The OB Media Rundown for 12/19/11

Without A Camp, Occupy Boston Seeks Next Phase

The Occupy Boston movement plans to join a rally on Causeway Street Monday afternoon against federal housing policies. More than a week after the dismantling of the Dewey Square encampment, opinions vary on the effectiveness of the movement.

So, where is the Occupy Boston movement going? And what has it accomplished?

http://tinyurl.com/cycnwuq

Profile: People of Occupy Boston: Elizabeth Holmes

BLAST Magazine: What do you do?

EH: I am a part of medical, safety, wellness, legal and jail support; was in media and direct action.

http://tinyurl.com/d3qkhts

Indian ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement takes shape

A local version of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement – a protest against social and economic inequality that started in New York but has now spread across 83 countries, is now also shaping up in India, and has in fact already incubated a ‘community-owns-resources’ experiment at Hazaribagh in Bihar.

The experiment questioning the new global economic order that led to the collapse of European and American economies, leaving people unemployed across the globe, has emboldened those Indians who oppose the “World Bank-piloted economic models designed to satiate appetite of big corporations and re-colonizers”.

http://tinyurl.com/d9m8zzg

Bishop arrested during Occupy Wall Street protests

Bishop George Packard, who was once a military chaplain in Iraq, joined other protesters climbing over a chain-link fence. They were trying to set up a new camp on property belonging to Trinity Church. Officials at the Episcopal church have supported the movement but said their property was not available to be occupied.

The former bishop, who was wearing a magenta cassock and attended the demonstration with his wife, was led away in handcuffs.

http://tinyurl.com/cwc28jj

Occupy the Food System

Thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement, there’s a deeper understanding about the power that corporations wield over the great majority of us. It’s not just in the financial sector, but in all facets of our lives. The disparity between the top 1 percent and everyone else has been laid bare — there’s no more denying that those at the top get their share at the expense of the 99 percent. Lobbyists, loopholes, tax breaks… how can ordinary folks expect a fair shake?

No one knows this better than family farmers, whose struggle to make a living on the land has gotten far more difficult since corporations came to dominate our farm and food system. We saw signs of it when Farm Aid started in 1985, but corporate control of our food system has since exploded.

http://tinyurl.com/888ag8e

NDAA and SOPA Bills Aim to Quash Dissent

SOPA is not aimed at shutting down piracy, it’s aimed at shutting down Anonymous, Reddit, and even Twitter and Youtube whenever they’re being used by people who want to bring about change.

Certain provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act have a similar purpose at heart. They are ostensibly aimed at al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and will likely lead to some unconstitutional arrests of Muslim terror suspects. But the other purpose of the indefinite detention provisions, and the reason it is before the Congress now, is to allow the government to arrest those who loudly disagree with it.

Occupiers, and potential occupiers, and anyone else who falls out of favor with the U.S. government, would be subject to arrest on just the suspicion that they might commit a crime, and no charges would ever have to be filed. They could be detained for years, and they would have no legal recourse to challenge their imprisonment. It’s a dream scenario for the NYPD and other police forces who have sought to end the protests that have swept through their cities: throw them all in jail, and the private prisons will get a boost to boot.

http://tinyurl.com/8a6xfan

Battlefield America: Is Gitmo in Your Future?

Ambiguous but alarming new wording, which is tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and was just passed by the Senate, is reminiscent of the “extraordinary measures” introduced by the Nazis after they took power in 1933. And the relative lack of reaction so far calls to mind the oddly calm indifference with which most Germans watched the erosion of the rights that had been guaranteed by their own Constitution.

As one German writer observed, “With sheepish submissiveness we watched it unfold, as if from a box at the theater.” The writer was Sebastian Haffner (real name Raimond Pretzel), a young German lawyer worried at what he saw in 1933 in Berlin, but helpless to stop it since, as he put it, the German people “collectively and limply collapsed, yielded and capitulated.”

“The result of this millionfold nervous breakdown,” wrote Haffner at the time, “is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the rest of the world.” Not a happy analogy.

http://tinyurl.com/7gdnfge

‘Occupy The Hamptons’ launches, ‘We want to demonstrate where the 1% vacation’

A resident since 1999, Ms. Wenzel said the group has held a couple of marches but is focused on gearing up for the summer, when moneyed vacationers decamp to the East End, driving the area’s population up fivefold from its usual 100,000.

“At first, people thought Occupy the Hamptons was a joke, that it wouldn’t fly here,” Ms. Wenzel said. “But this community is now completely out of reach for normal people, the rich infiltrators have driven prices and rents ridiculously high.”

http://tinyurl.com/88vtgln

Occupy Wall Street’s ‘We are the 99 percent’ tops list of year’s most memorable quotes

The growing scrutiny of the rich dominated this year’s best quotes, according to a Yale University librarian who anointed the Occupy Wall Street protesters’ slogan – “We are the 99 percent” – as the year’s best.

http://tinyurl.com/cv4fbvx

Tom Brokaw Says ‘High-Income People’ tell him they worry ‘Income Inequality Could Lead to Class War’

“In the course of the last three weeks, I’ve been all over America, 19 cities altogether. And I’ve had a lot of high-income people come to me and say we really do have to do something about income inequality because that could trigger a class war in this country. And the consequences are not very pretty to contemplate.”

http://tinyurl.com/ckv2dpy

Twitter shutting down accounts for talking too much about OWS and NDAA

Imagine my surprise this morning when, without warning, my shiny new Twitter account was suspended and taken offline. My crime? Talking too much about Occupy Wall Street (I’m not an Occupier, but as a blogger and journalist it strikes me as one of the most important stories out there — hence the constant coverage), and talking too much about the controversial detainment without trial provisions contained in the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would basically shred the Bill of Rights and subject American citizens to military police forces.

. . .

Also: it’s worth questioning why #NDAA and #OWS, which are receiving consistently VERY high volumes of conversation/tweet traffic are not trending at all on Twitter, yet their featured ‘worldwide trends’ this morning include: Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, #myfavoritefood, and Kindergarten Cop.

UPDATE 1:19pm ET: I am apparently not the only user booted today for discussing NDAA and Occupy movement protests. See the screenshot below.

http://tinyurl.com/bnd8h2u

GOP primary candidate says he would arrest and impeach judges with which he disagrees

SCHIEFFER: One of the things you say is that if you don’t like what a court has done, that Congress should subpoena the judge and bring him before Congress and hold a Congressional hearing. . .  how would you enforce that? Would you send the Capitol Police down to arrest him?

GINGRICH: Sure. If you had to. Or you’d instruct the Justice Department to send a U.S. Marshal.

http://tinyurl.com/7wm9w3v

Study: Nearly 1 in 3 will be arrested by age 23

Nearly one in three people will be arrested by the time they are 23, a study to be published today in Pediatrics found.

http://tinyurl.com/d6gzgjg