Arquivo da tag: Altermundismo

New York Post Helps NYPD Slander Occupy Wall Street (Again) (Village Voice)

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By Nick Pinto Thu., Jan. 3 2013 at 2:57 PM

morgangliedman.jpgFacebook – Morgan Gliedman was arrested with Aaron Greene, who the Post incorrectly linked to Occupy Wall Street.

When police raided the West Village apartment of Morgan Gliedman and Aaron Greene on Saturday, the New York Post was first to the story.

It was the sort of story that was right in the Post‘s wheelhouse. Gliedman, 27, nine months pregnant, the daughter of a prominent doctor and the product of a Park-Avenue-and-Dalton upbringing, and Greene, a Harvard alumnus, caught in a filthy den of drugs, decadence, and bomb-making materials just blocks from the townhouse where Weather Underground bomb-makers accidentally blew themselves up decades before.

The story also had another element that appears to becoming a Post signature: citing anonymous sources, apparently from within the NYPD, Post reporters Jamie Schram, Antonio Antenucci, and Matt McNulty reported that Greene had ties to Occupy Wall Street. The assertion was right up top in the story’s lead sentence:

“The privileged daughter of a prominent city doctor, and her boyfriend — a Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street activist — have been busted for allegedly having a cache of weapons and a bombmaking explosive in their Greenwich Village apartment.”

The Occupy association was quickly picked up and rebroadcast by both Reuters and the Associated Press.

Needless to say, the Occupy angle was red meat to FBI-informant-turned-right-wing-bloviator Brandon Darby, who used the link to justify the recent revelation (dropped on the deadest Friday afternoon of the year) that the FBI had indeed been centrally involved in nationwide surveillance of the Occupy movement.

The thing is, the story didn’t hold up. People involved in Occupy Wall Street had no memory of ever encountering Greene. And by the first afternoon, the Occupy link was already being stepped back in the media. As the Associated Press reported, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly suggested that the question of radical affiliations was still open:

“No political writings were discovered, and Kelly said the investigation was continuing into whether the couple had any larger plans or ties to any radical groups.”

That evening, the Daily Beast called the whole scenario into question with a post entitled “NY Couple Not Terrorists, Say Cops, Just Rich Kids With Drug Habits”

By the next day, the NYPD was in the Times fully contradicting the Post’s initial Occupy claims:

“But the police said they did not believe that Mr. Greene was active in any political movements.”

Even so, activists, say, the damage had already been done. None of the outlets ran corrections, and most of the initial stories are still online.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time that the Post — and more specifically, Schram, one of its top cop reporters — has been a conduit for vaguely sourced and ultimately baseless police claims linking scary high-profile crimes to Occupy Wall Street.

In July, Schram co-authored a cover story for the Post under the screaming front-page headline “OWS Murder Link,” citing the claims of anonymous sources that the cold-case murder of a jogger in Inwood had been linked by DNA to a chain used to hold open subway doors during a fare strike by transit workers and Occupy activists last winter. The local NBC affiliate did the same.

That story too was quickly rolled back, as officials conceded that in fact the match was far more likely to have resulted from sloppy lab work, but not before the fabricated link had been picked up by media outlets far and wide.

Occupy Wall Street is now pushing back. An online petition decrying the Post story is approaching 1,000 signatures.

Some activists see a pattern emerging, in which the NYPD uses it’s cozy relationship with the Post to put out anonymous slanders of a nonviolent social-justice movement without having to get its hands dirty.

Whether or not that’s the case, the fact that his has happened twice now raises real questions about the Post’s policies governing the use of anonymous law-enforcement sources and its commitment to correcting factually inaccurate reporting.

Kelly McBride, the senior ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, told the Voice the Post is definitely doing this wrong:

“In a case like this, the best practices would suggest that The Post is definitely obligated to correct their mistake, both by updating the online version of the story and noting the error, as well as printing a correction in the paper to inform people who saw the mistake there.”

We emailed both Schram and the Post’s PR office for comment, but haven’t heard back yet. We’ll update the post if we do.

UPDATE: More Misreporting On the West Village Explosives Arrests

Previous Coverage:

Idle No More: Hints of a Global Super-Movement (The Huffington Post)

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Posted: 01/02/2013 4:34 pm

By Jacob Devaney

What started as a murmur in early October from First Nations People in Canada in response to Bill C45 has become a movement that echoes the sentiments of people all over the world, a battle cry of love for the planet, “Idle No More.” At first glance it might appear that this movement is isolated and doesn’t effect you if you are not native or if you don’t live in Canada, yet it does. It may appear that this resistance is not related to The Occupy Movement, The Arab Spring, The Unify Movement, Anonymous, or any of the other popular uprisings sparked by social unrest, but it is.

At its very core, all of these movements have very common threads and are born from common issues facing people everywhere. Those who represent financial interests that value money over life itself, that are devoid of basic respect for human decency, and for nature have dictated the future for too long and people everywhere are standing up to say, “No more.” This non-violent social uprising is viral in the minds and hearts of everyone across the planet determined to bring healing to our troubled communities, our planet, and the corruption that is eroding the highest places of governments around the world.

2013-01-02-idlenomorehuffpo.pngImage by Andy Everson

Flashmobs with dancing and drumming at a malls in Olympia, Wash. Tempe, Ariz., Denver, Colo., a giant circle dance blocking a large intersection in Winnipeg, rail blockades in Quebec, this movement is using cultural expression combined with modern activism to get attention, and it is working. From their website, “Idle No More calls on all people to join in a revolution which honors and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water. Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage to the land and water.”

Idle No More was started in October by four ladies; Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam, Jessica Gordon & Sheelah McLean who felt it was “urgent to act on current and upcoming legislation that not only affects First Nations people but the rest of Canada’s citizens, lands and waters.” On December 11 Attawapiskat Chief, Theresa Spence, launched a hunger strike requesting a face-to-face meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss broken treaties and protection of natural resources. Spence is staying in a tipi on the frozen Ottawa River facing Parliament Hill and has gained the support from many natives and non-natives who are in solidarity with this movement.

Chief Arvol Lookinghorse from South Dakota recently expressed his support in a letter posted on Facebook that states, “As Keeper of our Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, I would like to send out support for the efforts of Chief Theresa Spence of the Attawapiskat First Nation, for giving of herself through fasting with prayers for the protection of Mother Earth.” He goes on to say,

This effort to protect Mother Earth is all Humanity’s responsibility, not just Aboriginal People. Every human being has had Ancestors in their lineage that understood their umbilical cord to the Earth, understanding the need to always protect and thank her. Therefore, all Humanity has to re-connect to their own Indigenous Roots of their lineage — to heal their connection and responsibility with Mother Earth and become a united voice… All Nations, All Faiths, One Prayer.

Society and nature work in similar ways to our own body’s immune system. We are given a symptom that causes us to be aware that there is an illness that needs to be addressed. We can try to suppress the symptom, but that does not heal the illness. Popular uprisings with very core commonalities are spreading all over the planet. Exploitation of our environment, as well as the exploitation of people and cultures for the sake of financial gain is immoral and must be stopped at the highest levels of our governments. It is possible to have a thriving economy and environmental ethics.

Here in America, the response to Occupy is tucked into NDAA as Washington prepares ways to suppress the symptoms of social discord. Without addressing the illness at its root nothing will change. It is like the mythical Many-Headed Hydra, if you cut one head off, two more will grow back. Popular uprisings will continue here and all over the world until leaders understand that people want real fundamental change in policy. Governments should lead by example if they want to be respected.

With Twitter, Facebook and the internet, these separate movements are finding solidarity with each other and converging as a global super-movement for the planet and all people. The quote used at Unify is, “Everyone, Everywhere, Together” and it is beginning to resonate more than ever.

Each of these movements share a commitment to non-violent revolution in their call to end the exploitation of people and the exploitation of natural resources. Sustainability can be applied to all aspects of social rights, economics and the environment. Social, economic, cultural, and environmental movements, resistance, civil disobedience, flash mobs and more will continue until this is addressed at home and abroad. Whether it is Anonymous and Wikileaks exposing the corruption of governments, or Indians with drums dancing and chanting in a local mall, people everywhere are awakening, speaking up, and acting for the needed changes. It’s time for politicians and religious leaders to get the message everywhere.

It is a simple choice: continue to be part of the cancer that slowly destroys our water, our air and the resources that are the fabric of life by staying unconscious, or become the conscious antidote that slowly kills the cancerous disease which threatens the existence of life on the planet? Is the disease capitalism, corruption, ignorance, greed, The Illuminati, or some combination of all of these things spiralling out of control? It doesn’t matter because it is becoming obvious that there are people from all nationalities, religions, and cultural backgrounds who are determined to resist the progression of imminent destruction. A factory producing monkey wrenches for the gears of the machine which is at the center of our collective demise.

Will the leaders wake up to this in order to play the roles they have sworn to uphold or will they further discredit their position, their institutions, and help to destroy the very systems that they have been entrusted to maintain? Every time Congress represents the will of a few wealthy people over the interests and the well-being of the planet and the people, they do more to subvert and destroy the state than ten thousand people protesting in the streets. When leaders fail, they destroy the trust that holds society together.

Is Harper cold and callous enough to ignore a constituent on hunger strike a short distance from his office? Can he afford to ignore these issues? Can any of us afford to ignore this call to be idle no more?

Take a moment and listen to the eloquent words of an 11-year-old girl in the video below. If a child can understand this, how come world leaders are still silent on making real changes to address these urgent issues?

Please support Idle No More, learn more about the movement, how it effects all of us and get involved. All of our futures depend on it.

Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy (The Guardian)

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New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent

Naomi Wolf – guardian.co.uk, Saturday 29 December 2012 14.58 GMT

Occupy Oakland clashes

Police used teargas to drive back protesters following an attempt by the Occupy supporters to shut down the city of Oakland. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledgesOccupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a “terrorist threat”:

“FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conductingsurveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.”

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it “police-statism”:

“This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a “Bank Fraud Working Group” met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its “domestic terrorism” unit. The Anchorage, Alaska “terrorism task force” was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Mississippi “joint terrorism task force” was issuing a “counterterrorism preparedness alert” about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Mississippi, the FBI and the “Bank Security Group” – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to “National Bad Bank Sit-in Day” (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state’s Occupy members’ details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its “joint terrorism task force” aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.

Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, who has sought similar documents for more than a year, reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration ofOccupy Wall Street existed at all. But the release may be strategic: if you are an Occupy activist and see how your information is being sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, not to mention the “longterm plans” of some redacted group to shoot you, this document is quite the deterrent.

There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people’s income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.

Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed – because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one’s personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a “terrorist organization” and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing.

Why the huge push for counterterrorism “fusion centers”, the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about “the terrorists”. It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you.

• This article originally referred to a joint terrorism task force in Jackson, Michigan. This was amended to Jackson, Mississippi at 4pm ET on 2 January 2012