"In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event," says the deputy Chief of Police. (Photo: Sergey Teplyakov/vkontakte)
Perhaps Obama’s buddy Rahm should send an attaché to Siberia to take notes:
Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: “I’m for clean elections” and “A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin”.
Judge Strips Power from Oakland Police
Decisions must now go through court monitors, as department steps closer to federal takeover”:
“A federal judge has granted significant decision-making powers to the monitors charged with overseeing court-ordered reforms at the Oakland Police Department, a move that brings the department one step closer to a federal takeover.
“In an order issued late Tuesday, Judge Thelton Henderson wrote that he was in ‘disbelief’ that the department had yet to finish the reforms, adding that the department remains ‘woefully behind its peers around the state and nation,’ and that ‘words and promises are not enough.’”
“If the department has not finished implementing the reforms by July, Henderson said he would consider the possibility of receivership proceedings, during which he could decide whether to place the department under federal authority.”
While earlier MSM coverage of OWSWest sensationalized black bloc destruction, it completely ignored the wonder of the black blob (video by jaspergregory)
“Critics say the “sit down and shut up” ordinance, as it has been called, seeks to chill protest and civil liberties in Chicago through measures including mandatory $1 million liability insurance for protests, a heightened police presence and more difficulty getting a permit. . . .
“When the ordinance was first introduced, it was said to be only a measure for the NATO/G8 conference to be held in Chicago in May, but it was later revealed that the ordinance change is expected to be permanent.”
Virtually every street protest in the downtown would be designated a “large parade,” requiring $1 million liability insurance and for organizers to “agree to reimburse the city for any damage to the public way or to city property arising out of or caused by the parade”;
Large parade or not, organizers would be required to provide the city with “a description of any recording equipment, sound amplification equipment, banners, signs, or other attention-getting devices to be used in connection with the parade” at least a week in advance of the march;
Every contingent in the march and the order in which they would appear would have to be registered at least a week in advance with the City; and,
Demonstration organizers would be required to have one marshal for every 100 participants.
Under a wholly new section of the municipal code (10-8-334), even gatherings on sidewalks, with no presence in the streets, would now be subject to demands that they get permits, giving the City extraordinary latitude to dictate what union and other pickets occur or get shut down by police action.
Allow the police Superintendent to deputize FBI, DHS, ATF, and DOJ employees as Chicago police officers.
That last point means Mayor Emanuel can have his own personal army, when the time comes.
Police Tech: “Why do Police douse Protestors with Colored Water?”
In what appears to be a growing trend around the globe, police are spraying crowds with semi-permanent dye.
As Egypt prepares to mark the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution on Wednesday, with activists mapping out protest routes and the ruling military council partially lifting the country’s emergency laws and releasing prisoners in apparent goodwill gestures, Al-Masry Al-Youm is reporting something rather odd. Anonymous security sources tell the Egyptian newspaper that security forces are planning to use batons, loudspeakers, and “colored chemicals that will stain one’s skin for six months” against “those perceived to be violating the law . . .”
The following is a statement from Joshua Hewitt, aka @DJ_JDot.
I was passing papers out fliers for Occupy Oakland’s January 28 Move In Day action in front of the Chabot Community College radio station in Hayward, CA and a security guard pulled up in a car and asked me if I had permission from the office of student life.
“I have rights,” I said. “The right to free education which I don’t get and the First Amendment. Since I don’t have one of those rights–because I pay too much for not enough education–I’m gonna use my other right.”
He called the other security guard, Nathan Moore, and they took my info. The security car and person drove and walked until I was off campus and told me if I’m back on campus they’ll call the Hayward Police Department to come get me.
And I’m suspended until I get a call to set an appointment up with a dean.
Two of a Kind: Obama administration engages in the “first known use of the US military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years.”
Spiegel Online: "A new art exhibition in Frankfurt draws connections between demonstrations past and present. In the case of Egyptian artist Aalam Wassef, it studies how online activism has transformed protesting and become a work of art in itself -- but one that can cost people their lives."
One of the exhibition’s premises is that humanity is in the midst of a new, global protest movement similar to those of the late 1960s. Nothing will be the way it was before, it posits, because too many things are happening and in too many places, including Spain, Greece, London, New York and Russia. And then, of course, there are also the uprisings in the Arab world, the so-called Arab Spring that has cost thousands their lives.
The article in Spiegel Online speaks with artist Aalam Wassef, and looks at the role of online protest:
"In this 2007, action, a Voina artist tossed a cat across the counter of a Moscow McDonald's outlet. Voina founder Oleg Vorotnikov said at the time that the cat-tossing performance had been designed to shake up service staff stuck in their work routine." Spiegel Online (Photo: Reuters)
More Voina:
Overturning a police car: photos and story, which involves a toddler as well
Russian establishment tries to co-opt Voina (is it working?)
Russian Protesters Use Art as Act of War: “Can they truly call their protests art?”
#J13 #OCCUPYMUSEUMS #OCCUPYWALLSTREET – MoMA BANNER DROP @ DIEGO RIVERA EXHIBIT
MoMA is exhibiting work from one of the most renowned Mexican painters of the twentieth century, Diego Rivera. Diego influenced by the Mexican Revolution and the Russian Revolution, believed that art should play a role in empowering working people to understand their own histories. Meanwhile MoMA buys and sells millions of dollars in art at Sotheby’s auction house. Sotheby’s has locked out 43 Local 814 union art handlers, claiming they are unable to negotiate a new contract with them. “The auctioneer proposed cutting the handlers’ workweek to 36 1/4 hours from 38 3/4 hours and increasing the number of temporary laborers, according to both sides. The union said new work rules would decrease eligibility for overtime, resulting in take-home pay declining 5 percent to 15 percent. Temporary workers without medical or pension benefits would replace unionized art handlers as they retire or find other jobs. Chief Executive Officer William Ruprecht, yearly salary doubled in 2010 to $6 million dollars.”
That’s a question posed by scholar Morgan Pitelka in a review of the book Lords of the Samurai: The Legacy of a Daimyo Family published in the journal Early Modern Japan in 2011.
The review explicates cultural politics otherwise elided, duly noting the issues raised in the rich dialogue generated by the intervention.
As long as museum exhibitions and catalogs are not subject to the same processes of peer review and academic criticism as other forms of scholarship, they should be open to—and indeed welcome—informal and if needed anonymous critiques of the sort orchestrated by Majime Sugiru and his band of merry artist-activists. Because in the end, the complicated and at times heated conversation about history, identity, and representation that can be traced through the websites, interventions, blogs, and even radio shows related to the Lords of the Samurai exhibition adds up to one of the more significant and compelling English-language critiques—albeit in the form of online hypertext—of the politics of museum displays of Japanese culture.
Liberate Tate stage Arctic ice performance in Tate Turbine Hall
‘Floe-piece’ highlights Tate’s sanctioning of BP’s risky Arctic drilling
On Saturday evening (14 January 2012) art collective Liberate Tate carried out their latest unofficial performance in Tate Modern highlighting Tate’s complicity in BP’s controversial oil extraction practices around the world.
At 6.30pm at the Occupy London protest camp at St Paul’s Cathedral four veiled figures dressed in black lifted the 55 kg chunk of Arctic ice onto a sledge and walked it in procession across the Thames on the Millennium Bridge and into the Tate Modern Turbine Hall. They placed the ice at the bottom of the Turbine Hall, standing silently around the melting ice for 15 minutes before leaving the building.
The Arctic ice had been donated to the Occupy London protest by an Arctic researcher who had brought it back to the UK. Read the rest of this entry »
RAN activists took to the streets of San Francisco last night and turned every Bank of America ATM in the city into an Automated Truth Machine.
Using special non-adhesive stickers that were designed to look exactly like BoA's ATM interface, the activists gave the bank's customers a menu of what their money is being used for, including investment in coal-fired power plants, foreclosure on America's homes, bankrolling climate change, and paying out fat executive bonuses. (Photo: Rainforest Action Network)
The stickers also encourage BoA customers to “Stop doing business with Bank of America until they start behaving responsibly” and have the URL to our new blog, which we’ve just launched along with The New Bottom Line:
This is a framing action for the upcoming Occupy Wall St. West daylong mass occupation of the Financial District on #J20. There will also be an OccupySF “Run on the Banks” in the Mission tomorrow (Sat. 1/14) at noon, Mission @ 16th St.
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