Citing Oakland Police's continued use of violent tactics against Occupy Oakland, the hacktivist group known as Anonymous has published sensitive personal information of several Oakland government employees and officials.
The cyber attack was announced on Twitter, with Anonymous posting links to a statement published on Pastebin. (Sorry, I'm not going to link to the information site.)
"Anonymous has been watching. Since the inception of Occupy Oakland, We have been actively monitoring your behavior, and exposing the identities and sensitive information of Officers of the Oakland Police Department; as they have continued to act in an unprofessional and violent manner. You tear gassed Us. You shot Us with your weapons."
"You arrested Us. You beat Us. You also did this to Our Friends, and to Our Families. We watched as you cut budgets, cut Our jobs, closed Our schools, Our parks, and Our libraries, while leaving your own salaries alone."
"The people on this list are supposed to represent the best of what the City of Oakland has to offer. If they are the best, why is there so much trouble within the Police Department, and in the City of Oakland?"
Occupy Portland activists were kettled on Hawthorne between 25th and 27th Streets with police videotaping the protesters. After police spoke to each other for a moment, they seemed to target certain people to pull off the sidewalk and place them under arrest.
A small group of remaining occupiers regrouped - I believe it was at 39th Street - where they encountered police on horseback before continuing their march. Now they are moving north.
As the group marches, cars slow down with people waving, cheering, and honking their horns in support of the group. Not what you see in the msm.
There is no word on total number of arrests this evening yet, and the occupiers are trying to find out where their friends were taken or if they were released.
Recently I reported on the Manhattan District Attorney who subpoenaed the Twitter account of @destructuremal (aka 23-year-old Brooklyn writer Malcolm Harris) because of his participation in Occupy Wall Street.
As it turns out, Harris is the twit person who tricked thousand of New Yorkers into showing up at Occupy Wall Street for a Radiohead concert that was never going to happen. He was chosen as one of Gawker's Most Loathsome Gawker Characters of 2011 for the prank.
If thousands of disappointed New Yorkers wasn't enough, now Harris has dragged Gawker's Adrian Chen into the prosecutorial Twitter morass.
Harris may not commit crimes on Twitter, but he did use the site's direct message function to trick me, on September 30th, into believing Radiohead was performing an impromptu show for Occupy Wall Street protesters down in Zuccotti Park. Harris, who writes for the New Inquiry magazine, was at the time a blogger for the radical journal Jacobin. He told me he'd heard the story about Radiohead, but his editor wouldn't allow him to print it.
Here are the two twitter messages Harris sent me the morning September 30th, which would likely be released to the DA under the subpoena.
Art+Culture committee will announce at Noon that Radiohead is the 4pm musical guest, my [editor] won't let me run it cuz band doesn't want media
Whereas I don't give a f-ck about what Radiohead wants. You didn't hear it from me, though.
"As more of our everyday communications take place on third-parties like Twitter, it's crucial to resist overly-broad intrusions by law enforcement, which is certainly what the DA's move appears to be," adds Chen, "It's not just Harris' privacy at stake, but that of anyone who communicated with him—no matter how full of sh-t he was."
It's still difficult to imagine what the Manhattan DA's office might want with such tweets, unless he waited patiently for hours at Zuccotti Park for Radiohead to show up and is still unhappy about that.
I do think it's no doubt a safe guess that Harris has a spot reserved on Gawker's "Most Loathsome Gawker Characters of 2012" list.
General Electric's Super Bowl commercial boasts of "revitalizing U.S. manufacturing," for hiring workers at Louisville's Appliance Park but leaves a few things out...
After numerous concessions by plant unions, starting GE workers in Louisville now make about $25,000 per year – or barely above the poverty line for a family of four – or the foreseeable future.
In an earlier era, that would have been a source of friction, perhaps protest. Now it isn’t, and in an interview William Masden, 62, earning $31.78 an hour after 42 years at Appliance Park, attempted an explanation. The younger workers still get annual raises, he noted, and by the time they top out, he and his peers — the oldest baby boomers — “won’t be here any longer to remind them of what they are missing.”
Linda Thomas, 37, one of the first to be hired in 2005 under the new arrangement, amends that explanation. Her hourly wage, $18.19, has almost topped out, although it is nearly $14 an hour less than Mr. Masden’s. But she keeps silent. Too many unemployed people, she explained, would clamor for her job and her wage if she were to protest.
“You don’t want to rock the boat,” Ms. Thomas said. “You take a chance on losing everything you have if you do.”
General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.
Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.
Unfortunately, the 99 percent don't have their own lobbyist.
Protesters from the Washington offshoot of Occupy Wall Street vowed to return to their camp in the US capital, which was all but dismantled by park police during a weekend clampdown.
Occupy DC denounced what they called “excessively forceful eviction,” and gathered to discuss the movement’s direction after the clampdown.
“This occupation is far from over. They can’t evict an idea whose time has come,” said a statement posted on the website occupydc.org.
In total 11 people were arrested Saturday, four for assaulting police officers, including one taken into custody for hitting and injuring an officer with a brick, and seven for disobeying orders to clear out, or for crossing police lines. Protesters said a protester had been beaten unconscious but the police did not confirm the injury.
Despite the clampdown, protester Sam Mellot said McPherson Square would be “occupied” again.
“Any time you see an occupation getting torn down they come back stronger. We’ll come back — absolutely we’ll come back stronger,” he said Sunday.
The following video is also from the DC Park Police action on McPherson Square and shows park police executing a violent take-down of a peaceful protester who was said to have been beaten unconscious, although that is not confirmed as yet.
This is the video for the song 'Occupy Wall Street' written and performed by Spencer Livingston. Produced and engineered by Peter Malick.
'Occupy Wall Street' is available on itunes, amazon, and rhapsody.
All Proceeds from the sale of this song will be used to support the current 'Occupy' movement.
Not exactly the Occupy Wall Street movement, but certainly government forces that openly murder innocent civilians amidst open condemnation from the international community is something we can all stand united against, and in solidarity with the people of Syria.
The Syrian forces continued with one of the deadliest attacks of the 11-month uprising on Sunday, pounding parts of Homs even as residents combed through rubble looking for victims of a sustained barrage over the weekend that killed scores of people.
Again, I caution that these images are very graphic by nature and can be quite disturbing.
