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The office of City Attorney Carmen Trutanich is considering filing a civil suit against Occupy L.A. protesters. Protesters could find themselves on the hook for damage to city property, the costs of remediation and clean-up, lost business opportunities and the loss of film permits, according to Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the City Attorney's Office. "The City could potentially file a civil [suit] and attempt to recoup the costs for any Occupy LA-related damages caused by any responsible persons or entities," Mateljan wrote in an e-mail to LAist. The Occupy L.A. movement is famously (or notoriously) leaderless, decentralized and, well,...

As'ad AbuKahlil—a political science professor at California State University, Stanislaus—spoke last month at a day-long "teach-in" at the University of California, Berkeley titled, "Building Solidarity with the Arab Spring." It consisted of a number of "workshop sessions" at the Valley Life Sciences Building, followed by a "plenary session" at the Multicultural Center, and was co-sponsored by the Arab Resource Organizing Committee, the Berkeley Muslim Students Association PAC, the International Socialist Organization, and the Syrian American Council. AbuKhalil's workshop on "The U.S. and the Arab Uprising" was held in a tiny, hot, windowless room filled with students wearing hijabs and keffiyehs....

Proposal for a Coordinated West Coast Port Shutdown, Passed With Unanimous Consensus by vote of the Occupy Oakland General Assembly 11/18/2012: In response to coordinated attacks on the occupations and attacks on workers across the nation: Occupy Oakland calls for the blockade and disruption of the economic apparatus of the 1% with a coordinated shutdown of ports on the entire West Coast on December 12th. The 1% has disrupted the lives of longshoremen and port truckers and the workers who create their wealth, just as coordinated nationwide police attacks have turned our cities into battlegrounds in an effort to disrupt...

Occupy Wall Street protesters clogged streets and tied up traffic around the U.S. on Thursday to mark two months since the movement's birth and signal they aren't ready to quit, despite the breakup of many of their encampments by police. Hundreds of people were arrested, most of them in New York. The demonstrations — which took place in cities including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Boston, Washington and Portland, Ore. — were for the most part peaceful. Most of the arrests were for blocking streets, and the traffic disruptions were brief. Chanting "All day, all week, shut down Wall Street," more...

22 Signs That The Thin Veneer Of Civilization That We All Take For Granted Is Starting To DisappearNovember 14, 2011 In order for a society to function, there has to be a certain level of trust. Each day when we leave our homes, we take for granted that most people are not going to attack us for no reason, that there will only be isolated incidents of theft in our community and that rioting and violence are not going to erupt in the streets. Whether we realize it or not, we depend on the fact that the vast majority of...

Even though Elihu Harris hasn’t been the Mayor of Oakland since 1999 (and was Mayor between 1990 and 1999), he’s still a fixture in Oakland.... --snip-- And how would Elihu have handled the Occupy Oakland matter if he were still Mayor? “I think first of all, I wouldn’t let people occupy the space in front of City Hall,” Harris remarked. “I think that was the wrong thing to do. It is the City’s park, it is not the Occupy Oakland park. There are probably places in Oakland were you could occupy – have a tent city – that would not...

She looks like any old bag lady scavenging for cast-offs in the rubbish as the world looks the other way. But this is no ordinary woman - she is Olga Onassis, 90, a woman linked by marriage to one of the richest dynasties in the world. She has now fallen, like her country, on desperate times. She is a regular at a church soup kitchen in the Greek capital Athens and roots around in the overflowing garbage containers of the city for clothes.

Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?

<p>The protests have now spread to other cities, with violence reported in parts of Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol.</p> <p>Great Britain and other parts of the world are experiencing unrest at a time of global economic uncertainty and stock market volatility.</p>

De-Emphasizing marriage and abolishing State Marriage would definitely have been seen as liberal, up until very recently. Certainly, removing state control over an area where it is not required is definitely liberal. That was the understanding when I began to back this long term goal back in 2004. (snip) ...the reason why we are fighting for marriage equality is because we have to work with the present governmental system for a while yet. Marriage equality is currently easier to achieve than getting government out of the business, but the latter should be our long term goal. As for de-emphasizing marriage...

An enraged Barack Obama just took to the nation’s airwaves to announce his effort to strike a deal with Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has fallen apart. Perhaps for the first time in American history, this president is literally using this press conference to create a financial panic over the weekend about the opening of the markets on Monday. He is warning of disaster on Monday. Clearly, he wants to use this as leverage to frighten the GOP into passing the plan proposed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, which will push the debt ceiling problem into 2013,...

The protests in Wisconsin are heating up again and this time the mob is even angrier than before. Thursday night at the Joint Finance Committee meeting in Madison, law enforcement removed around 30 protesters who repeatedly interrupted the budget-writing panel’s proceedings. The chaos started when an elected member of the Milwaukee Public Schools board and former University of Wisconsin regent ran up to the committee and began making speeches.

Considerations For SHTF Living & Bug Out Locations Mac Slavo May 3rd, 2011 Editor’s note: If you are not yet in the location you want to be if the S were to hit the fan, and are currently looking for either a home or raw land, then we recommend that you also read What Is The Best Place To Live In The United States To Prepare For The Coming Economic Collapse. The opinions expressed below are a supplement to that article. If insulating yourself from a worst-case scenario is your primary concern then the following considerations, some of which were...

We can't overstate the importance of the English translation of this film: the Iranian leaders are telling the Muslim world to prepare for the annihilation of Israel and the fall of the West Several months ago, I was informed by my contacts in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that the Basij had started work on a film that had the approval of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The purpose of the project: to inform Muslims across the globe of the immediate coming of the last Islamic messiah. As my English translation of the film makes clear (watch it exclusively at...

Police struggle to control hard-core anarchist rioters after 500,000-strong London march against government cuts ends in violence Extremists brought violent chaos to Central London yesterday after hijacking the much-heralded trade union protest against public spending cuts. Trouble continued to flare late into the night as hundreds of people attempted to hijack yesterday's massive anti government cuts demonstration. Riot police fought activists in Trafalgar Square as violent protesters threatened to overshadow the TUC rally in Hyde Park which had earlier passed off peacefully. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said between 200 and 300 people had gathered at the landmark location late yesterday...

The capitol is being stormed, again.

Iran is taking advantage of chaos in post-Mubarak Egypt to bolster its weapons-smuggling capabilities in the Sinai Peninsula, Israeli defense officials say. Tehran's goal is to build a new infrastructure there to enable it to smuggle advanced weaponry into Gaza. "Iran wants to take advantage of the current anarchy in Egypt and establish a stronger foothold in Gaza," a senior Israeli defense official told the Jerusalem Post. "They are building new capabilities, upgrading smuggling mechanisms and studying the new military presence there to see how it will affect them."

Beck gets better by the day. Glenn gets fired up as chaos is beginning to break out all over the world, including in the US. From the growing revolutions in the Middle East to the budget cut protests popping up everywhere, it seems the perfect storm could finally be upon us...

Anti-government protests raged Monday for the first time in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, with unconfirmed media reports of pro-regime snipers firing into crowds, bloody clashes on the city's main square, and fires blazing in key government buildings. Al Jazeera reported that a fire was burning inside the People's Hall, a symbol of longtime strongman Moammar Kadafi's repressive regime. TV images ......posted using frpa

Glenn Beck says that Egypt-style chaos in the streets coming to the US soon. By now, many people know that Glenn Beck—along with some conservatives and libertarians—believes that the Egypt uprising is anything but a true people’s movement and a call for democracy. As he and even some Middle East experts see it, the uprising that led to Mubarak’s stepping down yesterday is all a front for the anti-American, non-secular and Islamist Muslim Brotherhood taking over in Egypt. Beck also thinks that the chaos in Egypt’s streets will be the inspiration for revolutions in other countries, with the last stop...