#occupyphoenixtumblr

On Tuesday, May 29th, at 6PM, Occupy London demonstrated in solidarity with the people of Quebec in protest of austerity and unjust law.

For more than 100 days, students, faculty, and concerned citizens have staged demonstrations against sharp increases in university tuition fees and other austerity measures by the Quebec government.

On May 18th, 2012, the National Assembly of Quebec passed Bill 78, restricting freedom of assembly without prior authorization. This bill effectively criminalizes freedoms afforded by the Canadian Charter of Rights, and serves to militarize the policing of a peaceful protest.

We stand in opposition of this and other unjust legislation and policing, preventing the free and peaceful assembly of citizens in protest. We stand with the students of Quebec and all Canadians in their struggle against austerity.

We believe that education is a basic human right, and that students of Ontario and all Canadians deserve the opportunity for higher learning without a debt sentence.

Together, we will make our voices heard!

Ever wonder why you see and hear the same 20 artists on the rotation on radio & television? No, it’s not because people are calling the radio stations requesting the songs incessantly.  The answer: media-consolidation. 90% of the media is controlled by only 6 companies: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom & Time Warner. Compare that to 1983 when media was owned by 50 companies. 

Very interesting article/infograph

It’s been four years since the government, in the name of preventing a depression, saved this megabank from ruin by pumping $45 billion of taxpayer money into its arm. Since then, the Obama administration has looked the other way as the bank committed an astonishing variety of crimes – some elaborate and brilliant in their conception, some so crude that they’d be beneath your average street thug. Bank of America has systematically ripped off almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, depositors, homeowners, shareholders, pensioners and taxpayers.

kayleemb:

baxtavius:

cateematthews:

newsweek:

Just happened. So what bill is that? “House Democrats say the Republican-authored law would raise requirements to prove domestic violence and sexual assault, erase confidentiality protections for immigrant women and alert abusers when their…

FUCK

We can put an end to a shocking assault on our civil liberties:  Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act included language that could allow the military to detain civilian suspects INDEFINITELY without charge or trial.

This year’s NDAA could come up for a vote as soon as next week and we have a prime opportunity to reverse this travesty of justice. 

(Please spread this to as many people as possible, we need every ounce of support— this affects every American, from every walk of life, from every fandom, from every community, to the entire world in many ways)

The first shock came when Mordechai Jungreis learned that his mentally disabled teenage son was being molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse in Brooklyn. The second came after Mr. Jungreis complained, and the man accused of the abuse was arrested.

Old friends started walking stonily past him and his family on the streets of Williamsburg. Their landlord kicked them out of their apartment. Anonymous messages filled their answering machine, cursing Mr. Jungreis for turning in a fellow Jew. And, he said, the mother of a child in a wheelchair confronted Mr. Jungreis’s mother-in-law, saying the same man had molested her son, and she “did not report this crime, so why did your son-in-law have to?”

By cooperating with the police, and speaking out about his son’s abuse, Mr. Jungreis, 38, found himself at the painful forefront of an issue roiling his insular Hasidic community. There have been glimmers of change as a small number of ultra-Orthodox Jews, taking on longstanding religious and cultural norms, have begun to report child sexual abuse accusations against members of their own communities. But those who come forward often encounter intense intimidation from their neighbors and from rabbinical authorities, aimed at pressuring them to drop their cases.

Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses. Some victims’ families have been offered money, ostensibly to help pay for therapy for the victims, but also to stop pursuing charges, victims and victims’ advocates said.

“Try living for one day with all the pain I am living with,” Mr. Jungreis, spent and distraught, said recently outside his new apartment on Williamsburg’s outskirts. “Did anybody in the Hasidic community in these two years, in Borough Park, in Flatbush, ever come up and look my son in the eye and tell him a good word? Did anybody take the courage to show him mercy in the street?”

—

The New York Times, “Ultra-Orthodox Jews Shun Their Own for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse.”

Fucking sickening and I don’t give a damn about anyone that uses organized religion to excuse, allow and condone fucked-up bullshit like this.

(via inothernews)

(via kayleemb)

socialuprooting:

The FBI has been lobbying top internet companies like Yahoo and Google to support a proposal that would force them to provide backdoors for government surveillance, according to CNET.

The Bureau has been quietly meeting with representatives of these companies, as well as Microsoft (which owns Hotmail and Skype), Facebook and others to argue for a legislative proposal, drafted by the FBI, that would require social-networking sites and VoIP, instant messaging and e-mail providers to alter their code to make their products wiretap-friendly.

The FBI has previously complained to Congress about the so-called “Going Dark” problem – the difficulty of doing effective wiretap surveillance as more communications have moved from traditional telephone services to internet service companies.

Under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, passed in 1994, telecommunications providers are required to make their systems wiretap-friendly. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband providers like ISPs and colleges, but web companies are not covered by the law.

(via jun0rk)