The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5
www.freethecuban5.comfreethecuban5@...
Free the Cuban 5 Hotline: 718-601-4751

Free the Cuban 5!
 

Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and
René González are five Cuban patriots who were arrested and framed by the FBI
13 years ago. They are fighting for their freedom—with growing international
support. The Cuban Five were on a dangerous mission of infiltrating and
monitoring right-wing Cuban-American groups in South Florida with a long history
of bombings and other murderous assaults against Cuba. Over 3,000 Cubans have
been killed in US-backed attacks by these groups since the 1959 victory of the
Cuban Revolution.

The Cuban Five were railroaded to prison on “espionage conspiracy” and other
trumped-up charges. They were convicted -- without a shred of evidence of any
act of espionage against the U.S. government -- in an atmosphere of bias and
intimidation in a Miami federal court. They were given sentences of up to life
in prison. On October 7, 2011, René González was released from
prison—unbroken and unbowed. He is being forced to stay in Florida for 3 years
of probation, but is fighting for his right to return to Cuba and his family. By
courageously standing up for themselves and for others, the Five set an example
to all those fighting for justice.

Washington’s frame-up of the Cuban Five is an assault on the rights of all of
us. It has sparked calls by thousands worldwide for their release. These include
10 Nobel Prize Laureates, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, trade
unions, student organizations, and prominent U.S. artists and writers.

Join us in an Evening of Solidarity. Learn the facts about these five courageous
fighters and the blatant injustice against them. Join thousands around the world
demanding: Free the Cuban Five!

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Dr. Robert Sarhan will be addressing the Occupy Washington rally tonight at
around 7 pm in Freedom Plaza. Originally known as Western Plaza, Freedom Plaza
is an open plaza in Northwest Washington, D.C. located at the corner of 14th
Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, adjacent to Pershing Park.

A compelling voice in the anti-guardianship movement, Dr. Sarhan lost his mother
to the guardianship gulag and is now facing further governmental retaliation for
his activism.

Janet Phelan
In exile
Yucatan, Mexico


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The website of the Pirate Party of New York has links to the live  video streams
of Occupy actions a huge number of locations around the world.
http://piratepartyofnewyork.org/occupy-video-streams/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Demands Of Occupy Wall Street And Disinformation
October 21st, 2011
Tonight on the McLaughlin Group on PBS a list of demands was posted on their
broadcast and claimed to be from Occupy Wall Street.
-$20 an hour minimum wage,
-amnesty for all student loans, credit card debt and home mortgages,
-free medical care for all, there might have been a couple of others but I can't
remember.

There is a certain amount of disinformation here, also some of these may be
proposed demands that never went anywhere. The media certainly is trying to
discredit the Occupy Wall Street. The real demands that are being proposed by
the Demands committee are quite reasonable things that the social democracies of
Europe already provide. What is being proposed is that the USA catch up with the
rest of the developed world.

Unfortunately these are simply reforms that won't change the system.

���������������������-

This is my proposal.

Real change would involve demands for:

A) Worker participation in management at all companies.
B) Collective bargaining at all workplaces larger than family operations.
C) Community participation in industry relocation decisions.
D) Replacement of all banks with Co-ops
E) Elimination of Wall Street replacing it with an Enterprise Investment Bureau
F) Public funding of Elections
G) All parties eligible for public funding based on voter registration.
H) Limit electoral cycle to 3 months.
I) Free prime time access on media for Electoral debates as part of public
service
J) Free Public Transportation
K) Free Medical Care
L) Free Education
M) Basic housing and food allowance

These demands should break the back of corporate power and private influence in
elections. It should be the starting point for a people's democracy that
includes the workplace. It is my firm belief that without economic democracy
there is no hope of real political democracy. Citizens of a democracy cannot
have extreme discrepancies of wealth or education for the democracy to be
effective.

�����������������

Then I went to a site called Red State. They had a list of what they called OWS
demands.
This is a right wing site and they are trying to discredit OWS.

OWS Extremist List of Demands, posting for laughs

Posted by williamjameson (Diary)

Friday, October 7th at 10:27PM EDT

http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme\
/

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by
ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering
the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and
domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the
American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages.
Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty
dollars an hr.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all
private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect
on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and
hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st.
investors.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an
end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy
demand.

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads
and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests,
reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and
decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and
live.

Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper
ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party
observers system.

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt
forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity
loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be
stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt
and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives
or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken
from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on
the entire planet period.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union
organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a
union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill
them without an open borders policy.

http://www.redstate.com/williamjameson/2011/10/07/ows-extremist-list-of-demands-\
posting-for-laughs/

���������������������

This is from the Demands Working Group site of the Occupy Wall Street group and
this is the posting for Oct. 21, 2011.

The Demands Working Group of Occupy Wall Street unanimously endorsed and is
circulating for discussion the following PROPOSED demand, which will be
submitted to the General Assembly of OWS:

"Jobs for ALL � A Massive Public Works and Public Service Program

We demand a massive public works and public service program with direct
government employment at prevailing (union) wages, paid for by taxing the rich
and corporations, by immediately ending all of America's wars, and by ending all
aid to authoritarian regimes to create 25 million new jobs to:

-Expand education: cut class sizes and provide free university for all;

-Expand healthcare and provide free healthcare for all (single payer system);

-Build housing, guarantee decent housing for all;

-Expand mass transit, provided for free;

-Rebuild the infrastructure�bridges, flood control, roads;

-Research and implement clean energy alternatives; and

-Clean up the environment.

These jobs are to be open to all, regardless of documentation/immigration status
or criminal record."

http://pcp.gc.cuny.edu/occupywallstreet-demands-working-group-panel-teach-in/

������������������������

The real demands are reasonable, they can be met without destroying capitalism.
But if we want to create a better world, we have to get more ambitious and go
for the gold and demand real social democracy.

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

[I've found Lakoff's work very enlightening regarding the conservative
and liberal (which Lakoff prefers to call "progressive") worldviews. But
I find the way that he cannot see any alternatives to these two forms of
state-corporate capitalism and always ends up simply arguing for the one
he favors, very sad. The following provides a good instance. My own
recommendations would be very different from the mild reformism and
emphasis on electoral politics seen here. I would emphasize opposition
to state-corporate capitalism in *any* form, in favor of libertarian
alternatives, specifically boycotting state-corporate capitalist
institutions and attempting to build the structure of the new society in
the shell of the old via workers cooperatives and the like.--DC]

http://www.truth-out.org/how-frame-yourself-framing-memo-occupy-wall-street/1319\
031142
How to Frame Yourself: A Memo for Occupy Wall Street
Wednesday 19 October 2011
by: George Lakoff
Truthout | Op-Ed

I was asked weeks ago by some in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement
to make suggestions for how to frame the movement. I have hesitated so
far because I think the movement should be framing itself. It's a
general principle: Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you -
the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. I
have so far hesitated to offer suggestions. But the movement appears to
be maturing and entering a critical time when small framing errors could
have large negative consequences. So, I thought it might be helpful to
accept the invitation and start a discussion of how the movement might
think about framing itself.

About framing: It's normal. Everybody engages in it all the time. Frames
are just structures of thought that we use every day. All words in all
languages are defined in terms of frame circuits in the brain. But,
ultimately, framing is about ideas, about how we see the world, which
determines how we act.

In politics, frames are part of competing moral systems that are used in
political discourse and in charting political action. In short, framing
is a moral enterprise: it says what the character of a movement is. All
politics is moral. Political figures and movements always make policy
recommendations claiming they are the right things to do. No political
figure ever says do what I say because it's wrong! Or because it doesn't
matter! Some moral principles or other lie behind every political policy
agenda.

Two Moral Framing Systems in Politics

Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall
Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual
responsibility, but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority
based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is
"deserving," defined by success. And the highest principle is the
primacy of this moral system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and
the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign
policy and especially government. Conservative "democracy" is seen as a
system of governance and elections that fits this model.

Though OWS concerns go well beyond financial issues, your target is
right: the application of these principles in Wall Street is central,
since that is where the money comes from for elections, for media and
for right-wing policy-making institutions of all sorts on all issues.

The alternative view of democracy is progressive: Democracy starts with
citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense
of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one's family,
community, country, people in general and the planet. The role of
government is to protect and empower all citizens equally via The
Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education,
scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation,
resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on.
Nobody makes it one their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The
Public and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The
Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy
depend on those who work and who deserve a fair return for their
contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life
better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is
private.

A disproportionate distribution of wealth robs most citizens of access
to the resources controlled by the wealthy. Immense wealth is a thief.
It takes resources from the rest of the population - the best places to
live, the best food, the best educations, the best health facilities,
access to the best in nature and culture, the best professionals, and on
and on. Resources are limited and great wealth greatly limits access to
resources for most people.

It appears to me that OWS has a progressive moral vision and view of
democracy, and that what it is protesting is the disastrous effects that
have come from operating with a conservative moral, economic and
political worldview. I see OWS as primarily a moral movement, seeking
economic and political changes to carry out that moral movement -
whatever those particular changes might be.

A Moral Focus for Occupy Wall Street

I think it is a good thing that the occupation movement is not making
specific policy demands. If it did, the movement would become about
those demands. If the demands were not met, the movement would be seen
as having failed.

It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers
want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful
policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral
focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be
on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of
policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will
be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral
focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present
disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.

We Love America. We're Here to Fix It

I see OWS as a patriotic movement, based on a deep and abiding love of
country - a patriotism that it is not just about the self-interests of
individuals, but about what the country is and is to be. Do Americans
care about other citizens, or mainly just about themselves? That's what
love of America is about. I, therefore, think it is important to be
positive, to be clear about loving America, seeing it in need of fixing
and not just being willing to fix it, but being willing to take to the
streets to fix it. A populist movement starts with the people seeing
that they are all in the same boat and being ready to come together to
fix the leaks.

Publicize the Public

Tell the truth about The Public, that nobody makes it purely on their
own without The Public, that is, without public infrastructure, the
justice system, health, education, scientific research, protections of
all sorts, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture,
trade policies, safety nets ... That is a truth to be told day after
day. It is an idea that must take hold in public discourse. It must go
beyond what I and others have written about it and beyond what Elizabeth
Warren has said in her famous video. The Public is not opposed to The
Private. The Public is what makes The Private possible. And it is what
makes freedom possible. Wall Street exists only through public support.
It has a moral obligation to direct itself to public needs.

All OWS approaches to policy follow from such a moral focus. Here are a
handful of examples.

Democracy Should Be About the 99 Percent

Money directs our politics. In a democracy, that must end. We need
publicly supported elections, however that is to be arranged.

Strong Wages Make a Strong America

Middle-class wages have not gone up significantly in 30 years and there
is conservative pressure to lower them. But when most people get more
money, they spend it and spur the economy, making the economy and the
country stronger, as well as making their individual lives better. This
truth needs to be central to public economic discourse.

Global Citizenship

America has been a moral beacon to the world. It can function as such
only if it sets an example of what a nation should be.

Do we have to spend more on the military than all other nations
combined? Do we really need hundreds of military bases abroad?

Nature

We are part of nature. Nature makes us and all that we love, possible.
Yet, we are destroying nature through global warming and other forms of
ecological destruction, like fracking and deep-water drilling.

At a global scale, nature is systemic: its effects are neither local nor
linear. Global warming is causing the ferocity of the monster storms,
tornados, floods, blizzards, heat waves and fires that have devastated
huge areas of our country. The hotter the atmosphere, the more
evaporated water and the more energy going into storms, tornados, and
blizzards. Global warming cannot be shown to cause any particular storm,
but when a storm system forms, global warming will ramp up the power of
the storm and the amount of water it carries. In winter, evaporated
water from the overly heated Pacific will go into the atmosphere, blow
northeast over the Arctic and fall as record snows.

We depend on nature - on clean air, water, food and a livable climate.
And we find beauty and grandeur in nature and a sense of awe that makes
life worth living. A love of country requires a love of nature. And a
fair and thriving economy requires the preservation of nature as we have
known it.

Summary

OWS is a moral and patriotic movement. It sees Democracy as flowing from
citizens caring about one another as well as themselves and acting with
both personal and social responsibility. Democratic governance is about
The Public and the liberty that The Public provides for a thriving
Private Sphere. From such a democracy flows fairness, which is
incompatible with a hugely disproportionate distribution of wealth. And
from the sense of care implicit in such a democracy flows a commitment
to the preservation of nature.

  From what I have seen of most members of OWS, your individual concerns
all flow from one moral focus.

Elections

The Tea Party solidified the power of the conservative worldview via
elections. OWS will have no long-term effect unless it, too, brings its
moral focus to the 2012 elections. Insist on supporting candidates that
have your overall moral views, no matter what the local issues are.

A Warning

This movement could be destroyed by negativity, by calls for revenge, by
chaos, or by having nothing positive to say. Be positive about all
things and state the moral basis of all suggestions. Positive and moral
in calling for debt relief. Positive and moral in upholding laws, as
they apply to finances. Positive and moral in calling for fairness in
acquiring needed revenue. Positive and moral in calling for clean
elections. To be effective, your movement must be seen by all of the 99
percent as positive and moral. To get positive press, you must stress
the positive and the moral.

Remember: The Tea Party sees itself as stressing only individual
responsibility. The Occupation movement is stressing both individual and
social responsibility.

I believe and I think you believe, that most Americans care about their
fellow citizens as well as themselves. Let's find out! Shout your moral
and patriotic views out loud, regularly. Put them on your signs. Repeat
them to the media. Tweet them. And tell everyone you know to do the
same. You have to use your own language with your own framing and you
have to repeat it over and over for the ideas to sink in.

Occupy elections: voter registration drives, town hall meetings, talk
radio airtime, party organizations, nomination campaigns, election
campaigns and voting booths.

Above all: Frame yourselves before others frame you.


--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

On Effective Protest, Lessons From History
November 2nd, 2011
The banks are backing down because people have been withdrawing their accounts.
Also they have realized it was a bad PR move. Petitions don't do much of
anything, just like peaceful protests are useless unless they are backed by
significant action that hurts them in the pocketbook. The General Strike in
Oakland is one such action, shutting down banks by mobbing them with protests
are better than peaceful sign holders walking down the sidewalks. Peaceful
protests are effective when they provoke police overreactions. That was what got
the civil rights movement attention and eventual federal assistance, it was the
sight of too many people being beat up by cops in the south, not the kumbaya
moments not prayer vigils, those things are nice but they don't show strength
and it is our potential for violence that they are afraid of, our potential to
screw up the system, not our willingness to sign petitions. Until people are
pissed off enough to do something that makes a difference, then they will accept
protests as just the cost of doing business.

The occupations in and of themselves are not a threat because they are simply
activities within our constitutional rights to publicly express our grievances.
They are on public property and don't constitute a threat, only a nuisance.
Marches on sidewalks are not a threat, marches on streets can be effective means
of blocking traffic and upsetting the normal flow of work. Occupying Freeway
interchanges can be very effective, that sort of action is done in Latin America
all the time, a few tires on fire usually do the trick. Truckers do it when they
want to show their power, they simply line up a few big rigs and traffic stops
or is slowed to a crawl.

The most effective means of bringing about change is to cut off the choke
points, like the harbors. If the Longshoremen or harbor truckers are on your
side, you have a very powerful tool to bring the system to listen to your
demands.

This is because economic costs are the most effective way to get the attention
of the ruling classes. The problem is that they generally can wait out a strike
or boycott, unless their stockholders start to flee and the corporate wealth
evaporates, that can be an effect if they are seen as not properly handling the
situation. Disrupting corporate board meetings can have psychological effects.

Remember Hitler was not brought down by peaceful protest. If there had been a
general strike, and the soldiers refused to break the strike, then he might have
been brought down without much violence, but he had popular support. He was
brought down by force of arms. People willing to die to stop him.

Gandhi did not bring down the British Empire by passive resistance. His passive
resistance gave moral support to his movement, but it was the war and the
crushing cost of battling the Germans and Japanese that weakened the imperial
system. Indian prisoners of war went over to the Japanese side and formed an
army of liberation. The British offered eventual independence to the Congress
party in an attempt to gain their support for the war effort and to head off any
support for the army of liberation fighting with the Japanese against the
British led by Subhas Chandra Bose.

From A BBC summary of why the British left India.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/endofempire_overview_01.shtml

From an Article on the Indian National Army

"While Bose's compatriots in India remained totally wedded to an ideological
creed (non-violence), which at that time could only serve the British and
postpone the advent of independence"(Borra).

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v03/v03p407_Borra.html

There is some controversy over this. Martin Luther King used some of the
techniques of Gandhi in his campaign for civil rights in the southern USA. But
this was not a limp-wristed passive resistance. This was a willingness to take
the lumps of police violence, deliberately provoked to get media attention and
thus the moral support of the nation and thus induce the federal government to
intervene in the south and impose desegregation as had been ordered by the
Supreme Court. What King was doing was forcing the federal governments hand to
enforce the law. This meant a political calculation on the part of the Democrats
in power, would they be willing to lose the white southern political machine for
the sake of gaining the black vote which had been traditionally Republican.
Would it be enough to compensate? Yes and no, the loss of the south has been a
factor in Republican victories over the last 40 years and by untethering the
Democrats from its conservative `blue dog' faction, it was able to swerve to the
left, gathering up the progressives that might have formed the basis of an
effective third party. The Republicans were able to swerve to the right having
gained a powerful right wing voice in the south and having lost much of its more
liberal base in the north. Thus we have the basis of modern politics in the USA
a stalemate until one side or the other wins over the majority of the people. Or
until the people come up with a viable alternative to the two party system.

From a site called White House Histtorical Association

"In the spring of 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in the midst of a
campaign to force the desegregation of the downtown department stores of
Birmingham, Alabama. The goal was narrowly focused: persuade the city fathers to
act by applying pressure through boycotts and public demonstrations. Response to
that pressure, King understood, would bring a strong reaction from Eugene "Bull"
Connor, the police commissioner in Birmingham. That in turn would bring national
news attention, and had the possibility of bringing federal government
intervention in the ongoing civil rights struggle in the South. By May in
Birmingham, King made a controversial decision to use children in
demonstrations. Determined not to yield to the demands of blacks taking to the
streets, Connor used German shepherds and fire hoses to keep them under control.
Television cameras rolled, as young demonstrators skittered under the force of
hoses equipped with "monitor nozzles" capable of, as one fire department
advertised, "knocking bricks loose from mortar . . . at a distance of one
hundred feet." German shepherds dug their teeth into the flesh of protesters,
and Americans saw it all on the evening news.1 President John F. Kennedy was
sickened by the images, telling an audience in mid-May that the "shameful
scenes" in Birmingham were "so much more eloquently reported by the news cameras
than by any number of explanatory words."2 People across the nation and the
world were horrified: was this a "just" punishment for black Americans demanding
the right to buy a hamburger at a local lunch counter?"

http://www.whha.org/whha_classroom/classroom_9-12-pressure-march.html

It is violence or the threat of violence, and the economic costs of slowing or
shutting down the system that is a threat to the power structure. Right now they
are licking their wounds from the Wall Street collapse, but the wealthy are not
hurt, they simply shift their investments around and hire hot shot investment
specialists to find them a new rabbit hole to slide down. We have to block up
those rabbit holes. Then confiscate the wealth and then put it to productive
use. Simply redistribution of the wealth will not be enough. We have to either,
ride the golden goose of capitalism, and squeeze as much wealth out of it for
social production without killing it, or we have to bring the means of
production into a socialist mode, which means highly sophisticated planning.
Certainly, not follow the bungling bureaucratic model of the former Soviet
states. But that is down the road.

Right now what we need to do is to get over this fetish with pacifist modes and
realize that it is just a tactic to force the state to overreact and thus bring
pressure to bear on them by discrediting them, and or costing them economically.
We must make them calculate they will come out ahead by bending to our demands,
rather than continue resisting or ignoring us. Naturally we have to get over
this silly lack of focus and begin to make some sense out of what this protest
is all about. We need to elect leaders, make them recallable, and set up a
functioning parliamentary system. Consensus and general assemblies are good for
small groups, bitch sessions and kumbaya moments, but if we are to be effective,
we need to get serious.

Tomorrow at 2 pm ET on The Truther Girls, American Freedom Radio, we will be
discussing yet another suspicious death of a conservatee in Riverside County and
the incumbent coroner's report, which would be worthy of inclusion in a
"Superman Bizarro" comic book if it weren't so deadly serious. We will be asking
the question--are conservatees, people who have been stripped of their rights
through proceedings in courts of law which require no standard of proof for
allegations of incompetency--are many of� these people dying unnatural deaths?

American Freedom Radio� airs on multiple stations throughout the U.S. and
streams off the web at� http://americanfreedomradio.com/listen_live.html

Janet Phelan
www.janetphelan.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The two
reports herein linked reveal the impossibility of reforming guardianship. The
first article http://www.tulanelink.com/tulanelink/judicialbribes_10a.htm


indicates
that the judges have been corrupted and are laundering bribes and pay offs
through their home loans.

The second shows that the much-touted California
Professional Fiduciaries Bureau has also fallen victim to regulatory capture
and has compromised its mission and is now protecting the very system and
process it is mandated to oversee.


http://janetphelan.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95:report-to\
-california-assemblyman-dave-jones&catid=1:probate-murders&Itemid=50


�The fact that the above report was sent to
every member of the California House Judiciary Committee and not one single
individual responded also highlights the corruption that follows guardianship
through every aspect of government.



If the Congress believes that it will "fix" the problems in
guardianship by setting up a central clearing house with names of
"bad" guardians, our Congressmen must first come to grips with the
fact that the legal system is ignoring reports coming in on guardianship
crimes, and that neither police nor district attorneys are aggressively
pursuing� these crimes. Tomorrow's radio show on American Freedom Radio Network,
airing on "The Truther Girls", will go into more detail as to the contortions
being performed, and performed rather ineptly, by the Riverside Sheriff/Coroner
in what can only be seen as a pathetic attempt to protect culpable parties from
any responsibility for crimes against conservatees and, through extension,
against their family members, as well.

The Klobuchar legislation is simply one more in a long series of�
inadequate gestures towards reforming what can only be deemed a leprotic system.



Janet Phelanwww.janetphelan.com




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

David Dees illustrations are used to send a clear
message in this video.
http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=139873

Tell us the message and we will send two DVDs
of your choice from the list, when you sign up
on the Project site.
http://www.onedollardvdproject.com/

By the way, there are five categories/pages of
DVDs. Please, look them all over.

Please, watch the slideshow.
Sign up for mailings.
Reply with the video's message.
Receive two DVDs of your choice.

Ron
OneDollarDVDProject.com
http://www.onedollardvdproject.com/



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And they are only a dollar or two.

"Let it not be said that we did nothing." Ron Paul

http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=139016

Ron
http://www.onedollardvdproject.com/


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

A 'Sort of War on the Government' Uncovered in Georgia Terror Plot Charges
ANALYSIS� � AIR DATE: Nov. 2, 2011
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/july-dec11/terrorplot_11-02.html

SUMMARY
Four Georgia men who are suspected members of a militia group were
  arraigned on terrorism charges in federal court Wednesday. Margret Warner
discusses the alleged plot to use the toxin ricin and other means to kill
government officials and citizens with Greg Bluestein of The Associated Press.

Transcript

RAY SUAREZ: Now, the domestic terror plot uncovered in Georgia. Margaret Warner
has our story.

MARGARET WARNER: Four Georgia men appeared in a federal court in Gainesville,
Ga., today, arraigned on terrorism charges. They were accused of conspiring to
manufacture a deadly biological toxin, ricin, and planning to use it to kill
U.S. citizens, among them government officials.

The four are suspected members of a militia group. Ray Adams, 65 years old, and
Samuel Crump, 68, allegedly sought to develop and produce the ricin for use as a
weapon. Frederick Thomas, 73, and Dan Roberts, 67, were accused of seeking to
acquire weapons and an explosive device in the plot.

The U.S. attorney for the
  Northern District of Georgia announced the arrests yesterday.

SALLY QUILLIAN YATES, U.S. attorney: Many of us are really focused on
international violent extremists, but I think that this case really points out
that we have to be vigilant and to stay on top of those of us within our own
borders here who are attempting to do harm to their own government and to their
own citizens.

MARGARET WARNER: And for more on this, we are joined now by Greg Bluestein, who
covers legal affairs for the Associated Press in Atlanta. He was in the
courtroom today.

And, Greg, welcome, and thank you for joining us.

Tell us what it was like in court today.

GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press: Well, in a word, it was bizarre.

Imagine seeing four men between the ages of 65 and 73 shuffle into the
courtroom. Some of them had -- they had white, gray hair. One had a big bushy
white beard. They stooped forward, some of them, and they craned
  their necks to try to hear the judge. At one point, the judge even stopped the
proceedings and says -- said to one of the men, "If you can't hear me, please
raise your hand, because this is a very important proceeding."

It was very unique. They seemed very out of place.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, the court documents make it sound like quite a convoluted
plot. Lay it out for us.

GREG BLUESTEIN: Yes, I had to read the hundred -- the dozens of pages of
documents a few times just to try to get -- to comprehend it.

It says these four men lived in two north Georgia towns of Toccoa and Cleveland,
which are in the North Georgia Mountains, and said they were part of an obscure
militia group only known as the Covert Group. And they started meeting -- their
first meeting, at least that federal prosecutors would say, was in March at
Frederick Thomas' home

Frederick Thomas is a 73-year-old who is a 30-year -- his wife says he's a
  30-year Navy veteran.

And that's where their first meeting took place. Unbeknownst to them, there was
also a confidential informant who was tape-recording the meeting. And that's
where Frederick -- Mr. Thomas said that he had a -- quote, unquote -- "bucket
list" of government officials he wanted to see disappear for the better of the
country.

MARGARET WARNER: And so what were the targets they were planning to hit, and
how? Where does the ricin fit in? Where do the explosives fit in?

GREG BLUESTEIN: Sure. They were talking about all sorts of -- using all sorts of
violent means to carry out this sort of war on the government.

They were talking about getting explosives, getting guns, getting a gun
silencer, getting -- making homemade mines. At one point, they were talking
about -- well, several times, they were talking about making ricin,
manufacturing ricin from castor beans, because even small doses of this toxin
can be
  deadly. And they were talking about using it, even disseminating it through the
back of a car on busy highways in order to kill the maximum amount of people.

And they weren't -- these prosecutors say they weren't really distinguishing
between federal employees and just everyday citizens, which is one of the scary
things.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, before we go on with this story and the investigation, who
are these guys, other than their ages, and what was their motive? What comes
through in the papers about that, supposedly -- allegedly?

GREG BLUESTEIN: Yes. What comes through in the papers is that they had this
violent hate of the government.

We're not quite sure why or what exactly they hated, but we do know they
targeted -- they wanted to target the ATF and the IRS, because those two
agencies are mentioned over and over again. So, presumably, they were upset
about gun control activities and whatnot in government agents --
  agencies.

But one of them, Mr. Thomas, as I said, his wife says he's a 30-year Navy
veteran. Another man had worked for the USDA -- USDA agency, and has even
boasted of showing off some of his certificates he obtained from the USDA or
from training certifications to the other suspects. And one of the men was a
contractor for the CDC in Atlanta.

MARGARET WARNER: Did they do more than talk? Did they -- what did they do,
supposedly, in furtherance of this plot, actually do?

GREG BLUESTEIN: Yes.

Federal -- yes, federal prosecutors said they went beyond just idle talk, that
this is no laughing matter. They say two of the men actually were able to deduce
the formula to make ricin out of these castor beans and to extract the ricin
from the castor beans, and that the confidential informant somehow got their
hands on this, on whatever they made, and was able to test it. The Georgia
officials were able to test it, and it actually was
  ricin, that there was found to be traces of ricin.

So they actually had some sort of ricin. We're not sure if they were going to
use it. We're not sure what they were going to do with it. But they actually did
have in their position ricin.

Mr. Thomas, actually, went down with the confidential informant, drove from
north Georgia down to downtown Atlanta, and scoped out the ATF's headquarters in
Atlanta, which is in the northeast part of the city, and the IRS headquarters in
downtown Atlanta. So they actually cased the buildings.

Then, on the way back, he was -- prosecutors say he told the informant that he
wanted to blow up the building like Timothy McVeigh did, that he didn't mind if
-- that he wasn't sure if he minded if there was innocents who didn't work at --
work for the government who were also victims of the attacks.

And him and Mr. Roberts, one of the other suspects, were also accused of working
with an undercover
  agent to buy a homemade explosive -- to buy an explosive device and a silencer
to carry out this violence.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, this ricin, which is such a deadly toxin, is it clear
whether they actually just -- they had the beans or they actually had something
that had been processed?

GREG BLUESTEIN: Yes, that -- it's not exactly clear, but they had -- one of the
suspects' homes, prosecutors say the informant noticed beakers, they noticed lab
equipment, they overheard some of the men talking about building more lab
equipment, like a hood, because obviously making ricin is very deadly because
the toxin itself is very deadly.

So they were worried about the recipe to make this toxin and whether or not they
would fall victim to it as well. But, as I said earlier, the informant was able
to somehow get his or her hands on the -- on at least a sample of whatever they
were making. And it was tested in a Georgia laboratory and found to be
  -- to have traces of ricin in it.

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, and very briefly, I gather that one of them said they
were trying to follow a plot outlined in some novel by -- called, what -- by
some militia group writer?

GREG BLUESTEIN: Yes, it's called -- yes. It was called "Absolve."

And it's from an underground nonfiction novel that was written by a former
militia leader in -- in Alabama. And one of the -- Mr. Thomas said he wanted to
carry out what this underground novel had said to do. Now, the author of the
novel has said it's fiction; it's purely -- it's not meant to inspire any
violence or hate, and that he doesn't want to see this happen, of course.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, bizarre, indeed, as you said.

Well, Greg Bluestein of the Associated Press, thank you.

GREG BLUESTEIN: Thank
  you.



----------------------------------------------------------------------



----------------------------------------------------------------------




----------------------------------------------------------------------



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/anarchy-rules-ok-chomsky-tells-australia/st\
ory-e6frfku0-1226184908524
Anarchy rules OK Chomsky tells Australia
AAP
November 03, 2011 4:25PM

PEOPLE should embrace the sort of anarchism typified by WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange, Noam Chomsky says.

The American commentator, philosopher and activist was being interviewed
in front of a packed theatre at the Sydney Opera House today when he was
asked his thoughts on Prime Minister Julia Gillard's comments that
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's motivations were "sort of anarchic".

Professor Chomsky said if anarchy meant questioning authority and
demanding the truth, then everyone should be anarchic.

"In that sense I think everyone should be an anarchist," he said, in
response to heavy applause from the audience.

Anarchism should not be viewed in a negative light, Prof Chomsky said.

"It's not the conception of anarchism as people running wild and
breaking windows.

"In our age we have to overcome the barriers introduced by the ranks of
capitalism and corporate capitalism and I think there is some sense in
that, at the core of the anarchist tradition ... is to ask and raise
questions about authority, hierarchy and domination.

"And if it cannot justify itself, then it should be dismantled. That's
the core principle of anarchism."

His comments came after Britain's High Court in London upheld a ruling
that Assange should be sent to face questioning by Swedish authorities
over claims of sexual assault against two women.

Prof Chomsky is to receive the 2012 Sydney Peace Prize at a ceremony
later this evening.

--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3048/message-of-solidarity-to-occupy-wall-s\
treet-from-t
Message of Solidarity to Occupy Wall Street from the Organization of
Women's Freedom in Iraq
by Yanar Mohammed and Ali Issa

Dear Occupy Wall Street,

The people of the world are watching you, following your news and hoping
that � rather than just vent your anger and frustration - you achieve
all of your dreams.

While democracy should guarantee all people an equal say in the
decisions that affect their lives, you find yourselves forced to take to
the streets, as politicians and bankers make decisions behind closed
doors and hire an army of police to send you back home with nothing.

While a wealthy 1% ravages your jobs, health, and very lives, their
focus is always on their banks and not on the welfare and future of
innocent, unsuspecting millions of people. In times of growth, those
banks are sustained by your labor, resulting in extravagant luxuries for
the 1%; while their economic failures and crises deny you basic
resources and economic rights.

This is the same 1% that pursued the war on Iraq without hearing the
millions who marched - in the United States and around the world -
expressing their opposition. While claiming democracy, the 1% builds
vast armies to be launched not just against people all over the world,
but also within their own borders.

A second wave of global revolutions has begun as the 99% (that is, the
global working class) rejects the tyranny, marginalization, and poverty
which capitalist authoritarian governments force onto billions of us.
Despite all claims of representation, capitalist states make the people
pay the price of the economic failures of their political systems with
unemployment and government cuts, while the banks get bailed out by the
same resources that people�s toil has created. Avoiding the poverty and
starvation of billions is never the concern of these so-called
democracies as much as the stability of their own political rule.
Moreover, that same 1% re-creates the same failing model of �democratic�
capitalist political structures in newly-invaded countries around the globe.

The so-called democracy of Iraq, created by the western capitalist
states, divides Iraqi oil reserves between the 1% politicians and a
massive, newly-built army, which is now well trained to crush the Iraq�s
Tahrir square demonstrations (active since Feb 25th), with live
ammunition, torture, and beatings. While the 99% of Iraqis seethe with
anger waiting for the right conditions to claim what is theirs, they
eagerly follow your progress in occupying Wall Street, as our enemy is
one whether they are American or Iraqi. That enemy is the 1% of ruthless
exploiters.

Although plans of US withdrawal from Iraq have been publicized
worldwide, we are certain that US bases will remain around our cities
and villages in one form or another, fully ready to attack and crush any
popular uprising, whenever deemed necessary. Although the US
administration has already installed Iraqis to maintain systems of
inequality and suppression in Iraq, they will continue to keep their
military arsenals on full guard for a worst case scenario. This is what
our newly-installed democracy grants us: poverty, inequality,
suppression of dissent, and a lack of civil liberties for the vast
majority of the people, especially women.

People of the world have come to refuse a culture of wars and also the
�democracy� of the rich. It is time for a political system of equal
wealth for all, in other words, a socialist system, where free market
rules cannot starve billions while filling the pockets of a few.
Connecting such a movement globally was beyond even the wildest dreams
of most visionaries, but has proven to be within reach in 2011. And your
#Occupy movement has played a leading role in igniting it.

While hunger and wars are planned and organized by a ruthless 1%, it is
the responsibility of the 99% to create a better world, built on values
of humanity, equality and prosperity for all. In this world,
decision-making will not be taken by World Banks, capitalists, and their
representative statesmen, but by the immediate representatives of the
working class.

Putting demands to the 1% is not the solution, as they have failed
repeatedly and can only proceed with their methods of starving working
people and bringing on more economic failures.

The time has come for a second step. After occupying the street, it is
time to break into the castles and palaces of the 1%, and claim what is
rightfully yours, to start a new era based on global peace, equal
division of wealth, and humanity.

We stand behind you and carry on our continuous resistance to the rule
of the 1% in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and the entire world.

Long live the struggles of the 99%, and down with the 1%!

Yanar Mohammed
Organization of Women�s Freedom in Iraq

10/31/2011


--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

Sunday, October 30, 2011
    High Time For a New U.S.A. Constitution


              The Occupy movement will stand side by side with The Freedom
Riders and The Anti-War Movement, March for Social Security, etc. The
question is:  "Now what?  Where is this going?"  Stand back and
assess this moment in time.  Think of options.  This could fade out and
be an entry in your autobiography, or you could seize the time and
change history forever.

              Many in the movement are hyper-democratic.  General
assemblies are time consuming and tedious.  Someone should remind them
that, during a political situation, time is of the essence.  You
can't live democracy until you achieve democracy.  In other words,
in a revolutionary situation, you need revolutionary discipline.  You
need a central command to direct the troops into battle.  The corporate
state will not play by Queens-berry rules. They will shoot you in the
back if they have to.  Remember Kent & Jackson State, 1970.

              There are many paths to take at this point: Passive
Resistance, Civil Disobedience, or armed struggle (violent revolution).
Then, there is this route�

              Two things:  One--an organized 3rd party.  There is the
Green Party, which is ready-made to be activated and taken over.  They
got ballot status in most states.  If you don't like their platform,
you can change it.  You could upset the two party balance. Don't
worry about the right wing--they have their own 3rd parties.  If that
doesn't appeal to you�

              The second option is to call for a constitutional convention
to draft a new constitution.  Most of the time, it's the right wing
that does that.  The Black Panther Party once called for a
constitutional convention, but nothing ever became of it.

              Not only would you be working within the system, but you
would terrify the system.  The system has aversion to a new
constitution.  The unwashed masses could infiltrate the upper-echelon of
the system and forever change the Republic to a Democracy.  If you have
a new constitution, you could have an amendment for equal distribution
of wealth.

              Thomas Jefferson said a new constitution must be drafted
every 50 years.  Now, the corporate state will tell you how difficult it
is to draft a new constitution.  How it would take nine years, or even
longer.  It would put a strain on the nation and would put the
government at a halt.  Yeah, these are the same people who want to end
government and have capitalism run everything.  They would rather keep
an antiquated document and add or subtract amendments on it.  You want
revolution?  Time to rip up the old constitution and get a new one!

              The new constitution can deal with contemporary issues like
Internet privacy, sexism, racism, and school and prison censorship and
on and on.

              The movement can find a central location and find a new
constitution hall. There could be delegates from all 50 states and U.S.
territories.   Now is not the time for a world constitution.  Focus on
the USA.

              A constitution and revolution go hand in hand!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLVWzOp7Q70
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLVWzOp7Q70>





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

We are living at the vital juncture, cusp, of a brave new dawn in human
evolution, in every realm of life, certainly the social, economic,
political, as well as transpersonal realms.  Mark Engler covers some
meaningful points germane to making the current movement viable for a
healthier society.

So much of and so many of our concerns are, in objective analysis, all too
often reactionary, thus perpetuating an "us and them" bifurcation of
society.  This is due too often to only a partial ideological continuity,
our not going beyond the comfort zones of our affinities to explore
further, without any further calamities carrying us toward more fulfilling
solutions and principles which may harbinge a healthier society.

Without responsible maturation, dogma, with all its barking propensity,
will be all that remains as the economy collapses, resources become scarce,
and moral retardation ensues, lest we mature past selfishness and petty
sectarian psycho-social cannibalism so poopular today.
  http://twitter.com/PROUTNews
  * *
*Can* *Spirituality**, Social Justice, and Economic and Political **
Democracy* *  *
  * find synergy** and **synthesis** in a fair and equitable manner? *
http://EconomicDemocracy.Shows.it/
<http://economicdemocracy.shows.it/><http://economicdemocracy.shows.it/>

*Find out how!*

Human society is at a vital new juncture:
the decrepit skeleton of things tried and
proven false is rapidly being rent asunder.
Today we are on the precipice of a glorious
new dawn in human evolution. Embrace this
crimson dawn of the glorious new day.

http://99PercentSolution-11-7-11.has.it<http://99percentsolution-11-7-11.has.it/\
>


**
    Progressive Reform <http://progressivevanguard.blogspot.com/>

<http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/Pr\
ogressiveReform>
------------------------------

The Future of the #Occupy Movement: Solidarity and
Escalation<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProgressiveReform/~3/yZ3jnP3tv2o/futur\
e-of-occupy-movement-solidarity.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 02:38 PM PDT
Mark Engler <http://www.dissentmagazine.org/atw/author.php?id=17> - October
21, 2011

A month after it began with a few hundred people marching on Wall Street,
the #Occupy movement has grown to include tens of thousands of participants
throughout the country and has captured headlines around the
world<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/16/occupy-protests-europe-london-\
assange>.
If it has not yet succeeded beyond its wildest dreams, that�s only because
its participants have dreamed big: imagining a sustained popular uprising
that could force fundamental changes in our political and economic
system�ones that could end corporate dominance and promote real democracy.

The movement can, in fact, propel significant changes. But
#OccupyWallStreet and its allied occupations still have a ways to go before
realizing their potential. The two issues most pressing as they chart their
next steps: solidarity and escalation.

  *�Co-optation� or Flattery?  *

Despite great success in capturing the public eye, the actual number of
people camped out at the various occupations around the country remains
relatively small. While there are several hundred people camping in hubs
such as New York City and Los Angeles, overnight participants in smaller
cities number in the dozens. What bolsters the power of these encampments
is that they are representative of a much wider discontent. Far greater
numbers of sympathizers turn out for mass meetings, marches, and online
shows of support <http://www.occupytheboardroom.org/>. And, importantly,
more established political bodies�unions, advocacy organizations, and
community groups representing large constituencies�have offered
endorsements of the growing #Occupy effort.

As more have signed on, some activists have been wary of outside
expressions of support. Particularly as Democratic Party officials
(including President
Obama<http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/07/news/economy/occupy_wall_street/index.htm?\
iid=EL>and
Vice
President
Biden<http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/biden-attacks-big-banks-compare\
s-rise-of-occupy-wall-street-to-rise-of-tea-party.php>)
have said positive things about the movement, some have voiced concerns
about
�cooptation<http://www.truth-out.org/moveonorg-and-friends-attempt-co-opt-occupy\
-wall-street-movement/1318259708>.�
They have
argued<http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27070>that
outside liberals, �while pretending to advance the goals of the Occupy
Movement,� could instead �undermine it from within.�

How big of a danger �cooptation� actually
represents<http://www.truth-out.org/delicate-moment-occupy-wall-street-movement/\
1318336894#.TpTWogtqUrg.facebook>is
a matter of dispute. In a recent
interview<http://theactivist.org/blog/from-protest-to-disruption-an-interview-wi\
th-frances-fox-piven>,
Chris Maisano <http://www.dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=575> asked veteran
social movement theorist Frances Fox Piven about this issue. (Piven is
author, among many other books, of the landmark *Poor People�s
Movements*<http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Peoples-Movements-They-Succeed/dp/03947269\
79>and
has considered the issue of cooptation at length in her work.) I
believe she struck the right tone in her
response<http://theactivist.org/blog/from-protest-to-disruption-an-interview-wit\
h-frances-fox-piven>:


Maisano: [As] recent comments by even the president and vice-president have
showed, a lot of the more institutionalized forces on the left like the
unions and MoveOn and the Van Jones American Dream Movement are trying to
latch on to the protests and turn them into what some people have called a
liberal version of the Tea Party. How do you think their involvement will
effect the movement? How should the activists at the core of the movement
relate to them?

Piven: They should be friendly. They should ask them to do things; they
should give them assignments. And not adopt the insignia of these groups as
their own. In other words they should maintain considerable autonomy, but
nevertheless they should treat these groups as allies, as they treated the
unions as allies. But they shouldn�t ever let unions tell them what to do,
they shouldn�t let Van Jones tell them what to do. Partly because they seem
to know better, really.

So I don�t think that�s their biggest problem, how to deal with their
erstwhile supporters.

The danger of cooptation should be put in context. There have been some
clearly opportunistic instances of Democrats trying to capitalize on the
movement, such as the none-too-radical Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee attempting to build its mailing
list<http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/10/10/dccc-collects-signatures-with-i\
-stand-with-occupywallstreet-petition-while-obama-says-bankers-have-done-nothing\
-wrong/>through
a �I Stand with #OccupyWallStreet� petition. But is it really
possible that the Democratic Party would somehow swoop in and �take
control� of the #Occupy movement? It doesn�t seem like even a remote
possibility.

  Moreover, Peter Drier has made the important
point<http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.huffington\
post.com/peter-dreier/occupy-wall-street_b_1005708.html>that,
when it comes to social change, imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery. The fact that mainstream figures attempt to co-opt and advance
watered-down versions of movement demands (as they did with
once-impossibly-radical calls for �a progressive income tax, the eight-hour
day, the direct election of Senators, old age insurance, and voting rights
for African Americans�) is not a defeat, but a sign of victory. Of course,
if activists use this as an excuse to call it a day, that is a problem. But
if we treat it as an occasion to push for even greater changes, it is a
very positive thing.

  *Joining Forces, Gaining Power  *

One problem with the rhetoric of �cooptation� is that it casts the need to
expand the movement�s reach in a negative light. It leads figures such as
Chris Hedges, in a more-radical-than-thou *cri de
coeur*<http://www.alternet.org/story/152761/occupy_wall_street_is_a_movement_too\
_big_to_fail/?page=entire>,
to adopt right-wing talking points denouncing allies as �union bosses,�
rather than to approach coalition-building in a constructive manner. This
is unfortunate. For, while cooptation is something to be avoided, a much
more pressing and ongoing need for the #Occupy movement is fostering
solidarity.

Before #OccupyWallStreet ever existed, there were lots of people working to
fight banks, reverse foreclosures, and challenge corporate power. The
problem was that their efforts were isolated and almost universally ignored
by the media. The #Occupy movement has created a great opportunity for many
of these campaigns to see themselves as part of a unified fight and to
receive an added jolt of energy. In return, the more groups that sign on
and see themselves as part of the #Occupy effort, the more that movement is
able to sustain its status as a growing and dynamic force. It gains greater
numbers of participants, more diversity, and heightened credibility.

Many actions that different local occupations have embraced have grown out
of solidarity with groups that were already organizing to advance the
interests of the 99 percent. As just one of many examples, #OccupyLA joined
up with an anti-foreclosure action against several banks and successfully
compelled the reversal of at least one foreclosure decision. This
action<http://youtu.be/RGjFZpNWZ5I>�wonderfully
militant and effective�did not emerge out of the occupation itself.
Instead, it had already been organized by the Alliance of Californians for
Community Empowerment <http://www.calorganize.org/> (ACCE), an LA community
organization. But the fact that the #Occupy movement joined in solidarity
was a great boon to all involved. It added a ton of energy to ACCE�s direct
action. And, for the #Occupy folks, the positive media attention created by
the action generated greater excitement about the City Hall encampment and
helped bring a wider range of people to the occupation�s assemblies.

  When Piven argued that cooptation is not the #Occupy movement�s biggest
problem her interviewer replied, �What do you think their biggest problem
is?�

Piven gave a prescient answer: �Spreading the movement. Thinking of second,
third, fourth, fifth phases. Other forms of disruptive protest that are
punchier than occupying a square.�

She is right. If the #Occupy movement is to remain in the media spotlight
and continue gaining momentum, it must escalate. That could involve many
steps<http://www.alternet.org/economy/152721/6_places_to_occupy_next:_protest_th\
e_1_where_they_live,_work_and_play?page=entire>,
including occupying banks <http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=571>,
continuing to use direct action against foreclosures, and embracing
further international
days of
action<http://www.alternet.org/story/152752/occupy_wall_street_goes_global%3A_90\
0_protests_around_the_world%2C_thousands_in_times_square?akid=7722.6311.9XfHTj&r\
d=1&t=16>.
Solidarity will be an important part of all of these.

Within the call of �We Are the 99 Percent� is the idea that, while no one
can take over the movement�no single individual or group can declare it
over or announce that its ambitions have been satisfied�the coalition of
those invited to take part is vast. The movement draws power from its
reach. And that is no small part of its brilliance.

*This article and more, regularly updated, can be found here:  **
http://PROUT.Shows.it/* <http://prout.shows.it/>





.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Anonymous Vs. Los Zetas. Bank Transfer Day.
November 5th, 2011
I don't usually post Stratfor material, but in this case they have provided a
good article on the battle brewing between the clearest case of good vs. evil
that I have seen recently. Here is a struggle between a ruthless market driven
drug cartel and an anarchistic organization that is based in concepts of human
dignity and freedom. Greed vs. sharing, capitalism and the profit motive vs. the
collective interest, it is basically the same battle Occupy Wall Street is
fighting all over the world.

Today is divest �in- the- large- multinational- banks day. Occupy Wall Street
calls on people to transfer their funds from a large bank to a small community
bank or coop. If everyone did this, the major banks would in effect be only
business banks and we could quarantine our money from them to a much greater
extent. The next step is to get on the board of directors of these community
institutions and make sure they invest in enterprises that support the interests
of the people.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!! As John Lennon said "Remember, remember the 5th of
November."

������������������������-

From Stratfor

Anonymous vs. Zetas Amid Mexico's Cartel Violence

November 2, 2011 | 1701 GMT

By Scott Stewart

The online activist collective Anonymous posted a message on the Internet on
Oct. 31 saying it would continue its campaign against Mexican criminal cartels
and their government supporters despite the risks.

The message urged inexperienced activists, who might not be practicing proper
online security measures, to abstain from participating. It also urged
individuals associated with Anonymous in Mexico not to conduct physical pamphlet
drops, participate in protests, wear or purchase Guy Fawkes masks, or use Guy
Fawkes imagery in their Internet or physical-world activities. Guy Fawkes was a
British Roman Catholic conspirator involved in a plot to bomb the British
Parliament on Nov. 5, 1605. The British celebrate the plot's failure as Guy
Fawkes Day each Nov. 5. In modern times, the day has come to have special
meaning for anarchists. Since 2006, the style of the Guy Fawkes mask used in the
movie "V for Vendetta" has become something of an anarchist icon in the United
Kingdom and elsewhere.

Related Video
Dispatch: Anonymous' Online Tactics Against Mexican Cartels

It was no coincidence, then, that in an Oct. 6 video Anonymous activists set
Nov. 5 as the deadline for Los Zetas to release an Anonymous associate allegedly
kidnapped in Veracruz. The associate reportedly was abducted during an Anonymous
leaflet campaign called "Operation Paperstorm."

The Oct. 31 message acknowledged that the operation against Los Zetas, dubbed
"Operation Cartel," would be dangerous. It noted that some members of the
collective would form a group of trusted associates to participate in a special
task force to execute the operation. It asked supporters to pass information
pertaining to drug trafficking to the Operation Cartel task force for
publication on the Internet via a software tool developed by Anonymous that
permits the anonymous passing of information.

When discussing Anonymous, it is important to remember that Anonymous is not a
hierarchical organization, but rather a collective of activists. Individuals who
choose to associate themselves with the collective frequently disagree over
issues addressed by the collective and are free to choose which actions to
support and/or participate in.

With Nov. 5 approaching, and at least some elements of Anonymous not backing
down on their threats to Los Zetas, we thought it would be useful to provide
some context to the present conflict between Anonymous and Los Zetas and to
address some of its potential implications.

Context

The Mexican port city of Veracruz has been the epicenter of this event. Veracruz
has been a busy place over the past few months in terms of Mexico's cartel wars.
The port serves as a critical transportation hub for Los Zetas narcotics
smuggling. Because of this, STRATFOR has identified Veracruz as a bellwether for
determining Los Zetas' trajectory in the coming months.

In a major recent development in Veracruz, the Sinaloa cartel began an offensive
into the Zetas stronghold using the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG),
which, under the name "Matazetas" (Spanish for "Zeta killers"), conducted
high-profile body dumps of more than 50 alleged low-level Zetas operatives on
Sept. 20 and Sept. 22. On Oct. 25, Mexican marines arrested Carlos Arturo
Pitalua-Carillo, also known as "El Bam Bam," who was the Zetas' plaza boss in
Veracruz. The Zetas in Veracruz thus are feeling pressure from both the Mexican
government and the CJNG.

The Anonymous Internet collective entered this dynamic in August with its
activities in Veracruz. It is common knowledge that members of local, state and
federal governments in Mexico support various cartel groups. In the state of
Veracruz, it is generally believed that some members of the state government
support Los Zetas, the dominant cartel there. In response to this corruption,
some who have associated themselves with Anonymous launched Operation
Paperstorm. These activists distributed leaflets throughout Veracruz denouncing
the state government for supporting Los Zetas. They conducted leaflet
distributions Aug. 13, Aug. 20 and Aug. 29. They also released videos on the
Internet on Aug. 26 and Aug. 29 condemning the Veracruz state government.

Activities outside Veracruz also played a part in setting the stage. On Sept.
13, the bodies of two people who had been tortured and killed were hung from a
pedestrian overpass in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state. Signs left with the
bodies said Los Zetas had killed the pair because they had posted information
pertaining to the Zetas on blogs that specialize in reporting on the Mexican
cartels. On Sept. 26, the decapitated body of Marisol Macias Castaneda was found
in a park in Nuevo Laredo. Macias, who worked for a local newspaper, allegedly
posted on cartel blogs using the nickname "Laredo Girl." A message found with
her body said the Zetas killed her due to her online activities.

Following the death of Laredo Girl, Anonymous claimed responsibility for a
distributed denial of service attack against the official website of the state
of Veracruz. Although her murder occurred outside of the state, Anonymous said
its attack on the Veracruz website was in response to Laredo Girl's death. This
indicates that activists understand that Los Zetas are active in both areas and
suggests that Veracruz state-based activists are driving the Anonymous campaign
against Los Zetas.

Significantly, some individuals associated with Anonymous already were unhappy
with the state of Veracruz over its decision to prosecute two individuals who
had posted kidnapping reports on Twitter on Aug. 25 that proved false. According
to the reports, a group of children had been abducted from a Veracruz school.
The inaccurate reports allegedly caused some two dozen traffic accidents as
terrified parents rushed to the school to check on their children. The so-called
Twitter terrorists initially were charged with offenses that could have carried
a 30-year sentence. Some associated with Anonymous, which has absolute freedom
of speech on the Internet as one of its foundational principles, took umbrage at
the prospect of such stiff penalties � especially given the stark contrast with
the impunity enjoyed by many cartel figures in Mexico.

STRATFOR began to focus on the story following the Oct. 6 release of the video
in which Anonymous activists threatened to release information about individuals
cooperating with Los Zetas if the Zetas did not release the Anonymous activist
kidnapped during Operation Paperstorm. In light of the approaching Nov. 5
deadline, we published an analysis of the topic on Oct. 28; the topic
subsequently received a great deal of media coverage.

This publicity has generated a very interesting response from Anonymous that
emphasizes that it is a collective, not an organization. Some Anonymous
activists began to back off the issue, erasing online user accounts formerly
associated with the campaign, suggesting the operation against Los Zetas had
been a hoax and claiming that no activist had been kidnapped. Other activists
suggested that the campaign was dangerous, ill-advised and should be suspended.
Still other activists became more strident and determined in their posts, urging
that the campaign continue. As noted, Anonymous' collective nature means
activists can select the actions they participate in, including Operation
Cartel. It would only take one dedicated individual to continue the operation.

The will to continue was manifested Oct. 29 with the hacking of the personal
website of Gustavo Rosario Torres, the former attorney general of the Mexican
state of Tabasco. The site was defaced with a message from Anonymous Mexico
stating that Rosario is a Zeta. Rosario has long been accused in the Mexican and
international media of protecting Los Zetas, and videos long have circulated on
YouTube making the same charge. The hacking of his website thus did not provide
any startling revelation; Anonymous will have to uncover and publish original
and timely information if it hopes to do much damage to Los Zetas.

The determination by some activists to continue the operation against Los Zetas
also was reflected in the tone of the Oct. 31 message. Some activists associated
with Anonymous clearly feel compelled to continue with the campaign over what
they have characterized as an outpouring of public support in the wake of the
media coverage. According to their Oct. 31 video statement:

"We received many expressions of support and solidarity as well as the voices of
people crying for help. We must remember that we are on the side of the people,
and we cannot let down the people, especially in critical moments like the one
they currently live in."

We therefore anticipate that some Anonymous activists will continue the
campaign. We also believe that Los Zetas will respond.

Blowback

Mexico's various cartels long have used the Internet to trumpet their triumphs
on the battlefield and to taunt and even degrade their enemies. The cartels have
posted videos of the torture, execution and desecration of the corpses of
rivals. They also frequently monitor narcoblogs and sometimes even post on them.
As demonstrated by the September blogger killings in Nuevo Laredo, Los Zetas
appear to possess at least some rudimentary capability to trace online activity
to people in the physical world. They are known to employ their own team of
dedicated cyber experts and to have sources within the Mexican government.

In addition to technical intelligence, the Zetas can use old-fashioned human
intelligence to track down their online enemies. People sometimes discuss their
online identities with family and friends, and such information can be overheard
and passed to Los Zetas in return for money. This danger was recognized in the
Oct. 31 video from Anonymous that urges participants in their campaign not to
discuss their activities with anyone.

In past Anonymous actions, like the December 2010 attack against PayPal after
the WikiLeaks scandal broke, the U.S. and British governments arrested numerous
individuals associated with Anonymous who allegedly participated in the attacks.
In June 2011, Turkey arrested dozens of activists associated with Anonymous
actions conducted against the Turkish government in response to its plan to
establish a national Internet-filtering system. This indicates that some
activists associated with Anonymous are not nearly as anonymous as they would
like to be. Every action on the Internet leaves some sort of trail, making it
very difficult to be truly anonymous.

Like other Mexican cartels, Los Zetas do not take affronts lightly. Even if
Anonymous cannot provide information that damages Los Zetas smuggling
operations, the very fact that the collective has decided publicly to challenge
Los Zetas will result in some sort of response. The big question is whether the
Zetas possess the capability to trace the organizers of the Anonymous action?

One challenge with tracking an entity such as Anonymous is that it is
intentionally amorphous. It is also as transnational as the Internet, and it
would be unsurprising if many of those chosen to participate in the operation
against Los Zetas are located in the United Sates, Europe and other areas that
are outside the Zetas' immediate reach.

The amorphous nature of Anonymous can also cut the other way, however. If Los
Zetas abduct and execute random patrons at an Internet cafe, behead them and
place Guy Fawkes masks on their heads, it will be very difficult to prove that
they were not associated with Anonymous. Los Zetas also could execute random
people and claim they had provided Anonymous with information in order to
intimidate people from actually cooperating with Anonymous. As Anonymous noted
in its Oct. 31 video, this is dangerous business indeed.

The Big Picture

How the Mexican public reacts to the Anonymous operation must be watched. The
criminal cartels and their violence have deeply affected many people in Mexico's
middle and upper classes. STRATFOR talks to many people in Mexico who fear that
they or a family member will be kidnapped. In many communities, especially
places like Ciudad Juarez, Torreon, Monterrey and Veracruz, businessmen find
themselves in a terrible bind. They face ever-increasing extortion demands from
the cartels while their business revenues dwindle because the violence
associated with those same cartels has frightened people into not going out.
This is forcing many small businesses to close. It also is creating a great deal
of frustration and resentment.

At the same time, Mexico has become one of the most dangerous countries in the
world for journalists, and many media organizations practice heavy
self-censorship to protect themselves. In the wake of the September blogger
killings, some of the narcoblogs, like Blog del Narco, have exhibited strong
signs of self-censorship inspired by fear. As a result, many Mexicans believe
the mainstream media are not of any real assistance in the face of cartel
violence.

Mexican citizens also are frustrated with their government, which, as noted, is
well-known for corruption. This sentiment is feeding Anonymous' original
campaign in Veracruz. This frustration even has led some people to begin
discussing the creation of vigilante groups to fight the cartels � though this
has been attempted before in Mexico. As we saw in the case of La Familia
Michoacana, which began as such a vigilante group, vigilantism frequently does
not end well.

This is where Anonymous may fit in. With Mexican citizens unable to rely on
their government, the media or even armed vigilante groups for assistance, they
may embrace Anonymous, coming to view its form of cybervigilantism as an outlet
for their frustration. If Anonymous is perceived as a safe way to pass
information pertaining to cartel activities, we may see people from all over the
country begin to share intelligence. Such human intelligence could very well
prove to be far more damaging to the cartels than any information Anonymous
activists can dredge up electronically. As this operation is becoming more
widely publicized, the pool of people outside Mexico who might wish to
participate will likely grow. The number of people inside Mexico who wish to
provide information might grow as well.

Anonymous has taken on many powerful entities in the past, such as major
transnational corporations and governments. But the repercussions from
participating in such operations were never as grave for online activists as
they are in this case. Being identified and detained by Scotland Yard or the FBI
is a far different situation than being identified and detained by Los Zetas.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20111102-anonymous-vs-zetas-amid-mexico-cartel-vi\
olence?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=111103&utm_
term=sweekly&utm_content=SECtitle&elq=55ed
00ee593045b897d703f49c751894

������������������������-

From Radio Station KPIU Seattle

Movement to divest from big banks has its day Saturday

By Vanessa Romo

Frustrated consumers have something to say to big banks: It's not me � it's you.

And they plan to make it official on Bank Transfer Day Saturday.

Lashawna Bowman says it was just like dating a guy you know is no good�

"You know, there's just no caring. It's just money, money, money and greed,
greed, greed. And enough is enough. I'm done," Bowman said.

That's why � after 3 and half years � she's taking her money and leaving Chase
in honor of Bank Transfer Day.

An Occupy spin-off

The message, born out of the Occupy Los Angeles movement, is basic relationship
advice: if you're feeling taken for granted, break up and find someone new.
Someone who'll appreciate what you're worth.

In this case, a smaller, local bank or a credit union, which Bowman says make
you feel like they understand you.

"We're there for you. So now that this opportunity on Saturday has come up, I
want to be a part of that," she said.

Local credit union feeling the love

It's tough to gauge how much will be divested and the impact it'll have on big
banks � Chase, Wells Fargo or Bank of America � but so far, it's made local
credit unions like BECU especially attractive.

Todd Pietzche is a spokesman for the credit union.

"Typically in a normal month we would see anywhere between 6,000 and 7,000 new
members. And just in October we finished with almost 16,000 new members,"
Pietzche said.

He added they started noticing a swelling migration to BECU back in August. It's
meant longer wait times but they've hired more staff and customers are willing
to be patient.

Big banks step back from charges

A new survey from the Credit Union National Association that at least 650,000
consumers across the nation have joined credit unions in the past four weeks. As
the Los Angeles Times notes, that's more than the 600,000 customers who joined
credit unions during the entirety of 2010.

The association declares:

"They have joined credit unions since Sept. 29, when Bank of America (BofA)
unveiled its plans to charge $5 a month for debit cards. The public outcry the
past month has forced BofA and other big banks to reconsider their debit fees.
CUNA estimates that credit unions have added $4.5 billion in new savings
accounts."

More data

A story on Slate's blog states:

A second poll by Harris Interactive highlights the disparity between customers'
loyalty to the respective financial institutions. Nearly 90 percent of credit
union customers said they were extremely or very likely to stick with their
current institution, compared to only 40 percent of BofA customers. Other big
banks didn't fare much better: Only 46 percent of JP Morgan Chase's customers
and 54 percent of Wells Fargo/Wachovia's customers indicated a strong intention
to stay put.

John Hall, an American Bankers Association spokesperson, told Reuters that there
might be options for angry customers at their current institution, and urged
would-be account-closers to first search for a "better product at your own
bank."

Meanwhile, a number of big banks this week canceled plans to charge monthly
debit card fees. In a press release, Bank of America noted the changing
competitive marketplace and acknowledged the need to listen to customer
concerns.

http://www.kplu.org/post/movement-divest-big-banks-has-its-day-saturday

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105722
"Occupy" Movement Rolls to Rio
By Fab�ola Ortiz

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 3, 2011 (IPS) - Inspired by the movement for real
democracy and people's power that has spread to hundreds of cities
around the world, young Brazilians in Rio de Janeiro have created their
own version of "Occupy Wall Street", dubbed "Occupy Rio".

Following in the footsteps of Spain's "Indignados" (outraged people),
about 200 young people are carrying out a peaceful protest in one of the
main squares in Rio's city centre, where thousands of people pass by
every day.

Around 125 tents have been pitched in the Cinel�ndia square, where the
city council, the municipal theatre and the national library are
situated. The square has become the focal point of demonstrations
criticising consumerism, social inequality and the financial system.

Dozens of placards, reading "You are free", "Come out of your
living-room-prison, your life is worth much more than a soap opera
episode," or "Transform arms into art", express the sense of peaceful
protest and freedom that has inundated the plaza since Saturday Oct. 22.

The global wave of demonstrations against the handling of the financial
crisis has swept from Madrid, Barcelona and M�laga in Spain to New York,
Oakland and Seattle, and on to other capitals and large cities across
the globe.

Joining the global tide of protest, "Occupy Rio" is characterised by its
diversity and direct democracy through decision-making by assembly.

According to 18-year-old Eduardo de Oliveira Moraes, who is involved in
organising the movement's work groups, plurality is the hallmark of the
encampment.

Adopting a horizontal style of organising without hierarchies, people
meet in the square for dialogue and discussion, seeking consensus,
critiques or protests on widely divergent issues, including politics,
economics, culture and the environment.

"We're also protesting against corruption and all kinds of wavering in
the government," de Oliveira Moraes told IPS. He was one of the first to
show up in Cinel�ndia square at five a.m. on Saturday Oct. 22, ready to
start the demonstration.

"Everyone has their own reasons for being here. We have meetings and
work group activities every day. We started off thinking we would stay
for a week, but now we have no fixed date in mind to leave the square.
We are here because this is where we want to be; this square is publicly
owned and therefore belongs to us," he said.

The "Occupy Rio" movement is debating global issues like the financial
crisis. But it is also discussing local political issues, while building
bridges with local movements in the "favelas" or shanty towns, which are
organising against forced evictions caused by the preparations and
public works for the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, to
be hosted by this city.

Also on the movement's agenda are the social and environmental impacts
of hydroelectric dams in the Amazon jungle, like the Belo Monte project.

Although there are no leaders and the watchword is self-organisation, a
great deal of organising is necessary to keep the camp functioning. The
group of about 200 protestors share the essential jobs like cleaning,
security, and planning timetables for workshops and meetings, they
explained to IPS.

Food is provided by members of the camp themselves, or donated by city
centre restaurants.

"The movement's self-organisation is not easy; everything is done by
consensus. We are having some difficulties these days because of rain in
the city, but there is no shortage of food. People have been very
supportive and have given us tarpaulins and electricity generators,"
41-year-old Ronald Stresser told IPS.

The occupation of Cinel�ndia square will continue indefinitely, said
Stresser, who emphasised that new people are arriving every day, joining
in solidarity with the movement, "leaving their prejudices behind and
taking part in the debates."

The activist said the global wave of protests is a result of the
dissatisfaction and outrage people feel in an increasingly globalised
and consumerist world.

"The origin of the problem is our consumer society, and now that there
are seven billion people in the world, the situation has become
unsustainable," Stresser said, adding that it was time to raise global
awareness on the need for social changes.

"The common goal is to build a better world for everyone. And it's
possible. The movement has already swept across many cities worldwide.
We are getting stronger all the time," he said.

In Rio the movement has met with no opposition from the police, who have
apparently gotten used to the presence of the demonstrators in the square.

Twenty-seven-year-old Krishna Pada told IPS that the movement's weapon
of protest is poetry. "We are making poetry with our actions and our
words. We are dedicated to self-improvement, and what matters is what
each of us can contribute. The world that is controlled by money does
not represent us," he said.

Wander Ferreira, a 28-year-old philosophy student, joined the
sustainability group and looks after neglected flowerbeds in the city
centre.

"There are many neglected corners of the city centre that we are fixing
up, or converting into urban vegetable gardens to grow our own food.
It's very gratifying work; this is a unique experience in my life, and
in all our lives," he said. (END)


--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://original.antiwar.com/mbenjamin/2011/11/04/jailed-for-sailing-to-gaza-chal\
lenging-the-blockade/
Jailed for Sailing to Gaza, Challenging the Blockade
by Medea Benjamin and Robert Naiman, November 05, 2011

Two boats full of courageous passengers were on their way to Gaza when
they were intercepted on Friday, November 4, by the Israeli military in
international waters. We call the passengers courageous because they
sailed from Turkey on November 2 with the knowledge that at any moment
they might be boarded by Israeli commandos intent on stopping them �
perhaps violently, as the Israeli military did in 2010 when they killed
nine humanitarian aid workers on the Turkish boat named Mavi Marmara.

The boats � one from Canada and one from Ireland � were carrying 27
passengers, including press and peace activists from Ireland, Canada,
the United States, Australia, and Palestine. They were unarmed, and the
Israeli military knew that. They were simply peace activists wanting to
connect with civilians in Gaza, and the Israeli military knew that. Yet
naked aggression was used against them in international waters �
something that is normally considered an act of piracy.

The passengers on the boats were sailing to Gaza to challenge the
US-supported Israeli blockade that is crippling the lives of 1.6 million
Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They were sailing to stand up against
unaccountable power � the power of the Israeli government � that has
been violating the basic rights of the 5.5 million Palestinians that
live inside Israel�s pre-1967 borders or in the Occupied Territories.
They were sailing for us, civil society, who believe in human rights and
the rule of law.

The Arab Spring � which has now spread to cities across the United
States in the form of the "Occupy" movement, and has been echoed in
protests against economic injustice in Europe and Israel as well � has
fundamentally been a challenge to unaccountable power. Some countries
experiencing this protest wave are dictatorships under military rule or
ruled by monarchies; others are generally considered "democracies.� But
in all instances the majority feel that they have been shut out of
decision-making and have been harmed by policies benefiting a narrow
elite with disproportionate power.

The blockade of Gaza�s civilians is an extreme example of unaccountable
power. Palestinians in Gaza aren�t allowed to vote for Israeli or
American politicians. But due to political decisions taken in Israel and
the United States, Palestinians in Gaza are prevented from exporting
their goods, traveling freely, farming their land, fishing their waters
or importing construction materials to build their homes and factories.

We have been to Gaza before, where we have seen the devastation
firsthand. We have also been to Israel and the West Bank, where we have
seen how the Israeli government is detaining Palestinians at
checkpoints, building walls that cut them off from their lands,
demolishing their houses, arbitrarily imprisoning their relatives and
imposing economic restrictions that prevent them from earning a living.
We have seen how Palestinians, like people everywhere, are desperate to
live normal and dignified lives.

A UN Report released in September found that �Israel�s oppressive
policies [in Gaza] constitute a form of collective punishment of
civilians�, that these policies violate both international humanitarian
and human rights law, and that the illegal siege of Gaza should be
lifted.  The International Committee of the Red Cross also called the
blockade of Gaza a violation of international law because it constitutes
"collective punishment" of a civilian population for actions for which
the civilians are not responsible. The Red Cross is a neutral
humanitarian organization. It doesn�t usually go around making
pronouncements on matters of public policy. The fact that it has done so
in this case should be a strong signal to the international community
that the blockade of Gaza is extreme and must fall.

History has shown us again and again that when political leaders decide
it�s in their interest, then peace, diplomacy, negotiations are
possible. Recently, Israel and Hamas � with the help of the new Egyptian
government � successfully negotiated a prisoner exchange that had eluded
them for five years. In speeches, the Israeli government "opposes
negotiations with Hamas," and in speeches, Hamas "opposes negotiations
with Israel.� But when they decided it was in their interest, they had
no problem sitting down at the table and hammering out an agreement.

If Israel and Hamas can negotiate an agreement to release prisoners,
then surely Israel and Hamas can negotiate an agreement to lift the
blockade on Gaza�s civilians.

But the people of Gaza can�t wait for political leaders to decide it�s
in their interest to negotiate, so it�s up to us � as civil society � to
step up the pressure. That�s what these waves of boats are doing. That�s
what the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is doing.

More than a year ago, President Obama called the blockade unsustainable.
"It seems to us that there should be ways of focusing narrowly on arms
shipments, rather than focusing in a blanket way on stopping everything
and then, in a piecemeal way, allowing things into Gaza," he said. That
hasn�t happened. Why not? Why shouldn�t it happen now? What does
blocking Palestinian exports from Gaza to Europe or keeping people from
getting medical treatment abroad have to do with arms shipments?

The Israeli military stopped these two small ships carrying peace
activists to Gaza, but they won�t stop the Palestinians who are
demanding freedom, and they won�t stop the solidarity movement. We won�t
stop challenging the blockade on Gaza�s civilians � by land and by sea�
until the blockade falls. And we won�t stop challenging the denial of
Palestinian democratic aspirations until those aspirations are realized.


--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

Just added at the Bureau of Public Secrets website:

THE SITUATIONISTS AND THE OCCUPATION MOVEMENTS (1968/2011)
http://www.bopsecrets.org/recent/situationists-occupations.htm




* * *

BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS
P.O. Box 1044, Berkeley CA 94701
http://www.bopsecrets.org

"Making petrified conditions dance by singing them their own tune."

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2011/11/249530.php

Occupy the courts!
by Janet C. Phelan
Monday, Nov. 07, 2011 at 6:11 PM


writejanet@...
Expand the #OWS movement to include  Occupy the courts!

The impetus behind #OWS is to bring together
  the 99% who do not own the world and to provide a venue to address the
greed and corruption which has brought America to its knees. By focusing
  the attention on Wall Street and the financial institutions, #OWS may
be missing a prime target for the corruption that has taken over our
country—the courts.


  Because of decisions rendered by our
courts, millions of people are losing their homes. Because of decisions
rendered by courts, families are being torn apart and children are being
  taken from their parents. Because of decisions rendered by courts, our
elderly and disabled are losing all their rights and all access to their
  assets through guardianship proceedings which only stand to benefit
attorneys and the guardians. These “civil” proceedings are shredding the
  most fundamental unit of our society, which is the family.


  All of these issues are adjudicated by judges.  California attorney Richard
Fine (http://sites.google.com/site/freerichardfine/Home)
  attempted to address illegal payments received by State Superior court
judges, via “special benefits” afforded the judges by California
counties. For his groundbreaking work on this issue, he was rewarded
with a year and a half in jail.  Concerns have also been raised on the
massive amounts of money being laundered by judges through their home
loans, a revelation which demands further scrutiny, as judges have been
found to be systematically taking out loans far in excess of what they
could reasonably pay back so rapidly on a judges’ salary
(http://www.tulanelink.com/tulanelink/judicialbribes_10a.htm).  The question
that must be asked is--Who is paying back these loans?



   Both Fine’s work and the questions raised by judges’ loans impel the
question as to whether we have an impartial judiciary or simply a crew
of paid off legal hit men, masquerading in black robes.


  A
  movement to expand the focus of #OWS to include a general occupation of
  the courts could take several different manifestations. For example, on
  a designated day each week, a local Occupy group could all enter a
nearby courthouse and sit in on a certain department (if space
permits!). Or, there could be a contingent of a local Occupy group which
  could make the courthouse its focal point and sit in on proceedings
every day.  Each Occupy group could come to its own determination as to
how best to occupy the courthouses.


  The seat of power is
also occupied by the judges, not only by the financial institutions. If
we are to truly take back our country, we must occupy the very places
that those who have hijacked our democratic institutions now control.


  Occupy the courts!
www.janetphelan.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://anoncentral.tumblr.com/post/12409353866/for-the-99-the-new-common-sense-m\
ust-distribute

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/urgent-travel-expenses-needed-for.html

Tuesday, November 8, 2011







URGENT: Travel Expenses Needed for Activist Post Reporter to Speak at Bioweapons
Conference in Switzerland





Janet PhelanActivist Post

Dear Friend,



The multiple violations by the U.S.A. of the international biological
weapons convention (BWC) has put the entire planet at risk.  Biological
weapons are far more dangerous than nuclear in their ultimate
destructive capability. It is my intent to travel to Geneva, Switzerland
  this December to attend the BWC for the purpose of alerting the
international community to the risk posed by the actions of the U.S.,
whose illegal bioweapons program evidences a brazen disregard for all
human life.



Here are a few of my articles discussing this issue:
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/06/concerns-continue-to-mount-on-us.html
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april232011/bio-weapons-jp.php
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/january282011/bioweapons-treaty-jp.php

In
  addition, I have been interviewed on a number of radio shows about the
seriousness of this threat, including WBAI, The Alex Jones Show, KSKQ,
The Unsolicited Opinion (Republic Broadcasting Network) and  Truth Quest
  (Oracle Broadcasting)—to name a few.

After
  this December, the BWC will not meet for another five years.
Contributions are needed to further this effort. Geneva is a very
expensive city and a lower-end hotel room runs around $250 US a night.
The conference spans over two weeks and I am seeking assistance in
defraying these costs. Please go to my website
  and donate through PayPal! And as an added precaution against a
WikiLeaks-type PayPal snafu, please send me an email
(janetcphelan@...) telling me of your contribution. I will confirm
  receipt of all such emails, and only by my email confirmation can you
be assured  that your contribution was received.

Blessings and a long and safe life,


Janet Phelan
www.janetphelan.com



Janet
  Phelan is an investigative  journalist whose  articles have appeared in
  the Los Angeles Times, The San Bernardino  County Sentinel, The Santa
Monica Daily Press, The Long Beach Press  Telegram, Oui Magazine and
other regional and national publications.  Janet specializes in issues
pertaining to legal corruption and addresses the heated subject of adult
  conservatorship, revealing  shocking information about the
relationships between courts and shady  financial consultants.  She also
  covers issues relating to international bioweapons treaties.  Her
poetry has been published in Gambit,  Libera, Applezaba Review, Nausea
One and other magazines. Her first  book, The Hitler Poems, was
published in 2005. She currently resides  abroad.  You may browse
through her articles (and poetry) at janetphelan.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://occupydenver.org/occupy-denver-elects-leader/
November 8, 2011 · 12:39 pm
↓ Jump to Comments
OCCUPY DENVER ELECTS LEADER

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT
Occupy Denver
Attn: Media-PR Committee
media-pr@...
occupydenver.org
OCCUPY DENVER ELECTS LEADER

In response to Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s insistence that Occupy
Denver choose leadership to deal with City and State officials, and
drawing inspiration from the notion that corporations are people, Occupy
Denver’s General Assembly has elected a leader: Shelby, a three year old
Border Collie. “Shelby is closer to a person than any corporation: She
can bleed, she can breed, and she can show emotion. Either Shelby is a
person, or corporations aren’t people,” said a Shelby supporter at the
time of her election.

Occupy Denver reserves the right to alter leadership status, but for
now, Shelby exhibits heart, warmth, and an appreciation for the group
over personal ambition that Occupy Denver members feel are sorely
lacking in the leaders some of them have voted for on national, state,
and local levels. Accordingly, Occupy Denver looks forward to
communication with Mayor Hancock and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper
sometime this week to introduce their leadership.

Newly-elected leader Shelby will be leading this Saturday’s Occupy
Denver march against Corporate Personhood, and invites all other civic
minded dogs (and their leash-holders) to join.

- END -



--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5
www.freethecuban5.com
freethecuban5@...
718-601-4751
 
ARTIST BENEFIT FOR RENE GONZALEZ OF THE CUBAN 5!

Rene reunited with his father the day of his release on Oct. 7th!
 Sat. Dec. 10th, 2011 2pm-4pm
Casa de Las Americas
182 E. 111th St.(btwn. Lexington Ave. and 3rd Ave.)
 
Take the 6 train to E. 110th St.Suggested Donation: $5-10 (no one will be turned
away)


On Friday Oct. 7th, Rene Gonzalez of the Cuban 5 was released on parole and
returned to Miami, where Cuban 5’s unjust trial took place! The Cuban 5 are
five U.S. held political prisoners incarcerated for fighting against terrorism
in the United States and Cuba.

Miami is a city full of right wing anti-revolutionary Cuban Americans who could
harm Rene. He has not seen his wife in 13 years, has no family in Miami and is
being forced to spend the next three years there to serve his parole, instead of
going back home to Cuba.
Join The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5 for our Artist benefit
for Rene Gonzalez.
Let Rene know that New York City loves him! Come out and enjoy this amazing
afternoon of art, food, and film!
Poets/Film:Papoleto Melendez
 
Sandra Maria Estevez
 
Louis Reyes Rivera
 
Rafael Landron
 The Film: Will the real terrorist please stand up by Saul Landau: This film
chronicles half a century of hostile US-Cuba relations by telling the story of
the “the Cuban five”, intelligence agents sent to penetrate Cuban exile
terrorist groups in Miami and now serving long prison sentences. The film
highlights decades of assassinations and sabotage at first backed then ignored
by the very government that launched a “war against terrorism.” In the film,
viewers see leading terrorists, now in their 80s, recounting their deeds, and
Cuban state security officials explaining why they infiltrated agents into
violent Miami exile groups. The film, featuring Danny Glover and 84 year old
Fidel Castro in key scenes, raises and tries to answer the question: what did
Cuba do to deserve such hostile treatment?Our goal is to raise money for his
transition from prison to the outside.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The American voting public seems to have been roused out of its normal apathy
and voted on issues in an off year election that shows the basic left tendency
of the public when they vote. Generally only the right wingers and hard core
political junkies vote in off year elections. This is a good sign for Obama, and
an indication that Occupy Wall Street reflects the views of more Americans than
not. This indicates that we should be pushing hard for saving Medicare, Social
Security and jobs for Americans, and not giving into the right wingers who want
to force austerities on the working populace in the name of budget control.

The opposite trend seems to be occurring in Europe. As economic instability
rises, there is the tendency to scapegoat and these tend to be non-natives from
third world countries or Eastern Europe. The tendency for males and the under
thirty to participate or agree with the hard right in Europe is discouraging,
showing a lack of class consciousness and a failure of the left to mobilize the
youth. The fact that many of the socialist parties are participating in the
austerity plans indicates to the Youth that the answer may be in another
direction. Unfortunately they are turning right instead of to the hard left.
Whether this is an anomaly or a trend is to be seen. But it is true that the
Nazi's gained power in the midst of a depression.
They were voted into office.

������������������������-

From Guardian.uk

Obama's 2012 hopes boosted as Democrats celebrate election victories

Successes in Ohio, New Jersey, Arizona and Mississippi signal a return to the
American left, lifting Obama's hopes for re-election
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 November 2011 14.05 EST

Ohio voters overwhelmingly voted to kill off proposed anti-labour legislation
that had been backed by the Tea Party movement.

Democrats were on Wednesday celebrating a string of election victories that saw
the conservative agenda being rolled back across the country � and that offered
a glimmer of hope that Barack Obama might be re-elected to the White House next
year.

The biggest boost for Obama came in Ohio, one of the key swing states that could
determine his fate in November next year. He could be helped by the mobilisation
of Democratic activists and the unions in the state, where voters overwhelmingly
voted to kill off proposed anti-labour legislation backed by the Tea Party
movement.

Political analysts suggested the mood in the country may be changing, and that
last year's sweeping congressional election wins may mark a highpoint for
conservatives, in particular the Tea Party. But they also cautioned against
reading too much into Tuesday's election results, and stressed that the 2012
White House election remained tight.

The campaign to re-elect Obama, based in Chicago, sent activists to Ohio to work
alongside unions to defeat proposed anti-union legislation by governor John
Kasich, who was elected last November with the help of the Tea Party movement.
The proposed legislation was overwhelmingly rejected by 61% to 39% after a
campaign in which unions invested millions of dollars.

There were wins, too, for the Democrats and the progressive movement in
referendums and state elections in Mississippi, Arizona, New Jersey and
elsewhere.

There was consolation for the Republicans in elections to the state legislature
in Virginia, another swing state in the 2012 White House race.

Michael McDonald, a politics professor at George Mason University, who
specialises in number-crunching, said: "The Democrats are a bit more fired up
than we thought they were. They were successful in many places � A little bit of
the air has been let out of the Tea Party."

The wins on Tuesday hint at a reawakening of the left, a trend that began
earlier this year with mass protests in Wisconsin against anti-union legislation
similar to those proposed in Ohio, and the emergence in recent months of the
Occupy Wall Street movement.

The defeat in Ohio may blunt moves elsewhere by governors considering anti-union
legislation. Kasich, speaking to reporters, did not say what his next step would
be beyond that he would take "a deep breath and spend some time reflecting on
what happened here".

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, which led the union effort against the
proposed legislation, described it as a victory for "those who spend their time
scapegoating workers". Under the legislation, firefighters, police and teachers
would have lost many of their rights, including collective bargaining.

The big surprise on Tuesday night was in Mississippi, where polls had suggested
conservatives would succeed in introducing a measure that would have defined
life as starting at conception and would have banned abortion even in cases of
rape or incest. But it too was defeated, dispelling the idea that America is
trending rightwards on social issues.

In Arizona, Russell Pearce, the Republican senator who was the architect of that
state's draconian anti-immigration laws, was ousted. In New Jersey, Democrats
made inroads in state legislature elections in spite of massive spending against
them in the campaign by Republican governor Chris Christie.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/09/democrats-obama-election-victories-2\
012

����������������������

From France 24

.

Latest update: 09/11/2011

European far-right on the rise online

Inspired by the tens of thousands that have `liked' far-right political groups
such as France's National Front party online, a new study published Monday
examined who exactly are the supporters of Europe's increasingly popular
nationalist factions.

By Rachel HOLMAN

When Marine Le Pen, head of France's far-right Front National party, posted a
wall photo of herself on her official Facebook page last week, 417 people jumped
to `like' it, 30 people `shared' it, and 95 people left comments, one of which
read "President Marine" with a heart shaped emoticon next to it.

Inspired by the type of endorsements exhibited on Le Pen's Facebook page,
British think tank Demos conducted the first-ever large-scale quantitative study
of who exactly comprises Europe's increasingly popular far-right political
factions. Published on Monday, the report found that the far-right's growing
support base is young and online.

Even though the study looked at samples from several countries across the
continent, the report could have particular significance for France, which is
set to hold presidential elections in May.

"There are tens of thousands of people who are affiliated with [France's
far-right political party] the Front National or who have `liked' the Front
National. What we wanted to do was to find out who these people are", said
Jonathan Birdwell, one of the study's authors.

Perceived erosion of national culture and values

Placing targeted ads on Facebook group pages dedicated to 14 different far-right
political parties or grass roots organisations, Demos was able to collect data
from more than 10,000 users, in 11 European countries*.

What they discovered was a growing support for hardline nationalist politics
across Europe � particularly among men and the under 30s. Disillusioned with
their own governments and the European Union, many of the survey's respondents
listed immigration, the perceived erosion of national culture and values, and
Islamic extremism as their chief reasons for sympathising with far-right
populist movements.

More important still, the study also points out that the number of people
supporting far-right political groups online often outweighs actual party
membership. While many in the past would argue that this data could be
attributed to the fact that the Internet allows people to express themselves
with a certain degree of anonymity, these supporters are not merely `liking'
from the safety of their own homes � their online activity carries into offline
activism as well.

According to the study, 67 percent of online far-right supporters voted for
their party in the last general or national election. On top of that, the
report's authors found that the percentage of respondents that said they
participated in protests or demonstrations was significantly higher than the EU
average.

http://www.france24.com/en/20111107-study-growing-online-support-europe-far-righ\
t-politics-elections-le-penn-france

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/occupy-wall-street-welcome-to-the-occu\
pation-20111110
Inside Occupy Wall Street
How a bunch of anarchists and radicals with nothing but sleeping bags
launched a nationwide movement
by: Jeff Sharlet

It started with a Tweet � "Dear Americans, this July 4th, dream of
insurrection against corporate rule" � and a hashtag: #occupywallstreet.
It showed up again as a headline posted online on July 13th by
Adbusters, a sleek, satirical Canadian magazine known for its mockery of
consumer culture. Beneath it was a date, September 17th, along with a
hard-to-say slogan that never took off, "Democracy, not corporatocracy,"
and some advice that did: "Bring tent."

On August 2nd, the New York City General Assembly convened for the first
time in Lower Manhattan, right by the market's bronze icon, "Charging
Bull," snorting in perpetuity. It wasn't the usual protest crowd. "The
traditional left � the unions, the progressive academics, the community
organizations � wanted nothing to do with this in the beginning," says
Marisa Holmes, a 25-year-old filmmaker from Columbus, Ohio, who was
working on a BBC documentary called Creating Freedom, about why people
rebel. "I think it's telling that, of the early participants, so many
were artists and media makers."

Even the instigators and architects present at the creation marvel at
how things just happened. "It was a magic moment," says Kalle Lasn,
Adbusters' 69-year-old co-founder. "After that, things took on a life of
their own, and then it was out of our hands."

Adbusters' call to arms had been timid by the standards of the movement
quickly taking form. The magazine had proposed a "worldwide shift in
revolutionary tactics," but their big ideas went no further than
pressuring Obama to appoint a presidential commission on the role of
money in politics. In Lasn's imagination, though, that would be just the
start. "We knew, of course, that Egypt had a hard regime change where a
torturous dictator was removed," he says, "but many of us felt that in
America, a soft regime change was possible."

Possible, but not likely. They were still thinking in inches. "To be
perfectly honest, we thought it might be a steppingstone, not the
establishment of a whole thing," says David Graeber, a 50-year-old
anthropologist and anarchist whose teaching gig at Yale was not renewed,
some suspect, because he took part in radical actions. It was Graeber
who gave the movement its theme: "We are the 99 percent." He also helped
rescue it from the usual sorry fate of the left in America, the schisms
and infighting over who's in charge. He had shown up at the August 2nd
meeting thinking it was an Adbusters thing; he was surprised to find a
rally dominated by the antiquated ideas of the Cold War left. "This is
bullshit," Graeber thought. He recognized a Greek anarchist organizer,
Georgia Sagri, and with her help identified kindred spirits. "We looked
around. I didn't recognize faces, everybody was so young. I went by
T-shirts � Zapatistas, Food Not Bombs." Anarchists in name or
inclination. He calls them the "horizontal crowd" because they loathe
hierarchy. "It was really just tapping on shoulders. And a lot of people
said, 'Shit, yeah.'"

They set up a circle in a nearby park, dubbed it the New York City
General Assembly and got down to talking about how they'd pull off the
occupation. They were inspired by something they'd read on the Adbusters
website, a quote from Spanish political theorist Raimundo Viejo, who was
active in the revolts across Europe this year. "The anti-globalization
movement was the first step on the road. Back then, our model was to
attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf
who led the pack, and those who followed behind. Now the model has
evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people."

But the reality was, they only numbered about 60 people. "You always
fantasize," says Graeber. "But at some level, you've given up on
thinking it's really going to work." They had no money. And they were
planning to take over one of the most heavily policed public spaces on
the planet. "Everybody was talking about occupying Wall Street," says
Marina Sitrin, author of an oral history of revolution called
Horizontalism. "Having been around NYPD for two decades, I kind of
chuckled to myself and decided not to share what I thought at the time
was a wise perspective, which is we should prepare for everybody to get
arrested." And that'd be the end of it, another short, sharp chapter in
the little-read book of the modern American left.

Adbusters had called for 20,000 bodies; only 2,000 showed up on
September 17th. And maybe 100 of them slept over that first night in
Zuccotti Park, a block-long granite plaza tucked between skyscrapers a
couple of blocks from Ground Zero. The next night, there were a few
more, and on Monday morning, they were still there. There was a police
raid on Tuesday, and the little press the occupation got was mocking:
The New York Times sent an entertainment reporter, who made fun of the
protesters. In the days that followed, the few grew in numbers, a
demographic that didn't conform to media clich�s: a gritty spiral jetty
of anarchist punks and out-of-work construction workers and teachers who
sleep in the park and rise early to get to school. Cooks and nannies and
librarians, lots of librarians, and Teamsters and priests and
immigrants, legal and otherwise, and culture jammers, eco-warriors,
hackers, and men and women in Guy Fawkes masks, an army of stunt doubles
from V for Vendetta, all joined by young veterans of the Arab Spring and
the revolts in Greece and Spain � actual revolutionaries who had
overthrown dictators and made Western nations shake.

Now there are more than 1,600 occupations around the country and the
world, some big, most small, some no more than one angry soul on the
side of the road with a sign that says "We are the 99 percent." They are
in Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Oakland, Seattle and
Nashville; in London, in Sydney, in Cape Town, Tokyo and Sao Paulo. By
November, Occupy Wall Street was serving more than 3,000 meals every day
from its free kitchen, stocked mostly with donated food. At night, a
rotating cast of as many as 500 bed down in the park, many of them using
blankets and sleeping bags provided by the occupation. There's a library
with some 4,500 cataloged volumes � everything from the Communist
Manifesto to He's Just Not That Into You � an all-volunteer medical
staff to provide free health care, a station that gives out hand-rolled
cigarettes if you want them.

Six weeks in, when Marina Sitrin sat down to collect her thoughts about
the movement she had helped start, words failed. So she began with a
slogan � "my favorite chant, preferably sung: This is what democracy
looks like." The kind of thing you'd hear shouted at every rally against
a war or a law or a reactor for the past 20 years. But it wasn't true
anymore. This isn't just what democracy looks like, say the occupiers,
it's what it feels like.

One of the basic premises of the Occupy movement is the idea that
democracy exists for most Americans as little more than an unhappy
choice between two sides of the same corporate coin. "We've been so
alienated from our own sense of agency that being asked to be part of
any real decision is exciting," a woman in her late thirties who calls
herself Beatrix tells me. She's one of the old hands, close to the core
of nearly every major radical action in New York of the past decade. So
she's a little jaded, but even so, she's startled by what's happening:
"Movements usually spend a lot of time on education, telling people why
they need to come to the demonstration. This is exactly the opposite.
The people came. Now we're all deciding together what happens."

"Right off the bat I was addicted," says Jesse LaGreca, sipping a beer
at a fireman's bar near the park. Two hundred and fifty pounds, with
wiseguy eyes and a permanent ruddy flush, LaGreca looks like he grew up
on a bar stool in a place like this. He has a decade-plus of dead-end
jobs behind him. The best was managing a L'Occitane store in the West
Village � $15 an hour, no health insurance. Lately, he's been making his
living as a writer, posting deeply researched rants against the
Republicans on the liberal blog Daily Kos and asking for donations. "You
put up a �Pay�Pal link and tell people, 'Dude, I'm fucked. Can you help
me?'" Just before heading down to Occupy Wall Street, he wrote a post
called "If I light myself on fire, do you think these bastards will
notice?" It was a tribute to Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor
who did just that, igniting the Arab Spring. LaGreca also asked for a
MetroCard.

"I'm not gonna lie," LaGreca says. "First thing I saw at the park was
the topless girls." He knows how that sounds. "Can't help it, dude. But
then I saw the food lines" � the Occupy Wall Street kitchen, feeding all
comers � "and then I saw the books. I'm a nerd, man. I read and read."
He dropped out of high school in the 11th grade, but continued his
education on the job as a school janitor in New Jersey. "Read all of
Thoreau, Emerson, Shakespeare. Read a lot of Dostoyevsky. I was a shitty
janitor."

So there were books, free food and women, but that wasn't what kept him
there. "I see people talking. Everybody's talking, man, and I can talk,
too." He didn't just have a voice. He had amplification � the human
microphone. On the fourth day of the occupation, a former science
teacher named Justin Wedes was speaking to the crowd through a megaphone
when a policeman threw him to the ground, the first of a series of rough
arrests that morning. "Just to intimidate people," recalls Graeber. One
man's face was ground into a flower bed, another dragged, cuffed, until
his hands bled, another left gasping, denied his inhaler. The cops moved
in, citing a law prohibiting the use of electronic amplification. This
turned out to be a lucky break: Without conventional means, the
occupiers would have to figure out a new way to hear one another.

Sitrin, schooled in the factory takeovers of Argentina, which followed
that country's economic collapse, had an ingenious solution: "the
people's mic." One person speaks, all repeat, the words rippling through
the crowd. "Mic check!" it begins with a single voice. "Mic check!"
thunders the assembly. It's absurd, its inherent humor and brevity
undercutting the wordy earnestness that usually makes political meetings
unbearable. "My concern"/"MY CONCERN"/"is deeper"/"IS DEEPER"/"than
sleeping bags!"/"THAN SLEEPING BAGS!"

"Cops made a huge mistake," says LaGreca. "The people's mic, it's such a
unifying force. Almost like a choir. Like a modern religious revival.
But it's a civil revival. Down here, we're becoming citizens."

The people came. and then they stayed. Occupations are literally about
refilling space � parks and plazas, a hollowed-out public sphere. That
begins with bodies, accompanied by noise. Which is where the drums come
in, bongos and tablas and tambourines and full drum kits with snares. In
the beginning, the drummers drummed as long as their arms could flail,
sometimes 12 hours a day. The noise was so loud it was like a wall on
the western edge of the park. At first the drums were exciting, even if
you weren't really a drum-circle kind of person, which most of the
occupiers weren't. But then they got annoying. Like when you were trying
to sleep. Or talk. Or hold a general assembly.

One of the first times the General Assembly asked the drummers to quiet
down, they simply moved their drums farther down the park. Another time,
the drummers said what they were doing was sacred; they'd quiet down in
a little while (they didn't). "This movement would not be here right now
if we didn't do what we did, by playing all day," a drummer boasted. One
night they grew so rowdy, they began to drown out the General Assembly
altogether. So the first order of democracy was to bring the drummers,
many of whom did not want to stop drumming long enough to talk, into the
assembly. A lot of them weren't interested. "Aggro" was the word you
started hearing around the camp. "Scary" was another. What was to be done?

The drummers did it themselves, imperfectly but "horizontally," through
self-regulation rather than "vertical" rule imposed from above. They
pulled themselves into a "working group," one of the key units of
organization in the occupation � there are 82 as of this writing and
there will almost certainly be more tomorrow. The drummers called their
group Pulse and agreed to lay down their sticks for a while to attend
general assemblies.

"John" � that's all � a compact man, all taut vein and muscle, with a
shock of wiry gray-black hair, spoke for Pulse one night, arms twitching
in just a T-shirt on a cold evening. "We," he said. "We," the crowd
said. "Want to respect you." Back came the echo, a call-and-response
through which everybody, apparently, respected everybody. But John
wasn't satisfied. "But we want respect too!" he shouted bitterly. The
drummers, he reminded the General Assembly, had restricted themselves to
two-hour sessions, noon to two and four to six. But there was a move
afoot to cut them back to only one two-hour drumathon. "We are the
movement's heartbeat!" John shouted. "You're cutting out your heartbeat!"

To which another speaker, an earnest young woman named Linda, responded,
"I have a clarifying question. How is it that one group can claim to be
my heartbeat?"

The first night that I stayed at Zuccotti Park, bodies were laid out
like tiles, head to toe, in circles and blocked out in squares and the
occasional heap. There were street-sleeping pros, homeless and crusty
punks, wrapped up in tarps, a few people on air mattresses with fluffy
pillows. I didn't actually sleep. I paced among the tarp-covered bodies,
sat on the steps, browsed the library, drank coffee from the food trucks
open 24/7. The second night, after beers with LaGreca and a few other
occupiers, I followed his friend Austin, a college dropout � a casualty
of his student loans � who works with autistic children, to the Comfort
Station for some bedding of my own. "We'll set you up on the margins,"
said Austin. "That way you can get out if you need to."

Twice I woke up. Once when a squat woman with dreads down to her knees
shuffled by with a broom, a cleaning detail, and woke another sleeper,
who stood up with his sleeping bag wrapped around him, stumbled, and
gave up, letting it drop to reveal a sculpted body, naked but for dog
tags. And a second time when a deranged man, top-heavy like a bulldog,
punched the air above my head, daring anyone to take a shot at him. The
occupation's security, thin-limbed men with walkie-talkies, spread their
arms out like birds and surrounded him. "We love you, man," they said,
over and over, containing but never touching. Finally he fled; the scene
was too strange for conventional crazy.

If Occupy is "semireligious," which is how many at the park describe it,
and "a spiritual insurrection," in the words of Adbusters senior editor
Micah White, then its rituals might be counted as these: First,
occupation itself. Second, the General Assembly. Third, the kitchen and
the food line. And finally, sleep, lying among your comrades, everyone
vulnerable, everyone absurd, stretched out between the coffee trucks and
the police cruisers, under the watchful eye of a mobile NYPD
surveillance tower jacked up over a truck.

When I returned a week later, the scene had darkened. "It started with
punks and nice academic anarchists and grad students and labor
organizers," said a journalist who'd slipped into the movement. "Then it
got really mainstream. But now it's like a circus." The human mic wasn't
as loud. The sanitation group threatened to strike. There were more
signs that made no sense at all (my favorite: "Alligator Fuck Housed
Me," followed by a frowny face). There were suspicions of police
infiltration and accusations of treason. And the people who ran the
kitchen, confronted by street people in need of more care than a protest
camp can provide and sometimes given to violence, revolted, serving only
rice. They even proposed a fast. The other organizers would have none of
it. "In this camp, the bullshit flows in certain directions sometimes,"
said one participant at a daily coordinators' meeting, but that would be
no excuse for starving anybody. "Everybody eats," chimed in another
coordinator. "Junkie or tourist, a donator or a worker � everybody eats."

And then there were the tents. Zuccotti, renamed Liberty Plaza by
occupiers, had become a tent city. For some people, the turning point
occurred the night the drummers tried to drown out the people's mic at
General Assembly, but I think it was the tents. They have proved to be
one of Occupy Wall Street's most contentious issues. At the start of the
protests, the rapper Lupe Fiasco donated 50 tents, but the police tore
them down. In mid-October, members decided to try again, putting up a
medical tent. Police moved in to dismantle it, but Jesse Jackson
happened to be visiting the camp and put his body in the way. Cops on
the scene got the word from on high that it wasn't worth it to try and
arrest him. "Jesse threw down for us," LaGreca says. Soon, the park at
night was filled with the clickety-click of tent legs crackling into
assembly.

With the tents came a new kind of territory: turf, even private
property. The park's sobriety, an agreed-upon principle, began to erode.
The police reportedly started directing street people to the park but
refused to help when some got out of control. "You've got a right to
express yourself," went the cop's refrain. "He's got a right to express
himself." Junkies came and then the people who supply them. Some tents
became shooting galleries. Rumors began to circulate � that there'd been
a stabbing, that someone was running around with an AIDS-infected
needle, that the hacker group Anonymous had a plan to destroy the credit
ratings of the cops. A man who worked in the kitchen was arrested for
sexual assault.

By late October, there were three levels of internal security. The
kitchen closed at eight. The 24/7 library rolled up around midnight.
Liberty Park is a city now, and it has hours. There's even a
town-planning committee that has held meetings at 16 Beaver Street, in
an oddly shaped room with a movie screen and a grand piano.

But here's the thing: Anyone can still join. It's another old protest
slogan metamorphosed. "Whose streets?" would go the call. "Our streets,"
came the reply. Now it's personal. Whose city? Your city, there for the
making. All you have to do is show up.

Reporters keep sniffing around for leaders, but while it's true that the
movement has spawned celebrities � like LaGreca, who lambasted a Fox
News reporter in a YouTube clip that went viral � its resistance to
organized leadership has proved enduring. Kalle Lasn is simply watching
in awe from his home in Vancouver. David Graeber left for Austin four
days after the occupation started. Marina Sitrin stays active in the
legal team dedicated to working with Occupy Wall Street's arrestees
(there have been almost 1,000 arrests in New York and more than 3,000
movementwide, as of this writing), but she's far enough removed from the
action that LaGreca has never heard of her, just as the thousands who
have joined the camp for a night have never heard of him, either. The
evasion of organized leadership that for many began as a tactic �
leaders are targets and weak links, subject to prosecution and co-option
� has now grown into a principle.

Which left the biggest questions � What is Occupy trying to say, and who
will be its voice? � with no conventional answers. The press found this
maddening. It "doesn't really take you to a particular bumper-sticker
action," declared a puzzled Gerald Seib at The Wall Street Journal � he
couldn't imagine any other worthwhile outcome. Even some within the
movement have their doubts. "You don't seriously believe this is a
leaderless movement, do you?" Cecily McMillan, a 23-year-old graduate
student at the New School, asks me one day. Not possible, she says,
that's an illusion crafted by the OWS secret elite, who she insists are
unresponsive to the demand for a concrete agenda by the "actual 99 percent."

McMillan is Northeast regional organizer for the youth section of the
Democratic Socialists of America, which bills itself as the largest
socialist organization in the United States. She's been involved with
the Occupy movement since August, despite sharp differences with most of
the people in the park. "I believe in a constrained view of revolution,"
she says, by which she means putting pressure on mainstream politicians.
And for this, she says, she has suffered. "I have been called a
terrorist. I have been called CIA, FBI. I have been called a Democrat!"
Like Lasn, she wants regime change. Unlike most of the occupiers, she
believes it requires the guidance of those, like her, possessed of what
she calls "cultural capital."

She's a former cheerleader; she used to want to be a politician. She
says her studies and her work � she's also a nanny � prevent her from
sleeping in the park. But she's not afraid to put her body on the line.
She was arrested after she charged Wall Street three times, a "direct
action" that even some veteran anarchists � militant and masked �
considered wildly courageous, if foolish. A cop thought so, too, blasted
her with pepper spray, knocked her down, stepped on her head and snarled
at her, "Shut up. You get what you deserve, cunt bitch."

We met in the atrium of 60 Wall Street, built in 1989 as a headquarters
for JP Morgan and sold to Deutsche Bank right after 9/11. It looks like
a bad Italian restaurant � white-tiled columns, mirrored ceiling, a
grotto, stunted palms. This is where many of the movement's working
groups meet. At any given time there might be a half-dozen of them � the
People's Kitchen, Alternative Banking, Tactics, Medics, Sanitation.
McMillan had just come from a gathering of one of the biggest and most
influential groups, Facilitation, responsible for setting the agenda of
the daily General Assembly. She was there as the least bristly
representative of the working group that bluntly calls itself Demands,
and her first demand was a place on the agenda, which she claimed had
been denied by "infiltrators." She wasn't talking about police; she
meant other occupiers opposed to her ideas.

The question of demands, in all their variety � whether to make them,
when to make them, what to demand � is a peculiar one in that it's at
the heart of the national occupation debate, and yet mostly irrelevant
to the occupiers at Wall Street. Their demand is simply for a better
world, which, as far as they're concerned, they've already started
building. So to say that McMillan's group didn't have broad support
would be kind. The divide in the park might be better expressed as
between those who didn't believe that the demands group even counted as
a part of the occupation, and those willing to let them propose their
demands before shooting them down.

McMillan seems to see her role as an underground leader almost as a
genetic birthright. "My grandfather is Harlon Joye," she told me almost
immediately and emphasized several times across a number of
conversations. "He drafted the SDS constitution" � as in, Students for a
Democratic Society, one of the key organizations of 1960s revolt. She
sees herself as giving "a voice to the voiceless." To do that, she says,
the movement needs concrete demands. Any demands. The demand at which
the group arrived � "Jobs for All," meaning a public-works program
providing 25 million union-wage jobs � was not her first choice. But
McMillan's will did not matter � she was a servant of "the workers."

While we were talking, a tall, beautiful woman with olive skin and a
black leather coat was giving me the eye. The evil one. She was part of
a little squad of four that became a nucleus around which more gathered,
until they became about a dozen, and that's when they surrounded me,
close up, cutting me off from McMillan. They were, I learned, a "swarm,"
and they were performing an "intervention." On me.

"We were hearing there's a Rolling Stone interview about demands," said
a longhaired man in shorts and only wool socks on his feet, a leaf
pinned to his sleeve.

"We're actually just talking about my history?" said McMillan.

"There's been a lot of issues with the demands," no-shoes said, ignoring
McMillan. "As well as the kind of press we're getting. The place we're
in now, as a movement, is actually slaying co-opters. Any political,
ideological co-optation of the movement."

"That's actually where our conversation started," said McMillan.

"Right. But a lot of people see the discussion coming from the groups
you've been working with." He mimed out the problem with his hands, one
socked foot balancing on the other. "Demands are pretty much speaking
for the whole group."

"All we want is a voice," McMillan said.

Next to her, a small pale woman with a quiet face and quick eyes tilted
a shoulder away from McMillan and declared to me and the rest of the
swarm, "I want to be clear. We can have a voice without having demands."
She was Marisa Holmes, the filmmaker who'd been there since the
beginning. She seemed egoless, her confidence precise.

  From there, the conversation devolved into a dense thicket of the
intricacies of process. What is consensus? Where's the threshold? 90
percent? 75 percent? 80 percent? At issue were reports that McMillan had
attempted to strong-arm decisions based on a simple majority vote.
McMillan seemed frustrated by the accusation, which she couldn't quite
deny. Two months ago, she was a perfect organizing machine �
disciplined, articulate, working-class roots with a grad-school veneer.
But she was discovering she didn't function as well on the new terrain
of the occupation, where the traditional methods of the left no longer
meant as much as they once had. She had no idea that providing "a voice
for the voiceless" was not a service in demand in a movement built on
the idea that everyone can speak for themselves. To her, the occupation
was a symbol more than a community. When we walked by the camp later
that night she seemed surprised: "They have tents now?"

Almost everyone you meet in the park will tell you some variation of one
thing. They aren't doing this for 2012, they don't want to go to
Washington, they don't care what Congress or The New York Times or Bill
Maher or Kanye West thinks of them. They aren't trying to provide a
voice for the voiceless. They are doing it for themselves, and they
speak for no one but themselves. They are the 99 percent; so am I, so
are you. Make your own demands if you want to.

Late one night, I met a woman named Elisa Miller at the Occupy Library.
It was 2 a.m., and people were still up talking, a group of four Hasidic
Jews sitting on the broad steps of the park's shallow stone bowl,
singing quiet Hebrew harmony around a soft guitar. Miller, a 38-year-old
former landscape architect who took a bus up from New Orleans, had been
in the park since the beginning. She said she hadn't really laughed
since Katrina: "We've been occupying New Orleans for six fucking years."
But something had changed. She had long straight brown hair and the
loose rubbery gestures of someone who's exhausted and yet glad to be
awake. "You come here with what you've been OCD'ing about," she said.
"First day, you've got a sign: 'Tax the rich!' And it's, like, sure,
that's a good idea. But then you're here for a couple of days, you work
in the kitchen or in the library, you speak up when you want to, and you
get to thinking, here's exactly what you need. You can march if you want
to, but here?" She turned a circle, sweeping it all in, cops included.
"This is where we're rebooting history."

So it seemed on my last day at Liberty Plaza, the Sunday following last
month's freak snowstorm. "What will happen in the winter?" has been a
refrain almost as incessant as the drumming. The answer, of course, is
that nobody knows. Nobody has "known" anything that would happen so far.
Maybe they will endure; maybe they will retreat; maybe Mayor Bloomberg
will, like the mayors of Oakland and Denver, attack with gas and horses.
"Subzero sleeping bags" are a topic of constant conversation, three
words murmured or proclaimed with defiance and shivers. The morning
after the big snow, I expected to find the occupiers blue-lipped and
worried. Right before the storm, the city had confiscated their
generators, used for emergency heat, among other things, and the
bicycle-powered batteries they'd been building for just such a
contingency were not yet ready to pedal. The wet snow collapsed tents,
and the wind blew away tarps and signs and extra clothing. Copies of the
Occupied Wall Street Journal whipped up into the night and plastered
sidewalks.

But as I made my way to the park the next morning, the camp was
sparkling. The snow had melted, tents clean, books dry, jeans strung on
clotheslines. The kitchen was serving up roast turkey for all comers.
And they came from everywhere, occupiers and street people and tourists,
drawn, like me, to what they'd thought would be a scene of disaster.
Some of the tourists picked up signs. "I guess I am the 99 percent,"
said an electrical engineer from New Jersey. An elegantly dressed
white-haired woman leapt at a chance to work in the kitchen: "I can do
that," she declared. Another woman brought a bag of helium-filled yellow
balloons. The drummers, led by a dark-skinned man whose face was hidden
by a green bandanna, sounded energized, as if the night's cold had
taught them all a new, less angry rhythm, like they were laughing behind
their bandannas. That night, the General Assembly would be dedicated to
a battle over demands; but that morning, the first of what will likely
be a long and hard winter at Liberty, was a reprieve, a fantasy, a
multitude, an imaginary city raising its flags.


--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://www.wsm.ie/c/occupy-movement-assembly-process-revolution
Occupy - the assembly process is the revolution
Date: Thu, 2011-11-10 16:16

As we prepare to enter the 3rd month of the Occupy movement a commonly
heard criticism targets both the lack of clear demands and the related
complex and often drawn out decision making processes being used at
Occupy General Assemblies. These criticisms however miss the point,
against the traditional left with its package of pre-set answers (best
before 1917) what makes Occupy different is that process of decision
making through assembly. The assembly form is not just a way of making
decisions but also a different form of doing politics.  The Assembly is
in embryo the different world we seek to create.

I�m not arguing that the process is everything or especially the only
thing that matters. Of course the questions asked and decisions reached
will also determine the direction of the movement. A perfect process
that led back to parliamentary politics, banks with a kinder face or the
imposition of Brehon law would get us nowhere good. But right now the
successful development and expansion of the assembly process is what is
transformative about Occupy with regards to the old left. For sure
students of history will tell you these are old methods being
re-discovered or reinvented but all the same it is exciting to see them
being taken up by a new generation.

Occupy Wall Street started 17th September and in the month that followed
copycat Occupy camps sprang up in more than 1100 cities across the
globe. Solidarity demonstrations were held on all continents, even
Antarctica. In London, England the state church was thrown into crisis
as it debated evicting the camp on the door step of St Paul's and in
Oakland, USA the violent police eviction of the camp there led to a mass
assembly of 3,000 which called the Oakland General Strike of November 2nd.

What is the assembly?
What characterises all the Occupy�s is that at the heart of the movement
is an open assembly of everyone who identifies with it. Potentially open
to all of the 99%- which is the appeal of the form to those who are used
to having politicians and the 1% speak for them. At these assembles
proposals are put, concerns are debated and decisions are made. These
decisions are seldom by a simple 51% majority but rather made using
variations of consensus decision making, a process that makes it hard if
not impossible for a majority to simply force a decision on a minority
through numbers alone. This slows the process down but it also prevent
premature splits arising from controversial decisions being forced
through by narrow majorities.

Much of the conventional left in both its reformist and revolutionary
forms is openly frustrated with that aspect of the Occupy movement. In
Dublin as in other cities the approach that has all too often been made
by the already organised left to the Occupy movement has a strong
resemblance to the biblical legend of Moses coming down off the mountain
with the 10 commandments. The approach is that the wise ones arrive with
the pre-packaged answers and seek to find the quickest route to get the
multitude below to adopt these answers as their own. People are
lectured, browbeaten and even bullied into accepting the accumulated
wisdom of decades, decades the left has actually spent wandering in circles.

This approach of the left is wrong for several reasons. The first one is
that it is simply counter productive, a return to an educational process
that most resembles that in place when teachers were also allowed to
beat the answers into students. It is not surprising that the �we are
here to tell you how things are� tends to elicit a strong negative
response from those who are to be schooled. Elsewhere I've blogged the
specifics of these problems in Dublin so I don't intend to repeat this
argument here. (blog 1, blog 2)

The positives
Instead I want to highlight the two strongest points of value in the
assembly process

The first is that to anyone paying attention in the last decade it is
very clear that despite the deep crisis of capitalism the left does not
have the answers. In fact it often appears that most left groups don't
even have many of the questions that need to be asked. Sure there are
some general broad answers we can claim to have but in particular those
organisations and individuals who insist that all that is needed is the
correct interpretation of scripture as laid down 130 years ago by
Misters Marx & Engels are profoundly unconvincing.

The old style pursuit of needed new answers (and questions) for the left
would be to retreat to the British Library or some other Ivory Tower for
a couple of decades to formulate some new set of answers. There has been
some 'flash in the pan' attempts at this, some have even briefly seized
the imagination, Hardt & Negri's Empire did so for a while back in 2000
as the summit protest movemetnt peaked and now and again others have
briefly done the same since. The truth is though that this process of
relying on smart individuals to formulate answers is itself flawed. It
is reflective of something that was perhaps possible back in the 14th
century when a single person might have some hope of consuming the
accumulated sum of formal human knowledge (in western Europe). Today
when 48 hours of new content are uploaded to youtube every minute such a
task is an impossible one for an individual or small group to even hope
to approach.

The generation of questions, never mind answers can only be part of a
collective process involving tens of thousands of people at a minimum,
with a huge range of experiences, not just of bearded old white dudes in
the British library. At one point people might have expected this
process to emerge from the universities but even apart from the narrow
range of experience they contain today they are increasingly designed as
factories to reproduce the current system, even in those sections that
imagine they exist to challenge it.

The internet and in particular Facebook & Twitter have been focused on
as organising tools by many analysts who are trying to understand the
emerging movement. But actually they are much more than tools to call
people to protests, the circulation of links and the discussions taking
place under 10 million updates about Occupy are also a massive, if
informal and unstated, collective educational process.

It is in the 1100 assemblies of the Occupy Movement scattered across the
globe (and the earlier assemblies in Tahir, Barcelona and Syntagma) that
this collective process of identifying the questions and in time the
answers is starting to take form. For sure it is a process that is
messy, slow and that at least on the local level often takes a one or
two steps back for each 2 or 3 leaps forward. But it is a process that
is discovering itself, that is essentially self-organising, a path to
knowledge that we are finding by walking. The left has had a program (or
rather conflicting program's) for over 100 years, programs that any
reasonable person now realizes are quite incomplete. A little patience
with this Occupy movement taking 1, 2 or 20 months to create something
better is not so unreasonable.

Another way is coming into being
The second reason the assembly model is not a barrier to be overcome, to
be replaced with a more traditional committee of wise (mostly) men, is
that the assemblies are the different way of doing 'politics� we need.
For a long time politics has mostly meant one particular model, the
model where the politician's present us with their program and our role
is simply to chose between these program's either with ballots or rifles
(or even one in each hand). A methodology that inevitably replaces one
hierarchy with another when one set of politicians successfully replace
another.

These is however another less visible model. That is the assembly, not
as a way of controlling the politicians but of replacing them. And for
politicians here we can also substitute employer or landlord because
democracy in the streets means little without democracy in the workplace
and in our housing. We don�t want to change who the 1% are, who among
the 1% rules us we want to take the 99%, all of the 99% into power. Not
some 1% selected to represent the 99% and make decisions for us but once
more and forever the 99% directly deciding for ourselves how our world
should be run.

The idea of a political process that has at its core decision making
meetings where all of us can bring suggestions, make critiques and take
part in the final decision is what makes Occupy revolutionary far more
than whatever demands are formulated. It is the process itself that is
potentially transformative, even in the most weak and dysfunctional
assemblies. If the assembly can be the mechanism by which we organize a
camp or organize a general strike then why can it not also be the
mechanism by which we organize our workplace, our school or our
neighborhood. And when the assemblies spread and meet up where then is
the room for the politicians who instead want to represent us.

The assembly v the politician
This is not a new concept, the assembly is as old and almost certainly
older than the politician. The two have in fact been in conflict with
each other for many long years. It was the assemblies that liquidated
the power of the Czar in Russia in 1917 only to be liquidated in turn by
the Bolsheviks who formed the new government of politicians. In Chiapas
in Southern Mexico hundreds of Zapatista communities have used the
assembly as their root method of making decisions since (and before)
they entered into rebellion in 1994. The Zapatista assembly model that
will be 18 years old this new year. When Argentina went into crisis in
1999 and the people said of the politicians that 'they all must go' the
assembly emerged in both workplace and neighborhood as the way to keep
society functioning as government after government fell.

The assembly and the politician will always be locked in a combat to the
death, regardless if that politician is of the right, left or center.
The two models are incompatible, either the people rule or the
politicians rule and that applies as much at the small local level of an
Occupy assembly as at the national or regional level. And let us be
clear, the politician is not simply someone who embraces that term in
some formal way. It is also the person who informally declares that they
should have a special right in the making of decisions because of who
they are or what they have done - because in other words they know
better. The politician is the one that seeks to flatter those they think
can be won to their side and to browbeat those they think can not rather
than engaging in open and honest debate. The politician hates the
assembly process as constituting a barrier to �what is to be done� and
seeks to either abolish it or restrict just who is allowed to take part.

The Occupy assemblies are a long way from forming the new world in the
shell of the old. Only a very few have had a major local impact, Occupy
Oakland being the most obvious of the bunch. Most are small and
isolated, a cluster of tents in the vast cities of the disinterested. In
many places the General Assembly & the processes and dynamics it
contains are quite dysfunctional - all too often as in Dublin due to the
attempts by the old left to quickly push its answers through. But for
all these problems this scattering of 1100 assemblies across the globe
is a start, a start in the process that is not about reforming banking
laws or tweaking constitutions but building a new world.

WORDS: Andrew Flood


--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/10-5
Thursday, November 10, 2011 by Waging Nonviolence
Occupy Wall Street Joins an Assembly of Struggles in Athens
by Nathan Schneider

  From a glance at a recent front page of The New York Times, you might
guess that a political meeting in Athens this week would be full of talk
about the resigning prime minister, bailout deals, and the Euro. The
land that gave birth to European civilization now seems on the brink of
sinking the whole continent�s economy. But, among those gathered on
Monday in a basement in the neighborhood of Exarcheia�a kind of
Haight-Ashbury for Greek anarchists�the agenda was completely different.
They talked instead about parks, public kitchens, and barter bazaars.
They even seemed pretty hopeful.

The lack of concern for political figureheads, in retrospect, was to be
expected. Greek anarchists see no more reason to care about whether
George Papandreou goes or stays than those at Occupy Wall Street are
agonizing over Herman Cain�s sexual foibles. They have another kind of
politics in mind.

The meeting, convened by a group called Assembly for the Circulation of
Struggles, consisted of progress reports from neighborhood assemblies
around Athens. Located down some stairs under a graffiti black cat, the
basement included a ping-pong table, a kitchen, a bar, and a selection
of radical books in Greek. (�If the books do better than the bar,� said
a woman who would know, �we consider that a good night.�) For five
hours, 50 or so people sat in an ovular jumble of plastic chairs and
cafe tables, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and nursing beers. Among
them were Argentine activist Claudia Acuna and Marina Sitrin, a New
York-based activist, lawyer, and scholar who has been a central
organizer of Occupy Wall Street since the planning stages. The Assembly
had just published a Greek translation of Sitrin�s book, Horizontalism:
Voices of Popular Power in Argentina. Thanks to Acuna and Sitrin, the
conversation about neighborhoods got a little more global�a spitting
image of the emerging global justice movement that is focused less on
shuttling around to particular economic summits, as was common a decade
ago, than on occupying public spaces everywhere.

�In New York, we�re still the baby movement in the world,� said Sitrin.
Since Occupy Wall Street began on September 17, occupations and open
assemblies have spread to more than a hundred cities and towns around
the United States. But assemblies are only starting to find their way
from the central squares into neighborhoods and workplaces, where most
people spend most of their time, and where many of their most vital
concerns lie.

The Argentines and the Greeks have had more practice. Following the
economic collapse and popular rebellion in late 2001, non-hierarchical,
�horizontal� assemblies appeared across Argentina, reopening closed
factories and occupying defunct banks. When the government stopped being
able to provide basic services, people organized on the local level to
provide for themselves. Since then, the assemblies have both lived on
and faltered, while the national government increasingly tries to co-opt
and supplant them.

As does Argentina, Greece has a long history of anarchist thought and
practice. The most recent iteration dates back to the riots of 2008,
following the shooting of a teenage boy by police. The country�s
economic crisis of the past two years and the government�s effort to
respond with austerity measures has only strengthened the movement.
There have been enormous, volatile protests and occupations in Athens�
Syntagma Square, which spread images of Molotov cocktails and riot
police around the world. But those protests also gave birth to
assemblies, as people revived the terminology of ancient Athenian
democracy to explain their participatory, non-hierarchical decision
making process. Since the recent demonstrations at Syntagma, such
assemblies have became the norm among activists from around the country,
who have now taken assemblies home with them.

Like the Occupy movement in the U.S., Greek protesters have often been
blamed for being selfish, impractical and short on clear demands. But,
to the anarchists like those the Assembly for the Circulation of
Struggles gathered on Monday, such complaints ring hollow. (Graffiti on
the metal covering the windows of a post office on Syntagma Square
reads, �CAN A REVOLUTION BE SELLFISH.�) Rather than demanding particular
reforms of the government, they focus on creating alternative
institutions to replace it, actively resisting by getting a head start
on building the world they want to see.

Gandhi called this kind of work the �constructive program��as he put it,
the effort to achieve �complete independence by truthful and nonviolent
means.� Toward the end of a life spent building ashram communities,
wearing homespun cloth and preaching self-reliance, he came to see the
constructive program as the most vital part of a transformative
resistance movement.

As they take hold in neighborhoods, the Greek and Argentine assemblies
are concerned less with ideology than with finding direct ways to
address the needs of people and the crises of the community. One man
with long hair running down his back�characteristically Greek�reported
on how his assembly built a park on a block that was slated to become a
parking lot, while another described efforts to save preschools and
public entertainment from being lost to privatization. Politics,
however, becomes unavoidable. Everyone who uses a reclaimed park, or
sends a child to a reclaimed school, is taking part in an act of
political resistance. They�re radicalized by implication, by necessity.

Both the Greek and Argentine autonomous movements have dealt with a lot
of ideological infighting, especially as various leftist political
parties try to use the assemblies to win recruits and parliamentary
votes, distracting from the assembly�s own agenda. Since open assemblies
can thereby become too unwieldy, some anarchists have started smaller,
closed assemblies with more rigid philosophical boundaries.

In the United States, says Marina Sitrin, �Our leftist political parties
are nothing compared to those in Argentina and Greece.� The Democratic
Party much less impact on American radical groups than do the smaller
communist and socialist parties that parliamentary systems allow to
flourish elsewhere.

What worries Sitrin especially about Occupy Wall Street right now is
another form of co-option. The Greeks smiled half enviously when she
said, �Only in the U.S. do you start a movement and people give you
money.� But Sitrin wasn�t bragging. �As a movement, we can�t have money.
It�s a massive problem.� When supporters start donating large quantities
cash�as opposed to actual necessities like food and blankets�they
threaten to turn the movement into a bureaucracy, or worse.

With their country�s economic crisis worsening, the Greek anarchists
said they are similarly worried that aid money pouring in will enrich
bureaucratic NGOs, while further accustoming people to taking handouts
from above rather than providing for themselves. Claudia Acuna nodded
knowingly.

Instead, the anarchists are trying to create alternative economies,
through projects like public kitchens and barter markets for clothing
and other necessities. As in Argentina, doing so has meant weaning
people away from the taboo against using second-hand goods or from
accepting food when one can�t afford it�a taboo the anarchists blame on
the capitalist state�s false promises of a luxurious life for all.

As the evening went on, the different assemblies described their plans
for the future. One is organizing a demonstration on motorcycles.
(Motorcycle helmets and leather jackets are as common among Greek
activists as messenger bags and fixed-gear bicycles are for their U.S.
counterparts.) A union of delivery workers is trying to create a new
vision of labor in their industry based on a four-hour work day. Through
assemblies of assemblies, neighborhoods are also taking part in
larger-scale resistance campaigns, including ones against a new tax on
electricity and the privatization of public transit. The Greeks asked
Sitrin about last week�s �general strike� organized by Occupy Oakland,
and she in turn asked them about how the various occupations in the U.S.
might coordinate with each other better.

Around two in the morning, a pair from the Assembly for the Circulation
of Struggles finally drove Sitrin and Acuna back to their hotel, roughly
tracing the marching route from Exarcheia to Syntagma Square. They
passed, and mourned at, a bank once torched by Molotov cocktails,
accidentally killing three people inside. Though earlier the Greeks had
been joking about which beer bottles to use for Molotovs, this time they
spoke of the bomb-throwers as uncontrollable kids, as �not really even
anarchists.� They passed the columns around the square where marble had
been torn off and thrown at riot police. A handful of police with
shields were still stationed nearby, just in case.

At least as much as the riot police, and hopefully more, that evening�s
meeting seemed like a sign of things to come: a global resistance
movement coming together to face global problems. It�s being built,
however, around the particular needs of local communities, of people who
are learning to organize themselves and resist in the course of
providing for one another.
Nathan Schneider

Nathan Schneider is an editor of Waging Nonviolence. He writes about
religion, reason, and violence for publications including The Nation,
The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Commonweal, Religion Dispatches,
AlterNet, and others. He is also an editor at Killing the Buddha. Visit
his website at TheRowBoat.com.



--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3067/call-out-for-solidarity-with-egypt_def\
end-the-revo
Call-Out for Solidarity with Egypt: Defend the Revolution
0 Nov 04 2011 by Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by the No Military Trials for
Civilians Movement on 4 November 2011.]

A letter from Cairo to the Occupy/Decolonize movements & other
solidarity movements.

After three decades of living under a dictatorship, Egyptians started a
revolution demanding bread, freedom and social justice. After a nearly
utopian occupation of Tahrir Square lasting eighteen days, we rid
ourselves of Mubarak and began the second, harder, task of removing his
apparatuses of power. Mubarak is gone, but the military regime lives on.
So the revolution continues�building pressure, taking to the streets and
claiming the right to control our lives and livelihoods against systems
of repression that abused us for years. But now, seemingly so soon after
its beginnings, the revolution is under attack. We write this letter to
tell you about what we are seeing, how we mean to stand against this
crackdown, and to call for your solidarity with us.

The 25th and 28th of January, the 11th of February: you saw these days,
lived these days with us on television. But we have battled through the
25th of February, the 9th of March, the 9th of April, the 15th of May,
the 28th of June, the 23rd of July, the 1st of August, the 9th of
September, the 9th of October. Again and again the army and the police
have attacked us, beaten us, arrested us, killed us. And we have
resisted, we have continued; some of these days we lost, others we won,
but never without cost. Over a thousand gave their lives to remove
Mubarak. Many more have joined them in death since. We go on so that
their deaths will not be in vain. Names like Ali Maher (a
fifteen-year-old demonstrator killed by the army in Tahrir, 9th of
April), Atef Yehia (shot in the head by security forces in a protest in
solidarity with Palestine, 15th of May), Mina Danial (shot by the Army
in a protest in front of Masepro, 9th of October). Mina Daniel, in
death, suffers the perverse indignity of being on the military
prosecutor�s list of the accused.

Moreover, since the military junta took power, at least 12,000 of us
have been tried by military courts, unable to call witnesses and with
limited access to lawyers. Minors are serving in adult prisons, death
sentences have been handed down, torture runs rampant. Women
demonstrators have been subjected to sexual assault in the form of
�virginity tests� by the Army.

On October 9th, the Army massacred twenty-eight of us at Maspero; they
ran us over with tanks and shot us down in the street while manipulating
state media to try and incite sectarian violence. The story has been
censored. The military is investigating itself. They are systematically
targeting those of us who speak out. This Sunday, our comrade and
blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah was imprisoned on trumped-up charges. He
spends another night in an unlit cell tonight.

All this from the military that supposedly will ensure a transition to
democracy, that claimed to defend the revolution, and seemingly
convinced many within Egypt and internationally that it was doing so.
The official line has been one of ensuring �stability,� with empty
assurances that the Army is only creating a proper environment for the
upcoming elections. But even once a new parliament is elected, we will
still live under a junta that holds legislative, executive, and judicial
authority, with no guarantee that this will end. Those who challenge
this scheme are harassed, arrested, and tortured; military trials of
civilians are the primary tool of this repression. The prisons are full
of casualties of this �transition.�

We now refuse to co-operate with military trials and prosecutions. We
will not hand ourselves in, we will not submit ourselves to questioning.
If they want us, they can take us from our homes and workplaces.

Nine months into our new military repression, we are still fighting for
our revolution. We are marching, occupying, striking, shutting things
down. And you, too, are marching, occupying, striking, shutting things
down. We know from the outpouring of support we received in January that
the world was watching us closely and even inspired by our revolution.
We felt closer to you than ever before. And now, it�s your turn to
inspire us as we watch the struggles of your movements. We marched to
the US Embassy in Cairo to protest the violent eviction of the
occupation in Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland. Our strength is in our
shared struggle. If they stifle our resistance, the 1% will win�in
Cairo, New York, London, Rome�everywhere. But while the revolution lives
our imaginations knows no bounds. We can still create a world worth living.

You can help us defend our revolution.

The G8, IMF, and Gulf states are promising the regime loans of $35
billion. The US gives the Egyptian military $1.3 billion in aid every
year. Governments the world over continue their long-term support and
alliance with the military rulers of Egypt. The bullets they kill us
with are made in America. The tear gas that burns from Oakland to
Palestine is made in Wyoming. David Cameron�s first visit to
post-revolutionary Egypt was to close a weapons deal. These are only a
few examples. People�s lives, freedoms and futures must stop being
trafficked for strategic assets. We must unite against governments who
do not share their people�s interests.

We are calling on you to undertake solidarity actions to help us oppose
this crackdown.

We are suggesting an International Day to Defend the Egyptian Revolution
on Nov 12th under the slogan �Defend the Egyptian Revolution - End
Military Trials for Civilians�

Events could include:

Actions targeting Egyptian Embassies or Consulates demanding the release
of civilians sentenced in military tribunals. If Alaa is released,
demand the release of the thousands of others.

Actions targeting your government to end support for the Egyptian junta.

Demand the release of civilians sentenced to military tribunals. If Alaa
is released, the thousands of others must follow.

Project videos about the repression we face (military trials, Maspero
massacre) and our continued resistance. Email us for links.

Videoconferencing with activists in Egypt

Any creative way to show your support, and to show the Egyptian people
that they have allies abroad.

If you�re organising anything or wish to, email us at
defendtherevolution@.... We would also love to see photos and
videos from any events you organize.


The Campaign to End Military Trials of Civilians
The Free Alaa Campaign
Mosireen
Comrades from Cairo


--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/3tyj9cq
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://tcbmag.blogs.com/daily_developments/2011/11/nlrb-local-jimmy-johns-owner-\
violated-labor-laws.html
11/10/2011
NLRB: Local Jimmy John�s Owner Violated Labor Laws

The National Labor Relations Board found that Minnetrista-based Jimmy
John�s franchisee MikLin Enterprises violated labor laws when it fired
six employees for engaging in union activities.

Federal regulators have found that local Jimmy John�s franchisee MikLin
Enterprises, Inc., violated workers� rights when it fired six employees
in March for engaging in union activities, according to an announcement
made Wednesday.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) sided with the workers by
issuing a complaint against the Minnetrista-based franchisee, which owns
10 restaurants in Minneapolis and St. Louis Park. The complaint was
issued in response to unfair labor accusations launched by members of
the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)�an international labor union
with which some Jimmy John�s workers are affiliated.

The IWW filed the complaint after the workers were fired after they
distributed roughly 3,000 posters and protested the company�s sick-day
policy. The posters depicted two identical sandwiches, stating that one
sandwich was made by a healthy Jimmy John�s employee, while the other
was made by a sick worker�implying that the restaurant�s sick-day policy
causes employees to attend work while ill, which could jeopardize
customers� health.

Mike Mulligan, president of MikLin Enterprises, told Twin Cities
Business in March that the posters crossed the line of what is protected
under NLRB regulations. �These posters are false and misleading at best,
and in the view of our company, they are defamatory, disparaging, and
dishonest,� he said at the time.

However, the NLRB found that the poster protest was an organizing
activity protected by federal labor laws, according to the Star Tribune.

The NLRB also alleges that supervisors at the Jimmy John�s stores owned
by MikLin Enterprises made disparaging remarks against the fired workers
on Facebook and threatened to fire workers who support union activity.

�It�s basically a complete legal victory for us,� Micah Buckley-Farlee,
one of the fired employees, told the Star Tribune. He added that the IWW
will propose a settlement with Miklin that includes reinstatement of the
six workers with back pay.

Mulligan, however, told the Minneapolis newspaper that his company will
�vigorously defend� itself against allegations in the NLRB complaint.
�We don�t believe the union publicity campaign falsely implying that our
customers are at risk of foodborne illness is protected activity [under
federal labor laws].�

If IWW and the franchisee don�t reach a settlement, the NLRB�s complaint
will be heard by one of the agency�s administrative law judges.

In October 2010, the restaurants� workers voted against union
representation by the IWW, but the NLRB nullified the vote in January,
giving the union another shot at getting selected to represent the
workers, according to the Star Tribune.

�Nataleeya Boss
(nboss@...)



--
Dan Clore

New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_