Street Visuals

Video: NYPD Wrongfully Arrested Participants of Occupy The Bronx Festivities

2011-12-04T10:30:00.001-08:00

Please, view this video of the arrests made in the Bronx, share and invite others...

On Saturday, December 3, 2011, Occupy the Bronx was scheduled to conduct its roving General Assembly in solidarity with Morning Glory Garden gardeners at 11 am. However, upon arriving we were preempted by NYPD Captain Garcia and his legal gang – including some in “community” affairs attire – under his command from the 40th Precinct who began randomly arresting Bronxites, including Shaun Lin, Carlos Sabater, David Suker, Alex, and a sister who was merely there as an independent writer for allegedly “blocking pedestrian traffic” and congregating without a permit.

At the time of the arrest, there weren’t many of us there, but we were as vulnerable to arrest as anyone else and as vulnerable as those who were indeed wrongfully arrested without cause.
JOIN US!
THIS WEDNESDAY at 6PM at Lincoln Hospital, we invite you to confront the 40th Precinct at the precinct council’s monthly meeting to expose the inconsistency of this precinct’s policing practices within the Mott Haven, Melrose, Port Morris sections of the Bronx; to stand up for Shaun’s, Carlos’, David’s, Alex’s, and the sister’s, and the Bronx’ collective dignity; and to demand Deputy Inspector Christopher J. McCormack reign in his crew in all shades of blue!
JOIN US!
At the Bronx general assembly, there are numerous causes being fought for, all spearheaded by a single principle of community control and self-governance. The people in the Bronx should decide how things are run in the Bronx–in our schools, hospitals, streets and neighborhoods.
GENERAL ASSEMBLIES take place every Saturday at 11am, rotating locations each week:
1st weekend of every month: Fordham Plaza
2nd weekend of every month: 149th & 3rd Ave aka The Hub
3rd weekend of every month: Plaza by the Hunts Point Ave 6 train station
4th weekend of every month: Gun Hill Rd and White Plains Ave
Visit: http://www.occupythebronx.org/

Police Beating Iraq War Veteran in Oakland

2011-11-20T15:07:00.001-08:00

In yet another clash with Riot Police in Oakland, California, another peaceful Iraq War Veteran gets a beating from the Oakland Police.
Video footage has emerged of a police officer beating an Iraq war veteran so hard that he suffered a ruptured spleen in an apparently unprovoked incident at a recent Occupy protest in California.
http://occupymedfordoregon.org/2011/11/oakland-video-footage-shows-police-bea...

Run (The Occupy Movement Endures)

2011-11-17T07:38:00.001-08:00

"Run" by The Verge of Change Single available on iTunes and CD Baby

Nothing comes easy, you gotta fight for the right It doesn't seem fair for tax to reach heights People who cannot even afford to live life And the rich sit back, relax, remain ni

Banks no longer a friend, they're disliked For their blood sucking ways whenever your card swipes Robbed by the so-called good, and that's life No way, we're making a change man, don't take it light

Add a little rhythm, until they cut the ribbon Big brother stop fibbing, we all gotta make a living And for those that live in riches, do you understand the vision Maybe not, because you're too selfish to take a listen

You know the left is barely left, and the right is never right Now it's time for an election, and the people wanna fight The FOX is in the henhouse, and the chickens are uptight We're no closer to an answer, 'cause the questions have no bite It's all a corporate selection, and tonight may be the night

So I say run, baby, run, yeah run, just run So I say run, baby, run, run, just run So I say run, baby, run, yeah run, just run Run, baby, run, run, just run

The kids way down on Wall Street say it's 99-to-1 We'll ever find that someone who's fit enough to run

Run baby run, don't stop until you reach your goals Make a lifelong change, build a future home Young kids are in school, unemployment grows Let's do it for the world, that's what youth holds

We all breathe the same air, don't remain fair That is why educated people need the welfare Help, yeah, that is what we need Let's all get together, let the peace increase

Get outta bed, the talkin' heads are beating at their gums It's this one, no it's that one whose day has finally come

So I say run, baby, run, yeah run, just run Run, baby, run, run, just run It's 99-to-1, keep searching for the one 'Cause he might be the one, hey she can't be the one

The kids way down on Wall Street are beating on their drums Look forwards, not backwards, a change is gonna come

So I say run Run, 'cause a change is gonna come Run, yeah run Nothing comes easy, you gotta fight for the right

Keep running towards the sun, run, baby run And the rich sit back, relax, remain nice Keep running towards the sun, run, just run, 'Cause a change is gonna come

Robbed by the so-called good via youtube.com

#OccupyWallStreet – Live streaming since September 17th

2011-11-15T08:02:00.001-08:00

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

» BREAKING NEWS – Judge Orders Protesters Be Allowed Back in Park With Their Belongings

2011-11-15T06:52:00.001-08:00

For Immediate Release: November 15, 2011

Contact:

Yetta Kurland – 917-701-9590
Daniel Alterman – 917-945-2599
Gideon Oliver – 646-263-3495
Margaret Kunstler – 917-331-8012

New York, NY: At around 6 AM on November 15, 2011, attorneys associated with the New York City Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild working as the Liberty Park Legal Working Group obtained a temporary restraining order against the City of New York, various City agencies, and Brookfield properties directing that occupiers be allowed back on the premises with their belongings.

Earlier, at approximately 1 AM, the NYPD began massing around Zuccotti Park “aka Liberty Park.” In the following hours reports surfaced that the NYPD entered the park with police in riot gear backed up by numerous police vehicles, including a bulldozer, evicting occupiers. In the process they destroyed property and arrested dozens of occupiers and protestors including NYC Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez and District Leader Paul Newell.

In the coming hours, days and weeks the LPLWG will pursue all legal options to enable the occupiers to continue to exercise their first amendment rights to speech and assembly for speech. Attorney Yetta Kurland, one of the attorneys from the LPLWG, said, “This is a victory for everyone who believes in the First Amendment. We will continue to fight for everyone’s right to continue the occupation.” In response to the injunction, Daniel Alterman, also an attorney with the LPLWG, stated that, “This is a victory for all Americans, for the constitution and for the 99%.” Gideon Oliver, another attorney with the LPLWG reacted by saying, “The LPLWG has been fighting to ensure their right to free speech from day one of the occupation. The occupiers right to free speech is based in our most core legal principles and we will be here till the end to fight for those rights.”

The order is available for download here.

The Liberty Park Legal Working Group is a group of volunteer attorneys and legal workers dedicated to defending the rights of those engaged in constitutionally-protected assembly or protest.

via nlgnyc.org

A Call to Occupy | OccupyWallSt.org

2011-11-15T06:46:00.001-08:00

#OccupyWallStreet Convening 9 a.m. Sixth Avenue and Canal Street.

New York, NY — We are a global movement that is reclaiming our humanity and our future. We have stepped into a revitalizing civic process, realizing that we cannot fix our crises isolated from one another. We need collective action, and we need civic space. We are creating that civic space.

To occupy is to embody the spirit of liberation that we wish to manifest in our society. It is to exercise our freedom to assemble. We are creating space for community, values, ideas, and a level of meaningful dialogue that is absent in the present discourse.

Liberated space is breaking free of isolation, breaking down the walls that literally and figuratively separate us from one another. It is a new focus on community, trust, love and hope. We occupy to create a vision of equality, liberty and social justice onto the blank paving stones of public parks, in the silent hallways of abandoned schools, banks, and beyond. Public space plays a crucial role in this civic process and encourages open, transparent organizing in our movement. As we have seen in Liberty Square, outdoor space invites people to listen, speak, share, learn, and act.

Last night, billionaire Michael Bloomberg sent a massive police force to evict members of the public from Liberty Square—home of Occupy Wall Street for the past two months. People who were part of a dynamic civic process were beaten and pepper-sprayed, their personal property destroyed.

Supporters of this rapidly growing movement were mobilized in the middle of the night, making phone calls, taking the streets en masse, and planning next steps. Americans and people around the world are appalled at Bloomberg's treatment of people who peacefully assemble. We are appalled, but not deterred. Liberty Square was dispersed, but its spirit not defeated. Today we are stronger than we were yesterday. Tomorrow we will be stronger still. We are breaking free of the fear that constricts and confines us. We occupy to liberate.

We move forward in the grand tradition of the transformative social movements that have defined American history. We stand on the shoulders of those who have struggled before us, and we pick up where others have left off. We are creating a better society for us all.

Occupy Wall Street has renewed a sense of hope. It has revived a belief in community and awakened a revolutionary spirit too long silenced. Join us as we liberate space and build a movement. 9 a.m. Tuesday morning at Sixth Avenue and Canal we continue.

Global actions will be posted on this page.

via occupywallst.org

Occupy Wallstreet Nov. 15th Riot Police Raid, Videos and More. Stop The Repression!

2011-11-15T04:51:00.001-08:00

November 15, 2011 OWS

tear gassing of the kitchen. - Violent arrests pepper spray #OWS #occuppywallstreet Occupy Wall Street November 15, 2011 - Police Eviction NYPD Raid OWS Zuccotti Park Raw Video: Piles of Trash Near Zuccotti Park NYPD raid video: OWS protesters arrested at Zuccotti Park

Police raiding Zuccotti Park in the middle of the night: early news reports and footage -- 11/15/11 Occupy Wall Street: Cops clear Zuccotti Park - November-15-2011 - #occupytogether

ABC World News Now: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Cleared From Zuccotti Park

Watch livestream of Zuccotti Park here: http://www.livestream.com/occupynyc .

Go to 'Occupy Wall Street News and Videos' here: http://paper.li/f-1319837259 -- a daily paper to keep up with and support OWS movement!; and visit my Youtube channel -- 'Munderlarkst' -- for more OWS-related videos!

Please feel free to share any news or videos to spread the word and information. That's what it's there for! Thanks! -Munderlarkst

Thanks to people filming down at Zuccotti Park and everywhere!

From: Russia Today OWS destroyed: Cops clear Zuccotti Park (PHOTOS, VIDEO) Published: 15 November, 2011, 11:58 Occupy Wall Street protesters have clashed with police at Zuccotti Park after being ordered to leave their longtime encampment in New York. At least 70 people have been arrested with the police said to have used pepper spray. Meanwhile, City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez, 51, has reportedly been beaten by the NYPD and is bleeding from head. The police operation commenced at approximately 1am Tuesday. Hundreds of police have mobilized around the park showing protesters letters informing them that they need to leave the encampment temporarily. The NYC Mayor's Office has also posted their demand on Twitter. The tweet read: "Occupants of Zuccotti should temporarily leave and remove tents and tarps. Protestors can return after the Park is cleared." A group of protesters estimates vary from 40 to 100 are refusing to leave the park. Peaceful protesters have been dragged out of the "kitchen" by their arms and legs while nonviolently resisting NYPD, which has also repeatedly tear-gassed people.

http://rt.com/news/ows-clear-zuccotti-park-347/

NOVEMBER 15, 2011, 5:39 A.M. ET Police Clear Zuccotti Park Occupy Wall Street Protesters Arrested in Unannounced Raid By JESSICA FIRGER, MICHAEL AMON, AARON RUTKOFF and PERVAIZ SHALLWANI New York City police and sanitation workers swept in and cleared out the tents inside Zuccotti Park during an unannounced raid on the Occupy Wall Street encampment Tuesday morning, arresting 70 protesters who refused to leave. At least 400 New York Police Department officers dressed in riot gear surrounded the park at around 1 a.m. Tuesday. Officers used bull horns to warn the protesters who have been living in the small, privately owned plaza that the area would be temporarily evacuated and cleared of illegal structures, which were described as fire hazards.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190504577039253668863814.htm

Press Suppression at Occupy Wall Street Raid Around 1:00am on Tuesday, November 15th, the NYPD moved in to clear Zuccotti Park of all protestors and equipment. Members of the press, both independent and mainstream, were systematically prevented from covering the story " #BREAKING: Police in riot gear raid Zuccotti Park, order protesters to vacate bit.ly/uDycwr #OWS NBC New York 5 hours ago ReplyRetweet " "I'm press," I said. "Don't care," officer replied. #OWS Andrew Katz 2 hours ago ReplyRetweet Village Voice writer Rosie Gray sums up the theme of the night: " Me: "I'm press!" Lady cop: "not tonight" #ows

From The Bronx We Are The 99%

2011-11-11T19:13:00.001-08:00

At 161 Street in The Bronx protesting Chase bank...demanding that the rich pay their fair share of taxes. Standing against Corporate Greed! In Solidarity with the Occupation Movement. Occupy The Bronx! Occupy Wall Street! Occupy Everywhere! via youtube.com

Take Back Morning Glory Garden - YouTube

2011-11-08T13:59:00.001-08:00

Morning Glory is a garden created and maintained by youths for years on an abandoned lot. The week of Nov. 4th 2011 Housing and Preservation Development (HPD) came to the garden without any advance notice. They began destroying personal property belonging to the community. On Monday, the community were still angered by the disregard of those responsible for the destruction of the garden and their person property.via youtube.com

People's Assembly, Sat. Nov. 5, to be LIVE STREAMED

2011-11-04T12:31:00.001-07:00

Bail Out the People Movement / South Bronx Community Congress / Labor-Community Forum

Contact Information
Ramón Jimenez    or      Dee Knight                                                                              November 4, 2011
917-517-1320                 646-271-4158
LaborCommunityForum@gmail.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 4, 2011
People’s Assembly Sat. Nov. 5 to be Live-Streamed from Hostos College, 12noon – 4pm
A People’s Assembly at Hostos College this Saturday, November 5, will be accessible as “live stream” online video at the following address:

www.ustream.com
Show: mumiaabujamalonamove (Cut and paste this into the search field and press enter.)

The People’s Assembly will bring together the Occupy movement with the South Bronx Community Congress, the Bail Out the People Movement and the Bronx Freedom Party. The People’s Assembly is scheduled from noon to 5pm.

Participants include members of Teamsters Local 808 at Woodlawn Cemetery, SEIU Local 32BJ/Schools Division, Transport Workers Union Local 100, Picture the Homeless, Occupy the Bronx, District 12 Parents Association Presidents’ Council, the CASA tenants organizations, La Peña del Bronx, Labor-Community Forum, the May 1 Coalition for Workers’ and Immigrants’ Rights, Bail Out the People Movement, and others.

A video from People’s Video Network (online now) conveys some of the message of the People’s Assembly: http://www.youtube.com/peoplesvideo#p/a/u/0/jk_aQ_zOz9s

The People’s Assembly will focus on action plans, including:

A Nov. 12 march & rally at Woodlawn Cemetery against racist anti-union abuse on the job

Actions on Nov. 17 both in the Bronx and Manhattan to demand jobs

A March Against Poverty & Violence in the South Bronx on Nov. 19

Hearings, marches and picketlines to save the U.S. Postal Service, and occupy post offices

Support for efforts to defend the right to education and community control of the schools

Immigrants' rights actions to be announced

Co-Chair Ramon Jimenez, a founder of the South Bronx Community Congress and Freedom Party candidate for New York State Attorney General in 2010, emphasized the “people power” message of the event. “Just like the Occupy movement as a whole, this Bronx People’s Assembly offers a way for ordinary people to make their voices heard,” he said. “We also want to find a way for ordinary working families to be part of this growing movement,” he added.

Key demands expected to be part of the People’s Assembly include:
1.       An end to racist and anti-union violence and abuse on the job, like Woodlawn Cemetery.
2.       A campaign to end the Taylor law and other restrictions on union rights, and support for upcoming contract battles in the public sector, eg PEF and TWU, + fights to restore cuts in the schools.
3.       Cancellation of the student debt.
4.       A large-scale public works program, and an end to efforts to wipe out the postal service
5.       Reversal of the attacks on Medicare, SNAP and Social Security

Third International Anti-imperialist Conference of International Anti-imperialist and People’s Solidarity Coordinating Committee

2011-11-02T14:38:00.001-07:00

Third International Anti-imperialist Conference of International Anti-imperialist and People’s Solidarity Coordinating Committee (IAPSCC) Convened jointly with Socialist Party of Bangladesh (SPB) On the occasion of 94th Anniversary of November Revolution and 31st Anniversary of Foundation of SPB
Dhaka, November 27-29, 2011
A Call
1. Rise up in protest against aggression, occupation, looting and blockade by the imperialist powers led by USA in different corners of the globe, including, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Nepal, Latin America, Cuba and DPRK.
2. Strengthen the movement to protect and safeguard the national wealth of Bangladesh, including the natural resources of coal, gas, and petroleum.
3. Save the 140 million people of Bangladesh from capitalist oppression and exploitation; realize the people’s aspirations in the War of Liberation through the victory of socialist revolution. http://spb.org.bd/index.php?option=com_phocagallery&view=category&id=3%3Apart...

Essential Knowledge For A Wall Street Protestor / TheTiny Dot

2011-11-02T11:12:00.001-07:00

Commentary: What is found interesting is that if the root of many issues being faced by the 99% is caused by the two tiered (Democrate and Republican) political system and their Corporate Croonies rooted on economic monopololy what changes will be achieved in this world, if this incredible movement allows the same system to remain in place?

Essential Knowledge For A Wall Street Protestor

TheTiny Dot

OCCUPY YOUR MORAL GROUND

2011-11-01T19:19:00.001-07:00

The Occupy Wall Street movements and climate action movements stand on the same moral ground and affirm the same moral principles: It’s wrong to wreck the world. It’s wrong to wreck the health and hopes of others. An economic system that forces the people to bear the risks of the recklessness of a few powerful profiteers, to assume the burdens of others’ privilege, and to pay the real costs of destructive industries in the currency of their health and the hopes of their children -- that system is immoral. And when, to enrich a powerful few, that system threatens to disrupt forever the great planetary cycles that support all the lives on Earth? This is moral monstrosity on a cosmic scale.

        Both movements affirm that all flourishing is mutual. The world is deeply interconnected and interdependent; damage to any part undermines the thriving of the whole. Accordingly, every person, no matter how rich, and every system, no matter how entrenched, has the responsibility to honor affirmative obligations of justice and compassion to present and future generations of all beings. Not only in principle. On the ground.

       The Occupy Wall Street Movements are connecting the dots on a map of dysfunction and injustice. Climate change. Toxic neighborhoods. Financial recklessness. Jobs despair. Concentrated wealth. Pointless war. The dots all connect to one central social pathology, which is funding (one might say, buying and selling) of elections (and, of the elected) by powerful centers of wealth -- mostly corporations, mostly destructive and extractive corporations. Our erstwhile democracy has now developed a futures market in politicians. This has created a situation where the government is fundamentally controlled by those who would risk or wreck the (name your favorite: economy, environment, children’s futures) for their own short-term gain.

      The consequence is, of course, that the destructive few now control the regulatory agencies and potential regulations that might have limited their recklessness and greed. They have the consequent power to close off options for resolving the environmental and economic emergencies. They have the power to block federal actions that might prevent injustices. They have the power to bulldoze the natural systems that sustain our lives.

      This is what demonstrators' homemade signs are saying: Get the money out of politics (and politician’s pockets), so we can be a democracy again, so we can enact the measures that will save us from personal and global catastrophe. Self-created environmental catastrophe has taken down many civilizations before ours. But this time, the self-inflicted catastrophe of climate change will take down also the hydrological cycles and relative climate stability that have allowed the evolution of the world as we know and love it. We can draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide to livable levels. But not until we draw down the power of those who are enriched by destroying the conditions of human and ecological thriving.

     We are all in this together. The lines that connect climate change-jobs-environment-education-health-justice are strong and undeniable. The time has passed for an environmental movement. The time has passed for a climate change movement. The time has passed for isolated grassroots movements. We stand on ground that trembles with tectonic movement. Along the straining fault lines of our civilization, we feel the forces building for justice, sanity, and lasting ecological and cultural thriving. This, finally, is The Big One – the coming together of all of us who care about the future and do not want to gamble it away. The Big One will shake the world.

To Sign up for
Kathleen Dean Moore's
email newsletter:

via riverwalking.com

Just in Pictures...

2011-11-01T17:37:00.001-07:00

PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America

2011-10-30T12:38:00.001-07:00

As was unfortunately expected, the House version of PROTECT IP has been released (embedded below) and it's ridiculously bad. Despite promises from Rep. Goodlatte, there has been no serious effort to fix the problems of the Senate bill, and it's clear that absolutely no attention was paid to the significant concerns of the tech industry, legal professionals, investors and entrepreneurs. There are no two ways around this simple fact: this is an attempt to build the Great Firewall of America. The bill would require service providers to block access to certain websites, very much contrary to US official positions on censorship and internet freedom, and almost certainly in violation of the First Amendment.

Oh, and because PROTECT IP wasn't enough of a misleading and idiotic name, the House has upped the ante. The new bill is called: "the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act" or the E-PARASITE Act (though, they also say you can call it the "Stopping Online Piracy Act").

The bill is big, and has a bunch of problems. First off, it massively expands the sites that will be covered by the law. The Senate version at least tried to limit the targets of the law (but not the impact of the law) on sites that were "dedicated to infringing activities" with no other significant purposes (already ridiculously broad), the new one just targets "foreign infringing sites" and "has only limited purpose or use other than" infringement. They're also including an "inducement" claim not found elsewhere in US regulations -- and which greatly expands what is meant by inducement. The bill effectively takes what the entertainment industry wanted the Supreme Court to say in Grokster (which it did not say) and puts it into US law. In other words, any foreign site declared by the Attorney General to be "inducing" infringement, with a very broad definition of inducing, can now be censored by the US. With no adversarial hearing. Hello, Great Firewall of America.

And while defenders of this bill will insist it's only designed to target truly infringing sites, let's just recall a small list of sites and technologies the industry has insisted were all about infringement in the past: the player piano, the radio, the television, the photocopier, the phonograph, cable tv, the vcr, the mp3 player, the DVR, online video hosting sites like YouTube and more. All of these things turned out to be huge boons for the industry. And yet, with a law like this in place, the old industry gets to kill off technologies they don't understand. Scary stuff.

And it's not just foreign sites impacted by this law (despite what supporters would have you believe). It appears to expand who would have to take on the entire burdens of enforcing this blacklist -- broadly naming "service providers" as defined in the DMCA. That's significant, because a big part of this bill is to undermine and strip away the safe harbors of the DMCA. The DMCA set up an important balance that gave online service providers freedom from liability if they pulled down content upon notification. This new bill provides a massive and ridiculous burden: allowing the Attorney General to create an internet blacklist that all service providers will need to block access to:

A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

On top of that, the bill says any attempt to get around such blocks can lead to liability. Would this put liability on things like MAFIAAfire? It sure sounds like it:

To ensure compliance with orders issued pursuant to this section, the Attorney General may bring an action for injunctive relief....
against any entity that knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed for the circumvention or bypassing of measures described in paragraph (2) and taken in response to a court order issued pursuant to this subsection, to enjoin such entity from interfering with the order by continuing to provide or offer to provide such product or service.

While the text of the bill insists that nothing in it takes away the DMCA's safe harbors, once again this is a claim without the facts to back it up. A large part of the bill is an effective attempt to strip away the DMCA's safe harbors.

The only extraordinarily minor change against the interests of the entertainment industry is that the bill ever so slightly changes the "private right to action," which allows individual copyright holders to take action under this bill. This was a big problem in the old bill, and the only requirement here is that prior to making use of this private right to action, copyright holders have to provide "notice" to payment processors and ad providers. But then those service providers are expected to take action anyway, or face liability. So all this really does is take the court out of the process, and make it even easier for copyright holders to effectively kill off sites they don't like.

Think about this for a second: think how many bogus DMCA takedown notices are sent by copyright holders to take down content they don't like. With this new bill, should it become law, those same copyright holders will be able to cut off advertising and payment processing to such sites. Without court review.

And... because this bill wasn't already ridiculously bad enough, it also lumps in a House version of the felony streaming bill that will make huge swaths of Americans felons for streaming content online.

This bill is an abomination and an insult to the Constitution. It's unfortunate that Rep. Lamar Smith thinks this is worth introducing in its current state, and anyone who signs on to co-sponsor is effectively supporting mass censorship of the internet in the US, as well as the criminalization of huge numbers of Americans -- while putting a huge burden on the one part of the economy that actually is creating jobs. All because a few legacy companies in the entertainment industry refuse to adapt.

E-PARASITES Act

via activepolitics.com

With Generators Taken By The City - Time's Up! Energy Bike Powers Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-29T12:59:00.001-07:00

Time's Up! New York City's Direct Action Environmental group has been working with Occupy Wall Street since its inception. Recently, they have focused on replacing all the gas generators in Liberty Park with Pedal Power Generators. We currently have one up and running, but need your help to build 11 more and power the whole park!

We've received funding for 5 bikes but need at least 6 more, and any donations above that will be used to build more energy bikes which will be sent to other occupations.

Go to http://times-up.org/
and push the donate button

Sgt. Shamar Thomas Is Back And He Brought The Marines With Him To #OWS still Police Violence Ensued

2011-10-28T18:50:00.001-07:00

Occupy Wall Street demonstrators marched in a show of solidarity with Occupy Oakland Wednesday night. Leading the march front and center was none other than Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas sporting his uniform proudly. At some point during this chaotic protest due to the overwhelming police presence Sgt. Thomas becomes lost in the crowd after the usual suspects (NYPD) hammered into the protesters which seems to be becoming all too common across America.

Incidents across the country of excessive force and violence against peaceful protesters has been circulating the Internet.

Approximately one thousand protesters turned up for this demonstration in New York specifically in a show of solidarity for the protesters who marched in Oakland only to end up besieged by police lobbing tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades which concluded in Scott Olson a U.S. Vet ending up with a fractured skull. Footage of what appears to be the police intentionally targeting the protesters has surfaced and this behavior is only increasing support for the Occupy movement.

Suddenly, confusion and angst set in during the march.

At one point, NYPD officers began arresting, shoving, intimidating, grabbing, and beating demonstrators, even after they were forced to the ground, with shouts of, ‘The whole world is watching!” surrounding them. As the crowd became more riled protesters yelled, “Shame, shame, shame!” in chorus while documenting each police instance of abusive behavior with cameras aimed at the officers in question. Some of the police appeared distraught with the protesters unrelenting cause overtaking the atmosphere as they stood their ground. Other officers were aggressive prompting mass confusion; some were the usual white shirted supervisory officers and one or two were seen wearing suits.

After the arrests, the march continued throughout the financial district with protesters chanting in unison and cheering at their success — and they were indeed successful as they marched proudly without backing down to authoritarian-type police state tactics. Instead they held their heads high chanting “Oakland!”

As they walked along a hand reached out of a New York cab, giving one protester a high five. Reportedly people came out of bars showing support for the movement.

As for Sargent Thomas, the police brutality we’re witnessing recently would not occur under his leadership. While we’re in the process of demanding money out of politics, we should also vote in ordinary righteous Americans to represent the 99% — ‘Representative’ Thomas has a certain ring to it. Sgt. Thomas if you recall recently gave an impromptu speech confronting 30 NYPD officers in Time Square denouncing their crowd control methods and police brutality. Considering his military record and apparent ease at confronting dozens of officers, I sincerely doubt Sgt. Thomas would not take issue with standing up to Corporate greed and political corruption.

As America grows weary of billionaire and millionaire politicians feigning an understanding of what life is like for the 99%, Sgt. Shamar Thomas would be a change we could all believe in.

via politicususa.com

OWS Is For Real – America Has Lost Its Moral Bearings

2011-10-27T16:46:00.001-07:00

by Allen L Roland

America has lost its moral bearings! Recent polls indicate that if Occupy Wall Street (OWS) were a candidate for President, it would decisively beat any candidate from either party. 86% of Americans think that Wall Street and its lobbyists have far too much power in Washington and those Americans are taking to the streets demanding real moral change.

As I have mentioned before ~ there are evolutionary moral juices flowing through the Occupy Wall Street movement and they are social cooperation and altruism versus isolation and greed. A true shift in global consciousness is upon us for the OWS Movement is touching deeply felt evolutionary chords which will eventually break down the global walls of greed, separateness and war and will replace them with altruism, social cooperation and peace ~ the true driving forces of evolution. See my article ~

According to a recent CNN/ORC International poll, only 15% of Americans asked said that they trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time ~ and that is because Washington is out of sync with America’s grass roots moral values.

In a Press TV Interview this week I stress that the “Occupy” movements are seeking moral changes ~ both economic and political ~ which focus on social cooperation and altruism, not greed. I also stress that America has obviously lost its moral bearings / six minute video

I also mention the three stages of Occupy Wall Street;

Occupy and establish a visible presence and present a moral vision.

Demand the truth, including 9/11 truth, Fed Reserve transparency, full disclosure of Wall Street fraud and derivative indebtedness.

Strike, revolt and demand real change

The first step in regaining our moral bearings is the truth ~ which has yet to be fully revealed to Americans and which accounts for the deep mistrust of not only Wall Street but politicians in general ~ including President Obama. All of whom are obviously in bed with Wall Street and the corporate banking elite.

Have we forgotten the words of Carl Sandburg?

” For we know when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or civilization perishes, one condition may always be found ~ they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.”

No where is this loss of moral bearings more evident than our illegal preemptive attack and occupation of Iraq, where we set up and implemented a U.S. controlled coalition government, where we stage managed a flawed election and judicial system and where we condoned the brutal hanging of Iraq’s sovereign leader after a mock U.S. managed monkey trial. The recent brutal assassination of Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi, by US backed NATO forces and rebels, is yet another example of our flawed moral vision.

Here’s the collective human cost of this flawed moral vision ~

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq 1,455,590

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America’s War On Iraq: 4,798

Number Of International Occupation Force Troops Slaughtered In Afghanistan: 2,776

Here’s the financial Cost of War and occupation of Iraq & Afghanistan

Total Cost of Wars Since 2001

$1,268,965,662,411

Please Note the wars will cost Americans between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans, according to a new report by the Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.

Obviously, we have lost our moral bearings and focus and that is what’s driving the Occupy Wall Street movement ~ and many others acknowledge this driving collective moral force of a country that wants to redeem itself from its past and continuing moral transgressions.

George Lakoff correctly writes in AlterNet ( How Occupy Wall Street’s Moral Vision Can Beat the Disastrous Conservative Worldview ) that OWS has a progressive moral vision and that they’re protesting the disastrous effects that have come from operating with a conservative moral, economic, and political worldview.
Excerpt: “It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail…. Remember: The Tea Party sees itself as stressing only individual responsibility. The Occupation Movement is stressing both individual and social responsibility.” See article ~

Former four star general and NATO commander Wesley Clark talks about that disastrous conservative world view and the resultant neocon plan to invade seven countries in five years ~ including an attack on Libya and eventually Iran. He calls it the neocon policy coup of the United States led by Dick Cheney and many others. Remember, there’s nothing moral or humanitarian about dropping bombs under the guise of a humanitarian intervention ~ Video: Eight minute Commonwealth Club Interview / 2007

In summary, OWS is a people’s movement with the moral power to change the world ~ because the need to unite and co-operate is a soul based moral need whereas the need to separate, control and destroy is an ego based immoral need and contrary to human evolution.

As I predicted several months ago, a grassroots people’s freedom movement that started in Egypt will end in America in 2012 when the people demand the moral change they voted for in 2008 and never got with Obama ~ but this time, we will get it by ourselves!

via veteranstoday.com

Video: Chief of Oakland Police denies using flash grenades at Occupy Oakland protests

2011-10-27T15:28:00.001-07:00

Footage of Scott Olsen being shot in the head with a tear gas canister by Police at Occupy Oakland

2011-10-27T13:50:00.001-07:00

via Vimeo.

This footage is proof that Scott Olsen was shot in the face by police without provocation during the Occupy Oakland march on Tuesday October 25.

The moment leading up to the shooting, Olsen was standing completely still. He was then hit in the head with a tear gas canister, which is potentially fatal.

Also, no rocks or bottles were thrown before Olsen was shot, contrary to Police statements.

Two angles of footage confirm this.

Additional Footage courtesy of:
Matt Kresling
mattkresling.com

Rina Palta, Ali Winston
informant.kalwnews.org

New Internet Blacklist Legislation will thwart innovation, speech and economic growth

2011-10-27T11:21:00.001-07:00

This is a friendly message from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. View it in a web browser.

Dear Friends,

The Internet Blacklist Legislation is back and it’s worse than ever. Introduced today, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) seeks to authorize both the executive branch and private parties to conduct slash-and-burn campaigns against websites that allegedly host – or even link to – content that infringes on intellectual property rights. This would “disappear” whole domain names, fundamentally undermining Internet security, and/or choke off their financial support. The Internet Blacklist Legislation puts more sites than ever at risk, effectively upending the DMCA safe harbors that, while imperfect, have been crucial to the growth of Internet innovation and creativity.

Email your members of Congress now and tell them to reject the Internet Blacklist Legislation.

Sadly, these short-sighted and dangerous bills won’t do much to stop online infringement – but they will jeopardize our ability to speak and read online with the kind of freedom we cherish in the offline world. Deep-pocketed Hollywood lobbyists are aggressively pushing to control and censor the open Internet, willing to sacrifice free speech and our Internet culture in hopes of controlling how people view their movies and products.

We can stop them, but we’ll need to throw everything we’ve got at this fight. That’s why EFF is joining forces with organizations from across the country, Internet businesses, academics, inventors, and anti-censorship activists in fighting this dangerous legislation. Please act now to tell your Senators and Representatives to reject the Internet blacklist campaign:

Sign now.

Defending your online freedoms,

Rainey Reitman
EFF Activism Team

PS. If you’re one of the 25,000+ people who has taken action against PROTECT IP, please sign this as well. The previous action responded to a Senate-based bill, and this one includes the House – which means new recipients! Please sign now: https://eff.org/r.C8A

Support our work

EFF appreciates your support and respects your privacy.

454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110-1914
United States

Meet the 0.1 Percent: The War Profiteers

2011-10-27T09:58:00.001-07:00

MEET The 0.1 Percent: The War Profiteers

While the Occupy movement targets the 1 Percent, we want to introduce you to the elite among the gang of superrich: the war profiteers. War industry CEOs make tens of millions of dollars a year, putting them in the top 0.1 percent of income earners in the U.S., and they use their corporations’ massive lobbying dollars to keep their job-killing gravy train rolling. We’ve got to stop them.

Help give your local Occupy group the tools they need to fight
corporate power. Post our new video on their Facebook pages
and ask them to show it at their events.

Then, visit our Facebook page to tell us how it went!

Chicago Los Angeles New York

Dallas Madison Philadelphia

Denver Miami San Francisco

Houston Michigan Seattle

Indianapolis New Orleans Tampa

Don’t see your city? Post to Occupy Together

via warcosts.com

Video: Jon Stewart Asks "What The [Bleep] Happened In Oakland?"

2011-10-27T08:14:00.001-07:00

Godzilla would warrant such a strong police response

Last night, Occupy Wall Street protesters marched in solidarity with protesters injured at Occupy Oakland this week. And while things were calm for the most part here, people are still trying to make heads-and-tails out of what happened in Oakland, where police fired tear gas, rubber bullets, flash-bangs and bean bag projectiles at OccupyOakland protesters. Jon Stewart was particularly flummoxed by the extreme police response: "Seems a little heavy handed. Unless, was one of the protesters Godzilla? That would justify an attack." Watch below:

Although police complained of a public safety threat, Stewart points out that the "ruffian" protesters who were tear gased included flanneled teens, dull professors and a dude in a wheelchair. He argues there must have been a less violent way of resolving the public space dispute, and getting protesters to leave that particular space across from City Hall and occupy Oakland Coliseum, or somewhere not being used. And then he ends things with a slightly underwhelming pee joke about Oakland Raiders fans, the "Mad Max re-enactors club," as one should always end pointed critical analyses.

via gothamist.com

Police Attack Oakland Solidarity March - NYC October 26th, 2011/Call To Action Nov.2nd 2011

2011-10-27T07:47:00.001-07:00

via youtube

GENERAL STRIKE & MASS DAY OF ACTION – NOVEMBER 2 - Occupy Oakland

Below is the proposal passed by the Occupy Oakland General Assembly on Wednesday October 26, 2011 in reclaimed Oscar Grant Plaza. 1607 people voted. 1484 voted in favor of the resolution, 77 abstained and 46 voted against it, passing the proposal at 96.9%. The General Assembly operates on a modified consensus process that passes proposals with 90% in favor and with abstaining votes removed from the final count.

PROPOSAL:

We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.

We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.

All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.

While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.

The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.

The Strike Coordinating Council will begin meeting everyday at 5pm in Oscar Grant Plaza before the daily General Assembly at 7pm. All strike participants are invited. Stay tuned for much more information and see you next Wednesday.

via occupyoakland.org

Occupy protesters rally around wounded veteran

Veering around police barricades, anti-Wall Street protesters held a late-night march through Oakland streets, a day after one of their number — an Iraq War veteran — was left in critical condition with a fractured skull following a clash with police.

An exchange of opinions between a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street protests, right, and passersby attracts attention at Zuccotti Park in New York on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011. Some businesses and residents are losing patience with the protesters in the park, the unofficial headquarters of the movement that began in mid-September. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

A protester holds a sign asking for donations for pets at the Occupy Wall Street protest at Zuccotti Park, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011 in New York. Some businesses and residents are losing patience with the protesters in Zuccotti Park, the unofficial headquarters of the movement that began in mid-September. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

A protester post a sign about the cost of war, reflecting the range of issues found among participants of the Occupy Wall Street protest at Zuccotti Park, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011 in New York. Some businesses and residents are losing patience with the protesters in Zuccotti Park, the unofficial headquarters of the movement that began in mid-September. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

An Occupy Oakland protester spraypaints the side of a building during a march on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011, in Oakland, Calif. Except for a couple incidents of graffiti and minor confrontations with police officers, the protesters, who numbered about 1000, remained lawful. (Photo/Noah Berger)

The show of force in Oakland along with SWAT arrests in Atlanta have sent chills among some anti-Wall Street demonstrators.

But another showdown between police and protesters in Oakland appeared to be averted late Wednesday night as several hundred filed out of a plaza declared off-limits for overnight use and marched through nearby streets.

An AP photographer on the scene said police erected barricades to prevent the marchers from reaching a freeway, sending the group down side streets en masse.

Small contingents of officers could be seen following behind but there were no signs of any confrontations or arrests. The march tapered off after about an hour, with most of the protesters apparently dispersing.

On Tuesday, an Iraq War veteran marching with Oakland demonstrators suffered a cracked skull in the chaos between officers and protesters, further raising concern among some in the movement.

Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine veteran, was in critical condition Wednesday after he had been struck, said a spokesman for Highland Hospital in Oakland.

It was not clear exactly what type of object hit the veteran or who might have thrown it, though the group Iraq Veterans Against the War said it was lodged by officers.

Police Chief Howard Jordan said at a news conference that the events leading up to Olsen's injury would be investigated as vigorously as a fatal police shooting.

"It's unfortunate it happened. I wish that it didn't happen. Our goal, obviously, isn't to cause injury to anyone," the chief said.

While demonstrators in other cities have built a working relationship with police and city leaders, they wondered on Wednesday how long the good spirit would last and whether they could be next.

Will they have to face riot gear-clad officers and tear gas that their counterparts in Oakland, Calif., faced Tuesday? Or will they be handcuffed and hauled away in the middle of the night like protesters in Atlanta?

"Yes, we're afraid. Is this the night they're going to sneak in?" said activist William Buster of Occupy Wall Street, where the movement began last month to protest what they see as corporate greed.

"Is this the night they might use unreasonable force?" he asked.

The message from officials in cities where other encampments have sprung up was simple: We'll keep working with you. Just respect your neighbors and keep the camps clean and safe.

Business owners and residents have complained in recent weeks about assaults, drunken fights and sanitation problems. Officials are trying to balance their rights and uphold the law while honoring protesters' free speech rights.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Wednesday that the Occupy LA encampment outside City Hall "cannot continue indefinitely."

Villaraigosa told the Los Angeles Times that he respects the protesters right to peacefully assemble and express their views, but they must respect city laws and regulations.

San Francisco police have already cleared two encampments. Most recently, police estimated at least five protesters were arrested and several others injured in a clash Tuesday evening.

Some cities, such as Providence, R.I., are moving ahead with plans to evict activists. But from Tampa, Fla., to Boston, police and city leaders say they will continue to try to work with protesters to address problems in the camps.

In Oakland, officials initially supported the protests, with Mayor Jean Quan saying that sometimes "democracy is messy."

But tensions reached a boiling point after a sexual assault, a severe beating and a fire were reported and paramedics were denied access to the camp, according to city officials. They also cited concerns about rats, fire hazards and public urination.

Demonstrators disputed the city's claims, saying that volunteers collect garbage and recycling every six hours, that water is boiled before being used to wash dishes and that rats have long infested the park.

When riot gear-clad police moved in early Tuesday, they were pelted with rocks, bottles and utensils from people in the camp's kitchen area. They emptied the camp near city hall of people, and barricaded the plaza.

Protesters were taken away in plastic handcuffs, most of them arrested on suspicion of illegal lodging.

Demonstrators returned later in the day to march and retake the plaza. They were met by police officers in riot gear. Several small skirmishes broke out and officers cleared the area by firing tear gas.

The scene repeated itself several times just a few blocks away in front of the plaza.

Tensions would build as protesters edged ever closer to the police line and reach a breaking point with a demonstrator hurling a bottle or rock, prompting police to respond with another round of gas.

The chemical haze hung in the air for hours, new blasts clouding the air before the previous fog could dissipate.

The number of protesters diminished with each round of tear gas. Police estimated that there were roughly 1,000 demonstrators at the first clash following the march. About 100 were arrested.

On Wednesday, Oakland officials allowed protesters back into the plaza but said people would be prohibiting from spending the night, potentially bringing another clash with police.

About 1,000 people quickly filled the area, but later many of them filed out and began their march. By early Thursday, about 50 people were left at the site and few police could be seen.

In Atlanta, police in riot gear and SWAT teams arrested 53 people in Woodruff Park, many of whom had camped out there for weeks as part of a widespread movement that is protesting the wealth disparity between the rich and everyone else.

Mayor Kasim Reed had been supportive of the protests, twice issuing an executive order allowing them to remain.

Reed said on Wednesday that he had no choice to arrest them because he believed things were headed in a direction that was no longer peaceful. He cited a man seen walking the park with an AK-47 assault rifle.

"There were some who wanted to continue along the peaceful lines, and some who thought that their path should be more radical," Reed said. "As mayor, I couldn't wait for them to finish that debate."

Reed said authorities could not determine whether the rifle was loaded, and were unable to get additional information.

An Associated Press reporter talked to the man with the gun earlier Tuesday.

He wouldn't give his name — identifying himself only as "Porch," an out-of-work accountant who doesn't agree with the protesters' views — but said that he was there, armed, because he wanted to protect the rights of people to protest.

In Portland, Ore., the protest seems to be at a crossroads. Organizers have been dealing with public drunkenness, fighting and drug abuse for weeks, especially among the homeless who are also in the camp.

Some are floating the idea of relocating it, possibly indoors. Others see that as capitulation.

"I don't know if it would be a good idea. Part of the effectiveness of what's going on here is visibility," protester Justin Neff said. "Though I'd do it if there's a possibility that we'd get seen and noticed. I don't know how that would work indoors."

City officials haven't said what would cause them to forcibly evict the protesters. They said they evaluate the camp daily.

In Baltimore, protesters like Casey McKeel, a member of Occupy Baltimore's legal committee, said he wasn't sure aren't sure what to expect from city officials, noting that some cities have arrested protesters in recent weeks.

"Across the country we're seeing a wide range of reactions," he said. "For now we're hoping the city will work with us."

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said she is willing to work with them, but they should realize that they are camping out in a city park and that was not its intended use.

"I have absolutely no interest in a violent exchange," she said. "It's not about pitching a tent. It's about getting the work done."

via ajc.com

Police brutality against Occupy Wall Street protesters worse than in Iraq says US marine

AMERICA TODAY: Heartbreaking Pictures From New Jersey's Homeless 'Tent City'

2011-10-26T07:31:00.001-07:00

Doug Hardman wakes up every morning with a song in his head—a vague memory of his days on stage.
Inside his tepee in the woods outside Lakewood, NJ, at the homeless Tent City, the roosters wake early and the mornings are already cooler. A musician who lost his Florida home in the housing crisis, Hardman says he floats in and out of Tent City, that he's proud of his kids, and misses the life he no longer has.

He has a lot of company out here.

Click here for the pictures and story >

Tent City made the news recently and while community leader Steven Brigham says the media attention brought in greater donations, it also brought unwanted attention from the local politicians.

After battling with the city for years to have access to the public land here, Brigham found a New Jersey lawyer to represent his case pro bono.

The attorney, Jeff Wild, argued that the homeless population are part of the public and should therefore have access to public lands. Rather than take the case to court, Lakewood City Council settled, and Brigham signed an agreement to put up no more shelters and allow no more than 70 people to stay.

But last winter the community put up three wooden structures to house everyone and keep them warm.

"We didn't lose anybody last year," Brigham says, "and nobody got sick."

This year could be different. After City Council members saw the shelters on TV, they sent demolition crews in. The walls were torn down around whatever was inside, and meager furnishings were left to the elements.

This year, the tent city's residents will have to put wood-stoves in tents and plastic shanties, increasing fire risk. Brigham says the town is making it impossible to survive there, hoping to get the homeless out, and he's concerned it will end up killing people this year.

More than 700,000 people are currently homeless in the U.S. and the number has grown 20 percent from 2007 to 2010.

A recent UN report says the way the U.S. denies its citizens access to water, basic sanitation, and criminalizes homelessness is a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Brigham can relate. He started the camp five years ago and more people show up every year. Some stay, some find part-time work where they can, move on, and wind up coming back.

"There's a real glut of low-skilled manual labor in the area," he says. "There's just nothing for people to do."

Brigham works as a high-voltage electrical contractor on the bridges and tunnels around New York, but his mission is here in the Lakewood forest.

"I found this spot that had no underbrush, which is very unusual," he says, "and this community's become a living protest."

I ask him what he means, and he says, "We're protesting the insincerity of the political system. It's supposed to be for the people and its not."

(Reverend Steve Brigham can be reached at P.O. Box 326, Lakewood, NJ 08701)

Outside the town of Lakewood New Jersey, across from this intersection...

Image: Robert Johnson

70 people live at this homeless camp in the woods

Image: Robert Johnson

Some people have lived here for years and consider it their home

Image: Robert Johnson

The camp is run by Reverend Steven Brigham and welcomes residents from all walks of life

Image: Robert Johnson

Food comes in sporadically, like these baked goods from a local grocery store

Image: Robert Johnson

Nina is from Poland and according to Steve, moved into camp when her husband kicked her out (she's eating borscht)

Image: Robert Johnson

This is Nina's shanty

Image: Robert Johnson

She has family in Poland that she misses very much

Image: Robert Johnson

She has car batteries rigged up for power

Image: Robert Johnson

This is musician Doug Hardman who plays piano for the church services -- watch a video of him playing below

Image: Robert Johnson
Video of Doug Hardman playing piano.

Doug lives in this tee-pee

Image: Robert Johnson

Even with all the rain from Irene the inside is dry and smells like old smoke

Image: Robert Johnson

Daily essentials

Image: Robert Johnson

Elwood Hyers lives here and decorated the outside of his shanty with stuff he found behind a Dollar Store

Image: Robert Johnson

Elwood caught a felony drug charge and with a record he's has been unable to get on his feet

Image: Robert Johnson

Elwood lives with Cynthia Vellinga who decorated the inside

Image: Robert Johnson

This woman and her boyfriend didn't want their kids to recognize them online

Image: Robert Johnson

But they live here and allowed me inside

Image: Robert Johnson

The living room

Image: Robert Johnson

Walls insulated with old sleeping bags, the firewood supply, and a litter box filled with sand

Image: Robert Johnson

Their bedroom

Image: Robert Johnson

The vanity mirror and toilet in the background

Image: Robert Johnson

The chimney design to keep the place from burning down in the winter

Image: Robert Johnson

Marilyn and Mike lost their NYC jobs in the recession - ran down their savings and had nowhere else to go

Image: Robert Johnson

They raise chickens and rehabilitate birds -- they have a tent and the chickens have a tent

Image: Robert Johnson

This is their kitchen under a tarp and Marilyn is filtering a cup of coffee

Image: Robert Johnson

There are public facilities like toilets

Image: Robert Johnson

A wash house

Image: Robert Johnson

With a shower and water heated by an electric oven coil

Image: Robert Johnson

A washer and dryer

Image: Robert Johnson

A mirror and washtub

Image: Robert Johnson

And a basket of toiletries by the door

Image: Robert Johnson

There's also a kitchen

Image: Robert Johnson

Currently filled with food from a wedding and donated by the party house

Image: Robert Johnson

The chef lives here

Image: Robert Johnson

There's a chicken crossing sign painted by Marilyn

Image: Robert Johnson

Chickens are everywhere -- the eggs hatch and the birds never get slaughtered -- they keep down the number of bugs

Clover
Image: Robert Johnson

Rabbits are also supposed to be abundant

Image: Robert Johnson

But the only one I saw was in a cage

Image: Robert Johnson

There's a public garden named for a young girl who died from cancer

Image: Robert Johnson

A food storage shed

Image: Robert Johnson

A bell/empty oxygen cylinder - calls people to church - listen to it ring below

Image: Robert Johnson
Video of Steve ringing the cylinder with a monkey wrench.

A church that was torn down

Image: Robert Johnson

A group of Mormon missionaries were there Saturday helping chop wood for winter

Image: Robert Johnson

The camp will go through a stack this size, every day, all winter long

Image: Robert Johnson

Fires are not unheard of

Image: Robert Johnson

Which is why community sleep houses like this were put up - to keep everyone warm and safe in the winter

Image: Robert Johnson

But the town came in and tore them all down

Image: Robert Johnson

Leaving a mess and a winter filled with wood-burning fires inside everyone's tents and shanties

Image: Robert Johnson

Despite their situation, people here still love their country

Image: Robert Johnson

Even if there's no place for them and the people on Main Street want them gone

Image: Robert Johnson

via businessinsider.com

New guidance for law enforcement personnel from the FBI/ Responding to Persons with Mental Illness

2011-10-26T07:20:00.001-07:00

Responding to Persons with Mental Illness

By Abigail S. Tucker, Psy.D., Vincent B. Van Hasselt, Ph.D., Gregory M.
Vecchi, Ph.D., and Samuel L. Browning, M.S.

FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin October 2011

While police officers may not consider providing services to persons
with mental illness one of their primary functions, they respond to
challenges and dangers that ordinary citizens and social service
agencies are not equipped to manage. In addition to their roles as
investigators and protectors, police still must keep the peace.1
However, a review of case records illustrates the frustrating and often
tragic outcome of police calls for assistance pertaining to mental
illness. A closer look at these instances demonstrates that officers
usually serve as an initial contact for both the criminal justice and
the social service systems. Unfortunately, a disconnect exists in the
process from the first police response to the next level of appropriate
care due largely to a lack of proper training, resources, and
collaborative community support.2

Historical Perspectives

The trend toward deinstitutionalization between the 1960s and 1980s
contributed to the increased contact between police and individuals with
mental illness.3 Further, the curtailment of federal mental health
funding and the introduction of legal reforms have given these persons
the right to live in the community without treatment.4 However, many of
the legal reforms in the 1970s affected people with mental illness by
instituting laws for involuntary treatment, as well as those for
nondangerous offenses (e.g., responding verbally to auditory
hallucinations in public parks, sleeping on park benches). Beginning in
the 1950s, officers adhered to the professional model, which used
experts from other fields (e.g., psychologists, advocacy lawyers) to
bolster police reform and response to mental illness.5 Such goals, while
highly commendable, often were not realized by police agencies due to
financial constraints, a lack of realistic application, and the
inability of the consulting professionals to offer useful guidelines.

Upon confrontation with individuals with mental illness, police have
three main options: 1) transport them to a receiving psychiatric
facility; 2) use informal verbal skills to de-escalate the situation; or
3) arrest the individual.6 These possible actions stem from basic
concepts that guide police in all citizen encounters-the duty of the
officer to protect and serve the community and the governing reforms
that stipulate the power of an officer to involuntarily protect those
behaving irrationally who may harm themselves or others.7

Recently, more comprehensive and flexible approaches have arisen;
however, they are in the minority. Examples include specialized police
training and units, community-collaborative programs, and crisis
intervention training. As widespread media coverage in the past decade
has underscored, these limited options can lead to cases resulting in
death or injury. Even more tragic is the increase in police-assisted
suicide, defined by Police Officer Standards and Training as "an
incident in which an individual engages in behavior which poses an
apparent risk of serious injury or death, with the intent to precipitate
the use of deadly force by law enforcement personnel toward that
individual." Research shows that a significant number of persons
committing this act have some form of mental illness.8

Specialized Police Response Models

Officers often receive blame for lethal outcomes in situations involving
mental illness. Four decades ago, police were described as often being
pigeonholed into making medical decisions with little training and few,
if any, response options.9 Ironically, this conclusion still proves
largely relevant today.

As one possibility, law enforcement agencies can employ police-referral
programs. An examination of a police-referral program that designated an
intake unit at a community mental health center (CMHC) found that
streamlining the process of how officers refer individuals with mental
illness to hospitals bolstered the program's effectiveness.10
Additionally, the analysis showed that a collaborative response between
police and the CMHC reduced recidivism rates in referred psychiatric
patients.

Police also can incorporate specialized programs. One report noted that
although more than 50 percent of departments nationwide do not have such
a program/response, most rate themselves as effective in managing
service calls pertaining to mental illness.11 This contradicts research
that points to the efficacy of specialized response programs.12 In an
encouraging trend, more recent efforts suggest that the number of law
enforcement agencies reporting specialized training and units for
dealing with persons with mental illness is increasing.13

Crisis Intervention Teams
The Memphis Model of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) provides a framework
for a police-based specialized officer response now well established in
the field. CIT was created in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1988 following the
tragic death of a suicidal man with schizophrenia.14 Although many
officers of the Memphis Police Department knew of his mental illness,
the ones responding to the particular incident were unfamiliar with him.
When police confronted him and demanded that he drop his knife, the
young man became upset and made a sudden move toward the officers,
forcing them to shoot (as they had been trained to do in such
situations) and fatally wound him. Following this incident, the
community demanded a response.

Unfortunately, this does not represent an isolated incident; law
enforcement interactions with persons with a mental illness more
frequently result in the use of force by police than incidents involving
individuals who do not suffer from a mental condition.15 This can lead
to injury of both the individuals and the officers. However, some of the
incidents that result in the death of citizens at the hand of law
enforcement personnel cannot be avoided, as in the case of individuals
who commit suicide by cop. CIT offers investigators insight into these
persons and, perhaps, options to pursue during their exchanges with
them. The CIT model incorporates two main components: 1) a collaborative
framework between the community mental health resources, recipients of
those services, and local law enforcement agencies; and 2) specialized
training for CIT officers in mental health issues, crisis intervention,
and de-escalation.16

Collaborative Framework
Collaborations between policy makers, law enforcement, the regional
division of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), persons
with a mental health issue, and others from the community began to form
in the initial CIT planning stages. One example of these collaborations
in Memphis was the formation of a single-location mental health care
facility for police drop-offs, called the Med.17 This facility enacted
for police a no-refusal policy for officer referrals and streamlined the
intake process to allow them to admit someone with mental illness and
get back on patrol within about 30 minutes.

Officer Training
In addition to collaborations and policy changes, certain officers are
selected or volunteer to receive specialized training as part of the
40-hour CIT training program. The CIT curriculum includes recognition
and understanding of the signs/symptoms of mental illnesses (e.g.,
schizophrenia, depression, personality disorders); pharmacological
interventions and their side effects; crisis intervention and
de-escalation skills; and knowledge of the user-friendly mental health
resources available to individuals. In addition, role playing gives
officers opportunities to practice crisis situations involving persons
with mental illness. Feedback and reinforcement are provided concerning
the officers' verbal and nonverbal behaviors in these scenarios.

Mental health professionals from the community teach the majority of the
course components; patients and their families also participate in
educating the officers on relevant mental health challenges and issues
to add perspective. Police learn how to recognize severe mental illness
and how these different disorders affect the individuals. At the end of
the course, officers graduate with CIT certification and receive a pin
to wear on their uniforms, identifying them as CIT officers. This allows
persons with mental illness in crisis to recognize CIT officers and also
serves as a source of pride for the law enforcement professionals.

Research Support
Experts evaluated the Memphis CIT model by comparing perceived
preparedness, quality of response to persons with mental illness,
diversion from jail, officer time spent on these calls, and community
safety and found empirical support for the effectiveness of this
approach.18 Additional researchers expanded on this work by using arrest
rates and feedback from referral sources.19 Their results provided
further support for the Memphis CIT model with findings of higher
response rates and fewer arrests. Also, it appears that an integral
component of CIT training is the use of crisis intervention and active
listening skills (e.g., paraphrasing, reflecting emotions, asking
open-ended questions), which are critical for de-escalating crisis
situations in general and situations involving individuals with mental
illness in particular.20 Apparently, psychological evaluation concerning
mental health issues, as well as crisis intervention skills training,
both comprise important aspects of CIT.

Barriers and Concerns
One barrier in the development of police-based specialized officer
response is the definition of training in the field of law enforcement.
Basic officer training will prove inadequate in addressing this growing
and volatile problem without ongoing review and skill maintenance.
Researchers note the common misperception that all police officers have
the same mandated training and available resources.21 Other experts
contend that for specialized response programs to work effectively,
training is a crucial element. Law enforcement training is most
effective when it includes consultation with mental health professionals
and other administrative and social service systems.22

The mental health care system itself appears to be another barrier to
policing progress involving mental health situations. Social service
agencies often refuse to admit intoxicated or psychotic persons referred
by police. In addition, the "revolving door" phenomenon of recidivism
supports the reality of overworked and underpaid staff in receiving
facilities, such as hospitals and community mental health centers.
Specifically, many treatment facilities require police custody in the
waiting area for individuals transported for a mental disturbance. Also,
no systematic and hierarchical structure exists that links first
responders (e.g., police, EMS) with the appropriate level of care in the
mental health system (e.g., medical versus psychiatric hospitals, social
service shelters versus drug rehabilitation centers).

Findings
Overall, research supports the use of a specialized law enforcement
response to address the needs of persons with mental illness. In
particular, the Memphis CIT model is functional, generally accepted by
police departments, and, most important, effective.23

The utility of such programs is enhanced by the use of collaborative
drop-off sites. These allow for greater flexibility, provide ease and
speed in application, and serve as a more economical option. However, a
few important guidelines can make a substantial difference in
effectiveness. For example, researchers recommended police-friendly
procedures that include a no-refusal policy, an intake process with
streamlined paperwork, and consistent procedural steps.24

Conclusion
Police officers maintain and enforce public order. Their role as both
first responders and peacekeepers remains a challenge in many ways. The
law enforcement response to mental disturbance calls with ethical,
practical, and effective strategies requires interagency collaboration.
Numerous examples attest to the efficacy of police-based interventions
and collaborative policies and procedures. In particular, current
research supports the use of a specialized law enforcement response to
meet the needs and demands of persons with mental illness while ensuring
their safety and dignity.

Endnotes
1 G.W. Cordner, "A Community Policing Approach to Persons with Mental
Illness," Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 28
(2000): 326-331.
2 A.S. Tucker, V.B. Van Hasselt, and S.A. Russell, "Law Enforcement
Response to the Mentally Ill: An Evaluative Review," Brief Treatment and
Crisis Intervention 8 (2008): 236-250.
3 M. Zdanowicz, "A Sheriff's Role in Arresting the Mental Illness
Crisis," Sheriff 53 (2001): 2-4.
4 L.A. Teplin, "Keeping the Peace: Police Discretion and Mentally Ill
Persons," National Institute of Justice Journal 244 (2000): 8-15.
5 Cordner.
6 Teplin.
7 Ibid.
8 H.R. Hutson, D. Anglin, J. Yarbrough, K. Hardaway, M. Russell, J.
Strote,
M. Canter, and B. Blum, "Suicide by Cop," Annals of Emergency Medicine
32 (1998): 665-669; V.B. Lord, "Law Enforcement-Assisted Suicide,"
Criminal Justice and Behavior 27 (2000): 401-419; and A.J Pinizotto, E.F
Davis, and C.E. Miller, "Suicide by Cop: Defining a Devastating
Dilemma," FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, February 2005, 8-20.
9 A.R. Matthews, Jr., "Observations on Police Policy and Procedures for
Emergency Detention of the Mentally Ill," The Journal of Criminal Law,
Criminology and Police Science 61 (1970): 283-295.
10 L.A. Teplin and E.P. Sheridan, "Police-Referred Psychiatric
Emergencies: Advantages of Community Treatment," Journal of Community
Psychology 9
(1981): 140-147.
11 M.W. Deane, H.J. Steadman,
R. Borum, B.M. Veysey, and J.P. Morrisey, "Emerging Partnerships Between
Mental Health and Law Enforcement," Psychiatric Services 50 (1999):
99-101.
12 Teplin and Sheridan; R. Borum, M.W. Deane, H.J. Steadman, and J.
Morrissey, "Police Perspectives on Responding to Mentally Ill People in
Crisis: Perceptions of Program Effectiveness," Behavioral Sciences and
the Law 16 (1998): 393-405; T.M. Green, "Police as Frontline Mental
Health Workers: The Decision to Arrest or Refer to Mental Health
Agencies," International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 20 (1997):
469-486; and H.J. Steadman, M.W. Deane, R. Borum, and J.P. Morrissey,
"Comparing Outcomes of Major Models of Police Responses to Mental Health
Emergencies," Psychiatric Services 51 (2000): 645-649.
13 J. Hails and R. Borum, "Police Training and Specialized Approaches to
Respond to People with Mental Illness," Crime and Delinquency 49 (2003):
52-62.
14 B. Vickers, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance,
"Memphis, Tennessee, Police Department's Crisis Intervention Team,"
Bulletin from the Field: Practitioner Perspectives,
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/182501.pdf (accessed August 20,
2010).
15 R.S. Engel and E. Silver, "Policing Mentally Disordered Suspects: A
Reexamination of the Criminalization Hypothesis," Criminology 39 (2001):
225-253.
16 R. Dupont and S. Cochran, "Police Response to Mental Health
Emergencies: Barriers to Change,"Journal of American Academy of
Psychiatry and the Law 28 (2000): 338-344; and Vickers.
17 Vickers.
18 Borum, Deane, Steadman, Morrissey, "Police Perspectives on Responding
to Mentally Ill People in Crisis."
19 Steadman, Deane, Borum, and Morrissey, "Comparing Outcomes of Major
Models of Police Responses to Mental Health Emergencies."
20 G.M. Vecchi, V.B. Van Hasselt, and S.J. Romano, "Crisis (Hostage)
Negotiation: Current Strategies and Issues in High Risk Conflict
Resolution," Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal 10
(2005): 533-551.
21 DuPont and Cochran.
22 H.J. Steadman, K.A. Stainbrook, P. Griffin, J. Draine, R. DuPont, and

C. Horey, "A Specialized Crisis Response Site as a Core Element of
Police-Based Diversion Programs,"Psychiatric Services 52 (2001):
219-222.
23 Dupont and Cochran.
24 Steadman, Stainbrook, Griffin, Draine, DuPont, and Horey.

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/
october-2011/responding-to-persons-with-mental-illness

To the Occupy movement – the occupiers of Tahrir Square are with you | Comrades from Cairo

2011-10-26T07:02:00.001-07:00

Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park, New York. Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

To all those across the world currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it's our turn to pass on some advice.
Indeed, we are now in many ways involved in the same struggle. What most pundits call "the Arab spring" has its roots in the demonstrations, riots, strikes and occupations taking place all around the world, its foundations lie in years-long struggles by people and popular movements. The moment that we find ourselves in is nothing new, as we in Egypt and others have been fighting against systems of repression, disenfranchisement and the unchecked ravages of global capitalism (yes, we said it, capitalism): a system that has made a world that is dangerous and cruel to its inhabitants. As the interests of government increasingly cater to the interests and comforts of private, transnational capital, our cities and homes have become progressively more abstract and violent places, subject to the casual ravages of the next economic development or urban renewal scheme.
An entire generation across the globe has grown up realising, rationally and emotionally, that we have no future in the current order of things. Living under structural adjustment policies and the supposed expertise of international organisations like the World Bank and IMF, we watched as our resources, industries and public services were sold off and dismantled as the "free market" pushed an addiction to foreign goods, to foreign food even. The profits and benefits of those freed markets went elsewhere, while Egypt and other countries in the south found their immiseration reinforced by a massive increase in police repression and torture.
The current crisis in America and western Europe has begun to bring this reality home to you as well: that as things stand we will all work ourselves raw, our backs broken by personal debt and public austerity. Not content with carving out the remnants of the public sphere and the welfare state, capitalism and the austerity state now even attack the private realm and people's right to decent dwelling as thousands of foreclosed-upon homeowners find themselves both homeless and indebted to the banks who have forced them on to the streets.
So we stand with you not just in your attempts to bring down the old but to experiment with the new. We are not protesting. Who is there to protest to? What could we ask them for that they could grant? We are occupying. We are reclaiming those same spaces of public practice that have been commodified, privatised and locked into the hands of faceless bureaucracy, real estate portfolios and police "protection". Hold on to these spaces, nurture them and let the boundaries of your occupations grow. After all, who built these parks, these plazas, these buildings? Whose labour made them real and livable?
Why should it seem so natural that they should be withheld from us, policed and disciplined? Reclaiming these spaces and managing them justly and collectively is proof enough of our legitimacy.
In our own occupations of Tahrir, we encountered people entering the square every day in tears because it was the first time they had walked through those streets and spaces without being harassed by police; it is not just the ideas that are important, these spaces are fundamental to the possibility of a new world. These are public spaces. Spaces for gathering, leisure, meeting and interacting – these spaces should be the reason we live in cities. Where the state and the interests of owners have made them inaccessible, exclusive or dangerous, it is up to us to make sure that they are safe, inclusive and just. We have and must continue to open them to anyone that wants to build a better world, particularly for the marginalised, the excluded and those groups who have suffered the worst.
What you do in these spaces is neither as grandiose and abstract nor as quotidian as "real democracy"; the nascent forms of praxis and social engagement being made in the occupations avoid the empty ideals and stale parliamentarianism that the term democracy has come to represent. And so the occupations must continue, because there is no one left to ask for reform. They must continue because we are creating what we can no longer wait for.
But the ideologies of property and propriety will manifest themselves again. Whether through the overt opposition of property owners or municipalities to your encampments or the more subtle attempts to control space through traffic regulations, anti-camping laws or health and safety rules. There is a direct conflict between what we seek to make of our cities and our spaces and what the law and the systems of policing standing behind it would have us do.
We faced such direct and indirect violence, and continue to face it. Those who said that the Egyptian revolution was peaceful did not see the horrors that police visited upon us, nor did they see the resistance and even force that revolutionaries used against the police to defend their tentative occupations and spaces: by the government's own admission, 99 police stations were put to the torch, thousands of police cars were destroyed and all of the ruling party's offices around Egypt were burned down. Barricades were erected, officers were beaten back and pelted with rocks even as they fired tear gas and live ammunition on us. But at the end of the day on 28 January they retreated, and we had won our cities.
It is not our desire to participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose. If we do not resist, actively, when they come to take what we have won back, then we will surely lose. Do not confuse the tactics that we used when we shouted "peaceful" with fetishising nonviolence; if the state had given up immediately we would have been overjoyed, but as they sought to abuse us, beat us, kill us, we knew that there was no other option than to fight back. Had we laid down and allowed ourselves to be arrested, tortured and martyred to "make a point", we would be no less bloodied, beaten and dead. Be prepared to defend these things you have occupied, that you are building, because, after everything else has been taken from us, these reclaimed spaces are so very precious.
By way of concluding, then, our only real advice to you is to continue, keep going and do not stop. Occupy more, find each other, build larger and larger networks and keep discovering new ways to experiment with social life, consensus and democracy. Discover new ways to use these spaces, discover new ways to hold on to them and never give them up again. Resist fiercely when you are under attack, but otherwise take pleasure in what you are doing, let it be easy, fun even. We are all watching one another now, and from Cairo we want to say that we are in solidarity with you, and we love you all for what you are doing.

via guardian.co.uk

BREAKING: Oakland Police Use Rubber Bullets, Flash Grenades, And Smoke Bombs To Evict Occupy Oakland

2011-10-25T08:54:00.001-07:00

Late last night, Oakland police, under orders from the city, began surrounding the Occupy Oakland encampment in preparation to oust the protesters from Frank Ogawa Plaza.

Approximately an hour ago, hundreds of Oakland police officers raided the camp. Dressed in riot gear, the police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, and gas canisters to forcibly evict and/or arrest the demonstrators who remained in the plaza. The Occupy Oakland Twitter account live-tweeted the raid:

One protester at the scene captured an image of the riot police using smoke bombs:

If you have any video of the raid on Occupy Oakland, feel free to send it to ThinkProgress.

Update

One protester interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle remained upbeat. “People are going to keep coming back. What are they going to do, send cops in every night and waste taxpayer dollars?” asked Gabe Meyers. “The cops are the 99 percent, but they’re doing the work of the 1 percent. Wall Street is proud of them every time they clear out an encampment.”

Update

One protester captured video under the punkboyinsf UStream account. At 11:40, protesters began chanting, “You are the 99 percent!” to police moving in on the camp. At 17:30 in the following video you can see the police utilizing gas weapons. As the camp is raided, the protester says into the camera, “Sorry guys I can’t be any closer this stuff is going to make me sick,” referring to tear gas. The videographer also claims to have seen a sound cannon being used by the police:

Video streaming by Ustream

via thinkprogress.org

Cops Defy Orders to Arrest Hundreds of Occupy Albany Protesters

2011-10-25T08:16:00.001-07:00

ALBANY -- In a tense battle of wills, state troopers and Albany police held off making arrests of dozens of protesters near the Capitol over the weekend even as Albany's mayor, under pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration, had urged his police chief to enforce a city curfew.
The situation intensified late Friday evening when Jennings, who has cultivated a strong relationship with Cuomo, directed his department to arrest protesters who refused to leave the city-owned portion of a large park that's across Washington Avenue from the Capitol and City Hall.
At the Capitol, in anticipation of possibly dozens of arrests, a State Police civil disturbance unit was quietly activated, according to officials briefed on the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. But as the curfew neared, the group of protesters estimated at several hundred moved across an invisible line in the park from state land onto city property.
"We were ready to make arrests if needed, but these people complied with our orders," a State Police official said. However, he added that State Police supported the defiant posture of Albany police leaders to hold off making arrests for the low-level offense of trespassing, in part because of concern it could incite a riot or draw thousands of protesters in a backlash that could endanger police and the public.
"We don't have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble," the official said. "The bottom line is the police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor."
A city police source said his department also was reluctant to damage what he considers to be good community relations that have taken years to rebuild. In addition, the crowd included elderly people and many others who brought their children with them.
"There was a lot of discussion about how it would look if we started pulling people away from their kids and arresting them ... and then what do we do with the children?" one officer said.
Around midnight Friday, police leaders reported that the protesters were confined to city sidewalks and therefore they were not in violation of the city's curfew governing park land. But in truth, the protesters had set up tents in the park and several dozen slept there.
Meanwhile, Albany County District Attorney David Soares on Sunday said that over the weekend he had conversations with Jennings, Albany Police Chief Steven Krokoff and State Police officials about his concerns regarding prosecution of "peaceful protesters."
Soares said protests at the state Capitol are common, and historically anyone arrested for trespassing generally faces a low-level charge that's later dismissed.
"Our official policy with peaceful protesters is that unless there is property damage or injuries to law enforcement, we don't prosecute people protesting," Soares said. "If law enforcement engaged in a pre-emptive strike and started arresting people I believe it would lead to calamitous results, and the people protesting so far are peaceful."
Soares said another concern discussed by law enforcement officials was whether arrests could trigger an influx of young adults from Albany's significant college community.
Joshua Vlasto, a spokesman for Cuomo, did not respond directly to questions about contact between Cuomo's secretary, Larry Schwartz, and Jennings. "The state is working collaboratively with the city to enforce the curfew," Vlasto said in a statement Friday evening.
Late Friday afternoon, after his contact with the governor's office, Jennings took a hard-line stance and indicated he had instructed his police force to enforce the city's curfew. He declined to talk about his conversations with Schwartz, saying: "It's not important."
Inside police circles, there was speculation by some officials that the pressure from the governor's office to enforce the curfew was about political perception. They noted that some critics had questioned New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's handling of a similar protest in lower Manhattan that has become an organized fixture, with medical supplies, food and even donated office space supporting the protesters.
Jennings and Krokoff could not be reached for comment on Sunday afternoon. About 30 tents remained as the sun rose Sunday morning, and protesters who stayed the night remained commited to staying in the park as long as their message had not yet affected change.
"I think this has to go on indefinitely," said Chris Scully, 23, an engineer from Troy, as he wrote "Our Way Of Life is Dying" on a sign.
Local media outlets captured a small fight on video that happened during the Saturday night protest, a scuffle that apparently involved a passer-by trying to take a sign away from someone. But police made no arrests. The protest, called Occupy Albany, is an offshoot of the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City that participants say aim to eradicate economic inequality. The protests have taken place across the country and spread overseas, including London.
The police strategy in Albany was evident early Friday. Krokoff issued a departmentwide memo instructing officers "to be continually aware of the possibility that a small element may intentionally seek to draw us into conflict," according to a copy obtained by the Times Union. "At this time I have no intention of assigning officers to monitor, watch, videotape or influence any behavior that is conducted by our citizens peacefully demonstrating in Academy Park. ... In the event we are required to respond to a crime in progress or a reported crime, we will do so in the same manner that we do on a daily basis."

via timesunion.com

Wall Street protest plans global rally ahead of G20

2011-10-25T07:46:00.001-07:00

Canada-based Adbusters wants the Occupy Wall Street protest movement against economic inequality to take to the streets to call for a 1 percent tax on such deals ahead of a November 3-4 summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in France.
"Let's send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3 trillion easy money that's sloshing around the global casino each day -- enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world," the activist group said on its website, www.adbusters.org.
Adbusters put out the initial call for Occupy Wall Street and since protesters set up camp in a park in New York City's financial district on September 17, they have inspired solidarity demonstrations and so-called occupations around the world.
Thousands turned out for a global day of protests on October 15, which were mostly peaceful apart from in Rome, where there were riots.
Occupy Arrests, a Twitter feed compiling arrests related to Occupy Wall Street, said that since the movement began five weeks ago nearly 2,400 people have been arrested around the world, including in New York City.
Occupy Wall Street prides itself on not having any leaders and doing everything by consensus at daily general assemblies. Adbusters has asked protesters to approve its plan for a "Robin Hood" tax and global protests at their general assemblies.
The proposal by Adbusters comes as some people question whether the movement can sustain momentum and ask what will happen next. Critics accuse the group of not having a clear message.
"As the movement matures, let's consider a response to our critics. Let's occupy the core of our global system. Let's dethrone the greed that defines this new century," Adbusters said on its website.
The protesters say they are upset that the billions of dollars in bank bailouts doled out during the recession allowed banks to resume earning huge profits while average Americans have had no relief from high unemployment and job insecurity.
They also believe the richest 1 percent of Americans do not pay their fair share in taxes.
Occupy Wall Street is urging protesters to close their bank accounts and transfer their money to credit unions, a move that is due to culminate with a bank transfer day on November 5.

via reuters.com

CIA Kidnapped, Tortured "the Wrong Guy," Says Former Agency Operative Glenn Carle

2011-10-25T07:04:00.001-07:00

by: Jason Leopold, Truthout | Video Interview and Report

Former CIA Operative Glenn Carle. (Photo: Lance Page / Truthout)

Rob Richer, the No. 2 ranking official in the CIA's clandestine service, paid a visit to Glenn Carle's office in December 2002 and presented the veteran CIA operative with an urgent proposal.

"I want you to go on a temporary assignment," Carle recalls Richer telling him. "It's important for the agency, it's important for the country and it's important for you. Will you do it?"

Richer, who resigned from the CIA in 2005 and went to work for the mercenary outfit Blackwater, told Carle that agency operatives had just rendered a "high-value target," an Afghan in his mid-forties named Haji Pacha Wazir, who was purported to be Osama bin Laden's personal banker as well as financier for a number of suspected terrorists. Wazir was being held at a CIA black site prison in Morocco, and the agency needed a clandestine officer who spoke French to take over the interrogation of the detainee.

Carle, formerly the deputy national intelligence officer for transitional threats, who had no prior interrogation experience, agreed, and within 72 hours, he boarded a CIA-chartered jet bound for Morocco.

The Interrogator

Carle recounts what unfolded next in his riveting book, "The Interrogator: An Education," which stands as a damning indictment of the CIA's torture and rendition program and the Bush administration's approach to the so-called Global War on Terror.

Carle refers to Wazir in his book as CAPTUS. The CIA, which did not respond to requests for comment for this report, would not allow Carle to print Wazir 's name in his book, nor was he permitted to disclose the locations of the two black site prisons where Wazir was imprisoned and tortured.

A report published in Harper's in July first disclosed that CAPTUS is Wazir and the location of the CIA black site prisons where he was held.

During an on-camera interview with Truthout in Washington, DC, Carle said he originally believed the agency had captured a "significant Al-Qaeda leader" who had been a concern to US intelligence agencies "for a long time."

"The assessment that was made of [Wazir] was quite compelling and I accepted it," Carle said. "I knew my colleagues to be hard-working and careful and that they reviewed their assessments regularly and the assessment was that [Wazir] was one of the top players in Al-Qaeda."

Although Carle was told by a top agency official that he should do "whatever it takes to get this man to talk," which he said he understood meant using torture to "break this fellow's will" and obtain intelligence, Carle said he "would not do it [because] it was wrong."

Instead, Carle said he interrogated Wazir using standard rapport-building techniques and "psychological manipulation" that led the detainee to believe Carle was his "friend."

Carle concluded not long after he began interrogating Wazir that the agency had "kidnapped" the "wrong guy" and Wazir, who ran an informal money-transfer business known as a Hawala, was not a "committed jihadist" or Bin Laden's personal banker.

Wazir was "more like a train conductor who sells a criminal a ticket," Carle writes in "The Interrogator." "Slowly, progressively, first in dismay, then in anger, I had realized that on the CAPTUS case the Agency, the government, all of us, had been victims of delusion."

Wazir's life had been "destroyed" based on what Carle characterized as an "error."

But the CIA's position did not change. The agency believed Wazir was withholding intelligence due to the fact that he could not answer specific questions. So in an attempt to convince him to reveal information about Al-Qaeda, agency operatives kidnapped his older brother, Haji Ghaljai, in December 2002 and held him captive for six months at the same black site prison.

Carle documented his conclusions about Wazir, and called for his immediate release, in top-secret cables he prepared that were supposed to be sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. However, Carle said when he later inquired about his cables he discovered they "were never transmitted so they never formally existed."

The US government eventually moved Wazir from Morocco to the infamous Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan, which Carle refers to as "Hotel California," and then transferred him to the Bagram prison facility.

Psychological Torture

Carle described in great detail the conditions in which Wazir and other detainees were held at the black site prisons.

“It was instantaneously, completely black,” Carle said about the black site prisons. “Not dark, black. A darkness where literally I could not see my hand…Totally black. And there was loud incessant noise or a series of other sounds. Babies wailing, sounds that would appear to be someone being hit or car crashes or wheels screeching. The goal is to play upon the senses so as to disorient the prisoner.”

Carle said he believed the psychological methods used to disorient detainees rose to the level of torture. He said that if "things got out of hand" during an interrogation a CIA psychologist would step in. Carle said, however, he “never saw any of the physical techniques being administered [to Wazir]” while he was present.

“Whenever anything came up to make that possible I wouldn’t allow it,” Carle said. “I stopped it. So I wasn’t aware of that happening. But I don’t know what happened to him after I left” the black site prison.

Habeas Denial

Blogger Marcy Wheeler reported that in September 2006 Wazir filed a habeas petition and "his suit was ultimately consolidated with the three Bagram detainees whose DC Circuit habeas denial remains the relevant decision denying Bagram detainees habeas."

"But Wazir’s petition was denied in spite of the fact that a former Bagram detainee revealed that Wazir had been told some time in June or July 2008 there was no evidence against him," Wheeler wrote.

Tina Foster, a constitutional attorney who represented Wazir in his habeas petition against the US government, told Harper's, “the Justice Department maintained that Pacha Wazir was legally detainable on unspecified grounds, but that the determination had been properly made by those with knowledge of his case.”

“Had the conclusions reached by [Carle in cable assessments he sent about Wazir] not been destroyed, and instead acknowledged and disclosed by the government to the court, it would likely have tipped the scales of justice in his case and possibly also in other cases,” Foster said.

Wazir was not freed until February 2010, eight years after his capture.

Heavily Redacted

The CIA's Publications Review Board, "under the guise of 'protecting sources and methods,' imposed numerous redactions and elliptical phrases on my manuscript," Carle writes in "The Interrogator," which was published following a year-long battle with the agency. "These have eliminated or softened harsh facts about what our government has done in pursuit of terrorists, rounded edges of wrongdoing, and obscured the corruption of our institutions and of our system of government caused by the rendition, detention, and coercive interrogation of terrorists or terrorist suspects."

Still, Carle footnoted the redactions and summarized, in general terms, what the agency had censored. For example, in response to a redacted paragraph on page 134, Carle added this footnote:

The deleted passage concerns my assessment of why Headquarters would persit in its conceptual and operational errors in [Wazir's] case. The passage is acidic. This is the only reason I can see why it would be redacted, for it reveals no source or method--other than contemptible institutional incompetence.

Carle told Truthout that since his book was published in June, he has been the subject of a "whispering campaign," where "unnamed anonymous representatives and supporters of [torture] and defenders of them will speak to significant members of the media and say, 'You shouldn't take a chance on [reporting] his story because you don't want to damage your access to useful sources."

"That's had some effect on my ability to get this story out," Carle said, without citing the media outlets that were allegedly contacted. "The effort clearly has been, and I have heard this from multiple sources, to keep me from having access to the major media networks and newspapers and magazines. It has worked. I have not been able to share my story on a major network."

Prosecutions Would "Divide Us"

Yet Carle, who retired from the CIA in 2007, refuses to endorse an investigation and/or prosecution of key Bush administration and CIA officials who he said they were responsible for violating numerous laws in the name of national security, claiming it would "divide" the country.

"It's not to protect the guilty," Carle told Truthout about the reasons he does not support accountability. "I think a trial or series of trials would divide us, polarize us and become a he said, she said, 'I attempted to protect the nation' - and I am sure everyone sincerely intended to do that - and 'You're just for political reasons coming after me.' I think that would be counterproductive."

"The country is already 'divided,'" Truthout retorted, "even without a full-scale investigation or prosecution. You're well aware of the partisan bickering currently taking place in Washington, DC. How would a criminal probe further polarize the country?"

"Well, we are divided in a more distressing way than at any time since the the Vietnam War," Carle said. "But Vietnam was over an issue not over a political philosophy. By taking steps that fuel the divisions we don't end them. My objective is to make the feeling more broad among the American public that [torture is] un-American and unacceptable and doesn't work. I think that comes not by going after the designers of them, but by taking steps that make the average American think, 'well, yeah these methods don't work and are incompatible with what it means to be an American citizen. So, I think strengthening the feeling that the measures are wrong is more important than having three or four people pay a penalty for this."

"I Did My Best"

Another CIA officer took over Wazir’s case in 2003 and Carle returned to the United States. He said he did not inquire about what happened to the detainee until he reluctantly typed his name into Google in December 2010.

"I was an undercover CIA operations officer for most of my career,” Carle said. “I was known to foreign services around the world as a CIA officer. It would be unwise for me to associate my name with an operation. I never asked [about Wazir] and I never looked. I learned only last year, nine months after [Wazir] had been freed, that in fact he had been freed. I knew nothing about it."

Ultimately, Carle said, "I did my best and I think in this case I made the right decisions and acted honorably, although I was unable to accomplish much of what I tried."

via truth-out.org

Native Americans Share History of Oppression During Occupy Denver

2011-10-25T06:47:00.001-07:00

The fall temperatures were mild but the rhetoric was heated as some of the 1,000-strong Occupy Denver participants heard Glenn Morris, a leader of the American Indian Movement – Colorado (AIM), condemn centuries of occupation.

“‘Occupied’ doesn’t always have a good connotation for us,” he said to loud applause. “We’ve been ‘occupied’ for 519 years.”

He spoke in the amphitheater of Denver’s City Center Park on October 22, with the state capitol at one end of the park and the city-county building at the other. The annual Zombie Crawl, attended by an estimated 3,000 people was nearby and street marches by that group and Occupy Denver intersected at several points, with some zombie-clad youths holding up signs calling for change and assertions that “Corporations Are Not People.”

The concept of corporate person-hood is not new to Indian people, because “corporations were people before we were” in federal law, Morris said in his speech to Occupy Denver.

The audience reacted enthusiastically to Morris’ statements of mutual solidarity and support for rallies against the positions of President Barack Obama—termed “not our president”—particularly on the $13 billion Keystone XL Pipeline, which intersects a number of tribal lands from its origin in Alberta southward to the U.S. Gulf coast, in what he termed “the largest industrial project on earth.”

“We’ve got something to say about this,” he said. “The pipeline crosses the Ogallala Aquifer that provides your water. We want that pipeline stopped.”

Letters of eminent domain—which would take farmers’ and ranchers’ land in a sometimes-forced sale—have already been sent by XL Keystone officials to farmers in Nebraska, he said, urging listeners to “tell Barack Obama (in his visit to Denver October 24-25) that we are standing against the pipeline.”

Earlier, Morris noted that the Denver area was once the homeland of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute peoples, and said that Occupy Denver was the first city to adopt an AIM indigenous platform, with Phoenix, Oakland, Seattle and other cities adopting the proposal in principle.

“In the U.S., indigenous nations were the first targets of corporate/government oppression,” the platform states, and incorporation of the Doctrine of Discovery into law justified the theft of 2 billion acres of indigenous territory and established a framework of “corrupt political/legal/corporate collusion that continues throughout indigenous America to the present.”

Among other things, the platform Morris cited called upon Occupy Denver to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, repeal the Columbus Day holiday, endorse indigenous self-determination, enforce all treaties, recognize the right to repatriation of human remains and funeral objects, stand in solidarity with the Cree nations in opposing tar sands development, and immediately release from federal prison Leonard Peltier, a Native activist charged with murder in the aftermath of Indian/FBI conflicts in the 1970s in South Dakota.

“We’ve been waiting 519 years for this moment—a moment that says we want a new America” characterized by mutual respect, sustainability, and other qualities, he said. “We had that homeland, and we want it back.”

Although the audience was predominantly non-Native, a number of Indian youth and some adults were present. Calvin Standing Bear, Oglala/Sicangu Lakota, a prominent flutist and singer, held a sign reading “We R the World.”

The daytime event was peaceful, despite a significant police and state patrol presence.

via indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com

End of Twitter/Demand Progress

2011-10-24T16:04:00.001-07:00

Friends,

A bit of an emergency: The rumor all over Capitol Hill is that the House version of the Internet Blacklist Bill will be introduced this week, probably on Wednesday.

Please click here to urge your Congressmember to NOT COSPONSOR the legislation.

Our allies on the Hill say the bill's so bad that it could effectively destroy Youtube, Twitter, and other sites that rely on user-generated content by making the sites' owners legally responsible for everything their users post.

Nobody will want to take that risk, so sites like Youtube and Twitter could be forced to shut down.

And all of this is being driven by a few major corporations who are trying to protect their private profits.

Will you click here to ask your Congressmember not to cosponsor the legislation, at least until they've heard our concerns?

Thanks,

The Demand Progress team

PS: We need to completely overwhelm the social networking sites with info about this legislation so we can bombard Congress with constituent contacts:

If you're already on Facebook, click here to share with your friends.
If you're already on Twitter, click here to tweet about the campaign: Tweet

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Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston (Video's 1-3)

2011-10-24T08:29:00.001-07:00

Courts Rule US Government Above the Law

2011-10-24T08:08:00.001-07:00

via grtv.ca

Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein has declined to hold the CIA in contempt for destroying videos that it had been ordered by the courts to preserve.

The case revolves around 92 videos, depicting hundreds of hours of interrogations of detainees. The tapes allegedly contained evidence of torture, and the CIA was ordered by numerous courts to produce the videos in relation to lawsuits arising from torture allegations. The 9/11 Commission also demanded that the tapes be produced. Instead, the agency destroyed them.

Although the Obama Justice Department had already decided last year that no criminal charges would be filed for this blatant obstruction of justice, Judge Hellerstein’s recent ruling insures that the agency will not even face civil sanctions or so much as a contempt order for willfully breaking the law.

In his ruling, Judge Hellerstein, the very judge who had ordered the CIA to produce the tapes in September of 2004, notes that the agency had instead provided a description of what they say was on the tapes and “implemented new protocols” to insure that they don’t destroy evidence again, so there is no need to hold them accountable in any way.

Judge Hellerstein’s decision is not without precedent.

In 2010, Obama’s Office of Legal Council wrote a memo arguing the legality of Obama’s secret list of assassination targets, a list that apparently includes American citizens who have not been convicted or even charged of a crime. The memo was used as the legal justification for the extrajudicial assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen who the President ordered murdered early last year.

Now, the Obama White House is arguing that they don’t even have to show the justification for ordering the unconstitutional assassination of one of its own citizens.

Still, concerned citizens are attempting to challenge the Obama regime’s power grabs in court.

Earlier this year, Senator Wyden revealed that the federal government has a secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act that allows the government much more power than is suggested by the wording of the act itself.

When Charlie Savage of the New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the interpretation, he was denied on the basis that the interpretation is classified.

Last week, Savage and the Times sued the federal government for refusing to release the documents. The case is currently before Judge William Pauley of the US District Court.

TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=2855

Joe Rogan on Occupy Wallstreet

2011-10-24T07:51:00.001-07:00

Joe Rogan shares his thoughts about the Occupy Wallstreet protests on his podcast: The Joe Rogan Experience.

Podcast Episodes sampled: 141: Joe Rogan & Duncan Trussel 147: Joe Rogan, Redban & Duncan Trussel 148: Joe Rogan, Redban & Kevin Pereira

Download the Pocast For Free on Itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joe-rogan-experience/id360084272

Song used: 2nd Class Citizen - A World Without http://www.myspace.com/2econdclasscitizen

All protest footage is from the New York Occupy Wall Street protests, much of it from the shortmovie "Consensus" by Youtube user: http://www.youtube.com/user/meerkatmedia

Podcast Poster at the end made by Formal Sweatpants: http://formalsweatpants.com/journal/2011/10/20/the-joe-rogan-experience.html https://twitter.com/#!/Pants

Version without music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVSpYrIfNtU Video made by: @Warwithmyself in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street Thank you for watching!

Peter Joseph: Message to Occupy Wall Street & The World | The Zeitgeist Movement

2011-10-24T07:28:00.001-07:00

The Richest 0.1% Have Launched A War On Us – It’s Time To Fight Back And Hold These 400 Billionaires Personally Responsible For Our Economic Crisis

2011-10-24T07:20:00.001-07:00

Ampedstatus.org

Editor’s Note: The following post includes adapted excerpts from David DeGraw’s book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” Release Date: 9.28.11

We have endured financial oppression for long enough. In a time of national crisis and shared sacrifice, the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population cannot continue on their merry way, living in obscene wealth and detached from reality, while the majority of the population desperately struggles to make ends meet. We are under attack, and it’s time to fight back.

I work over 60 hours a week and still barely make ends meet. Increased costs of living and thousands of dollars in medical bills have made me and my family move three times in the past three years to downsize and cut living expenses. I’m certainly not alone in this dire economic situation, tens of millions of Americans are fighting this daily war to keep their family fed and healthy with a roof over their head.

In fact, as long as I can keep up this intensive work schedule at my current income level, I’m actually better off than many Americans. Over 46 million Americans are currently relying on food stamps to feed their family, over 50 millioncan’t afford health care, 62 million have zero or negative net worth and 64% of Americans have less than $1000 saved. As the economic downturn begins to accelerate once again, the majority of the population, which has been struggling for over three years now, is going to be pushed to a breaking point.

Meanwhile, in this time of national crisis, as we keep hearing calls for “shared sacrifice,” tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within the hands of the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population. This unprecedented consolidation of wealth continues unabated, as we now have the most severe inequality of wealth in American history. US millionaire households now have over $46 trillion in wealth, yet only one-tenth of one percent of the population makes over $1 million per year.

Let me be clear, I don’t fault a person for being rich. If you are great at what you do and work hard, you should be financially better off than people who slack off, are bad at what they do and don’t work hard. Almost all Americans agree with that. However, the problem we currently have is that people who are extremely bad at what they do are now all too often the people who have the most money. For example, the very people who caused this economic crisis have profited off of it and are now among the richest people in the world.

The reality of our current crisis is that we now have an aristocracy in this country that lives beyond the rule of law. They have used their wealth to rig the government and the economy. Through campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door between Washington and the most powerful global corporations, the world’s richest people have now effectively rigged the system against hardworking Americans. This economic crisis is the result of a deliberate systemic looting engineered by the global financial elite. To attempt to dismiss this reality as some unproven conspiracy theory is to display a stunning level of ignorance.

Just look at the bailout of Wall Street: trillions of dollars in national wealth were given to the people who engaged in fraudulent activity and crashed the economy. They then used the public’s wealth to give themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. And now, while the rich people who caused this crisis have never been richer, the government is giving them tax breaks and cutting vital programs that we need to keep our society functioning. To say that America has descended into a neo-feudal banana republic is not using bombastic rhetoric or hyperbole, it is a technical fact to anyone who spends time analyzing our current economic and socio-political condition.

As our society is incrementally and steadily deteriorating, millions of people are growing more desperate by the day. American families can no longer remain passive when under such a prolonged and ongoing economic attack. We literally can’t afford to. Clearly, this is a highly unsustainable and dangerous situation that cannot continue for much longer. A small fraction of society has systemically robbed the country and destroyed the economic future of the majority of the population. As more people realize this, and as desperate times continue, the mega-wealthy will eventually reap what they have sown.

To understand our future prospects, we just need to look at the civil unrest that is currently spreading throughout the world. The same people who robbed America have also robbed many other countries. People worldwide who have been pushed into severe poverty are rebelling because they have no other choice. It’s either fight back or let your family die a slow death. The massive protests and riots that have swept from Cairo to London are just the first wave of a tsunami of rebellion and unrest that, if the present course is not urgently and significantly changed, is sure to hit America soon.

Even the Wall Street friendly press, such as Market Watch, are publishing reports like this onefrom veteran journalist Paul B. Farrell:

“What a year. Rage in London, Egypt, Athens, Damascus….

Warning: More rage is dead ahead. Across our planet a new generation is filled with rage. High unemployment. Raging inflation. Dreams lost. Hope gone. While the super-rich get richer and richer.

Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America’s future….

Super-rich addicts are destroying the American Dream for everyone. They’re destroying the American economy. They don’t care about you. Yes, they hear the ticking time bomb. They’re stockpiling cash. Don’t say you weren’t warned. The IMF sees a new collapse sweeping across the planet. Open your eyes. You’re not watching a film. This is not a metaphor. Plan now for the revolution, class warfare, market crash, economic collapse, plan for another depression.”

Contagion of Global Unrest Spreads Worldwide

Unfortunately, as we see spreading throughout the world, the blacklash by impoverished and economically disenfranchised people is already taking a violent turn for the worse. All throughout the UK, which is economically comparable to many American states, financially oppressed people have resorted to rioting and looting. While the fallout and financial loss from these riots have only been a small fraction of the economic looting global bankers have inflicted upon the British population, it is horrifying to see. The popular German news outlet Der Spiegel recently featured this article:

A Society on the Verge of a Meltdown

“The riots in London are a social Fukushima for the Western world. Should we really be surprised that an increase in wealth for just a few, accompanied by simultaneous impoverishment of the masses, could not continue unabated?…

But with all due respect, the only thing astonishing here is the actual astonishment. Who really thought it could simply go on indefinitely like this? Who believed there would be no consequences to the increase of obscene wealth for a few while impoverishment simultaneously plagued the masses. Wealth disparity is no accident….We famously learn little from history. But if we take one thing from the Weimar era it should be this: The res publica amissa, or the neglected polity, will fail in the end.”

John Pilger, an award-winning London-based journalist, summed up the riots in this report:

Damn it or fear it, the forbidden truth is an insurrection in Britain

“Such is the truth of [UK Prime Minister] David Cameron’s ‘sick society’, notably its sickest, most criminal, most feral ‘pocket’: the square mile of the City of London where, with political approval, the banks and super-rich have trashed the British economy and the lives of millions. This is fast becoming unmentionable as we succumb to propaganda once described by the American black leader Malcolm X thus: ‘If you’re not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing.’”

Phil Rockstroh exposed the corporate mainstream media’s biased reporting in this article:

Life in an Age Of Looting

“According to the through-the-looking-glass cosmology of mass media elitists, when a poor person commits a crime of opportunity, his actions are a threat to all we hold dear and sacred, but, when the hyper-wealthy of the entrenched looter class abscond with billions, those criminals are referred to as our financial leaders.

Regardless of the propaganda of ‘free market’ fantasists, the great unspeakable in regard to capitalism is its wealth, by and large, is generated for a ruthless, privileged few by the creation of bubbles, and, when those bubbles burst, the resultant economic catastrophe inflicts a vastly disproportionate amount of harm upon those — the laboring and middle classes — who generate grossly inequitable amounts of capital for the elitist of the fraudster class… by having the life force drained from them by the vampiric set-up of the gamed system.”

Even in Germany, which has a better economic situation than most other European countries, people are burning luxury “fat cat” cars.

Arsonists Torch Mercedes, BMWs in Berlin Protests

“Arsonists have set fire to 26 cars in the German capital in the last two days, mainly from Daimler AG (DAI)’s Mercedes, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) and Volkswagen AG (VOW)’s Audi, police said today. That brings the total number torched this year in Berlin to at least 138, more than double the figure for all of 2010….

‘The arsonists want to hit what they say are ‘Fat Cats,’’ Berlin police spokesman Michael Gassen said. A special unit is investigating the fires as political crimes after the police received letters claiming responsibility that derided globalization, gentrification and rising rents, he said.”

Israel is another financially “better off” nation that has seen massive protests. Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country have been protesting the “high cost of living.” Some protesters even brought out a functioning guillotine on a street named after an infamous banking family. As Washington’s Blog summed it up:

“Indeed, these pictures from Israeli protests on Rothschild Boulevard last week show that people worldwide are getting sick and tired of the wealthiest acting like despotic kings:”

This past weekend, over 430,000 people protested throughout Israel in the country’s largest demonstration ever. This week, hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike inItaly and Spain. In Greece, yet another country that has been looted by the same people that have robbed the US, they have seen increasingly violent protests. There have been many violent clashes with the police. They even blew up JP Morgan offices and have repeatedly attacked the Ministry of Finance in Athens.

Throughout the world the situation is the same: rising costs of living, rampant poverty and unemployment, lower income and increasingly dire economic prospects for the overwhelming majority of citizens, while 0.1% of the population, the people who caused this economic crisis, are richer than ever.

Unfortunately, most of the American public has been propagandized and they still do not fully comprehend this blatant reality. US corporate television “news” has blinded much of the US public to this highly volatile situation.

The saddest part is that we know how to begin fixing this problem, yet common sense steps are not being taken. We can start by breaking up the “too big to fail” banks that hold us hostage and hold their top executives accountable. We can also end the system of political bribery that allows the mega-wealthy to control our political processes through campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door. Those are the first steps that absolutely need to be taken. Anyone who spends time researching our political and economic system will come to these obvious conclusions. These are common sense steps that are in the interests of 99.9% of the population.

However, with the US public so marginalized, confused and unaware of basic political reality, it appears these changes will not happen. Therefore, based on much empirical and statistical evidence, our society will soon descend into outbursts of rioting and violence.

Preparing for Civilian Unrest, the Crackdown in the US

Major US cities are getting ready for the blacklash by preparing their police force riot squads. New York City, the financial capital of the world, is a geographically clustered region that is home to millions of poor people – significantly large populations in highly impoverished neighborhoods are only a stones throw away from Wall Street. As this recent report reveals, the New York City Police Department is urgently preparing for unrest:

In wake of British riots, New York police prepare for unrest

“New York police anti-riot units assembled last week at a training facility on Randall’s Island to prepare for an outbreak of civil unrest similar to those that have occurred recently in Britain. The August 12 ‘mobilization exercises’ brought together police from all five of the city’s boroughs, including specialized units such as mounted police and aviation.

The riot training was held just days after the New York City Police Department (NYPD) announced the formation of a new ‘juvenile justice unit,’ which is to include detachments of cops assigned to troll Internet social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in search of any indication of impending disturbances….

The training mobilization of the NYPD, however, makes it more than clear that the ruling elite on the other side of the Atlantic is quite conscious that the conditions of social inequality, poverty, police abuse and attacks on social services and conditions that exist in both Britain and America can trigger an explosion in New York City.

In terms of income distribution, New York City, the capital of the US financial sector, is the most unequal major city in the US and is among the most unequal cities in the world. According to recent figures, the city’s top 1 percent monopolizes 44 percent of income. The city’s boundaries encompass both Wall Street, where top executives rake in salaries and bonuses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the Bronx, the poorest county in the country. If it were a country, New York City would be one of the most unequal in the world, ranking between Chile and Honduras.

Sitting atop this social powder-keg is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the richest of New York City’s 58 billionaires….

The combination of stark social inequality, depression-level unemployment in many city neighborhoods, ever-escalating budget cuts and relentless police harassment are creating the conditions for a social eruption in America’s largest city.”

Violence is on the rise throughout New York City. Over Labor Day weekend, 48 people were shot and killed in a rash of random shootings. New York is far from the only city in the country to be in imminent danger of mass civil unrest and increasing violence. Nine major US cities currently have a poverty rate over the critical threshold of 25%. As the economic downturn once again accelerates, there are many terrifying and ominous indicators. One leading indicator for unrest is youth unemployment. The percentage of young Americans who are not in the workforce, eligible workers up to the age of 24, is now at a record high of 51%.

As another example of a major US city on the edge, in Milwaukee the poverty rate is currently hovering around 30%. [Note: The graphic to the right is based on 2009 Census data. The poverty rate has increased since then.] Among African-American men in the region, 50% are now unemployed. Milwaukee has recently seen several small-scale riots, a violent flash mob riot just broke out at a local state fair.

As we have seen historically and recently throughout the world, the first phase of economic disenfranchised backlash leads to riots where people who are deeply impoverished look for the nearest person to attack or the nearest store to loot or vandalize. This eventually leads to clashes with local law enforcement – much like we have already seen in San Francisco (see below) and on a larger-scale in London. Throughout the US, as just mentioned, we have also seen the start of violent flash mobs, a trend many believe will continue to grow and occur more frequently. After this initial emotionally-driven phase, there tends to be more sophisticated acts of crime and violence directed at banks, politicians, mega-wealthy individuals and rich gated-communities, as we have started to see sporadically throughout Greece, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

The bottom line is that we will inevitably see many more “civil disturbances” throughout the United States, and the Army, just like the NYPD, is currently preparing for such occasions. As this report from Tom Burghardt reveals:

As Economy Tanks, ‘New Normal’ Police State Takes Shape

“Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources, otherwise known as Army Regulation 500-50, spells out the ‘responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department of the Army in planning and operations involving the use of Army resources in the control of actual or anticipated civil disturbances.’ (emphasis added)

With British politicians demanding a clampdown on social media in the wake of London riots, and with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San Francisco, switching off underground cell phone service to help squelch a protest against police violence, authoritarian control tactics, aping those deployed in Egypt and Tunisia are becoming the norm in so-called ‘Western democracies.’”

As the excerpt above references, in San Francisco, after the police fatally shot a person, protests broke out and a police state crackdown occurred, similar to the attempts to stifle free speech in Egypt. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sums up here:

BART Pulls a Mubarak in San Francisco

“This week, EFF has seen censorship stories move closer and closer to home — first Iran, then the UK, and now San Francisco, an early locus of the modern free speech movement. Operators of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) shut down cell phone service to four stations in downtown San Francisco yesterday in response to a planned protest…

One thing is clear, whether it’s BART or the cell phone carriers that were responsible for the shut-off, cutting off cell phone service in response to a planned protest is a shameful attack on free speech. BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who ordered the shutdown of cell phone service in Tahrir Square in response to peaceful, democratic protests earlier this year. Free speech advocates have called out British Prime Minister David Cameron for considering new, broad censorship powers over social networks and mobile communication in the UK, and we are appalled to see measures that go beyond anything Cameron has proposed being used here in the United States.”

To see how far the US police state is going, the Department of Homeland Security just sent out a bulletin warning financial corporations of an upcoming non-violent protest on Wall Street this September 17th. Police are now employing unprecedented measures to stifle First Amendment rights. In another recent example, an artist who painted a picture of a JP Morgan Chase bank on fire, to symbolize the financial crisis, was visited at his home by police questioning him as a potential terrorist.

It’s Time for Aware Citizens to Hold the Richest 400 Americans Personally Responsible

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class,
the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
– Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
Obviously top Wall Street executives, the Federal Reserve, members of the Business Roundtable, theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council, health insurance CEOs, war profiteering oil and private military companies, both dominant political parties, along with the Bush and Obama administrations all bare direct responsibility for our economic suffering. First and foremost, they deserve most of the blame. We need to hold them all personallyresponsible and apply mass direct action and pressure upon them.

That being said, at this urgent point in our national crisis, as the economic situation grows increasingly severe, we need to also focus on the richest 400 Americans and hold thempersonally responsible as well. We need to get in their face and call them out in a non-violent manner.

It is not my intention to demonize all 400 of the richest Americans. Some of them are well-meaning and hardworking people. However, as the primarily beneficiaries of a rigged and predatory economy, they must all acknowledge that the system that has produced their immense wealth is now overrun with corruption and society is breaking down as a result.

At this point, even the billionaires who haven’t had a direct role in creating this financial crisis need to be held responsible. As a person who has benefited so greatly, and has acquired so many resources, whether they like it or not, they are now in a position of responsibility. The richest 400 Americans have as much wealth as 154 million Americans combined, that’s 50% of the entire country. They personally have the power and wealth necessary to financially support organizations and politicians who will fight for much needed changes. If they are unwilling to put their immense power behind changing this dire situation, they too must be held personally responsible.

I’m extending an olive branch to these 400 billionaire Americans. I’m giving them fair warning. Either use your wealth and power to make urgently needed changes, or you too will end up like tyrants of the past.

Our country and our families have endured systemic financial oppression for long enough. In a time of national crisis and shared sacrifice, the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population cannot continue on their merry way, living in obscene wealth and detached from reality, while the majority of the population desperately struggles to make ends meet.

The last thing I want to see is rioting and violence. However, as we have seen throughout the world, it is evident that you cannot rob tens of millions of people of their economic security, dignity and future and expect society to continue functioning business as usual. All the gated communities and private security you can buy still won’t be enough to save you from tens of millions of desperate and enraged people.

As the economic crisis once again begins to accelerate, the overwhelming majority of Americans are hanging by a thread. When the inevitable wave of unrest hits our streets, the masses will be looking in your direction – this you can be sure of. Either start fighting for much needed changes or face the consequences of your actions, and inactions.

To paraphrase Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Mask of Anarchy,” we are many – you are few.

Are the 400 richest Americans going to stand and fight for America, or is history going to remember them as short-sighted, delusional, narcissistic and despotic tyrants?

The choice is theirs.

Which side of history will they be on?

From here on in, the people will be watching their every move.

We want to know what these 400 billionaires are personally doing to solve our financial crisis. In the days ahead, we will track their political activities.

Here are the 400 richest Americans according to Forbes Magazine:

1 Bill Gates
2 Warren Buffett
3 Larry Ellison
4 Christy Walton
5 Charles Koch
6 David Koch
7 Jim Walton
8 Alice Walton
9 S. Robson Walton
10 Michael Bloomberg
11 Larry Page
12 Sergey Brin
13 Sheldon Adelson
14 George Soros
15 Michael Dell
16 Steve Ballmer
17 Paul Allen
18 Jeff Bezos
19 Anne Cox Chambers
20 John Paulson
21 Donald Bren
22 Abigail Johnson
23 Phil Knight
24 Carl Icahn
25 Ronald Perelman
26 John Mars
27 Jacqueline Mars
28 Forrest Mars
29 George Kaiser
30 James Simons
31 Len Blavatnik
32 Steve Cohen
33 Edward Johnson
34 Philip Anschutz
35 James Goodnight
36 Mark Zuckerberg
37 Jack Taylor
38 Rupert Murdoch
39 Samuel Newhouse
40 Jim Kennedy
41 Blair Parry-Okeden
42 Steve Jobs
43 Andrew Beal
44 Eli Broad
45 Harold Hamm
46 Patrick Soon-Shiong
47 Pierre Omidyar
48 Eric Schmidt
49 Donald Newhouse
50 Charles Butt
51 John Menard
52 Charles Ergen
53 Richard Kinder
54 David Geffen
55 Harold Simmons
56 Ray Dalio
57 Frederik G.H. Meijer
58 Dennis Washington
59 Ira Rennert
60 Ralph Lauren
61 Sam Zell
62 Richard DeVos
63 Ray Lee Hunt
64 David Tepper
65 Richard LeFrak
66 Lester Crown
67 Leonard Lauder
68 John Paul DeJoria
69 Micky Arison
70 Bruce Kovner
71 Robert Rowling
72 Stephen Schwarzman
73 Roger Wang
74 Robert Bass
75 Charles Johnson
76 Robert Ziff
77 Daniel Ziff
78 Dirk Ziff
79 Marion MacMillan Pictet
80 Whitney MacMillan
81 Cargill MacMillan
82 Pauline MacMillan Keinath
83 Charles Schwab
84 Rupert Johnson
85 Thomas Frist
86 Ray Dolby
87 Victor Fung
88 Leonard Stern
89 Gordon Moore
90 William Koch
91 Henry Kravis
92 Henry Ross Perot Sr
93 John Sall
94 Haim Saban
95 John Sobrato
96 John Arnold
97 George Lucas
98 Ron Burkle
99 Ann Walton Kroenke
100 Daniel Och
101 William Cook
102 Robert Holding
103 George Roberts
104 Edward Lampert
105 Stephen Ross
106 Randa Williams
107 Dannine Avara
108 Milane Frantz
109 Scott Duncan
110 Paul Tudor Jones
111 John Malone
112 Steven Spielberg
113 James Jannard
114 Leon Black
115 Trevor Rees-Jones
116 Ted Lerner
117 Bruce Halle
118 Terrence Pegula
119 Stanley Druckenmiller
120 Riley Bechtel
121 Leslie Wexner
122 Kirk Kerkorian
123 Stephen Bechtel
124 Sumner Redstone
125 Barbara Piasecka Johnson
126 Ronald Lauder
127 Peter Kellogg
128 Joan Tisch
129 Philip Falcone
130 Oprah Winfrey
131 Steven Udvar-Hazy
132 David Murdock
133 Patrick McGovern
134 Stanley Kroenke
135 Timothy Headington
136 David Sun
137 Malcolm Glazer
138 John Tu
139 Edgar Bronfman Sr
140 Nancy Walton Laurie
141 Mitchell Rales
142 James Leprino
143 David Green
144 Mary Alice Dorrance Malone
145 Donald Schneider
146 William Hilton
147 Charles Dolan
148 Archie Aldis Emmerson
149 Richard Schulze
150 Mark Cuban
151 Igor Olenicoff
152 Warren Stephens
153 David Rockefeller
154 John Anderson
155 Martha Ingram
156 Donald Trump
157 Ty Warner
158 Tom Gores
159 Steven Rales
160 Richard Rainwater
161 Doris Fisher
162 Ken Griffin
163 Rodney Lewis
164 Glen Taylor
165 Julian Robertson
166 A. Jerrold Perenchio
167 David Shaw
168 Jack Dangermond
169 Nicolas Berggruen
170 Michael Milken
171 William Randolph Hearst III
172 Jeremy Jacobs
173 Henry Hillman
174 H. Wayne Huizenga
175 Robert Friedland
176 Edward Roski
177 William Wrigley
178 Ronda Stryker
179 Bill Gross
180 Stewart Rahr
181 Diane Hendricks
182 Lee Bass
183 George Mitchell
184 Sid Bass
185 Phillip Frost
186 Bennett Dorrance
187 Alfred Taubman
188 Amos Hostetter
189 Jerry Jones
190 Herbert Kohler
191 Mortimer Zuckerman
192 Phillip Ruffin
193 Gordon Getty
194 Peter Peterson
195 H. Fisk Johnson
196 S. Curtis Johnson
197 Winnie Johnson-Marquart
198 Helen Johnson-Leipold
199 Imogene Powers Johnson
200 David Rubenstein — 201 Robert Rich
202 Lynn Schusterman
203 William Conway
204 Daniel D’Aniello
205 Walter Scott
206 Ted Turner
207 Steve Wynn
208 Alan Casden
209 Wilbur Ross
210 Michael Jaharis
211 James Cargill
212 Austen Cargill
213 Marianne Liebmann
214 Jeffrey Hildebrand
215 Reyes J. Christopher
216 Reyes Jude
217 Frederick Smith
218 Albert Ueltschi
219 Jess Jackson
220 Israel Englander
221 Neil Bluhm
222 Dean White
223 Austin Hearst
224 Phoebe Hearst Cooke
225 George Hearst Jr
226 David Hearst Jr
227 Fred DeLuca
228 David Bonderman
229 Peter Buck
230 Jim Davis
231 James Coulter
232 Marc Benioff
233 Jerry Speyer
234 Kelcy Warren
235 Jeff Greene
236 Charles Munger
237 Stanley Hubbard
238 Clemmie Spangler
239 Michael Ilitch
240 Clayton Mathile
241 Bradley Hughes
242 Louis Bacon
243 John Catsimatidis
244 Thomas Siebel
245 Henry Samueli
246 Alec Gores
247 Alexander Rovt
248 Randal Kirk
249 Thomas Kaplan
250 Craig McCaw
251 Isaac Perlmutter
252 Barbara Carlson Gage
253 George Argyros
254 Ted Forstmann
255 Thomas Pritzker
256 Marilyn Carlson Nelson
257 William Connor
258 Michael Heisley
259 Leandro Rizzuto
260 Bharat Desai
261 Ken Fisher
262 S. Truett Cathy
263 Glenn Dubin
264 Stephen Mandel
265 Manuel Moroun
266 John Marriott
267 John Doerr
268 Wilma Tisch
269 Bernard Marcus
270 Edward DeBartolo
271 Leon G. Cooperman
272 S. Daniel Abraham
273 Edward Bass
274 Richard Peery
275 Richard Marriott
276 George Lindemann
277 Joe Jamail
278 Robert Kraft
279 Henry Nicholas
280 Thomas Friedkin
281 Min Kao
282 Penny Pritzker
283 David Gottesman
284 Charles Brandes
285 Brad Kelley
286 Norman Braman
287 Anita Zucker
288 Drayton McLane
289 Kavitark Ram Shriram
290 Roger Penske
291 John Arrillaga
292 Michael Price
293 Robert McNair
294 Gerald J. Ford
295 Romesh T. Wadhwani
296 John Pritzker
297 T. Boone Pickens
298 Anthony Pritzker
299 Jay Robert (J.B.) Pritzker
300 Gary Michelson
301 Thomas Peterffy
302 Joseph Craft
303 Henry Ross Perot Jr
304 James Irsay
305 Dustin Moskovitz
306 Ron Baron
307 Jonathan Nelson
308 Christopher Goldsbury
309 Thomas Lee
310 John Morgridge
311 Billy Joe McCombs
312 Carl Berg
313 Vinod Khosla
314 Michael Moritz
315 James Kim
316 Stephen Bisciotti
317 Pat Stryker
318 Evgeny (Eugene) Shvidler
319 James Pritzker
320 Linda Pritzker
321 Karen Pritzker
322 Jean (Gigi) Pritzker
323 Daniel Pritzker
324 Richard Hayne
325 James Dinan
326 Ray Davis
327 Richard Chilton Jr
328 Marc Lasry
329 Leon Charney
330 Herbert Simon
331 John Fisher
332 Scott Cook
333 Arthur Blank
334 Charlotte Colket Weber
335 Richard Scaife
336 Bernard Saul
337 David Duffield
338 Sheldon Solow
339 Barry Diller
340 Tom Golisano
341 Alfred James Clark
342 Alfred Mann
343 Gary Magness
344 Meg Whitman
345 Todd Wagner
346 Jon Stryker
347 Joseph Mansueto
348 Aubrey McClendon
349 Malone Mitchell
350 Thomas Barrack
351 Johnelle Hunt
352 Henry Swieca
353 Joshua Harris
354 Marc Rowan
355 C. Dean Metropoulos
356 Alan Gerry
357 Kenneth Adams
358 Peter Sperling
359 Jerry Yang
360 David Filo
361 Alexander Knaster
362 Howard Marks
363 Bruce Karsh
364 Eduardo Saverin
365 Kenneth Langone
366 Peter Lewis
367 William Moncrief
368 Sidney Kimmel
369 Hope Hill van Beuren
370 Nelson Peltz
371 Alexander Spanos
372 Edmund Ansin
373 Dan Snyder
374 Kenny Troutt
375 Steven Roth
376 Steve Case
377 Irwin Jacobs
378 Frank Fertitta
379 Matthew Bucksbaum
380 Peter Thiel
381 William Macaulay
382 John Sperling
383 Tom Benson
384 Elaine Wynn
385 Patrick Ryan
386 John Edson
387 William Ford Sr.
388 Donald Hall
389 Herbert Allen
390 Michael Krasny
391 George Joseph
392 Arturo Moreno
393 Samuel Wyly
394 John Brown
395 Darwin Deason
396 Nicholas Pritzker
397 Lorenzo Fertitta
398 Thomas Secunda
399 Jeffrey Lurie
400 Tamara Gustavson

- David DeGraw is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com. His long-awaited book, The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III, will finally be released on September 28th. He can be emailed at David[@]AmpedStatus.com. You can follow David’s reporting daily on his new personal website: DavidDeGraw.org

via pakalertpress.com

Prolonged solitary confinement is torture, says expert | United Nations Radio

2011-10-19T11:19:00.001-07:00

18 Oct 2011 | Posted by Sandra Guy

Prolonged solitary confinement is torture, says expert
Listen / Download
Juan Mendez

Long term solitary confinement in excess of 15 days could amount to torture and should be banned, says Juan Mendez, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Quoting scientific studies, Mendez says indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement or isolation causes mental damage.

Juveniles, persons with mental disabilities or in pre-trial detention should not be isolated because it can be used to ‘extort’ confessions.

Mr. Mendez, who was detained and tortured by the Argentinean military dictatorship in the 1970s, is not confining his message to governments.

“I am also expecting civil society organizations that have even more experience than I have on solitary confinement to pick up this report and to the extent that is possible, to use it as a campaign tool to see if we can abolish solitary confinement in its worst manifestations but even in those where it is permissible, to establish clear safeguards and protection so that it doesn’t end up constituting torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

The torture expert adds that the practice should only be used in exceptional circumstance and for very short periods of time.

(Duration: 25”)

Solitary confinement should be banned in most cases, UN expert says

Filed under Today's News.

via unmultimedia.org

SEE NYPD White Shirt Order Other NYPD: "Everybody lock somebody up" - Occupy Wall Street, Sept. 24, 2011

2011-09-27T18:18:00.001-07:00

At 1:14 you can hear a police officer say "Hey guys, everybody lock somebody up," talking to a bunch of other police officers after protestors left Union Square on Sept. 24. This is just after the police arbitrarily arrested Glenn Davis Jr., as seen here . This is just before things got really ugly at the intersection of W. 12 Street and University Place, as seen here and here .

via youtube

Demonstration in Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street/NYPD Police TroubleMakers•MSNBC

2011-09-27T09:19:00.001-07:00

via youtube

TIME: Friday, September 30 · 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Place: One Police Plaza (NYPD Headquarters)

We the undersigned condemn recent police attacks against the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations underway in Lower Manhattan.

The NYPD has: -pepper sprayed people in custody -violently arrested non violent demonstrators -curtailed the expressive activities of demonstrators in Liberty Square All of this is part of a long standing practice of the NYPD to make public protest extremely difficult, unpleasant, and even dangerous. Join us in calling for an end to police repression of protests in New York, and to support the ongoing Occupy Wall Street demonstration.

Please invite your friends. To sign onto this call, add your name to the wall and we will add people to the official list as best we can. Please include any relevant identifying information.

[Organizations listed for identification purposes only.]

Alex S. Vitale, author of City of Disorder, Brooklyn College, Executive Council PSC-CUNY Penny Lewis, Murphy Institute for Labor Education, Executive Council PSC-CUNY Francis Fox Piven, CUNY Graduate Center Stanley Aronowitz, CUNY Graduate Center Leslie Cagan, peace and justice organizer Jackie DiSalvo, Baruch College Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos, Brooklyn College Ben Shepard, author of The Beach Beneath the Streets, NYC College of Technology-CUNY Michele Hardesty, Hampshire College Ron Hayduk, author of Democracy for All, BMCC-CUNY Mitchel Cohen, Brooklyn Greens/Green Party, Chair, WBAI Local Station Board Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer Liza Featherstone, journalist Theodore Hamm, Editor of The Brooklyn Rail, MCNY Stephen Duncombe, author of Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, NYU Mark Winston Griffith, Exec. Dir.,Brooklyn Movement Center Carolina Bank Munoz, Brooklyn College Glenn Kissack, Hunter College High School, (ret.) Michael Letwin, Former President, Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; Co-Convener, New York City Labor Against the War Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind, Brooklyn College Kitty Krupat, Murphy Institute for Labor Education Marnie Brady, CUNY Graduate Center Stephanie Luce, author of Fighting for a Living Wage, UMass, Amherst Eric Laursen, activist, author of The People's Pension Maida Rosenstein, President, Local 2110 UAW Sean Jacobs, The New School Jessica Blatt, Marymount Manhattan College

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via youtube

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!

2011-09-24T15:24:00.001-07:00

While on a peaceful march near Union Square in downtown Manhattan, multiple female protestors were penned up in the street by orange mesh baricade, then maliciously maced. The women were peaceful and unarmed. They were secured by barricade with an overwhelming police presence. And they were then sprayed directly in the face with pressurized mace... WeAreTheOther99 continues to peacefully occupy lower Manhattan to begin a dialogue with the Top 1% with the goal of a peaceful transition of power back to the People. This can no longer be stopped. But be advised, this will not be televised

via youtube.com

CQC Family Survey on Prison Mental Health Services

2011-06-03T19:26:00.001-07:00

CQC Family Survey on Prison Mental Health Services flyer.pdf Download this file

CQC Family Survey on Prison Mental Health Services

The Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for People with Disabilities (CQC) is conducting a review of the mental health screening process and related services provided at New York State Correctional facilities.

As part of this review, CQC is surveying family members of people who are, or have been, incarcerated in a New York State Correctional facility to learn their opinions about the mental health services provided.

The survey is available on the CQC website by clicking this link: CQC Family Survey on Prison Mental Health Services. Family members may also submit a written survey, which can be obtained by calling 1-800-949-4232.

The results of the survey will help identify improvements that can be made in prison mental health services.

The deadline for submitting the survey is July 15, 2011.

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China Has Divested 97 Percent of Its Holdings in U.S. Treasury Bills

2011-06-03T19:05:00.001-07:00

China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury.

Treasury bills are securities that mature in one year or less that are sold by the U.S. Treasury Department to fund the nation’s debt.

Mainland Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury bills are reported in column 9 of the Treasury report linked here.

Until October, the Chinese were generally making up for their decreasing holdings in Treasury bills by increasing their holdings of longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, until October, China’s overall holdings of U.S. debt continued to increase.

Since October, however, China has also started to divest from longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, as reported by the Treasury Department, China’s ownership of the U.S. national debt has decreased in each of the last five months on record, including November, December, January, February and March.

Prior to the fall of 2008, acccording to Treasury Department data, Chinese ownership of short-term Treasury bills was modest, standing at only $19.8 billion in August of that year. But when President George W. Bush signed legislation to authorize a $700-billion bailout of the U.S. financial industry in October 2008 and President Barack Obama signed a $787-billion economic stimulus law in February 2009, Chinese ownership of short-term U.S. Treasury bills skyrocketed.

By December 2008, China owned $165.2 billion in U.S. Treasury bills, according to the Treasury Department. By March 2009, Chinese Treasury bill holdings were at $191.1 billion. By May 2009, Chinese holdings of Treasury bills were peaking at $210.4 billion.

However, China’s overall appetite for U.S. debt increased over a longer span than did its appetite for short-term U.S. Treasury bills.

In August 2008, before the bank bailout and the stimulus law, overall Chinese holdings of U.S. debt stood at $573.7 billion. That number continued to escalate past May 2009-- when China started to reduce its holdings in short-term Treasury bills--and ultimately peaked at $1.1753 trillion last October.

As of March 2011, overall Chinese holdings of U.S. debt had decreased to 1.1449 trillion.

Most of the U.S. national debt is made up of publicly marketable securities sold by the Treasury Department and I.O.U.s called “intragovernmental” bonds that the Treasury has given to so-called government trust funds—such as the Social Security trust funds—when it has spent the trust funds’ money on other government expenses.

The publicly marketable segment of the national debt includes Treasury bills, which (as defined by the Treasury) mature in terms of one-year or less; Treasury notes, which mature in terms of 2 to 10 years; Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), which mature in terms of 5, 10 and 30 years; and Treasury bonds, which mature in terms of 30 years.

At the end of August 2008, before the financial bailout and the stimulus, the publicly marketable segment of the U.S. national debt was 4.88 trillion. Of that, $2.56 trillion was in the intermediate-term Treasury notes, $1.22 trillion was in short-term Treasury bills, $582.8 billion was in long-term Treasury bonds, and $521.3 billion was in TIPS.

At the end of March 2011, by which time the Chinese had dropped their Treasury bill holdings 97 percent from their peak, the publicly marketable segment of the U.S. national debt had almost doubled from August 2008, hitting $9.11 trillion. Of that $9.11 trillion, $5.8 trillion was in intermediate-term Treasury notes, $1.7 trillion was in short-term Treasury bills; $931.5 billion was in long-term Treasury bonds, and $640.7 billion was in TIPS.

Before the end of March 2012, the Treasury must redeem all of the $1.7 trillion in Treasury bills that were extant as of March 2011 and find new or old buyers who will continue to invest in U.S. debt. But, for now, the Chinese at least do not appear to be bullish customers of short-term U.S. debt.

Treasury bills carry lower interest rates than longer-term Treasury notes and bonds, but the longer term notes and bonds are exposed to a greater risk of losing their value to inflation. To the degree that the $1.7 trillion in short-term U.S. Treasury bills extant as of March must be converted into longer-term U.S. Treasury securities, the U.S. government will be forced to pay a higher annual interest rate on the national debt.

As of the close of business on Thursday, the total U.S. debt was $14.34 trillion, according to the Daily Treasury Statement. Of that, approximately $9.74 trillion was debt held by the public and approximately $4.61 trillion was “intragovernmental” debt.

via cnsnews.com

Posted via email from Street_Visuals

Tell CA Gov. Jerry Brown to Protect Farm Workers

2011-06-03T10:29:00.001-07:00

Tell CA Gov. Jerry Brown to protect farm workers

The UFW's vital bill, the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act (SB 104) has passed the CA Senate and Assembly and will shortly go to Governor Jerry Brown.

The United Farm Workers has won solid laws to protect California farm workers who provide more than half of our nation's produce. But with over 400,000 field workers migrating among 80,000 farms, these laws have not and cannot be enforced by the state of California.

The Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act will ensure the laws on the books do become the laws in the fields. This new law will make it easier for farm workers to have a union and thus have the opportunity to speak up and protect themselves.

Sign the petition TODAY!
Help make sure there are no more
needless deaths like Maria Isavel’s!

Without this bill, farm workers will continue to face unbearable conditions and pressure. Many workers don't have access to basic things like shade, water, heat training or even breaks during the hot summer days. And nothing will change. Wage and hour violations will continue. Overexposure to pesticides will go unchallenged. Sexual harassment will remain rampant and the health crises caused by a lack of sanitation and lax safety standards will continue to plague farm workers.

You can help change these conditions today. Sign our petition to tell CA Gov. Jerry Brown to sign this bill into law. Let's give the California farm workers, who feed our nation, the basic protections every worker deserves.

http://www.ufw.org/sb104petition

After you take action please share this campaign with your friends and family. You can send them an e-mail and/or post this campaign on your Facebook and/or Twitter page by clicking here or going to http://action.ufw.org/page/share/sb104

Check out our website at: www.ufw.org and keep up with the latest news.

Check out the UFW's Social Networking pages. Click to visit our Facebook Fan Page, Facebook Cause, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace,and Care2 pages. Please link to us and become our "Friend" and follow us on Twitter too!

If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for the UFW List Serve.

Please add us to your safelist: Please add ufwofamer@aol.com to your address book so that our messages don’t get trapped in your spam filter. If you have questions about how to do this, drop us an e-mail.

United Farm Workers, P.O. Box 62, Keene, CA 93531, http://www.ufw.org

Posted via email from Street_Visuals

Human rights group sues mayor in Haiti for terrorizing earthquakevictims during unlawful evictions

2011-06-03T10:26:00.001-07:00

For Immediate Release:

May 31, 2011

Contact:

Mario Joseph, Av., Managing Attorney, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux,
mario@ijdh.org, +509-3701-9879/ +509-3554-4284 (in Port-au-Prince) (French)

Jeena Shah, Esq., Legal Fellow, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux,
jeena@ijdh.org, +509-3610-2781 (in Port-au-Prince) (English)

Human rights group sues mayor in Haiti for terrorizing earthquakevictims during unlawful evictions

On Wednesday, June 1, 2011, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux
(BAI) will file a complaint with Haiti's National Prosecutor against Delmas Mayor Wilson Jeudy for his recent
spree of illegal evictions in displacement camps created after the January 12, 2010 earthquake.
Grassroots human rights organizations and tent camp residents also plan to stage a protest at 10 am at the
Ministry of Justice, while the complaint is being filed, to draw attention to their grievances. The protest will
end before the nation's Parliament.

At least three camps housing approximately 1,000 displaced persons in the Port-au-Prince suburb were
destroyed last week by Mayor Jeudy, his armed security personnel and units from the Haitian National
Police, as a part of the Mayor's declared mission to remove camps from public lands. The police came with
little to no warning and raided the camps under the pretext of searching for criminals, slashing tents with
machetes and assaulting residents trying to protest the raids.

BAI's complaint on behalf of individual victims of the evictions charges Mayor Jeudy with violations of the
rights to life and housing protected by Haiti's Constitution and crimes against the person and property,
articulated in the Haitian Penal Code. "As a public official, Mayor Jeudy is not above the law," said BAI
Managing Attorney Mario Joseph. "Haitian law only permits him to enter private domiciles, regardless of
where they are located, with a judicial mandate or a Municipal Decree published in advance, neither of
which the Mayor had to justify his acts."

Last week's evictions in Delmas are just a snapshot of a larger epidemic of forced evictions that began
almost immediately after the earthquake struck 16 months ago. The Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights issued directives to the Haitian government last fall to impose a moratorium on evictions and protect
displaced communities from the violence often associated with forced evictions. However, due in large part
to government inaction, the International Organization on Migration estimated that 166,000 people were still
facing imminent threats of eviction as of April.

Mayor Jeudy tried to defend his actions by arguing that the public spaces occupied by tent camps needed to
be open to the communities at large. "Mayor Jeudy is ignoring his duties as a State agent," said BAI attorney
Jeena Shah. "Since Haiti is a party to the American Convention on Human Rights and a host of other human
rights treaties, Mayor Jeudy has a duty to not only protect displaced persons from forced evictions, but also
facilitate their resettlement into decent housing."

While the Mayor believes that many of the camps' residents have housing but were staying in camps to
access free services, the appalling conditions of displacement camps make apparent the fact that if the
earthquake victims had somewhere else to go, they would have left long ago.

Founded in 1995, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) is the only public interest law firm in
Haiti. With the support of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, the BAI uses litigation,
advocacy, documentation and grassroots empowerment to advance the rule of law and challenge the
unjust structures that violate the human rights of Haiti's poor majority.

Visit haitijustice.org. Follow @IJDH.

Posted via email from Street_Visuals

The War On Unemployment Continues: PROTECT JOB TRAINING PROGRAMS FROM DEVESTATING BUDGET CUTS

2011-06-03T10:16:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends,

With the national unemployment rate essentially unchanged this month - now 9.1% (from 9.0% in April) and black unemployment rate little changed at 16.2% (from 16.1% in April) our War on Unemployment continues! This week we urge members of Congress to protect essential job training programs. With nearly 14 million Americans who remain unemployed, now is not the time to subject our federal job training programs to further devastating cuts! Take action by contacting your members of Congress and urging them to instead pursue wise investments in our nation’s workforce development and employment system.

SEND A LETTER TODAY! Clck here.

Tell them that job training programs work! Research shows that:

Last year more than 8 million individuals received training and other employment services that were funded under Title I of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) – a 234 percent increase in participation rates in just two years; and
More than 4.3 million WIA participants found jobs last year, and hundreds of thousands more received training and education that will open up new career opportunities.

Share your concern that on top of millions of dollars in FY2011 budget cuts to job training programs, some House Republicans are now proposing $18.2 billion more in cuts in labor, health and education programs alone. This means that once again job training programs will be placed in jeopardy!

You can take immediate action by clicking on the following link, signing the letter, and it will be sent directly to your Representative(s). Clck here.

Empower yourself, empower your community, and join us in this vital War on Unemployment! Clck here.

Yours in the movement,

Marc H. Morial
President and Chief Executive Officer
National Urban League

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9/11: Brilliant Article Ties Together All the Threads

2011-06-03T10:11:00.001-07:00

"On that fateful day, the Securities and Exchange Commission declared a national emergency, and for the first time in U.S. history, invoked its emergency powers under Securities Exchange Act Section 12(k) easing regulatory restrictions for clearing and settling security trades for the next 15 days. These changes would allow an estimated $240 billion in covert government securities to be cleared upon maturity without the standard regulatory controls around identification of ownership."

Dear friends,

Few people are aware of the huge Black Eagle Trust fund, let alone its critical relation to the 9/11 attacks. A brilliant summary of excellent information regarding this covert fund compiled by meticulous researcher E.P. Heidner ties together many previously unexplained threads in the 9/11 mystery in ways that are most compelling. Heidner presents volumes of solid evidence to support his thesis that one of the main reasons for the attacks was to cover up the laundering of over $200 billion in bonds from this secretive fund that were to come due the day after 9/11.

Serious 9/11 researchers will likely be most grateful for the revealing connections in this careful research made between seemingly unconnected parts of the 9/11 story and the many people and organizations involved. Those less familiar with the 9/11 cover-up will almost certainly appreciate the broad overview given and the hidden history behind it all. If we follow the money, a lot of unexplained things begin to make sense.

Below are key excerpts from this remarkable paper with highlighting provided for those with limited time. If you do have time, the many diagrams, photos, and charts available in the original 58-page essay are most helpful. The full document also includes 232 footnotes for verification filling 17 pages worth of text. In the concise summary below, I've kept the original footnote numbers, so you will find they skip quite a bit. See the full essay to explore these informative footnotes. For the entire original paper with footnotes, click here.

Some readers may feel upset or overwhelmed with this material, yet the fact that you are reading this and that this powerful information is awakening many as it spreads around the Internet shows that we are making a difference. Others may be excited to finally see the bigger picture. See our "what you can do" section at the end of the article for ideas on how you can help spread the word and build a brighter future. Thanks for caring.

With best wishes,
Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team
Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton

Note: For what may be the most powerful single piece of evidence corroborating this theory, click here to read the Reuters news service article on the massive volume of electronic financial transactions conducted from inside the WTC just before the towers collapsed. Yet the investigation results are being kept secret.

Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on 9/11

The September 11th attacks were likely meant as a cover-up for financial crimes being investigated by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), whose offices in the Pentagon were destroyed on September 11th. [1] The attacks ... were intended to cover-up the clearing of $240 billion dollars in securities covertly created in September 1991 to fund a covert economic war against the Soviet Union, during which ‘unknown’ western investors bought up much of the Soviet industry, with a focus on oil and gas.

The 9/11 attacks also served to derail multiple Federal investigations of crimes associated with the 1991 covert operation. Hundreds of billions of dollars of government securities had to be destroyed. A critical mass of brokers from the major government security brokerages in the Twin Towers had to be eliminated to create chaos in the government securities market. A situation needed to be created wherein $240 billion dollars of covert securities could be electronically “cleared” without anyone asking questions – which happened when the Federal Reserve declared an emergency and invoked its “emergency powers” that very afternoon. [4]

There were three major securities brokers in the World Trade Center: Cantor Fitzgerald, Eurobrokers and Garbon Inter Capital. Cantor Fitzgerald was the largest securities dealer in the US [7] and arguably the primary target. [8] 41% of the fatalities in the Twin Towers came from Cantor Fitzgerald and Eurobrokers. [13] 31% of the 125 fatalities in the Pentagon were from the Naval Command Center that housed the Office of Naval Intelligence. 39 of 40 Office of Naval Intelligence employees died. The Naval Command Center had been moved into that newly opened section of the Pentagon only a month earlier. [21] And in the vaults beneath the World Trade Center Towers, any certificates for bonds were destroyed. [14]

On that fateful day, the Securities and Exchange Commission declared a national emergency, and for the first time in U.S. history, invoked its emergency powers under Securities Exchange Act Section 12(k) easing regulatory restrictions for clearing and settling security trades for the next 15 days. These changes would allow an estimated $240 billion in covert government securities to be cleared upon maturity without the standard regulatory controls around identification of ownership. [19]

The Origins of the World Trade Center Attack

Emboldened by the lack of consequences for subverting the U.S. constitution and breaking international law during the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, a Bush administration group known as “the Vulcans” planned a bigger drive to crush Communism once and for all. They waged war against the Soviet Union and Iraq under George H.W. Bush, and against Iraq and Afghanistan under George W. Bush. Belonging to this group were Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Condoleezza Rice. [31]

The Vulcan’s drive to bring an end to the Cold War was fueled by a covert war chest invisible to congressional oversight. [32] This war chest would be known by several names: Black Eagle Trust, the Marcos gold, Yamashita’s Gold, the Golden Lily Treasure, the Durham Trust or Project Hammer. [33] The program also seems to have lined the pockets of the individuals that executed this policy. This was done to the tune of a staggering $240 billion dollars in covert and allegedly illegal bonds, which appear to have been replaced with Treasury notes backed by U.S. taxpayers in the aftermath of September 11.

The covert securities used to accomplish the national security objective of ending the Cold War ended up in the vaults of the brokers in the World Trade Center, and were destroyed on September 11, 2001. [36] They came due for settlement and clearing on September 12. The federal Agency investigating these bonds – The Office of Naval Intelligence – was in the section of the Pentagon that was destroyed on 9/11. [37]

To this key group of senior National Security officials called the Vulcans, who had participated in the victory of the economic cold war in 1991, the WTC, the Pentagon, the four airliners and their occupants would became ‘collateral’ damage in the ending of the Cold War. Their deaths were required to hide the existence of the Black Eagle Trust, and the covert activities it had funded for over 50 years. The destruction of these lives and buildings constituted a cover-up of continued lawlessness by a fraternity or brotherhood of businessmen and criminals often referred to as ‘the Enterprise’ in the 1980s, though it has remained in the shadows since.

Numerous sources have documented that at the end of WWII, the treasury of the Japanese Empire was discovered in the Philippines by a staff member of General Charles Willoughby, [Edward Lansdale], who was General MacArthur’s chief of Intelligence. Then known as the Golden Lily Treasure, this mass of wealth had been accumulated by the Japanese through over fifty years of pillaging by its army in Southeast Asia and China. It was deposited in the Philippines due to the U.S. submarine blockade of Japan. Reports vary, but documents in the public domain suggest the recovered treasure was in excess of 280,000 metric tonnes of gold, not including jewels and diamonds. [40] After the War [Lansdale] tortured Major Kojima Kashii – General Yamashita Tomoyuki’s driver – until he revealed and created a map of the gold sites. [41]

Lansdale briefed Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy about the findings, and a U.S. Cabinet level decision was made to confiscate the gold and cover-up its discovery. The gold would be added to the Black Eagle Trust fund. It was McCloy, along with Secretary of the Navy Robert B. Anderson and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson who created the Black Eagle Trust. [42]

John McCloy, who had shared a box at the 1939 Olympics with Adolph Hitler, went on to become President of the World Bank. Robert Anderson would go on to operate the Commercial Exchange Bank in the British West Indies, be convicted of running illegal banking operations and tax evasion, and be sentenced to prison. [43] A fourth member of that group – William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan – would go on to found the CIA and distribute the gold to key banks represented by his staffers.

The trust they created takes its name from the Nazi Black Eagle stamped on the gold bars of the Third Reich. Gold bullion confiscated from the Reich and not returned to its rightful owners and their heirs was the original source of funding for this trust. [44] Over the years, the significance of the Nazi gold would pale in comparison to the confiscated Japanese treasure.

The men responsible for initiating and executing the confiscation of Nazi and Japanese treasury gold represented the most senior Intelligence officers in the U.S. and Britain at the end of World War II, and the Cabinet of the President of the United States. The financial institutions represented by these individuals would become the major financial banks in the world, along with the Swiss-German banks they hid their gold in. The Yamashita gold would become the cornerstone of the Black Eagle Fund, from which many covert operations of the U.S. intelligence would be funded. [58]

Lansdale’s operation in the Philippines gave birth to most of the common features of modern covert operations for U.S. Intelligence: bribery, theft, torture, and false flag operations. It would be Lansdale who would initiate a bond between the US intelligence organizations and Israeli intelligence. It would be Lansdale that would set precedents for the Intelligence community to retain the services of organized crime on U.S. soil. Lansdale would hire American Mafia family heads Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano in the U.S. war against Fidel Castro in 1961.

It would be Lansdale’s team that would propose and justify sacrificing innocent U.S. civilians in order to rally the American citizenry to support an invasion of foreign soil. This was done under a program run by Brigadier General William H. Craig, who reported to Lansdale for the Cuba project. [61] This project was called Operation Northwoods. Documents for this project would be accidentally released from the files of Robert McNamara into the public domain some 40 years later, exposing the degree to which Lansdale’s operatives would go to wage war. [62] These declassified documents revealed secret plans of the U.S. military to wage a fabricated “terror” campaign against US citizens as a pretext to justify a second invasion of Cuba.

Barrick Gold would become an investment for nearly every gold bullion bank associated with the Marcos gold recovery. These banks would loan gold to Barrick, which would then sell the borrowed gold as derivatives, with the promise of replacing the borrowed gold with their gold mining operation. The records of many of those transactions disappeared when Enron collapsed and the trading operation and all its records were taken over by UBS, another major recipient of Marcos gold. The FBI was reportedly conducting an investigation into those transactions, and the investigation files were kept on the 23rd floor of the North Tower of the WTC. A review of the personal accounts of September 11 now suggests that office was deliberately targeted with explosives prior to the collapse of the WTC towers. [73]

Taking Control

In November 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected to the White House. Sixty-nine days after the inauguration, John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Reagan. Eight days prior to that attempt, there were a series of unprecedented policy changes that put George Bush in charge of Foreign Policy and National Security. That conferred new roles and powers on Bush, including "unprecedented powers for a vice president." [85] Vice President George Bush was named the leader of the United States "crisis management'' staff, as a part of the National Security Council system. [86] Then, on March 30, 1981, just eight days after these powers were conferred on Bush, President Reagan was shot.

The father of the assassin that put Bush in power was John (a.k.a. Jack) Hinckley, Sr., the owner of Vanderbilt Oil. Hinckley had been giving maximum donations every year to George H.W. Bush since he started running for Congress. In The Black Hole of Guyana: The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre, John Judge painstakingly documents that Jonestown was a CIA operation for converting dispossessed and lonely refugees into assassins. In an operation that was falling under Congressional investigation, the evidence had to be eliminated – and nearly all the inhabitants were murdered to prevent disclosure. [88]

A key player in the Marcos gold would be Banker’s Trust, which was taken over by Alex Brown & Sons, after Banker’s Trust floundered financially on its Russian loans in the mid 1990s. These Russian loans were facilitated by Enron, starting in August of 1993, and very possibly were part of the Project Hammer takeover of Soviet industry. Alex Brown‘s involvement would bring to the forefront the names of three names of individuals who would play multiple roles in this mystery: Buzz Krongard, Mayo Shattuck, and J Carter Beese.

Buzz Krongard is reported as the mentor of Beese and Shattuck from their years together at Alex Brown. Additionally, he managed the merger between Bankers Trust and Deutschebank Alex Brown. Bankers Trust, Zurich was a key Marcos gold holder. Krongard would move on to become Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust, and Executive Director of the CIA at the time of September 11.

Mayo Shattuck would be reported to be the personal banker for Adnan Khashoggi and Edgar Bronfmann during their partnership at Barrick Gold. [107] He would move on to become the CEO of Deutschebank who would resign for unexplained reasons the day after September 11, and would not be at the WTC office that day when the tower collapsed. It was his bank that was identified as the source of the illegal stock options that indicated there was insider trading taking advantage of the September 11 tragedy.

What happened to the Marcos gold after it was confiscated by U.S. agents in 1986 has never been reported, but throughout the early 1990s, the world gold market would be befuddled by the mysterious appearance of thousands of tonnes of gold which appeared to suppress the price of gold.

In preparation for their war against Communism, and in the years leading up to the failed – or faux – coup of 1991 which initiated the last days of Gorbachev and the rise of Yeltsin, Bush and a cadre of rogue KGB officials built a complex international network of banks and holding companies that would be used to take over ownership of the Soviet economy. Over 300 of these KGB turncoats who supported this operation would later be re-located to the US in the early 1990s and pensioned. [111] Periodic CIA reports to Congress would review KGB and organized crime complicity in the takeover of Russia by criminal elements, but all mention of the formidable role of the U.S. would be expunged from Congressional oversight and the public record. [112]

In the first phase of the economic attack on the Soviet Union, George Bush authorized Leo Wanta and others to destabilize the ruble and facilitate the theft of the Soviet/Russian treasury. This would result in draining the Russian treasury of between 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes of gold bullion, ($35 billion at the time). [113] The gold was ‘stolen’ in March of 1991, facilitated by Leo Wanta and signed off by Boris Yeltsin’s right hand man. The majority of the leaked reports from the CIA and FBI suggest the theft of the Russian treasury was a KGB and Communist party operation, but what those reports omitted was the extensive involvement of Boris Yeltsin, the U.S. banking industry and the CIA.

In the second phase, Wanta, George Soros and a group of Bush appointees would begin to destabilize the ruble. There were two major operations: the largest was coordinated by Alan Greenspan and Oliver North, and implemented by Leo Wanta.

The 9/11 Cover-up and the Black Eagle Trust

With an understanding of the economic war being waged on the Soviet Union, the focus needs to turn to reports that on September 11, 1991, President George Bush was responsible for issuing $240 billion dollars in secretive bonds as a part of this attack on the Russian ruble. There are six lines of evidence from eight sources that suggest this was indeed the case. Many of these instances are corroborated with documents available on the Internet, presented by those making the claims. [174]

The bonds sat for ten years, like a ticking time bomb. They had to be settled – or cashed in by September 12, 2001. The two firms in the U.S. most likely to be handling them would be Cantor Fitzgerald and Eurobrokers – the two largest government securities firms in the U.S. The federal agency mostly involved in investigating those transactions was the Office of Naval Intelligence. On 9/11, those same three organizations: the two largest government securities brokers and the Office of Naval Intelligence in the US took direct hits.

What happened inside the buildings of the World Trade on September 11 is difficult, but not impossible to discern. The government has put a seal on the testimony gathered by the investigating 911 Commission, and instructed government employees to not speak on the matter or suffer severe penalties, but there are a number of personal testimonies posted on the Internet as to what happened in those buildings that day.

Careful reconstruction from those testimonies indicates the deliberate destruction of evidence not only by a targeted assault on the buildings, but also by targeted fires and explosions. In the event that either the hijacking failed, or the buildings were not brought down, the evidence would be destroyed by fires. In addition to the investigative evidence being destroyed, the Federal Register reported that the physical securities held by the brokers in their vaults had been destroyed.

What would be even more revealing would be the actions of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Securities and Exchange Commission on that day, and in the immediate aftermath. As one of many coincidences on 9/11, the Federal Reserve Bank was operating its information system from its remote back-up site rather than it’s downtown headquarters. The SEC and Federal Reserve system remained unfazed by the attack. All of their systems continued to operate. The two major security trading firms had their trade data backed up on remote systems. Nevertheless, the Commission for the first time invoked its emergency powers under Securities Exchange Act Section 12(k) and issued several orders to ease certain regulatory restrictions temporarily.

The Federal Reserve Suspends the Rules

On the first day of the crisis, the SEC lifted “Rule 15c3-3: Customer Protection – Reserves and Custody of Securities.” Thus GSCC [Government Securities Clearing Corporation] was thus allowed to substitute other securities for the physical securities destroyed during the attack. “…collateral substitutions can and should be made with regard to immediately maturing collateral.” [191] At this point in time, the Federal Reserve and its GSCC had created a settlement environment totally void of controls and reporting – where it could substitute valid, new government securities for the mature, illegal securities, and not have to record where the original bad securities had come from, or where the new securities went – all because the paper for the primary brokers for US securities had been eliminated.

A review of the explanations for the actions of the Federal Reserve after September 11th exposes an amazingly complex web of analysis and speculation. The reports published by the Federal Reserve argue that the Federal Reserve’s actions increasing the monetary supply by over $300 billion were justified to overcome operational difficulties in the financial sector. While impressive as the reports are, what is noted by the casual reader is that all of the Federal Reserve analysis is speculative and suggestive, using phraseology such as “may have,” “likely,” “presumably,” or “should have.” There are few – if any – definitive statements about root cause and the appropriateness of the Federal Reserve response.

While the Fed was reporting outstanding account balances of over $100 billion per day (while not identifying the banks involved), the Wall Street Journal reported that at one point during the week after 9/11, BoNY was publicly reported to be overdue on $100 billion in payments. [198] The Deutschebank, which sat inside the WTC and was totally decimated, reported no such account balance increase, and JP Morgan, the other of only two clearing banks which uses the same traders and communications hub, reported no such increase in its account balance. No one has publicly asked: why is it that these other two banks were not seriously disrupted, while the Bank of New York – which had no structural damage – seemed unable to operate?

Certain key unknown figures in the Federal Reserve may have ‘conspired’ with key unknown figures at the Bank of New York to create a situation where $240 billion in off balance sheet securities created in 1991 as part of an official covert operation to overthrow the Soviet Union, could be cleared without publicly acknowledging their existence. These securities, originally managed by Cantor Fitzgerald, were cleared and settled in the aftermath of September 11th through the BoNY. The $100 billion account balance bubble reported by the Wall Street Journal as being experienced in the BoNY was tip of a three day operation, when these securities were moved from off-balance-sheet to the balance sheet.

[As reported on page 12 of a Federal Reserve document] “In the absence of complete information on deliveries into and out of its account at BoNY on September 11, and as a result of its assumption of settlement fails on the starting legs of blind-brokered RPs, GSCC recorded (after the close of business on September 11) $266 billion in transactions that apparently failed to settle.… Continuing connectivity problems prevented GSCC from giving BoNY delivery instructions after the close of business on September 11 and prevented it from acquiring information on activity in its account at BoNY during the day on September 12. Consequently, GSCC recorded $440 billion in settlement fails as of the close of business on September 12.” [201]

What appears to be the case is that the Federal Reserve imbalances reported on three consecutive days in the aftermath were largely concentrated at the Bank of New York, which is reported to represent over 90% of the imbalance, suggesting the Bank had been the recipient of massive fund transfers, and unable to send out transfers. Overall transactions for the day of 9/11 were seemingly down even more significantly than volume, but the transactions that came in after closing were extremely large, averaging in size in packages of $35 million or more. This would be consistent with a hypothesis that $240 billion of securities were being pushed surreptitiously into the money supply.

The Federal Reserve, without providing the detail required to substantiate it’s claims, would have the public believe that there were widespread liquidity issues, when in fact the issues were very concentrated primarily, if not singularly, in the BoNY, which has been the subject of an ongoing major money-laundering investigation for many years. These account balance issues resulted in the defacto expansion of the monetary supply, details of which are no longer reported by the Federal Reserve.

The reported cause of this market malfunction is seemingly suspect. By comparison, the Deutschebank which sat inside the World Trade Center reported no such account balance increase, and JP Morgan, the other of two clearing banks which uses the same traders and communications hub, reported no such increase in account balance. Additionally, while problems were being documented between the BoNY and GCSS, no other institution had those problems.

There is a contention that at the core of the September 11th attack, someone was planning to cover the 1991 issuance of $240 billion in covert securities used to finance the collapse the Soviet Union. The facts surrounding the financial aftermath of September 11 suggest this is not only possible, but that reports describing the aftermath have deliberately been misleading.

The US dollar money supply was significantly increased in the aftermath of 9/11;
The bank at the core of the illegal money laundering by ex-Soviet criminals was the source of the increased money supply (BoNY);
The generally disseminated rationale for BoNY’s operational problems seems to have affected no other bank in a similar manner or magnitude and is inconsistent with reports on the BoNY operations in the aftermath;
A key witness who might provide insight to these issues is a statistically aberrant death;
The source of the BoNY’s $330 billion increase in assets is cloaked under the privilege of “private banking;”
The only alleged “severe” disruption to the financial systems was the Federal Reserves account balance and the securities trading fails – both systems required to hide the laundering of $240 billion in covert securities.

This is not a ‘proof’ that $240 billion was laundered, but it provides probable cause for paying serious attention.

Conclusion

History has many interpretations, and this report has been just one of many – an interpretation pieced together from the bold admissions and revelations of insiders, whose stories have been ignored and suppressed by the major media organizations. It is an interpretation of history that suggests a few determined men strove to change the world in defense of Western capitalism in ways which they felt needed to be hidden from the public. Whatever emotion or logic that was adequate to cause them to hide their actions from the public was not strong enough to prevent them from committing the acts.

Author’s Note: This is the condensed version of this story. The author cannot vouch for the accuracy of the source materials, although efforts have been made to validate the consistency of the story line with as many references as possible. There is no single fact or reference that this story is dependent on. The author expects some details to be disputed, and possibly disproved, but contends that the story line will hold true regardless.

Note from Fred: Though I doubt this was the only reason for 9/11, it was likely one of the main motivators. For what may be the most powerful single piece of evidence corroborating this theory, click here to read the Reuters news service article on the massive volume of electronic financial transactions conducted from inside the WTC just before the buildings collapsed. Yet the investigation results are being kept secret.

What you can do:

Inform your media and political representatives of the vital information in this article on the Black Eagle Trust. To contact those close to you, click here. Urge them to call for the release of classified documents and videos and to press for a new, impartial investigation of 9/11.
Explore the wealth of reliable, verifiable information on 9/11, including several excellent documentaries, in our 9/11 Information Center available here.
Learn more about 9/11 and the secret societies likely involved in this powerful lesson from the free Insight Course.
Explore inspiring ideas on how we can build a brighter future by reading this short essay.
Spread this news to your friends and colleagues, and recommend this article on key news websites so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly failing. Together, we can make a difference.

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Rally this Sunday to Demand Stronger Rent Laws

2011-06-03T10:06:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends,

New York's rent laws expire in less than two weeks, on June 15th! Rent regulated tenants and their advocates must make it clear that we need these laws renewed and strengthened to protect our homes and our city. Landlords and State Senate Republicans are working to weaken these laws even further, opening the door to more unfair rent increases and evictions.

This Sunday, please join me as well as other state and city legislators, tenants, clergy, and labor leaders in a rally to demand stronger rent laws!

RALLY FOR STRONGER RENT LAWS

Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 2:30pm

at First Corinthian Baptist Church

Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard (7th Avenue) at 116th St.

Dr. Death, Jack Kevorkian, dies at 83

2011-06-03T10:03:00.001-07:00

Dr. Jack Kevorkian poses at the 62nd annual Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, California August 29, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni

By Mike Miller

DETROIT | Fri Jun 3, 2011 12:56pm EDT

DETROIT
(Reuters) - Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, known as "Dr. Death" for helping more than 100 people end their lives, died early on Friday at age 83, his lawyer said.
Kevorkian died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, where he had been hospitalized for about two weeks with kidney and heart problems, said Mayer Morganroth, Kevorkian's attorney and friend.
The Detroit Free Press reported that Kevorkian, previously diagnosed with liver cancer, died from a blood clot that lodged in his heart.
Kevorkian, a pathologist, was focused on death and dying long before he ignited a polarizing national debate over assisted suicide by crisscrossing Michigan in a rusty Volkswagen van hauling a machine to help sick and suffering people end their lives.
Some viewed him as a hero who allowed the terminally ill to die with dignity, while his harshest critics reviled him as a cold-blooded killer who preyed on those suffering from chronic pain and depression. Most of his clients were middle-aged women.
"Dr. Jack Kevorkian was a rare human being," his longtime attorney Geoffrey Fieger told reporters on Friday. "It's a rare human being who can single-handedly take on an entire society by the scruff of its neck and force it to focus on the suffering of other human beings."
Kevorkian launched his assisted-suicide campaign in 1990, allowing an Alzheimer's patient to kill herself using a machine he devised that allowed her to trigger a lethal drug injection. He was charged with first-degree murder in the case, but the charges were later dismissed.
Fiery and unwavering in his cause, Kevorkian made a point of thumbing his nose at lawmakers, prosecutors and judges as he accelerated his campaign through the 1990s, using various methods including carbon monoxide gas. Often, Kevorkian would drop off bodies at hospitals late at night or leave them in motel rooms where the assisted suicides took place.
He beat Michigan prosecutors four times before his conviction for second-degree murder in 1999 after a CBS News program aired a video of Kevorkian administering lethal drugs to a 52-year-old man suffering from debilitating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease.
STILL IN PUBLIC EYE
Kevorkian was imprisoned for eight years. As a condition of his parole in 2007, he promised not to assist in any more suicides.
He himself had appealed to leave prison early because of poor health, but said he did not consider himself a candidate for assisted suicide.
Kevorkian did not leave the public eye after his exit from prison, giving occasional lectures and in 2008 running for Congress unsuccessfully.
An HBO documentary on his life and a movie, "You Don't Know Jack," starring Al Pacino, brought him back into the limelight last year.
Born in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Kevorkian taught himself the flute and was a painter. Well read in philosophy and history, he cited Aristotle, Sir Thomas More and Pliny the Elder in his arguments for why people should have the right to die with dignity.
In a June 2010 interview with Reuters Television, the right-to-die activist said he was afraid of death as much as anyone else and said the world had a hypocritical attitude toward voluntary euthanasia, or assisted suicide.
"If we can aid people into coming into the world, why can't we aid them in exiting the world?" he said.
Doctor-assisted suicide essentially became law in Oregon in 1997 and in Washington state in 2009. The practice of doctors writing prescriptions to help terminally ill patients kill themselves was ultimately upheld as legal by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kevorkian was first dubbed "Dr. Death" by colleagues during his medical residency in the 1950s when he asked to work the night shift at Detroit Receiving Hospital so he could be on duty when more people died.
His career was interrupted by the Korean War, when he served 15 months as an Army medical officer.
After the U.S. Supreme Court permitted states to reinstate the death penalty in 1976, Kevorkian campaigned for performing medical experiments and harvesting the organs of death row inmates -- with their consent -- before their executions.

via reuters.com

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Julian Assange wins Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism

2011-06-03T10:01:00.001-07:00

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been awarded the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
The prize is awarded annually to a journalist whose work has "penetrated the established version of events and told and unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or 'official drivel', as Martha Gellhorn called it."
Gellhorn, who died in 1998, was a well-known war correspondent and author.
The judges voted unanimously for Assange, claiming that he "represents that which journalists once prided themselves".
"WikiLeaks has been portrayed as a phenomenon of the hi-tech age, which it is. But it’s much more. Its goal of justice through transparency is in the oldest and finest tradition of journalism.
"WikiLeaks has given the public more scoops than most journalists can imagine: a truth-telling that has empowered people all over the world.
"As publisher and editor, Julian Assange represents that which journalists once prided themselves in – he’s brave, determined, independent: a true agent of people not of power."
This year's judges were: Dr Alexander Matthews, John Pilger, James Fox, Shirlee Matthews, Cynthia Kee and Jeremy Harding.
Journalist and author Pilger has been a vocal advocate of Assange and WikiLeaks for some time, and offered surety at Assange's recent bail hearing over sex assault charges leveled against him in Sweden.
WikiLeaks has been criticised for publishing material with the potential to put the lives of informants at risk, but speaking to Journalism.co.uk after the prize announcement Pilger defended the group's record:
"The Pentagon has said there is no evidence that anyone has died as a result of the WikiLeaks revelations (McClatchy Newspapers). Secretary of Defence Robert Gates in a letter to Congress said, 'No sensitive intelligence sources has been compromised [as a result of the WikiLeaks disclosures].' The Nato spokeperson in Kabul told CNN that it could not find 'a single person who needs protecting [as a result of the WikiLeaks leaks]'."
Assange is currently staying at the Norfolk home of journalist Vaughan Smith under the terms of his bail.
Three other journalists were awarded a Martha Gellhorn Special Award for Journalism to at this year's ceremony:
Judges said that the work of Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema in exposing official corruption was "simply astonishing".
"He has been harassed and tortured, yet he keeps going. This is journalism at its most compelling and courageous."
According to the Martha Gellhorn Trust, Cheema could not attend the ceremony in London because the UK High Commission in Islamabad refused to expedite his visa in time.
The other Special Award winners were Charles Clover, Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times and Jonathan Cook, an independent journalist based in Nazareth.
Judges praised Clover for a "meticulous, insightful and brave" investigation into far-right gangs in Russia and their links to the government.
Cook's work on Palestine and Israel was said to have made him "one of the reliable truth-tellers in the Middle East", the judges said.
Last year's award was won by Independent columnist Johann Hari.
Previous winners include: Michael Tierney of the Glasgow Herald, Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, and Geoffrey Lean of the Independent, and Ghaith Abdul Ahad, Chris McGreal, and Nick Davies of the Guardian.

WikiLeaks most recent release was a trove of secret files on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The Guantánamo files were published in the UK in conjunction with the Telegraph, which was criticised for making the full cache available through its website, including a report that may have broken the PCC editors' code of practice in naming a victim of a sexual assault under the age of 16.

via journalism.co.uk

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House Voting Now on Ending Libya War: Act Now !

2011-06-03T09:58:00.001-07:00

The U.S. House of Representatives today will vote on two resolutions.

H.C.R. 51 sponsored by Dennis Kucinich would -- if also passed by the Senate -- have the force of law and end the Libya War. If this does not pass, Rep. Jerrold Nadler said on the floor this morning, there are no circumstances in which a president will not be able to go to war at his/her whim.

Fearing that Kucinich's resolution might pass, Speaker John Boehner has introduced H.Res. 292, a toothless resolution that would not carry any force and not even go to the Senate for a vote. This resolution admits that the war is unauthorized but does not end it or even suggest ending it.

Congress members are speaking in support of congressional power but bowing to partisan power and presidential power. They need to hear from you.

Call (202) 224-3121

Tell your representative you want a lawmaker, not a court jester.

via warisacrime.org

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