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Syrian Refugee Arrested Attempting To Cross Texas Border After US Promised To Allow 10,000 Migrants

<p><a href="http://cdn10.trueactivist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/800px-US-Mexico_border_fence.jpg"><img alt="800px-US-Mexico_border_fence" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-41089" height="600" src="http://cdn10.trueactivist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/800px-US-Mexico_border_fence.jpg" width="800" /></a></p>
<p>Last week, President Barack Obama announced that the US would be taking in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/politics/u-s-take-10000-syrian-refugees/">up to 10,000</a> Syrian refugees over the course of the next year. However, it seems that the policy may be very tightly regimented, as Syrian refugees are already getting arrested while attempting to cross into the US.</p>
<p>Earlier this week, 27-year-old <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/immigration-border-crisis/syrian-arrested-texas-border-charged-misusing-u-s-passport-n431421?cid=sm_tw">Syrian refugee Walaa Alrehawi was arrested</a> after border control agents became suspicious and checked the passport that she was using. The passport actually belonged to her sister and she was using to it travel from Lebanon to Germany and then finally to Mexico.</p>
<p>Both Walaa and her sister charged on Friday with “willfully” using a U.S. passport intended for somebody else. However, in the midst of escaping a war zone, it is likely impossible to get the right paperwork to get a passport in time, and Walaa was obviously just doing the best she could with a bad situation. Now it is likely that she will end up in a prison or a FEMA camp for an extended period of time, simply because her circumstances made it impossible for her to get a passport.</p>
<p>As we have been reporting in recent weeks, the refugee situation in Europe has been met with both uplifting and disappointing reactions. <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/german-woman-who-survived-ww2-explains-why-shes-helping-refugees/">Germany has been extremely open</a> and generous to the refugees while other places are more resistant. We reported earlier this week that <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/egyptian-billionaire-will-purchase-an-island-to-provide-200000-refugees-new-home/">Naguib Sawiris, an Egyptian billionaire and philanthropist</a>, has decided to “be the change” and help remedy the Syrian refugee crisis by purchasing an island in the Mediterranean to provide a new home to those displaced by the civil war.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/syrian-president-says-us-and-europe-created-refugee-crisis-by-supporting-terrorism/">In an interview last week</a>, Syrian President Bashar Assad pointed out that the US and Europe are largely to blame for the <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/?s=refugee">refugee crisis</a> that has intensified in recent weeks.</p>
<p>As Assad noted, the United States government and NATO have funded and trained the Syrian rebels who ended up becoming ISIS. The rebels have been attempting to take over the Syrian dictatorship, not to set the people of <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/?s=syria">Syria</a> free, but to install their own dictatorship.</p>
<p>Many of the anti-immigration commenters who have been against allowing the refugees to move from their war-torn homes, have claimed that Syrian migrants would be a drain on the economy and would eat up the benefits and welfare that Europeans receive. However, this is not true, many of the migrants are skilled and willing workers who don’t want any handouts, they just want to work and own their own property in place that is relatively peaceful and safe to raise children.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jgvibes" target="_blank">John Vibes</a> writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.</p>
<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

activism knowledge news Syrian Refugee Arrested Attempting To Cross Texas Border After US Promised To Allow 10,000 Migrants

Last week, President Barack Obama announced that the US would be taking in up to 10,000 Syrian refugees over the course of the next year. ...

Monsanto’s Cancer Causing Herbicide Doesn’t Even Work, Actually Makes Weeds Stronger

<p><a href="http://cdn9.trueactivist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/grass-76069_640.jpg"><img alt="grass-76069_640" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-41085" height="387" src="http://cdn9.trueactivist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/grass-76069_640.jpg" width="640" /></a></p>
<p>As we have covered <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/page/6/?s=roundup" target="_blank">extensively in recent months</a>, Monsanto’s herbicide Glysophate, the primary ingredient in their top-selling product “RoundUp” has been proven to cause cancer. Now, according to new reports, the chemical <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/22/us-agriculture-glyphosate-idUSKCN0RM2ER20150922" target="_blank">doesn’t even work</a> and is creating a new resistance in weeds that make them more resiliant and more difficult to get rid of.</p>
<p>Nebraska <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/?s=farmer" target="_blank">farmer</a> Mike Pietzyk recently discussed how the weeds are becoming resistant to RoundUp in a recent interview with <a href="http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i37/Rocky-Road-Roundup.html" target="_blank">Chemicals And Engineers News.</a></p>
<p><em>“The days of going out and spraying RoundUp twice a year—those are long gone,</em>” he said, adding that he was forced to use a cocktail of different chemicals, some of which are even more dangerous than RoundUp. Pietzyk and other farmers are now seeking new solutions to avoid the harsh pesticides used in conventional farming.</p>
<p><em>“People in urban areas and towns need to understand—we live here, we drink the water under the ground out here,” he says. “We want to be good stewards of what we’ve been entrusted with,”</em> he said.</p>
<p>According to U.S. weed scientist Dallas Peterson, one type of weed, in particular, called Palmer amaranth, has become especially resistant to pesticides and is overgrowing farms across the country.</p>
<p>Complaints of herbicide-resistant weeds have become so common that the House Agriculture Committee has scheduled a meeting on December 4th to specifically address the situation.</p>
<p>Roundup, formulated to be used on <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/?s=monsanto" target="_blank">GMO</a> or “Roundup Ready” crops engineered to be resistant to it, is the most widely used herbicide in the world. It was originally introduced in the 1970s to control weeds and then took off when the planting of GMO crops skyrocketed in the past 15 years.</p>
<p><a href="http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/pnsp/usage/maps/show_map.php?year=2012&map=GLYPHOSATE&hilo=H">According to a U.S. Geological Survey</a> (USGS), glyphosate use in the U.S. increased from about 20 million pounds in 1992 to 110 million pounds in 2002 to more than 280 million pounds in 2012.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://theantimedia.org/roundup-probably-causes-cancer-in-humans/">statement</a> released earlier this year, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced that glyphosate, the main ingredient in RoundUp, is “probably carcinogenic.”</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jgvibes" target="_blank">John Vibes</a> writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.</p>
<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

activism knowledge news Monsanto’s Cancer Causing Herbicide Doesn’t Even Work, Actually Makes Weeds Stronger

As we have covered extensively in recent months , Monsanto’s herbicide Glysophate, the primary ingredient in their top-selling product “Rou...

Using Collective Muscle, Here's How We Free U.S. Cities from Wall Street Control

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<h2>Using Collective Muscle, Here's How We Free U.S. Cities from Wall Street Control</h2>
<span>Using Collective Muscle, Here's How We Free U.S. Cities from Wall Street Control</span>
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<div>This article originally appeared on <span><a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/" rel="nofollow">In These Times</a></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/180898995.jpg?itok=abrU0hYI" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_narrow/public/field/image/180898995.jpg?itok=abrU0hYI" /></a>
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<p>In August 2014, the Los Angeles City Council debated whether to call for the renegotiation of the city’s financial deals. A report by the labor-community coalition Fix L.A. found that the city had spent more than twice as much on banking fees in fiscal year 2013 as it had on street services.</p>
<p>To try to balance its budget, Los Angeles had enacted hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts over the previous five years. City jobs had been slashed by 10 percent, flood control procedures had been cut back, crumbling sidewalks were not repaired and alleys were rarely cleared of debris. Sewer inspections ceased entirely; the number of sewer overflows doubled from 2008 to 2013.</p>
<p>The campaign slogan wrote itself: “Invest in our streets, not Wall Street!”</p>
<p>At the city council debate, Timothy Butcher, a worker with the Bureau of Street Services, got up and said, “I don’t know a whole lot about high finance. I’m just a truck driver. But I do know, if I go to a bank and they give me a bad deal, I don’t deal with that bank any more. And I don’t understand why the city can’t use the same kind of concept on some of these big banks, saying, ‘Hey, help us out or, you know, we’re not going to deal with you any more.’ ”</p>
<p>The City Council approved the resolution unanimously.</p>
<p>It was a blow against both the austerity agenda and the iron grip of Wall Street on American cities. State and local governments in the United States rely on Wall Street firms to put together bond deals, manage their investments and provide financial services. For this, banks charge billions of dollars in fees each year. Public officials believe they have little choice but to cough up. When there are revenue shortfalls, cities typically impose austerity measures and cut essential community services, but Wall Street gets a free pass – payments to banks are considered untouchable.</p>
<p>Public officials assume (wrongly) that financial fees are set in stone because they are based on so-called market rates. However, market rates aren’t preordained by God. Banks set them, and public finance officials simply don’t demand anything substantively lower.</p>
<p>So, what if cities took a page from the labor movement and bargained collectively over interest rates and other financial deals?</p>
<p><strong>The Strength of Collective Bargaining</strong></p>
<p>The simple reason why anti-union politicians are waging a war on collective bargaining by workers is that it works: There is power in numbers. The basic idea behind such bargaining is to shift the balance of power in the employer-employee relationship and empower workers to negotiate with owners on a more equal footing.</p>
<p>But collective bargaining does not have to be limited to the workplace. Student organizations such as United Students Against Sweatshops have forced university administrations to negotiate over labor standards for their merchandise vendors. Consumer unions press retailers over issues like pricing and safety standards. Community organizations are able to negotiate community-benefit agreements with major corporations in their cities and win benefits such as local hiring policies and community investment standards.</p>
<p>Similarly, public finance officials in cities, states and school districts across the country could apply collective bargaining practices to their financial relationships with Wall Street. While there is no established mechanism for them to do so, there are some creative options worth exploring. For example, cities could establish a nonprofit or publicly funded agency to set guidelines for municipal finance deals and refuse to do business with any bank that does not comply. (More on this later.)</p>
<p>This may sound pie-in-the-sky, but the reality is that American taxpayer dollars are a tremendous source of bargaining power. Just three U.S. cities – New York, Los Angeles and Chicago – together with their related agencies and pension funds, do nearly $600 billion of business with Wall Street every year, more than the gross domestic product of Sweden. Wall Street wants a piece of that action. If it has to jump through a few hoops to get it, it will. This gives public officials the leverage to demand lower interest rates and fairer terms, freeing up scarce funds for community services like parks, libraries and schools.</p>
<p><strong>Runaway Fees</strong></p>
<p>Over the last few decades, the banking industry has shifted its profit model away from interest. Big banks’ profits now rely heavily on fees—the money charged for creating loans, packaging them into securities, selling them and servicing them. This structure incentivizes banks to push more complex and expensive deals, like adjustable-rate mortgages and variable-rate bonds, that require fees and add-ons.</p>
<p>Banking fees do not have to bear any relationship to the actual cost of providing services. Banks charge whatever they can get away with, which is why fees have shot up as banks have consolidated and customers’ choices have narrowed. For example, in 2007, Bank of America raised its ATM fee for non-customers from $2 to $3. In all likelihood, the bank’s costs hadn’t suddenly risen 50 percent, despite a spokesperson’s claim that the fee hike would offset “significant” expansion and upgrade of its machines. Banks also arbitrarily raised prices on credit enhancements for municipal borrowers after the financial crash.</p>
<p>For cities and states, which deal in large dollar amounts, this nickel-and-diming hits particularly hard. A 1 percent fee on a $200 million bond is a lot more money than a 1 percent fee on a $200,000 mortgage. That explains why the city of Los Angeles paid $334 million in publicly disclosed fees for financial services in fiscal year 2013, according to the Fix L.A. report. This amount did not include principal or interest on any debt, and neither did it include fees that are not publicly disclosed, like the astronomical fees hedge funds and private equity firms charge pension funds to manage investments.</p>
<p>In Illinois, a preliminary analysis by researchers at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – full disclosure: where I used to work – found that the state’s pension funds spent approximately $400 million in publicly disclosed fees in 2014 alone. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has released a report showing that nearly all of the returns from the city’s five pension funds over the past 10 years – approximately $2.5 billion – have been eaten up by fees. An investigation by the International Business Times found that New Jersey’s pension funds paid more than $600 million in financial fees in 2014.</p>
<p>Every dollar that banks collect in fees from state and local governments and pension funds is a dollar not going toward essential neighborhood services. It’s not just the streets and sewers of Los Angeles. Illinois is teetering on the edge of a government shutdown. Already, Gov. Bruce Rauner has slashed funding for college scholarships for low-income students, taken a hatchet to vital healthcare programs like Medicaid, and cut state funding for CeaseFire, a highly regarded violence-prevention program with a proven track record.</p>
<p>Most public officials still resist acknowledging that these fees are a problem. When Gov. Rauner tried to cut the municipal share of state income tax revenue by 50 percent this spring, the Illinois House of Representatives responded with a first-of-its-kind resolution urging the state to match any such cuts with proportional cuts to financial-service fees. SEIU also proposed a reduction of financial-service fees during its contract negotiations for state workers, but this was roundly rejected by the Rauner administration.</p>
<p>Of course, Rauner has personally profited from these fees in the past. Before deciding to run for office, he was the managing director of a private equity firm that did business with Illinois pension funds, GTCR LLC.</p>
<p>But even public finance officials who don’t have direct industry ties typically drag their feet on fee reductions. The Los Angeles City Council’s efforts to pressure banks into renegotiating or terminating costly financial deals were met with stiff resistance from the city’s financial officers.</p>
<p>There are a number of reasons why finance staff can be reluctant, if not obstructionist, in efforts to curtail banking fees. One is the revolving door between public finance jobs and Wall Street. Another is the fact that public officials can be outflanked by smooth-talking bankers making dishonest and deceptive sales pitches. But perhaps the biggest reason is that officials truly believe they got the best deal they could. Los Angeles’s finance staff point out that even though they paid $334 million in fees in 2013 alone, they actually did better than many of their peers.</p>
<p>When Councilmember Paul Koretz called for a vote on the motion in Los Angeles, he skewered the City Administrative Officer’s (CAO) office, saying: “Our lack of success in negotiating thus far could partly be a factor of CAO saying that, ‘Hey, this is a fine deal and we’ve done as well on this as anything else we could do.’ ”</p>
<p><strong>Changing the Rules</strong></p>
<p>Under the current system, Wall Street sets the rules of the game and public officials think they have no choice but to play on those terms. They may negotiate around the margins and get a fee lowered by half a percentage point, but they do not typically push back on the illogic of the underlying fee structures.</p>
<p>Cities that consider taking a stand against Wall Street are routinely told that if they do, their credit ratings will be downgraded, and banks and investors will stop doing business with them. In reality, the public finance officials who claim they have no choice but to pay high fees and accept onerous terms from Wall Street banks are like elephants afraid of mice. The notion that Wall Street could sustain a prolonged boycott against a city or state as punishment goes against the very nature of banking. U.S. taxpayer dollars are among the largest pools of capital in the world. If there is money to be made, there will always be a bank that will step in to get that business.</p>
<p>Similarly, threats about credit rating downgrades are baseless. Rating agencies are concerned with a borrower’s ability to pay back its bondholders. If anything, negotiating lower fees with banks would free up money and make cities and states less likely to default.</p>
<p>Some cities and states are already blazing the trail. In 2010, then-Massachusetts State Treasurer Timothy Cahill moved state deposits out of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo because the banks’ credit card operations did not comply with the state’s usury law, which caps interest rates at 18 percent.</p>
<p>In 2012, the city of Oakland initiated a boycott of Goldman Sachs because the bank refused to renegotiate a deal that had put the city on the losing side of a risky interest-rate bet costing $4 milion in annual fees and payments.</p>
<p>And earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors of Santa Cruz County, Calif., voted not to do any new business for the next five years with banks convicted of felonies. The boycott affects the five banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, that pleaded guilty to illegally rigging foreign exchange rates.</p>
<p>These actions are first steps. However, they would be significantly more effective if cities and states joined together. When Oakland—a mid-sized city of 400,000 people—boycotted Goldman Sachs, Goldman didn’t flinch. But if several cities, states and school districts banded together and threatened a boycott, the banking behemoth would be forced to take notice.</p>
<p><strong>Power in Numbers</strong></p>
<p>In an ideal world, the federal government would establish standards for protecting state and local officials against predatory financial deals. In the same way that there is a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, there is a dire need for a Municipal Financial Protection Bureau whose top priority would be to protect taxpayers’ interests. Even though there are already agencies with oversight over municipal finance—such as the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission—protecting cities and states from abuse is not their priority. And they have close ties to the financial services industry.</p>
<p>Because federal regulation has proven woefully inadequate, and the chances of effective congressional action in the near future are slim to none, cities and states need to step up.</p>
<p>If just New York, Los Angeles and Chicago banded together and threatened to withhold their collective $600 billion of potential annual business with Wall Street, they wouldn’t have to simply accept the so-called market rates. They have enough bargaining power to set their own.</p>
<p>Together, they could refuse to sign contracts that prevent them from publicly disclosing fees. If they also get their state governments and pension funds on board, they could alter fee structures for things like bond underwriting. They could require any bank that pitches products to sign a fiduciary agreement, meaning they are legally required to put taxpayer interests ahead of their own.</p>
<p>Santa Cruz County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty has already said he is reaching out to other jurisdictions across the country to urge them to join in refusing to do business with felonious banks. If public officials were to coordinate their demands and present a unified front, they could force the banks to take them seriously.</p>
<p>My organization, the Roosevelt Institute’s ReFund America Project, works with community-labor coalitions in cities nationwide that are calling for a reduction in bank fees and an end to predatory municipal finance deals. Last summer, ReFund America and Local Progress – a network linking local elected officials with unions and progressive groups – led a small meeting called “A Progressive Vision for Municipal Finance.” We brought together organizers, policy experts and public officials to discuss various proposals for fixing municipal finance. Among those present were four city councilmembers and three representatives from mayors’ offices. These officials expressed strong interest in developing a bargaining vehicle that would allow cities to take collective action to stand up to Wall Street.</p>
<p>One idea was the creation of a nonprofit or public agency to set municipal finance guidelines. Individual cities and states could subscribe to these guidelines and the agency would in effect become the gatekeeper for banks wishing to do business with them. The more subscribers the agency had, the more bargaining power it would hold. Strict controls would help ensure the agency remained scrupulously independent of Wall Street. That organization could even be the precursor to a national Municipal Financial Protection Bureau.</p>
<p><strong>People Over Profit</strong></p>
<p>Together, American cities, states and pension funds hold untold power. If they flex their muscles and organize around coordinated demands, they can radically transform taxpayers’ relationship with Wall Street.</p>
<p>In 2012, a community leader from Oakland attended the Goldman Sachs shareholder meeting in New York City and urged CEO Lloyd Blankfein to renegotiate its interest rate swap with the city to avoid library closures and layoffs. He said it was “an issue of morality.” Blankfein responded, “No, I think it’s a matter of shareholder assets.”</p>
<p>This is the mentality that led Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi to call Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”</p>
<p>It’s not just Goldman. All of municipal finance has become an extractive industry, pumping billions away from the communities that need them most. Morality is an externality that financial firms seldom concern themselves with. The financial sector’s fee-based business model is designed to maximize profits, not to protect taxpayers.</p>
<p>Banks may not have a moral compass, but their business contracts with our state and local governments can and should. After all, our cities, states and school districts are not simply fodder for Wall Street’s insatiable greed. Our elected leaders have a duty to protect us from predatory financial practices. Cities and states can force banks to charge drastically lower fees, do away with arbitrary fee structures and eliminate onerous terms that divert billions of dollars away from the most vulnerable members of our society into bonus checks for our nation’s wealthiest few.</p>
<p>Governors in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois are waging war on collective bargaining and telling taxpayers that empowering publicsector unions robs state coffers, but the real drain on public treasuries is the billions in fees paid to banks every year. And unlike money that goes into workers’ pockets, most of these fees are not recycled back into the local economy but sent to offshore tax havens or invested in complex financial schemes. The irony is that collective bargaining is one of the most effective tools available to public officials who truly want to do right by taxpayers—and cast off Wall Street’s tentacles.</p>
<p><a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/18273/how-cities-can-beat-wall-street" rel="nofollow">Originally published by In These Times</a></p>
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<p>Financial fees are sucking cities and states dry – but they can change the terms if they band together and bargain collectively over interest rates and other financial deals peddled to them by Wall Street.</p>
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<p>"This case is not just about me – it's about how much control we allow U.S. corporations and the U.S. government to have over the Internet."</p>
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<p>As a nation we're uncomfortable with the morality of the degree – not the kind – of intelligence collection that occurs as a result of secret government-business partnerships.</p>
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<p>New data shows that more than a quarter of the nation’s 60 richest universities leave their low-income students owing an average of more than $20,000 in federal loans.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>A new federal lawsuit centers on more than 200 arrests made on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September of 2012, when the NYPD arrested and harassed protesters for no reason other than that they were protesting.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Margaret Flowers is speaking up loudly, saying it's high time we got activists in the halls of the mighty and powerful – time to move from occupying the streets to occupying Congress.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 11 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Sanders’s rise in this election season is inconceivable without Occupy Wall Street having elevated the conversation around inequality.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Veteran activist Elaine Brown is determined to transform a once-blighted, under-resourced neighborhood in Oakland, Calif., into a thriving urban farm business that employs former offenders.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Those displaced after a “just transition” away from fossil fuels should be able to count on decent new green jobs and retraining.</p>
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<p>From movements in Bolivia and Uruguay to voter rebellions in Nigeria, Holland, Italy, France and Ireland, citizens worldwide are demanding the return of their water to public hands.</p>
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<p>The fascist, immigrant-bashing party has shed boots for suits and toned down its rhetoric to emerge as Europe’s most dangerous political force.</p>
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<div><A HREF="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Foccupycom-20%2F8001%2F3da333c2-43f6-43c5-878f-2df69555462e&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com Widgets</A></div>
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armageddon news revolution Using Collective Muscle, Here's How We Free U.S. Cities from Wall Street Control

Using Collective Muscle, Here's How We Free U.S. Cities from Wall Street Control Using Collective Muscle, Here's How We Free ...

Megaload Founder and Internet Freedom Icon Kim Dotcom In Court Facing U.S. Extradition

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<h2>Megaload Founder and Internet Freedom Icon Kim Dotcom In Court Facing U.S. Extradition</h2>
<span>Megaload Founder and Internet Freedom Icon Kim Dotcom In Court Facing U.S. Extradition</span>
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<div>This article originally appeared on <span>Al Jazeera America</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/_85656432_6d7af6b4-788e-4352-9a4c-fd688acda2d1.jpg?itok=NRkIfQ7K" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_narrow/public/field/image/_85656432_6d7af6b4-788e-4352-9a4c-fd688acda2d1.jpg?itok=NRkIfQ7K" /></a>
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<p>Flamboyant German tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom appeared in a New Zealand court on Monday, after nearly four years of legal wrangling, at a hearing to determine whether he will face copyright infringement and other charges in the United States.</p>
<p>The case will decide whether Dotcom, the founder of file-sharing website Megaupload, and three other executives can be extradited to the U.S. Other charges include racketeering and money laundering.</p>
<p>"This case is not just about me. This case is about how much control we allow U.S. corporations and the U.S. government to have over the Internet," Dotcom tweeted before the hearing began.</p>
<p>He entered the courtroom wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, his Mercedes SUV, with a license plate reading "KIM.COM," parked outside.</p>
<p>Dozens of black-clad police, working in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, rappelled into Dotcom's New Zealand mansion in 2012. Years of legal wrangling ensued.</p>
<p>U.S. authorities say Dotcom and the three other Megaupload executives cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material, such as movies and TV shows.</p>
<p>Dotcom claims that the U.S. government is pursuing him at the request of the U.S. entertainment industry and says the case could set a precedent that affects all Internet users.</p>
<p>"The judges on this case can become the champions for billions of Internet users or a handful of U.S. content billionaires," he tweeted.</p>
<p>His lawyers argued in a 2013 position paper that copyright theft is usually treated as a civil offense that would not warrant extradition from New Zealand. They said the inclusion of serious criminal charges, which would normally be leveled only against gangsters, showed a "gunslinger attitude" by prosecutors determined to claim Dotcom's scalp.</p>
<p>Dawson does not need to determine whether Dotcom and his co-accused are guilty of any crimes, only whether there is a strong enough case to warrant extraditing them to the U.S. to stand trial there.</p>
<p>The hearing will resume on Thursday, when the judge will hand down a decision on the defendants' application for a stay of proceedings.</p>
<p>Dotcom greeted supporters in the gallery but sat apart from the other accused men in a black leather armchair taken to the court from his mansion. He told New Zealand radio last week he needed a special chair because of back problems.</p>
<p>The case is being watched closely by the media industry and developers in the file-sharing business for signs of how far the U.S. government is willing to go to protect American copyright holders.</p>
<p>The hearing is scheduled to take two weeks. Monday's session was largely procedural, and the case will resume on Thursday.</p>
<p><a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/21/megaupload-founder-kim-dotcom-appears-in-court-to-fight-us-extradition.html" rel="nofollow">Originally published by Al Jazeera America</a></p>
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<p>Financial fees are sucking cities and states dry – but they can change the terms if they band together and bargain collectively over interest rates and other financial deals peddled to them by Wall Street.</p>
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<p>"This case is not just about me – it's about how much control we allow U.S. corporations and the U.S. government to have over the Internet."</p>
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<p>As a nation we're uncomfortable with the morality of the degree – not the kind – of intelligence collection that occurs as a result of secret government-business partnerships.</p>
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<p>New data shows that more than a quarter of the nation’s 60 richest universities leave their low-income students owing an average of more than $20,000 in federal loans.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>A new federal lawsuit centers on more than 200 arrests made on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September of 2012, when the NYPD arrested and harassed protesters for no reason other than that they were protesting.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Margaret Flowers is speaking up loudly, saying it's high time we got activists in the halls of the mighty and powerful – time to move from occupying the streets to occupying Congress.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 11 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Sanders’s rise in this election season is inconceivable without Occupy Wall Street having elevated the conversation around inequality.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Veteran activist Elaine Brown is determined to transform a once-blighted, under-resourced neighborhood in Oakland, Calif., into a thriving urban farm business that employs former offenders.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>From movements in Bolivia and Uruguay to voter rebellions in Nigeria, Holland, Italy, France and Ireland, citizens worldwide are demanding the return of their water to public hands.</p>
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<p>A new federal lawsuit centers on more than 200 arrests made on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September of 2012, when the NYPD arrested and harassed protesters for no reason other than that they were protesting.</p>
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<p>Occupy Wall Street may not have dismantled capitalism – but it did profoundly change the way people perceived it, and how their voices can impact institutions of power all over the world.</p>
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<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

armageddon news revolution Megaload Founder and Internet Freedom Icon Kim Dotcom In Court Facing U.S. Extradition

Megaload Founder and Internet Freedom Icon Kim Dotcom In Court Facing U.S. Extradition Megaload Founder and Internet Freedom Icon Kim...

A Century of Mass Government Surveillance Is Enough – It’s Time for New Limits

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<h2>A Century of Mass Government Surveillance Is Enough – It’s Time for New Limits</h2>
<span>A Century of Mass Government Surveillance Is Enough – It’s Time for New Limits</span>
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<div>This article originally appeared on <span>The Intercept</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/nsa_surveillance-tracking_cellphones.jpg?itok=lNe5z5vh" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_narrow/public/field/image/nsa_surveillance-tracking_cellphones.jpg?itok=lNe5z5vh" /></a>
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<p>There is something disquieting and unwholesome about telecoms feeding our communications to government agencies. It was headline news, again, last month when we learned that AT&T has had a longstanding partnership with the National Security Agency. Unfortunately, this form of private-public intelligence collusion is neither new nor, in my view, illegal. Whether it is immoral is an entirely separate question.</p>
<p>U.S. communications carriers first became partners in the intelligence game shortly after World War I. Diplomatic and military affairs transmitted via telegram to home countries were intercepted and decrypted by the Black Chamber, the NSA’s precursor. Obtaining telegrams then was eerily similar to how communications are obtained today: The government simply asked.</p>
<p>The Western Union Telegraph Company and the Postal Telegraph Company allowed intelligence officers to copy telegrams, and this partnership persisted in peacetime. In 1929, however, Secretary of State Henry Stimson defunded the Black Chamber. His concise, and seemingly naïve, rationale reportedly being: “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”</p>
<p>World War II exigencies overruled Stimson’s moral objections and the United States resumed telegram interception. Starting in 1945, just after the end of the war, this interception widened, and Western Union, RCA, and ITT provided the government, via the NSA and its predecessors the Army Security Agency and the Armed Forces Security Agency, with paper tape, microfilm, and later magnetic tape copies of most international telegrams. This continued unabated for decades after the war and was known as Project SHAMROCK.</p>
<p>NSA shared this data with law enforcement, including the FBI and Secret Service. Project SHAMROCK, however, suffered from classic function creep, the gradual extension of a system beyond the purposes for which it was conceived. In the 1960s and 1970s, names of American citizens and organizations were added to watch lists. Anti-war activists, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhummad Ali, and Jane Fonda were among the nearly 1,700 U.S. individuals and organizations targeted for domestic surveillance. This was known as Project MINARET.</p>
<p>Presciently, in 1975 on Meet the Press, Senator Frank Church (he himself a target of MINARET) stated:</p>
<p>"In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. … That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left. … There would be no place to hide."</p>
<p>The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, codifying a warrant requirement with judicial oversight for electronic surveillance, with particularly strong protections for U.S. persons, was born of the eponymous Church Committee.</p>
<p>This was a philosophical shift in the perception of intelligence activities. Despite infringing privacy of U.S. residents — and undeniably going beyond the degree of intrusion at issue with the Black Chamber — there was no Stimson-like categorical condemnation of surveillance itself. Communications interception was a necessary evil to detect and deter existential threats to the United States. It was crucial, therefore, to safeguard U.S. persons from harm occasioned by this necessary evil.</p>
<p>Foreigners were viewed in a different light, with considerably less protection under FISA as it exists today. Foreigners’ communications have always been legitimate targets of collection, from the time of the Black Chamber and despite fallout from Projects SHAMROCK and MINARET. As an NSA presentation indicates, AT&T even withheld domestic communications before delivering anything to the NSA. The intelligence game in the United States has not changed in over 100 years, so what is the source of the outrage?</p>
<p>As a nation, we are uncomfortable with the morality of the degree (not kind) of intelligence collection that occurs as a result of secret partnerships. In the busiest of MINARET’s six years of operations, there were only 600 domestic and 6,000 foreign targets. Contrast that with the billions of emails flowing across the networks to which AT&T has provided the NSA access. It is the quantity, not the type, source, or method of collection, that produces visceral unease.</p>
<p>Linking this sense of unease to a chilling effect on freedom of speech and association, the ACLU and the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, have sued to try and halt bulk collection of communications. Our federal courts, however, are not the proper forum. Legal standing and damages requirements mire the process in preliminary motions, and perhaps rightly so because, at root, the question of how surveillance is to be carried out in our names is more of an ethical and political question than a legal issue.</p>
<p>Stimson’s moral prescription that we should not “read each other’s mail” was anachronistic when uttered in 1929. It is ridiculous to suggest we halt foreign intelligence collection derived from U.S. telecoms. It is not outrageous, however, to expect our intelligence be derived more efficiently and fairly. Technologies used to exclude domestic communications can also be adapted to minimize foreigners’ data. Given the quantities of data collected daily, we must expect more to be done to prevent the same function creep that allowed SHAMROCK and MINARET to spiral out of control.</p>
<p>There is a perception that our infrastructure – critical to free expression and global commerce – is exploited and untrustworthy. Our moral compass, again, tells us that this is wrong: Privacy is a right that is universal and fundamental, which ought to apply to all.</p>
<p><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/09/22/history-of-us-surveillance-shows-need-for-new-limits/" rel="nofollow">Originally published by The Intercept</a></p>
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<p>Financial fees are sucking cities and states dry – but they can change the terms if they band together and bargain collectively over interest rates and other financial deals peddled to them by Wall Street.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>"This case is not just about me – it's about how much control we allow U.S. corporations and the U.S. government to have over the Internet."</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>As a nation we're uncomfortable with the morality of the degree – not the kind – of intelligence collection that occurs as a result of secret government-business partnerships.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>New data shows that more than a quarter of the nation’s 60 richest universities leave their low-income students owing an average of more than $20,000 in federal loans.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>A new federal lawsuit centers on more than 200 arrests made on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September of 2012, when the NYPD arrested and harassed protesters for no reason other than that they were protesting.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
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<p>Margaret Flowers is speaking up loudly, saying it's high time we got activists in the halls of the mighty and powerful – time to move from occupying the streets to occupying Congress.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 11 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
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<p>Sanders’s rise in this election season is inconceivable without Occupy Wall Street having elevated the conversation around inequality.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
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<p>Veteran activist Elaine Brown is determined to transform a once-blighted, under-resourced neighborhood in Oakland, Calif., into a thriving urban farm business that employs former offenders.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Margaret Flowers is speaking up loudly, saying it's high time we got activists in the halls of the mighty and powerful – time to move from occupying the streets to occupying Congress.</p>
</div>
</div>
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<p>From movements in Bolivia and Uruguay to voter rebellions in Nigeria, Holland, Italy, France and Ireland, citizens worldwide are demanding the return of their water to public hands.</p>
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<p>New data shows that more than a quarter of the nation’s 60 richest universities leave their low-income students owing an average of more than $20,000 in federal loans.</p>
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<div><img src="http://www.occupy.com/article/century-mass-government-surveillance-enough-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-time-new-limits" /></div>
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<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

armageddon news revolution A Century of Mass Government Surveillance Is Enough – It’s Time for New Limits

A Century of Mass Government Surveillance Is Enough – It’s Time for New Limits A Century of Mass Government Surveillance Is Enough – ...

Act Out! [30] - Chris Hedges, Klima Kamps, and Kevin Gosztola on a shadow proof government

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<h2>Act Out! [30] - Chris Hedges, Klima Kamps, and Kevin Gosztola on a shadow proof government</h2>
<span>Act Out! [30] - Chris Hedges, Klima Kamps, and Kevin Gosztola on a shadow proof government</span>
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<div>This article originally appeared on <span>Occupy.com</span></div>
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<p>Financial fees are sucking cities and states dry – but they can change the terms if they band together and bargain collectively over interest rates and other financial deals peddled to them by Wall Street.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>"This case is not just about me – it's about how much control we allow U.S. corporations and the U.S. government to have over the Internet."</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>As a nation we're uncomfortable with the morality of the degree – not the kind – of intelligence collection that occurs as a result of secret government-business partnerships.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>New data shows that more than a quarter of the nation’s 60 richest universities leave their low-income students owing an average of more than $20,000 in federal loans.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div><span><em>6 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>A new federal lawsuit centers on more than 200 arrests made on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September of 2012, when the NYPD arrested and harassed protesters for no reason other than that they were protesting.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Margaret Flowers is speaking up loudly, saying it's high time we got activists in the halls of the mighty and powerful – time to move from occupying the streets to occupying Congress.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 11 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Sanders’s rise in this election season is inconceivable without Occupy Wall Street having elevated the conversation around inequality.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>Veteran activist Elaine Brown is determined to transform a once-blighted, under-resourced neighborhood in Oakland, Calif., into a thriving urban farm business that employs former offenders.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>6 days 6 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Understanding the ins and outs of the proposed new federal minimum wage is the first step in taking a stance on the issue.</p>
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<p>Sanders’s rise in this election season is inconceivable without Occupy Wall Street having elevated the conversation around inequality.</p>
</div>
</div>
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<p>A new federal lawsuit centers on more than 200 arrests made on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September of 2012, when the NYPD arrested and harassed protesters for no reason other than that they were protesting.</p>
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<div><img src="http://www.occupy.com/article/act-out-30-chris-hedges-klima-kamps-and-kevin-gosztola-shadow-proof-government" /></div>
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<p><sub><i>-- Delivered by <a href="http://feed43.com/">Feed43</a> service</i></sub></p>

armageddon news revolution Act Out! [30] - Chris Hedges, Klima Kamps, and Kevin Gosztola on a shadow proof government

Act Out! [30] - Chris Hedges, Klima Kamps, and Kevin Gosztola on a shadow proof government Act Out! [30] - Chris Hedges, Klima Kamps,...