Colours of Resistance Archive | A collection of analysis and tools for liberatory organizing and movement-building. Liberation Book Club: Becoming Allies. When I kicked off the Liberation Book Club back in May I posed the question: What would it take to have activist groups and social change organisations which genuinely reflect the diversity in the broader community, to be actively inclusive of difference? I think one part of the answer is the commitment to become active allies. What is an ally? In my view, an ally is someone outside an oppressed group or identity, who commits to standing alongside those people. This can look like many things - last month we explored an important aspect, speaking up against oppressive language and behaviour.
It can also involve learning about that oppression, cleaning up our own beliefs and behaviours in the area, building friendships and working relationships across the divide of oppression... and more. Allies work is key to building strong and diverse groups and social movements. 'Becoming An Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in People' by Anne Bishop offers some interesting insights. Effective World Government Will Be Needed to Stave Off Climate Catastrophe.
Receding Himalayan glaciers Almost six years ago, I was the editor of a single-topic issue on energy for Scientific American that included an article by Princeton University’s Robert Socolow that set out a well-reasoned plan for how to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below a planet-livable threshold of 560 ppm.
The issue came replete with technical solutions that ranged from a hydrogen economy to space-based solar. If I had it to do over, I’d approach the issue planning differently, my fellow editors permitting. I would scale back on the nuclear fusion and clean coal, instead devoting at least half of the available space for feature articles on psychology, sociology, economics and political science. Since doing that issue, I’ve come to the conclusion that the technical details are the easy part. It’s the social engineering that’s the killer. Unfortunately, far more is needed. Image credit: NASA.
MediaWrench.org Presents Occupy Talks: Oil « Media Wrench. MediaWrench.org is pleased to present the next evening in the Occupy Talks series which took place at the Bloor Street United Church at 300 Bloor St. W in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on the evening of the 20th of March, 2012. The church provided a setting that was both strangely focusing, while also excellently ironic, and the first order of business that evening was to do a very small “smudge” ceremony (to clear the air of bad spirits). Once this was finished, the smell of burnt sage and other traditional native medicines set the stage for an evening of insight.
“Tar sands extraction is one of the largest civil and environmental rights issues of this generation. . - Occupy Talks The following embedded videos feature esteemed community organizers and intellectuals Eriel Deranger, Ron Plain, Isaac Asume Osuoka and Syed Hussan. Diem Lafortune (Mama D) - Lafortune does not take life lying down. Ron Plain – “I am not an environmentalist, I am Aanishinaabe. Private Prison Presentation For Investors. 404 Food for Thought This post is very relevant to our latest posts on GEO Group Inc. , the second largest for-profit prison operator in the United States where the private prison sector is a $3 billion, and swiftly growing, industry. Read more on GEO: Punishment For Sale: Deeply Rooted in Conservative Politics, GEO Knocks on Harper Government’s Door Corrections Corp of America (CCA), a huge private prison business, has a presentation for investors that just might creep you out.
How much money is made by locking people up? Ana Kasparian and guest host Michael Shure discuss the prison industrial complex, the failed drug war, and the incentive to push for profits over a safer society. Private Prison Investment Presentation Immigrants For Sale This Investor Presentation For A Private Prison Is One Of The Creepiest Presentations We’ve Ever Seen Joe Weisenthal | Mar. 12, 2012 | Business Insider This morning we came across a rather interesting piece of research.
Among the bullish datapoints. Youth in Revolt: The Plague of State-Sponsored Violence. Young people are demonstrating all over the world against a variety of issues ranging from economic injustice and massive inequality to drastic cuts in education and public services. At the moment, these demonstrations are being met with state-sanctioned violence and insults in the mainstream media rather than with informed dialogue, critical engagement and reformed policies.
In the United States, the state monopoly on the use of violence has intensified since the 1980s and, in the process, has been increasingly directed against young people, poor minorities, immigrants and increasingly women. As the welfare state is hollowed out, a culture of compassion is replaced by a culture of violence, cruelty and disposability. As young people make diverse claims on the promise of a radical democracy, articulating what a fair and just world might be, they are increasingly met with forms of physical, ideological and structural violence. The Agora Project • Index page. The Sabu Double Play. How the real target is Julian Assange. | The Bat Country Word. By: Louis Syphr Hector Monsegur, known as Sabu, leader of the Anonymous affiliated hacking group LulzSec, was arrested by FBI agents in his New York apartment on Monday, June 7, 2011, at 10:15PM. On August 15, Monsegur pleaded guily to several counts of hacking and identity theft.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney James Pastore, as told to U.S. Court documents and several news agencies report that Monsegur’s computer was tracked by the FBI since June 8, 2011. From the FBI document entitled Six Hackers in the United States and Abroad Charged for Crimes Affecting Over One Million Victims, the following is based on the indictment and the information, complaints, and statements made up to and including Monsegur’s guilty plea: The Stratfor Hack Jeremy Hammond is a political activist from Chicago and the founder of the computer security training website HackThisSite. On December 24, 2011, AntiSec announced the theft of Stratfor data in a link entitled,“Anonymous Lulzxmas rooting you proud.”
Blackthrow - Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau. Google Reader (80) Canadian Anonymous | Cananon | Planning. Film : Title : We Are Legion The Story Of The Hacktivists. Full Interview: Gabriella Coleman on Anonymous | Spark. Anonymous revives LulzSec for new campaign of hacks and attacks. With the arrest of its members and the revelation that its leader was an FBI informant, one might have thought that LulzSec would fade into history. Apparently not. A YouTube video posted at the weekend has announced that LulzSec will return. On April 1st the group will be back, and attack corporations and governments, promising "epic operations and pranks. " The LulzSec video downplays the arrests and insists that LulzSec remains a going concern. "Several days ago we decided to swiftly bring back our humble hacking group and set sail towards the Interwebz once again, much to the dismay of corrupt governments and corporations across the planet," proclaims the video's computer-generated voice.
The new LulzSec targets are as broad and varied as the old LulzSec targets: "Lulzsec will start targeting governments, corporations, agencies, and quite possibly the people watching this video. " After this attack, Imperva published a document describing Anonymous' techniques. Keep Your Friends Close, Especially If They Are Anonymous. Sabu's traitorous ways reminds us of the sage advice to keep your friends close and your enemies closer Hindsight is 20/20. It must be, since it seems no one was surprised by the big reveal that a main player in LulzSec and Anonymous, a fellow code-named "Sabu," had been working with the FBI and ratted on some of his partners in crime -- except maybe those said partners, as they were being led out of their hovels by federal agents.
Sabu acted to save himself, as it seems someone who outwardly cared about no one did care about the two young girls in his care. Maybe he reduced his sentence a little by cooperating, but I think he'll find his hacking skills relatively useless in the big house. Unless he becomes the sysadmin for the jail for $2.50 an hour. What could go wrong with that? The other folks arrested will also spend some time in the big house, that much is clear. But there are some instructive lessons here. Will the turning of Sabu act as a deterrent to the cybervigilantes? Alleged 'Commander X' Anonymous hacker pleads not guilty | InSecurity Complex. A 47-year-old homeless man has pleaded not guilty to charges that he joined in an Anonymous-organized cyberattack that temporarily shut down Santa Cruz County servers.
Chris Doyon was arrested yesterday and is being held until a bail hearing scheduled for Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., his lawyer, Jay Leiderman, told CNET this afternoon. "Hopefully he will be released on Thursday," Leiderman said. Also listed as a defendant on the indictment with Doyon is 26-year-old Joshua John Covelli of Fairborn, Ohio. And in a separate case that involves cyberattack charges linked to Anonymous spin-off LulzSec, a 23-year-old Arizona man was arrested yesterday on charges related to the theft of data from Sony earlier this year. Not much is known about Doyon, except that he is homeless and has been in Mountain View, Calif., for the past few months after living on the streets of Berkeley, according to Leiderman. "He said they found his 'camp,'" the attorney said. "Is he Commander X? Why Antisec matters. A couple of weeks ago the FBI announced the arrest of five members of the hacking group LulzSec.
We now know that these arrests were facilitated by 'Anonymous' leader* "Sabu", who, according to court documents, was arrested and 'turned' in June of 2011. He spent the next few months working with the FBI to collect evidence against other members of the group. This revelation is pretty shocking, if only because Anonymous and Lulz were so productive while under FBI leadership. Their most notable accomplishment during this period was the compromise of Intelligence analysis firm Stratfor -- culminating in that firm's (rather embarrassing) email getting strewn across the Internet. This caps off a fascinating couple of years for our field, and gives us a nice opportunity to take stock. Computer security as a bad joke To understand where I'm coming from, it helps to give a little personal background. This seemed totally wrong to me. Don't get me wrong, it was a rollicking good time.
The ugly Notes: How Anonymous emerged to Occupy Wall Street | Ayesha Kazmi. Defying harsh critiques from Stephen Colbert and slews of bloggers who scoffed last week at the "leaderless", "directionless", Frisbee-throwing hipsters camping out on cardboard at a random New York City park in the financial district, Occupy Wall Street appears to be gaining ground. From the modest 200 occupiers last week, numbers of protesters rose to an estimated peak of approximately 3,000 to 5,000 at the weekend's march.
Media attention has grown exponentially. After taking their inspiration from the Egyptian "one demand" model, Occupy Wall Street have now released their list of "one" demands, bringing much-needed clarity to their objectives. The movement has moved to reach out to a broader base, including labor unions. Last week's execution of Troy Davis also contributed to the growth of Occupy Wall Street as crowds of protesters in Zucotti Park, renamed Liberty Plaza, swelled to approximately 1,500 last Thursday night demanding an end to capital punishment. From Anonymous to shuttered websites, the evolution of online protest - Canada. The days of screaming activists marching with signs in hand to voice their displeasure at a particular politician are changing rapidly – just ask Vic Toews.
Canada's public safety minister was the latest in a string of public-policy lightning rods to feel the wrath of Anonymous, a loose coalition of web-based activists who went after Toews for his overly vociferous promoting of the government's online surveillance bill. Anonymous is one of the most prolific and infamous (depending on your point of view) groups operating in the "hacktivist" world. Yet it is far from alone. All over the globe, many people are availing themselves of new mediums and techniques to voice their dissent. From the "going dark" campaign in January, in which websites like Wikipedia shut down for a day to protest against a proposed U.S. web-piracy law, to the group of international academics who fought successfully for more publicly accessible research, the face of online protest is changing. Not your '60s movement.
Why Anonymous is Winning Its War on Internet Infrastructure. Anarchism Is Not What You Think It Is -- And There's a Whole Lot We Can Learn from It. February 13, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. On February 8, 1921 twenty thousand people, braving temperatures so low that musical instruments froze, marched in a funeral procession in the town of Dimitrov, a suburb of Moscow. They came to pay their respects to a man, Petr Kropotkin, and his philosophy, anarchism. Some 90 years later few know of Kropotkin. I am astonished Hollywood has yet to discover Kropotkin. His struggles against tyranny resulted in years in Russian and French jails. In the 1920s Roger N. “Kropotkin is referred to by scores of people who knew him in all walks of life as "the noblest man" they ever knew.
For our purposes Kropotkin’s most enduring legacy is his work on anarchism, a philosophy of which he was possibly the leading exponent. The precipitating event that led Kropotkin to embrace anarchism was the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859. The Agent Provocateurs in Occupy's Midst. Infiltration to Disrupt, Divide and Misdirect Is Widespread in Occupy Posted on Feb 24, 2012 By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article contained erroneous information about an alleged infiltrator, identified as Michael Stack, who the article said provoked people in the Occupy movement in Washington, D.C., and New York to resist police with force.
There was such a person at the Occupy protests, but the authors have informed us that it was not Michael Stack. The article has been edited to correct that error. This is Part I of a two-part series on infiltration of Occupy and what the movement can do to limit damage by those who seek to cause harm from within. In its first five months, the Occupy movement has had major victories and has altered the debate about the economy. As Part II of this discussion will show, infiltration is the norm in political movements in the United States. In New York, there were also reports of infiltration. Oil & Gas. This industry, which includes multinational and independent oil and gas producers and refiners, natural gas pipeline companies, gasoline service stations and fuel oil dealers, has long enjoyed a history of strong influence in Washington.
Individuals and political action committees affiliated with oil and gas companies have donated $238.7 million to candidates and parties since the 1990 election cycle, 75 percent of which has gone to Republicans. Though former oilmen George W. Bush and Dick Cheney occupied the White House for eight years, the oil and gas industry could not win support for repealing bans on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, Congress voted in 2008 to lift a ban on offshore drilling.
Project PM. Thom Hartmann: Why Fox News has the Right to Lie to Us. Concerning the Violent Peace-Police: An Open Letter to Chris Hedges | Truthout. Activists and Anarchists Speak for Themselves at Occupy Oakland.
John Zerzan: anti-civilization theorist, writer and speaker. Derrick Jensen. Home - GREEN ANARCHY. Latin American & Caribbean Solidarity Month February 2012 - LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN SOLIDARITY NETWORK. Diversity of Tactics - 3 - Harsha Walia.