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Thursday, November 10, 2011
AL GORE COMMENT ON EVIL AUSTRALIAN CARBON TAX
Start of a new era - GetUp!
”
This is a historic moment. Australia's Parliament has put the nation's first carbon price into law. With this vote, the world has turned a pivotal corner in the collective effort to solve the climate crisis. This success is the result of the tireless work of an unprecedented coalition that came together to support the legislation, the leadership of Prime Minister Gillard, and the courage of legislators to take a vote that helps to safeguard the future of all Australians.
I have spent enough time in Australia to know that their spirit of independence as a people cannot be underestimated. As the world’s leading coal exporter, there’s no doubt that opposition to this legislation was fierce. But through determination and commitment, the voice of the people of Australia has rung out loud and clear.
Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we do everything we can to ensure that this legislation is successful."
- Al Gore, November 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF OAKLAND FROM THE OAKLAND POLICE OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION
1 November 2011 – Oakland, Ca.
We represent the 645 police officers who work hard every day to protect the citizens of Oakland. We, too, are the 99% fighting for better working conditions, fair treatment and the ability to provide a living for our children and families. We are severely understaffed with many City beats remaining unprotected by police during the day and evening hours.
As your police officers, we are confused.
On Tuesday, October 25th, we were ordered by Mayor Quan to clear out the encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and to keep protesters out of the Plaza. We performed the job that the Mayor’s Administration asked us to do, being fully aware that past protests in Oakland have resulted in rioting, violence and destruction of property.
Then, on Wednesday, October 26th, the Mayor allowed protesters back in – to camp out at the very place they were evacuated from the day before.
To add to the confusion, the Administration issued a memo on Friday, October 28th to all City workers in support of the “Stop Work” strike scheduled for Wednesday, giving all employees, except for police officers, permission to take the day off.
That’s hundreds of City workers encouraged to take off work to participate in the protest against “the establishment.” But aren’t the Mayor and her Administration part of the establishment they are paying City employees to protest? Is it the City’s intention to have City employees on both sides of a skirmish line?
It is all very confusing to us.
Meanwhile, a message has been sent to all police officers: Everyone, including those who have the day off, must show up for work on Wednesday. This is also being paid for by Oakland taxpayers. Last week’s events alone cost Oakland taxpayers over $1 million.
The Mayor and her Administration are beefing up police presence for Wednesday’s work strike they are encouraging and even “staffing,” spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for additional police presence – at a time when the Mayor is also asking Oakland residents to vote on an $80 parcel tax to bail out the City’s failing finances.
All of these mixed messages are confusing.
We love Oakland and just want to do our jobs to protect Oakland residents. We respectfully ask the citizens of Oakland to join us in demanding that our City officials, including Mayor Quan, make sound decisions and take responsibility for these decisions. Oakland is struggling – we need real leaders NOW who will step up and lead – not send mixed messages. Thank you for listening.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
TAKING A BREATH OVER OCCUPY PORTLAND’S FINANCE BROUHAHA
POSTED BY DENIS C. THERIAULT ON WED, OCT 26, 2011 AT 2:36 PM
This morning I broke the news that a member of Occupy Portland's finance committee had started a likely unauthorized nonprofit bearing the local movement's name. This afternoon the Oregonian got hold of the story—also reporting that not only was the nonprofit started, but that some $20,000 in donations might be missing and that someone also locked the group out of its website.
Okay. Let's all take a big breath. It's not quite what it seems—although what did actually happen really did piss off occupiers and is seen nonetheless as a serious breach of trust. So, what happened? Let's take it step by step.
First off, "missing" is not the right word when mentioning the money. Neither, maybe, is $20,000. (I'm told $10,000 is a far more accepted number—but it's not great that nobody exactly knows.)
First off, "missing" is not the right word when mentioning the money. Neither, maybe, is $20,000. (I'm told $10,000 is a far more accepted number—but it's not great that nobody exactly knows.)
A finance committee member, according to two different occupiers, has control over the money—moved from a personal PayPal account into the newly formed nonprofit, started by someone identified as Reid Jackson. The person holding the Paypal account was worried about his personal tax liability. Restructuring the movement's finances was on the table, but the account holder refused to wait for the group's consensus-driven general assembly to approve another option and started the nonprofit. That's a big sin among this group—you'll remember that devotion to the general assembly's agreed-upon message was the only reason some occupiers got themselves arrested on SW Main Street this month.
Communication between Jackson and occupiers is a bit strained right now, based on what's been a somewhat bellicose response to the nonprofit move by some of the organizers. Spokesman Jordan LeDoux says Jackson has control of the money but that there's been limited access.
"It's a matter of timing and communication and transparency and respect for others," says Reid Parham, a media liaison speaking for himself, not for the group. "That's the real story. it's interpersonal conflict as opposed to criminal conduct."
Jackson allegedly talked to the O, although they called him (the pronoun Parham and LeDoux used) a "she." Jackson's quotes are troublesome, and invoked the notion of protection from infiltration: "I've tried explaining it to them, but they won't listen to me. There is someone who has infiltrated the group and is trying to capitalize on the money."
As for the Web fiasco, that was a different person acting independently, and without any justification, I'm told. One thing the O got wrong initially: Occupy Portland isn't locked out of the domain name occupypdx.org. That's, in fact, the site they've begun ghosting over content from occupyportland.org.
Spokesman LeDoux explains:
Another individual from the finance committee “bought” the OccupyPortland.org domain name from the person that originally registered it and changed the DNS so that for a while, all traffic to OccupyPortland.org was disrupted. After posting several pages, the traffic is now redirecting to our alternate URL, OccupyPDX.org but all of the email to the domain addresses are being lost or going to the individual directly. Also, the traffic can be redirected/blocked/messed with again at a moment’s notice. All of this again was a unilateral action by a single person without consulting or consent from the GA.
But, hey, holy shit... this still all shows that no matter what the organization or the politics at play, finances are a messy sum'bitch to contend with. Last night, the general assembly spent two hours agreeing, ironically, on a way to restructure the finance committee. Parham says he thinks the changes were partially related to the disputes that simmered over in battle over the nonprofit.
Some occupiers don't want money at all. While others say, no, you need it to procure things for the camp, like gas to plug in computers and lights and cooking devices and guitar amplifiers. And, reasonably, a nonprofit is probably the safest place for all this money to go.
Still, the bigger message: DON'T PISS OFF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. Say it again: DON'T PISS OFF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. That's one reason why LeDoux, when talking to the O, was probably as growly as he was this afternoon. No matter the intentions, the group won't tolerate that.
Here's his release:
Over the past 48 hours two unfortunate events have taken place that we at Occupy Portland are still working through.
1. A non-profit corporation (Occupy Portland, Inc.) [http://egov.sos.state.or.us/br/pkg_web_name_srch_inq.show_detl?p_be_rsn=1546777&p_srce=BR_INQ&p_print=FALSE] was registered by a member of the finance committee after promising that no so action would take place before proposing to the OP General Assembly. In fact, the OP GA has been working diligently on proposal that have passed [http://occupypdx.org/2011/10/26/general-assembly-notes-full-10-25-2011/#more-1407] to provide a fully open and transparent view into the movement’s finances.2. Another individual from the finance committee “bought” the OccupyPortland.org domain name from the person that originally registered it and changed the DNS so that for a while, all traffic to OccupyPortland.org was disrupted. After posting several pages, the traffic is now redirecting to our alternate URL, OccupyPDX.org but all of the email to the domain addresses are being lost or going to the individual directly. Also, the traffic can be redirected/blocked/messed with again at a moment’s notice. All of this again was a unilateral action by a single person without consulting or conesnt from the GA.FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEPORTLAND, ORE. — Individuals on the Finance Committee at Occupy Portland were able to take control the protest’s domain name and and associate email addresses late Tuesday evening. Additionally, in a somewhat ironic twist, these individuals formed a (non-profit) corporation to which they transferred all of the money which had been collected for the movement through kind donations from our community.The emails that were being used maintain contact the with the press, organize our online group discussions, and control the technical means of organization were all taken over by a handful of individuals that were able to get the passwords to these systems then lock everyone else out.Unless restored immediately, OccupyPortland.org is no longer affiliated with our protest or our movement. The Finance Committee members that have acted on their own will need to account for their own actions. We cannot state with certainty the amount of the donations that were taken in through the internet. We will use all means at our disposable to account for every dollar and make this transparent as soon as possible.We have restored the website at the backup address, OccupyPDX.org, and have full control over this domain and all of its email addresses. Nothing originating from OccupyPortland.org should be trusted to represent the Occupy Portland protest or the people of the Portland General Assembly. No emails originating from this address are affiliated any longer with any part of Occupy Portland.If anything, this incident illustrates the very reason we are protesting. Our protest against corporate power and control is now colored by people who have used this very structure we are protesting against to deprive us of donations and resources that the community as a whole helped establish for our protest.The ways in which these things happened is a perfect illustration of the corruption and secrecy that are problematic at every level of our society.We have attempted to reach out to these individuals, but they have assured us that they have no intention of changing their course of action. In light of this, the public should understand that they are willfully and falsely representing themselves as speaking for the Occupy Portland General Assembly.None of these actions were approved by the General Assembly. None of these actions were even explained to the General Assembly. These two things are facts which are impossible to dispute.Occupy Portland will continue our protest in deference to the General Assembly, and will not let this distract us or slow us down. It is a shame a few people act in interests against the will of the movement, but in the greater scheme of things it will not matter. It is a minor bump in a road that is laden with mines on the path to achieve Accountability, Transparency and Justice.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
REALITY CHECK: THE #OCCUPY PROTESTORS ... KIND OF HAVE A POINT
October 20, 2011
http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/social-issues/reality-check-the-occupy-protestors-kind-of-have-a-point.html
Everybody's talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the many related demonstrations around the world. According to Journalism.org, the movement "occupied" 10% of news coverage in the U.S. last week, with commenters' opinions ranging from fervent support to outright disgust. The Wall Street Journal has compiled a few of the most interesting reactions here.
One thing that can't be denied: the protesters are making a lot of noise. Andnew research from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2011 might just raise the volume. There are some pretty sobering facts in the report, including the statistic that 0.5% of the world's population own 38.5% of the wealth, while the bottom two-thirds account for just 3.3% of wealth.
Those are pretty crazy numbers. Here are some more: another new studyanalyzing the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has found that only 147 are "superconnected". What does that mean? Basically that a lot of money and power is concentrated in very few hands - and a lot of the 147 companies are banks. Here's an image the researchers released. The yellow dots are 1318 "very connected" companies, and the red are the 147 "superconnected" companies:
The study was conducted by three complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and is the first of its kind. It's already met with some criticism - Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute, for instance, points out that the study assumes ownership equates to control, which isn't necessarily true - but its findings are still fascinating.
There are some interesting similarities in the numbers. Credit Suisse found that 0.5% of the world's population control 38.5% of the wealth. The Zurich study found that about 40% of the corporate network is controlled by about 1% of companies. So all signs seem to be pointing to the fact that wealth is distributed very unevenly on the world stage.
Speaking of signs, here's one from the protests:
A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF BEING ARRESTED FOR PROTESTING
by nicocoinicon on October 24, 2011
I was one of the people arrested on Friday for protesting against forcibly shutting down Occupy Melbourne. I have never been arrested before, and had never even considered it a possibility. I realise that I am a white middle class male, and that there are others in our society who are confronted by these realities on a regular basis. Despite this, I feel that my experience is worth sharing as it has had a huge impact on me.
Many police seemed to enjoy the opportunity to cause some violence. At one stage a girl I was next to was choked as a policeman pushed her against the people behind with his arm across her throat. As her face went bright red I grabbed his arm and said “let her go” at which point he pushed my head back instead, to which my sore neck is a testament. Afterwards, she asked him, in tears, “why did you choke me?” and he smiled. On the other hand, I did not see a single protester act violently, an aspect of the day which even Robert Doyle doesn’t seem to deny, only confuse.
I can be seen with my face to the camera and my hands in the air earlier in the day. From the Herald Sun online.
When the protesters in City Square had been arrested and the horses were brought up to Collins Street a man came up to me and started yelling in my face “those horses are going to crush your skull” and “when I see you in the back of the van I’m going to fuck you up”. My first response was to ask him why he was saying this, but then as I looked him up and down I realised he was a cop in plain clothes (the black and yellow police boots were the giveaway). I took out my phone to take a photo of him, but he quickly turned away and ran across the intersection and across the police line. It was the first, but certainly not the last time that I had failed to realise what was happening. Before Friday I considered myself to be quite cynical, but I was never ready to believe that the police would act like this.
After the horses pushed the main group of people out of the Swanston and Collins intersection (trampling a few people along the way) there was a lot of discussion among the protesters. It was clear that if we stayed put the police were going to push us again soon, so after a show of hands it was agreed that everyone would march up Swanston Street towards Burke. So at around 3pm, everyone turned to face North, with our backs to the police, and began to move forward. At this point, once the protesters were moving away from them, and perhaps because the cameras now faced away from them, the police began to push forward.
They shouted “MOVE, MOVE, MOVE” and pushed those of us at the back against the people in front of us. Ahead, protesters were blocked by the traffic stuck in the Bourke Street intersection, so the crowd had slowed to a crawl. I remember yelling “I’m moving as fast as I can”. When someone grabbed the backpack of the person to my right, I reached out towards him. Instantly, another officer grabbed my arm, twisting it behind my back. Another protester shouted “let him go you’ll break his arm” and a voice behind me shouted “I fucking hope so”.
Within half a minute, the guy on the right with the backpack, the guy to my left and a few others nearby had all been pulled behind the police line. I couldn’t see what was happening to them because I was facing the opposite direction and being constantly shoved forwards. Someone then grabbed me, lifted me up in the air and threw me on the ground behind the line. As I scrambled to get back up I was shoved back down to my hands and knees again.There were at least a dozen other people around me having the exact same thing done to them. It sounds daft now but I remember saying out loud “I haven’t done anything wrong” still completely shocked. I felt like I was ready to cry. I put my hands in the air to show that I wasn’t going to struggle, and a policewoman pulled them down behind my back. They then pushed me forwards, one on either side, to the back of a truck where they grabbed my phone from my pocket and started reaching around my clothes. I asked what I had done wrong but was met with no reply. The woman who took my phone asked “do you have any ID” and perhaps naively I told them which pocket had my wallet. She then searched all my other pockets and took my keys, some coins, a handkerchief and a mandarin peel and my shoes for good measure. I’m not sure if me raising my arms and telling them what I had on me amounted to consenting to a search, but at the time I was scared and just wanted it to be over. I asked “where will you take me” and she told me the Custody Center, which later turned out to be false. Because I was getting answers now I again asked I had done and this time the reply was “you failed to comply with a police order” a cause which on it’s own is ludicrous. As someone has put it to me since; the police could order me to shoot my own mother.
The truck was entirely metallic with no windows. One guy sitting across from me was asking “can I please go to the toilet, you can bring me right back” every time they brought another person in. Eventually there were eleven of us in our section, one was a kid of seventeen who had come to the protests from school. The majority of the time spent in the back was spent with the engine off, occasionally we would move for few minutes at a time before stopping again. We tried to guess what was happening, the two main theories being that they were either driving around and letting people out one and a time (starting with the other section) or that they weren’t sure which station to take us to. At one point we realised we were all sitting on an angle and the van must be parked on a slope. After what seemed like an eternity we drove for a bit longer, the sounds letting us know we were on a freeway and then entering a car park with roller doors, signalling that we had indeed been taken to a police station.
After another stretch of time someone opened the door and said “first one”. We chose the guy who had been denied a chance to use a bathroom by the cops in the city. Around ten minutes later police took another person (again we let a guy who needed to piss go first), and then finally told us all to get out. As we were escorted through the underground car park the police pointed out our torn and filthy clothes, ripped by their colleagues and dirtied by the horseshit covered streets we had been thrown down and laughed. We were taken to a small bathroom, and I stood out the front of the door because I didn’t need to go. It was only after a double take that I realised this was the holding cell. The room was disgusting, it stank like shit and one of the metal benches was covered in blood. Every five minutes or so they would come in and take another one of us. When it was my turn I was taken down a corridor to a desk where a policeman asked for my name, date of birth and address. Lining the corridor was a row of shoes. I peered over the desk, I could see a bank of TVs, most showed empty rooms, but one showed some of the people I was with and some others who I hadn’t seen before who must have been from the other section. I could also see our property bags behind the counter and recognised mine. This was the first time I had seen a clock since they took my phone and it was 5:30, which meant I had been in the truck for over two hours. After checking that I didn’t have a belt (I guess they thought I might hang myself). I was brought into a room with FCELL painted on the walls, which one of the others had overheard being called the “female cell”. The “male cell” was already full.
In the cell they used temperature to tire us out and break us. First they heated the cell until we were all lying on the floor in silence, exhausted. They then swapped and cooled us right down, and we suddenly all got up, pacing around the room to keep warm. Just as suddenly, they would then make it unbearably hot again, leaving us even more weaker than before. I’m sure this procedure must be common knowledge for many, but for me this was completely shocking. It left me with an unbearable mixture of fear, lethargy and boredom. At one point I tried to balance a coin on its side to keep myself from thinking about what was happening and realised that my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
After a few more hours they opened the door and asked for me specifically. I went back to the desk, where they told me I was banned from City Square and environs until Sunday evening, an area which ranged from Queen Street to Spring, from Flinders to Latrobe. At first I thought I was being told to sign an agreement, so I asked what would happen if I didn’t agree. They told me that I would have to see what the Governor said, which meant waiting in the cell until Monday. It took me a little while to realise that I was just being formally told this information, and didn’t have to agree with anything. So I took the ban notice, signed for the return of my belongings and was released without charge. I later found out they asked for me first because I had someone waiting outside. It was 8pm, five hours after I had been grabbed out of a group of peaceful protesters.
There is clearly more I could say about my own beliefs in regards to the Occupy movement, but my intention in writing this is to document what happened to me, not to further a particular agenda. However I don’t want my story dismissed through the type of stereotyping that has seen people labeled professional protesters, a term which I don’t even begin to understand. I would like to stress that I did not attend the protest in order to be arrested, and I spent most of the day refilling plastic bottles of water and passing them throughout the crowd. So briefly, for those of you who don’t know me, no I am not unemployed, drawing government benefits, a member of a union, political party or activist group – not that I think that should matter in the slightest. I was there because I believe the right to protest is one of the most important rights we have, it plays a crucial role in any democracy. A few flimsy excuses about hanging heavy items and having some tents shouldn’t be enough to clear a protest entirely with two hours notice. Most importantly, to first threaten a group with violence and to then blame them for the violence after they don’t give in to your threats is an incredibly dangerous brand of flawed logic.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE ON OCCUPY MELBOURNE
OCTOBER 24, 201
Repression into Barbarism
The War on Terror in Australia
Footage from the recent police raid on the Occupy Melbourne camp in the city square has been circulating globally: ugly Youtube clips of protesters dragged by the hair, cracked over the head, menaced by dogs and so on.
Why did the conservative lord mayor, Robert Doyle, send in his constabulary to disperse a relatively small and entirely peaceful assembly that could quite easily have been accommodated for the foreseeable future?
In an article for the tabloid Herald Sun, the mayor explained his reasoning.
‘The protest,’ he said, ‘[had] been infiltrated by professionals: what were those knives, hammers, bottles, bricks and fuel for?’
Some took that as merely a clueless affirmation of Doyle’s position on the Occupy percentage scale: he was so thoroughly part of the one percent that he didn’t recognize the implements normal people use when camping.
But there’s a considerably more sinister explanation. 
‘Peaceful? Hardly,’ Doyle continued. ‘And how do these protesters explain the knives, hammers, bricks, bottles and flammable liquids that we found in their illegal tent city? What were they for?’
By labelling demonstrators as ‘professionals’, by trumpeting the fearsome arsenal his men had uncovered, Doyle was deliberately invoking the specter of terrorism.
In Australia, the War on Terror has, for the most part, taken place exclusively on our television screens, with the official apologists for Iraq and Afghanistan stressing the necessity for fighting ‘Over There’ precisely so we don’t have to war ‘Over Here’.
But these events provide an illustration of how such conflicts inevitably seep home.
Before 2001, Australian authorities gave a certain institutional recognition of the legitimacy of protest. By rallying regularly, and in large numbers, the social movements of the 1970s established the street march as an accepted facet of the political process. For a while, there was even a tacit agreement (albeit regularly breached) about keeping police off campuses. If the students were marching, well, that was their right, with the universities accepted a degree of disruption in the name of a vibrant political culture.
Those days are well and truly over. The post-9/11 security laws give authorities tremendous powers to use against protesters: during the APEC meetings of 2007, for instance, the NSW government partitioned Sydney into zones and then released a list of people who weren’t permitted into certain areas on the basis not of anything they’d done but on the grounds of what they might do.
In Melbourne, the conservative Liberal Party and the equally conservative Labor Party have been engaged in a law and order bidding, the results of which have manifested in the government’s new ‘public order response team’: essentially, a dedicated anti-protest squad. Even before the assault upon the camp, the policing of Occupy Melbourne was more like the deployment for an international incident (horses, dogs, motorcycles, vans, etc) than a response to a protest of a few hundred people.
Since George Bush explained that you were either with him or with the terrorists, the line between dissent and criminality has been deliberately blurred. We’ve also seen a normalization – indeed, almost a cathectization — of extreme violence.
Occupy Melbourne’s attempts to regroup coincided with local newspapers showcasing images of Muammar Gaddafi’s battered corpse, lovingly reproduced in sufficiently high-resolution so that the bullet wounds to his head could be admired. Once – and not so very long ago either – it was taken for granted that even the vilest criminal deserved due process, that torture and summary executions were barbarous, and that only sociopaths gloated over the bodies of their enemies.
But that’s all so yesterday. These days, footage of a man being kicked and stabbed and dragged off to be shot embarrasses nobody. On the contrary, it’s almost universally accepted as an appropriate backdrop for world leaders to prate about freedom and democracy and humanitarianism.
In that context, it’s no wonder that Doyle feels that Victoria Police did, as he puts it, a ‘magnificent job’. If the protesters were terrorists – ‘professionals’, no less – well, we all know what that follows.
Indeed, the deployment of state violence against anti-corporate protesters provides a happy point of concurrence for neo-conservatives and neo-liberals.
It’s worth recalling that the Melbourne City Square only ever become a public space because the Builders Laborers Federation won a campaign to prevent the council demolishing historic buildings in the area and selling the space to developers.
Because of that victory, the square served, for many years, as a focal point for public assemblies of all kind – until, that is, the early nineties when a right-wing premier sold most of it in one of the privatization sprees that were all the rage back then.
That, then, was the other the justification for the assault on Occupy Melbourne. The camp was, supposedly, interfering with the local businesses — and in today’s world the rights of free enterprise always trump those of free assembly.
Neoliberals might not fetishize violence in the same creepy fashion as their neoconservative brethren but it’s central to their creed that no-one interfere with the sacred workings of the invisible hand. Hence the hostility of a surprising number of establishment ‘progressives’ to the ‘Occupy’ idea: there’s a liberal technocratic mindset for which anti-market protests simply do not compute.
What will happen now?
Organizationally, Doyle’s brutality seems to have given the campaign a shot in the arm, with numbers nearly doubled in the rally the next day. Politically, the Occupy movement in Australia now grapples with all kinds of question about the nature of the state and society.
Whether the camp will be re-established remains to be seen. But the implications of the last week will reverberate on the Australian Left for a long time to come.
Jeff Sparrow is the editor of Overland magazine and the author of Killing: Misadventures in Violence.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
MEDIA RELEASE – 7.20am FRIDAY OCTOBER 21st 2011
Move to Evict Occupy Melbourne?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
At 6.58 council issued us with the following notice:______________________________________________
“I am an authorised officer of the Melbourne City Council.
I direct all persons in the City Square who are, in my opinion, failing to comply with the Council Activities Local Law 2009 by:
- Camping in the City Square; and
- Hanging or placing objects and things on or over the city square.
both without a permit, to
- leave the city square; and
-remove all items, goods and equipment including tents and associated infrastructure which the person owns or is responsible for.
by 9am on Friday 21 October 2011.
If you do not comply with this direction in the time provided we will be referring the matter to the Victoria Police and you may be subject to further enforcement proceedings and/or trespass.
_____________________________________________________
We remain committed to peacefully occupying public space and intend to remain.
Please join us if you believe that public use of public space for peaceful protest is worth supporting.
MEDIA RELEASE – 5:30pm THURSDAY OCTOBER 20th 2011
Victoria Police Speak to OM Protestors
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Inspector Bernie Jackson of the Melbourne East police station this afternoon met with Occupy Melbourne protestors today to discuss a potential eviction scenario.Jackson stressed that Victoria Police does not have the authority on its own to prosecute the eviction, and instead will wait for Melbourne City Council’s instructions on how to proceed.
Inspector Jackson said that once an eviction notice had been served, a “reasonable time” would be given for protestors to voluntarily vacate City Square. “Reasonable time will be given in hours, as in a number of hours,” said Jackson. He qualified: “it’s not going to be in the middle of the night.”
Inspector Jackson further discussed Victoria Police’s likely course of action should an eviction order be issued. When the police arrive on site, protestors will be again asked to leave voluntarily. Anyone who refuses to leave will be forcibly removed from City Square by police officers.
Inspector Jackson told the crowd that he was satisfied with the current state of relations between police and the Occupy Melbourne protestors.
Inspector Jackson’s statement will be discussed at the nightly General Assembly, to be held at 6pm this evening on the north side of City Square.
Jackson was challenged by a number of vocal members of the crowd, including Indigenous activist Robbie Thorpe.
Mr Thorpe asked Jackson: “If the by-laws [relating to the Summary Offences Act’s powers for eviction] relate to the Aboriginal people and if so, how?”
Inspector Jackson responded that the police force was required to follow the directions of the Melbourne City Council with regard to the eviction of protestors.
Mr Thorpe later told Occupy Melbourne’s media liaison team that any eviction notice served on the protestors is likely to be immediately challenged in the courts.
MEDIA CONTACT
Nick Carson, media spokesperson, 0438 428 116
Tal Slome, media spokesperson, 0421 652 642
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
AUSTRALIAN MURDOCH TABLOID TO CHARGE FOR INTERNET CONTENT.
By Michael, Member of the House of Byers.
Melbourne corporate newspaper, The Age, has reported that Murdoch tabloid, The Australian, is set to announce a charging schedule.
The $2.95 fee shall apply to website, tablet & mobile phone access, and applications, but, is a sliding fee that increases depending on what you are purchasing.
There is no word as to whether the scheme will be rolled out to other News Ltd tabloids such as the Herald-Sun & the Courier Mail, although it is claimed that the news ltd website will not be charging for access to its website.
Other newspaper around the world that charge for content such as The Financial Review, The Times of England, and The New York Times, do not appear to be faring well.
At any rate, it is a much better idea to consume and support independent news agencies such as The Mikiverse.
Melbourne corporate newspaper, The Age, has reported that Murdoch tabloid, The Australian, is set to announce a charging schedule.
The $2.95 fee shall apply to website, tablet & mobile phone access, and applications, but, is a sliding fee that increases depending on what you are purchasing.
There is no word as to whether the scheme will be rolled out to other News Ltd tabloids such as the Herald-Sun & the Courier Mail, although it is claimed that the news ltd website will not be charging for access to its website.
Other newspaper around the world that charge for content such as The Financial Review, The Times of England, and The New York Times, do not appear to be faring well.
At any rate, it is a much better idea to consume and support independent news agencies such as The Mikiverse.
MEET THE GUY WHO SNITCHED ON OCCUPY WALL ST TO THE FBI AND NYPD
Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, New York security consultant Thomas Ryan has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement. Ryan says he's done contract work for the U.S. Army and he brags on his blog that he leads "a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world." But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers' social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.
What may much more alarming to Occupy Wall Street organizers is that while Ryan was monitoring September17discuss, he was forwarding interesting email threads to contacts at the NYPD and FBI, including special agent Jordan T. Loyd, a member of the FBI's New York-based cyber security team.
On September 18th, the day after the protest's start, Ryan forwarded an email exchange between Occupy Wall Street organizers to Loyd. The email exchange is harmless: Organizers discuss how they need to increase union participation in the protest. "We need more outreach to workers. The best way to do that is by showing solidarity with them," writes organizer Jackie DiSalvo in the thread. She then lists a group of potential unions to work with.
Another organizer named Conor responds: "+1,000,000 to Jackie's proposal on working people/union struggles outreach and solidarity. Also, why not invite people to protest Troy Davis's execution date at Liberty Plaza this Monday?"
Five minutes after Conor sent his email, Ryan forwarded the thread—with no additional comment—to Loyd's FBI email address. "Thanks!" Loyd responded. He cc'd his colleague named Ilhwan Yum, a fellow cybersecurity expert at the agency, on the reply.
On September 26th, Ryan forwarded another email thread to Agent Loyd. But this time he clued in the NYPD as well, sending the email to Dennis Dragos, a detective with the NYPD Computer Crimes Squad.
The NYPD might have been very grateful he did so, since it involved a proposed demonstration outside NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. In the thread, organizers debated whether to crash an upcoming press conference planned by marijuana advocates to celebrate NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly ordering officers to halt arrests over possession of small amounts of marijuana.
"Should we bring some folks from Liberty Plaza to chant "SHAME" for the NYPD's recent brutalities on Thursday night for the Troy Davis and Saturday for the Occupy Wall Street march?" asked one person in the email thread. (That past Saturday, the video of NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper-spraying a protester had gone viral.) Ryan promptly forwarded the email thread to Loyd at the FBI and Dragos at the NYPD.
Interestingly, it was Ryan who revealed himself as a snitch. We learned of these emails from the archive Ryan leaked yesterday in the hopes of undermining the Occupy Wall Street movement. In assembling the archive of September17discuss emails, it appears he accidentally included some of his own forwarded emails indicating he was ratting out organizers.
"I don't know, I just put everything I had into one big package," Ryan said when asked how the emails ended up in the file posted to Andrew Breitbart's blog. Some security expert.
But Ryan didn't just tip off the authorities. He was also giving information to companies as well. When protesters discussed demonstrating in front of morning shows likeToday and Good Morning America, Ryan quickly forwarded the thread to Mark Farrell, the chief security officer at Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal.
Ryan wrote:
Since you are the CSO, I am not sure of your role in NBC since COMCAST owns them.
There is a huge protest in New York call "Occupy Wall Street". Here is an email of stunts that they will try to pull on the TODAY show.We have been heavily monitoring Occupy Wall Street, and Anonymous.
"Thanks Tom," Farrell responded. "I'll pass this to my counterpart at NBCU."
Did the FBI and/or NYPD ask him to monitor Occupy Wall Street? Was he just forwarding the emails on out of the goodness of his heart? In a phone interview with us, Ryan denied being an informant. "I do not work with the FBI," he said.
Ryan said he knows Loyd through their mutual involvement in the Open Web Application Security Project, a non-profit computer security group of which Ryan is a board member. Ryan said he sent the emails to Loyd unsolicited simply because "everyone's curious" about Occupy Wall Street, and he had a ground-eye view. "Jordan never asked me for anything."
Was he sending every email he got to the authorities? Ryan said he couldn't remember how many he'd passed on to the FBI or NYPD, or other third parties. Later he said that he only forwarded the two emails we noticed, detailed above.
But even if he'd been sending them on regularly, they were probably of limited use to the authorities. Most of the real organizing at Occupy Wall Street happens face-to-face, according to David Graeber, who was one of the earliest organizers. "We did some practical work on [the email list] at first—I think that's where I first proposed the "we are the 99%" motto—but mainly it's just an expressive forum," he wrote in an email. "No one would seriously discuss a plan to do something covert or dangerous on such a list."
But regardless of how many emails Ryan sent—or whether Loyd ever asked Ryan to spy on Occupy Wall Street—Loyd was almost certainly interested in the emails he received. Loyd has helped hunt down members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous, and he and his colleagues in the FBI's cyber security squad have been monitoring their involvement in Occupy Wall Street.
At a New York cyber security conference one day before the protest began, Loyd cited Occupy Wall Street as an example of a "newly emerging threat to U.S. information systems." (In the lead-up to Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous had issued threats against the New York Stock Exchange.) He told the assembled crowd the FBI has been "monitoring the event on cyberspace and are preparing to meet it with physical security,"according to a New York Institute of Technology press release.
We contacted Loyd to ask about his relationship with Ryan and if any of the information Ryan passed along was of any use to the agency. He declined to answer questions and referred us to the FBI's press office. We'll post an update if we hear back from them.
We asked Ryan again this morning about how closely he was working with the authorities. Again, he claimed it was only these two emails, which is unlikely given he forwarded them to the FBI and NYPD without providing any context or explaining where he'd gotten them.
And he detailed his rationale for assisting the NYPD:
My respect for FDNY & NYPD stems from them risking their lives to save mine when my house was on fire in sunset park when I was 8 yrs old. Also, for them risking their lives and saving many family and friends during 9/11.Don't you find it Ironic that out of all the NYPD involved with the protest, [protesters] have only targeted the ones with Black Ribbons, given to them for their bravery during 9/11?I am sorry if we see things differently, I try to look at everything as a whole and in patterns. Everything we do in life and happens in life, there is a pattern behind it.
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