AnonMedics

Dubai: Police officials in Dubai have warned against wearing a mask that symbolises opposition to state authority during any celebrations connected to National Day and declared it illegal.

Any person found wearing Guy Fawkes masks, also known as ‘Vendetta masks’, risks police questioning as any object or action deemed to be instigating unrest or insulting the UAE is illegal, police officials said.

[…]

A Dubai Police official stressed the negative connotations of the mask. “Using any symbol that insults the country or instigates unrest against its system is not allowed. We urge citizens to celebrate using other symbols such as national flags, slogans or photos that are more appropriate to the happy occasion of National Day.”

ema

catmartini:

After its encampment in Zuccotti Park, which changed the public discourse about economic inequality and introduced the nation to the trope of the 1 percent, the Occupy movement has wandered in a desert of more intellectual, less visible projects, like farming, fighting debt and theorizing on banking. While several nouns have been occupied — from summer camp to health care — it is only with Hurricane Sandy that the times have conspired to deliver an event that fully calls upon the movement’s talents and caters to its strengths.

Maligned for months for its purported ineffectiveness, Occupy Wall Street has managed through its storm-related efforts not only to renew the impromptu passions of Zuccotti, but also to tap into an unfulfilled desire among the residents of the city to assist in the recovery. This altruistic urge was initially unmet by larger, more established charity groups, which seemed slow to deliver aid and turned away potential volunteers in droves during the early days of the disaster.

In the past two weeks, Occupy Sandy has set up distribution sites at a pair of Brooklyn churches where hundreds of New Yorkers muster daily to cook hot meals for the afflicted and to sort through a medieval marketplace of donated blankets, clothes and food. There is an Occupy motor pool of borrowed cars and pickup trucks that ferries volunteers to ravaged areas. An Occupy weatherman sits at his computer and issues regular forecasts. Occupy construction teams and medical committees have been formed.

Managing it all is an ad hoc group of tech-savvy Occupy members who spend their days with laptops on their knees, creating Google documents with action points and flow charts, and posting notes on Facebook that range from the sober (“Adobo Medical Center in Red Hook needs an 8,000 watt generator AS SOON AS POSSIBLE”) to the endearingly hilarious (“We will be treating anyone affected by Sandy, FREE of charge, with ear acupuncture this Monday”). While the local tech team sleeps, a shadow corps in London works off-hours to update theTwitter feed and to maintain the intranet. Some enterprising Occupiers have even set up awedding registry on Amazon.com, with a wish list of necessities for victims of the storm; so far, items totaling more than $100,000 — water pumps and Sawzall saw kits — have been ordered.

….read the full article, it’s beautiful!

amodernmanifesto:

In 2011, California prisoners organized two waves of hunger strikes to protest heinous prison conditions and abuses. The hunger strike actions, initiated by a group of inmates in the Secure Housing Unit of Pelican Bay State Prison, spread to one-third of California’s prisons and at their peak included the supportive participation of more than 12,000 prisoners.

Central among their demands was ending the practices and policies of extreme solitary confinement, in which prisoners are subjected to indefinite isolation, sensory deprivation and other forms of abuse and torture, in many cases for decades on end.

In California, thousands of prisoners are subject to agonizing, indefinite isolation, not because of illegal behavior or because they were found guilty of committing a criminal act, but because the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has given them a “gang classification” based on unsubstantiated allegations of prison informants or even innocent association.

“Gang classification” or status is also a convenient catchall that can be used by prison authorities to throw inmate activists into the oblivion of isolation.

facingreality:

By Don Gato

It was a little weird to wake up today to an article by Chris Hedges on a website called “Truth-Out” when “truth” is in such short supply in the piece. Hedges was trained as a journalist and worked for years at such luminaries of lies like the New York Times, so it shouldn’t be a…

A political campaign by San Francisco’s well-heeled “property owners” was launched to influence police and politicians to aggressively demobilize Occupy SF and to dismantle their encampments. And, there are documents to prove it.

cultureofresistance:

What are the police preparing for? National “spending spree” by local law enforcement has created small armies.

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If terrorists ever target Fargo, N.D., the local police will be ready.

In recent years, they have bought bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets, like those used by soldiers in foreign wars. For local siege situations requiring real firepower, police there can use a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. Until that day, however, the menacing truck is mostly used for training runs and appearances at the annual Fargo picnic, where it’s been displayed near a children’s bounce house.

“Most people are so fascinated by it, because nothing happens here,” said Carol Archbold, a Fargo resident and criminal justice professor at North Dakota State University. “There’s no terrorism here.” 

Fargo, like thousands of other communities in every state, has been on a gear-buying spree with the aid of more than $34 billion in federal government grants since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.  

The federal grant spending, awarded with little oversight from Washington, has fueled a rapid, broad transformation of police operations in Fargo and in departments across the country. More than ever before, police rely on quasi-military tactics and equipment, the Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

No one can say exactly what has been purchased in total across the country or how it’s being used, because the federal government doesn’t keep close track. State and local governments don’t maintain uniform records. But a review of records from 41 states obtained through open-government requests, and interviews with more than two-dozen current and former police officials and terrorism experts, shows police departments around the U.S. have transformed into small army-like forces.

Since Occupy Wall Street and similar protests broke out this fall, confusion about how to respond has landed some police departments in national headlines for electing to use intimidating riot gear, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse demonstrators. Observers have decried these aggressive tactics as more evidence that police are overly militarized. Among them is former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper, who today regrets his “militaristic” answer in 1999 to the infamous “Battle in Seattle” protests.

the-zeitgeist-movement:

Posted by Jen Graves on Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 2:25 PM

As Central District News reported, police last night raided a house at 19th and Spruce, arresting three men for charges including “Criminal Trespassing, Property Damage and weapons violations. Other criminal charges may be forthcoming.”

According to the SPD’s account, the raid was in response to a 911 call that afternoon that alerted them about “multiple male and female subjects who had unlawfully entered and occupied a residence. …Preliminary investigation indicates that the suspects entered the house and subsequently damaged the interior of the house with graffiti. They also left garbage, open containers of food, and were cooking inside the house on a portable, gas-operated stove.”

The house had been bought out of foreclosure in August by Mountaincrest Credit Union, according to CDN. The way the CDN story reads, the house was under renovation and the occupiers were interrupting progress and damaging it—and they’d broken in.


But that story doesn’t match what I learned in a meeting just now with two of the 10 or 12 occupiers who had been in the house for about two weeks.

They held up the house key. An anonymous “elf” had come by the Occupy Seattle encampment at SCCC a few weeks ago and handed them the key and the address, they said. (A different anonymous donor also gave them a sailboat that they’ll begin using and painting in the spring.) Inside, they’d begun painting a forest landscape, and planned a waterfall down the staircase; they titled the house “Water.” They denied doing damage or being a haven for any kind of destructive activity and said they didn’t know of any complaints from neighbors. Instead, they saw the house as a home base for adding art to the immediate neighborhood. To that end, they’d completed a mural nearby yesterday, on Fir Street between 14th and 15th, on a garage wall offered to them by a resident. Also yesterday, another donor gave them furniture: a futon, bookcases.

Two of their fellow occupiers are still in jail, set to be released on bail this afternoon. The third person arrested was not part of the occupation and never had lived in the house, they say. He, along with about 50 other protesters against the raid, had come to show his support, and when he stepped onto the grass, he was arrested, the occupiers say. He is the one charged with weapons violations, they say: He had a pocket knife in his pants pocket, which he then offered to the police, for which they booked him on the weapons charge.

The police did not give the squatters 72 hours eviction notice, and when Cammi Morgan, one of the occupiers, asked whether the police had any contact with the property owner, they said no, she says. It is unclear why the scenario at 19th and Spruce is so different from the other house where Occupy Seattle is squatting, at 23rd and Alder—where anarchist squatters have a court date December 28 and have had plenty of notice of removal.

“This house wasn’t about anti-police at all,” Morgan says. “Our intention was to show that we could give back to the community. It wasn’t about having a roof over our heads—we’re all pretty resourceful. We were excited to use the house as a pathway to create art for everyone. We’d offered to touch up the fading murals at the food bank at Saint Mary’s. I wanted to offer guitar lessons at the boys and girls club near there.”

Neil Vandervloed, creator of the cartoon hand signs that have been the most visible graphic for Occupy Seattle, was bringing community dinners cooked by his wife to the house each night.

“I’m really disappointed,” Vandervloed said. “Especially this type of reaction. There were something like 13 cop cars and 30 cops there, with assault rifles, shotguns, and handguns out and drawn—to arrest two artists on Christmas Eve. The neighbors made us hot coffee and stood in solidarity with us as the police raided.”

collaterlysisters:

It was that mean GOP and the religious right, wasn’t it?  I mean, it would have to be, because they’re basically satan and we hear about their gross terrifying beliefs all the time!  President Nobel Peace Prize Winner Barack Obama would never do something like that:

“I agree … there is adequate and reasonable, well-supported, and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential,” Hamburg said.

“However, this morning I received a memorandum from the Secretary of Health and Human Services invoking her authority under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to execute its provisions and stating that she does not agree with the Agency’s decision to allow the marketing of Plan B One-Step nonprescription for all females of child-bearing potential,” she said.

Whoops!  The Democratic Party doesn’t have your back.  On nearly anything.  Remember it, and replace them.

healthtothepeople:

rosadefuego:

dandieelyon:

truth. speak it

Fuck the person who wrote this article, fuck the person who blogged this article, and fuck everyone who reblogged this article.

It is NOT “macho” to smash windows. At least half the black bloc were women, and many people of color. Have you not heard of Laila Khaled? What about Comandante Ramona? They were fucking soldiers.

Look at every other social movement in the world—will you condemn Egyptians for torching government buildings when by doing that, they are now running their own country instead of living under an oppressive authoritarian regime? Do you think the U.S. left Vietnam because they sat in peaceful protest while the United States blew their heads off? No. 

It’s called resistance. I think a huge reason there’s so much “peace policing” happening at this protest is because so many white people—and poc who are fooled into their racist bullshit—are involved. I talked to a “hippy” white man on the way to the docks, and he said: “I don’t have a problem with undercover cops. That’s their job.” Yeah, seriously. Undercover cops have never fucked your shit up because you’re a white man who owns land. But they destroyed black families with crack. They killed Chicano leaders when they were actually starting to get people’s attention. 

What the fuck did white liberals ever do for me? My mom couldn’t get welfare anymore because of Bill Clinton. White conservatives? She couldn’t get housing assistance because Bush cut the program that was helping her out. The white man created the circumstances that gave birth to my psychopathic gangster of a father. I don’t owe them shit. I don’t owe them an apology if I smash a fucking window—which I regrettably did not. I don’t owe ANYBODY an apology for exercising my freedom of speech when I write words on a public wall. That’s the people’s wall. It’s my wall. The corporations should be apologizing to us for filling our world with hideous advertisements.

But you are absolutely right: I’m not part of the same 99% as privileged white people who grew up believing the rich white man’s version of history. I’m not part of the group of poc that have been fooled by the white man’s lies. What the fuck do you have to be angry about? You don’t have a mercedes? You can’t afford 40,000 channels on the Dish anymore? You can’t easily pay for your shitty kids to go to school? Well guess what, my people have been dealing with that for our entire history, and we still are experiencing real oppression. 

You don’t understand why preaching nonviolence is racist because you don’t understand violence. You don’t understand what it’s like to live in a place where you might get shot every time you step outside your door. You don’t understand the violence we experience when the police treat the families of criminals, like criminals. You don’t understand the violence I experience every time I turn on the television, and see my people portrayed as either whores, day laborers, or maids. When I fight back, it’s not violence—it’s resistance. 

I wish I could say I had more white friends that sympathized, that tried to understand the oppression of my people—but they are few. I love them. I trust them. But I don’t trust the rest of you white people to back up me or my people when we get radical. I don’t fool myself into thinking you’re getting together to change things for me. You do this for you. I’m not part of your 99%, and I don’t want to be. 

Maybe I’ll add more to this later.

when i was there some dude was really trying to get me to cosign on some non-violence. but i believe the police are violent and so are banks for that matter. those windows had it coming. please keep this critique coming. <3

“Many Occupy L.A. protesters arrested during demonstrations in recent months are being offered a unique chance to avoid court trials: pay $355 to a private company for a lesson in free speech.

Los Angeles Chief Deputy City Atty. William Carter said the city won’t press charges against protesters who complete the educational program offered by American Justice Associates.”

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Every single one of these arrestees should insist on a trial. Even after the media myths about OccupyLA’s “peaceful, friendly” eviction were thoroughly debunked, evidence continues to accumulate.