Hey Agonistas, I'm going to be working at Netroots Nation in Minneapolis this week (Thurs-Sat). Do you know anyone that's going? Cliff Schecter is going to be on a panel I think, I will have to say hi. Anyone else around?? I will be working on the streaming video stuff more or less. Hit me up twitter @hongpong or email hongpong AT hongpong.com . There will also be the rightwing blogger conference RightOnline (a branch of Americans for Prosperity foundation) part of the time too, could there be a crazy live video mega blogger hypercollision?? Can Michelle Malkin and Kos enter the same ZIP code?? If there is a good livestream entry I will try to embed it on an Agonist post.

The latest from my friend Robert Erickson :)

(Minneapolis) –At a book signing in Minneapolis, recently declared the hippest and gayest city in America, local activist Robert Erickson greeted 2012 GOP presidential contender and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with a shower of rainbow glitter.

“Feel the Rainbow!” Erickson shouted. Gingrich was conducting the book signing as part of The Minnesota Family Council & Institute Annual Dinner 2011 celebration. The MFC has been an instrumental mover of a marriage inequality amendment that would enshrine discrimination in Minnesota’s state constitution.

“Since Newt is hanging with the Family Council, I figured he needed a shiny dose of Minnesota Nice to counteract the hate embraced by those who are pushing this divisive bill,” Erickson said. “Of course, he might have to explain all the glitter to his third wife, Callista.”

It Began with a Plague of Debt Demons

Stunning turns in Egypt - you have to hand it to the Egyptians, they filtered & neutralized all those underhanded thug provocateur tricks in a snap. Then unloaded their dictator - Old School Civilization like a boss ;-D

Update - they just posted an arrest warrant in Pakistan for ex-Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf! The hits don't stop! AFP: Pakistan court issues arrest warrant for Musharraf - for the Bhutto assassination no less! Sweet videos are already turning up from Algeria - below!

It's no surprise California is in tough straits – Hollywood ain't a great place, and they can even trap corruption whistleblowing attorneys like Richard Fine in jail easily over there (Fine got tangled in LA's enormous immunized bribery system). But Randy Quaid, of all people, has suddenly turned up in Canada claiming a nasty grifter conspiracy wants to kill him. (one version - interesting Estate of Denial blog). This lolcat BulletproofCourier is on top of it.

What's more telling: TMZ & People offering misleading audio clip of the Quaids worrying about their dog, or how ABC Good Morning America refused to actually name the names that Randy Quaid has named, shady Hollywood financial and legal operatives?

Alleged Hollywood conspirators according to Quaid - let's see if we can try to determine who these people are:

By Dan Feidt for Twin Cities Indymedia - More than 300 newly released pages of Iowa FBI investigation files confirm the existence of a busy network of federal agents across the Midwest dedicated to clamping down on political dissenters. A Freedom of Information Act request by Des Moines' David Goodner revealed two extensive "Terrorism Enterprise" style investigations against dissenters mainly run by the Omaha FBI office into Iowa, including digging through garbage, watching restaurants, advanced data mining and cell phone record collection. The agents involved claimed "statistical accomplishment" of saving our nation from terrorism: this is exactly, how, and why, federal agents endlessly create pretend counterterror campaigns.

More incidents keep spilling out: yet another report from the Department of Justice oversight office (ZIP 2.4MB), the Office of the Inspector General, spelled out the FBI's deception towards Congress in spying on antiwar activists in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. The DOJ-OIG report focuses on FBI spying against meetings at Pittsburgh's Thomas Merton Center, the friendly group which houses Twin Cities Indymedia's counterpart, PGH Independent Media Center, and hosted many IMCers during the 2009 G20. And of course they cheated on tests about surveillance!

Download Cointelpro Gothic - the Iowa investigation, proving the existence of a national FBI Domestic Terrorism "Anarchists Team": 300 pages FBI FOIA [9MB PDF/ Browse]. Related coverage: Iowa FBI investigation in Des Moines Register | ACLU files new PGH G20 lawsuit | PGH Trib-Review: Lawsuit planned after terror list | Docs show anti-drill PA tracking | OIG: FBI Inappropriately Tracked Domestic Advocacy Groups - The Atlantic. Below the fold: How FBI launches counterterror snooping, adds dissidents to terror watchlists!

Full statement from Wanda Johnson, Oscar Grant's mother Reaction from Grant's mother to verdict | Video | abc7news.com

A long night for residents of Oakland as former BART cop Mehserle somehow won an "involuntary manslaughter" with gun verdict after killing Oscar Grant Jan 1 2009. Found a lot of good social media items around the situation and even an awesome track.

A decade after the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, more than ten thousand activists have arrived from around the world in Detroit for the 2010 US Social Forum, the first since 2007's Atlanta conference. Over four days USSF is hosting a huge program with more than a thousand workshops and dozens of Peoples Movement Assemblies on 14 subject tracks like Detroit and the Rust Belt, Indigenous Sovereignty, Capitalism in Crisis, International Solidarity and Responsibility, Media Justice, Ensuring Community Needs, Transformative Justice & more. I'm currently in the People's Media Center at Cobo Hall, with a view of Windsor Canada and the downtown monorail right outside. The second day has just wrapped up — if only it were possible to experience these dozens of workshops at once!

WikiLeaks via SunshinePress.org just sent out a curiously ambiguous call, signed by the elusive Julian Assange, for emergency funds, with subject "WikiLeaks may be under attack", also calling for people to set up local "Friends of Wikileaks" chapters. Julian Assange signed it himself. The whole thing seems strange -- Is Assange in hiding? Is the whole thing too outsized? Daniel Ellsberg says he should hide. Would Assange refer to the 'alleged' diplomatic cables in a last ditch plea for funds? Why not?

Journalists aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza humanitarian flotilla, documented Israel's lethal military attack, and were able to smuggle out an hour of footage. The video is being released presently at a United Nations press conference by Iara Lee, a filmmaker from Cultures of Resistance (CulturesofResistance.org). Twin Cities Indymedia is helping mirror the High-Definition 1080P 16-minute edit of the Israeli attack. From the media alert: "The footage shows the mood and the activities on board the Mavi Marmara in the time leading up to the attack, including a walk through the ship, and the immediate reaction of the passengers during the attack."

Please support the distribution of this video - Mirrors will be updated here: http://tc.indymedia.org/files/flotilla-footage/index.html

HongPong.com - Scored tickets & blogger access to the Palin-Bachmann event, surely the best GOP show of the season...

A mellow crowd greeted Minnesota's top Republicans, ready to slug out another election season. There isn't much new news to report, but Andrew French (@tacomachine) got really nice photos and we got a sense the Republicans will spend another month in primary mode then shift gears immediately upon endorsement, which'll also be at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Palin wrote "23 foster kids!" on her hand & the shot was snagged... ftw!

continue reading after the jump, with lots of pics!

Strange days up here in Minnesota. A guy by the pseudonym Robert Erickson spoke to an anti-immigrant Tea Party rally at the State Capitol on Saturday. Turns out he punk'd them and demanded "Columbus Go Home" and the deportation of all these European immigrants. The videos were hits on YouTube. I got the reverse angle of the crowd in HD, now we've got a bit of a viral event unfolding!

[PoliticsinMinnesota.com - I wrote this up for work] One major dynamic of political action these days is the constant battle of perception over whether a given demonstration or political organization is really an authentic "grassroots" wildfire rising up from the people. As one local tea party supporter put it to PIM, this is really a "liberty movement," not a partisan movement, but are political opportunists of every stripe trying to reshape perceptions?

The first argument from detractors is often a claim that their opponents are really getting played or co-opted by a fake grassroots "astroturfing" operation staged by "the usual suspects," namely public relations firms, think tanks and the other institutional infrastructures dedicated to propagating ideas and influencing policy.

The Congressional Research Service is an obscure wonky staff office (annual budget: $100 million!) of the U.S. Congress that releases policy analyses on a variety of subjects, but these reports are traditionally not released to the general public. If you somehow caught word of something good in one of their reports, you had to either get it through skeezy Beltway info peddlers or via the offices of your congressional representatives. Interestingly, the CRS has lobbied to prevent its own work product from going out to the general public.

Fortunately, the rockstars at Wikileaks.org have gotten ahold of BILLION DOLLARS of research, more than 6000 new documents out there. Here's the chronological index, the alphabetical index, and OpenCRS.com must be having a party right now. NICE!! (And if you have a spare dime, increasingly popular/legally embattled WikiLeaks could really use it!) If anyone finds anything interesting, post it!! (h/t cryptome.org)

The appointment of George Mitchell as special Middle East envoy for the Obama administration was fantastic news: everyone was afraid that lame squares like Dennis Ross or Martin Indyk would end up calling the shots, in particular since a lot of AIPAC-style foreign policy wonks appeared to be saturating new appointments. Fortunately, Mitchell is a serious guy, and he's already been working the case for years, so he knows who's who and what the angles are. Since the Obama administration appears to be avoiding the total rejectionism and "surrender first, then we'll talk" neo-conservative approach, an entirely new tray of carrots and sticks have appeared! And thus, Israel and HAMAS are falling all over each other to offer cease-fire terms: HAMAS wants a year, and Israel 18 months! Mitchell is expected to roll up his sleeves and head over there next week.

Here's a grim scene: A new video surfaced of Oakland, CA police detaining several people -- and suddenly fatally shooting one of them. The video was shot from the open door of a train car, and its angle and long running time clearly show that nothing much was going on. (FLV here)

[Originally posted @work.] A little while after noon today, the State Canvassing Board began evaluating the challenged U.S. Senate race ballots. Some cookies and coffee are making the rounds; they just joked the cookies made everyone more amicable.

On the ballot where someone marked "Mickey Mouse" for president, and made a small dot on Al Franken's oval, Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson is getting a little snarky: "This isn't a voter who cared a lot... or maybe cared too much, I don't know." The small dot was ruled, with a dissenting vote, to not constitute a vote for Franken.

For the most part, things are moving along fairly smoothly, and generally everyone seems to be in good spirits. Franken's lawyer, Marc Elias, has gotten razzed for being blustery at press conferences (most memorably in a great MinnPost article by Jay Weiner), but he seems cool and collected today, as does U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's team. Evidently, these lawyers know that ticking off judges is a bad move.

Several outlets are streaming live: WCCO, the Star Tribune, and The Uptake are all putting up video feeds. The Uptake also has a nifty live chat widget going, as does Bob Collins' News Cut.

Several heavily disputed ballots have been set aside to evaluate later: it's probably a wise move to drill through the easier challenges first. The Franken campaign touted a report by one of the AP's Capitol writers, Brian Bakst, which suggested that their camp might finally have the edge because of around 200 easily determined ballots in his favor. Of course, the Coleman camp doesn't buy it.

Gold finally posted its biggest gain in three months last week. On December 2nd, goldbugs said gold futures went into backwardation, which suggests supplies are drying up. What does this mean? I can't possibly claim to get this stuff; however, there are crazy bastards trying to spark a COMEX futures gold 'bank run' of sorts.

The artificially tilted gold market could likely get a huge thrashing at the end of the month. The idea: everyone trades on gold and silver futures - bets of delivery at a certain price and time. Normally all these bets get rolled over to cash and extended into the next cycle -- so the gold that's being bet on never has to leave the reserves.

Yesterday the Chicago window workers' sit-in looked like it was gaining momentum - national press, a huge deal, an icon of a nation whose economy is parked in free fall as companies get denied the credit lines needed to keep rolling debts over. Now, that demonstration is off the news.

Today, former Democratic Alabama governor Don Siegelman's appeals case started: he got yanked out of office, convicted in a faulty process by the corrupt local U.S. Attorney's office, and tossed in prison. Siegelman also off the news.

Fellow Agonistas, there's one documentary you should check out, perhaps even before you go vote tomorrow (if you choose / are able to do so). We worked really hard over the last seven weeks to get this feature on the violent repression of political dissent at the Republican National Convention out the door. "Terrorizing Dissent: Election Cut" was produced by Twin Cities Indymedia and Glass Bead Collective of New York, along with several other collectives and Indymedia chapters, cut from hundreds of hours of footage that people gave us.

There is another category of offenses, described by the French poet André Chenier as "les crimes puissants qui font trembler les lois," crimes so great that they make the laws themselves tremble. We know what to do with someone caught misappropriating funds, but when confronted with evidence of a systematic attempt to undermine the political system itself, we recoil in a general failure of imagination and nerve.

-- Gary Sick, October Surprise (p 226)

******

I have never understood why "normal" people are supposed to believe that the Iranians let the hostages go during Reagan's inauguration because he intimidated them, but then Reagan quickly pivoted to sell them all those weapons in the 1982-1986 period traditionally known as "Iran Contra". [Crossposted @ hongpong.com]

We were about to call it a night, and had drifted past a CNN rerun of Bill Nye and Larry King rambling about UFOs. Suddenly this secret variant of CNN known as "CNN International" broke in, and unknown anchors announced Barack Obama has arrived in Afghanistan. They said their staff had only learned in the last 30 minutes - it is still not on Google News (although the Wapo called it "coming days").

With a little luck our guy from Registan can peer sideways at the spectacle there? First post?!

Ok here's a pretty good one. From Cryptome.org, which appears to be the only place regularly monitoring the Federal Register (essentially like a cash register receipt declaring new and exciting autonomous plots of the executive branch agencies... Once it's in the Register, it's Reality!)...

Well, in this case there are marvelous new proposals from the SEC for so-called "ratings agencies," aka groups of shady morons agreeing everything is fine, truly sure that blocks of goo can inflate in value through Magic Confidence in Bubbles.

I will really miss The Wire. We are gonna watch the last episode the second it comes on OnDemand in a couple hours whenever they finally post the episode. Damn.

At the end of the second-to-last episode, Clay Davis tells Detective Freamon that Levy, the gangsters' lawyer has been buying secret documents from someone at the Courthouse. My guess is that the Judge was selling the documents -- that would bring the plot full circle, since the Judge and Detective McNulty set the whole plot in motion at the very beginning of the series' first episode. The Judge has been signing the wiretaps all along, hence The Wire merely working out to supply info to the highest bidder, would be a pretty good final joke.

Hey everyone, I caught some important news late Friday afternoon (And I've got a cold right now and nothin' better to do!).

The big news is that the City of St. Paul would take all applications for demonstrations and space in parks on March 3rd. Naturally the City put out the news very late on Friday to keep it off the news radar. There are only a few days to offer some kinds of finalized plans for the permitted use of public space during the Republican National Convention.
http://www.stpaul.gov/convention/rncpermits.html

Since the process apparently involves a drawing/lottery, it may be a good idea for many groups of people (bands?) to enter into the lottery system and win space/time in a park.