Diane Coyle — From ‘Arab Spring’ to Fake News

I’m late to Zeynep Tufekci’s excellent Twitter and Teargas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. It analyses the impact of social media on political events such as the Arab Spring – remember that? – and Occupy. Her thesis is that online organization is a powerful political tool when combined with offline organization, but cannot substitute for it; and the evidence presented here from a range of mass protests certainly convinces me. The problem mass socially-networked protests have lies in their norms of decision making, which are slow and non-hierarchical. This makes them unable to change tactics quickly when hostile authorities respond to the protest, and so the moment passes. If, however, there is a parallel offline organisation with more conventional decision-making structures, the political protest can adapt and continue....

The Enlightened Economist
From ‘Arab Spring’ to Fake News
Diane Coyle | freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission and is acting Chairman of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation

The Battle for Venezuela and Its Oil — Jeremy Scahill interviews Eva Golinger

Backgrounder.

EG: Because while there is a state reaction taking place, there is repression with tear gas and rubber bullets, you’re not seeing the other side of it, which is that those are not exactly peaceful democratic protests. There are smaller factions. I mean, there are parts of the opposition in Venezuela that act within a democratic framework, but there is a very violent faction that’s gotten out of control. It’s anarchical. I mean, they where they’re using Molotov cocktails, homemade bombs and weapons, and they’re using them against the state security forces.

So I mean, I always think about it is, if this were happening in Washington D.C. or even here in the in the streets of New York where I am, I mean, it wouldn’t last more than an hour....

The Intercept

The Battle for Venezuela and Its Oil

Jeremy Scahill interviews Eva Golinger

See also

Ironically, Trump has been hammering his generals on losing in Afghanistan and suggested an interest in a total pullout. Yet, he then said that he was considering an intervention in Venezuela — a move that could unite the country behind Maduro and hand him the very victory that has eluded him.

Maduro can now take that statement to Venezuela’s new Constituent Assembly as he demands unchecked powers.

Jonathan Turley
Trump Declares That Military Options Are Being Considered in Venezuela
Jonathan Turley | Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University

Dara Lind — Read Justice Ginsburg’s moving tribute to her “best buddy” Justice Scalia

Respect versus reality show. The American public likes a reality show, so that's what they get.

VOX
Read Justice Ginsburg’s moving tribute to her “best buddy” Justice Scalia

Dara Lind

Jeff Stein, Elizabeth Warren: Republicans risk threatening "our democracy itself" over Supreme Court seat

Having Committed to Adopting the Euro Currency, Lithuania's Constitutional Court Simply Declares That "anti-european" Efforts Are Unconstitutional

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)




Read the announcement here.

REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA 

CONSTITUTIONAL COURT 

PRESS RELEASE   

On 2014, 24 January 

Amendment of 125 Article of the Constitution is incompatible with Constitution

[By the way, amendments to the Constitution which alter the Constitutional decision to join the EEU [and adopt the euro] are [so far] deemed unconstitutional - unless  paired with termination of EEU membership.]

Information about the LCC is given in English here, but it is not up to date.

So "anti-euro" dissent is unconstitutional, and therefore preempted? Do they even recognize how nonsensical that is? What's next? Thinking is unconstitutional? How about feeling?

Heck, maybe even receiving net wages-minus-taxes for labor will soon be unConstitutional too? Only euro-denominated capital will be allowed to keep a profit?  Where? In Sherwood Forest, guarded by a "reformed" Robin "Control-Fraud" Hood?

Someday, only silent serfdom will be legal?

Most readers will have to rely upon translation services to read the Lithuanian document. I'm told by sources in Lithuania that Google-translate leaves a LOT to be desired - at least when translating from Lithuanian to English.

For now, I'm trusting the interpretation received from Vytautas Vakrina in Vilnius - who agrees that the existing Lithuanian Constitutional Court decision constitutes an oxymoron. They're essentially saying that the original wording of some Constitutional clauses precluded Lithuanian citizens from changing said clauses.

Vytautas says: 

"The main [opinion of the Courts] is [the] impossibility to dispute any Lithuanian euro-obligations without leaving the European Union first."

Good luck with that argument!

Sounds like the key intent of the original Constitutional wording was guaranteed income for lawyers? Especially Lithuanian lawyers who had bet heavily on Lithuania adopting the euro, and enacting crippling austerity and depression?

Why should said Lithuanian Lawyers care? They're off to their quid pro quo jobs at the European Parliament, or at the European Central Bank.

Who says that Control Fraud doesn't exist? It does, and it works, wherever a foolish population and it's fiat are being separated.

ps: Rumor is that writing of key sections of the Lithuanian Constitution was outsourced to a mysterious woman named TINA, who resides in Brussels.

Fascism Alert — Ranjit Devraj: Delhi bill to criminalize opposition to GM food

India's environmental and food security activists who have so far succeeded in stalling attempts to introduce genetically modified (GM) food crops into this largely farming country now find themselves up against a bill in parliament that could criminalize such opposition. 

The Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) bill, introduced into parliament in April, provides for "single window clearance" for projects by biotechnology and agribusiness companies including those to bring GM food crops into this country, 70% of whose 1.1 billion people are involved in agricultural activities....

"The new bill is not about regulation, but the promotion of the interests of food giants trying to introduce risky technologies into India, ignoring the rights of farmers and consumers," Sahai said. "It is alarming because it gives administrators the power to quell opposition to GM technology and criminalize those who speak up against it." 

Asia Times Online
Delhi bill to criminalize opposition to GM food
Ranjit Devraj

Looks like criminalizing dissent is catching on.

Yves Smith — Banks Deeply Involved in FBI-Coordinated Suppression of “Terrorist” Occupy Wall Street

The peculiar part of this overreaction is it says that banks and government officials see peaceful protests as a threat to their hold on power. It’s odd that they see their position as precarious, unless they have convinced themselves of their vulnerability as an excuse for clamping down even harder on the rest of us.

Naked Capitalism
Banks Deeply Involved in FBI-Coordinated Suppression of “Terrorist” Occupy Wall Street
Yves Smith

The same can be said of the hugely disproportional reaction of the US Establishment to 9/11, which continues into the present, depriving US citizens of civil liberties and constitutionally guaranteed rights in the name of an amorphous and ill-defined "Global War on Terror."

This also brings up the disproportional reaction to possession and trafficking of illegal drugs under the rubric, "War on Drugs" that has resulted in a disproportional swelling of the US prison population and the expansion of a privately owned and operated prison industry at government expense.

This is exactly what the Founding Fathers drafted the US Constitution and Bill of Rights to prevent being repeated in America.

And no, I don't buy the Rothbardian-Libertarian argument that this is all the predictable result of "Keynesianism" and that all we need to do to fix this morass is privatize the monetary system and get government out of the way.

Meanwhile, the TBTF (to big to fail) bankers are now found to be TBTJ (to big to jail).

This is a constitutional crisis rocking the very foundations of the nation and threatening the Great Experiment with failure. The nation needs the leadership of a constitutional lawyer. Oh, wait!

Vermin?

Mayors and police around the country have pretended public health is the reason for shutting down Occupy protests, but their actions belie their words.

Read it at AlterNet
Hazmat Suits to Break Up Occupations? How Mayors Feign Concern for Health to Trash a Growing Movement
By Sarah Jaffe

Stretching the bounds of credulity to suppress constitutional rights of free speech, assembly, and redress?

Is this part of a coordinated program to paint protestors as dirty? Looks like it. This tactic is right out of Dr. Goebbels playbook to portray "enemies of society" as vermin, the obvious next step being extermination.

What especially gives the lie to this lame excuse is that the police do not allow those they round up and confine accesses to toilets with predictable results.

Hundreds of OccupyLA Demonstrators Held for Days Without Charges on $5,000 Bail in Often Deplorable, Illegal, and Unconstitutional Conditions by  Ernest A. Canning at The Brad Blog

Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).

Rachel Maddow on Political Dissent

Rachel Maddow did a two part lead story on her show last evening that is well worth watching and adding to the historical file.

History of Occupy movements

This segment has some excellent footage of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio, which launched what would morph into the anti-war movement in the Vietnam era.

NYPD riot police clear Zuccotti Park

You be the judge. Is this crowd control, or repression and intimidation?

 I regard the Occupy and 99% movement as a world historical event that will shape globalism in one direction or another — toward greater political liberalization and economic reform, or toward an authoritarian neoliberal global regime ruled by finance capital.

Globalization coming home to the West?

...In short, “globalization” is coming home to the countries that helped create it. The rich economies of the global north, which long relied on the exploitation of southern peoples and economies, are coming under the same restrictions they once imposed on the rest of the world.

Though many poor people in these countries have long suffered from domestic exploitation, this wave of budgets cuts threatens to expose new, harsher realities for both the poor and middle-classes.

This is where this movement comes from; from Tunis to Wisconsin and back over to Barcelona, similar economic shifts caused by integration into the “global economy” have brought millions into the streets because the economic situations facing them are threatening to put millions more into poverty....

Read the whole post at Even If Your Voice Shakes via TruthOut, “Globalization” Is Coming Home by Ryan Harvey

The message: “We will not pay for their crisis!”

Democracy under fire in Chile

Chilean police used water cannons and tear gas to break up a student march for free public education on Thursday, hours after protesters' talks with the government collapsed.

A huge deployment of riot police surrounded students in the Plaza Italia, Santiago's traditional gathering place, where student leader Camila Vallejo tried to lead the march while holding a sign saying "United and Stronger," only to be pummeled by water cannons and forced to retreat by tear gas.

Protesters hurled rocks at police and set blockades ablaze in the streets as officers on horseback chased students onto nearby campuses. Vallejo said officers shot tear gas into their student government offices in "a direct attack against our organization."

Students occupied the Alameda, one of Santiago's main avenues, by dancing in large numbers, but were blasted with water from police. Small groups managed to elude officers and approach the presidential palace before being beaten back by police.

The regional governor, Cecilia Perez, said 132 people were arrested and 25 officers and five civilians were injured. At least a half-dozen journalists were arrested. She called this "lamentable" and said their arrests would be investigated.

Thursday's march was the 37th weekly protest since the movement against Chile's largely privatized education system in began in April, demanding more spending and higher taxes on the wealthy so that quality public education can be free for all.

With both sides accusing the other of intransigence, Chile's government has focused on criminalizing the protests, proposing tough new penalities including up to three years in prison for occupying schools and other public places.

Chile Protests: Police And Student Protesters Clash In Santiago

Shaping a generation of dissent

The Real Reason Why Police Cage Peaceful Protestors

With Occupy Wall Street protesters kettled on the Brooklyn Bridge this weekend, we look at how kettling was used on protesters during the London riots earlier this year....

This has a very physical manifestation-- in the suffocating of peaceful protest through a technique that has become known as "kettling," in which protestors are contained for five, seven or 10 hours without food, water, toilets, or hope of release....

The kettle is neoliberalism's most apt strategic deployment -- and as a public order policing tactic, it is as risky as its philosophical underpinning. The intent is to suffocate protest with 'containment', to stifle the swarming dissemination of dissent, territorialising with hard lines; but in fact it agitates and intensifies: it pushes the dilettante protester into becoming a hard-liner, a kind of unwitting agent provocateur.

It is interesting to me that the Tea Party "protests" were attended mainly by middle-aged to seniors and were addressed by members of Congress, some quite prominent, urging the protestors on, while these protest are treated exactly opposite. I wonder why that this.

From the sociological work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of The Fourth Turning, it would appear that suppression of dissent simply radicalizes a generation and shapes history in terms of these searing experiences, which is not easily forgotten or erased.