Government

Brazil to Spend $25bn on Public Transit, Vote on Reforms

June 24, 2013 Staff, www.aljazeera.com Create! Brazil, Education, Government, Health Care, Transportation

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has proposed to set aside $25bn for public transport following days of mass nationwide street protests, in an effort to seize the political initiative. She also suggested on Monday a referendum on broad "political reform" in response to public anger with substandard public services and rampant official corruption in Brazil, the world's seventh largest economy. She also stressed the need for fiscal responsibility and for boosting investments in health and education as demanded by Brazilians who have taken to the streets in the tens of thousands over the past two weeks. "The streets are telling us that the country wants quality public services, more effective measures to combat corruption ... and responsive political representation," Rousseff said.

Protests Around the World are Keeping the Spirit of Occupy Alive

June 23, 2013 John Harris, www.guardian.co.uk Educate! Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government

It is in the nature of protests that people are impatient for change. But all this is so huge that it will take decades to work itself out. Across the world, parties of both left and right will either be transformed or disappear; in more and more countries, protests will flare into life, and then go quiet. Ugly populism and the hard right could very well prosper; social democracy may spend a long time in retreat. For good or ill, it's going to be a very interesting century.

Paraguayan Indigenous Community Reoccupies Territory After Two Decades

June 23, 2013 David Dougherty, www.therealnews.com Create! Food and Agriculture, Government, Human Rights

ving precariously on the side of a highway in Paraguay's remote Chaco region for more than 20 years, ever since a German cattle rancher and the Paraguayan state illegally kicked them off of their ancestral lands. A 2006 Inter-American Human Rights Court ruling held the Paraguayan state responsible for returning roughly 14,000 hectares to the community Sawhoyamaxa, a small fraction of their original territories. After pursuing every legal means possible and even blocking the highway in protest to no avail, the community decided in March 2013 to take matters into their own hands and reoccupy their lands.

Autonomy: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

June 23, 2013 Jerome Roos, www.roarmag.org Create! Brazil, Corporatism, Democracy, Egypt, Finance and the Economy, Government, Human Rights, Türkiye, Worker Rights and Jobs

As the ongoing uprising in Turkey and the mass protests in Bosnia, Bulgaria and Brazil confirm, the wave of struggles that kicked off with the Arab revolutions of 2011 is still in full swing. However, it is also clear that, two years hence, the “dangerous dreams” of the Arab revolutionaries, Europe’s indignados and America’s occupiers largely remain unfulfilled. In Europe, the austerity mantra is still being uncritically praised and dutifully imposed by governments of the left and the right. In Egypt, Islamist forces have successfully managed to hijack the revolution by taking state power and suppressing its epochal promise of radical emancipation. In the United States, meanwhile, the bodies that once assembled on Wall Street seem to have dissipated back into their previous state of social atomization. In the present conjuncture, an old but important question arises — both for the movements that kicked off in 2011 and for the ones currently underway in Turkey, Brazil and elsewhere: what is to be done?

Global Protest Grows as Citizens Lose Faith in Politics and the State

June 23, 2013 Peter Beaumont, www.guardian.co.uk Educate! Brazil, Finance and the Economy, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government, Human Rights, Solidarity

If the recent scenes have seemed familiar, it is because they shared common features: viral, loosely organised with fractured messages and mostly taking place in urban public locations. Unlike the protest movement of 1968 or even the end of Soviet influence in eastern Europe in 1989, these are movements with few discernible leaders and often conflicting ideologies. Their points of reference are not even necessarily ideological but take inspiration from other protests, including those of the Arab spring and the Occupy movement. The result has seen a wave of social movements – sometimes short-lived – fromWall Street to Tel Aviv and from Istanbul to Rio de Janeiro, often engaging younger, better educated and wealthier members of society.

McLibel Leaflet was Co-Written by Undercover Police Officer Bob Lambert

June 21, 2013 Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, www.guardian.co.uk Educate! Corporatism, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Government

An undercover police officer posing for years as an environmental activist co-wrote a libellous leaflet that was highly critical of McDonald's, and which led to the longest civil trial in English history, costing the fast-food chain millions of pounds in fees. The true identity of one of the authors of the "McLibel leaflet" is Bob Lambert, a police officer who used the alias Bob Robinson in his five years infiltrating the London Greenpeace group, is revealed in a new book about undercover policing of protest, published next week. McDonald's famously sued green campaigners over the roughly typed leaflet, in a landmark three-year high court case, that was widely believed to have been a public relations disaster for the corporation. Ultimately the company won a libel battle in which it spent millions on lawyers.

More Than One Million Protest in Brazil, Rousseff Calls Emergency Cabinet Meeting

June 21, 2013 arco Sibaja and Stan Lehman, www.ap.org Resist! Brazil, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government, Human Rights

More than a million Brazilians poured into the streets of at least 80 cities Thursday in this week's largest anti-government demonstrations yet, protests that saw violent clashes break out in several cities as people demanding improved public services and an end to corruption faced tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. Despite the crackdown, protesters said they would not back down. In Brasilia, police struggled to keep hundreds of protesters from invading the Foreign Ministry, outside of which protesters lit a small fire. Other government buildings were attacked around the capital's central esplanade. There, too, police resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets in attempts to scatter the crowds. President Dilma Rousseff called an emergency meeting with top advisers for Friday morning. "This is the start of a structural change in Brazil," said Aline Campos, a 29 year old publicist in Brasilia. "People now want to make sure their money is well spent, that it's not wasted through corruption."

Three Things About the TPP You Need to Know and Share

June 20, 2013 Dennis Trainor, Jr., www.acronymtv.com Organize! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government, TPP

The Obama administration is brokering a secret global deal that combines all of the worst elements of NAFTA and Citizens United, shoots them up with steroids, sprinkles in a speedball and codifies these principles into a trade agreement that is in fact much more than a trade agreement. The trade agreement is the Trojan horse to bore you and put you to sleep so that when you wake up a global corporate coup will be in place creating a parallel system of justice where three private attorneys would oversee a kangaroo court set up to defend corporate interests that the laws all countries signing on to what is known as the Trans Pacific Partnership would be subservient to.

Brazil’s President Proud of Protesters, Listening and Sympathetic

June 19, 2013 Todd Benson, www.reuters.com Resist! Brazil, Finance and the Economy, Government, Human Rights

Dilma Rousseff was leftist guerrilla in her youth who was jailed for conspiring against Brazil's military dictatorship, Rousseff said the sight of so many young Brazilians marching for their rights moved her. She also said her government sympathizes with the many grievances expressed at the demonstrations, from calls for more spending on education and healthcare to better and more affordable public transportation. "My government hears the voices clamoring for change, my government is committed to social transformation," Rousseff said. "Those who took to the streets yesterday sent a clear message to all of society, above all to political leaders at all levels of government."

New Yorkers Protest Corrupt Senate in Albany

June 19, 2013 Record Staff, www.troyrecord.com Resist! Corruption, Government, Human Rights

State troopers have arrested demonstrators urging Senate votes on several bills who blocked the office door of a legislative leader at New York’s Capitol. About 50 protesters who crowded around Sen. Jeff Klein’s office support measures including campaign finance reform, transgender rights, farm worker wages, women’s rights, decriminalizing marijuana and prohibiting hydrofracking. Their spokesman, Charlie Albanetti, says 21 were arrested, including seven Capital Region residents. Klein leads the Independent Democratic Conference, which has formed a coalition with Senate Republicans to control that chamber. Demonstrators say Klein should use his position to advance those bills to a floor vote.

Sao Paulo Protests Rage In Brazil’s Largest City

June 19, 2013 Bradley Brooks, www.ap.org Resist! Brazil, Finance and the Economy, Government, Human Rights, Transportation

Tens of thousands of Brazilians again flooded the streets of the country's biggest city to raise a collective cry against a longstanding lament – people are weighed down by high taxes and high prices but get low-quality public services and a system of government infected with corruption. "What I hope comes from these protests is that the governing class comes to understand that we're the ones in charge, not them, and the politicians must learn to respect us," said Yasmine Gomes, a 22-year-old squeezed into the plaza in central Sao Paulo. Mass protests have been mushrooming across Brazil since demonstrations called last week by a group angry over the high cost of a woeful public transport system and a recent 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares in Sao Paulo, Rio and elsewhere. The local governments in at least four cities have now agreed to reverse those hikes, and city and federal politicians have shown signs that the Sao Paulo fare could also be rolled back.

Britian Intercepted Foreign Politicians’ Communications at G20 Summits

June 16, 2013 Ewen MacAskill, Nick Davies, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and James Ball, http://m.guardian.co.uk/uk Educate! Finance and the Economy, Government, Privacy, Surveillance

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic. The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.

Do Not Extradite Edward Snowden, Protesters Urge Hong Kong

June 15, 2013 Tania Branigan and Jonathan Kaiman, www.guardian.co.uk Resist! Government, NSA, Privacy, Solidarity, Surveillance

Hundreds of demonstrators have taken to the streets of Hong Kong despite heavy rain to support the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and press the US to change its surveillance policies. Hong Kong's chief executive, CY Leung, broke days of silence on the case saying the government would handle Snowden's case "in accordance with the laws and established procedures of Hong Kong". Human rights groups and other organisations arranged the rally after Snowden, a US citizen, told the South China Morning Post that he planned to stay in the territory and "ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate".

Support Transparency in Trade Negotiations

June 14, 2013 Daily Kos, www.dailykos.com Petitions and Online Actions Government, TPP

- GO STRAIGHT TO THE PETITION HERE -
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is standing up to the Obama administration and the U.S. Trade Representative’s office–demanding they release trade documents used as part of negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Sign the petition to back up Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s request that all documents being used to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership be released for review by the public.

Edward Snowden Demonstrates the Power of Breaking Ranks

June 13, 2013 Ken Butigan, www.wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Government, NSA

Successful nonviolent movements depend on people breaking ranks: questioning, demurring, disobeying, defecting and withdrawing support. In most cases, this entails a slow process in which a significant percentage of the population gives up its fidelity to the status quo and finds itself shifting. As the late social movement theorist Bill Moyer put it, the population may not agree with the movement’s answer, but it is beginning to question — and even gradually abandon — the traditional one. By breaking ranks, Snowden not only brought more sunlight into yet another murky corner of the infrastructure of the ever-expanding U.S. global and domestic control — part of the dizzying flurry of recent revelations about drones, special operations and kill lists — he has taught us, just as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg did, the critical importance of breaking ranks.

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