A Bennington, Vermont math and science teacher is home on administrative leave after being briefly hospitalized for a mental evaluation on the recommendation of police officers last week. Police became concerned after becoming aware of disturbing videos posted to Youtube and Facebook, and calls from concerned neighbors who witnessed the teacher carrying a rifle, a Bushmaster AR-15, to his car. There were also emails sent to some of the other school staff that caused alarm.

The Bushmaster is the same type of rifle that was used in the Newtown, Connecticut shootings, and other recent mass shootings.

The teacher, Steven Davis, willingly handed over his weapon to police along with two high-capacity magazines. During a search of his home, police seized another 500 rounds of ammunition.

Davis' online postings had included angry rants about his job. In one Youtube video, Davis said he had plans for retribution.

"This is all planned and very well thought out," Davis said in another video clip. "I've studied military tactics and this is the way to go. it's all going to hit so hard, so fast and shut that school system down til they get things straight."

Davis' wife said she was unaware that he owned the firearm. Police say that she left the home with the couple's small children, and obtained a restraining order against Davis.

In the most recent Youtube video, recorded from his hospital bed, Davis pleaded, "Is there any way to get a lawyer? For you guys to find me a lawyer right now?"

Mark Horvath has been a drug addict, a con artist, a producer for Christian television, and for a time, homeless. Now, he's using social media to raise awareness about homelessness and poverty in America. Armed with a website (invisiblepeople.tv), Twitter account (he goes by @hardlynormal), and a camera, Mark's on a mission to give "a face and a voice to homelessness."

Watch, and meet the guy who just might solve homelessness with his Twitter account.

The French online retailer "Early Flicker" has reportedly registered both the logo and slogan of hacktivist collective "Anonymous" with France's trademark agency, INPI.

The company, which sells personalized gifts and t-shirts, perhaps isn't aware of the logo's source, because who would purposely provoke a powerful legion of hackers who could easily delete Early Flicker from existence?

In an Anonymous call-to-action video posted to YouTube, the group demands a retraction of the trademark application, as well as a public apology in exchange for not raising hell on the internets.

Transcript of the video follows:

Hello Citizens of the world, We are Anonymous. Dear brothers and sisters. Now is the time to open your eyes and expose the truth!

Anonymous logo and slogan has been defiled and registered through the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI). An online t-shirt company online called "Early Flicker" or "E-flicker" has registered the anonymous slogan and logo and passed it on as there own. Now under french law the company owns the rights to the anonymous logo and slogan.

The companies website is pick a pop dot F r .

In a response the National Institute of Industrial Property said that "the conditions seem fulfilled since the mark is registered and it does not seem to have made ​​use."

There arrogance and ignorance of what they have done will not go un punished. Anonymous will take down any business they have going on the internet and the ninety nine percent will not stop until the registration has been revoked and a public apology has been made.

The name of Anonymous will not be the whore of the world.

We are anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.

Susie passed this article from The Atlantic on to me that highlights many of the documented instances of police misconduct cited in the 8 month study and investigation undertaken by law clinics at NYU, Fordham, Harvard, and Stanford, "Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street." I wrote my own summary of the report here, but only highlighted two of the documented cases of misconduct involving police treatment of occupy protesters.

These are all worthy of noting, and I received the above Youtube video this morning from a reader that seems like a perfect accompaniment:

A café employee at work near Union Square heard a passing Occupy march, went outside, and decided to begin filming after seeing police using what he felt was excessive force on protesters. Video evidence shows a white-shirted police officer pushing the café employee, camera in hand. It appears that the employee then began speaking to the officer while holding both hands in the air as the officer approached him. In an interview, the employee stated that he asked the officer why he was pushing and told the officer, "I'm just taking pictures." Video then shows the officer grabbing the employee by the wrist, and flipping him hard to the ground face-first, in what was described as a "judo-flip." The employee stated that he was subsequently charged with "blocking traffic" and "obstructing justice."

Video shows that an officer drove a scooter at a crowd of people, including journalists and legal observers. The video then shows a legal observer lying on the ground screaming, his foot under the scooter. A second video shows the observer on the ground with his foot under the scooter. A third video shows that the observer kicked the scooter off or away from his leg, at which point officers dragged the observer several feet and began to cuff him. While he was being cuffed, an officer pushed the observer's face into the pavement by pressing his baton across the back of the observer's neck.

A member of the Research Team observed an officer push and then throw a male protester into the air for no apparent reason as he walked, with many other protesters, near parked police scooters. The protester fell hard to the ground and was not arrested.

A journalist stated that when he asked a non-uniformed officer for his name at a march, the officer pushed the journalist against a wall and held him there, threatening him that if he kept asking questions, he would get "his f-cking ass beat." The journalist recorded interviews with two bystanders immediately after the incident. One bystander stated that he witnessed the officer using abusive language toward the journalist. He then told the journalist that the officer "put his chest in your face and pushed you around." The other bystander told the journalist that the officer "[got] up in your face and [shouted] at you. He pressed you against the wall of the supermarket."

More at The Atlantic, or click on the link above to read the report directly.

Anonymous hacktivists are targeting Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait and the Anaheim Police Department in an action dubbed “Operation Anaheim.”

In a YouTube video published July 24, Anonymous calls for “the citizens of the United States to rise up in unison” and protest the police brutality in Anaheim.

Violence in Anaheim began Saturday, July 21, with the deadly police shooting of Manuel Diaz, who was unarmed, and according to reports had dropped to his knees before he was shot in the back of the head by police.

Transcript:

Citizens of the World,

We are Anonymous.

The purpose of this video is clear.

We want to inform the citizens of the world, that the United States is setting the flames of revolution. In Anaheim, police shot protesters and bystanders including kids who did nothing wrong. We, Anonymous, are calling yet again to the citizens of the United States, to rise up in unison, and defeat this government which values no lives nor freedom.

Do it for the safety of your families, your homes, and your future generations.

The fate of America is in your hands. Do you wish to be oppressed further, or do you wish to obtain freedom and peace?

The choice is yours. Let beat the drums of war.

Operation Anaheim, engaged.

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.

In this clip from Channel 4's Random Acts series, British protesters flip the script and kettle activists on behalf of London's Metropolitan Police, who grow angry that their "top-secret" suppression tactic has been exposed - and publicly, mercilessly mocked.

See more "Random Acts" by other filmmakers here.

Filmmakers: Joe Wade, William Pine, Joseph Dives and Nimrod Kamer Content partner: Channel 4

[Caution: Viewers may find some images disturbing due to the topic of the film.]

Nearly 10 million hits on YouTube and counting... It is a campaign against a Ugandan warlord - Joseph Kony - that has gone viral.

In less than three days after filmmaker Jason Russell released the 30-minute documentary on YouTube, the "Kony 2012" campaign is trending worldwide on Twitter and made the front page of Reddit.

The campaign, produced by the Invisible Children movement, seeks to make Joseph Kony one of the most infamous people in the world. On iots website, the campaign says, "If the world knows who Joseph Kony is, it will unite to stop him. It starts here."

The campaign intends to urge the United States and other countries to intensify their efforts to nab Joseph Konyy, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), who has wreaked havoc over four Central African nations for more than two decades.

The US elite troops set up a base in Obo in December and have been coordinating their efforts with local government forces and Ugandan soldiers.Besides Obo, the US forces also have a forward base in South Sudan.

Not to wander too far off topic here, but Rush Limbaugh's disgusting sexist comments have had people so up in arms of late that this needs to be said. When President Obama sent that small number of elite US troops to Obo, Limbaugh either ignorantly or intentionally misled his listeners to believe that Kony's LRA is a "Christian" group, and that Obama had sent troops to help Muslims kill Christians:

Via:

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Another message from the Anonymous collective. This time, they want war.

To the Citizens of the United States and the United States Government.
We are Anonymous.

In the past few months, our collective has been organizing the operation known as Operation Blackout. Part of the operation's purpose was to alert the people of the coming bill that was to be called the Stop Online Piracy Act.

This Act would give Congress the power to censor any internet website they wish without consent from the Citizens of the United States. This act would've also had the power to jail any person who infringed on its new copyright law for an equivalence of five years. This copyright law would've had the power to destroy social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Video gameplay and free movies would cease to exist.

However, Operation Blackout was a success. As a collective, we've managed to spread the word and alert the masses. Internet giants such as Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit became hand-in-hand with us as we all managed to make an impact on the decisions of our, "free government". But as we've seen with Megaupload, the government may not need a bill to be passed to get their way. Other operations we've conducted over this time period have awaken the people to the nightmare that is the United States Government. Sections 1031 and 1032 of the National Defense Authorization Act have been ratified. Yet we face new threats.

The United States Government is seeking to pass the Cyber Security Act of 2012. This act is as Orwellian as it sounds; it will endanger our collective and we will not stand by and watch while this government of lies prepares to take away our freedoms. The National Security Agency insists on labeling us as a leaderless, terrorist organization. The question is, "who do we terrorize?". Can it possibly be that the United States government is truly scared of us? Nevertheless, The time for action is now.

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