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.)

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.)

More Re- the Infowar

Don't miss Michael Hasting's excellent, recent interview of Julian Assange in Rolling Stone.

Assange mentions the speaker in the video below, Jacob Appelbaum, ("[t]he Tor Project, which protects people around the world from being spied on or censored, lost some $600,000 to the U.S. government, as a result of one of their people, Jacob Appelbaum, having filled in for me once at a conference in New York.") If you haven't seen much of Appelbaum before, his presentation's also not to be missed (you can skip the first 2 min.):



Assange's appeal of extradiction proceedings in the U.K. is due to be heard by the nation's supreme court tomorrow.

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.

Clay Shirky on PIPA and SOPA

Excellent overview of where these bills are coming from and what we should expect going forward, at TED.

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.)

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.

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).

Great Signs from Today's Gov. Scott Walker Recall Rally in WI

More photos here.

Per the Brookfield Patch, 25,000 to 30,000 showed up at the rally, and organizers say they've collected more than 105,000 signatures on recall petitions.

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.