If you thought SOPA and PIPA were bad, let us introduce you to their Big Brother, ACTA.

Just because SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) & PIPA (Protect IP Act) have been derailed (for the moment) in the US doesn’t mean the fight is over. The giant media corps that are behind that endeavor are global in scope, and are pushing their same agenda in the European Union, under legislation known as ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement).

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which has already been signed by several countries, poses a dangerous threat to the inherent freedom and openess of the Internet. Under ACTA, ISP’s and websites will be given more power to track what we do online, while forcing them to turn over our information and reporting our activity to the authorities — all in the name of copyright protection! Excessive copyright protection is a great tool for information suppression. Once technology and blocking techniques are in place, virtually all information is liable to filtering and suppression due to “copyright violation.” ACTA’s ill-conceived provisions will have chilling effects on free speech everywhere.

Read more on this, and then Sign The Petition calling for ACTA’s removal.

This is a good overview on this legislation from The Atlantic, “SOPA Stopped for Now, Anti-Censorship Activists Turn to ACTA”

Now that the armchair activists are doing victory laps, celebrating the (temporary) death of anti-piracy laws SOPA and PIPA in Congress, the years-long protest against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is getting nasty. Led by Poland, who currently holds the European Union Presidency, several European nations became the latest to sign the secretive treaty in a ceremony that took place in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday. The United States signed it last year.

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What the heck is ACTA anyways? And why is it so horrible?

Well, there are plenty of websites set up to explain the bill, not to mention plenty of explainers. The best we’ve read comes from the folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco who’ve been waving a banner of protest against the agreement since it first appeared nearly six years ago. Their explainer is worth reading in full, but the section on why you should care about ACTA is worth quoting. It’s less about the measures proposed in ACTA, than it is about the secretive way the agreement was developed. Noting how “ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers, privacy and civil liberties for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet” the EFF argues that “both civil society and developing countries are intentionally being excluded from these negotiations.” So if you’re still surprised that you’ve never heard of ACTA — even in the anti-SOPA pile-on protest that blacked out some of the world’s biggest websites last week — this is likely why.

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So if the most troubling element of ACTA is that it was largely developed behind closed doors, those doors are starting to swing open. Or rather the Internet is charging through them, and we’re sure that white-haired world leaders will have a hard time blocking them. Democracy is no longer something that happens at a ballot box, once a year. It’s a kinetic being, capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of citizens behind a cause and forcing decision-makers to rethink things. That’s one of those great things about the open Internet.

Read more Here

RT weighs in on this issue with its report: “ACTA, Secret Censor Tool Worse Than SOPA and PIPA”

As cyberspace turns its attention to the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, has been quietly signed or ratified by most of the developed world and is arguably the biggest threat to Internet freedom yet.

Read and Watch the complete report Here

And in case you’re not sure what the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) bills involve, and why they are such a threat to existing
internet freedoms, Watch This.

An open letter signed by many organizations, including Consumers International, EDRi (27 European civil rights and privacy NGOs), the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ASIC (French trade association for web 2.0 companies), and the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), states that “the current draft of ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy.

Source: http://video.nixxon.net/~riesling/acta/?

This is an enlightening and disturbingly revealing discussion on the radically expanding levels of online surveillance that governments and corporations are able to wield today over your personal information on the internet.

It is about the new technology of “mass surveillance,” referred to as “strategic interception,” where corporations are helping to enable governments to record and store all phone transmissions, all internet communication from the entire population of a country. This is the militarization of cyberspace, which has been considered a form of civilian space, where a whole range of details of our lives flows to and fro through, and which are documented and stored upon.

This is staggering in its implications, and happening at a rate and to a degree which populations are not prepared for. It certainly challenges the fundamental basis of any notion of rights which are elaborated in the American Constitution, or any international covenants on human rights.

“Every civilian is now a target of military intelligence activity. Everyone.

“There is little left of democratic life that is not surveilled. But it is not being surveilled equally. It is not the public that is surveilling big corporations, secretive government agencies, and the rest of the public. Rather, there is a disproportionate flow of information from us, from the public, into organizations that are already very powerful. And that permits the elite - the surveillance elite, the national security state elite of any country - to lift off from its people. To disconnect from its people. To predict its people. That’s a dangerous situation.

“And what we’re dealing here is not merely the surveillance elite of one country operating alone, but rather an international surveillance elite; transnational companies selling these products all over the world, and then intelligence agencies swapping data that they collect with each other. That’s a worrying situation for western democracies.”

“That’s a worrying situation for western democracies.”

Understatement of the year.

And to think, the power establishment is working overtime to convince you that its this guy talking about this who is the threat to “freedom” and your rights to privacy and liberty..

Highly recommended, even essential viewing.

And while you’re at it, this is worth taking in, as well. Julian Assange Julian Assange speaking to The Cambridge Union Society, about freedom of information, freedom of discourse, the rise of the the modern technological national security state, and more.

[The internet is] a technology which can be used to set up a totalitarian spying regime, the likes of which we have never seen. Or, on the other hand, if taken by us, and taken by activists, and taken by all those who wish a different trajectory for a technological world, it can be something that we all hope for.

That battle between people wo want to use the internet as a tool of liberation, and those tremendous organizations that want to use the internet as a tool of control - mass control - is not over. It is only just beginning.

Watch The Video

Another excellent presentation by author and journalist Chris Hedges. Here he discusses his book “Death of the Liberal Class” and the destruction of critical culture, which flourished before World War I, but was destroyed soon afterwards. He provides a short, but spot on overview on the history of the American labor movement, the historical congealing of the forces aligned against it, and its relationship to the modern Occupy Wall Street movement.

Of particular importance and relevance is the history of the rise and dominance of state/corporate propaganda from World War I. This apparatus was originally employed against the Germans, but was then quickly turned against the labor movement. This is particularly relevant and telling history, which he begins to get into the meat of around the 12-minute mark in the video.

Hedges is one of the few people to openly and persistently discuss what I personally feel to be some of the most important and least talked about history in America; that of the ubiquitous but sublimated role of propaganda. Here, Hedges goes into some detail about the creation of the Committee on Public Information (The Creel Commission), and the employment of modern propaganda in America through the ideas of people like Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays. These are names known to very few Americans, but whose impact on our nation and our world is incalculable.

Good to see Bill Moyers back on the media scene. This is an insightful report on the wide variety of people who have involved themselves with the Occupy movement, and why they support it. I definitely recommend it for people who keep asking what this movement is supposed to be about, or for those that continue to assert that somehow people are ‘confused’ as to why they are protesting, or that they don’t have a ‘coherent point’ to make. Plus, it has the added bonus of featuring Bill Black, author of The Best Way To Rob a Bank Is To Own One . Black is one of the most articulate and knowledgeable voices out there regarding the criminality of today’s nexus between Wall Street and Washington.

So has anyone noticed the Bill of Rights has become pretty much a dead letter? Maybe what is the final blow (after years of a series of blows), was this, the so-called “National Defense Authorization Act,” (more like the National Elite Power and Privilege Protection Act), passed on December 15th, which was, ironically enough, “Bill of Rights Day,” marking the 220th anniversary of its adoption. The gods of history have a sense of humor, if nothing else. Nothing like being killed on the day you were born for poetic drama.

Read about it here.

Jon Jost wrote about this insidious piece of legislation and its ramifications, in a post on his lucidly pointed blog Cinemelectronica…

While the circus of the Republican nominee selection process travels the country putting on its dog and pony show, back in DC, in the furious rush to wrap up “business” before the Christmas break, our wonderful Congressmen and women have hobbled together a fantastic new bill, the annual National Defense Authorization Act – to say “law” – which Barack Obama, our erstwhile scholar of the Constitution, and our erstwhile “liberal” President, had promised to veto if it retained a certain element that had been tacked on in the devious manner of our politicians, a “rider” having to do with giving the Executive the (unconstitutional) right to declare someone “a terrorist” or even someone as being vaguely in some way connected to a claimed “terrorist” and to arrest them, lock them up, hide them, and throw away the key. American or not, where ever they are. However, as is his way, Mr Obama did his feint to the left, and now is ready to sign this new bill/law. And bye-bye to what is left of the Constitution’s “Bill of Rights.”

Read more about what all this means here from Robert Scheer.

Glenn Greenwald effectively dissects and debunks the myths about the NDAA, which are being propagated by its supporters and Obama defenders. This, like practically all of Greenwald’s stuff, is essential reading.

The Punk Patriot pretty much explains what this law potentially entails for American citizens, summing it up in his direct, to-the-point style in this video… (Note: Alert! - This video features the repeated use of graphic language)

This is bad stuff folks. Bad stuff. And how anyone can rationalize voting for Obama or ANY of the constitutional traitors in Congress who voted for this is beyond me. Would love to hear your rationale, if you’ve got one.

We all-too-often hear shrill “the sky is falling” screeds being pushed in our national civic discourse, but in this case, such dire warnings are warranted. This video discusses the Senate version of the so-called “PROTECT IP Act,” but the House bill that was just introduced is much worse. It will give the government new powers to block Americans’ access websites that corporations don’t like. The“Stop Online Piracy Act”, or SOPA (HR 3261), could rip apart the open fabric of the Internet. People could see their websites disappear from the Internet for a “crime” as innocent as posting a video of themselves singing along to a favorite song. It paves the way for the sort of heavy-handed blocking tactics you’d expect to see in China, not the United States. This legislation will stifle free speech and innovation, and even threaten popular web services like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. SOPA violates our right to free speech.

We need to act now to let our lawmakers know just how terrible this bill is. Please take a quick moment to let your lawmakers know that you oppose this legislation, by signing This Petition, as well as signing your name to Free Press’ petition letter Internet Censorship: Not Today, Not Tomorrow.

Learn more about this bill, who opposes it, and the serious ramifications for us all if it passes into law.

Bill Moyers delivers what may be the single most clearly succinct, historically astute, and morally inspired argument affirming the need for and validity of the Occupation movement sweeping the country and the world. Anyone who questions what the Occupy Wall Street movement is about, or why it should be supported, needs to read/watch this. Here are a just a few excerpts…

…[T]he property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly feared as an unseemly “veneration for wealth” are now openly in force; the common denominator of public office, even for our judges, is a common deference to cash…

During the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains a century after the Constitution was ratified, the populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease exclaimed: “Wall Street owns the country…Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us…Money rules.”

That was 1890. Those agrarian populists boiled over with anger that corporations, banks, and government were ganging up to deprive every day people of their livelihood.

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Why New York’s Zuccotti Park is filled with people is no mystery. Reporters keep scratching their heads and asking: “Why are you here?” But it’s clear they are occupying Wall Street because Wall Street has occupied the country. And that’s why in public places across the country workaday Americans are standing up in solidarity.

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But let me call another witness from the pro-business and capitalist- friendly press. In the middle of the last decade - four years before the Great Collapse of 2008 - the editors of The Economist warned:

A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to levels not seen since the (first) Gilded Age. But social mobility is not increasing at anything like the same pace….Everywhere you look in modern America - in the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts - you see elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening, and a gap widening between the people who make decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of working stiffs.

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And so it does. Evidence abounds that large inequalities undermine community life, reduces trust among citizens, and increases violence. In one major study from data collected over 30 years (by the epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their book: The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger ) the most consistent predictor of mental illness, infant mortality, educational achievements, teenage births, homicides, and incarceration, is economic inequality. And as Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow has written, “Vast inequalities of income weakens a society’s sense of mutual concern…The sense that we are all members of the social order is vital to the meaning of civilization.”

The historian Gordon Wood won the Pulitzer Prize for his book on The Radicalism of the American Revolution: If you haven’t read it, now’s the time. Wood says that our nation discovered its greatness “by creating a prosperous free society belonging to obscure people with their workaday concerns and their pecuniary pursuits of happiness.” This democracy, he said, changed the lives “of hitherto neglected and despised masses of common laboring people.”

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Even as the [U.S.] Chamber [of Commerce] was doubling its membership and tripling its budget in response to [Future Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell’s manifesto, the coalition got another powerful jolt of adrenalin from the wealthy right-winger who had served as Nixon’s secretary of the treasury, William Simon. His polemic entitled A Time for Truth argued that “funds generated by business” must “rush by multimillions” into conservative causes to uproot the institutions and “the heretical strategy” [his term] of the New Deal. He called on “men of action in the capitalist world” to mount “a veritable crusade” against progressive America. Business Week magazine somberly explained that “…it will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have move.”

I’m not making this up.

And so it came to pass; came to pass despite your heroic efforts and those of other kindred citizens; came to pass because those “men of action in the capitalist world” were not content with their wealth just to buy more homes, more cars, more planes, more vacations and more gizmos than anyone else. They were determined to buy more democracy than anyone else.

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So once again: Take heart from the past and don’t ever count the people out. During the last quarter of the 19th century, the industrial revolution created extraordinary wealth at the top and excruciating misery at the bottom. Embattled citizens rose up. Into their hearts, wrote the progressive Kansas journalist William Allen White, “had come a sense that their civilization needed recasting, that their government had fallen into the hands of self-seekers, that a new relation should be established between the haves and have-nots”… Democracy doesn’t begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle the patriot’s dream.

For the full text of this insightful and inspirational speech, go Here.

You can also watch Moyers at the event in which he delivered it Here…

Gerald Celente, publisher of The Trends Journal, calls out the political class, and the fraudulence of our political system today. This short little interview pretty much sums up the key reasons of the hows and whys behind the corrupting nonsense which plagues governance. The revolving door nexus between corporate power and government, the “money junkies” which live off the body politic, and so on and so on… American electoral politics is “The Presidential Reality Show,” and Obama is the star actor.

And yes, Wall Street = Washington D.C. = Wall Street = Washington D.C = Wall Street = Washington D.C. = Wall Street = Washington D.C…

This is a must see.

Want to know what the Occupy Wall Street movement is about? This short video pretty much sums it up. It is up to each of us to decide where we stand in relation to the increasingly blatant need for systemic reform in our global political-economic system today.