Thousands Commemorate Tiananmen Square

More great photos here.

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.

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.

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.)

Real-Life Batman

" . . . Zoltan Kohari, from the southern Slovak town of Dunajska Streda, has donned a leather Batman suit that he’s stitched together himself, in an attempt to help the people of the town. He goes around cleaning the streets, helping the old, and calling the police when he spots something suspicious.

" . . . Kohari was a petty criminal prior to his superhero-avatar . . . . This was before he realized that he had a larger mission – to make life in his community better. . . . “I take care of order and help clean up the environment so we can keep living on this planet,” he says. Since Kohari doesn’t really have a full time job, he’s moved into an abandoned apartment in a dilapidated building on the edge of town. . . .

The unusual thing about Kohari is that he’s a bit of a peace-loving Batman. He says that he never resorts to physical violence, he’d rather make peace between people."

More at Oddity Central; photo and original story from Reuters; and Oddity Central has previously noted another real-life batman, here. (Thanks, Ben!)

Why the Economy Does Not Have to Be a Zero Sum Game

Who's saying it does? I've heard the claim attributed to Occupiers, but I personally haven't seen or heard any Occupiers make it.

In fact, I'd argue it's the 1% who've acted as if they believe the economy's a zero-sum game – and in so doing, have made it so.

Here are a couple of factors to think about (from my essay, Ten Things You Need to Know About the Infowar, which as far as I can tell no one has read, but they should, 'cuz as far as I can tell, it's still the case that hardly anyone else has put some of this stuff together):

8. Greater transparency maximizes efficiency and profits for a group as a whole, but individuals within the group profit most when they're not transparent while others in the group are.

There's a fascinating piece, "The Transparency Paradox," at colayer, regarding what I've called [Julian] Assange's theory of "the cost of tightened secrecy to organizational I.Q.," or as Volatility puts it more succinctly (more under Thing No. 9 below), his "secrecy tax." The author at colayer says studies show that, while greater transparency maximizes efficiency and profits for a group as a whole, individuals within the group profit most when they're not transparent while others in the group are.

General transparency means that everyone has more useful info to work with, and can work together efficiently to solve problems and create wealth for all; the group benefits from the "wisdom of the crowd," as James Surowiecki would put it, or as Assange might say, the computational power of the system as a whole is maximized.

(Image right from "The Transparency Paradox," at colayer.)

And, colayer points out, the internet and other technologies now available have greatly reduced the cost of transparency.

But when you're negotiating, you have an advantage if you know what cards the other parties are holding but they're ignorant of yours.

I'd like again to emphasize again the importance of the dimension of time, which Assange has also written about, in his 2006 essay for counterpunch, "Of Potholes and Foresight." To put part of his point in other words, a stitch in time often saves nine, and transparency makes that kind of foresight possible, which otherwise tends to give way to political pressures to allocate resources in more near-sighted ways. Recall Wikileaks' logo (an hourglass). Or as someone else said, making a related but somewhat different point, " . . . Napoleon . . . said that it wasn't necessary to completely suppress the news; it was sufficient to delay the news until it no longer mattered." (attributed by PRWatch to Martin A. Lee & Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1991), P. xvii; I hope the internet adopts Assange's "scientific journalism" and becomes better sourced, as well as more complete, soon).

* * * * *

9. So long as a system as a whole remains mostly transparent, it's a more-than-zero-sum game; but where transparency has sufficiently deteriorated, the competition among "players" devolves into a race to see who can loot the most the fastest, even if valuable resources (including personnel) are wasted in the process.

Re- the big, "systems" picture, there's a great article at Volatility on "racketeering":

According to Joseph Tainter’s theory of imperial collapse, as societies become more complex, they must expend an ever greater portion of the energy they have available simply on maintaining their complexity. Although social and technological advances may achieve profitable returns for awhile, once a certain level of complexity is reached, diminishing returns set in. Eventually, at the late imperial stage, the complexity of the power structure, the military infrastructure, the bureaucracies, all the rents involved in maintaining an ever more bloated parasite class, their luxuries, the police state required to extract these rents and keep the productive people down, and the growing losses due to the response of the oppressed producers, everything from poor quality work to strikes to emigration or secession to rebellion, reaches a point where the system can only cannibalize itself and eventually collapse.

Julian Assange’s theory of the secrecy tax he’s trying to impose through Wikileaks is one example of these diminishing returns on imperial complexity. All the indications are that Wikileaks has been successful in this.

* * * * *
This is a welter of parasites battening on the same host. They’re in a zero sum game, not only against the people, but among themselves. Each has an interest in just exploiting the host, not killing it. But together they are killing it and therefore themselves. It’s clear none is capable of organizing or regulating the others. The federal government isn’t capable of doing it. If one big bank tried to do it, it would be subverted by the others. Each racket, from highest to lowest, is going to maximize its bloodsucking until there’s no blood left.

I would argue that "complexity" is often associated with a lack of transparency. And I would argue that size matters greatly, since it's difficult for a large system to function without some kind of internal division of responsibilities, and that means complexity. One of the main respects in which both size and complexity matter has to do with the fact that they make it more difficult to keep track of what different individuals or agencies within the organization are doing and hold them accountable. In particular, those at the top of the hierarchy become less accountable to those along the bottom.

Again, theoretically, so long as the system as a whole remains mostly transparent, it's not a zero-sum game (or at least, its productivity growth would be subject only to such physical limits as peak oil or climate change), because problem-solving and general efficiency are maximized by pervasive info-sharing, plus everyone's equally incentivized. The system as a whole is greater than any one individual within it or even than the sum of its "parts."

(Still from Falls (2008).)

In contrast, where transparency has sufficiently deteriorated, workers become less productive, both because of reduced info-sharing and because they're disincentivized – i.e., those not sharing info are still incentivized to continue to exploit the others, but once those who are being exploited figure out what's going on, they're discouraged from sharing and working hard just to enrich the exploiters. At this point, the competition devolves from who can produce the most of the best, into who can loot the most the fastest. If anything, non-transparency should tend to result in something even worse than a zero-sum game, since not only are opportunities for growth wasted, but even resources already in existence may be at least partially wasted, since each actor is motivated to grab what it can even at the cost of spoiling portions of the remainder for possible use by others.

(As Julian Assange has observed, corrupt governments (and, I expect, other organizations) are inevitably secretive because their efforts to exploit people and interfere with their liberties tend to inspire resistance – see "State and Terrorist Conspiracies" and "Conspiracy as Governance" (2006) and Assange's post on his site, IQ.org, "Sun 31 Dec 2006 : The non linear effects of leaks on unjust systems of governance".)

All Student General Strike Monday, November 28

November 28th – In solidarity with UC Davis, UC Berkeley, CUNY schools and all students who are defending their right to protest against rising tuition costs and out-of-control student debt. We ask you to STRIKE! No work, no school – please join together in a central area of your choosing and stand up against the VIOLENCE and SUPPRESSION that is happening in our schools.

Please abide by the Pledge of Non-Violence to participate in the student strike:

We are an open, participatory, democratic, horizontal, peaceful, and nonviolent movement.

We are not a leaderless movement, we are a movement of leaders.

As a nonviolent movement, we have agreed to refrain from violence against any person, from carrying weapons, and from destruction of property.

We reject violence, including property destruction, because we recognize that it undermines popular support and discourages the broadest possible participation among the 99%.

We believe nonviolence promotes unity, strength of message, and an environment in which everyone’s voice might be heard.

We affirm that it is the personal responsibility of every individual participant in our movement to promote and maintain nonviolent discipline and to intervene to prevent violent action by anyone in our movement.

Register your college here.

How to Stand Up for Your 1st Amendment Rights

Watch the video below to see how one videographer stood up to illegal intimidation by NYPD police:



Per Gizmodo, police in at least three states have taken the position that citizens have no right to record police without the latter's prior consent, based on laws that prohibit wire-tapping without the consent of all parties recorded.

I believe most legal scholars disagree. The ACLU has published an excellent summary of what it views as your Constitutional rights to videotape and photograph police in public places, here.

Know your rights, and use 'em or lose 'em.

Matt Taibbi on Principles and Pepperspray

Another brilliant piece by Taibbi in one of the last bastions of journalism still standing in the U.S., Rolling Stone; here's a taste:

[W]hen we abandoned our principles in order to use force against terrorists and drug dealers, the answer to the question, What are we defending? started to change.

The original answer, ostensibly, was, "We are defending the peaceful and law-abiding citizens of the United States, their principles, and everything America stands for."

Then after a while it became, "We’re defending the current population of the country, but we can’t defend the principles so much anymore, because they weigh us down in the fight against a ruthless enemy who must be stopped at all costs."

Then finally it became this: “We are defending ourselves, against the citizens who insist on keeping their rights and their principles.”

More here. (Image by √oхέƒx™).

UPDATE: Re- our eroded rights, Wired just posted 9 reasons for tinfoil millinery, including: warrantless wiretapping; warrantless GPS tracking; warrantless location tracking of your cell; fake cell interception towers; the 100-mi. wide, Constitution-free zone along US borders; the "6 mos. and it's the Goverment's" rule; the ironically-named Patriot Act; Government malware; and the known unknowns about what else the gummint's doing (remember, "warrantless" means they do it whenever they like, for reasons good, non-existent, or bad). Details here.

The Difference Between the 2008 Bank Crisis & the S&L Crisis of the '80's

. . . as explained by William K. Black. You've got to see this.

NYPD Rendition of "Wikileaks Truck"

The “WikiLeaks Top Secret Mobile Information Collection Unit” has no actual affiliation with Wikileaks; its owner, artist/activist/prankster Clark Stoeckley, just wanted to raise awareness about WL. But the truck had become something of an OWS mascot, when on Nov. 17, police impounded it – except the truck never made it to the pound.

Stoeckley was arrested for "Obstructing Governmental Administration" after he declined to allow them to search the truck without a warrant. All charges against him have now been dropped; but the truck is missing, and police say they have no record of it. More at Gawker and Animal.

In a recent interview, Stoeckler discoursed:

[W]hen the Secret Service pulled me over and searched the truck, they asked what would be the first thing they saw when we opened the back. I told them “records”. Their eyes lit up and they and they asked “What kind of records?” My reply was “Mostly classic rock, some R&B and folk.” The door goes up, and the first thing they saw was boxes of 33 rpm vinyl records. . . .

[Asked whether he'd been hit on because of his attractive vehicle,] It is not a Ferrari or a Porsche. I attract a lot of conspiracy theorists, but they are usually older men who need a bath, and they want to talk my ear off. Some of them actually think I work for Wikileaks and they wish they had something to leak. No I have not gotten hit on by anyone because of the truck. It is a former U-Haul truck with 200,000 miles. Luckily my girlfriend has a car.

More at Wikileaks-Movie.com.

UPDATE: The Wikileaks Truck was recovered and is now for sale on e-bay – apparently Stoeckley needs funds (update via Gawker).

Citigroup's 2006 Declaration of "Plutonomy"

Per Bill Moyers (see vidi below), the term was coined by Citgroup in 2005 to refer to "an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer, with government on their side."

The following spring, Citigroup issued a memo to their wealthy investors in which they actually stated flat out that favorable treatment by governments had allowed the "plutonomists" to take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years and that the top 10%, esp. the top 1%, have benefitted disproportionately at the relative expense of labor. See for yourself :

(Thanks, Ben!)

A Useful Summary of Recent Police Violence Against Protesters in the US

. . . is available on Alternet (with visuals).

The Day After the Pepper-Spraying at U.C. Davis

Another one I've got to re-blog. As Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing put it,

I thought I wouldn't see a more dramatic video than the ones yesterday of the pepper-spraying of students by police at UC Davis [see video of the spraying, here]. I was wrong.

In the video [below in this post] UC Davis students [silently] confront Chancellor Linda Katehi just one day after the incident. It's hard to tell exactly how many of them are present, but there they are, a huge crowd. They're seated in the same . . . position [on the ground, with crossed legs and linked arms] their fellow students were [in] yesterday just before Lt. John Pike pulled out a can of pepper-spray and pulled the trigger.

From lhfang86, the guy who shot the video:

A press conference, scheduled for 2:00pm between the UC Davis Chancellor and police on campus, did not end at 2:30. Instead, a mass of Occupy Davis students and sympathizers mobilized outside, demanding to have their voice heard. After some initial confusion, UC Chancellor Linda Katehi refused to leave the building, attempting to give the media the impression that the students were somehow holding her hostage. A group of highly organized students formed large gap for the chancellor to leave. They chanted “we are peaceful” and “just walk home,” but nothing changed for several hours. Eventually student representatives convinced the chancellor to leave after telling their fellow students to sit down and lock arms.

As Ye Reap . . .

From the Yes Men:

Massive 24-hour DRUM CIRCLE and JAM SESSION party starting tomorrow, Sunday at 2pm, outside Mayor Bloomberg's personal townhouse: 17 East 79th Street.

Tie-dye, didgeridoo, hackeysack welcome! No shirt, no shoes, no problem! And if you don't have talent, don't worry: FREE DRUM LESSONS offered! Also on offer: collaborative drumming with the police!

Even though this is a 24-hour drum circle, don't be late! The mayor loves evictions. Who knows what'll happen? In any case, there'll be an afterparty in world-famous Central Park right afterwards.

Please spread this announcement (www.yeslab.org/drumcircle) as far and fast as you can!

FOIA Request for Info on Nationwide Crackdown on OWS

One observer has suggested that the real reason for the crackdown on the Occupy camps was that "[t]he camps were the beginnings of a community . . . the community needed for a culture of resistance." Highly ironic if, as seems likely (see, e.g., here and here), the Obama's administration was instrumental in coordinating the crackdown.

Civil liberties groups have filed a FOIA request for info: "'The severe crackdown on the occupation movement appears to be part of a national strategy to crush the movement,' said Mara Veheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice and the co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s National Mass Defense Committee. 'This multi-jurisdictional coordination shows that the crackdown is supremely political.'" More at Common Dreams.

What Happened to the OWS-er's Property

When the NYPD evicted the OWS-er's camp from Liberty Square (f.k.a. Zuccotti Park), the property was reportedly tossed into garbage trucks and dump trucks; but the reality may be worse. Motherboard suggests the laptops look like they were attacked with a baseball bat (but not, one imagines, before their contents had been downloaded; note the label scrawled on the blue laptop). (More info and pics at Motherboard.)

(Yes, any deliberate destruction of property or unreasonable search of the laptops would be, like the NYPD's defiance of the court order to allow the OWS-er's back into the park, against the law.)

Another N17 Projection, Visible from Brooklyn Bridge:

Photo from This Is The Right One (thanks!) (Click on the image for a larger version.) Per the UK Guardian:

A massive projection is being displayed on the Verizon building . . . . In a series of shots it reads, "We are the 99%, Look around, you are a part of a global uprising...We are unstoppable, another world is possible...We are a cry from the heart of the world...It is the beginning of the beginning." The projection then goes on to display the names of occupations around the country in rapid-fire succession with the final name reading, "Occupy Earth." With a chorus of honking cars in the background, the crowd erupts in cheers and reads the display in unison as they pass."

UPDATE: Good interview with creator of the projection here.