Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

Makes nothing but sense to me, although we have all been complicit in allowing things to get this bad, and go this far. Time to get off our collective butts and change things before it is too late.

This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011, with minor updates made on October 1, 2011. It is the first official, collective statement of the protesters in Zuccotti Park.

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As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

• They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
• They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
• They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
• They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
• They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
• They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
• They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
• They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
• They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
• They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
• They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
• They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
• They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
• They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
• They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
• They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
• They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
• They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
• They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
• They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
• They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
• They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/declaration-occupation-new-york-city-1317784408. All rights are reserved.

 

Bersih 2.0 bike.

OK, bit late catching up, but after reading this, couldn’t resist. How to get away riding this next time there is a rally?

(BTW: It’s for sale! Show your allegiance riding the appropriate machine. )

Well, it’s one way to get practice…

Random found on the net. As a former Londoner, who worked closely with the police in a professional capacity for over a decade –  I am *disgusted* with the way that the police deport themselves nowadays - slaves of government though they have always been – but the new tactics of riot control and the insidious “kettling” are beyond the pale. Beat them at their own game, but beat them mercilessly with a bigger stick. Medic, heal thyself. Cunt.

Don’t drink and walk…

We all know the “Don’t drink and drive” warnings, the “Drink responsibly” exhortations, the various Surgeon General or Health Ministry warning labels on alcohol. And much good it seems to do, but that’s another argument.

But found on the net somewhere, this bottle from South Africa; a very relevant warning, I’m sure. Know some people this could apply to…lol.

THE NET IS A WASTE OF TIME …and that’s exactly what’s right about it.

Old, old article, in terms of our current time of reckoning, yet so salient overall and refers  the media of today’s internet back to a previous visionary time. How much is true, how much prediction? I am especially interested from a historic standpoint as I don’t use Twitter, Facebook or most (if not all) forms) of “social” networking. What *is* the future? Commerce? I think this is the ultimate answer. Knowledge? I hope this is the final answer, and most constructive. Purely “social” – jeez, I hope not!

THE NET IS A WASTE OF TIME
…and that’s exactly what’s right about it.
by William Gibson

published in ‘New York Times
Magazine’ (July 14, 1996)
I coined the word “Cyberspace” in 1981 in one of my first science fiction stories and subsequently used it to describe something that people insist on seeing as a sort of literary forerunner of the Internet. This being so, some think it remarkable that I do not use E-mail. In all truth, I have avoided it because I am lazy and enjoy staring blanky into space (which is also the space where novels come from) and because unanswered mail, E- or otherwise, is a source of discomfort.

But I have recently become an avid browser of the World Wide Web. Some people find this odd. My wife finds it positively perverse. I, however, scent big changes afoot, possibilities that were never quite as manifest in earlier incarnations of the Net.

I was born in 1948. I can’t recall a world before television, but I know I must have experienced one. I do, dimly, recall the arrival of a piece of brown wooden furniture with sturdy Bakelite knobs and a screen no larger than the screen on this Powerbook. Initially there was nothing on it but “snow,” and then the nightly advent of a targetlike device called “the test pattern,” which people actually gathered to watch.

Today I think about the test pattern as I surf the Web. I imagine that the World Wide Web and its modest wonders are no more than the test pattern for whatever the 21st century will regard as its equivalent medium. Not that I can even remotely imagine what that medium might actually be.
In the age of wooden television in the South where I grew up, leisure involved sitting on screened porches, smoking cigarettes, drinking iced tea, engaging in conversation and staring into space. It might also involve fishing.

Sometimes the Web does remid me of fishing. It never reminds me of conversation, although it can feel a lot like staring into space. “Surfing the Web” (as dubious a metaphor as “the information highway”) is, as a friend of mind has it, “like reading magazines with the pages stuck together.” My wife shakes her head in dismay as I patiently await the downloading of some Japanese Beatles fan’s personal catalogue of bootlegs. “But it’s from Japan!” She isn’t moved. She goes out to enjoy the flowers in her garden.

I stay in. Hooked. Is this leisure – this browsing, randomly linking my way through these small patches of virtual real-estate – or do I somehow imagine that I am performing some more dynamic function? The content of the Web aspires to absolute variety. One might find anything there. It is like rummaging in the forefront of the collective global mind. Somewhere, surely, there is a site that contains … everything we have lost?

The finest and most secret pleasure afforded new users of the Web rests in submitting to the search engine of Alta Vista the names of people we may not have spoken aloud in years. Will she be here? Has he survived unto this age? (She isn’t there. Someone with his name has recently posted to a news group concerned with gossip about soap stars.) What is this casting of the nets of identity? Do we engage here in something of a tragic seriousness? In the age of wooden television, media were there to entertain, to sell an advertiser’s product, perhaps to inform. Watching television, then, could indeed be considered a leisure activity. In our hypermediated age, we have come to suspect that watching television constitutes a species of work. Post-industrial creatures of an information economy, we increasingly sense that accessing media is what we do. We have become terminally self-conscious. There is no such thing as simple entertainment. We watch ourselves watching. We watch ourselves watching Beavis and Butt-head, who are watching rock videos. Simply to watch without the buffer of irony in place, might reveal a fatal naivete.

But that is our response to aging media like film and television, survivors from the age of wood. The Web is new, and our response to it has not yet hardened. That is a large part of its appeal. It is something half-formed, growing. Larval. It is not what it was six months ago; in another six month it will be something else again. It was not planned; it simply happened, is happening. It is happening the way cities happened. It is a city.

Toward the end of the age of wooden televisions the futurists of the Sunday supplements announced the advent of the “leisure society”. Technology would leave us less and less to do in the Marxian sense of yanking the levers of production. The challenge, then, would be to fill our days with meaningful, healthful, satisfying activity. As with most products of an earlier era’s futurism, we find it difficult today to imagine the exact coordinates from which this vision came. In any case, our world does not offer us a surplus of leisure. The word itself has grown somehow suspect, as quaint and vaguely melancholy as the batterend leather valise in a Ralph Lauren window display. Only the very old or the economically disadvantaged (provided they are not chained to the schedules of their environment’s more demanding addictions) have a great deal of time on their hands. To be successful, apparently, is to be chronically busy. As new technologies search out and lace over every interstice in the net of global communication, we find ourselves with increasingly less excuse for … slack.

And that, I would argue, is what the World Wide Web, the test pattern for whatever will become the dominant global medium, offers us. Today, in its clumsy, larval, curiously innocent way, it offers us the opportunity to waste time, to wander aimlessly, to daydream about the countless other lives, the other people, on the far sides of however many monitors in that postgeographical meta-country we increasingly call home. It will probably evolve into something considerably call home. It will evolve into something considerably less random, and less fun – we seem to have a knack for – but in the meantime, in its gloriously unsorted Global Ham Television Postcard Universes phase, surfing the Web is a procrastinator’s dream. And people who see you doing it might even imagine you’re working.

I have a dream…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last snarky line amuses me greatly. Unfortunately I wouldn’t know how to categorize the Malaysian situation. Not so promising, I suspect. *sigh.

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team’s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one. The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland…

They found…that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them. And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.

Since the study only examined well-educated secular democracies, the United States obviously has little need to fear a change.

Copied entirely from Dvorak’s blog.

Shanghai – braving the Expo part 1.

Another rainy day in Shanghai, requiring the essential purchase of new umbrellas, mine in a rather appropriate Royal Stewart tartan , and the decision to brave the crowds and hit the Expo for a long day of walking, eating, walking, queuing to get into pavilions, and more walking. Thank heavens for comfortable shoes.

Starting off in the Asian area, walking into the veritable sea of umbrellas, we immediately spotted the Malaysian, Singaporean, Australian and New Zealand pavilions, but decided to grab some food before we started to brave the queues. The multitude of regional food court choices was initially overwhelming, and daunting – somehow Tibetan Yak ribs and Yak butter tea proved unappealing – but we managed to eat a substantial if bland Hong Kong Chinese meal.

Then hit the pavilions. Aiyoh! The endless queues, even in the rain were somewhat off-putting, but once there, there was really no option but to pick carefully and get going.

First, we visited the New Zealand pavilion, which to be honest was something of a disappointment. Of course, actually having been there doesn’t help, but the multimedia displays showing urban life were rather bland, and the rest of the pavilion consisted of a walk through a synthetic NZ forest which was OK, but uninspiring.

Then we ventured into what proved to be one of the best pavilions, the Indonesian. It took a good 45 minutes to walk through the 3 floors, displaying all aspects of Indonesian culture and history. It was well presented, fascinating in parts, lots of excellent multimedia displays, and a good cafe where we rested and tried the incredibly strong Indonesian coffee, which was delicious and provided a much needed pick-me-up.

We decided to skip the Malaysian and Singaporean pavilions – I mean, living there they were surely bound to provide little of additional educational interest – and the Thai and Cambodian as well. Been there, seen that, no point in seeing plastic reconstructions of Angkor when you have experienced the real thing. And since we had explored Australia extensively, there seemed little point in that either, and the queues were endless.

So, we decided to wander across to the European area, where we visited some of the smaller display areas such as Albania (no expense spent. ) San Marino, and cruised the cafes outside the Turkish and Greek pavilions. Viewed the German pavilion, which looks like the Death Star crossed with a fortress and the insanely lit and chaotic Dutch one, cheekily titled “Happy Street”.

Stopped for a kebab at the Greek pavilion, and fortified ourselves again. Then, more wandering in the persistent drizzle to view the Belgian, French, Swiss and UK pavilions from the outside. The crowds were really gathering, and the will to queue for up to 2 hours to visit any of them individually was definitely waning.

Finally, the legs were weary, the feet crying for release, and we made our way back to the hotel to watch more football – of a higher quality this time and a rock solid sleep

Carry on fighting…

Nobel Peace Prize – yeah, well done. Fully deserved.

“One of my first objectives as President will be to remove all troops and bring them back home, and you can take that to the bank” (paraphrased slightly)

But first we have to make sure all the poppies get harvested, right?

Free, civilized, safe Britain – where did you go?

I used to live in a country with freedoms, of movement, of expression, of religion and political affiliations. I used to walk the streets, sometimes with a camera taking pictures , feeling secure in the old-fashioned virtues of a society regulated in part by it’s own social control system, but also by the rule of law, and the guardians of law and order.

I now am pretty much domiciled in Malaysia, and after watching this (which was filmed merely 200 meters from where I used to work) I am damn glad to be here! If the UK government wants it to be like America, so be it, but most Americans enjoy greater freedoms overall than people do in the UK today.

I want no part of it. CCTV everywhere. Too much ignorance of the law, and too many part-time idiots who think they can interpret it without proper training. It’s an entertaining watch, but oh so fucked up:London, I miss you – not very much. And for UK photographers, or photographers visiting the UK, here are your rights – let no-one take them away from us. Direct PDF link.ukphotographersrights.pdf

Leaked UK gov’t doc reveals plan to “coerce” Brits into national ID register.

I’m just going to copy and paste the headline fom Boing-Boing’s Cory Doctorow – someone who knows about screcy and abuse of freedoms! – verbatim.

And the linked file is here: Take me down, chaps, take me down! nis_options_analysis_outcome.pdf

Leaked UK gov’t doc reveals plan to “coerce” Brits into national ID register — MIRROR THIS FILE!

Posted by Cory Doctorow, January 29, 2008 3:01 AM | permalink

Phil from the UK anti-ID-register group NO2ID sends in this nugget — note the call to action there. We’ve got a sensitive government document revealing the British government’s plan to trick us into a database state and we need as many copies as possible, as quickly as possible! If you mirror this document, please add a link to it in the comments for the post.

UK campaigners NO2ID this morning enlisted the help of bloggers across the world to spread a leaked government document describing how the British government intends to go about “coercing” its citizens onto a National Identity Register. The ‘ID card’ is revealed as little more than a cover to create a official dossier and trackable ID for every UK resident – creating what NO2ID calls ‘the database state’. NO2ID’s national coordinator, Phil Booth, exhorted bloggers, freedom lovers and anyone who gives a damn about personal privacy to mirror the annotated document on their site.

“The charade is over. While ministers try to bamboozle the British public with fairytales about fingerprints, officials are plotting how to dupe and bully the population into surrendering control of their own identities.”

“Biometric ID cards are a sham; a magician’s flourish to cover the biggest identity fraud there has ever been.”