Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: Protesters in Moscow have adopted new tactics, “dilemma protests” and flash mobs, to avoid the mass arrests. In a primer on nonviolent protest, “Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle,” Gene Sharp, an American intellectual, described a “dilemma protest” as a performance of an action so inchoate and unorthodox that police are trapped. If they let it happen, they are encouraging it, but if they arrest people they risk looking either silly or arbitrary and unjust, which is the point. The tactic has found wide appeal in Belarus, where activists gather to clap, eat ice cream cones, set their cellphone alarms to ring in chorus or simply stand silently. For more, see Protesters in Moscow Alter Approach to Avoid Arrests. And  more than 200,000 long-term jobless Americans will lose their unemployment checks this week, when eight states roll off the federal extended benefits program. “The hundreds of thousands of long-term unemployed who are being abruptly pushed off the extended benefits program are just the latest wave of jobless workers forced to survive without basic financial protections,” said George Wentworth, senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group. For the story, see Jobless Americans to Lose Unemployment Benefits. And when people talk about “austerity,” they only ever talk about the pain the general population should voluntarily accept, in the form of reduced services and curtailed “stimulus.” No one ever says the financial services sector should have to cut back on its access to easy money, and there hasn’t been much in the way of serious plans to restore some sanity and prudence to the lending and investing business. Read more: Austerity Can’t Be Just for Regular People. And cruelty comes in many forms, whether it’s exacted at the hand of a high school bully or in a nation’s capitol. This weekend, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is still on defense over the cruelty he exhibited as a student. Social Darwinism is executed on the back of severe austerity measures like those seen across Europe and those sought by Romney and his party. It is the ultimate bullying tactic. It is using the brute strength of elected power (usually paid for by wealthy campaign contributors) to grab weakened middle class and impoverished families by the shoulders and slam them against the wall just to see what change might shake out of their pockets. For more, see Austerity, Bullies, and Broken Spirits. And on a lighter note: the Class War comes to Sesame Street: The Muppets have been accused by Fox News of being communists, to which they responded at a press conference. Now, watch as they sing N.W.A.’s classic, “F- tha Police.” For the video, see Muppets with Attitude.

Other Occupies/Protests: From Occupy Wall Street: September 17, 2012, The People’s Picket on Wall Street, 7am-10am. We will form a massive moving picket line on our one-year anniversary, and continue the conversation we started One year prior with boots on the ground. People from all over the world get ready to shut it down. And: masses of chanting “indignant” activists poured into the streets across Spain on Saturday in a vast show of strength one year on from igniting a global protest against economic injustice. Tens of thousands packed Madrid’s central Puerta del Sol square, the emblematic birthplace of their popular movement against inequality, sky-high unemployment and spending cuts that shook the political establishment. Many had marched to the square for hours in separate columns of protesters from all directions and defied an official warning that they must disperse after 10pm. For more, see One Year On, Spain’s “Indignants” Take to the Streets. And the Guardian UK published this “GlobalMay Manifesto of the Occupy Movement,” (although they didn’t mention if it was endorsed by any Occupy), saying “the global Occupy movement wants a better world. Such a world is possible, and here’s how … ”

Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: Two Fullerton, Calif., police officers will be tried in the death of a mentally ill homeless man, who had not even broken any laws, and whose apparent beating by six police officers was captured on a security camera video, a judge ruled May 9. The victim suffered from schizophrenia and was not fluent in English. The apparent beating lasted nine minutes and 40 seconds and ended with Thomas’ limp body in handcuffs. The officers had responded to the Fullerton Transportation Center after receiving a call that a homeless man was seen looking into car windows and pulling on door handles. For more, see Cops to Be Tried in Alleged Fatal Beating of Homeless Man Caught on Video. And thanks to police officer Enoch Clark, Beaumont, California resident Monique Hernandez will never see her ten-year-old daughter again. On February 21, Clark conducted a traffic stop involving Hernandez, who was suspected of drunk driving. When Clark attempted to handcuff her, Hernandez resisted. The officer responded by using a JPX device at point-blank range — a weapon that uses a gunpowder charge to fire a stream of pepper spray at roughly 400 miles an hour. The payload of weaponized OC spray is propelled over the prescribed distance at less than three one-hundredths of a second, making it “too fast to avoid…. The effect is immediate; there is no chance to resist.” For the story, see Beaumont, California Woman Blinded for “Contempt of Cop.” And if you’re going to the NATO protests, please be careful. Police in Chicago have spent $1 million on riot-control equipment in the last few months ahead of next month’s Nato summit, which is expected to attract thousands of anti-war protesters.  Officers are also preparing to use the controversial long-range acoustic device, or LRAD, a sonic weapon which can cause permanent hearing loss, during the operation. For more, see Chicago police bulk up with $1m in riot gear for peaceful NATO summit protests. Let’s take a look at some of the new weapons of the police state: The American military have presented the world with a new weapon, informally named the heat ray or microwave cannon. The “Active Denial System” is a non-lethal weapon primarily designed for crowd control. The Active Denial System (ADS) beams a high-frequency, man-sized electromagnetic wave 1,000 meters. ADS fires a high-powered beam of high-frequency millimeter waves at 95 GHz (a wavelength of 3.2 mm). Similar to the same way that a microwave oven heats food at 2.45GHz, the millimeter waves excite the water and fat molecules in the body, instantly heating them via dielectric heating and causing intense pain. While microwaves will penetrate into human tissue about 17mm (0.67″), the millimeter waves used in ADS only penetrate the top layers of skin, with most of the energy being absorbed within 0.4 mm (1/64″). For more, see Microwave Goodbye Weapon: Heat-Ray Crowd Dispersal Cannon Unveiled. And according to British paper The Telegraph, police are currently testing a shoulder-mounted laser cannon that can project a virtual wall of blinding light from nearly 500 meters away.  Originally developed to help cargo ships repel pirate attacks, the device temporarily blinds incoming attackers with a band of light that’s 10 meters wide. While the United Nations has banned laser weapons that cause permanent blindness, lasers that only cause temporary vision impairment, or blindness by accident, are still acceptable. Police would not be deploying the weapon on the British public unless it could be confirmed that it does not cause permanent blindness, the paper said. Police were also testing a long-range electronic device, similar to a Taser, that can incapacitate targets from a distance. Another less-lethal weapon category, “long-range chemical irritant projectiles,” was also being examined, The Telegraph noted. For more, see Shoulder-Mounted Lasers, Long-Range Tasers Among New U.K. Riot Gear. And here’s a weapon that can literally silence protesters: a silence gun.  A strange and unsettling new gun being developed by Japanese researchers shoots sound waves in an effort to disrupt and silence anyone who dares speak out of turn. The gun operates based on the concept of delayed auditory feedback. An attached microphone picks up the sound being made by the target and plays it back 0.2 seconds later. The effect is incredibly confusing to the human brain, making it all but impossible to talk or hold a conversation. The device doesn’t cause the person it’s being used on any physical harm — it simply messes with their head. For more, see Silence Gun: Strange Weapon of the Future Immediately Quiets You, Whether You Like it or Not. And for some dark comedy: you may have heard people in Occupy Boston singing “I Really Like the Cops.” This song was written by the activist Brad Will, who was killed by police in Mexico during a protest. Click here for a video of him singing the song.