Jak of JNL media describes his arrest while filming the Keystone XL pipeline and the aftermath that prevents him from speaking out against the pipeline. Under this legal injunction, Jak faces 1 year in jail or 3 years supervised probation if decides to speak out against the pipeline.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XthAezqn738
Via WeAreChange… Read the rest
Organizers of the largest protest in history to this point, the 2003 march against the invasion of Iraq, are among those hopping to orchestrate a watershed moment for the global movement against austerity, writes the Independent:
The new “People’s Assembly Against Austerity” will march through London on 22 June, and, with the help of the Stop The War Coalition, intends to break that group’s record for the largest public rally in the nation’s history. The group claims it will be “an alternative democratic forum to a Parliament that has failed the people it is supposed to represent.” It will be, they hope “the launch-pad for mass resistance to austerity”.
Green Party Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas, Labour’s Katy Clark, Director of Executive Policy at the Unite trade union Steve Turner, head of the National Union of Teachers Kevin Courtney, comedian and disabled activist Francesca Martinez, as well as Independent columnists Owen Jones and Mark Steel, are the figureheads of a group they hope will appeal to anyone against austerity, regardless of background.
A few days ago, I had heard that there were riots going on in Brooklyn. I had no idea what was going on or why and didn’t feel like waiting for the evening news to tell me what was going on. I knew that people were taking pictures on Instagram and tweeting under the hashtag #brooklynriot and #brooklynprotest, so I used a new website to get the big picture in one fell swoop.
Tagboard.com is a hashtag aggregation website that searches all social media for the hashtag that you plug in. In the case of the Brooklyn riot meme, I was able to see moment to moment what was occurring.
Of course, Tagboard was not created as a site to help protestors organize, but to keep the increasingly media savvy public well organized. But one has to consider the power that a site like this can wield; across the board, from site to site, you have an eye in the sky.… Read the rest
I could call this film many things:
“A chilling view of the future”
“A harrowing tale of what we may become”
Based on the book The Death of the Liberal Class by Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, “Obey” brutally conveys our present reality, perhaps in the hope that we may finally wake as a united humanity.
We have been lulled into a state of being in which we are not confronted with monolithic decisions where we choose Liberty or Death; instead we are fed a steady diet of mini-compromises in our lives that we often choose wrongly upon.
I myself and totally guilty of this, but the overall result is a total compromise of every single piece of our dignity and personal sovereignty. So say that things are as they truly are is a radical notion that may get you shot in the face with a gas canister, like the military veteran of the Oakland Occupy protests or thrown into prison indefinitely like Bradley Manning.… Read the rest
Atlantic Cities describes the 8-bit-style smartphone game RIOT, a thought-provoking attempt to capture the liminal state which occurs during uprisings when order breaks down. I’d rather have my kids playing this than a game which makes them Navy SEALs:
“Riot” is a developing project in Italy that’s led by film-and-game director Leonard Menchiari, who previously did cinematography for “Half-Life” creator Valve Corporation. The atmospheric little simulator of bedlam, which runs on iOS or Android phones, is inspired by real-life political turmoil from around the globe.
There’s a hefty element of strategy involved, with the player taking on either the role of the agitators or the truncheoned legions of police trying to maintain order.
The developers have received modest funding so far on their Indiegogo page. If they collect enough cash, they hope to enrich the simulator by traveling to the sites of recent uprisings in Greece, Egypt and Italy to interview people involved in the conflicts.
Loophole For All is a move of extremely questionable legality but unquestionable inspiration from Paolo Cirio. The press release and introductory video explain:
Paolo Cirio, contemporary artist and pirate, hacked the governmental servers of the Cayman Islands and stole a list of all the companies incorporated in the country. Now on Loophole4All.com, he is selling the identities of those companies at a low cost to democratize the privileges of offshore businesses.
Paolo hijacks the identities by moving their addresses to his Caymans mailbox and issuing counterfeited certificates of incorporation from the Caymans company registry. This massive corporate identity theft benefits from the anonymous nature of those companies since the real owners’ secrecy allows anybody to impersonate them.
Through Loophole4All.com, anyone can hijack a Caymans company, from 99¢ for a certificate of incorporation for a real company to $49 for a mailbox in the offshore country with mail rerouting.
Via NYpost
PARIS — Topless women activists have pounded a huge church bell in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to “celebrate” the pope’s resignation.
The nine women from Ukrainian feminist group Femen had their chests and backs emblazoned with the words “Pope No More.” They didn’t explain their action except to say they are “provocateurs” celebrating Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to step down.
At one point the women rang an enormous bell on display in the hall of the landmark cathedral, part of a set of new bronze bells cast for Notre Dame’s 850th anniversary this year. Cathedral staff turned off the church lights and pulled the women away.
The women say they’re also protesting in support of gay marriage. France’s lower house of parliament is voting Tuesday on whether to legalize it.
When the first lolcats emerged, who imagined they would morph into a key tool for transmitting political dissent? The Wall Street Journal runs down ten Chinese memes of note of the past year, including Liu Bo is Very Busy, seen at right:
Protestors scored a double victory in the Sichuanese city of Shifang in July, scuppering plans for a molybdenum copper plant while simultaneously giving Chinese Internet users their own version of the Occupy movement’s Lt. John Pike (aka Pepper Spraying Cop).
The overzealous policeman in China’s case, identified by web sleuths as Liu Bo, was wielding a baton instead of pepper spray. Posting under the hashtag #LiuBoisVeryBusy in Chinese, Sina Weibo users published images of the rotund Mr. Liu bearing down on a variety of victims, including the distressed subject of Edward Munch’s “The Scream,” Chinese track star Liu Xiang and a terrified-looking puppy.
Picture: Sensei Sam (CC)
Costica Bradatan writes for the New Statesman:
Here he is. Matches in one hand, petrol bottle in the other. He removes the bottle cap, drops it to the ground and douses himself in liquid. He does everything slowly, methodically, as if it were part of a routine he has practiced for years. Then he stops, looks around, and strikes a match.
At this moment nothing in the world can bridge the gap that separates the self-immolator from the others. His total defiance of the survival and self-preservation instincts, his determination to trample on what everybody else finds precious, the ease with which he seems to dispose of his own life, all these place him not only beyond our capacity of understanding, but also outside of human society. He now inhabits a place that most of us find inhabitable. Yet, from there he does not cease to dominate us.
BayOfRage reveals infrastructure and redevelopment projects in Oakland (and beyond) as a means of reshaping cities for social control:
Further development will not open space for meaningful social activity and will only constrict it — In the slew of development projects coming down the pipe, residents will be free to consume, travel to and from work, or stay inside to not bother anyone.
Mistakes in architecture will never be repeated in future developments. The UC system learned the danger in building large plazas where dissident students could gather during the free speech movement at Berkeley. University of California campuses built since the sixties are subdivided into a number to smaller campuses, to better contain and neutralize student revolt. Housing projects are built to make the space transparent and easily surveillable, often by the administrators of social services. Likewise, we can be entirely sure that the city of Oakland will never allow the construction of another space like Oscar Grant Plaza, where thousands of people were able to gather, meet their needs and organize an assault against capitalism.
