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Third International Anti-imperialist Conference of International Anti-imperialist and People’s Solidarity Coordinating Committee

Third International Anti-imperialist Conference of International Anti-imperialist and People’s Solidarity Coordinating Committee (IAPSCC) Convened jointly with Socialist Party of Bangladesh (SPB) On the occasion of 94th Anniversary of November Revolution and 31st Anniversary of Foundation of SPB
Dhaka, November 27-29, 2011
A Call
1. Rise up in protest against aggression, occupation, looting and blockade by the imperialist powers led by USA in different corners of the globe, including, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Nepal, Latin America, Cuba and DPRK.
2. Strengthen the movement to protect and safeguard the national wealth of Bangladesh, including the natural resources of coal, gas, and petroleum.
3. Save the 140 million people of Bangladesh from capitalist oppression and exploitation; realize the people’s aspirations in the War of Liberation through the victory of socialist revolution. http://spb.org.bd/index.php?option=com_phocagallery&view=category&id=3%3Apart...

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Essential Knowledge For A Wall Street Protestor / TheTiny Dot

Commentary: What is found interesting is that if the root of many issues being faced by the 99% is caused by the two tiered (Democrate and Republican) political system and their Corporate Croonies rooted on economic monopololy what changes will be achieved in this world, if this incredible movement allows the same system to remain in place?

 

Essential Knowledge For A Wall Street Protestor

TheTiny Dot

                                       

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OCCUPY YOUR MORAL GROUND

The Occupy Wall Street movements and climate action movements stand on the same moral ground and affirm the same moral principles: It’s wrong to wreck the world. It’s wrong to wreck the health and hopes of others. An economic system that forces the people to bear the risks of the recklessness of a few powerful profiteers, to assume the burdens of others’ privilege, and to pay the real costs of destructive industries in the currency of their health and the hopes of their children -- that system is immoral. And when, to enrich a powerful few, that system threatens to disrupt forever the great planetary cycles that support all the lives on Earth?  This is moral monstrosity on a cosmic scale.         Both movements affirm that all flourishing is mutual. The world is deeply interconnected and interdependent; damage to any part undermines the thriving of the whole. Accordingly, every person, no matter how rich, and every system, no matter how entrenched, has the responsibility to honor affirmative obligations of justice and compassion to present and future generations of all beings. Not only in principle. On the ground.        The Occupy Wall Street Movements are connecting the dots on a map of dysfunction and injustice. Climate change. Toxic neighborhoods. Financial recklessness. Jobs despair. Concentrated wealth. Pointless war. The dots all connect to one central social pathology, which is funding (one might say, buying and selling) of elections (and, of the elected) by powerful centers of wealth -- mostly corporations, mostly destructive and extractive corporations. Our erstwhile democracy has now developed a futures market in politicians. This has created a situation where the government is fundamentally controlled by those who would risk or wreck the (name your favorite: economy, environment, children’s futures) for their own short-term gain.       The consequence is, of course, that the destructive few now control the regulatory agencies and potential regulations that might have limited their recklessness and greed. They have the consequent power to close off options for resolving the environmental and economic emergencies. They have the power to block federal actions that might prevent injustices. They have the power to bulldoze the natural systems that sustain our lives.       This is what demonstrators' homemade signs are saying: Get the money out of politics (and politician’s pockets), so we can be a democracy again, so we can enact the measures that will save us from personal and global catastrophe. Self-created environmental catastrophe has taken down many civilizations before ours. But this time, the self-inflicted catastrophe of climate change will take down also the hydrological cycles and relative climate stability that have allowed the evolution of the world as we know and love it. We can draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide to livable levels. But not until we draw down the power of those who are enriched by destroying the conditions of human and ecological thriving.      We are all in this together. The lines that connect climate change-jobs-environment-education-health-justice are strong and undeniable. The time has passed for an environmental movement. The time has passed for a climate change movement. The time has passed for isolated grassroots movements. We stand on ground that trembles with tectonic movement. Along the straining fault lines of our civilization, we feel the forces building for justice, sanity, and lasting ecological and cultural thriving. This, finally, is The Big One – the coming together of all of us who care about the future and do not want to gamble it away. The Big One will shake the world.

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via riverwalking.com

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Just in Pictures...

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PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America

As was unfortunately expected, the House version of PROTECT IP has been released (embedded below) and it's ridiculously bad. Despite promises from Rep. Goodlatte, there has been no serious effort to fix the problems of the Senate bill, and it's clear that absolutely no attention was paid to the significant concerns of the tech industry, legal professionals, investors and entrepreneurs. There are no two ways around this simple fact: this is an attempt to build the Great Firewall of America. The bill would require service providers to block access to certain websites, very much contrary to US official positions on censorship and internet freedom, and almost certainly in violation of the First Amendment.

Oh, and because PROTECT IP wasn't enough of a misleading and idiotic name, the House has upped the ante. The new bill is called: "the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act" or the E-PARASITE Act (though, they also say you can call it the "Stopping Online Piracy Act").

The bill is big, and has a bunch of problems. First off, it massively expands the sites that will be covered by the law. The Senate version at least tried to limit the targets of the law (but not the impact of the law) on sites that were "dedicated to infringing activities" with no other significant purposes (already ridiculously broad), the new one just targets "foreign infringing sites" and "has only limited purpose or use other than" infringement. They're also including an "inducement" claim not found elsewhere in US regulations -- and which greatly expands what is meant by inducement. The bill effectively takes what the entertainment industry wanted the Supreme Court to say in Grokster (which it did not say) and puts it into US law. In other words, any foreign site declared by the Attorney General to be "inducing" infringement, with a very broad definition of inducing, can now be censored by the US. With no adversarial hearing. Hello, Great Firewall of America.

And while defenders of this bill will insist it's only designed to target truly infringing sites, let's just recall a small list of sites and technologies the industry has insisted were all about infringement in the past: the player piano, the radio, the television, the photocopier, the phonograph, cable tv, the vcr, the mp3 player, the DVR, online video hosting sites like YouTube and more. All of these things turned out to be huge boons for the industry. And yet, with a law like this in place, the old industry gets to kill off technologies they don't understand. Scary stuff.

And it's not just foreign sites impacted by this law (despite what supporters would have you believe). It appears to expand who would have to take on the entire burdens of enforcing this blacklist -- broadly naming "service providers" as defined in the DMCA. That's significant, because a big part of this bill is to undermine and strip away the safe harbors of the DMCA. The DMCA set up an important balance that gave online service providers freedom from liability if they pulled down content upon notification. This new bill provides a massive and ridiculous burden: allowing the Attorney General to create an internet blacklist that all service providers will need to block access to:

A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

On top of that, the bill says any attempt to get around such blocks can lead to liability. Would this put liability on things like MAFIAAfire? It sure sounds like it:

To ensure compliance with orders issued pursuant to this section, the Attorney General may bring an action for injunctive relief....

against any entity that knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed for the circumvention or bypassing of measures described in paragraph (2) and taken in response to a court order issued pursuant to this subsection, to enjoin such entity from interfering with the order by continuing to provide or offer to provide such product or service.

While the text of the bill insists that nothing in it takes away the DMCA's safe harbors, once again this is a claim without the facts to back it up. A large part of the bill is an effective attempt to strip away the DMCA's safe harbors.

The only extraordinarily minor change against the interests of the entertainment industry is that the bill ever so slightly changes the "private right to action," which allows individual copyright holders to take action under this bill. This was a big problem in the old bill, and the only requirement here is that prior to making use of this private right to action, copyright holders have to provide "notice" to payment processors and ad providers. But then those service providers are expected to take action anyway, or face liability. So all this really does is take the court out of the process, and make it even easier for copyright holders to effectively kill off sites they don't like.

Think about this for a second: think how many bogus DMCA takedown notices are sent by copyright holders to take down content they don't like. With this new bill, should it become law, those same copyright holders will be able to cut off advertising and payment processing to such sites. Without court review.

And... because this bill wasn't already ridiculously bad enough, it also lumps in a House version of the felony streaming bill that will make huge swaths of Americans felons for streaming content online.

This bill is an abomination and an insult to the Constitution. It's unfortunate that Rep. Lamar Smith thinks this is worth introducing in its current state, and anyone who signs on to co-sponsor is effectively supporting mass censorship of the internet in the US, as well as the criminalization of huge numbers of Americans -- while putting a huge burden on the one part of the economy that actually is creating jobs. All because a few legacy companies in the entertainment industry refuse to adapt.

E-PARASITES Act

via activepolitics.com

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With Generators Taken By The City - Time's Up! Energy Bike Powers Occupy Wall Street

Time's Up! New York City's Direct Action Environmental group has been working with Occupy Wall Street since its inception. Recently, they have focused on replacing all the gas generators in Liberty Park with Pedal Power Generators. We currently have one up and running, but need your help to build 11 more and power the whole park!

We've received funding for 5 bikes but need at least 6 more, and any donations above that will be used to build more energy bikes which will be sent to other occupations.

Go to http://times-up.org/
and push the donate button

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Sgt. Shamar Thomas Is Back And He Brought The Marines With Him To #OWS still Police Violence Ensued

Occupy Wall Street demonstrators marched in a show of solidarity with Occupy Oakland Wednesday night. Leading the march front and center was none other than Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas sporting his uniform proudly. At some point during this chaotic protest due to the overwhelming police presence Sgt. Thomas becomes lost in the crowd after the usual suspects (NYPD) hammered into the protesters which seems to be becoming all too common across America.

Incidents across the country of excessive force and violence against peaceful protesters has been circulating the Internet.

Approximately one thousand protesters turned up for this demonstration in New York specifically in a show of solidarity for the protesters who marched in Oakland only to end up besieged by police lobbing tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades which concluded in Scott Olson a U.S. Vet ending up with a fractured skull. Footage of what appears to be the police intentionally targeting the protesters has surfaced and this behavior is only increasing support for the Occupy movement.

Suddenly, confusion and angst set in during the march.

At one point, NYPD officers began arresting, shoving, intimidating, grabbing, and beating demonstrators, even after they were forced to the ground, with shouts of, ‘The whole world is watching!” surrounding them. As the crowd became more riled protesters yelled, “Shame, shame, shame!” in chorus while documenting each police instance of abusive behavior with cameras aimed at the officers in question. Some of the police appeared distraught with the protesters unrelenting cause overtaking the atmosphere as they stood their ground. Other officers were aggressive prompting mass confusion; some were the usual white shirted supervisory officers and one or two were seen wearing suits.

After the arrests, the march continued throughout the financial district with protesters chanting in unison and cheering at their success — and they were indeed successful as they marched proudly without backing down to authoritarian-type police state tactics. Instead they held their heads high chanting “Oakland!”

As they walked along a hand reached out of a New York cab, giving one protester a high five. Reportedly people came out of bars showing support for the movement.

As for Sargent Thomas, the police brutality we’re witnessing recently would not occur under his leadership. While we’re in the process of demanding money out of politics, we should also vote in ordinary righteous Americans to represent the 99% — ‘Representative’ Thomas has a certain ring to it. Sgt. Thomas if you recall recently gave an impromptu speech confronting 30 NYPD officers in Time Square denouncing their crowd control methods and police brutality. Considering his military record and apparent ease at confronting dozens of officers, I sincerely doubt Sgt. Thomas would not take issue with standing up to Corporate greed and political corruption.

As America grows weary of billionaire and millionaire politicians feigning an understanding of what life is like for the 99%, Sgt. Shamar Thomas would be a change we could all believe in.

via politicususa.com

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OWS Is For Real – America Has Lost Its Moral Bearings

by Allen L Roland

 

America has lost its moral bearings! Recent polls indicate that if Occupy Wall Street (OWS) were a candidate for President, it would decisively beat any candidate from either party. 86% of Americans think that Wall Street and its lobbyists have far too much power in Washington and those Americans are taking to the streets demanding real moral change.

As I have mentioned before ~ there are evolutionary moral juices flowing through the Occupy Wall Street movement and they are social cooperation and altruism versus isolation and greed. A true shift in global consciousness is upon us for the OWS Movement is touching deeply felt evolutionary chords which will eventually break down the global walls of greed, separateness and war and will replace them with altruism, social cooperation and peace ~ the true driving forces of evolution. See my article ~

According to a recent CNN/ORC International poll, only 15% of Americans asked said that they trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time ~ and that is because Washington is out of sync with America’s grass roots moral values.

In a Press TV Interview this week I stress that the “Occupy” movements are seeking moral changes ~ both economic and political ~ which focus on social cooperation and altruism, not greed.  I also stress that America has obviously lost its moral bearings / six minute video 

I also mention the three stages of Occupy Wall Street;

1.  Occupy and establish a visible presence and present a moral vision.
2. Demand the truth, including 9/11 truth, Fed Reserve transparency, full disclosure of Wall Street fraud and derivative indebtedness.
3.  Strike, revolt and demand real change

The first step in regaining our moral bearings is the truth ~ which has yet to be fully revealed to Americans and which accounts for the deep mistrust of not only Wall Street but politicians in general ~ including President Obama. All of whom are obviously in bed with Wall Street and the corporate banking elite.

Have we forgotten the words of Carl Sandburg?

 ” For we know when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or civilization perishes, one condition may always be found ~ they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.”

No where is this loss of moral bearings more evident than our illegal preemptive attack and occupation of Iraq, where we set up and implemented a U.S. controlled coalition government, where we stage managed a flawed election and judicial system and where we condoned the brutal hanging of Iraq’s sovereign leader after a mock U.S. managed monkey trial. The recent brutal assassination of Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi, by US backed NATO forces and rebels, is yet another example of our flawed moral vision.

Here’s the collective human cost of this flawed moral vision ~

• Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq 1,455,590
• Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America’s War On Iraq:  4,798  
• Number Of  International Occupation Force Troops Slaughtered In Afghanistan: 2,776

Here’s the financial Cost of War and occupation of Iraq & Afghanistan

Total Cost of Wars Since 2001

$1,268,965,662,411

Please Note the wars will cost Americans between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans, according to a new report by the Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.

Obviously, we have lost our moral bearings and focus and that is what’s driving the Occupy Wall Street movement ~ and many others acknowledge this driving collective moral force of a country that wants to redeem itself from its past and continuing moral transgressions.

George Lakoff correctly writes in AlterNet ( How Occupy Wall Street’s Moral Vision Can Beat the Disastrous Conservative Worldview ) that OWS has a progressive moral vision and that they’re protesting the disastrous effects that have come from operating with a conservative moral, economic, and political worldview.
Excerpt: “It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail…. Remember: The Tea Party sees itself as stressing only individual responsibility. The Occupation Movement is stressing both individual and social responsibility.”  See article ~

Former four star general and NATO commander Wesley Clark talks about that disastrous conservative world view and the resultant neocon plan to invade seven countries in five years ~ including an attack on Libya and eventually Iran. He calls it the neocon policy coup of the United States led by Dick Cheney and many others. Remember, there’s nothing moral or humanitarian about dropping bombs under the guise of a humanitarian intervention ~ Video:  Eight minute Commonwealth Club Interview / 2007

In summary, OWS is a people’s movement with the moral power to change the world ~ because the need to unite and co-operate is a soul based moral need whereas the need to separate, control and destroy is an ego based immoral need and contrary to human evolution.

As I predicted several months ago, a grassroots people’s freedom movement that started in Egypt will end in America in 2012 when the people demand the moral change they voted for in 2008 and never got with Obama ~ but this time, we will get it by ourselves!

via veteranstoday.com

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Video: Chief of Oakland Police denies using flash grenades at Occupy Oakland protests

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Footage of Scott Olsen being shot in the head with a tear gas canister by Police at Occupy Oakland

via Vimeo.

 

This footage is proof that Scott Olsen was shot in the face by police without provocation during the Occupy Oakland march on Tuesday October 25.

The moment leading up to the shooting, Olsen was standing completely still. He was then hit in the head with a tear gas canister, which is potentially fatal.

Also, no rocks or bottles were thrown before Olsen was shot, contrary to Police statements.

Two angles of footage confirm this.

Additional Footage courtesy of:
Matt Kresling
mattkresling.com

Rina Palta, Ali Winston
informant.kalwnews.org

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