The House voted 298-121 that two tablespoons of pepper spray should be counted as a serving of vegetable.

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​Courts call it asset forfeiture. Critics call it robbery. Either way, local and federal law-enforcement agencies will likely get to keep any cash, computers, cars, or real estate seized during the raids on medical marijuana dispensaries earlier this week.

According to the Department of Justice website, asset forfeiture "enhances public safety and security…[by] removing the proceeds of crime and other assets relied upon by criminals and their associates to perpetuate their criminal activity against our society."

Translation: If you sell drugs (or do anything else illegal), prosecutors can confiscate your money, anything bought using that money, and anything used to make that money. For example, if you drive your car to a drug deal and get busted, odds are that car will eventually become property of the law-enforcement agency that caught you. And in some cases they don’t even have to arrest you to get away with it.

And there’s your reason there won’t be legalization any time soon.

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People have come to see copyright as a tool of punishment, Europe’s technology chief has said in her strongest-yet attack on the current copyright system.

Digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes said on Saturday that the creative industries had to embrace rather than resist new technological ways of distributing artistic works. She added that the existing copyright system was not rewarding the vast majority of artists.

"Is the current copyright system the right and only tool to achieve our objectives? Not really," Kroes said in a speech to the Forum D’Avignon thinktank. "Citizens increasingly hear the word copyright and hate what is behind it."

"Sadly, many see the current system as a tool to punish and withhold, not a tool to recognise and reward," Kroes added.

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"We started asking, How can we reduce the human interaction between businessmen and state workers, so we can reduce corruption?" says Jane Joram, senior deputy registrar general at the Company Registrar Office. "Now you can file your application online and you can pay online. That means no more bribes."

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ECONOMISTS are constantly urging governments to adopt policies that would reduce global imbalances—which, in crude terms, means that China should slash its current-account surplus and America its deficit. Yet they ignore the biggest imbalance of all: the current-account surplus that planet Earth appears to run with extraterrestrials. In theory, countries’ current-account balances should all sum to zero because one country’s export is another’s import. However, if you add up all countries’ reported current-account transactions (exports minus imports of goods and services, net investment income, workers’ remittances and other transfers), the world exported $331 billion more than it imported in 2010, according to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook. The fund forecasts that the global current-account surplus will rise to almost $700 billion by 2014.

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Who’s coordinating crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street? The San Francisco Bay Examiner reports that, although there was rampant speculation about Homeland Security’s role in Occupy Wall Street crackdowns across the nation given multiple police force’s paramilitary actions, the Feds are not directly involved. Instead, planning has been facilitated by an affiliated non-profit organization called Police Executive Research Forum, aka PERF.

But what exactly is PERF?
“The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) is a national membership organization of progressive police executives from the largest city, county and state law enforcement agencies. PERF is dedicated to improving policing and advancing professionalism through research and involvement in public policy debate. Incorporated in 1977, PERF’s primary sources of operating revenues are government grants and contracts, and partnerships with private foundations and other organizations.”

PERF publishes studies, such as Future Technology Needs in Law Enforcement, a Partner Paper with Lockheed Martin (pdf)

And books such as Chief Concerns: Exploring the Challenges of Police Use of Force which was “generously supported by Motorola Inc.”

There is currently a crowd sourced investigation into #PERF underway, and it looks like they may be the next big Anonymous target

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Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional super committee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.

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Police dressed in riot gear at U.C. Davis on Friday afternoon used pepper spray to clear seated protesters from the university quad where they had set up a small Occupy encampment, pro-actively and repeatedly dousing the passively-resisting students with a chemical agent designed to cause pain and suffering in order to make it easier to remove them.

Almost a world-press photo worthy picture – the police officer almost posing for the title “pig”, and the press in the background recording excessive police force like it’s absolutely normal what is happening.

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A pretty remarkable thing just happened. A press conference, scheduled for 2:00pm between the UC Davis Chancellor and police on campus, did not end at 2:30. Instead, a mass of Occupy Davis students and sympathizers mobilized outside, demanding to have their voice heard. After some initial confusion, UC Chancellor Linda Katehi refused to leave the building, attempting to give the media the impression that the students were somehow holding her hostage. A group of highly organized students formed large gap for the chancellor to leave. They chanted “we are peaceful” and “just walk home,” but nothing changed for several hours. Eventually student representatives convinced the chancellor to leave after telling their fellow students to sit down and lock arms.

Here’s video of the pepper spray incident:

Incidentally, The police officer shown in the video calmly walking up to the seated protesters and spraying them in the face made $110,243.12 last year for the privilege. The assistant professor calling for the chancellor’s resignation is risking only a little more than half of that.