Agence France-Presse — China tells US to back off: Hong Kong democracy protests are ‘internal affairs’

The United States and China openly clashed Wednesday over the pro-democracy protests sweeping Hong Kong, with Beijing angrily warning Washington to back off and saying it would not tolerate “illegal acts.” 

“The Chinese government has very firmly and clearly stated its position. Hong Kong affairs are China’s internal affairs,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was standing next to him, just before they went into talks at the State Department. 

“All countries should respect China’s sovereignty and this is a basic principle of governing international relations,” Wang said sternly.

“I believe for any country, for any society, no one would allow those illegal acts that violate public order. That’s the situation in the United States and that’s the same situation in Hong Kong.”

Double standard? The US pretty well tarnished its moral superiority with respect to civil liberties and human rights and diminished its soft power. It looks, sounds and feels just hypocritical now.

Amid a tense standoff on the streets of Hong Kong, a Chinese territory, Kerry renewed US calls for restraint by the city’s police.

Where we these champions of democracy during the suppression of Occupy protests in the US? Oh, they were coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security. (Wow, that sounds eerie. Couldn't they have come up with a more innocuous name?)

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki reaffirmed the US position. 

“It’s clear that we want the people of Hong Kong to have a broad choice of candidates,” she said. 

“We believe human rights and the freedom of expression is something that’s important not just in China but countries around the world,” she insisted, asked about Wang’s assertion that Hong Kong was an internal Chinese matter.

"Not just in China but countries around the world” What about the US?

What the US media doesn't report and actually misreports is that the agreement regarding Hong 'independence" was a two-systems, one country agreement that gave the Chinese government the right to administer Hong Kong's elections. While the US might have wished for an agreement more to its liking, China is in its rights according to the agreement. The US is trying to foment change in a sovereign country, something that it doesn't brook regarding itself. Why is that not hypocritical?

And as far as I can tell, the HK protestors are being treated less harshly that Occupy in many US cities including NYC and certainly Oakland. Looks like they are being treated about the same as the anti-war protests in DC in the Seventies under Nixon, although we were "just" tear gassed. They didn't have pepper spray then. I'm reasonably sure they would have used it if they did.

The Raw Story
China tells US to back off: Hong Kong democracy protests are ‘internal affairs’

Agence France-Presse

The Big Picture — Why Occupy Movement Was Treated As Terrorism

Barry Ritholz crossposts Washington's Blog documenting the government targeting Occupy protests as terrorism. The government's report on the Black Friday boycott reads like The Onion but it's not satire. These security people are dangerously crazy, and the Constitution obviously means nothing to them.

The intelligence reporting and communications apparatus was in full throttle over potential Occupy Black Friday boycotts. One sample document issued from the Baltimore police shows a distribution list ranging from the Maryland Fusion Center, the FBI, the DHS, the Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network, the Secret Service, the NYPD and other city and state law enforcement, the manager of corporate security for an energy company, university personnel, and the Federal Reserve.

The “counter-terrorism” documents contain multiple references to Black Friday boycotts as well as potential negative impacts on retails sales.

 Corporate statism.

The Big Picture
Why Occupy Movement Was Treated As Terrorism
Washingtons Blog

Partnership for Civil Justice Fund — FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring

FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests.

The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.

“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring
Reported in The Occupy Wall Street Press, December 22, 2012
by Alyssa

Fabius Maximus — Two vital lessons from the election so far, about lies and force

Summary:  This campaign season has, as they should, taught us much about the condition of the Republic’s most vital political processes.  We should have learned that the Republic is dying.  Watch your TV and smell the rot.  Our leaders lie — big lies — and are willing to casually use overwhelming force to suppress protests. What will we learn in the remaining two months? We can re-take control, if we can muster the will to do so.

Fabius Maximus
Two vital lessons from the election so far, about lies and force

Brandon Smith — Americans Are Being Prepared For Full Spectrum Tyranny

Sample:

Last week, I covered the disturbing use of armored vehicles (APC’s or urban tanks) in open training regiments on the streets of St. Louis by the U.S Army, despite the fact that all of their exercises could have easily been accomplished on any number of military bases across the country. The action is an obvious attempt to condition the American populace to the sight of military units operating in a policing capacity:

http://www.alt-market.com/articles/866-military-tanks-on-st-louis-streetsbut-why

I received multiple letters from current serving military who stated that in all their years in the armed forces they had never seen such a brash mishandling of public relations or an overstepping of bounds when it came to the restrictions of Posse Comitatus. It was encouraging to hear from military men and women who did not agree with or condone this kind of psyop activity on the part of our government.

Though the St. Louis event is not isolated, I believe it does represent an escalation.

Read it at Alt-Market.com
Americans Are Being Prepared For Full Spectrum Tyranny
by Brandon Smith

Inside Occupy Wall Street's New York March

Was this year's May Day a sign of things to come?

Read it at Mother Jones
Inside Occupy Wall Street's New York March
by Michael Tracey

America's two-faced liberalism

 How do we explain this deep tension in liberal thought? How can liberty be treated so differently by Kennedy and some of his fellow supreme court justices in the context of economic exchange (healthcare) as opposed to the context of policing (strip-searches)? 

Though the contrast is so stark, there is a coherence and logic to it. It dates back to the 18th century, when the idea of natural order (which would evolve into the concept of free-market efficiency) was introduced into economics hand-in-hand with the idea of a police state. The first economists, François Quesnay and his disciples, referred to this as "legal despotism". Using this rubric, they formulated a political ideal of complete governmental inactivity in all but the penal sphere. Given the existence of natural laws governing economic exchange, the group envisaged no role for the legislature except to criminalize and punish severely those who fail to see and appreciate the fundamental laws of nature. The only object of positive manmade laws was to severely punish those who were disorderly, as a way to protect society from "thieves and the wicked".

The same paradoxical, but coherent link ran through early laissez-faire liberalism. It was reflected in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, who argued that the government should "Be Quiet" in economic matters – at the very same time that he was inventing the all-seeing panopticon prison. This paradox is found in the Chicago School of economics as well, which defined the function of criminal law in a capitalist society as punishing and preventing those who "bypass" the free market. And of course, it continues to the present – a period in which we may be declared free from a government mandate on healthcare, but subject to strip-searches and delousing if arrested. 

Since the 18th century, the idea of economic freedom has been joined at the hip with the need for a police state; government is perceived as incompetent with regard to economic regulation, but fully legitimate and competent at policing and punishing. Not surprisingly, the periods of strongest belief in the free market (the "Market Revolution" in the 1820s and the recent period of neoliberalism since the 1970s) have coincided with the starkest periods of penal expansion – with the birth of the penitentiary in the first half of the 19th century and the exponential rise in prison populations since 1973. 

The rise of neoliberal thought since the 1970s has left us with a frightening union, one in which there is both free-market ideology (which militates against universal healthcare) and mass incarceration (with the attendant excesses like generalized strip-searches). This is what many of us have come to call "neoliberal penality". 

Read it at The Guardian (UK)

Laissez-faire with strip-searches: America's two-faced liberalism

by Bernard Harcourt | guardian.co.uk
(h/t Trixie in the comments)

Capitalism (economic liberalism) and democracy (political liberalism) fundamentally incompatible?

BTW, if anyone is wondering what Occupy is really about, this is it.

Zero Hedge — Why Is It Necessary For The Federal Government To Turn The United States Into A Prison Camp?

Well said.

Read it at Zero Hedge
Why Is It Necessary For The Federal Government To Turn The United States Into A Prison Camp?
Submitted by ilene
Reposted courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse

Peter Van Buren — On the run from America's Stasi

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year veteran Foreign Service Officer at the State Department, spent a year in Iraq as team leader for two State Department Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Now in Washington and a TomDispatch regular, he writes about Iraq and the Middle East at his blog, We Meant Well. His book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books), has recently been published.

Read it at Asia Times Online
On the run from America's Stasi
by Peter Van Buren | Whistleblower

"American Spring" was launched yesterday at Liberty Park

Occupy Wall Street launched American Spring on St. Patrick's Day at Zuccotti Liberty Park. I watch the police incident last evening life at TimCast, webcasting via Upstream. Tim Pool (@timcast) is an independent journalist with a press card, so police left him more or less alone. Footage will be up at his site and on YouTube. Here is an interview with him by Reuters.

This is definitely the media of the future. It's free and he also has a donation button. There is a running chat on the side, with a great deal of participation last evening as events unfolded more violently, with all the violence on the side of the police. What is Mayor Bloomberg thinking of? This is the message that he and Commissioner Kelly want to send to world youth about the NYPD? At least they held the riot gear and gas this time around, so I suppose they are learning — but pretty slowly.

David Graeber was there live tweeting, as was Rortybomb's Mike Konczal. These are the ones whom I follow, so there may have been others, too.

My assessment of the global movement is now shifting away from seeing this as a more or less short term phenomenon to a long term one that will be with us for at least a generation or more as the world confronts huge issues arising from globalization on a neoliberal model. It is doubtful that ruling elite are going to abandon power without a fight, and a protracted fight is brewing with global youth that is going to be ongoing as long as many if not most them see a bleak future for themselves and their compatriots, now global due the the Internet and social media.

There is already an cadre developing that is building on similar factors in the past, including public intellectuals and intelligentsia as well as activists. Now scientists and technologists are also getting on board. there is a powerful undercurrent that has been building up and it now seems ready to rise into surface waves that are not generated merely by temporary winds, which only creates white caps rather than the power of the wave rising from the deep. Get ready for some tsunamis as undersea tectonic plates start shifting too. Global collective consciousness is on the move.

UK Police linked to blacklist of construction workers

Security services 'gave data to clandestine organisation funded by major names in building industry' 

The police or security services supplied information to a blacklist funded by the country's major construction firms that has kept thousands of people out of work over the past three decades.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has revealed that records that could only have come from the police or MI5 have been discovered in a vast database of files held on 3,200 victims who were deemed leftwing or troublesome.

The files were collected by the Consulting Association, a clandestine organisation funded by major names in the construction industry.

Read it at The Guardian (UK)
Police are linked to blacklist of construction workers
by Daniel Boffey | Policy Editor
(h/t TruthDig)

Congressional Democrats And Republicans Unanimous: Bring The Robot Drones To American Skies

On Valentine’s Day, while many Americans were obsessed with the decision between dark chocolate and milk chocolate, Barack Obama sat with his pen poised over H.R. 658, a bill with a stark impact lying beneath its bland title: “FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012.”

Are you familiar with the thousands of robot drones being deployed in foreign war zones to spy on locals and drop bombs on them? You need to be, because thanks to H.R. 658The stage was set for this transformation of American surveillance in American airspace nearly a year ago when the House of Representatives passed House Amendment 220(read the text here on page H2187) on March 31 2011. The amendment, a piece of legislative language written by Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan, “directs the FAA to work with various federal agencies to integrate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) into the National Airspace System more expeditiously,” engaging in studies and regulatory action in order to allow self-piloting robots to fly over American airspace using “sense and avoid” technology while they engage in surveillance of the American people.

Recall that federal courts have already declared that Americans have no reasonable “expectation of privacy” to grant them 4th Amendment protections from warrantless surveillance when they can be seen from “publicly navigable airspace”. We’ll be visible to the robotic watchers, but the robotic watchers won’t be visible to us, flying so high in the airthat we won’t be able to perceive them.Who were the brave souls standing up for the privacy rights of Americans against the robotic drones flying over our heads? Who were the members of Congress objecting to Candice Miller’s amendment?

There weren’t any.

Read it at Irregular Times

Congressional Democrats And Republicans Unanimous: Bring The Robot Drones To American Skies

by Jim Cook

4 Signs the American Spring May Be Coming to Chicago

Here are four signs that the American Spring is coming to Chicago:

1) Political Provocation [by the Elite]2) Climate of Repression3.) Elite-Driven Hysteria4) Dynamic Political Organizing Capacity

Read it at AlterNet

4 Signs the American Spring May Be [Is] Coming to Chicago

by Matt Reichel

This has already been worked out by movement leaders from around the world at the anti-Davos in Brazil. There is huge global solidarity growing that the neoliberal approach to globalization is a dangerous threat to democracy other than in name only. It is viewed as a global power grab for world hegemony under the leadership of Western elites, especially finance capital, the  ideal of which is unfettered rent-seeking rather than development with a view to distributed prosperity. It is seen as merely the next step in neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism, as set forth in the works of people like Michael Hudson and Noam Chomsky in the US.

We are at the outset of a battle that will determine the course of the 21st century. It is a battle between those that believe late stage (monopoly) capitalism, whose goal is global growth through the aegis and under the control of the elite, is the future and those who hold that the future belongs to those willing to struggle for participatory democracy, distributed prosperity, and solidarity. 

The question is one of freedom:  Will there be freedom for the few that make it to the top, or freedom and prosperity for all.

UPDATE: Here comes the protest music. Bruce Springsteen on board with Occupy.

Read it at The Huffington Post
Bruce Springsteen Talks Occupy Movement, New Album

Bruce Springsteen said this week that his new album Wrecking Ball was inspired by an "angry patriotism" that drew fuel from the Occupy movement. 

Speaking to a group of journalists at the Theatre Marigny in Paris, Springsteen described how the financial crisis, income inequality, and other hot-button political issues informed Wrecking Ball, which paints a picture of an America that has failed the working class. 

"My work has always been about judging the distance between American reality and the American Dream--how far is that at any given moment," Springsteen said. Judging by the album's tenor, he believes the gap has only become wider in recent years.

Ter·ror·ist (Noun): Anyone Who Disagrees with the Government

Read it at Washington's Blog
Ter·ror·ist (Noun): Anyone Who Disagrees with the Government

by Washington's Blog

Twitter caves to censorship

Micro-blogging service unveils shift in policy as it seeks to expand into new territories and expand its user base.

The micro-blogging service, Twitter, has announced that it has altered the technology behind the service to allow for country-specific censorship of messages.

The announcement comes as the San Francisco, USA-based company makes a push to expand into new territories hoping to increase their 100 million active user base and generate more money.

Read it at Al Jazeera
Twitter to enable country-specific censorship

Selling the human spirit of freedom to the devil for filthy lucre. Sad.

Twitter follows Google:

Twitter says it has authored the new feature with transparency in mind. In a move similar to search engine Google, Twitter says it "will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld." 

Though Twitter says it has yet to utilise the feature, it, like Google, will share removal requests from companies, individuals, and governments on the website.

U.S. Drops 27 Places in Press Freedom Rankings

The nation drops 27 places in annual index thanks to the harsh treatment of reporters covering the protests.

Read it at The Slatest
After OWS, U.S. Drops in Press Freedom Rankings
by Abby Ohlheiser

Jeff Cox — Riots in US Streets? Why Soros' Prediction Is Unlikely

Read it at CNBC NetNet
Riots in US Streets? Why Soros' Prediction Is Unlikely

by By Jeff Cox | Senor Writer

I would agree with this analysis, but I suspect that this is not what Soros is concerned with. I would guess that he, like Randy Wray, foresees another crisis developing that will be far worse than the present one since it will be hitting on top of this crisis before this one is resolved. If that happens, who knows what will happen. Moreover, the global economy now has countries joined at the hip. Another crisis would likely be global.

How weird is this?

LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Joint military training exercises will be held evenings in downtown Los Angeles through Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The LAPD will be providing support for the exercises, which will also be held in other portions of the greater Los Angeles area, police said.

Training sites ``have been carefully selected to ensure the event does not negatively impact the citizens of Los Angeles and their daily routine,'' a department official said.

The training, which a department official said would involve helicopters, has been coordinated with local authorities and owners of the training sites, police said.

Police said safety precautions have been taken to prevent risk to the general public and military personnel involved.
The exercises are closed to the public, police said.

The exercises are designed to ensure the military's ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements, police said.

Posted by David Perez
KFI News

Read it at KFI News
LA Military Exercises

Ron Paul — Stop Internet Censorship

Read it at Congressman Ron Paul
Stop Internet Censorship

by Rep. Ron Paul

(h/t Edward Harrison | Credit Writedowns)

Ron Paul gets it. Democrats by and large are on the wrong side of this issue, other than wrt to the donors.

Congress is using a sledge hammer to kill flies and threatening to break the Internet and stifle innovation.

A lot of people across the political spectrum, especially younger people, are flocking to Ron Paul for this and similar reasons, even though they may disagree with some of his other views.

Rachel Maddow: "It's no longer OK not to know how the Internet works." — 'The Rachel Maddow Show' for Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Authoritarianism Watch — Add ACTA to SOPA and PIPA

Push back against ACTA picking up on Twitter.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement.[1] ACTA would establish a new international legal framework that countries can join on a voluntary basis[2] and would create its own governing body outside existing international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization(WIPO) or the United Nations.[1][3] Negotiating countries have described it as a response "to the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works."[2] The scope of ACTA includes counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet.[4] Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) oppose ACTA,[5] stating that civil society groups and developing countries were excluded from discussion during ACTA's development in an example of policy laundering.[6] The treaty calls for the creation of an "ACTA committee" to make amendments, for which public or judicial review are not required. Industry representatives may have "consultatory input" to amendments.[7]

Opponents have argued that the treaty will restrict fundamental civil rights, including the freedom of expression and communication privacy.[8] They also criticize ACTA's removal of "legal safeguards that protect Internet Service Providers from liability for the actions of their subscribers" in effect giving ISPs no option but to comply with privacy invasions.[9] According to an analysis by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), ACTA would require that existing ISPs no longer host free software that can access copyrighted media, and DRM protected media would not be legally playable with free software.[10]

Wikipedia