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‘Occupy Mordor’ in Spain: the finger in Sauron’s eye Posted: 25 May 2012 02:42 PM PDT With Spain bracing for a run on the banks, the #OccupyMordor protest in front of the Caixa bank in Barcelona strikes the system where it hurts most. Just as we who live in Spain learn that the recently nationalized Bankia is asking for a 20bn euro government bailout (a total that doubles both the original amount reported and the amount being slashed from public health care and educational budgets), the New York Times publishes a piece detailing a wave of transfers away from Spanish banks that the local media has gone to great lengths to sweep under the rug. “It is only a trickle so far, and not nearly enough to constitute a classic bank run,” writes Landon Thomas, “but these growing transfers of deposits out of troubled Spanish banks reflect a broader fear that the country’s problems could make it hard for Spaniards to get to their money if banks fail and cannot be supported by the government.” Even more alarming is Thomas’s assertion that “while many Spanish consumers may still be trusting the government to protect their money — perhaps not realizing that the country’s Deposit Guarantee Fund has been depleted and now exists mainly in name only — the in-the-know money is heading for the border at an increasingly brisk pace.” Perhaps it was being ‘in-the-know’ which led one La Caixa Bank employee to steal one million euros and flee the country, leaving behind his wife and two daughters. Or perhaps not, and that was just one more example of thievery in a country where the President of the General Council of the Judiciary and head of the Supreme Court can use public funds to pay for 20 extravagant extended weekends in the resort town of Puerto Banús, file away the case and claim that he has nothing to explain to the press. What is certain, however, is that the bank-imposed media blackout is not keeping everyone in Spain out of the loop: As it turns out, there are a lot of people dealing with Spanish banks who do not need the mainstream media to tell them that they have a bone to pick with their local branch. The most striking case is that of the approximately one million pensioners, workers and unemployed customers affected by the plummeting value of preferred stock and subordinated debt, toxic assets typically reserved for financial firms which were popularized by 53 Spanish banks starting in 2009. According to the Estafa Banca platform, once their values started to fall, customers saw their savings accounts deteriorate and tried to pull their money, only to find that their accounts had been blocked and would remain so for up to ten years. To make matters worse, the explanations bankers gave these angry customers were often surreal. As Pedro recounts in an informative video (in Spanish), one bank teller told him: ‘No, no, I mean… If necessary, we can give you a loan.’ And I said, ‘A loan of my own money? What are you talking about? How am I going to take a loan of my own money out if it’s my money?’ ‘Well, we’re going to pay you part of it in March.’ ‘Pay me? What are you going to pay me? When a person talks about paying someone, it’s because they worked for it. We’re talking about my money. You’re not paying me anything!’ It was only a matter of time until people started to take action. On the night before the first anniversary of the indignados movement, an idea proposed by the neighborhood assemblies began to circulate around the web. After a year of hard work and small payoffs, it was time to recuperate the bold, autonomous gesture and broad appeal which had sparked the 15-M uprising. This gesture would reaffirm the radical common sense that captured the world’s attention and voiced our indignation at the commercialization of human life by targeting those least affected by austerity measures, foreclosures, the erosion of democracy and the media’s navel-gazing. It was time to talk about the banks. The action began with a popular ‘trial’ held outside La Caixa Bank’s famously ominous headquarters. This served to explain the role of banks in the current crisis and underline how little they have paid for their wrongdoings compared to the average citizen. But the qualitative leap came when people called for a permanent cacerolazo starting the next day. Since then, thousands of people have joined the protest, whether it was by showing up with their pots and pans and banging them until they were reduced to abstract works of contemporary art, playing samba drums, or vigorously honking their car horns and adding to the simultaneously infernal (for the bank) and sublime (for the protesters) racket surrounding what had come to be known as #OccupyMordor. It is this protest that appears in the photograph that introduces the aforementioned New York Times article. And it is no mistake that the photo features a black tarp over the company’s logo. Banks exemplify what Franco Berardi Bifo calls semiocapitalism: the mode of production in which the accumulation of capital is achieved mainly through the production and accumulation of signs or symbols which, in turn, accumulate value. This form of capitalism is highly susceptible to rumour, reputation and confidence, which makes a Situationist-style ‘communications guerrilla’ an especially effective approach. In a communications guerrilla, words, signs and symbols are weapons. And, at least in the European imagination, equating a well-known bank with Mordor is as direct and explosive a hit as you can get. This is why La Caixa Bank decided to threaten Catalan and Spanish media outlets with pulling their advertising if they mentioned the expanding protests. What La Caixa Bank’s heavy-handed response shows (aside from its apparent ignorance of the existence of the internet) is that, while window-smashing and burning tires may transmit the romance of resistance, it is often peaceful, artistic and even humorous intervention that hits power where it hurts the most. Our stories, our jokes and our common sense are all weapons that can be used against global capitalism. And given the globalized nature of power in the 21st century, there is probably a Mordor near you.

Occupy Mordor and education strike in Barcelona — in photos Posted: 25 May 2012 02:48 AM PDT In Barcelona, the revolution did not stop on 15-M — it continues with a massive education strike and a constant cacerolada in front of the Caixa bank. Education Strike On May 22nd, for the first time in the country’s history, Spain’s entire education system went on strike. Students and teachers from kindergartens, high schools, universities and adult learning centres went on strike against the savage cuts taking place to the education sector. University fees will rise by 66%, government funding to schools will reduce by 20% and education is being privatized. Mass demonstrations took place all over the county, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets in protest, in Barcelona alone an estimated 150,000 people marched. Universities were occupied, assemblies held and many faculties and campuses announced indefinite strikes.

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Youtube

The Hugvie: A 'cuddly' robot phone that hugs you back.

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"Who's driving a lot of neuro research? The military. Much of it is health related, like figuring out how to make prosthetics work more seamlessly and helping diagnose brain injuries. But the military's involvement highlights the basic ethical quandary of neurological development: When our brains pretty much define who we are, what happens when you start adding tech in there? And what happens when you take it away? Jonathan Moreno is quite possibly the top bioethicist in the country, and along with Michael Tennison, recently penned a fascinating essay on the role and ethics of using neuroscience for national security. He also recently updated his book Mind Wars, a seminal look into the military's work with the brain. In this interview he discusses brain implants, drones, and what will happen when military tech hits the civilian world."

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Interstellar Hitchhikers, Rejoice: It’s #TowelDay!

Posted: 24 May 2012 09:01 PM PDT

Sass this: It’s May 25th. Do you know where your towel is, hitchhiker?

Back in 2001, two weeks after the death of Douglas Adams, fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy all across the universe banded together to honor the author by wearing a towel all day. Thus was born Towel Day, celebrated every year on this date.

Not an HHGG fan? “What the heck is the towel about?” you ask. Well, strag*, it goes like this. In chapter three of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, Adams explains that a towel “is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” So one who is both hoopy* and a frood* should always have a towel handy. Just read the book.

Find a Towel Day celebration in your area at TowelDay.org, the official site for all things towel-related. If you’re organizing your own, let us know! Break out your towels and wear them around, tweet about #towelday, spread the good news on Facebook, share your favorite Douglas Adams videos, wear your thinking caps, don’t panic, build a Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser, park some cars in the car park, and try to be nice to the doors. (I’m really hoping one of you takes it upon yourself to parody Rebecca Black’s “Friday” in Douglas Adams’s honor, if only so I can feel like that song exists for a reason.)

There’s no doubt that Adams left a lasting impression on the world; the very fact that today is Towel Day speaks to his contribution to his fellow hitchhikers. In the words of Richard Dawkins, “If ever a man understood what a magnificent place the world is, it was Douglas. And if ever a man left it a better place for his existence, it was Douglas.” I couldn’t agree more. The world is smaller without him.

*A strag is a non-hitchhiker; hoopy means “really together”; a frood is a “really amazingly together guy,” all of which you would know if you weren’t such a strag. Read the book, already.

OK, Geeks. What are you doing this Towel Day? We want to see you with your towels on. Send us your (SFW) pics!

Here are a few pictures that [GAS] readers have sent us last year:

From [GAS] reader Klaus (and friends!):

And here’s one from Selina:

And from Adrienne (the author of this post):

And finally, a last one from Jamie:

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SpaceX Makes History

Dragon Becomes First Commercial Spacecraft to Attach to the Space Station

Today, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) made history when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle in history to successfully attach to the International Space Station.  Previously only four governments – the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency – had achieved this challenging technical feat.

The vehicle was grappled by the station’s robotic arm at 9:56 a.m. Eastern.  Dragon’s passive common berthing mechanism successfully attached to the orbiting laboratory at 12:02 p.m Eastern.

Mission control at the moment of grapple

 

Dragon at station

Dragon heads to berth (attach) to the station

Dragon is berthed to station!

When asked for his initial thoughts on Dragon’s capture and move into the history books, Elon Musk stated, “just awesome.”

Broadcast quality videos, including video inside of the SpaceX factory, may be downloaded at vimeo.com/spacexlaunch.  For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv. High-resolution photos are posted at spacexlaunch.zenfolio.com.

SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk will join NASA Space Station Program Manager Mike Suffredini, NASA COTS Program Manager Alan Lindenmoyer and NASA Flight Director Holly Ridings  for a press conference to discuss the remarkable achievement at 1:00 PM Eastern.

This is SpaceX's second demonstration flight under a 2006 Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement with NASA to develop the capability to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station. Demonstration launches are conducted to determine potential issues so that they might be addressed; by their very nature, they carry a significant risk. If any aspect of the mission is not successful, SpaceX will learn from the experience and try again.

Mission Highlights:

• May 22/Launch Day: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon spacecraft into orbit from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
• May 23: Dragon orbited Earth as it traveled toward the International Space Station.
• May 24: Dragon’s sensors and flight systems were subjected to a series of complicated tests to determine if the vehicle was ready to berth with the space station; these tests included maneuvers and systems checks in which the vehicle came within 1.5 miles of the station. 
• May 25: NASA gave Dragon the GO to attempt berthing with the station.  Dragon approached. It was captured by station’s robotic arm and attached to the station.

Coming up next:

• May 25 - 31: Astronauts open Dragon’s hatch, unload supplies and fill Dragon with return cargo.
• May 31: Dragon is detached from the station and returns to Earth, landing in the Pacific, hundreds of miles west of Southern California.

# # #

 

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How to Forget on Memorial Day

May 25, 2012 By Tom Engelhardt

Tom Engelhardt's ZSpace Page / ZSpace

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We need new slogans: what if Greece went Argentina’s way? Posted: 24 May 2012 03:58 PM PDT With the Left poised to take power in Greece, we would do well to remember how Kirchner killed the piqueteros and saved capitalism in Argentina. (To be read while listening to Sokratis Malamas’ song: Ta paidia mes tin plateia) “There will come a magic night, just like it did in Argentina And then, let’s see who’s gonna get on the helicopter first!” That’s one of the slogans that the people in the square were chanting during that hot summer of 2011. It was a reference to the helicopter escape of Argentine President Fernardo de la Rua from the Casa Rosada — the Presidential Palace — in December 2001, amidst bloody protests and violent police repression. Given the similarities of the socio-political condition of today’s Greece and Argentina in 2001-’02, the aforementioned slogan expresses the popular discontent that is targeted at the political and economic status quo of the country, which the indignados are dreaming to do away with. With this article, I would like to make a suggestion to the square: “let’s come up with alternative slogans!” Because if we stick to the ‘helicopter’ one, I am afraid that we are going to win a battle, at best, yet lose the war. Just like Argentina did. The Piqueteros The first to revolt in Argentina, already since the 1990s, were the so-called piqueteros. The movement of the unemployed, many of them victims of Menem’s privatizations, that had adopted the road blockade as a tactic (and later on the blockade of boulevards, bridges, supermarkets, as well as government buildings) in order to highlight the social, political, and economic problems of the country. Yet the piquetero movement never managed to mobilize the masses or capture the support of middle-class Argentinians in its challenge to the country’s political and economic status quo; at least not until the so-called corralito: the banning of cash withdrawals higher than 250 pesos per week (1000 per month) that the De la Rua government and Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo imposed. Only after they were denied access to their banking accounts did the middle classes — the ladies with the cacerolas and the pensioners that you may remember from TV — take to the streets. And it was exactly at that moment that things got dangerous for the system. In an excellent documentary by Giorgos Avgeropoulos and his team, Exandas, there is a shocking scene: amidst protests against the coralito, and amidst screams referring to the thieves in Parliament (does it ring any bells, my Greek compatriots?), there appears an old man, presumably a pensioner, who faces the camera and cries out: “Now we are fighting? Now that our pocket has been picked? Welcome coralito, it is one stage beyond consciousness. If that’s what it takes for the people to take to the streets, welcome coralito… the sheep have rebelled. The revolution of the animal farm.” He was right. And the system knew it. -“Que se vayan todos!” the Argentinians were shouting. Away with them all! -“Να φύγουν όλοι!” they were shouting in the squares of Greece. Away with them all! And their discontent was targeted towards similar directions: the Argentinians were protesting against the IMF for the debt and the neoliberal reform conditionalities it was demanding, but also against the country’s political establishment which it considered corrupt. The Greeks, on their part, are protesting against the Troika for the debt and the neoliberal reform conditionalities it demands, as well as against their country’s political establishment, which is characterized by corruption, nepotism, and clientelistic relations. And there’s one more thing the Argentinians and the Greeks have in common: they both started doubting the dominant economic paradigm as such: capitalism. And if in Greece the squares have just started to learn how to ‘breathe freely’, to self-organize, to decide and act together, in Argentina things had become more dangerous for the political and economic status quo. The piqueteros started coordinating with each other, started occupying workplaces and established workers’ cooperatives for their administration (watch Naomi Klein’s and Avi Lewis’ The Take for a wonderful impression of this alternative system of ‘grassroots socialism’), while at the same time they began experimenting with economic systems based on barter, or direct exchange. The piqueteros also started operating communal kitchens, came up with neighborhood assemblies, and launched cooperative efforts to run bakeries, construction teams, and libraries. According to Benjamin Dangl, in Dancing with Dynamite, this process gave birth to more than 200 worker-run factories and businesses throughout the country, with more than 15.000 people working in these cooperatives in sectors as diverse as car-part production and balloon factories. All of this took place during the one year of Eduardo Duhalde’s transitional government. And then came Kirchner… In summer 2002, Eduardo Duhaldo resigned after backing Nestor Kirchner as his favorite successor. Elections were announced, and the main two competitors were Carlos Menem, the man who more than anyone else represented the Argentinian crisis, and Nestor Kirchner, a political outsider, former governor of Santa Cruz province – the only option for the Argentinean left. Menem won the first round but, seeing that it would be virtually impossible to beat Kirchner in the second, he stood down. And so, Nestor Kirchner was elected President of Argentina, with the smallest ever percentage gained by a presidential winner: a mere 22 percent of the votes. Upon his election, Kirchner refused to implement the IMF’s conditionalities, which included further cuts in social spending and a shrinking role for the state in the economy, while at the same time announcing that he would pay back to the country’s private creditors 30 cents on every dollar that it owed to them, using the effective threat of a total default instead. Of course, he paid back the IMF in full, but refused to continue receiving loans (and orders) from it. In addition, Kirchner introduced policies that raised the minimum wage, protected workers’ and unions’ rights, and expanded social security programs to more unemployed and workers in the informal sector. He increased public spending on education and housing, and put limits on the prices of the formerly state-owned enterprises privatized by Menem. Moreover, Kirchner’s government took a solid stance on the prosecution of criminals involved in the 1976-83 dictatorship. And of course, Kirchner did little to hide his intentions, which were to save the Argentine state from implosion and reconstruct the capitalist system in the country, reversing the extreme neoliberal measures that the previous governments had taken and replacing them with a more humanistic or social democratic orientation. Kirchner’s measures brought middle class Argentinians back home from the streets — to the normalcy they were asking for. At the same time, while it cannot be denied (and it should not be underestimated either) that this certainly helped middle and lower class citizens to get back on their feet, it should also be noted that Kirchner’s measures clearly played a decisive role in the demobilization of the country’s once powerful social movements. Some piquetero leaders were coopted and given positions in the government while certain civil society organizations were offered state subsidies. Those who insisted in their resistance were treated with police repression, isolation, and exclusion from the public sphere. The rest was a matter of time. Soon, the radical experiments on direct democracy and life beyond capitalism lost their  momentum, giving way to Kirchner’s ‘capitalism with a human face’ (which, no matter how you mask it, remains capitalism, albeit slightly more regulated by the state). “In other words,” As Benjamin Dangl summarizes, “Kirchner was handing out crumbs, when what many demanded was revolution.” What way forward for Greece, compas? In a way, the challenges faced by the piqueteros were nothing new. Throughout history, social movements around the world have been faced with an eternal and seemingly intractable dilemma: how to bring about lasting social change? While some have opted for a revolutionary road to capture state power, others chose the electoral road to obtaining state power. Others still have chosen to ignore the state altogether and build alternative institutions of direct democracy and autonomous self-management from the grassroots up. Ahead of the Greek elections, and against the backdrop of widespread excitement around Europe about the expected electoral victory of a ‘radical’ left-wing party, maybe we should turn back and try to remember what happened in other parts of the globe when a left-wing party answered the eternal dilemma facing social movements with a decisive choice for the ‘parliamentary path’ to state power. Maybe then we‘ll be able to answer the question asked by James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer: “Why do social movements consistently lose out to electoral institutional politics once the center-left takes over a regime?” And maybe then, at last, we will realize that we need to come up with new slogans to keep the Greek squares from falling prey to the same fate as the one that befell the piqueteros of Argentina. P.S: “…if we manage to become powerful, by building a party, or taking up arms, or winning an election, then we shall be no different from all the other powerful in history.” (John Holloway, Change the World without Taking Power). Re-P.S.: The pink tide reaching the shores of Europe?

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Real trends in word and sentence length

October 31, 2011 @ 8:34 am · 

Filed by Mark Liberman under Computational linguistics, Linguistic history

A couple of days ago, The Telegraph quoted an actor and a television producer emitting typically brainless "Kids Today" plaints about how modern modes of communication, especially Twitter, are degrading the English language, so that "the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us", and "words are getting shortened". I spent a few minutes fact-checking this foolishness, or at least the word-length bit of it — but some readers may have misinterpreted my post as arguing against the view that there are any on-going changes in English prose style.

So I wrote a script to harvest the  inaugural addresses and state of the union addresses from the site of the American Presidency Project at UCSB, and some other scripts to (I hope) extract the texts of the speeches from their html wrappings, and to count word and sentence lengths. Why use these sources? Well, different kinds of writing have their own norms, and so it wouldn't be good evidence of an overall historical trend to show (for example) that 20th-century sports reporting is stylistically different from 19th-century sermons, or that 21st-century blogging is different from 18th-century pamphleteering. U.S. Presidential addresses are one accessible example of a body of texts, spanning more than 200 years, which ought to be fairly consistent in genre and register.

The results suggest that mean word lengths have decreased slightly in these addresses over the past century — by 5% or so — while mean sentence lengths have been falling since the founding of the republic, and have undergone a cumulative drop of perhaps 50%.

(In the plots above, the red lines track the address-by-address measurements as my scripts calculated them, while the blue lines are smoothed approximations produced by locally-weighted scatterplot smoothing in R.)

There are lots of obvious questions, if you care about things like this — for example, how much of the fall in mean sentence length is due to using less clausal embedding, and how much is due to splicing fewer sentences together paratactically, e.g. with semi-colons?

But whatever is going on, we can't blame (or praise) Twitter for it, since Twitter was founded in 2006, and thus could possibly have affected only the last datapoint in the Inaugural graphs, and the last five datapoints in the SOU graphs.

For a more anecdotal picture of the trend, here is the first paragraph (five sentences) of George Washington's 1789 Inaugural Address:

Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years — a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected. All I dare hope is that if, in executing this task, I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which mislead me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality in which they originated.

And the first five sentences of Barack Obama's 2009 Inaugural Address:

My fellow citizens, I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our Nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the Presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.

In between, the first five sentences of Lincoln's 1861 Inaugural:

In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of this office."

I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement.

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection.

October 31, 2011 @ 8:34 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Computational linguistics, Linguistic history

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"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of their country." 

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via explosm.net

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MARCUS DEMERY

Occupy’s Spiritual Quest
The fork in the road ahead

Dear occupiers, jammers, dreamers,

Three years after the May 1968 uprising that swept the world, the great French philosopher Michel Foucault observed that a key strategy of power is to “appear inaccessible to events.” Power, Foucault argued with a nod towards 1968’s failed insurrection, acts to “dispel the shock of daily occurrences, to dissolve the event … to exclude the radical break introduced by events.”

Forty years later, in light of Occupy, Foucault’s observation still strikes home. Despite achieving the impossible at unprecedented speed – sparking a global awakening, triggering a thousand people’s assemblies worldwide, and giving birth to a visceral anti-corporate, pro-democracy spiritual insurrection – Occupy is now struggling through an existential moment. Our movement has been dealt a blow: our May 1 and follow-up events have been dissolved by power; the status quo has shown itself to be far more resilient than many of us expected.

Now a passionate debate is emerging within our movement. On one side are those who cheer the death of Occupy in the hopes that it will transform into something unexpected and new. And on the other are patient organizers who counsel that all great movements take years to unfold.

OCCUPY WALL STREET IS NOW DEAD May 1 confirmed the end of the national Occupy Wall Street movement because it was the best opportunity the movement had to reestablish the occupations, and yet it couldn’t. Nowhere was this more clear than in Oakland as the sun set after a day of marches, pickets and clashes. Rumors had been circulating for weeks that tents would start going up and the camp would reemerge in the evening of that long day. The hundreds of riot police backed by armored personnel carriers and SWAT teams carrying assault rifles made no secret of their intention to sweep the plaza clear after all the “good protesters” scurried home, making any reoccupation physically impossible. It was the same on January 28 when plans for a large public building occupation were shattered in a shower of flash bang grenades and 400 arrests, just as it was on March 17 in Zuccotti Park when dreams of a new Wall Street camp were clubbed and pepper sprayed to death by the NYPD. Any hopes of a spring offensive leading to a new round of space reclamations and liberated zones has come and gone. And with that, Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland are now dead. The task ahead of us in Oakland and beyond is to search out and nurture new means of finding each other. We are quickly reaching the point where the dead weight of Occupy threatens to drag down the Commune into the dustbin of history. We need to breathe new life into our network of rebellious relationships that does not rely on the Occupy Oakland general assembly or the array of movement protagonists who have emerged to represent the struggle. This is by no means an argument against assemblies or for a retreat back into the small countercultural ghettos that keep us isolated and irrelevant. On the contrary, we need more public assemblies that take different forms and experiment with themes, styles of decision-making (or lack there of) and levels of affinity… Most of all, we need desperately to stay connected with comrades old and new and not let these relationships completely decompose. — Read the rest of the this article, by anonymous West Coast anarchists, at Bay of Rage

THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT HAS BARELY BEGUN Occupy Wall Street was at the pinnacle of its power in October 2011, when thousands of people converged at Zuccotti Park and successfully foiled the plans of billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg to sweep away the occupation on grounds of public health. From that vantage point, the Occupy movement appears to have tumbled off a cliff, having failed to organize anything like a general strike on May Day – despite months of rumblings of mass walkouts, blockades and shutdowns. The mainstream media are eager to administer last rites. CNN declared that “May Day fizzled,” the

New York Postsneered “Goodbye, Occupy,” and The New York Timesconsigned the day’s events to fewer than 400 words, mainly dealing with arrests in New York City.

Historians and organizers counter that the Occupy movement needs to be seen in relative terms. Eminent sociologist Frances Fox Piven, co-author of Poor People’s Movements, says:

“I don’t know of a movement that unfolds in less than a decade. People are impatient, and some of them are too quick to pass judgment. But it’s the beginning, I think, of a great movement. One of a series of movement that has episodically changed history, which is not the way we tell the story of American history.”

— Read the rest of Arun Gupta’s What Happened to the Occupy movement?

The fire in the soul of Occupy burns from Oakland to Quebec,Barcelona to Chicago, Wall Street to Moscow and Frankfurt… the question now is which fork in the road will our movement take?

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SpaceX to Webcast Dragon's Visit Space Station

SpaceX is planning to webcast Dragon's historic attempt to visit the space station live tomorrow morning starting at approximately 4:30 AM PT / 7:30 AM ET. Times may change so check back for updates. 

Astronauts aboard the space station watching the Falcon 9/Dragon launch!  Credit: ESA/NASA

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Responsible, middle-class families have been devastated by the unethical and abusive practices of the Big Banks throughout the mortgage crisis. Countless tragedies lie in the wake of their greed and recklessness, but the story of Norman and Oriane Rousseau of Newbury Park, CA stands out above the rest. It's the saddest, most upsetting story we've yet come across, and only the words of Oriane can do it justice. Please watch the video below.

Our fight to pass the Homeowner Bill of Rights and end the vast majority of these abuses hangs in the balance. Next week, a special conference committee is scheduled to vote on the bill, and if it passes, it will immediately proceed to a floor vote in both houses of the Legislature.

There is no good reason to delay the vote further, but the lobbyists for the Big Banks are pushing relentlessly for just that. 

 The only way we can force a vote on a good bill -- one that guarantees that homeowners can defend their homes in court if banks break the law -- is by showing Sacramento that the public demands this bill pass. Join with ACCE and our partners at the Courage Campaign to make that happen.

 Please watch the video and then share it with as many people as you can. There's no time to lose.

In Solidarity,

Vivian Richardson, ACCE
 

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Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Tenenbaum's Legal Appeal The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday (May 21) refused to hear the legal appeal of former Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum (right), who has been ordered to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs on the internet. "I can't believe the system would uphold a six-figure damages amount for downloading 30 songs on a file-sharing system that everybody used," Tenenbaum said following the SCOTUS decision. "I can't believe the court would uphold something that ludicrous."  A jury in 2009 ordered Tenenbaum to pay $675,000, or $22,500 per song, after the Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA] sued him on behalf of the four major record labels. A federal judge subsequently called the financial penalty unconstitutionally excessive and reduced the award to $67,500, but the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later reinstated it. The 1st Circuit said a new judge assigned to the case could reduce the award again, but the record labels would then be entitled to a new trial. Tenenbaum argued that the U.S. Copyright Act is unconstitutional and that Congress did not intend the law to impose liability or damages when the copyright infringements amount to "consumer copying." [Full story: Huffington Post] Michael MacDonald Is Latest Artist To Sue Record Label   Singer-songwriter Michael McDonald, known both as a member of The Doobie Brothers and for such solo hits as "I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)," and "What A Fool Believes," has filed suit against Warner Music Group, claiming the company underpaid him for online music sales. McDonald, who lives in Franklin, TN, filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Nashville on Monday (May 21). According to court documents, he is seeking at least half a million dollars in royalties he claims were deliberately underpaid for sales of his music through download sites such as iTunes and through cellphone ringtone sales. The underpayments to McDonald were "part of a conscious decision by Warner, and others in the music business, to deprive artists of their proper royalties," his lawsuit contends. McDonald is the latest in a growing list of artists to file breach of contract lawsuits against their record labels over accounting and payment practices for music licensed to online music stores. [Full story: The Tennessean] Forbes: U.S. Copyright Royalty Structure "In Need Of Repair"   Executives at Sirius XM and many internet radio companies view music copyright royalties as the scourge of the earth, hindering them in their efforts to grow intheir businesses in the era of digital evolution. At the other extreme of this debate is SoundExchange, the organization that collects royalties for record labels and artists, and which insists that not only are the royalty payments fair, but possibly still not "rich" enough. As Forbes legal contributor John Villasenor points out, copyright law is underpinned by the simple premise that authors (including songwriters and recording artists) deserve to be compensated for the use of their creative works, and that society benefits if those works are broadly available. But the power granted by the Copyright Royalty Board [CRB] to SoundExchange now is the subject of a federal antitrust complaint filed by Sirius XM, which questions the overall scope of the group's perceived "monopolistic" collection efforts. This debate, Villasenor says, very well may lead to legal examination of the constitutionality of the CRB, a panel of three copyright royalty judges appointed by the Librarian of Congress. So where does this leave us? "In need of repair," he answers his own somewhat rhetorical question. [Full story: Forbes] Study: Listening To Loud Music Leads To Pot Smoking, Unsafe Sex   Turns out our parents were right: Listening to loud music leads to marijuana smoking and unsafe sex. That's the primary takeaway from a new study released this week by the medical journal Pediatrics, which claims that teens and young adults who listen to digital music players with ear buds are almost twice as likely as non-listeners to smoke pot and engage in unsafe sex. And those who attend concerts or go to dance clubs are nearly six times as likely as "safe music listeners" to go on a binge-drinking bender. Interestingly, the report is based on a survey of 944 low-income students age 15-25 at two vocational schools in the Netherlands, and concludes that listening to music at 89 decibels for at least an hour per day leads to "increased feelings of isolation, depression, loneliness, anger, and fear." These same individuals, when compared with students who followed what the researchers considered safe music listening practices, were found to be 1.99 times more likely to have used cannabis in the last four weeks; 1.19 times more likely to smoke cigarettes daily; and 1.10 times more likely to have had sex without using a condom every time. Editor's note: The report does not adequately address the issue of causality; i.e., whether the "risky" music listening causes these risky behaviors, or vice versa. [Full story: Pediatrics] TheStreet.com: Pandora-Triton Deal Officially Crushes AM/FM Radio   Someday we will all look back on May 16, 2012, as the day Pandora - and internet radio in general - rendered terrestrial radio, on a grand scale, obsolete. That's the bold prediction from TheStreet.com, which this week said that the audience measurement pact reached by Pandora and Triton Digital last week would "change the game in terms of how advertisers decide to allocate their radio dollars." "Really?" one might ask. "Really," TheStreet replies, observing that, "While Pandora already experiences success pitching local and national radio buyers advertising, it can now walk into a room with local ratings data compiled and crunched by a third party. Pandora can compare itself, from a ratings standpoint, with radio stations in local markets." It took "forever" for somebody to do this, the website points out, noting that if Arbitron did not rely on Clear Channel and other terrestrial radio companies for a vast majority of its revenue, "it probably would have stepped into the 21st century years ago." Noting that "a place will always exist for traditional radio, [we can] expect to see terrestrial radio broadcasters shed physical stations and broadcast towers like big box retail now races to decrease square footage in feeble attempts to counter Amazon's dominance." [Full story: TheStreet.com] Sony To Launch Music Unlimited App This Friday   Sony this week announced that its Music Unlimited app for iPhone and iPod touch will be available globally Friday (May 25), allowing subscribers to access the service's catalog of millions of tracks whenever and wherever they are. "With the proliferation of connected devices, consumers expect complete access to their digital entertainment and demand a consistent experience regardless of the device," Tim Schaaff, President of Sony Network Entertainment International, commented in a statement. "Bringing the Music Unlimited service to iPhone and iPod touch is one of the many ways we are able to reach more music lovers around the world while ensuring the same level of high-quality entertainment that is associated with the overall Sony experience." Music Unlimited is a cloud-based digital music platform that hosts a global catalog of over 15 million songs licensed through all major U.S. labels, leading independent labels, and major publishers worldwide. [Full story: company statement] CNBC: Mel Karmazin Killed The Sirius XM Dream   "Mel Karmazin killed the dream of satellite radio as a terrestrial alternative with compelling and original programming." That's the word from CNBC's Rocco Pendola, who this week said Sirius XM has acted far too long - both operationally and attitudinally - as a player in the dying industry known as traditional radio. "It has failed to innovate and imitate companies in emerging spaces (internet, new media, social media) and it has a reasonable amount of cash to take it through any lean times, pay down debt, and return capital to shareholders. But it has yet to come around to the reality that it can no longer live in the past, or live off of its cash pile, and must make wholesale organizational changes." In fact, Pendola writes, "Karmazin refuses to even consider a Sirius XM with young talent either at the helm or as a major part of the visioning and decision-making process.... The worst part is that Karmazin could flip the switch on a potentially bright future simply by giving up control of the company to John Malone's Liberty Media [but] he does not seem prepared to do this. Mel believes he's the only guy for the job." [Full story: CNBC] Liberty Media Is Allowing Sirius XM To Grow And Survive   Three years ago Sirius XM was forced to sign over 40% of the company to Liberty Media in order to avoid bankruptcy proceedings. As Seeking Alphapoints out, the deal allowed the satellite radio company to concentrate on growing the company and offer a better product rather than being creative with debt refinancing - positive factors that led to the addition of 1.7 million net subscribers in 2011, including 540,000 in the fourth quarter. Now that Moody's has upgraded its credit rating, Sirius will spend less on debt interest and more on growth and expansion. This has given the company time and resources to focus more attention on such business practices as the lawsuit it filed against Sound Exchange in March, contending in the anti-trust complaint that licensing fees have been set artificially hig. Also, by adding new "Pandora-like" features, such as skipping songs, to its new 2.0 satellite system, the company has demonstrated a willingness to adapt to trends and technology. Profit margins are thin and Sirius is not listed as "investment grade" yet, butSeeking Alpha predicts Sirius XM will survive and be a stable, profitable company over the next decade. [Full story: Seeking Alpha] Al Bell Presents American Soul Music ... And American Soul TV If you're into classic and contemporary Soul, R&B, Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Hip-Hop Soul, Rap Soul, and Neo-Soul, we invite you to listen to Al Bell Presents American Soul Music. Former Stax Records owner and Motown Records Group President Al Bell personally has programmed this awesome radio station online, presenting your favorites from the 1960s and '70s [and some '80s], a lot of the best new music that's being released today, and some real gems you haven't heard in a long, long time. Come to www.AlBellPresents.Com  and hear it for yourself! And now...join us for Al Bell Presents American Soul TV here.

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