Nathaniel Botwinick: Congress Prepares to Censor the Internet

Congress Prepares to Censor the Internet
By Nathaniel Botwinick
National Review

The House of Representatives is currently considering the bill “Stop Online Piracy Act,” (SOPA) which would infringe upon the freedom we currently enjoy on the Internet.

SOPA is so controversial — EFF calls it “disastrous” — because it would force changes to the Domain Name System and effectively create a blacklist of Internet domains suspected of intellectual property violations

Those against SOPA include Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and hundreds of Internet start-up companies. Those opposed to the bill have described it in dark terms:

SOPA is an “Internet blacklist bill” that “would allow corporations, organizations, or the government to order an internet service provider to block an entire website simply due to an allegation that the site posted infringing content.”

The House is also attempting to silence criticism of the bill by presenting a skewed hearing:

Rep. Lofgren from California said during this morning’s hearing that it was a mistake for SOPA’s backers to dismiss criticism from people and companies who would be affected by it.

“It hasn’t generally been the policy of this committee to dismiss the views of the industries that we’re going to regulate,” Lofgren said. “I understand why cosponsors of this legislation aren’t happy about widespread criticism of this bill,” but attacking the messenger isn’t the answer.

Lofgren also accused Smith, the panel’s chairman, of deliberately stacking the composition of the panel in favor of SOPA. Of the six witnesses invited, “five are in favor and one is against,” she said. “That’s not a balanced panel.”

To Access the Report and Hyperlinked Resources

David Graeber: Occupy and Anarchism's Gift of Democracy

Occupy and anarchism's gift of democracy. The US imagines itself a great democracy, yet most Americans despise its politics. Which is why direct democracy inspires them
by David Graeber
The Guardian (United Kingdom)

As the history of past movements all make clear, nothing terrifies those running America more than the danger of true democracy breaking out. As we see in Chicago, Portland, Oakland, and right now in New York City, the immediate response to even a modest spark of democratically organised civil disobedience is a panicked combination of concessions and brutality. Our rulers, anyway, seem to labor under a lingering fear that if any significant number of Americans do find out what anarchism really is, they may well decide that rulers of any sort are unnecessary.

Almost every time I'm interviewed by a mainstream journalist about OWS, I get some variation of the same lecture:

"How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what's with all this anarchist nonsense – the consensus, the sparkly fingers … ? You're never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!"

It is hard to imagine worse advice. After all, since 2007, just about every previous attempt to kick off a nationwide movement against Wall Street took exactly the course such people would have recommended – and failed miserably. It is only when a small group of anarchists in New York decided to adopt the opposite approach – refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the existing political authorities by making demands of them; refusing to accept the legitimacy of the existing legal order by occupying a public space without asking for permission, refusing to elect leaders that could then be bribed or co-opted; declaring, however non-violently, that the entire system was corrupt and they rejected it; being willing to stand firm against the state's inevitable violent response – that hundreds of thousands of Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa began rallying in support, and a majority declared their sympathies.

This is not the first time a movement based on fundamentally anarchist principles – direct action, direct democracy, a rejection of existing political institutions and attempt to create alternative ones – has cropped up in the US. The civil rights movement (at least, its more radical branches), the anti-nuclear movement, the global justice movement … all took similar directions. Never, however, has one grown so startlingly quickly.

To Read the Rest of the Commentary

Scot Kersgaard: Alabama gives birth to a new civil rights movement

Alabama gives birth to a new civil rights movement
By Scot Kersgaard
The Colorado Independent

With State Senator Russell Pearce’s dramatic recall in Arizona behind us, the nation’s immigration watchers turn their eyes to Alabama, now home to the nation’s fiercest immigration laws.

In Alabama, comparisons to the civil rights battles of the 1960s are hard to avoid. From local press to the New York Times and beyond, reporters and those they interview are connecting the dots, not generally in a way flattering to the state.

The New York Times was blistering in an editorial published Monday, all but calling Alabama and its lawmakers racist.

Alabama is far from alone in passing a law whose express aim is misery and panic. States are expanding their power to hasten racial exclusion and family disintegration, to make a particular ethnic group of poor people disappear. The new laws come cloaked in talk of law and order; the bigotry beneath them is never acknowledged.

But if there is any place where bigotry does not go unrecognized, it is Alabama.

“It is a fear of folks who are not like us,” said Judge U. W. Clemon, a former state senator and Alabama’s first black federal judge, now retired. “Although the Hispanic population of the state is less than 5 percent, the leaders of the state were hell-bent on removing as much of that 4 percent as possible. And I think they’ve been fairly successful in scaring them out of the state of Alabama.”

If it was just the big-city national media piling on, that would be one thing, bu the local press has more than held its own in this regard.

From al.com:

The nation’s harshest immigration law… is creating nothing short of a “humanitarian crisis” that mirrors the fear and racism felt during the Jim Crow era, opponents of the law said Thursday.

During an afternoon news conference about Alabama’s immigration law, lawyers, educators and children’s advocates said the effects of the law mirror the fear and racism felt during the Jim Crow era and have led to thousands of children being kept home from school, pregnant women being afraid to give birth in a hospital and families having their water supply cut off.

When Alabama’s law was enacted, the Southern Poverty Law Center established a hotline to hear people’s concerns and offer guidance. The SPLC, which has taken a leading role in fighting the law, received more than 2000 calls in the first week the line was open.

The Center for American Progress Monday released a number of lists attempting to quantify the effects of the law.

Among the Center’s findings are that if only 10,000 of Alabama’s 120,000 undocumented immigrants quit or were forced out of their jobs, it would cost the state $40 million in lost productivity. If the federal government was to deport all 120,000, the Center says it would cost taxpayers $2.8 billion.

The Center’s study concluded that undocumented immigrants paid $130 million in taxes last year.

To Read the Rest of the Article

John Tomasic: Watchdog targets mayors -- Stop harassing journalists covering Occupy protests

Watchdog targets mayors: Stop harassing journalists covering Occupy protests
By John Tomasic
The Colorado Independent

As has been widely reported, police crackdowns on the Occupy movement in cities across the country have extended beyond the protesters to include attacks on journalists as a way to stanch news of police action. Ten reporters were arrested in New York when police cleared Zuccotti Park on Tuesday, including reporters for the AP, NPR, and the New York Daily News, according to watchdog organization Free Press. The organization announced today it has launched a campaign “targeted at mayors around the country to demand they honor the 1st Amendment and drop all charges against journalists.”

“If the mayor of our country’s largest city thinks protecting the press means silencing them, we’re in big trouble,” wrote Free Press Program Director Josh Stearns at the organization’s website. Stearns has been tracking harassment and arrests of journalists covering the Occupy movement for the last two months.

From the Free Press campaign web page:

In what appears to have been a coordinated effort to block coverage of the raid, many journalists said they were barred from reporting the police action. Ten reporters were also arrested, another was put in a choke hold and others described extensive police harassment.

This kind of police response is happening all over the country. Police harassment of the press has been reported during “Occupy” protests in Chicago, Denver, Oakland, Portland and beyond.

We need to send the message loud and clear to mayors across the country: They must drop all charges and publicly commit to protecting press freedoms in their cities. This is especially true for Mayor Bloomberg, who took full responsibility for the NYPD’s actions.

Speak out now: Tell Mayor Bloomberg and the U.S. Conference of Mayors to publicly commit to protecting journalists covering all protests and police actions. You can also call Mayor Bloomberg at 212-639-9675 to speak out against the most recent arrests of journalists.

To Read The Entire Article and To Access Videos

Mike Flanders: Occupy the Church

(via Christian Torp)

Nation of Change and Grit TV

Matthew Hyde: Tolerance, Censorship and the Occupy Wall Street Library

Tolerance, Censorship and the Occupy Wall Street Library
by Matthew Hyde
Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

CS Lewis and Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and Tolkien. To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye, Spider-Man and Doctor Who. It’s strange how you can feel kinship, solidarity, with people you’ve never met through the books they read. I’m one of those nosy people who, when visiting somewhere for the first time, always checks out what’s sitting on their bookshelves, seeing if there are any matches with my own, searching for something that catches my interest.

The list above comes from the catalogue of the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street, a collection of over 5,000 books kept on-site at the protest since September this year. Yesterday, during the NYPD’s eviction of the protestors, from which press were barred, the library was gathered up, along with myriad other belongings, and thrown into a dumpster.

It’s an act that prompts strong emotions – you just don’t throw books into the trash. Beyond their content, the very physicality of books is symbolic of learning, information, knowledge, literature. Put them all together into a library and suddenly it raises the spectre of Alexandria and the House of Wisdom. Of course, this isn’t the same, but at the same time, maybe it’s reflective of the times in which we live. While this wasn’t a deliberate act of biblioclasm, together with actions like the media blackout it shows a sad disregard for education and freedom of expression. Moving the library would be one thing, but there seem to be conflicting reports as to whether or not the majority of books have been destroyed.

So while the destruction of the People’s Library is sad and disgusting, it’s also symbolic. Today is American Censorship Day, campaigning for internet freedom. It’s also the International Day for Tolerance, sponsored by the United Nations to promote freedom of conscience, belief, expression and opinion. Here in the UK, the High Court has ruled that protestors can mount a legal challenge against the closure of public libraries in Gloucester and Somerset. Suddenly the last 24 hours seem to be a moment in which a number of events come together to remind us that freedom of information, freedom of speech, aren’t to be taken for granted. Frightening as it sounds, people are genuinely keen to suppress those freedoms, not out of insane malice, but out of ignorance, apathy and greed. In the comfortable western world, they’re the more present dangers. After all, a movement that puts together its own public library is unlikely to be the sort of movement you need to pepper-spray and tear-gas, but still it happened, even if cameras weren’t allowed to see it

To Read the Rest and Access Hyperlinked Sources

Josh Harkinson: Inside Police Lines at the Occupy Wall Street Eviction

[Important because it outlines the continuing institution of a new police tactic designed to eliminate media coverage of police actions against peaceful protesters: the "frozen zone."]

Exclusive Video: Inside Police Lines at the Occupy Wall Street Eviction
Amid this morning's crackdown on Zuccotti Park, I was one of the only reporters bearing witness.
By Josh Harkinson
Mother Jones

By about 4 a.m. today, New York City police had pushed the media out of Zuccotti Park and were preparing to evict the few dozen protesters who remained. Yet there I was, standing in the park amid a gaggle of high-ranking officers, quietly watching the whole thing unfold.

"You gonna occupy awhile?" one officer cracked to another.

"Yeah," the other guy smiled.

I stood next to them against a short granite wall, trying to avoid notice.

Like the other reporters who'd swarmed to Lower Manhattan to cover the eviction, I'd quickly discovered that the media was not allowed here. The police had created a one-block buffer zone around the park—in some areas two or three blocks—and were refusing to admit even the most credentialed members of the press. A New York Times reporter had already been arrested, a member of the National Lawyers Guild told me. I feared that Occupy Wall Street's big day was being censored.

As occupiers streamed out of the park, harried by baton-wielding cops, I resolved to get inside. Shielded from view by a car, I slipped under a barricade and came to another blockade across the street from the park's southeast corner, where I cut through a hole and was quickly approached by a police officer. "I'm not an occupier," I told him, holding out my business card.

"That's great, he said, pointing away from the park. "But you are going to have to wait on the other side of the street."

I waited, and when nobody was looking, I crossed back over as confidently as I could and entered a scrum of suit-wearing police brass and cleanup workers scrubbing the park's sidewalk. Nobody bothered to stop me as I strode up to the park's northern entrance and stopped against a wall, a few yards from where police in helmets surrounded the the remaining occupiers.

Next to me, an officer was telling an important-looking guy named Eddie about "the intel we've had over the past couple of months" about "the severely mentally retarded, the ones that are real fucked up in the head, and have been violent in the past." He went on: "They are a little off kilter. They're off their meds. They haven't had meds in 30 days."

"I'm only 24 hours off mine," Eddie joked.

"It's good for you, Eddie," the cop said. "You've got to come clean every once in a while."

As the two men talked, a sweaty-faced man wearing a neon vest over a business suit walked up and started tearing protest signs off the wall."I couldn't wait," he said. "Destroying things never felt so good."

"Really," someone said, almost inflecting the word as a question.

"They're fucking assholes," the guy in the suit shot back.

Another guy came up to Eddie. "How are we about hooking up the fire hydrants?" he asked. "We talkin' to somebody?"

"Do it. Do it," Eddie said over the roar of a garbage truck.

A few yards away, the last occupiers took turns waving a large American flag. Huddled inside the park's makeshift kitchen, they seemed as diverse as Occupy Wall Street: There was a shaggy punk in a spiky leather jacket. A young girl in a red sweatshirt that read "Unity." Clean-shaven guys wearing glasses. A shirtless occupier named Ted Hall, who has led an effort to hone the movement's "visions and goals." All of them surrounded a smaller group of occupiers who'd chained their necks to a pole.

To Read the Rest of the Report and To Watch the Video

More:

Slate: David Weigel - The Frozen Zone

Stephen Graham and Tariq Ali: Police Crackdowns on Occupy Protests from Oakland to New York Herald the "New Military Urbanism"

Police Crackdowns on Occupy Protests from Oakland to New York Herald the "New Military Urbanism"
Democracy Now

After a wave of raids across the country in which police in riot gear broke up Occupy Wall Street encampments and arrested protesters, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan acknowledged in an interview with the BBC that she participated in a conference call with officials from 18 cities about how to deal with the Occupy movement. As police forces violently crack down on protests across the United States and Europe, we look at the increasing influence of military technology on domestic police forces. Stephen Graham is professor of Cities and Society at Newcastle University in the U.K. His book is, "Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism." "Why the Occupy movement is so powerful, what it’s demonstrating, is that by occupying public spaces around the world — and particularly these extremely symbolic public spaces — it’s reasserting that the city is the foundation space for democracy," Graham says.

Guests:

Stephen Graham, professor of Cities and Society at Newcastle University in the U.K. His most recent book is called Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism.

Tariq Ali, participant in Occupy Oakland

George Katsiaficas: The Subversion of Politics -- European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life

[Michael Benton -- This is an important book for Occupiers because it explores non-hierarchical, autonomous social movements, the politics of occupying spaces/places, the repercussions of various protester/occupier tactics, and the tactics/policies of police/state violence.]

The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life
by George Katsiaficas

Overview:George Katsiaficas's account covers the period 1968-1996 and pays special attention to the role of autonomous feminist movements, the effects of squatters and feminists on the disarmament movement and on efforts to shut down nuclear power, and the antifascist social movements developed in response to the neo-Nazi upsurge.

In addition to providing a rare depiction of these often overlooked movements, Katsiaficas develops a specific notion of autonomy from the statements and aspirations of these movements. Drawing from the practical actions of social movements, his analysis is extended into a universal standpoint of the species, a perspective he develops by uncovering the partiality of Antonio Negri's workerism, Seyla Benhabib's feminism and notions of uniqueness of the German nation.

Reviews: "As a long-term and perceptive observer of the autonomous scene in Europe, George Katsiaficas provides a comprehensive and well-informed narrative history of the autonomous movements in Europe. This elegantly written and lively account has been meticulously researched and reveals startling insights. Katsiaficas focuses on the movement in Germany and traces back the sources of autonomous politics as far back as the 1960s to the SDS, sponti and women movements.

But his book goes beyond just accounting the history of European movements (which has been largely ignored by the US audience). His book is at the same time a sophisticated analysis of postmodern and postfordist capitalism which - by discussing theories of modern scholars such as Antonio Negri and Sheila Benhabib - makes us understand that any analysis which is limited to focusing exclusively on gender, ethnic, or workerist categories fails to unravel the goal of the autonomous movements: to find new antisystemic forms of participating democracy for achieving a greater control of individuals and communities over everyday life. Thus the book’s most notable value is to acknowledge the important role of the autonomous movements by offering us some perspective on how to limit the damaging effects of global capitalism on our lives."

--Professor Susanne Peters, University of Giessen

"At a time when the dominant trends in politics and culture are toward the right, it is important to be aware that there are also counter-trends. With the knowledge and understanding of an insider, George Katsiaficas describes the Autonomen, the loose network of European young people who live collectively on the margins of society, and who combine the pursuit of a communal life with social action against racism and repressive politices of the right. This book is an important corrective to the all-too-common view that global capitalism is triumphant, that there is no basis for opposing the values that it promotes."

--Professor Barbara Epstein, University of California, Santa Cruz

To Purchase the book or download it for free

More:

Makana: We Are the Many

(via Rebecca Glasscock)



More:

Occupy Honolulu: Hawaiian Musician Makana Performs Protest Song to World Leaders at APEC Summit

Bluegrass Film Society: Korkoro (France: Tony Gatlif, 2009: 111 mins)

Bluegrass Film Society
Korkoro (France: Tony Gatlif, 2009: 111 mins)
November 16th, 7:30PM at BCTC Auditorium

Michael Benton: Thoughts Upon Waking Up on November 15th

Just waking up after standing in the rain all night into the morning at Occupy Lexington. Would like to remind people that the Occupy Movement is more than one place (over a thousand worldwide). Like the mythical hydra, you shut down one place, two more spring up; you put one veteran in the hospital, and his comrades take his place; you trash, beat, evict and arrest protesters and more people come to take their place. We refuse to bow down

Occupy Lexington Study Group on “the history of corporate power & personhood” (11/20/11: 1 - 2:30pm)

WHAT: Study Group on “the history of corporate power & personhood”

WHEN: Nov 20 Sunday, 1:00-2:30 pm, Room C, 4th Floor, downtown Public Library

READING: We’re reading Chapters 11-15 for this Sunday & then finishing the book the next Sunday Gangs of America: the Rise of Corporate Power & the Disabling of Democracy by Ted Nace

The Occupy Wall Street movement is very concerned with the growing power of a small number of massive corporations. Occupy Lexington invites you to a study group to explore the history of the corporation, including:

* the fiercely anti-corporate political culture of early America

* the rise of monopolistic corporations in the late 19th century

* the campaign for corporations to be declared legal “persons” entitled to universal human rights under the Bill of Rights– from the notorious Santa Clara 1886 ruling to the 2010 Citizens United ruling of the US Supreme Court

* what does this growing corporate power mean for America, the world, the earth?

These are the last meetings in a four week course of study, sponsored by the “Study & Teach-in Working Group” of Occupy Lexington. The “price of admission” to the study group is that you try to read as much of the readings as you can…The book can be downloaded at this website and a hard copy is available at the Morris Bookstore

Blue Gold: World Water Wars (USA: Sam Bozzo, 2008: 90 mins)

Greg Mitchell: Occupy USA Blog

Greg Mitchell at The Nation has a great ongoing daily blog where he compiles reports and commentary on Occupy USA.

The Occupy USA Blog

Stephen Resnick: Economics 305 - Marxian Economics

This course addresses the central themes of Marxian social theory and economics: an understanding of the class process as the organization of surplus value; an analysis of the relationship between class and non-class processes using the concept of overdetermination; the epistemological foundations of Marxian theory (including a discussion of empiricism, rationalism, and dialectics); and other topics. The course ends with application of Marxian concepts to understand the stress and strain of US capitalism over the last four decades.



Course developed with Richard D. Wolff

Shane Claiborne: A Monastic Revolution

A Monastic Revolution
On Being (American Public Media)

Shane Claiborne is a leading spirit in a gathering movement of young people known as the New Monastics. Emerging from the edges of Evangelical Christianity, they are patterning their lives in response to the needs of the poor — and the detachment they see in our culture's vision of adulthood.

To Listen to the Interview

An Unreasonable Man (USA: Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan, 2006: 122 mins)

(This is the first part of 12 -- to get the rest of the film)

Deep Green Philly: Cindy Milstein on Radicalism

Cindy Milstein on Radicalism
Deep Green Philly

Cindy Milstein spoke ... about what it means to be a radical, the myths and misconceptions surrounding radicalism and anarchism, and her thoughts on Occupy Philadelphia and the Occupy Together movement in general.

To Listen to the Interview

Clancy Sigal: Blair Mountain and Labor's Living History

Blair Mountain and labor's living history: Ninety years on, the coal seams of West Virginia are a battlefield once more: for working people, the struggle goes on
by Clancy Sigal
The Guardian (United Kingdom)

My first time in Westminister Abbey, London, I was taken inside by a coal miner friend who was down from South Wales for a brief London holiday. Suitably awed, we gawked at Poets' Corner, the Coronation Throne, the tombs and effigies of prelates, admirals, generals and prime ministers – England in all its majesty and pageantry. Gazing at the Gothic Revival columns, transepts and amazing fan-vaulted ceiling, my friend said, "Impressive, isn't it? Of course, it's their culture not ours."

Our culture – class conscious, bolshie, renegade – rarely lay in plaques and statues, hardly ever in school texts, but mainly in orally transmitted memories passed down generation to generation, in songs and stories. "Labor history" has become a province of passionately committed specialists and working-class autodidacts, keepers of the flame of a human drama at least as fascinating and blood-stirring as the dead royal souls in the Abbey. It belongs to all of us who claim it.

I'm lucky because my family's secular religion is union. They include cousin Charlie (shipbuilders), cousin Davie (electrical workers), cousin Bernie (printers), my mother (ladies' garment) and father (butchers and barbers), and cousin Fred (San Quentin prisoners). Establishment history may have its Battle of Trafalgar and Gallipoli; we have Haymarket Square, Ludlow, Centralia and Cripple Creek: labor's battle sites, more often slaughtering defeats than victories.

Until recently, a lot of this history casually disappeared down Orwell's "memory hole", forgotten, censored or ignored. But with the spectacular emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and fight-backs in states like Wisconsin and Ohio, young people especially seem to be regaining and reinvigorating a living history. Memory stirs.

This contest for memory is a class struggle by other means.

Half our story – the half where unions created the modern middle class – is written in the pedestrian language of contracts, negotiations, wages and hours laws … the nuts and bolts of deals. After all, unions exist to make a deal.

But the other half is inscribed in the whizzing bullets, shootouts and pistol duels of out-and-out combat. Labor has its own Lexington and Gettysburg. And none more bloodily inscribed than in the hills and hollows of the West Virginia coal fields.

To Read the Rest of the Article