, in small towns and big cities all across America, 100,000 people will come together for an unprecedented national nonviolent, direct action training. We'll learn to tell the story of our economy and what went wrong; we'll learn the history of nonviolent direct action; and, we'll learn how we can take action and create great change in this country.

You can find a training event near you, here.

This is a coordinated effort by, among others: Jobs With Justice, United Auto Workers, National Peoples Action, National Domestic Workers Alliance, MoveOn.org Civic Action, New Organizing Institute, Movement Strategy Center, The Other 98%, Service Employees International Union, Rebuild the Dream, UNITE-HERE, Greenpeace, Institute for Policy Studies, United Steel Workers, Working Families Party, Communications Workers of America, United States Student Association, Rainforest Action Network, American Federation of Teachers, Leadership Center for the Common Good, UNITY, National Guestworker Alliance, 350.org, The Ruckus Society, Citizen Engagement Lab, smartMeme Strategy & Training Project, Right to the City Alliance, Pushback Network, Progressive Democrats of America, Change to Win, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future, Fuse Washington, National Day Laborers Organizing Network, Alliance for a Just Society, The Partnership for Working Families, United Students Against Sweatshops, etc.

UPDATE: Here's a helpful article on the origins of this effort. Here's an article expressing reservations about the effort (based on the fact that its statements omit any objection to the US wars in the Middle East).

FURTHER UPDATE: I just learned that Noam Chomsky has endorsed the 99% Spring coalition .

(Note, 99% Spring is separate from but apparently congruent with other Occupiers' May 1st General Strike.)

NYC Art Fairs 2012, and "It's the Political Economy, Stupid"

Pulse may have decided, wisely, that the field's gotten too crowded; they've moved to May.

Within four days (Mar. 3 - 11), viewers were offered the Armory Show, Scope, VOLTA, the Moving Image Fair, the Independent Fair, the Dependent Fair, the Fountain Art Fair, the Spring Break fair, and the Brucennial; not to mention the Whitney Biennial, the New Museum Triennial and plenty of other shows, most of which could only be viewed Wed. thru Sun., i.e. mostly the same days the fairs were open, and mostly only during roughly the same hours. Given that most exhibitions include a lot more video and other time-based work than they used to, any hope of seeing and doing justice to all the work shown has become even more remote.

I saw (in no particular order): the Armory Show – just the contemporary Pier and some of the Armory Film programs; the Moving Image Fair; the Independent; the Dependent; Spring Break; the Brucennial; the It's the Political Economy, Stupid show at the Austrian Cultural Forum; the Whitney Biennial; and the New Museum Triennial.

I shot lots of photos, which I'm in the process of culling and putting online. The first up are from It's the Political Economy, Stupid, curated by Gregory Sholette and Oliver Ressler. The exhibition borrows its title from Slavoj Žižek's twist on Pres. Clinton's old campaign slogan. (Image above from The Bull Laid Bear (2012), video, 24 min., Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, from this show.)

As you may know, I've followed the economic situation for a while and am concerned that economic reform is essential but that few non-experts understand the problems well enough to know what should be done about them. But the problems aren't all that hard to understand; it's just that the perpetrators have done a terrific job obfuscating them. (My own grasp happens to be a little better than average, since I happened to write a paper on Glass-Steagall back when it was being repealed, and I've also had experience with commercial loans that were rolled into the kind of securitized mortgage pools blamed by some for the economic meltdown.)

The works in Political Economy were really brilliant, using various documentary and imaginative strategies to greatly further this discussion. More info at the Austrian Cultural Forum; and there's an excellent review of the show on the art:21 blog.

UPDATE: Posts on the other shows I saw will be available here.

How to Keep a Frog Occupied

The Logic of Nonviolence

"Erica Chenoweth has developed a dataset and analyzed the historical record. Below the fold are slides summarizing the results of her study of 323
 non-violent and violent campaigns 
from
 1900‐2006." Lots more at naked capitalism.

(In other words,

Hatred never ceases by hatred;
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.

Dhammapada, Ch. 1, the Twin Verses 5, as quoted by Maha Ghosananda.)

Sources on Occupy, Assange

F.w.i.w., based on admittedly hurriedly searches, the best source I've found on the ongoing hearing in the UK Supreme Court on Assange's proposed extradition to Sweden for questioning is The Guardian's blog on Assange; and a good source on ongoing Occupy activity, aside from Tim Poole's livestream coverage, is Greg Mitchell at The Nation.

UPDATE: Apparently the core of Assange's appeal at this point is the argument that the person who issued the warrant for his extradition is not a genuine "judicial official," as required by the European applicable treaty – since the person who issued it was not a judge or other member of the judiciary, but the prosecutor in the case (which is sufficient under Swedish law but not under British law, and it's unclear whether it suffices under the treaty). (Assange recently gave a great summary of the case from his point of view, as well as his current situation, in his interview in Rolling Stone, by the way.) No decision is expected on Assange's appeal for at least a few weeks.

Assange to Host Talk Show

Just when one might have feared that Assange and Wikileaks had been successfully sidelined, WL's issued this press release:

Julian Assange will be hosting a series of in-depth conversations with key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries from around the world. The theme: the world tomorrow.

Upheavals and revolutions in the Middle East have commenced an era of political change that is still unfolding. In the West, the deterioration of the rule of law has demonstrated the bankruptcy of once leading political institutions and ideologies. The internet has never been so strong, or so much under attack.

At this pivotal moment there is an awareness of the need to radically rethink the world around us.

WikiLeaks, as the world’s boldest publisher, has been at the front line of this global movement for understanding and change. Its founder, Julian Assange [has been] the subject of an ongoing Grand Jury investigation in the United States for over 500 days now . . . .

Both a pioneer for a more just world and a victim of political repression, he is uniquely placed to catalyse a global discussion on how to go forward.

. . . Assange will draw together controversial voices from across the political spectrum – iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders – each to offer a window on the world tomorrow and their ideas on how to secure a brighter future.

Julian Assange says: “Through this series I will explore the possibilities for our future in conversations with those who are shaping it. Are we heading towards utopia or dystopia, and how we can set our paths? This is an exciting opportunity to discuss the vision of my guests in a new style of show that examines their philosophies and struggles in a deeper and clearer way than has been done before.”

The series will begin airing in mid-March, in ten weekly half-hour episodes. Initial licensing commitments cover over 600 million viewers across cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcast networks. . . .

(Wikileaks; see also The Guardian.) As I've suggested, Assange knows it's not just an infowar, it's a p.r. war.

Occupying the Golden Calf

From Raw Story:

WASHINGTON — About 20 “Occupy DC” protesters took their anti-corporate demonstration to the corridors of the US Congress, toting a “golden calf” made from papier-mache to symbolize lawmakers’ subservience to moneyed interests.

The protest, said the group’s leader Jeremy John, aimed to call attention to the “the worship of money,” by the US legislature.

The second photo is from dixiegrrrrl, who says, " . . . the first thing the [NYC] cops did was protect this:")

Yesterday, 50 OWS-er's were arrested in Manhattan as they attempted to occupy land owned by Trinity Church (inthesetimes.com).

One of those arrested, who happens to be bishop in the church, noted, "[t]his is a church, not a corporation. They own one-third of the property south of Canal Street" (YouTube). Another protester explained, "[w]e're just trying to say that this country has gone in the wrong direction, and we need spaces that we can control and can decide our future in, and that's what this is about" (CBS).

More on yesterday's events here.

Tents for Protesters Not Ok; Tents for Police to Hide Their Actions from Media, Ok

Must See: Occupy Melbourne

On Wall Street, Some Insiders Express Quiet Outrage

From the NYT: "Last week, I had a conversation with a man who runs his own trading firm. In the process of fuming about competition from Goldman Sachs, he said with resignation and exasperation: 'The fact that they were bailed out and can borrow for free — it’s pretty sickening.'

"Though the sentiment is commonplace these days, I later found myself thinking about his outrage. Here is someone who is in the thick of the business, trading every day, and he is being sickened by the inequities and corruption on Wall Street and utterly persuaded that nothing has changed in the years since the financial crisis of 2008.

"Then I realized something odd: I have conversations like this as a matter of routine. I can’t go a week without speaking to a hedge fund manager or analyst or even a banker who registers somewhere on the Wall Street Derangement Scale.

* * * * *

"Mr. Mayo is particularly outraged over compensation for bank executives. Excessive compensation 'sends a signal that you take what you get and take it however you can,' he told me. 'That sends another signal to outsiders that the system is rigged. I truly wish the protestors didn’t have a leg to stand on, but the unfortunate truth is that they do.'" (Emphasis supplied.)

From Chris Hedges,"The historian Crane Brinton, in his book Anatomy of a Revolution, laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton’s next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression."

(The image above left is a 1912 cartoon about the then-proposed Federal Reserve Act. The image right is the UC Davis Occupy General Assembly the day after protesters there were gassed.)

Update on Media Ownership

Thanks to Frugal Dad for this updated chart. (For an even bigger version, click on the image to see it in a separate page, then click on it again.)

The bright spot has, of course, been the internet; but the 1% is fast closing in on controlling that as well (click on the "media consolidation" label for a bit more info on that, and assume that things have gotten worse since those posts).

UPDATE: Some additional charts re- media ownership at freepress.net, also, I believe, fairly recent.