If Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine has taught us nothing else, it's to expect governments facing overwhelming popular backlash over austerity policies to rush legislation forward rather than pause and debate the issue.

Right on schedule, lawmakers scrambled Wednesday to adopt a bundle of emergency laws that will inflict further income and government spending cuts upon the people of Greece. Parliament plans to debate the new cuts even though it's extremely likely both pieces of legislation will be approved. 

The $172 billion bailout is the second huge loan Greece has taken on in less than two years, and despite the bailouts, things have only gotten worse. During the same period of time, Greece has been experiencing what the Washington Post calls "deepening misery," and Paul Krugman described as "double-digit decline in output." 

The caustic measures: cutting the minimum wage by 20 percent, deep cuts in government spending, wages, and pensions, and some 150,000 government employees losing their jobs, are all the more wasteful given austerity's poor global track record.

An estimated 36,000 post-secondary students in Quebec have left their classrooms for strikes planned in response to proposed tuition-fee hikes. The Charest government plans to double tuition (the current $2,200 fee will rise to $3,800 over the next five years). 

Montreal police arrested 37 people last week after the protesters occupied a downtown college, and it appears as though the police are escalating actions against the students. CBC posted a photo of police using pepper spray to disperse a crowd blocking the Delta hotel during a demonstration on Thursday. Riot police were brought in to suppress a group of people responsible for smashing furniture and windows and spraying graffiti.

While the striking students represent less than 10 percent of all Quebec students, their numbers have dramatically grown in the past few days.

"In just one week, the strike has more than tripled," said Jeanne Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the CLASSE coalition.

"The (government) now has no choice but to take our strike seriously. If it does not (act) quickly, the Quebec education system will paralyzed even more."

Recent raids on the Occupy movement's major camps have led some mainstream media outlets to declare that all the camps are "gone," a claim easily disproven by visiting any one of the dozens of cells still operating in smaller towns and cities all across the country.

Not only are many camps still in operation, but the offshoots of Occupy are not only surviving, but securing real, meaningful victories, which should interest media players who bemoaned that Occupy was too ideologically scattered and too flighty to fight for lasting policy changes.

Occupy oftentimes plays a supportive, inspirational role in ongoing protests. For example, parents and students occupied Brian Piccolo Specialty School on Chicago's West Side for nearly twenty-four hours in opposition to a proposal that would result in the firings of Piccolo's entire staff under the tutelage of a private operator, a dramatic gutting process the city refers to as a "turn-around."

Outside, Occupy Chicago and other allies set up an encampment and protested in solidarity.

Friday marks the five-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In September of last year, protesters began camping in Zuccotti Park, and were almost universally dismissed (and despised) by the establishment media as being an unserious force with a fleeting expiration date.

OWS chapters now operate in all fifty states and the movement has grown to the international level with cells in at least 82 countries. Its members have embraced a hugely diverse array of tactics including, but not limited to, occupations, strikes, teach-ins, wonky letter-writing campaigns to the SEC, and now reportedly filing for a super PAC.

A supporter of the 99 percent is one of the latest citizens (or corporations) to apply to raise unlimited sums of money for politics.

John Paul Thornton of Decatur, Alabama submitted an application to the Federal Election Commission on behalf of Occupy Wall Street to create the Occupy Wall Street Political Action Committee.

A central criticism of the Occupy movement has been the group's wide array of mission statements, so it's odd that a recent ideologically-focused OWS protest received relatively little media attention.

Occupy submitted its 325-page technical comment letter – written by the working group Occupy the SEC in the atrium of 60 Wall Street – to U.S. regulators this week.

The submitted letter is an impressive document (Felix Salmon calls it "absolutely astonishing") calling for the SEC to strengthen and enforce the Volcker Rule, named after former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, a reform that would curb the same risky speculative trading that tanked the world's economies in 2008. (The letter can be read in its entirety here, PDF).

Occupy the SEC's working group is comprised of a remarkable gathering of wonks and legal experts: a former derivatives trader, a former compliance officer at a major financial firm, a corporate lawyer, and a technology expert who helped Wall Street firms design proprietary software for "volatility surface modelling."

The goal of their very detailed letter: “We want the regulators to enforce the Volcker rule vigorously,” said Akshat Tewary, the lawyer, in an interview. “There’s obviously a lot of pressure” on regulators coming from foreign governments, banks and “pretty much everyone to try to dilute and winnow away the rule as much as possible. So we want to take the counterpoint position and try to have it enforced as much as possible.”

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For the past five months, states across the nation have permitted law enforcement officials to abuse Occupy protesters will near-total impunity. It's true that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson told Oakland police they really shouldn't cover up their name tags during protests because that's a blatant violation of department rules, but sadly Henderon's insistence that police abide by the law is an exception, and not the rule.

More often, state officials pardoned the behavior of police by claiming unarmed protesters presented a clear and present danger to citizens. 

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg rejected a proposal by three Democratic New York state senators who wanted an independent inspector to oversee the New York Police Department after what they called several abuses, including the widespread surveillance of Muslims and the abuse of Occupy Wall Street protesters. 

Bloomberg has gone on record many times defending the NYPD's most controversial tactics and insisting the city won't turn over the police department to an outside group despite overwhelming evidence of not only the presence of deep corruption, but official approval of those nefarious tactics by the highest ranks of the NYPD, including Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

The Citizens Police Review Board (CPRB) was scheduled to meet the night of Feb. 9 to discuss the treatment of Occupy Oakland by police, but at the last minute "indefinitely postponed" the meeting.

Instead, protesters facilitated their own forum to review police actions that took place on Jan. 28 and Oct. 25, when Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen suffered a severe head injury after being hit by a police tear gas canister.

Kevin Gosztola, Firedoglake:

Occupy Oakland did not think it would be right to let the CPRB get away with indefinitely postponing the event. They invited community, press and city officials to attend and listen. They planned speakers for the event and organized a section at the end of the forum for the public to share their thoughts.

Additionally, Occupy Oakland notes in a post promoting this event, “Federal monitors overseeing OPD’s Consent Decree have requested a video tape of the forum to use in their own investigations.”

Keeping the Oakland Police Department under the constant watchful eye of the federal government has cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Using the California Public Records Act, KTVU combed through nine years of records to find out exactly how much money has been spent.

Athens erupted early Monday in response to Greece's austerity measures that include deep cuts in government spending, wages (lawmakers agreed to cut the minimum wage by 20 percent), and pensions. Some 150,000 government employees will lose their jobs under the new bailout deal, which is estimated at €130 billion ($172.6 billion) and passed Parliament in a 199-74 vote.

The European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund were the forces demanding Greece's second bailout. This is the second time in less than seven months that the troika steered Greece toward dramatic budgetary cuts. (photo by Getty)

Tens of thousands of individuals took to the streets in protest that included widespread property damage – the Athens News Agency reports that more than 45 buildings were damaged by fire and numerous others looted – resulting in the arrests of 74 people, according to police.

Some protesters threw rocks at the police, who countered with tear gas. After night fall, the demonstration turned more violent as Greek demonstrators threw molotov cocktails at police:

Thousands of protesters gathered at Brooklyn Tech High School yesterday evening to oppose 25 pending school closures, 13 of which are scheduled to occur in Brooklyn. 

Modifying a staple Occupy Wall Street slogan, the crowd chanted, "All day, all week, occupy the DOE!" (photo by @ydanis)

Despite the large turnout, WABC reports the Panel for Education Policy voted to close 18 New York City schools anyway. However, many first-hand witnesses and the New York Post report that the panel voted to shutter all 23 schools on the list (The Post has a list of the school closures at its website). 

The count discrepancy may be due to the panel voting to close or partially close the schools. According to the Wall Street Journal, the board voted to close 18 schools and "shrink" 5 more. Most of the schools slated for closure will be phased out over several years.

Conservatives from across the country will converge upon Washington today for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), featuring such prominent speakers as Florida Governor Rick Scott, Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. 

According to CPAC's website, the conference is a great meet-up opportunity for activists to mingle with conservative leaders in order to share their resources. The website also adds CPAC is super awesome for "Average Joes" and students  who might find the speakers and participants "inspiring and enlightening" since ordinarily the "liberal left tends to encompass everything that happens on college campuses."

In the past, CPAC has been criticized for its vitriolic style. Matthew Albright, a journalist for the award-winning Louisiana State University Daily Reveille, once described the youth presence at CPAC as "disturbing, but only because CPAC itself is disturbing."

Albright continues:

The event is a riotous and self-congratulatory anger festival showcasing the many faults of the most militant, reactionary and dangerous wings of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. The prime speakers at the event included Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter — a veritable laundry list of exactly who should not be in charge of steering a movement, let alone a political party.