From ths at psalience.org Mon Oct 10 14:15:01 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:15:01 +0200 Subject: [THS] Partnership for Civil Justice Silenced on Twitter Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111010141430.0411b608@mail.messagingengine.com> October 7, 2011 Partnership for Civil Justice Silenced on Twitter Tweeting about Brooklyn Bridge arrests Dear Constituent, We just had our Twitter account suspended while working on collecting contact information from arrested protesters. If you've seen news about us recently you will know that the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund filed a class action lawsuit against New York Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kelly and the City of New York, charging mass violations of constitutional rights from the mass arrest at the Brooklyn Bridge last Saturday. The lawsuit charges that "the NYPD engaged in a premeditated, planned, scripted, and calculated effort to sweep the streets of protesters and disrupt a growing protest movement in New York." While working on this lawsuit, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund was using Twitter as one way get in contact with those arrested through friends, acquaintances and other users who can help spread the word. Unfortunately, at 1:00 p.m. today the PCJF's account was suspended. Suspended moments after tweeting: "PCJF filed the class action lawsuit in the Brklyn Bdg arrests representing protestors. Arrested? Contact us http://ow.ly/6QGwH" Time is of the essence in getting in contact with those protesters who were arrested. PCJF appealed to Twitter, but there has been no response. Help us continue to get in touch with those arrested related to the lawsuit and help us get our Twitter account back. Spread the news! If you know someone arrested in the Brooklyn Bridge mass arrest, tell them to go to: www.JusticeOnline.org Forward this email to protesters and friends of protesters Get on Facebook and Like Us to keep in touch Get on Twitter and continue sharing our message From ths at psalience.org Mon Oct 10 14:30:08 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:30:08 +0200 Subject: [THS] Occupy Wall Street Contributions Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111010141601.0411b378@mail.messagingengine.com> From Susan Lee: At Alliance for Global Justice?http://afgj.org/?there's a tab for giving to OccupyWall.St through PayPal. I made a contribution using my credit card. The link is http://afgj.org/ According to a handout I was given yesterday, checks can be sent to: Alliance for Global Justice 1247 ?E? Street, SE Washington DC 20003 They ask that you indicate ?Occupy Wall Street? in the memo line, or, to make a telephone donation, call 202 544 9355. DONATE SUPPLIES & MONEY ORDERS HERE: The UPS Store Re: Occupy Wall Street 118A Fulton St. #205 New York, NY 10038 From ths at psalience.org Mon Oct 10 17:09:06 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:09:06 +0200 Subject: [THS] Tomgram: Ariel Dorfman, A Warning for Barack Obama Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111010170506.0677bc28@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175451/tomgram%3A_ariel_d Tomgram: Ariel Dorfman, A Warning for Barack Obama Posted by Ariel Dorfman at 8:03pm, October 9, 2011. [Note for TomDispatch Readers: Novelist, playwright, and activist Ariel Dorfman?s new memoir, Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile, begins with his own ?death? in Chile in 1983. A UPI reporter tracks him down to ask about it. ?The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,? he replies, feeling inordinately pleased with himself for delivering Mark Twain?s classic line -- until he realizes that there?s still a body in a ditch in Chile, that someone else?s throat has been slit, that someone else?s mother is missing a son or already grieving. And that?s just page one! This is Dorfman at his usual best. Today, TomDispatch is offering his just-published memoir -- your own signed, personalized copy of it -- in return for a $100 contribution to this site. I hope it?s an offer you can?t refuse. The money will be a boon for us as we plan our future. The offer will last only a single week. To find out more, visit our donation page by clicking here. Tom] On Wednesday afternoon, we marched out of Zuccotti Park, where the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have bedded down for the duration. Drums were pounding and shouts of ?Whose streets? Our streets!? ?All day, all week, occupy Wall Street,? and ?This is what democracy looks like, that is what hypocrisy looks like!? rang out as we headed directly into New York City?s version of a police state. The helicopters with the high-tech sensors and high-resolution cameras hovered in the distant sky, the security cams peered down from walls, the barriers the police had set up hemmed us in -- no street, just sidewalk for these demonstrators -- and the cops, scores of flexi-cuffs looped at their belts, were lined up all along the way, while empty buses wheeled past ready for future arrestees. This was not exactly a shining Big Apple example of the ?freedom? to demonstrate. It was demonstration as imprisonment and at certain moments, at least for this 67-year-old, it was claustrophobic. This is the way the state treats 15,000 terrorist suspects, not its own citizens. Still, the energy and high spirits were staggering. The unions were out -- nurses, teachers, construction workers -- the bands were lively (? down by the riverside, ain?t gonna study war no more ?), and hand-made signs were everywhere and about everything under the sun: ?Crime does pay in the USA -- on Wall Street,? ?When did the common good become a bad idea,? ?4 years in college, $100,000 in debt, for a hostess job,? ?Eat the rich,? ?Arab Spring to Wall Street Fall? (with the final ?L? in ?Fall? slipping off the sign), ?We are the 99%,? ?Legalize online poker, occupy Wall St.? Amid the kaleidoscopic range of topics on those signs and in those chants and cries, one thing, one name, was largely missing: the president's. In those hours marching and at Foley Square amid the din of so many thousands of massed people, I saw one sign that said ?Obama = Bush? and another that went something like ?The Barack Obama we elected would be out here with us.? That was it. Sayonara. It?s as if the spreading movement, made up of kids who might once have turned out for presidential candidate Obama, had left him and his administration in the dust. Like big labor, the left, and the media, the administration that loved its bankers to death (and got little enough in return for that embrace) is now playing catch-up with a ragtag bunch of protesters it wouldn?t have thought twice about if they hadn't somehow caught the zeitgeist of this moment. (Don?t forget that the Obama administration was similarly left scrambling and desperately behind events when it came to the demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo last January.) The best Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner could say a few days ago, when asked about his sympathies for the Occupy Wall Street movement, was: "I feel a lot of sympathy for what you might describe as a general sense among Americans that we've lost a sense of possibility." Really? White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley didn?t know if the movement was exactly ?helpful? for the White House agenda. Truly? And White House press spokesman Jay Carney commented blandly, ?I would simply say that, to the extent that people are frustrated with the economic situation, we understand.? Do you? Suddenly, on Thursday, with news about the anti-Wall Street movement whipping up a storm, the Obama administration found itself out of breath and running hard to reposition itself. Vice President Joe Biden said, ?The core is the bargain has been breached with the American people,? while at his news conference addressing questions about the movement the president added, ?I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel... [T]he protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.? Still, those signs with everything but Barack Obama on them should be considered a warning. Today, TomDispatch has something different and distinctly relevant. Back in 2003 at the time of the invasion of Iraq, Ariel Dorfman, the Chilean writer and activist, penned a series of messages from ?the dead? for TomDispatch -- to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Laura Bush, and others. Eight years later, he returns with word from a man who died in the attacks of September 11th. His name was Salvador Allende, he was the elected president of Chile, and the ?terrorists? on that day in 1973 were the Chilean military backed by the CIA. (Strangely enough, afterwards no one declared a global war on anyone.) Now, Dorfman, whose remarkable new book , Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile, is just out, channels warning words from Allende to Barack Obama. But mark my words, Allende?s isn?t the only warning to the president at this moment. Those kids in downtown Manhattan (and increasingly across the country and the world) are offering their own warning, and theirs, after a fashion, comes from the future, one in which his presidency could someday be seen as little but an irrelevancy. (To catch Timothy MacBain?s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Dorfman discusses the Occupy Wall Street movement and his own experience with democratic rebellions click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom Salvador Allende Has Words for Barack Obama from the Other Side of Death By Ariel Dorfman For the last decade, I have been haunted by voices from the other side of death. In this way, back in 2003 I transcribed the words of Pablo Picasso after a tapestry version of his famed painting Guernica at the entrance to the Security Council was covered over at the U.N. just before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was to present the Bush administration case justifying an invasion of Iraq. From the depths of ancient Mesopotamia, I transcribed the words of Hammurabi, the exalted prince of Babylon, as he reviled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for laying waste to his ancient land. And in that same year I found that Christopher Columbus, too, had words for the new warriors/conquerors of the twenty-first century, while the poets William Blake and Franceso Petrarca asked Laura Bush how she could sleep with the man responsible for so many deaths. The dead were then silent for years, which left me unprepared when Salvador Allende came to me offering advice for Barack Obama. It seemed, at first glance, a strange connection. Elected president of Chile in 1970 by popular vote, Allende was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup three years later. On that other September 11th, also (coincidentally enough) a Tuesday, terror rained down from the skies as the Chilean air force bombed the Presidential Palace where Allende died, ending an experiment in constructing socialism through peaceful, democratic means, and inaugurating the long dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Barack Obama has never, of course, claimed to be a revolutionary like Allende, though he did once upon a short time ago give the impression of being a reformer dedicated to bringing about significant change. And though, like Allende, he has faced ferocious opposition to his plans from similarly conservative forces, there has never been the slightest rumor of a coup d??tat in the United States (nor, as it turned out, any need for one) -- though who knows what would have happened had Obama decided to take on the military-industrial/national security behemoth that essentially governs the country. And yet, I have no doubt that Allende would have sympathized with Obama on his entry into the Oval Office, and that he would have appreciated his urge to search for common ground with his adversaries, as well as the intelligence and sophistication of his mind. And I?m sure he would have greeted young Barack?s election in 2008, as I did, with a certain joy, seeing in it the popular wish for a different sort of politics, a different sort of world. Evidently, based on what follows, Allende did feel that it was worth sending a message to the American president from the shores of death where so much becomes clearer, where we will all ultimately discover whether we truly kept faith with the lives and dreams of those who, in turn, had faith in us. Here, then, is his message: I have held off, Barack Obama, till now, I have bitten my tongue in this dusk and averted my gaze if words like tongue and gaze and bitten biting bite have any meaning under this grim face of night. Now it is time that you knew what awaits you here once you join us in the vast kingdom of the gone, what your retreat and regret will be if you do not learn the lessons I learnt from defeat, the omen I am sending your way as you fail to lead and flail and neglect the reason you became our hope. I held off this warning, young Barack, till now. Who was I, after all, to send you words of advice? Surrounded as I am in this dark by the many who tried and failed, who gave their lives to change the world so those unheeded in the shadow of strife, the child who cries in the dawn of life, the women and the old and the working poor could rise. I am surrounded in this sorrow by those who did not prevail. Who am I, after all, to send anyone a word of advice? I died that September day at La Moneda in Santiago. The bombs were falling and the fires burned and I was worried about the child inside the womb of Beatriz, my eldest daughter, I ordered her from the Presidential Palace and only then started to rehearse in my head en medio del fuego the last words I would pronounce, my goodbye to the people of Chile, mi adi?s, and my greetings to a world that would have to continue without me, without one more word from the man who was convinced he could bring justice and peace to his people without bullets and blood, without widows and their sighs. No more words from this dead mouth, except for these few I now send and that may not arrive in time, Barack. So many words die before they can be heard. Back then, in 1973, in September, as the bombs fell, as the soldiers mounted the stairs and I grabbed the gun with which I would kill myself rather than be taken alive, pay with my death so others might remember, there were no thoughts of fire or hate for the United States, of Richard Nixon who tried to destroy my land, or Gerald Ford who followed through on that illegal plan, elected by their people as freely as I by mine, why waste my last breath cursing men like them, how to anticipate that a boy like you, then barely twelve, would someday steer the realm that hounded me to death, that I?d send words like these to any American president? The dead that keep me company swear it?s no use, no good. Spartacus is nearby, Jeremiah fills me with prophecy, Nat Turner rebels again and again in his dreams, our Joan of Arc, who knows so much about perfidy and pyres, all, all calling out to those who live to repair the wounded world, all without rest until the living attend the faraway dead who did not betray. They tell me not to speak to you, the enchantment gone. He?s done it wrong, they say, too afraid to brawl and rage and stage a final confrontation where his foes will bite the dust. Not me, not I, it?s not a revolution he pursues. Who was I to tell him to draw a bitter line in the sand? Do you want him to end as I did, with a divided land? And yet I was wrong, wrong, I let myself be seduced by his song. I gave you, young Barack, the benefit of too many a doubt, I prayed you would not need my words from beyond the beyond, that you would clean up and heal a world gone mad with greed. Before you disappear, before you can no longer hear my words from beyond the beyond and inside the ground, before your run ends in downfall and rout and retreat, let this old heart beating with the Earth and the stars and the need for not one child, not one, to die for lack of love, let me tell you one last secret found in the abyss of despair. It is true that he who is mighty is he who makes of an enemy a friend, mighty and wise is he who offers the foe a way out, a bed to sleep in, a meal to share. But not without a fight. Not without a fight. Listen to me, Barack, listen to this man who left too soon and never saw his grandchild born and lost his way. You will be destroyed. I have seen men like them before. They will stop at nothing, they want it all and more. Can?t you see, can?t you see what is being planned? You are the victim of a silent coup, an invisible invasion of every last corner, every last law, every last height. Don?t you understand that they want it all, that they don?t care? I have seen them, they will not be stopped by smiles. You will be destroyed, take down with you all that is good, what the wretched of the Earth built against the dark. These are the same men, the same billionaires, who did me in. They will blow it all up, derail the train, they do not care. They deal in fear, they do not know right from wrong. Oh do not let yourself be seduced by the siren of their song. They are coming for you as they came for me. I can hear their footsteps drawing near. And you ever more alone. Listen, listen: if you are to go down, go down fighting. Barack, listen to your name. Lightning, glittering of weapons, blessed, blessing, be your name, go down fighting. You might even win. Barack, listen: if you are doomed, go down fighting, so others can come after and build, so a legend is left, a spark to start the next fire, to inspire and bring word of a new world waiting to be born, fight so there may be peace, fight for what you believe in, do not leave the dead without consolation and the living with no faith. Trust your name. Go down if you must, but go down fighting. So that when you arrive on these shores and look back as I do, you will have no regrets. Go down if you must, but go down fighting. Or do you wish to face, one by one, the lovers and mothers you did not defend? Spend the rest of eternity, one by one, with the stories of the pain you did not assuage or mend? One by one, one by one, they will haunt you in the dusk. Go down, Barack Obama, go down and rise up fighting. This time we might even win. Never believe it is ever too late. Ariel Dorfman is a Chilean-American writer. His books have been published in over 40 languages and his plays staged in more than one hundred countries. He is the author, most recently, of Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). His website, including a message to his readers, can be viewed by clicking here. To listen to Timothy MacBain?s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Dorfman discusses the Occupy Wall Street movement and his own experience with democratic rebellions click here, or download it to your iPod here. Copyright 2011 Ariel Dorfman From ths at psalience.org Mon Oct 10 23:20:16 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:20:16 +0200 Subject: [THS] Chris Hedges: Why the Elites Are in Trouble Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111010231123.06302da0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.truth-out.org/why-elites-are-trouble/1318252392 Why the Elites Are in Trouble Monday 10 October 2011 by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed A group of people listen to a man talk about economic theories as the Occupy Wall Street protest continues in Zuccotti Park in New York, on October 9, 2011. The movement has inspired more than 200 Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, seeking volunteers for protests and fostering discussion. (Photo: Ozier Muhammad / The New York Times) Ketchup, a petite 22-year-old from Chicago with wavy red hair and glasses with bright red frames, arrived in Zuccotti Park in New York on Sept. 17. She had a tent, a rolling suitcase, 40 dollars? worth of food, the graphic version of Howard Zinn?s ?A People?s History of the United States? and a sleeping bag. She had no return ticket, no idea what she was undertaking, and no acquaintances among the stragglers who joined her that afternoon to begin the Wall Street occupation. She decided to go to New York after reading the Canadian magazine Adbusters, which called for the occupation, although she noted that when she got to the park Adbusters had no discernable presence. The lords of finance in the looming towers surrounding the park, who toy with money and lives, who make the political class, the press and the judiciary jump at their demands, who destroy the ecosystem for profit and drain the U.S. Treasury to gamble and speculate, took little notice of Ketchup or any of the other scruffy activists on the street below them. The elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible. And what significance could an artist who paid her bills by working as a waitress have for the powerful? What could she and the others in Zuccotti Park do to them? What threat can the weak pose to the strong? Those who worship money believe their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million JPMorgan Chase gave a few days ago to the New York City Police Foundation, can buy them perpetual power and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace, blinded by their self-importance, impervious to human suffering, bloated from unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught a lesson in the folly of hubris. Even now, three weeks later, elites, and their mouthpieces in the press, continue to puzzle over what people like Ketchup want. Where is the list of demands? Why don?t they present us with specific goals? Why can?t they articulate an agenda? The goal to people like Ketchup is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word?REBELLION. These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back. This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don?t understand what is happening. They are deaf, dumb and blind. ?The world can?t continue on its current path and survive,? Ketchup told me. ?That idea is selfish and blind. It?s not sustainable. People all over the globe are suffering needlessly at our hands.? The occupation of Wall Street has formed an alternative community that defies the profit-driven hierarchical structures of corporate capitalism. If the police shut down the encampment in New York tonight, the power elite will still lose, for this vision and structure have been imprinted into the thousands of people who have passed through park, renamed Liberty Plaza by the protesters. The greatest gift the occupation has given us is a blueprint for how to fight back. And this blueprint is being transferred to cities and parks across the country. ?We get to the park,? Ketchup says of the first day. ?There?s madness for a little while. There were a lot of people. They were using megaphones at first. Nobody could hear. Then someone says we should get into circles and talk about what needed to happen, what we thought we could accomplish. And so that?s what we did. There was a note-taker in each circle. I don?t know what happened with those notes, probably nothing, but it was a good start. One person at a time, airing your ideas. There was one person saying that he wasn?t very hopeful about what we could accomplish here, that he wasn?t very optimistic. And then my response was that, well, we have to be optimistic, because if anybody?s going to get anything done, it?s going be us here. People said different things about what our priorities should be. People were talking about the one-demand idea. Someone called for AIG executives to be prosecuted. There was someone who had come from Spain to be there, saying that she was here to help us avoid the mistakes that were made in Spain. It was a wide spectrum. Some had come because of their own personal suffering or what they saw in the world.? ?After the circles broke I felt disheartened because it was sort of chaotic,? she said. ?I didn?t have anybody there, so it was a little depressing. I didn?t know what was going to happen.? ?Over the past few months, people had been meeting in New York City general assembly,? she said. ?One of them is named Brooke. She?s a professor of social ecology. She did my facilitation training. There?s her and a lot of other people, students, school teachers, different people who were involved with that so they organized a general assembly.? ?It?s funny that the cops won?t let us use megaphones, because it?s to make our lives harder, but we actually end up making a much louder sound [with the ?people?s mic?] and I imagine it?s much more annoying to the people around us,? she said. ?I had been in the back, unable to hear. I walked to different parts of the circle. I saw this man talking in short phrases and people were repeating them. I don?t know whose idea it was, but that started on the first night. The first general assembly was a little chaotic because people had no idea a general assembly, what is this for? At first it was kind of grandstanding about what were our demands. Ending corporate personhood is one that has come up again and again as a favorite and. What ended up happening was, they said, OK, we?re going to break into work groups. ?People were worried we were going to get kicked out of the park at 10 p.m. This was a major concern. There were tons of cops. I?ve heard that it?s costing the city a ton of money to have constant surveillance on a bunch of peaceful protesters who aren?t hurting anyone. With the people?s mic, everything we do is completely transparent. We know there are undercover cops in the crowd. I think I was talking to one last night, but it?s like, what are you trying to accomplish? We don?t have any secrets.? ?The undercover cops are the only ones who ask, ?Who?s the leader?? ? she said. ?Presumably, if they know who our leaders are they can take them out. The fact is we have no leader. There?s no leader, so there?s nothing they can do. ?There was a woman [in the medics unit]. This guy was pretending to be a reporter. The first question he asks is, ?Who?s the leader?? She goes, ?I?m the leader.? And he says, ?Oh yeah, what are you in charge of?? She says, ?I?m in a charge of everything.? He says, ?Oh yeah? What?s your title?? She says ?God.? ? ?So it?s 9:30 p.m. and people are worried that they?re going to try and rush us out of the camp,? she said, referring back to the first day. ?At 9:30 they break into work groups. I joined the group on contingency plans. The job of the bedding group was to find cardboard for people to sleep on. The contingency group had to decide what to do if they kick us out. The big decision we made was to announce to the group that if we were dispersed we were going to meet back at 10 a.m. the next day in the park. Another group was arts and culture. What was really cool was that we assumed we were going to be there more than one night. There was a food group. They were going dumpster diving. The direct action committee plans for direct, visible action like marches. There was a security team. It?s security against the cops. The cops are the only people we think that might hurt us. The security team keeps people awake in shifts. They always have people awake.? The work groups make logistical decisions, and the general assembly makes large policy decisions. ?Work groups make their own decisions,? Ketchup said. ?For example, someone donated a laptop. And because I?ve been taking minutes I keep running around and asking, ?Does someone have a laptop I could borrow?? The media team, upon receiving that laptop, designated it to me for my use on behalf of the Internet committee. The computer isn?t mine. When I go back to Chicago, I?m not going to take it. Right now I don?t even know where it is. Someone else is using it. But so, after hearing this, people thought it had been gifted to me personally. People were upset by that. So a member of the Internet work group went in front of the group and said, ?This is a need of the committee. It?s been put into Ketchup?s care.? They explained that to the group, but didn?t ask for consensus on it, because the committees are empowered. Some people might still think that choice was inappropriate. In the future, it might be handled differently.? Working groups blossomed in the following days. The media working group was joined by a welcome working group for new arrivals, a sanitation working group (some members of which go around the park on skateboards as they carry brooms), a legal working group with lawyers, an events working group, an education working group, medics, a facilitation working group (which trains new facilitators for the general assembly meetings), a public relations working group, and an outreach working group for like-minded communities as well as the general public. There is an Internet working group and an open source technology working group. The nearby McDonald?s is the principal bathroom for the park after Burger King banned protesters from its facilities. Caucuses also grew up in the encampment, including a ?Speak Easy caucus.? ?That?s a caucus I started,? Ketchup said. ?It is for a broad spectrum of individuals from female-bodied people who identify as women to male-bodied people who are not traditionally masculine. That?s called the ?Speak Easy? caucus. I was just talking to a woman named Sharon who?s interested in starting a caucus for people of color. ?A caucus gives people a safe space to talk to each other without people from the culture of their oppressors present. It gives them greater power together, so that if the larger group is taking an action that the caucus felt was specifically against their interests, then the caucus can block that action. Consensus can potentially still be reached after a caucus blocks something, but a block, or a ?paramount objection,? is really serious. You?re saying that you are willing to walk out.? ?We?ve done a couple of things so far,? she said. ?So, you know the live stream? The comments are moderated on the live stream. There are moderators who remove racist comments, comments that say ?I hate cops? or ?Kill cops.? They remove irrelevant comments that have nothing to do with the movement. There is this woman who is incredibly hardworking and intelligent. She has been the driving force of the finance committee. Her hair is half-blond and half-black. People were referring to her as ?blond-black hottie.? These comments weren?t moderated, and at one point whoever was running the camera took the camera off her face and did a body scan. So, that was one of the first things the caucus talked about. We decided as a caucus that I would go to the moderators and tell them this is a serious problem. If you?re moderating other offensive comments then you need to moderate these kinds of offensive comments.? The heart of the protest is the two daily meetings, held in the morning and the evening. The assemblies, which usually last about two hours, start with a review of process, which is open to change and improvement, so people are clear about how the assembly works. Those who would like to speak raise their hand and get on ?stack.? ?There?s a stack keeper,? Ketchup said. ?The stack keeper writes down your name or some signifier for you. A lot of white men are the people raising their hands. So, anyone who is not apparently a white man gets to jump stack. The stack keeper will make note of the fact that the person who put their hand up was not a white man and will arrange the list so that it?s not dominated by white men. People don?t get called up in the same order as they raise their hand.? While someone is speaking, their words amplified by the people?s mic, the crowd responds through hand signals. ?Putting your fingers up like this,? she said, holding her hands up and wiggling her fingers, ?means you like what you?re hearing, or you?re in agreement. Like this,? she said, holding her hands level and wiggling her fingers, ?means you don?t like it so much. Fingers down, you don?t like it at all; you?re not in agreement. Then there?s this triangle you make with your hand that says ?point of process.? So, if you think that something is not being respected within the process that we?ve agreed to follow then you can bring that up.? ?You wait till you?re called,? she said. ?These rules get abused all the time, but they are important. We start with agenda items, which are proposals or group discussions. Then working group report-backs, so you know what every working group is doing. Then we have general announcements. The agenda items have been brought to the facilitators by the working groups because you need the whole group to pay attention. Like last night, Legal brought up a discussion on bail: ?Can we agree that the money from the general funds can be allotted if someone needs bail?? And the group had to come to consensus on that. [It decided yes.] There?s two co-facilitators, a stack keeper, a timekeeper, a vibes-person making sure that people are feeling OK, that people?s voices aren?t getting stomped on, and then if someone?s being really disruptive, the vibes-person deals with them. There?s a note-taker?I end up doing that a lot because I type very, very quickly. We try to keep the facilitation team one man, one woman, or one female-bodied person, one male-bodied person. When you facilitate multiple times it?s rough on your brain. You end up having a lot of criticism thrown your way. You need to keep the facilitators rotating as much as possible. It needs to be a huge, huge priority to have a strong facilitation group.? ?People have been yelled out of the park,? she said. ?Someone had a sign the other day that said ?Kill the Jew Bankers.? They got screamed out of the park. Someone else had a sign with the N-word on it. That person?s sign was ripped up, but that person is apparently still in the park. ?We?re trying to make this a space that everyone can join. This is something the caucuses are trying to really work on. We are having workshops to get people to understand their privilege.? But perhaps the most important rule adopted by the protesters is nonviolence and nonaggression against the police, no matter how brutal the police become. ?The cops, I think, maced those women in the face and expected the men and women around them to start a riot,? Ketchup said. ?They want a riot. They can deal with a riot. They cannot deal with nonviolent protesters with cameras.? I tell Ketchup I will bring her my winter sleeping bag. It is getting cold. She will need it. I leave her in a light drizzle and walk down Broadway. I pass the barricades, uniformed officers on motorcycles, the rows of paddy wagons and lines of patrol cars that block the streets into the financial district and surround the park. These bankers, I think, have no idea what they are up against. Chris Hedges Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. From ths at psalience.org Tue Oct 11 14:18:40 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:18:40 +0200 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?_Neutralizing_Citizens_United_won=92t_get_bi?= =?iso-8859-1?q?g_money_out__of_government?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111011141825.049c3b38@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/3528 Neutralizing Citizens United won?t get big money out of government Greatly reducing the value of political influence is the only way By Carmen Yarrusso Posted on October 7, 2011 by Carmen Yarrusso The Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission is a grave threat to America?s already faltering democracy. This ruling essentially legalizes the well-under-way takeover of our government by big corporations. To claim corporations are persons and are thus protected by our First Amendment is an absurd abomination. Many progressive groups (e.g. freespeachforpeople.org, MovetoAmend.org) have organized against this decision. But attempting to neutralize this ruling by amending our Constitution is futile folly. This well-meaning strategy goes something like this: amend our Constitution to end corporate personhood, which would take away corporate First Amendment rights to unlimited free speech (political spending), which would then allow us to enact legislation that limits big money?s influence in government. This can?t possibly succeed. Here?s why: It?s highly unlikely such an amendment would pass because big corporations pretty much own our government already and would unleash their immense political influence to prevent it (and Congress would surely be on their side). But let?s assume such an amendment passes. Let?s further assume legislation is then enacted that goes way beyond the McCain-Feingold Act and prohibits most of the current shady political spending by big corporations. This approach has the same fatal flaw as drug prohibition Prohibiting the buying of a product in great demand (such as certain drugs) is doomed to fail. It simply creates a lucrative underground industry that will find creative ways to bring eager buyers and sellers together. The only effective way to get big money out of the drug business is to enact policies that greatly reduce the value of the product for sale. Prohibiting the buying of certain drugs is futile folly because it does nothing to reduce the value of the product (on the contrary). The only effective way to reduce the value of prohibited drugs (and thus get big money out) is to end prohibition. But that?s another matter. Similarly, prohibiting any corporate buying of political influence (a product in great demand) is doomed to fail. It would simply create a lucrative underground industry that would find creative ways to bring eager buyers and sellers together. The only effective way to get big money out of government is to enact policies that greatly reduce the value of the product for sale. Prohibiting corporations from buying political influence is futile folly because it does nothing to reduce the value of the product for sale. There would still be great demand, which means, by hook or by crook, corporate money would continue to flow between eager buyers and sellers of political influence. But if we enacted a simple accounting system that GUARANTEED immediate public exposure of ALL government deceit, this would greatly reduce the value of political influence (since deceit is typically necessary to pass special interest legislation). Here?s why it would work: Deceit is vital to bought political influence Take away deceit and bought political influence loses its power. Since members of Congress claim to represent the interests of the American people, they MUST regularly use deceit to hide their efforts to enact special interest legislation. If members of Congress knew that ALL deceit by them would be publicly exposed almost immediately, it would be very difficult to enact special interest legislation. The power of bought political influence would be greatly reduced (thus greatly reducing its value), which would virtually eliminate big money in government. But how could we GUARANTEE that ALL congressional deceit would be exposed immediately? By adopting WikiArguments, a simple system of forced Congressional accountability that would quickly and efficiently expose any and all deceit by our so-called ?representatives.? WikiArguments (details here) is an Internet-based (wiki) system that would make Congressional deceit virtually impossible. Briefly, WikiArguments would provide a secure mechanism for anonymous public (wiki) arguments that expose government deception, but, more importantly, it would also provide a simple system of forced Congressional accountability where our ?representatives? could no longer avoid giving us clear, rational justifications for their positions (instead of the evasive, specious claptrap they typically give us now). WikiArguments would impose just one simple requirement on our members of Congress: they would be required to justify and defend their collective positions on legislation using clear, rational (wiki) arguments (one wikiargument for each side of an issue posted on the Internet so they can be easily scrutinized by the public). That?s it. There would be no other requirement. If members of Congress could no longer lie to us, they would find it nearly impossible to enact special-interest legislation. Corporations would stop spending big money trying to bribe Congress because Congress could no longer deliver the goods. The extremely lucrative lobbying market of buying and selling political influence would crash because bought political influence would become essentially worthless. Why WikiArguments can?t be defeated by clever politicians The effectiveness of WikiArguments doesn?t require the American people to be skilled logicians who can easily recognize subtle deceit in clever Congressional arguments. No matter how clever the deceit in a given congressional wikiargument, some member of Congress on the opposing side will see through the deceit and expose it in clear, simple English (in the corresponding opposing congressional wikiargument). Even if a clever specious argument fools every member of Congress on the opposing side (a highly unlikely event), or if both sides are in collusion as is usually the case, someone in the public (which includes anyone on earth with an Internet connection) is sure to see through the deceit and could immediately expose it in the corresponding opposing public wikiargument. Under a WikiArguments system, it would only take one member of Congress or one member of the public to expose any Congressional deceit. Most Americans can easily see (even clever or subtle) deceit if it?s pointed out to them in clear English. It would be virtually impossible for a member of Congress to deceive us with a specious wikiargument because the whole world would be watching, ready to expose the deceit on the Internet. Conclusion Amending our Constitution to neutralize Citizens United or using any other means to pass laws to limit corporations from buying political influence can?t possibly succeed. The ONLY way to get big money out of government is to enact policies that greatly reduce the value of political influence. WikiArguments is a simple, efficient, effective system that would do just that. As long as big money continues to dominate our political system, railing against the countless examples of unfairness or incompetence in our government is just idle chatter. Trying to solve any government problem without first addressing big money is merely hacking at the branches of evil while ignoring the root. Until we solve this supreme political problem, there will be no real hope and no real change. Life on earth will continue to deteriorate. Carmen Yarrusso, a software engineer for 35 years, designed and modified computer operating systems (including Internet software). He has a BS in physics and studied game theory and formal logic during his years with the math department at Brookhaven National Lab. He lives in New Hampshire and often writes about uncomfortable truths. From ths at psalience.org Tue Oct 11 22:44:56 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:44:56 +0200 Subject: [THS] Canada Supreme Court Okays Safe Injection Site Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111011224344.06dc6e60@mail.messagingengine.com> Canada Supreme Court Okays Safe Injection Site [FEATURE] http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2011/sep/30/canada_supreme_court_okays_safe Rebuffing the Conservative government of Prime Minister, the Canadian Supreme Court Friday ruled unanimously that Vancouver's safe injection site for heroin addicts can stay open. Known as Insite, the Downtown Eastside facility is the only safe injection site in North America. Vancouver's safe injection site wins a reprieve. (Image: Vancouver Coastal Health) The Downtown Eastside, centered on the intersection of Main and Hasting, streets, has one of the highest concentrations of injection drug users in the world. An overgrown Skid Row flush with prostitution and destitution, most of its residents live in decaying SRO hotels lining Main Street. Out of 12,000 residents in the area, some 5,000 are estimated to be drug addicts. At Insite, drug users are provided clean needles and sterilized water with which to mix their drug. Insite does not provide the drugs; users must bring their own. The users inject under medical supervision at one of 12 injecting alcoves. Insite operates under the auspices of the British Columbia Ministry of Health and the local public health authority, Vancouver Coastal Health. Numerous research reports on Insite have found that it has reduced fatal drug overdoses, reduced HIV and Hepatitis C transmission rates, reduced crime rates in the neighborhood, and increased the number of drug users entering treatment. It has operated since 2003 under an exemption to Canada's drug laws, but since coming to power, the Harper government has attempted to shut it down, claiming it "enables" drug users. Friday's decision by the Canadian Supreme Court is the final chapter in that effort. The Harper government argued that the federal drug law took precedence over British Columbia's public health policies. British Columbia and other Insite supporters argued that because Insite is providing a form of health care, its operation is a provincial matter. The federal government's concerns did not outweigh the benefits of Insite, the court said. "The grave consequences that might result from a lapse in the current constitutional exemption for Insite cannot be ignored," the court said. "Insite has been proven to save lives with no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada." Hundreds of Insite supporters gathered at the facility at dawn and broke out in cheers after the decision was announced. As the news spread, harm reduction, public health, and drug reform groups in Canada and around the world lined up to applaud it. "We are absolutely delighted that we finally have a clear decision on the legal framework for Insite," said Dr. Patricia Daly, Vancouver Coastal Health Chief Medical Health Officer. "Since 2003, Insite has made a positive impact on thousands of clients, saved lives by preventing overdoses, and provided vital health services to a vulnerable population. Today's ruling allows us to continue the outstanding work Insite, its doctors, nurses, staff and partners provide." "This represents a victory for science," said Dr. Julio Montaner, Director of the BC Center for Excellence for HIV/AIDS. "Prior attempts from the federal government to stop the activities of Insite have been ruled unconstitutional. We are thankful for the continued and unwavering support from the provincial government that has allowed us to set an example in Canada and the world for how to deal with addiction which is, indeed, a medical condition." "We applaud today's landmark decision by the Canadian Supreme Court to uphold the human rights of all Canadians by allowing Insite to remain open," said the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, CACTUS Montreal, and Harm Reduction International in a joint statement. "We are heartened the Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that criminal laws on drugs must give way to good public health practices and harm reduction." "This is a victory for science, compassion and public health -- and, given the fiscal benefits of such programs, the Canadian taxpayer. The Supreme Court of Canada recognized that Insite saves lives, and that that should be a guiding principle in deciding drug policy," said Laura Thomas, California deputy director for the Drug Policy Alliance. "Congratulations to the advocates, drug users, researchers, nurses, and elected officials who have campaigned for Vancouver's supervised injection facility for so long. This is a complete validation of their work." The Supreme Court of Canada's Insite ruling applies only to Insite. Other Canadian localities seeking to establish safe injection sites must win permission from the federal government. Canadian activists urged them to do so. "In light of today's Supreme Court decision, jurisdictions Canada-wide should act fearlessly on evidence and make harm reduction services modeled on Insite available to those in need in their locales," said the Canadian groups. "The Minister of Health must respect the court's decision and grant similar exemptions to other sites so that people across Canada will be able to access the public health services they desperately need." There are 67 safe injection sites operating today, with one in Australia, Insite in Vancouver, and the rest in Europe. There are no safe injection sites operating in the United States, although a move is afoot in San Francisco to get one underway there. The Drug Policy Alliance's Thomas said it is time to start pushing harder. "For communities in the US which have been hard hit by drug use, it is time to look at the evidence from Canada and start opening supervised injection facilities here," she said. "We look forward to implementing the same desire to save lives in the US." Drug War Issues Safe Injection Sites - Overdose Prevention - Harm Reduction - Drug-Related AIDS/HIV or Hepatitis C - Court Rulings Consequences of Prohibition Overdoses - Disease Politics & Advocacy Canada From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 13 13:40:42 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:40:42 +0200 Subject: [THS] Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake (But Who Faked It?) Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111013133646.0686b5d0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://thepassionateattachment.com/2011/10/12/iranian-terror-plot-fake-fake-fake-but-who-faked-it/ Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake (But Who Faked It?) In his latest Antiwar.com piece [below], Justin Raimondo asks some of the questions that mainstream reporters never seem to think of asking (or if they do, these doubts don?t ever make it past their more credulous editors): The long narrative spun by the indictment tells us everything but what we really need to know, which is: how is it that these two Iranian ?terrorists? just happened to meet up with a Mexican drug cartel assassin who just happened to be a longtime DEA informant? I guess that would be giving too much away: far better to spice up the story with scary details, such as the conversation between one of the alleged plotters and the informant, in the course of which the former says ?If you have to blow up the restaurant and kill a hundred Americans, well then f*ck ?em!? But Raimondo then gets a bit distracted in looking for the source of plot: This story is very scary ? not because it?s credible, or believable, because it is neither. However, it?s the most frightening story I?ve heard in quite a while because it shows that the US government is bound and determined to go to war with Iran, no matter what the consequences. Throwing caution to the winds, our rulers have decided to go all out against Tehran ? all the better to mask our current economic malaise under the damage done by the tripling and quadrupling of oil prices. This way, Obama can blame our crashing economy on Tehran, rather than his own discredited policies ? and sideline the Republicans, who have been criticizing him for being ?soft? on Iran. In passing, however, he does locate the more obvious source of any anti-Iranian propaganda: The making of American foreign policy is all about domestic politics. By preparing the country for war with Iran, Obama will not only defang the GOP, but also appease the all-important Israel lobby, which has been beating the war drums for years. In contrast, Raimondo?s readers have a more clear-eyed view of the affair. One comments: I don?t believe a word of it. The Zionists who control the State, Justice and Homeland Security Departments have fabricated this event to egg the USA on to invade Iran for the sake of Israel security. And the typical Zionist media, CNN, Fox and others, will play it for all its worth. Unfortunately most Americans just don?t understand how manipulated this ?greatest government on the earth? is and will likely believe it at face value. Schumer and Kantor will step right up to the plate. In 30 years, when our ties to Israel have bankrupted the nation (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, who knows where), we will look back and see just how we have been used by our best friends in the Middle East. With friends like that, who needs enemies. Another is even more perceptive: The script for this ?plot? was probably hand-delivered direct from AIPAC to Holder. As soon as I heard that, btw, the Israeli embassy was targeted for bombing also, I knew the whole thing was bogus ? not that the other inconsistencies and absurdities weren?t enough but this was the giveaway line. Israel must be getting really desperate to think that something as badly concocted as this was going to pass the smell test. As FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III so aptly put it, the whole thing ?reads like the pages of a Hollywood script.? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://thepassionateattachment.com/2011/10/12/rt-scheuer-suspicious-about-fbi-role-in-iran-investigation/ RT: Scheuer suspicious about FBI role in Iran investigation with 2 comments Russia Today reports: ?Michael Scheuer, a former CIA intelligence officer, believes there are many suspicious issues about the investigation. ?One of the biggest problems in the US is telling what the terrorist threat is in our country,? Scheuer told RT. ?The FBI runs the sting operations and then claims great credit for breaking up a plot that would not have existed [had they not] lured someone into doing it.? ?My initial reaction was: If the Iranians want to kill a Saudi ambassador, why do it in the US?? said the former CIA intelligence officer, suggesting the incident could be used as an excuse to start a full-scale war with Iran. Watch RT?s report here. http://rt.com/news/us-plot-assassinate-iran-617/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/10/11/iranian-terror-plot-fake-fake-fake/ Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake Not even good propaganda by Justin Raimondo, October 12, 2011 | Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum Fake, fake, fake ? I?m talking about the latest anti-Iranian propaganda coming out of Washington, which claims the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were involved in a ?plot? to take out the Saudi ambassador to the US and blow up both the Saudi and Israeli embassies. The narrative reads like a formulaic melodrama: two Iranians, one a naturalized US citizen, purportedly approached someone they thought was a member of a Mexican drug cartel ? according to the indictment [.pdf], it was a ?sophisticated? drug cartel, not the plebeian sort ? and proposed paying him $1.5 million to murder Adel al Jubeir, the Kingdom?s ambassador in Washington ? oh, and by the way, the Iranians supposedly said, ?Are you guys any good with explosives?? The key to understanding just how fake this story is can be found in the New York Times report, which informs us: ?For the entire operation, the government?s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents, Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District, said in the news conference. ?So no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere,? he said, ?and no one was actually in ever in any danger.?? Translation: the whole thing is phony from beginning to end. This is another one of US law enforcement?s manufactured ?anti-terrorist? triumphs, where the feds set somebody up, fabricate a ?crime? out of thin air, and then proceed to ?solve? a case that never really existed to begin with. This has been the general pattern of our ?anti-terrorist? operations in the US since the beginning ? because finding and catching real terrorists is much too hard, at least for our Keystone Kops. Instead of going out and actually, you know, looking for the Bad Guys, and then apprehending them, they lure some unsuspecting Muslim immigrant into a trap, and spring it when the time is right. The long narrative spun by the indictment tells us everything but what we really need to know, which is: how is it that these two Iranian ?terrorists? just happened to meet up with a Mexican drug cartel assassin who just happened to be a longtime DEA informant? I guess that would be giving too much away: far better to spice up the story with scary details, such as the conversation between one of the alleged plotters and the informant, in the course of which the former says ?If you have to blow up the restaurant and kill a hundred Americans, well then f*ck ?em!? The credibility rating of this story, taken on its face, is close to zero. Let?s say the Iranians really were plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador on American soil: would they contract it out to the Mexican Mafia, send all kinds of traceable money wires from Iran to the US, and not care if they killed a hundred Americans in the process of achieving their goal? Or would they send some fanatic, who would not only do it for free but also eliminate himself (or herself)? This flimsy cock-eyed tale is so transparently fake that it?s an embarrassment to the United States of America. Can?t our spooks do better than this? This fabrication marks a new trend in the field of anti-Iranian war propaganda. Previously, the War Party was relying on the same technique they used in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq: the old ?weapons of mass destruction? gambit. The big problem with that is it?s old, and tired: no one believes it anymore [.pdf]. Once burned, twice shy, as the saying goes. This latest lie is a fresh angle on a continuing theme, merely substituting Iran for the traditional bogeyman known as al-Qaeda. That this story involves the Mexican drug cartels, and Attorney General Eric Holder proclaiming that we?re going to ?hold the Iranian government accountable,? has got to be some kind of sick joke: after all, here is a man who stood by and watched while US law enforcement agents let guns travel over the US border to arm those very same cartels. Is this ?coup? for the Justice Department the pay-off for that harebrained scheme ? and when is Holder going to be held accountable? That our government would float a narrative like this without any apparent regard for the basic rules of fiction-writing ? create believable characters who do believable things ? is Washington?s way of showing contempt for the Iranians, the American people, and anyone else who stands in the way of their war agenda. They don?t care if it?s not believable. They think Americans will swallow anything, that we?re too busy trying to survive day-to-day, these days, to inquire much further than the ?official? account. And of course our brain-dead media, which is reduced to a chiefly stenographic role, isn?t going to ask any inconvenient questions. This story is very scary ? not because it?s credible, or believable, because it is neither. However, it?s the most frightening story I?ve heard in quite a while because it shows that the US government is bound and determined to go to war with Iran, no matter what the consequences. Throwing caution to the winds, our rulers have decided to go all out against Tehran ? all the better to mask our current economic malaise under the damage done by the tripling and quadrupling of oil prices. This way, Obama can blame our crashing economy on Tehran, rather than his own discredited policies ? and sideline the Republicans, who have been criticizing him for being ?soft? on Iran. The making of American foreign policy is all about domestic politics. By preparing the country for war with Iran, Obama will not only defang the GOP, but also appease the all-important Israel lobby, which has been beating the war drums for years. What Obama and his gang are hoping is that the American people are too tired, too beaten down, and too broke to care enough about this latest exercise in war propaganda to question it. Certainly the ?mainstream? media, which is Obama?s loudest cheering section, isn?t about to question it. Here is where the administration has probably miscalculated: people are just angry enough to wonder ?why now?? They?re just broke enough to resent being asked to pay for yet another holy crusade overseas. And they?re just tired enough of the bullsh*t that gets reported as ?news? day after day to start asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions about this latest offering by the Washington fable factory. The Americans are already backing away from the assertion that the Iranian government is directly responsible for the actions of these two individuals, averring that top Iranian officials didn?t ?necessarily? know what was going on. As the details of this case become known, Holder?s story is going to start unraveling like a substandard sweater ? and you can read all about that unraveling right here, at Antiwar.com . From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 14:54:19 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:54:19 +0200 Subject: [THS] Paul Craig Roberts: The Suicide of Liberty Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015145215.060f31d8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29386.htm The Suicide of Liberty By Paul Craig Roberts October 13, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Pat Buchanan?s latest book, Suicide of a Superpower, raises the question whether America will survive to 2025. The question might strike some readers as unduly pessimistic and others as optimistic. It is unclear whether the US, as we have known it, will survive its next presidential election. Consider the candidates. Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley, who was likely to have been an early Obama supporter, now wonders if Obama is ?the most disastrous president in our history.? Despite Obama?s failure, the Republicans can?t come up with anyone any better. One Republican candidate admires Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman who gave us financial deregulation and the financial crisis. Another is ready for a preemptive strike on Iran. Yet another thinks the Soviet Union is a grave threat to the United States. None of these clueless dopes are capable of presiding over a government. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the ?superpower? is over-extended financially and militarily. The US is currently involved in six conflicts with Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Pakistan on the waiting list for full fledged military attacks and perhaps invasions. Russia is being encircled with missile bases, and war plans are being drawn up for China. Where is the money going to come from when the country?s debt is bursting at the seams, the economy is in decline, and unemployment on the rise? Washington thinks that the money can simply be printed. However, enough has already been printed that the rest of the world is already suspicious of the dollar and its role as reserve currency. As John Williams has said, the world could begin dumping dollar assets at any time. I don?t think we can dismiss Buchanan?s concern as pessimistic. Buchanan documents his concern across a wide front. For example, the combination of mass immigration and its consequent demographics together with the ?diversity cult? means the end of ?white America? and the transformation of what once was the dominant population into a disadvantaged underclass. Buchanan cites a Wall Street Journal article by Ron Unz published 12 years ago. Unz found that white American gentiles who would be considered Christian are dramatically under-represented in America?s elite universities, which provide the elites who dominate government, business, and the professions. Unz reported that white Americans who comprised 70% of the US population made up only 25% of Harvard?s enrollment and that the composition of the student bodies at Yale Princeton Columbia, Berkeley, and Stanford was much the same. Asians who comprised 3% of the US population comprised one-fifth of Harvard?s enrollment, and Jews, who comprised 2.5% of the population comprised between one-fourth and one-third of Harvard?s student body. As Buchanan puts it, the country?s native-born majority has relegated its own progeny to the trash bin of history. Buchanan doesn?t address the question whether the rest of the world will miss white America. Considering the endless wars and astounding hypocrisy and immorality associated with white America since the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago, the world is likely to cheer when power slips from the hands of what Leonard Jeffries termed the ?ice people,? that is, people without souls or feelings for others. Americans are so wrapped up in the myth of their ?exceptionalism? that they are oblivious to the world?s opinion. American soft power, once a foundation of US influence, has been squandered, another reason the ?superpower? status is crumbling. Financial deregulation and the consequent financial crisis, collapse of the real estate market, and evictions of millions of Americans from their homes have greatly dimmed America?s economic prospects. However, as Buchanan points out, the offshoring of US jobs and industry under the guise of ?free trade? has damaged the middle class, halted the growth in consumer purchasing power and left many college graduates without careers. In the first decade of the 21st century, the Bush/Cheney years, America lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs. During this decade, Michigan lost 48% of its manufacturing jobs, New Jersey lost 39%, and New York and Ohio lost 38%. During this decade, the US incurred trade deficits totaling $6.2 trillion, of which $3.8 trillion is in manufactured goods. In other words, imports of manufactured goods are a larger cause of the trade deficit than oil imports. Early in the decade the US lost its trade surplus in advanced technology products. In recent years the US has run up $300 billion in trade deficits in advanced technology products with China alone. As Macy Block?s site, Economy in Crisis, documents, foreigners have used their huge dollar earnings to buy up American companies, with the consequence that foreign earnings on US investments now exceed US earnings abroad, thus worsening the current account deficit. Although Buchanan makes many points, this is not his best book. He becomes lost in old arguments that no longer make sense, such as the claim that the poor vote away the property of the rich, and he ignores the destruction of the US Constitution in the name of ?the war on terror,? which has transformed the US into a police state. Conservatives are stuck in the canard that democracy is a tool used by the poor to provide themselves with benefits at the expense of the rich. Buchanan cites statistics of those on welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and so on as evidence that the rich are being plundered. Yet, the facts are the opposite. The distribution of income has completely reversed since the 1960s. In the 1960s, the top 1 percent received 11% of the income gains, and the bottom 90% received 65%, leaving 24% of income gains for the 9% of richest Americans just below the top 1%. In the first decade of the 21st century, these figures have reversed. The top 1% receive 65% of the income gains and the bottom 90% receive 12%, leaving 23% for those rich Americans in the 91-99 percentile. If recent history (Yugoslavia, Soviet Empire) is a guide, Buchanan is probably correct that a country whose population consists of diverse ethnic and racial groups is less likely to share a common interest and enjoy political stability. However real this threat, it is not comparable to the threat to American identity of a destroyed Constitution. The Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes have shredded the constitutional protections that gave American citizens their liberty. By dictate alone, the executive branch has acquired the power, prohibited by the Constitution, to incarcerate citizens indefinitely without presenting evidence and obtaining conviction. According to the US government, a secret executive branch panel now exists that has acquired from somewhere the unaccountable power to put citizens on a list to be assassinated without due process of law merely on the basis of an unproven government assertion. How does this differ from Stalinist Russia and Gestapo Germany? The transformation of the US into a police state has been achieved quickly and with scant protest. Congress and the courts are silent. The media is silent, as are the law schools and bar associations. Out of 535 US Senators and Representatives, only Ron Paul has protested the destruction of liberty. Buchanan is concerned that America might not survive until 2025. Instead, shouldn?t we be concerned that the American police state could last that long? Shouldn?t we be worried that the police state will survive yet another presidential election, or even one more day? From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 14:58:09 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:58:09 +0200 Subject: [THS] Glenn Greenwald: The Very Scary Iranian Terror Plot Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015145514.0610c178@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29388.htm The ?Very Scary? Iranian Terror Plot By Glenn Greenwald October 13, 2011 "Salon" -- The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism ? against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel ? is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it. But since the U.S. Government rolled out its Most Serious Officials with Very Serious Faces to make these accusations, many people (therefore) do believe it; after all, U.S. government accusations = Truth. All Serious people know that. And in the ensuing reaction one finds virtually every dynamic typically shaping discussions of Terrorism and U.S. foreign policy. To begin with, this episode continues the FBI?s record-setting undefeated streak of heroically saving us from the plots they enable. From all appearances, this is, at best, yet another spectacular ?plot? hatched by some hapless loser with delusions of grandeur but without any means to put it into action except with the able assistance of the FBI, which yet again provided it through its own (paid, criminal) sources posing as Terrorist enablers. The Terrorist Mastermind at the center of the plot is a failed used car salesman in Texas with a history of pedestrian money problems. Dive under your bed. ?For the entire operation, the government?s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents,? explained U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and ?no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere and no one was actually ever in any danger.?? But no matter. The U.S. Government and its mindless followers in the pundit and think-tank ?expert? class have seized on this ludicrous plot with astonishing speed to all but turn it into a hysterical declaration of war against Evil, Hitlerian Iran. ?The US attorney-general Eric Holder said Iran would be ?held to account? over what he described as a flagrant abuse of international law,? and ?the US says military action remains on the table,? though ?it is at present seeking instead to work through diplomatic and financial means to further isolate Iran.? Hillary Clinton thundered that this ?crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for.? The CIA?s spokesman at The Washington Post, David Ignatius, quoted an anonymous White House official as saying the plot ?appeared to have been authorized by senior levels of the Quds Force.? Meanwhile, the State Department has issued a Travel Alert which warns American citizens that this plot ?may indicate a more aggressive focus by the Iranian Government on terrorist activity against diplomats from certain countries, to include possible attacks in the United States.? In case that?s not enough to frighten you ? and, really, how could it not be? ? some Very Serious Experts are very, very afraid and want you to know how Serious this all is. Within moments of Holder?s news conference, National Security Expert Robert Chesney ? without a molecule of critical thought in his brain ? announced that this ?remarkable development? was ?very scary.? Very, very scary. Chesney then printed large blocks of the DOJ?s Press Release to prove it. Self-proclaimed ?counter-terrorism expert? Daveed Gartenstein-Ross tapped into his vast expertise to explain: ?Holder weighing in on the plot?s connection to Iran means the administration is deadly serious about it.? Progressive think-tank expert and Atlantic writer Steve Clemons decreed that if the DOJ?s accusations are true, then ?the US has reached a point where it must take action? and ?this is time for a significant strategic response to the Iran challenge in the Middle East and globally,? which ?could involve military.? The ironies here are so self-evident it?s hard to work up the energy to point them out. Outside of Pentagon reporters, Washington Post Editorial Page Editors, and Brookings ?scholars,? is there a person on the planet anywhere who can listen with a straight face as drone-addicted U.S. Government officials righteously condemn the evil, illegal act of entering another country to commit an assassination? Does anyone, for instance, have any interest in finding out who is responsible for the spate of serial murders aimed at Iran?s nuclear scientists? Wouldn?t people professing to be so outraged by the idea of entering another country to engage in assassination be eager to get to the bottom of that? Then there?s the War on Terror irony: our Hated Enemy here (Iran) is a country which had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. Meanwhile, our close ally, the victim on whose behalf we are so outraged (Saudi Arabia), is not only one of the most tyrannical and aggressive regimes on the planet, but produced 15 of the 19 hijackers and had extensive and still-unknown involvement in that attack. If the U.S. is so deeply offended by the involvement of a foreign government in an attack on U.S. soil, it would be looking first to its close friend Saudi Arabia, where ?elements of the government? were likely involved in an actual plot rather than a joke of a plot. To make sure you understand just how dastardly and evil the Iranian plotters here are, the DOJ in its complaint highlighted that the used-car-salesman-Terrorist-Mastermind said that he preferred that nobody else be killed when the Saudi Ambassador was assassinated, but if it were absolutely necessary, he could accept some unintended deaths! Here?s how the NYT summarizes that: The complaint quotes Mr. Arbabsiar as making conflicting statements about the possibility of bystander deaths; at one point he is said to say that killing the ambassador alone would be preferable, but on another occasion he said it would be ?no big deal? if many others at the restaurant ? possibly including United States senators ? died in any bombing. What kind of monster thinks that way, we are supposed to ponder. Behold the warped mind of the Terrorist! He?s actually willing to accept that others die besides his intended targeted! Is that not the mentality that drives U.S. behavior in multiple countries around the world every day? The U.S. flattened an entire civilian apartment building in Baghdad with a 2,000-pound bomb when it thought Saddam Hussein was there (he wasn?t ? oops ? but lots of innocent people were). NATO repeatedly bombed structures in Tripoli where it thought (mistakenly) Moammar Gadaffi was located, in the process almost certainly killing large numbers of unintended targets. The U.S. just killed one of its own citizens that it insists (not very credibly) it did not intend to kill in order to eradicate the life of Anwar Awlaki, and killed dozens of innocent people when it previously tried to kill Awlaki with cluster bombs. The U.S. is the living, breathing symbol of this ?collateral damage? rationale. It?s what drives all the multi-nation American wars and occupations and drone campaigns and assassinations that continuously pile up the corpses of innocent people. But we?re all going to gather in righteous disgust at the idea that this monstrous International Terrorist would be willing to incur some unintended civilian deaths in order to assassinate an official of the peaceful, freedom-loving Saudi regime. Really, for brazen irony, how can this be beat? Tom Kean, former chairman of the 9/11 Commission said the alleged plot ?surprises me.? Speaking to CNN?s Erin Burnett, Kean said the plot is ?pretty close to an act of war. You don?t go in somebody?s capital to blow somebody up.? Meanwhile, President Obama decried this plot as ?a flagrant violation of US and international law.? But maybe some Persian Marty Lederman in Tehran wrote a secret legal memo concluding that this was all in accordance with domestic and international law, which ? as we know ? is conclusive and provides a full shield of immunity. So facially absurd are the claims here ? why would Iran possibly wake up one day and decide that it wanted to engage in a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil when it could much more easily kill Saudi officials elsewhere? and if Iran and its Quds Force are really behind this inept, hapless, laughable plot, then nothing negates the claim that Iran is some Grave Threat like this does ? that there is more skepticism expressed even in establishment media accounts than one normally finds about such things. Even the NYT noted ? with great understatement ? that the allegations ?provoked puzzlement from specialists on Iran, who said it seemed unlikely that the government would back a brazen murder and bombing plan on American soil.? The Post noted that ?the very rashness of the alleged assassination plot raised doubts about whether Iran?s normally cautious ruling clerics supported or even know about it.? The Atlantic?s Max Fisher has more on why this would be so out of character for Iran. But while some attention has been devoted to asking what motive Iran would have for doing this, little attention has been paid to asking what motive the U.S. would have for exaggerating or concocting the connection of Iran?s government to this plot. Aside from the benefits the FBI and DOJ receive when breaking up a ?very scary? plot ? the bigger, the better ? it has been one of Obama?s highest foreign policy priorities to isolate Iran and sanction it further: as a means of placating Israel and punishing Iran for thwarting America?s natural right to rule that region (so monstrous is Iran that, as the U.S. has repeatedly complained, they actually continue to ?interfere? in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan!). As Ignatius explains, the U.S. Government instantly converted this plot into a vehicle for furthering those policy ambitions: With its alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Iran has handed the United States an opportunity to undermine Tehran at a moment when U.S. officials believe the Iranian regime is especially vulnerable. . . . ?We see this as a chance to go out to capitals around the world and talk to allies and partners about what the Iranians tried to do,? the [White House] official said. ?We?re not going to tolerate targeting a diplomat in Washington. We?re going to try to use this to isolate them to the maximum extent possible.? Meanwhile, Joe Biden announced today that the U.S. is ?working to unite the world? behind a response to Iran?s ?outrageous? actions and that ?nothing has been taken off the table.? So Iran?s supposed involvement in this plot is the ideal weapon for the U.S. to advance its long-standing goals with regard to that country. Maybe that warrants some serious skepticism about whether the U.S. Government?s claims are true? But we all know that only Bad Muslim countries exploit foreign policy exaggerations or fabrications for political gain, and not the United States of America (especially not with Barack Obama, rather than a Republican, in the White House). What?s most significant is that not even 24 hours have elapsed since these allegations were unveiled. No evidence has been presented of Iran?s involvement. And yet there is no shortage of people ? especially in the media ? breathlessly talking about all of this as though it?s all clearly true. If the Obama administration decided tomorrow that military action against Iran were warranted in response, is there any doubt that large majorities of Americans ? and large majorities of Democrats ? would support that? As I said when discussing the Awlaki killing, the truly ?scary? aspect of all of this is that the U.S. Government need only point and utter the word ?Terrorist? and hordes of citizens will rise up and demand not evidence, but blood. UPDATE: Perpetual war-cheerleader Ken Pollack of Brookings says that, if true, this plot ?shows that Tehran is meaner and nastier than ever before? and ?would represent a major escalation of Iranian terrorist operations against the United States.? Also, he announces, this ?should remind us that Iran also is not a normal country by any stretch of the imagination.? That ? self-anointed arbiter of who is and is not a ?normal country? ? from a person as responsible as any pundit or think-tank expert for the attack on Iraq that killed at least 100,000 human beings, denouncing as Terrorists and abnormal a country that has invaded nobody. UPDATE II: On NPR this morning, Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations ? and Ken Pollack?s co-author on Iran ? said this when asked if he has any doubts about the accuracy of U.S. government statements: ?The only unusual aspect of this is actually having a terrorist operation on American territory. I don?t know what the evidence about this is, but I?m not in a position to doubt it.? That perfectly summarizes the political, media and ?expert? class? attitude toward U.S. Government claims: they?re keeping everything secret about their accusations, so there?s no reason to doubt what they?re claiming. The National Security Priesthood that uncritically amplified every U.S. Government claim and fanned the flames of war against Iraq is alive, well, and more mindless and dutiful than ever. UPDATE III: The Christian Science Monitor details the many reasons why ?Iran specialists who have followed the Islamic Republic for years say that many details in the alleged plot just don?t add up.? UPDATE IV: On Good Morning America this morning, Joe Biden warned that ?the Iranians are going to have to be held accountable? and ?nothing has been taken off the table,? and then promised: ?And when you see the case presented you will find there is compelling evidence for the assertion being made.? Except ? after 24 hours of media hysteria ? there?s this Reuters article, which ? under the headline ?Officials concede gaps in U.S. knowledge of Iran plot? ? reports: Iran?s supreme leader and the shadowy Quds Force covert operations unit were likely aware of an alleged plot to kill Saudi Arabia?s ambassador to the United States, but hard evidence of that is scant, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The United States does not have solid information about ?exactly how high it goes,? one official said. . . .The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their confidence that at least some Iranian leaders were aware of the alleged plot was based largely on analyses and their understanding of how the Quds Force operates. I wouldn?t exactly call that ? what was the phrase Biden used? ? ?compelling evidence for the assertions being made.? In fact, it reminds me of the language anonymous government officials began using to describe their ?knowledge? of Anwar Awlaki?s alleged operational role in plots against the U.S. once they killed him: ?patchy?; ?partial?; ?suspicion.? But what we learned with Awlaki is likely what we?ll see here: many people reflexively believe government accusations even when unaccompanied by evidence, and that belief is not diluted even when government officials began acknowledging (albeit anonymously) that they do not possess and never did possess any conclusive evidence to support their accusations. From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:00:24 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:00:24 +0200 Subject: [THS] Pepe Escobar: The Fast and Furious Plot to Occupy Iran Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015145943.06129b70@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29390.htm The Fast and Furious Plot to Occupy Iran Tehran would have to be terminally foolish to try to snuff out an ambassador on US soil, author says. By Pepe Escobar October 13, 2011 "Al-Jazeera" - - No one ever lost money betting on the dull predictability of the US government. Just as Occupy Wall Street is firing imaginations all across the spectrum - piercing the noxious revolving door between government and casino capitalism - Washington brought us all down to earth, sensationally advertising an Iranian cum Mexican cartel terror plot straight out of The Fast and the Furious movie franchise. The potential victim: Adel al-Jubeir, the ambassador in the US of that lovely counter-revolutionary Mecca, Saudi Arabia. FBI Director Robert Mueller insisted the Iran-masterminded terror plot "reads like the pages of a Hollywood script". It does. And quite a sloppy script at that. Fast and Furious duo Paul Walker/Vin Diesel wouldn't be caught dead near it. The good guys in this Washington production are the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). In the words of Attorney General Eric Holder, they uncovered "a deadly plot directed by factions of the Iranian government to assassinate a foreign Ambassador on US soil with explosives". Holder added that the bombing of the Saudi embassy in Washington was also part of the plan. Subsequent spinning amplified that to planned bombings of the Israeli embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires. The Justice Department has peddled quite a murky story - Operation Red Coalition (no, you can?t make that stuff up) - centred on one Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old holding both Iranian and US passports and an Iran-based co-conspirator, Gholam Shakuri, an alleged member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's (IRGC) Quds Force. Arbabsiar allegedly had a series of encounters in Mexico with a DEA mole posing as a Mexican drug cartel heavy weight. The Iranian-American seems to have been convinced that the mole was a member of the hardcore Zetas Mexican cartel, and reportedly bragged he was being "directed by high-ranking members of the Iranian government", including a cousin who was "a member of the Iranian army but did not wear a uniform". On top of it, he told the DEA mole that his Iranian government buddies could come up with "tons of opium" for the Mexican cartel (an Afghan connection, perhaps). Then they discussed a "number of violent missions" complete with Arbabsiar bragging about bombing a packed Washington restaurant used by the Saudi ambassador. Holder characterised the whole thing as a $1.5m "murder-for-hire" plan. Arbabsiar was arrested only a few days ago, on September 29, at JFK airport in New York. He allegedly confessed, according to the Justice Department. Shakuri for his part is still at large. Holder was adamant: "The United States is committed to hold Iran accountable for its actions." Yet he stopped short of stating the plot was approved by the highest levels of the Iranian government. So what next? War? Hold your horses; Washington should first think about asking the Chinese if they?re willing to foot the bill (the answer will be no). Predictably, the proverbial torrent of US "officials" came out with guns blazing, spinning everything in sight. An alarmed Pentagon will be increasing surveillance over the Quds Force and "Iran?s actions" in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. Former US ambassadors stated that, "it's an attack on the United States to attack this ambassador". Washington is about to impose even more sanctions against Iran; and Washington is urgently taking the matter to the UN Security Council. What next? An R2P ("responsibility to protect") resolution ordering NATO to protect every House of Saud minion across the world by bombing Iran into regime change? Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a spokesman for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at least introduced a little bit of common sense. "I think the US government is busy fabricating a new scenario and history has shown both the US government and the CIA have a lot of experience in fabricating these scenarios ... I think their goal is to reach the American public. They want to take the public's mind off the serious domestic problems they're facing these days and scare them with fabricated problems outside the country." Iran has not even established yet that these two characters are actually Iranian citizens. The Iranian government - which prides itself on a logical approach to diplomacy - would have to have been inoculated with a terminal Stuxnet-style foolishness virus to behave in such a counterproductive manner, by targeting a high-profile foreign policy adviser to King Abdullah on American soil. The official Iranian news agency IRNA described the plot as "America's new propaganda scenario" against Iran. As for the Washington mantra that "Iran has been insinuating itself into many of the struggles in the Middle East", that's undiluted Saudi propaganda. In fact it's the House of Saud who's been conducting the fierce counter-revolution that has smashed any possibility of an Arab Spring in the Persian Gulf - from the invasion and repression of Bahrain to the rash pre-emption of protests inside Saudi Arabia's Shia-dominated eastern provinces. The whole thing smells like a flimsy pretext for a casus belli. The timing of the announcement couldn't be more suspicious. White House national security advisor Thomas E. Donilon briefed King Abdullah of the plot no less than two weeks ago, in a three-hour meeting in Riyadh. Meanwhile the US government has been carrying not plots, but targeted assassinations of US citizens, as in the Anwar al-Awlaki case. So why now? Holder is caught in yet another scandal - on whether he told lies regarding Operation Fast and Furious (no, you can't make this stuff up), a federal gun sting through which scores of US weapons ended up in the hands of - here they come again - Mexican drug cartels. So how to bury Fast and Furious, the economic abyss, the 10 years of war in Afghanistan, the increasing allure of Occupy Wall Street - not to mention the Saudi role in smashing the spirit of the Arab Spring? By uncovering a good ol' al-Qaeda style plot on US soil, on top of it conducted by "evil" Iran. Al-Qaeda and Tehran sharing top billing; not even Cheney and Rumsfeld in their heyday could come up with something like this. Long live GWOT (the global war on terror). And long live the neo-con spirit; remember, real men go to Tehran - and the road starts now. Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:01:45 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:01:45 +0200 Subject: [THS] Amnesty Calls on Canada to Arrest Bush Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015150109.0601e7d0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29387.htm Amnesty Calls on Canada to Arrest Bush By Michel Comte October 13, 2011 "AFP" - Amnesty International called on Canadian authorities Wednesday to arrest and prosecute George W. Bush, saying the former US president authorized "torture" when he directed the US-led war on terror. Bush is expected to attend an economic summit in Surrey in Canada's westernmost British Columbia province on October 20. In a memorandum submitted last month to Canada's attorney general but only now released to the media, the London-based group charged that Bush has legal responsibility for a series of human rights violations. "Canada is required by its international obligations to arrest and prosecute former president Bush given his responsibility for crimes under international law including torture," Amnesty's Susan Lee said in a statement. "As the US authorities have, so far, failed to bring former president Bush to justice, the international community must step in. A failure by Canada to take action during his visit would violate the UN Convention Against Torture and demonstrate contempt for fundamental human rights," Lee said. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney blasted Amnesty for "cherry picking cases to publicize, based on ideology." "This kind of stunt helps explain why so many respected human rights advocates have abandoned Amnesty International," he said. Kenney said it will be up to Canadian border officials to decide independently whether to allow Bush into the country. Bush canceled a visit to Switzerland in February, after facing similar public calls for his arrest. Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International's Canadian branch, told a press conference the rights group will pursue its case against the former US president with the governments of other countries he might visit. "Torturers must face justice and their crimes are so egregious that the responsibility for ensuring justice is shared by all nations," Neve said. "Friend or foe, extraordinary or very ordinary times, most or least powerful nation, faced with concerns about terrorism or any other threat, torture must be stopped. "Bringing to justice the people responsible for torture is central to that goal. It is the law... And no one, including the man who served as president of the world's most powerful nation for eight years can be allowed to stand above that law." Amnesty, backed by the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, claims Bush authorized the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "waterboarding" on detainees held in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency between 2002 and 2009. The detention program included "torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (such as being forced to stay for hours in painful positions and sleep deprivation), and enforced disappearances," it alleged. Amnesty's case, outlined in its 1,000-page memorandum, relies on the public record, US documents obtained through access to information requests, Bush's own memoir and a Red Cross report critical of the US's war on terror policies. Amnesty cites several instances of alleged torture of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, by the US military. The cases include that of Zayn al Abidin Muhammed Husayn (known as Abu Zubaydah) and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, both arrested in Pakistan. The two men were waterboarded 266 times between them from 2002 to 2003, according to the CIA inspector general, cited by Amnesty. From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:04:52 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:04:52 +0200 Subject: [THS] There Never Was an Egyptian Revolution Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015150253.06151b98@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29385.htm There Never Was an Egyptian Revolution By Ahmed Amr October 13, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The thrill is gone, the euphoria has faded and our mass delusions have been swept away to make room for the reality that there never was an Egyptian revolution. Eight months after deposing the old despot, Egypt is now in the firm grip of a new and improved military dictatorship ? the Supreme Counsel of the Armed Forces. Any lingering doubt about the intentions of the generals to retain command and control of the ship of state vanished on Bloody Sunday. There is no need for additional forensic evidence of what exactly transpired at Maspero, the site of a massacre that can only be called a crime against humanity. What started out as a peaceful march against religious persecution by Salafi vandals with a nasty habit of destroying Coptic churches turned into a blood bath. Two dozen demonstrators were murdered, the youngest of them 12 years old. The only real question remaining is whether the slaughter was premeditated. From where I sit in Cairo, it sure looks that way. How else can one explain the outright lies and deceptions propagated by state owned media operatives? The provocative coverage by State TV made it sound like Coptic gangs armed with machine guns had assaulted unarmed military police. And the public ate it up because they ?saw? it on their Telly. A call went out for ?honorable? citizens to go out and defend the army. Of course, that story turned out to be a load of state manufactured manure. The online English language Al-Ahram website, also a government media outlet, gave a very different account. A march of 10,000 Copts began today from Shubra to the State TV building in Maspero turned violent when protesters were attacked by stone throwing mobs from on top of the surrounding walls while they were trying to cross the Shubra tunnel. A 15-minute battle ensued as the Coptic protesters fought back and hurled stones at their assailants. Gun shots were fired in the sky, leaving terrified demonstrators wondering aloud if they were going to be shot. During the attack, panic ensued as women protesters were told to stand under the bridge for safety as Coptic youth tried to contain the march. After the battle stopped the march, once again regained its peaceful nature and continued towards Maspero. On their way to Maspero they stopped in the neighboring Galaa Street and were attacked once again. A car sped through the crowd and randomely shot at protesters. The march continued once again to Maspero where the protesters were attacked again with increased vigour and violence. An Ahram Online correspondent at Maspero reports seeing glass being thrown down at protesters from inside the State Broadcasting building in Maspero while armoured personnel carriers were driven by the army through the crowds, hitting and running protesters over. Eyewitness accounts posted on Twitter detail people being shot by the armed forces and attacked by plain-clothed thugs, with fire consuming vehicles by the Nile. So far confirmed as being among those killed are Mina Daniel, an activist and blogger; Wael Yunna, a journalist for Coptic TV; and Michael Mosaad, an activist and member of the Maspero Youth Coalition. The protest was organised by the Maspero Youth Union, a group of young Coptic activists to protest against the recent violations against Copts. The protesters chanted, ?raise your head high you are a Copt,? and ?no to burning of churches.? The protesters also chanted against the army, shouting ?the people want the fall of the Field Marshall Tantawi,? and chanted: ?Tantawi, where is your army, our homes and churches are being attacked.? The very next morning, the Arabic print version of Al-Ahram spared all of 150 words to report the story. The brief account didn?t even mention a clash or report on the casualties. This sanitary version of the events had Muslims and Christians marching peacefully chanting ?Muslims and Copts are One Hand.? My best guess is that they didn?t want to squander all their recently acquired post-revolutionary virginity on a single story. By Tuesday morning, Al-Ahram was back to usual form and reporting an eyewitness account from a wounded soldier who claimed he saw 14 of his comrades burned alive in an armored personnel carrier. The journalist who wrote that story is well-advised to invest a little money in a calculator. The official death toll is 25 killed. Of those, 21 have already been identified as Copts, two bodies are unidentified and it?s not exactly certain who the other two are. They could have been soldiers but then again they could have been Muslim activists who were marching in solidarity with their Coptic brothers. The army initially claimed that three of its soldiers had died and now refuses to confirm the exact count. Usually, in similar circumstances, the soldiers who die in the line of duty are identified and their families are awarded compensation and press coverage to honor their sacrifice. So it could be that the military suffered no fatalities. The bottom line is that the state owned press accounts were all over the place even though the reported events happened right under their noses. The site of the massacre was across the street from the State Television building at Maspero. State media, any state media, is always a suspect source of information. But when you get this level of confusion in Egyptian state media outlets, it is a sure sign of a cover-up. The behavior of these ?journalists? ? and I use that word very loosely ? is very similar to what happened on February 2, 2011. That is exactly the same scenario that transpired during the infamous ?Battle of the Camels? when armed thugs on horses and camels attacked demonstrators in Tahrir Square. At the time, the army had already committed itself to protecting the demonstrators and volunteered to be a ?custodian of the revolution.? But a curious thing happened ? the army didn?t intervene and never bothered to explain how the hired goons had penetrated their lines or how they had manage to pass unnoticed through dozens of army checkpoints that were set up to enforce a curfew. That remains a taboo subject. But there are some things we now know about the Battle of the Camel. It was a carefully orchestrated attempt by the Mubarak regime to abort the revolution and the plan included a very well-defined role for state media operatives. Their instructions were to ignore it and concentrate on reporting on ?spontaneous? outbreaks of support for the now deposed president. It?s fair to speculate that similar instructions were handed down to state media operatives on Bloody Sunday. For the record, these government salaried scribes are pretty much the same crowd that faithfully supported Mubarak for thirty years. The massacre at Maspero came straight out Mubarak?s play book. Manufacture chaos, pose as a savior of the nation and extend the emergency laws or maybe go a bit further and declare martial law. Field Marshal Tantawi is already signaling the need to impose harsher measures against unidentified domestic and foreign provocateurs. The Coptic demonstrators were not hooligans armed with machine guns; their ranks included women, children and sympathetic Muslim activists. And autopsies confirm that many of them were shot, stabbed, crushed by armored personnel carriers or beaten to death. There is absolutely no need for a massive inquiry here. Just ask the soldiers and officers what their instructions were and who gave the orders. Pull in a few of the journalists on the state payroll and ask them the same thing. Round up a few of the thugs who attacked the demonstrators to determine if they acted ?spontaneously? or if they also had instructions. I?ll bet my last dollar that this was a False Flag operation to manufacture chaos and create enough sectarian tension to justify continued military rule. Which gets me back to my initial thesis which is that there never was an Egyptian revolution. What happened in Egypt was a coup d??tat that rode the back of a popular uprising, tamed it and now plans to re-establish six decades of military dictatorship. The generals were more than happy to get rid of Mubarak and his heir, a son who was not only a corrupt investment banker but also a draft dodger who never served a day in the military and was rumored to have a British passport. The Copts who perished on Bloody Monday will go down as the last martyrs of the first Egyptian uprising or the first martyrs of the second Egyptian uprising. Either way, their blood will remain an indelible stain on Egyptian history. May God have mercy on their souls. Ahmed Amr is the former editor of NileMedia.com and the author of The Sheep and The Guardians - Diary of a SEC Sanctioned Swindle. He can be reached at: Montraj at aol.com This article was first posted at Dissident Voice: From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:07:09 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:07:09 +0200 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?Targeting_Syria_=96_The_=91Bad_News=92_For__?= =?iso-8859-1?q?The_Guardian?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015150652.0618eda0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29393.htm Targeting Syria ? The ?Bad News? For The Guardian By Media Lens October 13, 2011 "Media Lens" -- Afghanistan and Iraq may still be in flames. A bloodbath may continue to flow from Nato?s ?humanitarian intervention? in Libya. No matter, mainstream journalists are appalled that a double Russian and Chinese veto at the UN has thwarted Western efforts to do more good in Syria. The two powers rejected the latest draft of a UN Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian government and preparing the way for international sanctions. In the Guardian, Middle East editor Ian Black wrote last week: ?Bashar al-Assad can certainly feel satisfied that powerful allies have stood by him and prevented international action that might ? just ? have given him pause for thought as he pursues his vicious crackdown on Syria's protest movement.? This is the standard media version of events, repeated endlessly, for example, by the BBC and ITV. We are to understand that the Syrian government is responsible for a vicious repression of peaceful protestors along the lines of Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Yemen. But is it an accurate depiction of the conflict? In May, Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, commented on the first outbreaks of violence in Syria: ?What is clear from these initial reports is that many of the demonstrators were not demonstrators but terrorists involved in premeditated acts of killing and arson. The title of [an] Israeli news report summarizes what happened: ?Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests.? The initial conflict, Chossudovsky noted, ?had all the appearances of a staged event involving, in all likelihood, covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence. Government sources point to the role of radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel). Other reports have pointed to the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the protest movement.? Jeremy Salt, associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University, Ankara, wrote this month: ?The armed groups are well armed and well organised. Large shipments of weapons have been smuggled into Syria from Lebanon and Turkey. They include pump action shotguns, machine guns, Kalashnikovs, RPG launchers, Israeli-made hand grenades and numerous other explosives. It is not clear who is providing these weapons but someone is, and someone is paying for them.? So why do Western media keep referring to a ?vicious crackdown on Syria?s protest movement?? Chossudovsky explained: ?The existence of an armed insurrection is not mentioned by the Western media. If it were to be acknowledged and analysed, our understanding of unfolding events would be entirely different. What is mentioned profusely is that the armed forces and the police are involved in the indiscriminate killing of protesters.? He added some background: ?Since the Soviet-Afghan war, Western intelligence agencies as well as Israel's Mossad have consistently used various Islamic terrorist organizations as "intelligence assets". Both Washington and its indefectible British ally have provided covert support to "Islamic terrorists" in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya, etc. as a means to triggering ethnic strife, sectarian violence and political instability The ultimate objective of the Syria protest movement, through media lies and fabrications, is to create divisions within Syrian society as well as justify an eventual "humanitarian intervention".? As Chossudovsky observed, Syria is on the US list of ?rogue states.? In 2004, in an interview with Democracy Now!, former Nato chief General Wesley Clark recalled a conversation with a Pentagon general in 2001, a few weeks after the September 11 attacks: ?He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, ?I just got this down from upstairs? ? meaning the Secretary of Defense?s office ? ?today.? And he said, ?This is a memo that describes how we?re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.?? From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:10:43 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:10:43 +0200 Subject: [THS] Phil Rockstroh: Late Capitalism and Its Discontents of the American Autumn Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015150740.060d1950@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29394.htm Punching a Hole in Bubbles of Denial and Addiction: Late Capitalism and Its Discontents of the American Autumn By Phil Rockstroh October 13, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The global designs of the neo-liberal agenda have met the living architecture of a larger order -- a portion of which has taken the form of a still coalescing, yet potent, countervailing consciousness, a global-wide Liberty Plaza of the mind -- an order that is not informed by corporate era public relations legerdemain, hyper-adrenaline media sound bites, rightwing emotional displacements, or "sensible" centrist platitudes -- but the type of order that begins to jell when the structures of an existing system lose touch with the realities of daily life. A ground-level, global-wide movement is afoot and has announced to the economic, media and political elite that they are on to their schemes. Accordingly, the plundering class and their protectors will no longer be afforded the luxury of insulating themselves (almost absent confrontation) within bubbles of privilege, bubbles of denial, bubbles of insularity. Late capitalism has proven to be wholly reliant upon, in fact, addicted to, the creation of bubbles: market and media bubbles, respectively, serving to create inflated wealth and the manufacturing of closed narratives that shield the privileged players within from being held accountable for the consequences of their schemes. The system is analogous to a rigged game in a tawdry, traveling carnival. The carnival barker's success hinges on whether or not his audience is seduced by his unctuous pitch, in this case being the dubious claim that, under late capitalism, illusionary economic success is attainable by pluck and perseverance. ("Step right up, folks, all can play"-- but the house will win.) Of course, the game has been rigged from the get-go, has been designed to fleece credulous rubes who have never glimpsed the larger world, and, when any prize at all is won, it is a piece of cheap, disposable consumer junk. As Autumn stands before us, it will be helpful to allow illusions to fall away like dying leaves. Summer is kind to fools, but winter insists on clarity. Let the old delusions blaze out in Autumnal splendor, and then be mindful of winter's stark perfection its demarcations rendering bare branches against a bleak sky. Know this: The illusions of the corporate empire can no longer provide shelter; the elite and operatives of economic imperium can no longer raid and plunder the easy pickings of summer hoard and squander its bounty. Therefore, to quote the poet, at present, "One must have a mind of winter" to navigate the white-out winds of new realities. One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind [ ] -- Wallace Stevens, excerpt from The Snow Man Yet, with the rise of that wing of the privileged class known as the corporate media, we receive the opposite; instead, we are enveloped within a hothouse bloom of hype, surface-level, adrenaline-activating content bearing misleadingly narrowed context. On January 17 1991, at the start of the U.S.'s formal military hostilities against Iraq in the first Gulf War, the "folk rapper"/performance poet Chris Chandler and I were in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House. Chris pounded and thrashed at his battered guitar and recited talking blues protest ditties that we composed on the spot. We were among a crowd of well over a couple of thousand demonstrators, plus scores of homeless people shared the surroundings as well. Shortly after the bombing of Iraq began, many in the park joined in an impromptu march around the metro D.C. area where thousands more protesters joined our ranks. As we wended our way back to Pennsylvania Avenue, we were met, a block from the White House, by a phalanx of police i.e., full riot gear-clad storm troopers and mounted sons-of-bitches on horseback who charged the crowd. The following is a close approximation of the account of the events as reported in the next day's Washington Post: "A few dozen ragged protesters hobbled up Pennsylvania Ave. throwing rocks and taunting the police " Bearing that in mind, here is the opening graph of the account of the events on the Brooklyn Bridge, where on Sunday, Oct 2, 2011, demonstrators were herded, kettled and arrested by police: "NEW YORK (AP) ? More than 700 protesters demonstrating against corporate greed, global warming and social inequality, among other grievances, were arrested Saturday after they swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge and shut down a lane of traffic for several hours in a tense confrontation with police." Buyer beware: If the corporate press reports a breaking story with any degree of accuracy, the act is to be viewed as a fluke and certainly not as an act of honest intention by the reporters, producers and editors involved. On a personal basis, I have yet to be part of an unfolding news story in which the version of events created by these courtesans to power do not seem simply cut out of whole cloth, as they truckled to create an inoffensive narrative for the ruling elite. "Now, from America, empty indifferent things are pouring across, sham things, dummy life . A house, in the American sense, an American apple or a grapevine over there, has nothing in common with the house, the fruit, the grape into which went the hopes and reflections of our forefathers Live things, things that are alive ? that are conscious of us ? are running out and can no longer be replaced. We are perhaps the last to have known such things."?Rainer Maria Rilke Living in New York City, as I do, brings into stark relief the fact that the city operates as a defacto banana republic/police state. In the same manner that the mission of the police force is to protect the power and privilege of the moneyed classes, mainstream journalists work within the boundaries of its acceptable narratives for the purpose of job security and a bit of privilege. The general population, buffeted by economic insecurity, at least, up to this point, has remained docile, and, to mitigate the anxiety and depression caused by feelings of powerlessness, many have become addicted to the small perks and bribes and endless distractions of the corporate/consumer state Furthermore, these bubble-enclosed states of being constitute addiction in a literal sense: Ergo, the compulsive mechanisms of addictive behavior are an attempt to ease an individual's abiding sense of powerlessness and the attendant feelings of anxiety and despair experienced in the midst of uncontrollable circumstances and to quell troubling, obsessive thoughts and feelings of acute emotional discomfort by an habitual reliance on mood altering substances such as alcohol, food, gambling, work, hoarding, lust for power, wealth and privilege. Addictive actions arise from the drive of libido, but its energy is usurped and exploited by the relentless will of a rigid, turned in on itself ego..."Self will run riot," as the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous poetically puts it. Addiction is a pathology of the mechanistic mind; an addict?s disregard for his own body and his exploitative attitude towards the world at large is a microcosmic version of the economic designs of the global economic elite. Apropos, the world is mine to abuse, not to engage...to exploit from within a protective bubble of privilege and entitlement, not to be enjoined with in common communion. The demands of the addicted mind are analogous to that of a bratty child, a high chair tyrant, "his majesty the baby," who is convinced that his wants are the end all be all of all things. Therefore, a childish addict must grow up and ask himself this question: How do I transform my obsessive wants into the rage of my dharma, my un-reflective compulsions into the steady work of my soul. In our time, when nearly all the apparatus of the corporate/consumer state exist and are maintained by the demeaning, soul-defying dynamics of addiction, as an act of defiance, one should attempt to get drunk on clarity--which is a different matter than a priggish, "dry drunk's" hyper-moralistic refusal of excess, for the primary option does not constitute a puritanical refusal of the world--but, instead, is an embrace of the sacred quality of life, a respect for the finite quality of our fleeting passage through this life. The voice of addiction (both internal and extant in the consumer state) will say anything and will go to craven lengths to continue on. Withal, its narrative will insist its path is the only passage possible that its doomed trajectory must be maintained. And when its flimsy, desperate arrangements do collapse, it will insist that it must be propped back up so it can topple once again (or as this destructive act of enabling was called, a few years back, "The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008"). Let the stock market hit bottom and allow "consumer confidence" to plummet allow the psyches' of consumers, addicted to distraction, to spiral into the abyss. Because, in so doing, one may be compelled to find and grasp onto one's essential self, as the persona of one's false self, addicted to the present order, disappears into the void. To truly embrace the possibility of change, it is essential to allow putrefied habits to compost into the rich loam that will nourish reborn understandings. Apropos: I felt a Funeral in my Brain And Mourners to and fro Kept treading--treading-till it seemed That Sense was breaking through" --Emily Dickinson, opening stanza from, I Felt A Funeral In My Brain Yes, this is a grievous event a time of tears, confusion and lamination. Yet: Let the young tears come Let the calm hand of grief come It is not as evil as you think. --Rolf Jacobsen, excerpt from Sunflower Within the present societal structure of the corporate state, "learned helplessness" is encouraged (as opposed to embracing reflective sorrow and deploying focused rage). Because it sustains itself by exploiting an individual's instinctual drives and human longings, the present order of late capitalism is depended upon allowing an individual to possess just enough libido to vampirize--but not to retain enough ?lan vital to be roused to rebellion against the corporate state's relentless practices of economic coercion. "In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy" --Ivan Illich I have noticed that often what is (unconsciously) beneath paranoia is envy. Envy that others are taking up one's space in the world and are plotting to maintain the arrangement. Solution: Punch a hole in bubbles of denial and addiction and take a look for yourself. Insist on your portion of life -- your portion of fate. Many situations in this life are rigged e.g., the gamed system of the corporate state. But life itself is too vast, too intricate to be rigged; it is truly too big to fail. Now: To the streets, glistening with renewing rain to the flaming barricades its flames caress the future. Come out of self-exile; you are the change you can believe in. Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil at philrockstroh.com Visit Phil's website http://philrockstroh.com And at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100... From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:15:25 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:15:25 +0200 Subject: [THS] Matt Taibbi: Rolling Stone: Hit Bankers Where it Hurts Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015151126.0612af28@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29395.htm My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters Hit Bankers Where it Hurts By Matt Taibbi October 13, 2011 "Rolling Stone" - - I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal. But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war. Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls. That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America ? just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year. No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy ? to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles ? makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five: 1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies ? now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" ? are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks. 2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow. 3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress. 4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year. 5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health ? no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world. To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that ? if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness ? it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform ? not later, but right now ? will be there in an instant. ? 2011 Rolling Stone Scroll down to add your comments From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:17:13 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:17:13 +0200 Subject: [THS] Libya: It Ain't Over Yet Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015151648.060ffdc0@mail.messagingengine.com> Heroic defense of Sirte: NATO supported rebel forces retreat from Sirte under heavy "Qadhafi" fire: The NTC forces, which had been hoping to mop up the last pockets of resistance in two residential neighbourhoods in the northwest of the city, withdrew at least two kilometres (more than a mile) to the central police headquarters they captured on Tuesday, the correspondent said. http://www.brecorder.com/world/africa/31630-ntc-forces-pull-back-in-sirte-under-heavy-qadhafi-fire.html === Libya: Gaddafi fighters hit back in Sirte, NTC backtracks capture claim: Libya's new regime fighters retreated under heavy fire from loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte today as their leaders backtracked on an announcement they had captured one of his sons. http://bit.ly/ovgkWH === Libya: NATO supported rebels torture, abuse prisoners: Amnesty says: "According to his cellmates, several days after beatings left him paralyzed from the waist down, he started vomiting blood and he died shortly after being taken to the hospital," the report said. http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/12/2451208/libyan-rebels-abuse-torture-prisoners.html === Libyan forces make chaotic advance into Sirte: Video - "They are families inside fighting for their houses and their children who have died," said Mohammed, 23, who fled Sirte a few days ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2e8yBadngw&feature=player_embedded === Libya's rival military commanders fight war of words: "Who is Abdulhakim Belhaj and who appointed him?" Naker asks. "We don't know him. We are the leaders, we are the revolutionists, we know everything." http://world.myjoyonline.com/pages/africa/201110/74693.php === Smuggled Libyan weapons flood into Egypt: Large caches of weapons from Libya are making their way across the Egyptian border and flooding black markets in Egypt's already unstable Sinai Peninsula, according to current and former Egyptian military officials and arms traders in the Sinai. http://wapo.st/pIoMsq === From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:20:23 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:20:23 +0200 Subject: [THS] 23 years after Lockerbie, a father fights on for justice Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015152011.0601d318@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/23-years-after-lockerbie-a-father-fights-on-for-justice-16061589.html#ixzz1aZLqXcxq 23 years after Lockerbie, a father fights on for justice David Benson, who brings his play about the Lockerbie disaster to the Queen's Festival, explains why the case fascinates him Tuesday, 11 October 2011 My last visit to the Queen's Festival was in 1997 with my show Think No Evil of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams, and one might reasonably expect to be asked why a man best known for impersonating dead camp comedians should now be appearing in a drama of intense seriousness. I was living in Edinburgh when the most deadly terrorist atrocity in post-war British history occurred. On December 21, 1988, I was working on the door of a nightclub earning ?10-a-night when one of the bouncers wandered over and whispered that a Jumbo jet had gone down in the borders. Soon the city was buzzing with stories of devastation at the scene: the pretty, secluded border town of Lockerbie and the land for miles around strewn with the dead and their belongings, seat-belted corpses left for days in trees and on roofs or to be stepped over on garden paths. Nearly 23 years later, the events surrounding that atrocity formed the basis of a one-man show that I wrote and performed at the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe and which I am privileged to be bringing to the Queen's Festival for one performance. The man whose story I tell is one touched as cruelly by the crime as it is possible to be. Dr Jim Swire's daughter, Flora McDonald Margaret Swire, was on Pan Am 103 from Heathrow to JFK the night before her 24th birthday. Just before Christmas such flights are usually at capacity, but Flora was one of the unlucky recipients of a stroke of fortune: this flight had a substantial number of late cancellations; she was able to get a ticket for it at the last minute and so set off to spend the Christmas in New York with her boyfriend, Hart. Just 38 minutes after take-off, a bomb went off in the hold and the aircraft was lost, along with its 259 passengers and crew. Eleven people in Lockerbie were killed as the aircraft hit the ground. The events are still fresh in the minds of everyone who lived through them. I performed the show earlier this year in the towns of Dumfries and Langholm, close to the heart of the catastrophe, and heard testimony from eye-witnesses in the audience. A woman described seeing the fuselage crash with its jets still screaming as she washed her dishes; and how their cat, in its terror, tore round the walls of the living room like a motorcycle on a wall of death. There has since been a trial, a man was convicted of the crime, and compensation was paid to victims' families by the recently-overthrown Libyan regime. So why is Jim Swire still fighting so doggedly in his 76th year and in defiance of many who have begged him to 'retire' and let his daughter rest in peace? Because, in his view, justice has not been done. In fact, anyone who examines the events of the trial in the Netherlands will see that the prosecution case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhima was laughable, a grotesque parade of paid witnesses, corrupt evidence and dodgy 'experts'. Fhima was totally cleared of involvement and, since the prosecution case was built on the fantasy that the two accused had acted in concert, al-Megrahi should have been found not guilty, too. Instead, he was sentenced to 20 years in a Scottish jail, later increased to 27 years, all the time protesting his innocence. His release on 'compassionate' grounds was an opportunity for howls of manufactured outrage from politicians deeply relieved that the questions a second appeal would have raised would now, they hoped, never be asked. The findings of a three-year investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which identified six major points suggesting a miscarriage of justice, would never be published and a largely compliant media would go on forever referring to al-Megrahi as the Lockerbie Bomber. But the controversy refuses to go away. A phony 'humanitarian' invasion of Libya is raging as I write, with defenceless civilians in Sirte and elsewhere, under siege by forces we are paying for, with the Lockerbie bombing persistently held up as part-justification for the carnage. In spite of the initial claims of Gaddafi regime members to have positive proof that he ordered the bombing, not a shred of evidence has been laid before our eyes. Meanwhile, Obama, Clinton and a nest of cynical senators in the USA repeatedly call for the dying al-Megrahi to be unhooked from his drips and oxygen mask to face a new, totally illegal trial in America, in spite of the fact that they accepted the verdict of the first. There is a special poignancy in bringing this play to a province whose people are no strangers to terrorism. To lose loved ones in criminal circumstances is to risk finding out how hard-hearted and cynical our guarantors of justice can be when the demands of truth run counter to the dark currents of Government business. It cannot be easy for any politician to face a Jim Swire, or a Michael and Patsy Gallagher, or anyone motivated solely by finding the answer to the question: Who killed my beautiful child? My play is an attempt to pay tribute to these reluctant, heroic campaigners and to show also what it costs them to pursue truth and justice, while retaining dignity, integrity and compassion - every virtue their tormentors lack. From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:22:19 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:22:19 +0200 Subject: [THS] Iranians May Have Consulted Three Stooges Script in Terror Plot Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015152145.060eb1c8@mail.messagingengine.com> 'US claim insults global intelligence': Iran's envoy to the UN says US allegations about Tehran's involvement in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington are an "insult to the intelligence" of the people of the world. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/204337.html === We know, but we just don't have evidence: Officials concede gaps in U.S. knowledge of Iran plot: They said it was "more than likely" that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Quds Force commander Qasem Suleimani had prior knowledge or approved of the suspected plot. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/12/us-usa-iran-plot-idUSTRE79B7VO20111012 === Analysis: U.S. plot charges face skepticism in Middle East: Riyadh's antagonism toward Iran was revealed in leaked U.S. cables that quoted Jubeir telling United States diplomats four years ago that the time had come to "confront Iran." http://reut.rs/ptrtCd === Engineering Consent For Attack On Iran U.S. aims to "unite the world" against Iran: The Obama administration was taking its case against Iran to the world Wednesday, trying to stir up an international response to charges that the Islamic republic plotted to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/12/national/main20119095.shtml === Biden says Iran will be held accountable for plot: "It's an outrage that violates one of the fundamental premises upon which nations deal with one another and that is the sanctity and safety of their diplomats." http://bit.ly/rn19iC === US Senator Kerry: 'All options' open on Iran plot: Asked whether using force was a possibility, the Democratic lawmaker told reporters: "I don't think anything should be taken off the table at this point in time." http://bit.ly/pcCe2i === Perry says Iranian terror plot proves America must secure its southern border: The Republican presidential hopeful used Tuesday's announcement that Iranian forces had sought to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. to call for more border troops, improved fencing along the Mexican border and increased border patrols including the use of predator drone surveillance. http://wapo.st/r8DA5G === Iranians May Have Consulted Three Stooges Script in Terror Plot: How stupid are the Iranians? If the allegations by the United States are true, they hired a used car salesman in Texas to knock of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, and they also introduced the used car salesman to members of the Quds force like it was a cocktail party. http://ti.me/n2SUF1 === Jewish communities hail thwarting of Iran terror plot: Jewish communities in the US and Argentina on Wednesday congratulated law enforcement officials in Washington D.C. who earlier announced the foiling of a terror plot targeting the Israeli embassies in their respective countries. http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=241460 === From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:24:25 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:24:25 +0200 Subject: [THS] Exxon Aims to Bail on Payments for Valdez Damage Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015152410.0612d9d0@mail.messagingengine.com> Exxon Aims to Bail on Payments for Valdez Damage: In its filing to the US District Court in Alaska on September 30, the company argues that the agreement it reached with the government only covers "restoration" work-not additional "clean-up." http://bit.ly/plnADu From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:44:09 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:44:09 +0200 Subject: [THS] Victory at Zuccotti Park! Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015154241.06072e60@mail.messagingengine.com> info at nationofchange.org Victory at Zuccotti Park! #Dear Readers, Last night we published a special call to action urging our readers to occupy Zuccotti Park early this morning to defend the community from what seemed to many an effort to evict the protesters and end the occupation. Mayor Bloomberg had announced that the occupiers must leave the park from 7am to 7pm this morning allegedly so that the city could clean the area. Yesterday, at the OWS General Assembly it was decided that the occupiers would themselves clean the park in addition to allocating $3,000 in GA funds to hire professional cleaners. Throughout the day and well into the night the protesters put this plan into action. We attended another smaller meeting last night (though this was several blocks away from Zuccotti Park, there were at least ten police officers present), in which the protesters prepared the strategy for this morning?s event. Volunteers were given the opportunity for assignment in various roles, some of which required training. Roles included column (linking arm to arm to form a barrier), escort, jail support, media wrangler, and others and were classified as either ?arrestable? or not, giving volunteers fair warning of the likelihood of arrest. Click here to view NationofChange's exclusive footage from the event. As we joined this morning?s meeting in the center of the park, the tension was palpable. Dozens of uniformed and unknown numbers of undercover NYPD police officers surrounded the square, and nearby vans filled with SWAT officers stood by. We were amazed to watch as an increasingly large crowd continued to file in from all parts of the country and beyond in numbers which appeared to exceed three thousand. As the General Assembly prepared the crowd at large for the upcoming act of civil disobedience, various scenarios and options were offered. We could form a column surrounding the park and forming a first line of defense, we could remain in the center of the park (this is what our team had decided to do), or we could cross the street and offer moral support to the occupiers. The energy of the crowd was infectious and each of us found ourselves inspired to defy the authority gathering against our borders. As we prepared ourselves for the oncoming assault it was difficult not to recall descriptions of siege warfare of the European middle ages. In typical melodramatic fashion, it was at this instant when breaking news was echoed across the human microphone system (traditional voice amplification being prohibited), announcing that the Park?s owners, Brookfield Properties, had decided to ?postpone the cleaning of the park.? The crowd broke out into enormous cheers, and applause. Many began reciting chants such as: ?the people / united / will never be defeated? and others began to sing, dance, and some could be seen shedding tears of joy. A considerable effort by those in power was made to remove the protesters from their occupation and that effort was defeated. At least for the time being, the people hold Liberty Square and are now celebrating their victory on Broadway and Wall Street. Thank you for all that you do. Respectfully Yours, Rebecca Buell, Executive Director, Donna Luca, Board President, and the NationofChange Team From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:45:29 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:45:29 +0200 Subject: [THS] Occupy Wall Street 24/7 -- We have a new Dig Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015154506.049765b0@mail.messagingengine.com> The Occupy Movement: Full Coverage "Occupy Wall Street 24/7" -- We have a new Dig where you can find all of our Occupy movement coverage from Truthdig editors, contributors and commenters, as well as the latest from Twitter and around the Web. http://www.truthdig.com/dig/occupy_wall_street >> TRUTHDIG RADIO: Truthdig Radio: Occupy Wall Street Edition "There's Something Happening Here" -- This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: It's all about Occupy Wall Street, which Pulitzer Prize winner and guest David Cay Johnston says is unlike any movement he's covered. Also: voices from Occupy L.A., Nomi Prins, Scott Tucker and the NYPD arrests journalists. http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/theres_something_happening_here_20111013/ Click here to subscribe to the podcast: http://www.truthdig.com/podcast/item/theres_something_happening_here_podcast_20111013/ From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 15:55:47 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:55:47 +0200 Subject: [THS] Florida Asks Court to Repeal 1965 Voting Rights Act as Unconstitutional Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015155448.04667c28@mail.messagingengine.com> [forwarded] Florida Asks Court to Repeal 1965 Voting Rights Act as Unconstitutional While it might seem like a fantasy straight out of the mind of Karl Rove, Art Pope or Charles Koch - Kurt Browning is trying to repeal the Voting Rights of 1965 in the key battleground state of Florida. Charging that the Voting Rights Act violates the Constitution, Browning's move takes the cake as the most brazen attempt yet to rig the presidential election of 2012. By asking the court to strike down the legal basis of voting rights, Florida's Secretary of State is officially arguing to reinstate the Jim Crow Era. But hold onto your seats, Browning's extremist ploy will be surpassed by others even more brazen, even more nefarious, even more racist - in this cycle. See both stories below. Michael Carmichael ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Florida secretary of state argues 1965 Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional The Republican drive to repeal the 20th century continues. In this Florida-based version, we learn that the 1965 Voting Right Act, which prevents states from making laws that discriminate against voters and requires the federal government to issue approval for changes in voting laws in certain, shall we say, problem areas, is unconstitutional. Because the Republican secretary of state in Florida says so: The complaint ? which was filed today by Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning ? argues that federal preclearance requirements for state election laws are ?unconstitutional.? [...] Working to implement the Legislature?s elections overhaul, Browning?s office has asked a federal judge to approve four of the law?s most controversial measures: new restrictions on third-party voter registration drives, a shortened ?shelf life? for signatures collected for ballot initiatives, new restrictions on voters changing their registered addresses on election day, and a reduction in the number of early voting days. In the 62 Florida counties not covered by Section 5, Browning?s office has already implemented the new elections rules. You might note that each of these new restrictions is meant to reduce the number of people voting, and/or make it more expensive for people to vote. It's not quite poll tax territory (the new ID requirements being pushed by multiple states fills that role nicely), but it's still intended to be discriminatory by making it more difficult for people to support initiatives, to register, or to vote, come election day. Since poorer voters tend to be less able to overcome increased barriers to voting than better off people, this benefits Republicans. Same story as always. I'm not sure why Browning is going all out for a "the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional!" approach. Perhaps it is the only argument they have; perhaps Browning is feeling especially emboldened of late, and thinks it's high time to make the good Republican case that having states implement discriminatory voting laws is their damn right, you federal government communists. Maybe we'll get to hear about "upholding southern tradition" or the like. Who knows? It's a brand new era in Republicanism, an era in which every element of progress on civil rights or economic justice that took place in the last hundred years needs to be dismantled, so we can get back to the good old days of slave labor (see: Georgia's new indentured servitude laws, for Christ's sake) or speculator-driven economic collapses. Just contemplate that for a bit. Republicans are now fighting over whether to keep the 1965Voting Rights Act. "Conservative" seems a weak word for that; reactionary seems the better choice. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/12/1025652/-Florida-secretary-of-state-argues-1965-Voting-Rights-Act-isunconstitutional Florida Independent Florida secretary of state challenges Voting Rights Act In an effort to push forward the Legislature?s controversial elections overhaul, the state of Florida has filed a complaint challenging sections of the Voting Rights Act. The complaint ? which was filed today by Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning ? argues that federal preclearance requirements for state election laws are ?unconstitutional.? The Voting Rights Act, which became law in 1965, was written to outlaw discriminatory voting rules. Section 5 of the act requires the federal government to review and approve any changes to election laws in certain areas. Five Florida counties currently fall under that jurisdiction. Working to implement the Legislature?s elections overhaul, Browning?s office has asked a federal judge to approve four of the law?s most controversial measures: new restrictions on third-party voter registration drives, a shortened ?shelf life? for signatures collected for ballot initiatives, new restrictions on voters changing their registered addresses on election day, and a reduction in the number of early voting days. In the 62 Florida counties not covered by Section 5, Browning?s office has already implemented the new elections rules. With today?s filing, the state is now challenging the very law that stands in the way of implementing the new election rules in every county. According to Browning?s complaint (.pdf), ?subjecting Florida counties and other jurisdictions covered exclusively under the language minority provisions of the [Voting Rights Act] to pre-clearance is not a rational, congruent, or proportional means of enforcing the Fourteenth and/or Fifteenth Amendments and violates the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the U.S. Constitution.? The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, among others, is challenging the new elections laws in federal court in Miami. Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, says in a statement today that the ?Voting Rights Act was designed and passed expressly to prevent states from undermining voting rights of minorities ? which is exactly what Florida is doing.? ?Today they?ve essentially asked a court to allow them not to follow federal law,? he says. ?It?s an admission that they know that the federal courts are likely to find that the Voter Suppression Act passed this year is a serious threat to the voting rights of Florida?s language and racial minorities.? http://floridaindependent.com/51798/kurt-browning-voting-rights-act From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 16:12:08 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:12:08 +0200 Subject: [THS] Obama DOJ Ratchets Up War Against Medical Marijuana Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015161126.04650720@mail.messagingengine.com> Obama DOJ Ratchets Up War Against Medical Marijuana [Feature] http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2011/oct/07/obama_doj_ratchets_war_against_m Signaling an intensification of federal government targeting of medical marijuana providers, the four US Attorneys in California last Friday announced a campaign of "coordinated enforcement actions targeting the illegal operations of the commercial marijuana industry in California." The announcement came at a Sacramento news conference. The federal prosecutors said their enforcement actions would rely on pursuing civil forfeiture lawsuits against properties where dispensaries are located, sending threatening letters to dispensary landlords, and criminal prosecutions. The prosecutors said recent dispensary busts in Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego were part of the enforcement campaign. The feds said that enforcement actions would vary across regions of the state and that they would be working with federal law enforcement and local officials to crack down. The Department of Justice in Washington made clear that this was not an instance of prosecutors going off the reservation. "The actions taken today in California by our US Attorneys and their law enforcement partners are consistent with the Department's commitment to enforcing existing federal laws, including the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), in all states," said Deputy Attorney General James Cole. "The department has maintained that we will not focus our investigative and prosecutorial resources on individual patients with serious illnesses like cancer or their immediate caregivers. However, US Attorneys continue to have the authority to prosecute significant violations of the CSA, and related federal laws." Medical marijuana supporters were quick to charge the Obama administration with waging a renewed war on them and reneging on its promises to not interfere in states where medical marijuana is legal. "Aggressive tactics like these are a completely inappropriate use of prosecutorial discretion by the Obama administration," said Joe Elford, chief counsel with Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the country's largest medical marijuana advocacy group. "President Obama must answer for his contradictory policy on medical marijuana." On the campaign trail and in the White House, President Obama pledged that he was "not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state [medical marijuana] laws." "It is unconscionable that the federal government would override local and state laws to enforce its will over the will of the people," said ASA spokesperson Kris Hermes. "States must be allowed to enforce their own laws without harmful interference from the Obama administration." "The Obama administration's latest moves strongly suggest that their medical marijuana policies are now being driven by overzealous prosecutors and the anti-marijuana ideologues who dominated policymaking in past administrations," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Barack Obama is betraying promises made when he ran for president and turning his back on the sensible policies announced during his first year in office. Instead of encouraging state and local authorities to regulate medical marijuana distribution in the interests of public safety and health, his administration seems determined to recriminalize as much as possible. It all adds up to bad policy, bad politics and bad faith." Large medical marijuana dispensary operations are not health care providers but criminal organizations hiding behind patients, the prosecutors claimed Friday. "Large commercial operations cloak their moneymaking activities in the guise of helping sick people when in fact they are helping themselves," said Benjamin Wagner, US Attorney for the Eastern District of California. "Our interest is in enforcing federal criminal law, not prosecuting seriously sick people and those who are caring for them. We are making these announcements together today so that the message is absolutely clear that commercial marijuana operations are illegal under federal law, and that we will enforce federal law." "The California marijuana industry is not about providing medicine to the sick," claimed Laura Duffy, US Attorney for the Southern District of California. "It's a pervasive for-profit industry that violates federal law. In addition to damaging our environment, this industry is creating significant negative consequences, in California and throughout the nation. As the number one marijuana producing state in the country, California is exporting not just marijuana but all the serious repercussions that come with it, including significant public safety issues and perhaps irreparable harm to our youth." The prosecutors said they had sent out "dozens" of threat letters to dispensary and grow-op landlords in the past few days. In the Southern and Eastern districts, they targeted building owners, while in the Central district they sent letters to landlords "in selected cities where officials have requested federal assistance." In the Northern district, they targeted their threat letters to landlords of dispensaries within 1,000 feet of schools or parks, but warned "we will almost certainly be taking action against others." The prosecutors also said they had already filed seven civil forfeiture complaints against properties where landlords allow dispensaries to operate. One complaint alleged that an Orange County strip mall had eight dispensaries and that recalcitrant city officials had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to shut them down. One letter targeted the landlord for the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana (MAMM) in Fairfax, which has been operating with the support of the city and without complaint since 1996. In a letter to MAMM's landlord, the US Attorney for Northern California warned that the dispensary was operating within a "prohibited distance of a park." The letter threatened MAMM's landlord with up to 40 years in federal prison, seizure of his property, and forfeiture of all rental proceeds for the last 15 years if he doesn't evict MAMM. Similar letters have gone out to other dispensary landlords warning them of pending federal action because their tenants are too close to schools. The dispensaries are operating in accord with California law, which treats them like liquor stores and bars them from operating within 600 feet of a school, but federal law imposes additional penalties for the distribution of controlled substances with 1,000 feet of schools, playgrounds, and public parks. "This is nuts," said Greg Anton, attorney for the Marin Alliance and its director, Lynnette Shaw. "There's a dispensary near where I live that sells guns, narcotics, alcohol and tobacco and it's full of children. It's called Walmart, and it's safe. So is Lynnette's place. She's proven that over 15 years." "This is an outrageous abuse of law enforcement resources for the DOJ to use property forfeiture to enforce meddlesome, nanny-state regulations," said California NORML director Dale Gieringer. "The federal government has no business dictating local zoning decisions. No one has any problems with the Marin Alliance except the bureaucrats in Washington." The DEA is also along for the ride. "The DEA and our partners are committed to attacking large-scale drug trafficking organizations, including those that attempt to use state or local law to shield their illicit activities from federal law enforcement and prosecution," said DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart. "Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that its distribution and sale is a serious crime. It also provides a significant source of revenue for violent gangs and drug organizations. The DEA will not look the other way while these criminal organizations conduct their illicit schemes under the false pretense of legitimate business." And so is the IRS. "IRS Criminal Investigation is proud to work with our law enforcement partners and lend its financial expertise to this effort," said IRS chief of criminal enforcement Victor Song. "We will continue to use the federal asset forfeiture laws to take the profits from criminal enterprises." Friday's announcement of a federal crackdown is just the latest in a series of moves against medical marijuana providers by the Obama administration. The Department of the Treasury has been busily scaring banks into shutting down the accounts of providers in California and Colorado, the Department of Justice is aggressively prosecuting dispensary operators in Montana and elsewhere, and the IRS is attempting to drive dispensaries out of business by denying them standard business expense deductions -- Oakland's Harborside Health center was just this week hit with a $2.5 million tax bill after the IRS disallowed its standard business deductions. Meanwhile, the administration has continued to block federal approval of medical marijuana, with the DEA recently rejecting a nine-year-old petition to reschedule pot, saying it would only accept large-scale, controlled FDA trials. But at the same time, the DEA has acted to block such trials by refusing to allow a private production facility to supply marijuana for medical research. The only existing source for marijuana for research purposes is the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, but it recently blocked a request for marijuana to study its effects on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, saying it has no intention of allowing studies that would develop marijuana for medicinal purposes. "How can the Obama administration say that it's fine for sick people to use this proven medicine, and yet tell them they can't have any legal place to get it?" asked Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. "Medical marijuana isn't going away. Over 70% of Americans support making medical marijuana legal, and 16 states allow it." But not the federal government. Not under George Bush and, it is increasingly clear, not under Barack Obama. With Obama facing no challengers in the Democratic primary and with reform-friendly Republicans unlikely to win the Republican nomination, it appears that medical marijuana is going to be condemned to wander through the political wilderness for the foreseeable future. The question now becomes whether any sort of response can stem the federal onslaught, and just what that response might be. Or does the dispensary scene just wither away and die? From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 16:12:18 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:12:18 +0200 Subject: [THS] US Govt Bill To Extend Us Drug Laws Overseas Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015160850.04650348@mail.messagingengine.com> House Moves Bill To Extend Us Drug Laws Overseas http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2011/oct/09/house_moves_bill_extend_us_drug A bill that would allow federal prosecutors to charge people in the US with Controlled Substances Act violations for planning activities outside the US that violate US drug laws -- even if those acts are legal in the country where they take place -- has passed the House Judiciary Committee. The committee approved the measure, HR 313, the Drug Trafficking Safe Harbor Elimination Act, on a 20-7 vote last Thursday. Lamar Smith The bill is the brainchild of committee chair Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who said in a statement that it was designed to close a "loophole" in US drug laws. "Drug traffickers are currently allowed to conspire with impunity in the United States and evade criminal prosecution when their goal is to traffic drugs outside of the United States," he said. He cited the case of a cocaine trafficking conspiracy involving drugs shipped from Venezuela to Europe in which some meetings took place in Miami. The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned convictions in the case, reasoning that if there was no intent to traffic drugs in the US, there was no violation of US law. "This bill tells drug traffickers not to plot their illegal activities in the US, and if they do, they will be brought to justice," said Smith. "The United States should not provide a safe haven for the world's drug traffickers to plot their international trafficking operations." But, as Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance noted, the bill is written so broadly that it could criminalize any violation of US drug laws if that violation is planned in the US. For instance, heroin maintenance therapy is illegal under US drug laws. As the law is written, a US health care professional who made plans to work with colleagues doing heroin maintenance in a country where it is legal could potentially face prosecution. "Under this bill, if a young couple plans a wedding in Amsterdam, and as part of the wedding, they plan to buy the bridal party some marijuana, they would be subject to prosecution, Piper told the Huffington Post. "The strange thing is that the purchase of and smoking the marijuana while you're there wouldn't be illegal. But this law would make planning the wedding from the US a federal crime." While the bill has passed the Judiciary Committee, it still must pass the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where it is currently bottled up in the Subcommittee on Health, before it can go to a House floor vote. Politics & Advocacy Congress From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 15 16:01:54 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:01:54 +0200 Subject: [THS] Wall Street Report Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111015160109.0495c7e0@mail.messagingengine.com> see attached. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Media makes the message.jpg Type: application/octet-stream Size: 163243 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.psalience.org/pipermail/ths/attachments/20111015/f10a2d9a/attachment-0001.obj From ths at psalience.org Sun Oct 16 14:04:59 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:04:59 +0200 Subject: [THS] Obama Sends 100 Troops to Fight Ugandan Rebels Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111016140324.045826b8@mail.messagingengine.com> Obama Sends 100 Troops to Fight Ugandan Rebels By BNO In a letter to Congress, Obama informed that in the next months further U.S. troops will be shipped out to other African countries as well, including South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29408.htm [Oh boy, pretty soon Amerika will have troops in every corner of the empire, just like Rome!] From ths at psalience.org Sun Oct 16 15:09:27 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:09:27 +0200 Subject: [THS] Obama plans to turn anti-Wall Street anger on Mitt Romney, Republicans Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111016145845.045822e0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-plans-to-turn-anti-wall-street-anger-on-mitt-romney-republicans/2011/10/14/gIQAZfiwkL_story.html Obama plans to turn anti-Wall Street anger on Mitt Romney, Republicans View Photo Gallery ? ?The movement, which started Sept. 17 with a few dozen demonstrators who tried to pitch tents in front of the New York Stock Exchange, has spread to cities across the country. By Peter Wallsten, President Obama and his team have decided to turn public anger at Wall Street into a central tenet of their reelection strategy. The move comes as the Occupy Wall Street protests gain momentum across the country and as polls show deep public distrust of the nation?s major financial institutions. Loading... Comments * Weigh In * Corrections? Gallery ? The movement, which started Sept. 17 with a few dozen demonstrators who tried to pitch tents in front of the New York Stock Exchange, is spreading to other cities across the country. Video Owners of a NYC plaza where protesters have camped out for a month decided Friday to delay cleaning it, sending up cheers from demonstrators who feared the plan was merely a pretext to evict them and said the victory emboldened their movement. (Oct. 14) Owners of a NYC plaza where protesters have camped out for a month decided Friday to delay cleaning it, sending up cheers from demonstrators who feared the plan was merely a pretext to evict them and said the victory emboldened their movement. (Oct. 14) More on this Story * Read more on PostPolitics.com * Obama looks to harness anger at Wall Street * Rick Perry calls for more oil drilling * Romney increases campaign spending View all Items in this Story * Key senators back extending federal pay freeze * Perry?s next last chance? * Gingrich?s claim that ?Washington bureaucrats? ruled on prostate test * Perry?s jobs plan: Drill, baby, drill * Does Perry really want to leave Texas? * Advice from lawmakers pours in to ?supercommittee? * Early soggy pomp gives way to opulent state dinner in Obama?s South Korean charm offensive And it sets up what strategists see as a potent line of attack against Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, a former investment executive whom Obama aides plan to portray as a wealthy Wall Street sympathizer. Many Democrats consider Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, the greatest threat to Obama when it comes to wooing centrist independents next year, and Romney this week has begun to present himself as a champion of middle-income Americans. Obama aides point to recent surveys that show anger at Wall Street spanning ideologies, including a new Washington Post-ABC News poll in which 68 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans say they have unfavorable impressions of the big financial institutions. But the strategy of channeling anti-Wall Street anger carries risks. Many of Obama?s senior advisers have ties to the financial industry ? a point that makes Occupy protesters wary of the president and his party. In recent days, Obama has ramped up his rhetoric. He took the unusual step of targeting an individual company when he attacked Bank of America for its new $5 monthly debit-card fee, calling it ?exactly the sort of stuff that folks are frustrated by.? And his campaign and the White House have distributed messages blasting GOP candidates and lawmakers for wanting to repeal Wall Street regulations pushed by Obama and opposing the confirmation of a leader for the consumer protection bureau created as part of the overhaul. ?We intend to make it one of the central elements of the campaign next year,? Obama senior adviser David Plouffe said in an interview. ?One of the main elements of the contrast will be that the president passed Wall Street reform and our opponent and the other party want to repeal it.? ?I?m pretty confident 12 months from now, as people make the decision about who to go vote for, the gut check is going to be about, ?Who would make decisions more about helping my life than Wall Street???? Plouffe added. GOP stance Romney, no doubt anticipating the White House?s new attack line, sought to show solidarity with the demonstrators during this week?s GOP candidates debate. ?The reason you?re seeing protests .?.?. is middle-income Americans are having a hard time making ends meet,? he said. GOP leaders say the Wall Street law is government overreach, and Romney?s economic plan calls for replacing it with a ?streamlined regulatory framework.? Obama has tried this line of attack before, railing in 2009 against ?fat-cat bankers? who he accused of taking excessive bonuses in the wake of the financial meltdown. But after complaints from Democrats on Wall Street and business leaders, the president has spent much of the past year courting companies ? even hiring a new chief of staff, William Daley, from the banking industry. And many on the left have attacked Obama and his administration for its ties to Wall Street, arguing that the financial regulatory overhaul fell far short of an industry makeover that many critics believed necessary. Much of his top economic team has roots in the financial services industry, and in recent months Daley and top campaign aides have devoted much of their time improving the relationship with big-dollar donors on Wall Street. Gallery ? The movement, which started Sept. 17 with a few dozen demonstrators who tried to pitch tents in front of the New York Stock Exchange, is spreading to other cities across the country. Video Owners of a NYC plaza where protesters have camped out for a month decided Friday to delay cleaning it, sending up cheers from demonstrators who feared the plan was merely a pretext to evict them and said the victory emboldened their movement. (Oct. 14) Owners of a NYC plaza where protesters have camped out for a month decided Friday to delay cleaning it, sending up cheers from demonstrators who feared the plan was merely a pretext to evict them and said the victory emboldened their movement. (Oct. 14) More on this Story * Read more on PostPolitics.com * Obama looks to harness anger at Wall Street * Rick Perry calls for more oil drilling * Romney increases campaign spending View all Items in this Story * Key senators back extending federal pay freeze * Perry?s next last chance? * Gingrich?s claim that ?Washington bureaucrats? ruled on prostate test * Perry?s jobs plan: Drill, baby, drill * Does Perry really want to leave Texas? * Advice from lawmakers pours in to ?supercommittee? * Early soggy pomp gives way to opulent state dinner in Obama?s South Korean charm offensive That relationship helps explain the brewing tensions between Democratic officials and the Occupy Wall Street protests. The growing movement is adding new energy to a disaffected left that the party has been trying to excite ? but it is largely separate from traditional party institutions. ?The fact that Obama has been so close to Wall Street makes this tough going for him,? said Van Jones, a longtime liberal organizer and former Obama aide. Tea party echoes The situation mirrors the choice Republican Party officials confronted in 2009 as the tea party movement found its footing and began challenging establishment figures in the GOP hierarchy. Over time, a series of establishment groups such as Freedom?Works began coordinating with the activists, and the tea party insurgency began to more closely resemble the energized GOP base. Liberal activists, though, see the Occupy groups as a potentially more unwieldy phenomenon resistant to traditional politics and resentful of the Democratic Party?s reliance on corporate money. That distrust was evident at an Atlanta demonstration last week, when Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a legendary protester in his own right, was denied the chance to speak. A video of the incident, in which Lewis looks on uncomfortably as activists rise to debate whether allowing a congressman to speak violates the spirit of the protest, became an Internet sensation. Other disputes have been raging online and in person at demonstration sites across the country. At Occupy D.C., the McPherson Square encampment inspired by Occupy Wall Street, a shouting match erupted this week when a woman describing herself as a longtime Democratic campaign worker encouraged the young protesters to express their concerns by voting, only to be told that voting was not enough. An Obama strategist from Florida, Steve Schale, posted on his Facebook page that ?clamoring for change is hollow unless you vote.? He linked to an image from the liberal Think Progress blog calling on activists to ?Occupy the Polls.? A former Obama volunteer from central Florida, Madison Paige, retorted on Schale?s page that voting alone could not fix the system, saying, ?We have to be willing to do the hardest work ? and that means taking a look in the mirror when necessary.? How demonstrators channel their activism could depend on what they see and hear from Obama in the coming months ? meaning the protests present opportunities and perils for the president as he starts to strike a more populist tone on the campaign trail. ?It?s not a danger ? if [Obama] handles it properly,? said Steve Hildebrand, an architect of Obama?s 2008 grass-roots organization who is not affiliated with the reelection effort. ?I would encourage him to carefully listen to the people who are passionately protesting Wall Street, big corporations and CEO pay.? Obama and his aides have been cautious in discussing the demonstrations. The president said last week that the protesters were ?giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.? But Obama also defended his support for bailing out distressed banks after the 2008 financial crisis, saying he ?used up a lot of political capital, and I?ve got the dings and bruises to prove it, in order to make sure that we prevented a financial meltdown and that banks stayed afloat.? Obama and his campaign are now ramping up efforts to portray the Wall Street overhaul he signed last year as a key rallying point. A campaign e-mail sent last week ? as the demonstrations gained momentum ? urged supporters to pressure the Senate to confirm former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created as part of the law. ?The goal of this campaign ? and this President ? is to make sure people who work hard and play by the rules get a fair shake, whether that means being able to get a loan to buy a house and send your kid to college, or not having to go bankrupt when you get sick,? the e-mail said. Polls suggest that pressing such issues and going after the banks could be a winner, both with liberals and centrists. But it could also become uncomfortable next year ? particularly if Obama continues to single out institutions such as Bank of America. His party will hold its convention next year in Charlotte, a major banking city known nationally as the firm?s corporate home town. Polling analyst Scott Clement contributed to this report. Read more on Post Politics.com Like PostPolitics on Facebook | Follow @PeterWallsten on Twitter Occupy Wall Street reveals liberal tensions The Fix: Is Occupy Wall Street overblown? Romney increases campaign spending From ths at psalience.org Sun Oct 16 15:14:49 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:14:49 +0200 Subject: [THS] !!!! Occupy Wall Street Activist Slams Fox News Producer In Un-Aired Interview Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111016144839.045822e0@mail.messagingengine.com> Subject: [MCM] Cops on horseback charge the crowd in Times Square?just like in "Planet of the Apes"! http://qik.com/video/45087624 Subject: [MCM] Check out Occupy Madrid! La Puerta del Sol llena por la protesta del 15O [VIDEO] http://wp.me/pkFiL-89T Occupy Wall Street Protest Culminates With 6,000 in Times Square October 15, 2011, 6:28 PM EDThttp://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-15/occupy-wall-street-protest-culminates-with-6-000-in-times-square.html By Esm? E. Deprez Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City today culminated with a Times Square rally that drew thousands opposed to economic inequality, echoed by protests from London to Tokyo. Participants in the month-old movement marched past a JPMorgan Chase & Co. branch early in the day to urge clients to close accounts. Twenty-four were arrested later at a Citigroup Inc. office, the police said, and about 6,000 gathered in Times Square, the organizers estimated. Hong Kong, Sydney, Toronto and other cities also saw protests, which turned violent in Rome, in what organizers called a ?global day of action against Wall Street greed.? Backers say they represent ?the 99 percent,? a nod to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz?s study showing the top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of U.S. wealth. ?The world will rise up as one and say, ?We have had enough,?? Patrick Bruner, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, said in an e-mail. A news release from the organization said there were demonstrations in 1,500 cities worldwide, including 100 in the U.S. New York participants walked from an encampment in lower Manhattan?s Zuccotti Park to 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza near Wall Street. They passed out fliers urging clients to transfer accounts to ?a financial institution that supports the 99 percent.? The fliers provided a list of alternatives, including the Lower East Side People?s Federal Credit Union and Amalgamated Bank, described as the nation?s only union-owned bank. Message to Banks ?I?m interested in sending a message to support banks that actually support the community as opposed to those like Chase that took government money and fired workers anyway,? said Penny Lewis, 40, a City University of New York labor professor. She said she planned to close her Chase account on Monday. Howard Opinsky, a Chase spokesman, declined to comment. The second-largest U.S. bank received and repaid $25 billion from the government?s Troubled Asset Relief Program. A group left a demonstration at Washington Square Park and entered a downtown branch of Citibank at nearby LaGuardia Place, Deputy New York City Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne said in an e-mail. They refused the bank manager?s request to leave and 24 were arrested for trespassing, he said. One was charged additionally with resisting; the others were compliant, he said. More than 700 have been arrested in New York since the movement began Sept. 17, mostly for disorderly conduct. Police said they arrested 15 yesterday for infractions such as sitting in the street and overturning trash bins. Confrontation Avoided A wider confrontation was avoided after Zuccotti Park?s owner, Brookfield Office Properties Inc., postponed a cleanup that would have removed and banned protestors? sleeping bags, tents and other gear that provided overnight accommodations. Protesters and local politicians had gathered 300,000 signatures, flooded the city?s 311 information line and drew more than 3,000 people to the park to oppose the cleanup, Bruner said. The protesters have sought to transform Zuccotti Park into a self-sustaining community with donated food, medical supplies, hygiene products, sleeping bags and clothing. Pete Dutro, a member of the group?s finance committee, said it had received at least $150,000 in donations. Justin Strekal, a Cleveland native and member of the protestors? shipping, inventory and storage committee, said about 200 packages are being received daily. He said names and return addresses are being recorded so thank-you notes can be sent. Letters of Support Letters of solidarity are also being archived to post online, he said. One that was included in a box holding 10 packets of ramen noodles said the sender couldn?t afford more because they were unemployed for two years and their house was in foreclosure, Strekal said. David Gorman, who lives on Wall Street and works nearby as president of capital markets at Kern Suslow Securities Inc., said the area?s activity is a nuisance. ?They?re banging drums and screaming and it?s a quarter to eight in the morning and this is literally in my back yard,? he said. ?People live here. If someone was protesting in front of my house in the suburbs, I don?t think they?d let that happen.? The Occupy Wall Street protest has spread to U.S. cities including Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco. While New York?s participants have been allowed to stay at their encampment, other cities haven?t been as tolerant. Near the Colorado state Capitol in Denver, police in riot gear took down protesters? campsite and arrested two dozen people, the Associated Press reported. In San Diego, police used pepper spray to split up a human chain formed around a tent, the news agency said. In Trenton, New Jersey, police removed tents and other gear from an area near a war memorial yesterday. --With assistance from Suzanne Woolley, Charles Mead, Jeff Kearns, Joel Stonington, Henry Goldman, Chris Dolmetsch, Andrea Riquier, Jeff Kearns and David M. Levitt in New York; Freeman Klopott in Albany and Stacie Servetah and Terrence Dopp in Trenton. Editors: Jerry Hart, Christian Thompson To contact the reporter on this story: Esm? E. Deprez in New York at edeprez at bloomberg.net; To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen at bloomberg.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ OCCUPY WALL STREET By Drew Grant http://www.observer.com/2011/10/exclusive-occupy-wall-street-activist-slams-fox-news-anchor-in-un-aired-interview-video/ Exclusive: Occupy Wall Street Activist Slams Fox News Producer In Un-Aired Interview [Video] Protester Jesse LaGreca schools Fox producer Even if Geraldo Rivera was at the Zuccotti Park yesterday, Fox News has generally been a tad dismissive of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Foxnews.com (as of this writing) has no coverage of this national event on their front page stories. (Hard to imagine for a network that was so gung-ho about the Tea Party!) Red Eye?s Bill Schulz went out to try to ?prank? the protesters. Bill O?Reilly sent a producer minion out with the same mission: to belittle OWS?s cause by cutting up interviews to make people sound stupid. Well, here is an interview that Fox News filmed, but doesn?t want you to see. The segment was shot on Wednesday for Greta van Susteren?s show, (though it looks like the same producerfrom this O?Reilly segment questioning Michael Moore?s anti-capitalist agenda) though the decision was made to leave it on the cutting room floor. The reason should be obvious pretty quickly. The speaker giving Fox News the buisness is Jesse LaGreca, a vocal member of the Occupy Wall Street protests. This video comes courtesy of Kyle Christopher fromOccupyWallSt.org?s media team. Now, no news organization is under obligation to air every interview they?ve filmed, especially when it makes them look bad. But you?d think that a ?Fair and Balanced? network (that tells an interviewee that they are here to give them fair coverage to get any message they?d like to get out) would try to include at least a couple of opposing viewpoints to Mr. Shulz?s smarmy jokes or O?Reilly?s ?infiltration? of the camp. The ball is in your court, Fox. Updated 10/3 11:00a.m.: Now with transcript of the video Fox: Jesse, so Ray, your partner here, your .. Ray: comrade. Fox: Your colleague, she?d seen the protests in Greece and Europe and elsewhere. Did you guys take your cue from that? Are you hoping to cite certainly what was a lot of the tension, if not police activity. I know over the weekend there were over 100 arrests and you guys got things fired up. Are you taking your cues from the international movement and how do you want to see this? If you could have it in a perfect way, how would it be? Jesse: Well I don?t know, its really difficult to answer questions leading to those conclusions. I?d say that we didn?t take our cue leading off of anybody really. It became a more spontaneous movement. As far as seeing this end, I wouldn?t like to see this end. I would like to see the conversation continue. This is what we should have been talking about in 2008 when the economy collapsed. We basically patched a hole on the tire and said let the car keep rolling. Unfortunately it?s fun to talk to the propaganda machine and the media especially conservative media networks such as yourself, because we find that we cant get conversations for the department of Justice?s ongoing investigation of News Corporation, for which you are an employee. But we can certainly ask questions like you know, why are the poor engaging in class warfare? After 30 years of having our living standards decrease while the wealthiest 1% have had it better than ever, I think it?s time for some maybe, I don?t know, participation in our democracy that isn?t funded by news cameras and gentlemen such as yourself. Fox: But, uh, yeah well, let me give you this challenge Jesse. Jesse: Sure. Fox: We?re here giving you an opportunity on the record [ ] to put any message you want out there, to give you fair coverage and I?m not going to in any way Jesse: That?s awesome! Fox: give you advice about it. So, there is an exception in the case, because you wouldn?t be able to get your message out there without us. Jesse: No, surely, I mean, take for instance when Glenn Beck was doing his protest and he called the President, uh, a person who hates white people and white culture. That was a low moment in Americans? history and you guys kinda had a big part in it. So, I?m glad to see you coming around and kind of paying attention to what the other 99 percent of Americans are paying attention to, as opposed to the far-right fringe, who who would just love to destroy the middle class entirely. Fox: Alright, fair enough. You have a voice, an important reason to criticize myself, my company and anyone else. But, let me ask you that, in fairness, does this administration, President Obama, have any criticism as to the the financial situation the country?s in ? Jesse: I think, myself, uh, as well as many other people, would like to see a little but more economic justice or social justice?Jesus stuff?as far as feeding the poor, healthcare for the sick. You know, I find it really entertaining that people like to hold the Bill of Rights up while they?re screaming at gay soldiers, but they just can?t wrap their heads around the idea that a for-profit healthcare system doesn?t work. So, let?s just look at it like this, if we want the President to do more, let?s talk to him on a level that actually reaches people, instead of asking for his birth certificate and wasting time with total nonsense like Solyndra. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Subject: [MCM] Corporate news crews seek out loonies, dummies, anti-semites, while avoiding protesters who make sense, look presentable (MUST-SEE) [VIDEO] http://wp.me/pkFiL-89P ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Subject: [MCM] Chris Hedges smacks down Kevin O'Leary, Fox-News-blowhard-wannabe, on CBC [VIDEO] http://wp.me/pkFiL-89N From ths at psalience.org Sun Oct 16 15:18:06 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:18:06 +0200 Subject: [THS] !!!!! 10 Things to Know About Wall Street's Rapacious Attack on America Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111016151613.04581f08@mail.messagingengine.com> [Attack on America? Hell, It was an attack on everybody on the planet -ths] http://www.alternet.org/story/152629/10_things_to_know_about_wall_street%27s_rapacious_attack_on_america 10 Things to Know About Wall Street's Rapacious Attack on America By Les Leopold, AlterNet Posted on October 6, 2011, Printed on October 7, 2011 http://www.alternet.org/story/152629/10_things_to_know_about_wall_street%27s_rapacious_attack_on_america When you climb out of the subway at Wall Street, you might wonder why there are no protestors in the cavernous alley by the stock exchange. That?s because since 9/11, Wall Street has been barricaded shut to prevent possible attacks. But up the block at Zuccotti Park between Liberty and Cedar streets, west of Broadway, the party?s on. There you?ll find a festive group of about 1,000 people, mostly young folks having a good time accompanied by the occasional cluster of old lefties singing songs. People make signs while sitting on the ground then prop them up wherever they can find a space. They gather at tables filled with donated food and browse boxes of donated books. You also can?t miss the swarm of media folks milling around asking questions, taping interviews and taking notes: they?re the ones in dress suits who spend most of their time interviewing each other. My favorite sign held by an occupier is painted on a skateboard: ?This is what Freedom Looks Like.? My son would agree. And my recurring thought is, ?It?s about f?ing time.? What took us so long? How much worse did it have to get before public outrage would finally focus on those who caused the problem and those who are milking us dry? Several of us have been pleading in blog after blog for more than two years to build a broad-based assault on Wall Street. Where was our answer to the Tea Party? Well, here it is. There?s no telling where this Occupy Wall Street can lead, especially if a virtuous media feedback loop continues: The more protestors, the more coverage, the more protestors. It?s about the only good thing the mainstream media has done in years. If unions throw into the mix full force, we may have something powerful in the making. It?s far too early to tell, although the October 5 labor march in New York that drew upwards of 25,000 people was certainly a good sign. Will labor come back and do it again each and every week? Will unions mobilize support for the satellite occupiers in city after city? Or will most of their energy go into the Obama/Democratic Party re-election campaigns as if nothing much has happened? (They should listen to protestors, who agree that corporations and the wealthy are destroying our democracy by buying candidates of both parties.) Already you can hear the chattering classes mumble about the lack of focus, the lack of consensus and the lack of a coherent agenda in this nascent movement. But they have this coherent call: We are the 99 percent, and we demand our fair share. The irrefutable fact is that 99 percent of us really are being screwed by the 1 percent who are looting our country (actually it?s more like the top 1/10 of one percent). So if you still harbor any doubts that Wall Street is the right target, here are 10 reasons to consider: 1. Wall Street caused the crash: Unless you are suffering from financial amnesia, you should remember that it was Wall Street?s reckless gambling that did us in. It was Wall Street banks and hedge funds, not home buyers, who created the enormous demand for high-risk mortgages to pool, to securitize, and to turn into Ponzi-like gambling structures with names like CDOs, CDO squared and synthetic CDOs. It was the money-grubbing rating agencies that blessed these pieces of garbage with AAA ratings. As a result, trillions of dollars of worthless toxic assets polluted our financial system. When the bubble they induced burst, our system crashed, causing 8 million working people to lose their jobs in a matter of months due to no fault of their own. Anyone who still blames low-income home buyers, or regulations or Greece -- or anyone other than Wall Street -- should be checked for dementia. 2. The Wall Street crash directly caused the gravest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression: We?re three years into the worst jobs crisis since 1937. Upwards of 29 million people are out of work or have been forced into part-time jobs. The number of people who have been jobless for more than 26 weeks is at post-WWII record levels. And there?s no end in sight to this misery. Meanwhile, Wall Street?s representatives in Washington want us to focus on cutting public employment and public services to address the debt that Wall Street itself precipitated. WE wouldn?t have a debt crisis were it not for the bailouts, the crash, the lost jobs and the soaring cost of jobless benefits that can be laid at Wall Street?s door. (The debt was also caused by tax cuts for the rich, and the bankers certainly don?t want to talk about that.) For those diversionary debt tactics alone, Wall Street should be occupied until it pays to replace the jobs it destroyed. 3. Wall Street profited from the bailouts and remains unaccountable: Taxpayers provided trillions of dollars in cash and asset guarantees to the wealthiest bankers and hedge fund managers in the world. But nothing was extracted from them in return. Here?s one egregious example: Goldman Sachs paid $550 million in SEC fines for selling mortgage-related securities that were designed to fail so that a large hedge fund could bet against them. The securities failed as planned and the hedge fund pocketed $1 billion in profits. But after we bailed out AIG, Goldman Sachs picked up nearly $12 billion for similar bets that AIG had insured. Goldman Sachs collected 100 cents on the dollar and those dollars were ours. 4. The super-rich are getting richer: When the economy was crashing during 2008, high frequency traders in hedge funds and banks made upwards of $20 billion from the turmoil. This trading scam provided no redeeming value to our economy. Rather, it was a hidden tax on our sorrows -- a transfer of funds from the many to the few. In 2010 the top hedge fund managers ?earned? over $2 million an HOUR! The top 25 hedge fund managers took in as much as 650,000 teachers. Young people have the right to question these lopsided values. All of us have the duty to do something about it. 5. The super-rich are paying lower and lower taxes: While the government pleads poverty when asked to create a massive jobs program, our financial elites use every loophole available to avoid taxes. In 1995, the 400 wealthiest families paid about 30 percent of their income in taxes (after all deductions). Today their effective rate is less than 16 percent. And for what? What did society gain from their retained wealth? Not jobs, not debt reduction, only more Wall Street gambling. 6. Financial elites pay lower taxes than their secretaries: Venture capitalists and private equity fund managers, as well as some hedge fund elites, get a fantastic tax break called ?carried interest? that allows them to pay a top rate of 15 percent on their income (rather than the 35 percent top rate regular people pay). This tax break, originally designed for small business partnerships, has made the mega-rich even richer. You might be wondering why this outrageous tax break continues for billionaires. The answer is simple: these elites are pouring money into Washington to make sure that Republicans and Democrats alike keep the loophole in place. Even some liberal Democrats are parroting the line that this tax break for billionaires is good for America. So when the occupiers say they are disenfranchised, they?re right. 7. None of those who caused the crash have been prosecuted: Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund billionaire, is going to the hoosegow for insider trading. Bernie Madoff is in prison for life for his Ponzi scheme. And about 40 others have pleaded guilty to insider trading crimes. Yet none of these scoundrels, as immoral as they may be, had much to do with the financial crash. They didn?t peddle toxic mortgage-related securities. They didn?t push predatory loans. They didn?t rate garbage securities as if they were gold. None of these perps pumped up the housing bubble. Those who did are still roaming free, financially armed and dangerous. 8. Wall Street is much too big and its salaries are much too high: The financial sector is supposed to be an intermediary that turns our savings into productive investments. It?s not supposed to be a casino and it?s not supposed to dwarf the rest of the productive economy. But after years of deregulatory foolishness, it has metastasized to destructive levels. From the 1930s until the mid-1970s, financial sector employees earned the same as those in other sectors, relative to their skills and experience. That?s the way it should be. But since we embarked on the long march of financial deregulation and tax breaks for the super-rich, people working in the financial sector have seen their incomes skyrocket compared to everyone else. The bigger that gap, the more danger we face. And unless we build a massive populist uprising, it won?t change. 9. Wall Street still owns the regulators: When you put too much money in the hands of the few and when you deregulate finance, you get a financial casino. That?s what happened in the years leading up to the 1929 crash, and it happened again in 2008. During the New Deal we regulated the tar out of finance, ending their reign of speculative terror. And it worked for nearly a quarter of a century as financial crises virtually disappeared. Since financial deregulation reappeared over the last 30 years, there have been over 180 financial crises around the world. So you would think after 2008, we?d be back to reining in the bankers. But, no our leaders are afraid to stifle ?financial innovation? (See next point.) The Dodd-Frank bill is weak and getting weaker, thanks to intensive Wall Street lobbying. High government officials still believe that Wall Street can lead the nation forward. The kids are telling us that we should shut down the casinos now. Right again. 10. Financial innovation is a joke: Washington genuflects before the gods of financial innovation: the adjustable no-money down mortgages with resetting teaser rates, the synthetic collateralized debt obligations that turn garbage mortgages into AAA securities, the credit default swaps that are financial insurance policies without regulation, the nanosecond trading programs that flip millions of stocks per second while milking slower investors, and the myriad of ways to make enormous financial bets using little or none of your own money. They tremble at the thought of whispering anything that might stifle these highly profitable Wall Street inventions. They are wowed by trading measured in nanoseconds, by the alphabet soup of securities, by the dark pools of financial trading and most of all by financial billionaires and their lobbyists. But to paraphrase former fed chair Paul Volcker, the only real financial innovation in the last 25 years is the ATM machine. The rest are simply gambling games designed to enrich Wall Street's elites who pocket the winnings and pawn off the losses on us. The protesters sense the game is rigged. It is. Does Wall Street pay or do we? In the end, it comes down to a clear-cut struggle between the few and the many. (There?s that 99 percent again.) Who is going to pay for the jobs we need? Who is going to pay for the debt that was created to bail out Wall Street and prevent another Great Depression? Wall Street wants us to pay in the form of cuts in Social Security and medical coverage, reduced wages and higher taxes (for everyone but them). In fact, they want the kids to pay by working longer before they retire (if they can ever find a job), paying higher medical costs as they grow older, and turning their Social Security accounts into Wall Street playthings no one can rely on. At the same time financial elites are arguing for fewer regulations and lower taxes on themselves and their fellow millionaires and billionaires. Financial interests are hoping we?ll simply forget who caused what and instead focus on debt, more debt and still more debt. They?re hoping we?ll blame government, regulations and taxes, while they laugh all the way to the bank ? their banks. Some of us may be old and tired and fatalistic about all this looting, and sour about the chances for change. Thank god the kids still have their wits about them?and a fighting spirit. Get out there and join them. And if you?re too old to stay overnight (like me), visit often and urge your unions, churches and community groups to join the fray. A progressive populist uprising only works when it?s large, vocal and full of spunk. Go occupiers, go! Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York, and author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity?and What We Can Do About It (Chelsea Green, 2009). ? 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152629/ From ths at psalience.org Sun Oct 16 15:24:13 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:24:13 +0200 Subject: [THS] Le Nouvel Observateur on the world protests Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111016152325.0434f430@mail.messagingengine.com> http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com//monde/20111016.OBS2542/premiere-journee-planetaire-des-indignes-reussie-malgre-les-violences.html Premi?re journ?e plan?taire des Indign?s r?ussie malgr? les violences Publi? le 16-10-11 ? 07:22 Modifi? ? 07:37 par Le Nouvel Observateur avec AFP 22 r?actions D'Europe aux Etats-Unis en passant par le Chili, la journ?e mondiale des "indignes" a r?uni des dizaines de milliers de personnes. Manifestation des "indign?s" place Puerta del Sol ? Madrid le 15 octobre 2011. (c) Afp D'Europe aux Etats-Unis en passant par le Chili, la premi?re journ?e mondiale des "indignes" a r?uni samedi 15 octobre des dizaines de milliers de personnes et a ?t? marqu?e par des violences ? Rome et des dizaines d'interpellations ? New York. Sous les slogans "Peuples du monde, levez-vous" ou "Descends dans la rue, cr?e un nouveau monde", les "indign?s" avaient appel? ? manifester dans 951 villes de 82 pays, selon le site 15october.net, contre la pr?carit? li?e ? la crise et le pouvoir de la finance. 71 interpellations ? Times Square Samedi soir devant Times Square ? New York, la police am?ricaine a proc?d? ? 71 interpellations ? l'issue d'une manifestation anti-Wall Street qui a rassembl? plusieurs milliers de personnes, selon un bilan de la police. Les manifestants ont ?t? imm?diatement embarqu?s dans plusieurs fourgons de police, a constat? un journaliste de l'AFP. Plus t?t, la police ? cheval avait repouss? des manifestants qui essayaient de p?n?trer sur la place. Une personne avait ?t? bless?e en tombant ? terre lorsque la foule paniqu?e s'?tait mise ? courir. "Chaque jour, chaque nuit, occupons Wall Street", "Nous sommes le peuple", "Nous voulons du travail", scandaient les manifestants. A Washington, plusieurs milliers d'autres "indign?s" ont fait cause commune pour manifester contre la "rapacit?" de la finance, pour "l'emploi et la justice". Quelque 300 manifestants se sont rassembl?s en devant la Maison Blanche et le d?partement du Tr?sor contre la "mafia financi?re", avant de rejoindre un autre rassemblement, fort de plusieurs milliers de personnes, r?unies ? l'appel d'une vingtaine d'organisations. D?fense des droits des animaux au Canada Plus de 10.000 Canadiens ont ?galement manifest?, pancartes ou guitares en main, dont 5.000 ? Toronto, dans le quartier financier. Leurs exigences allaient d'une meilleure r?partition des richesses ? "la v?rit? derri?re 9/11", ou ? la "d?fense des droits des animaux". Violences ? Rome En Europe, des violences spectaculaires ont ?clat? ? Rome, faisant 70 bless?s, dont trois graves, en marge du d?fil? qui a r?uni des dizaines de milliers de personnes, sous des pancartes proclamant "Une seule solution, la R?volution!" ou "Nous ne sommes pas des biens dans les mains des banquiers". Des ?l?ments incontr?l?s ont envahi un h?tel de luxe, fracass? les vitrines de banques et mis le feu ? une annexe du minist?re de la D?fense. Plusieurs voitures ont ?t? incendi?es. En fin de journ?e, la place historique de la basilique Saint-Jean de Latran ?tait transform?e en champ de bataille. La police a charg? des centaines de jeunes qui lan?aient fumig?nes, cocktails Molotov et bouteilles contre les forces de l'ordre, tandis que les manifestants pacifiques quittaient la place les bras en l'air pour ne pas ?tre confondus avec les casseurs. Des pays en crise qui manifestent A Ath?nes, ?picentre de la crise financi?re europ?enne, plusieurs milliers de manifestants se sont mass?s en soir?e devant le parlement, dans une ambiance bon enfant. Au Portugal, autre pays durement touch? par la crise, 50.000 personnes de tous ?ges ont d?fil? ? Lisbonne, aux cris de "FMI dehors", rang?es derri?re une banderole proclamant "Stop tro?ka", en r?f?rence aux cr?anciers du Portugal (Union europ?enne, Banque centrale europ?enne, Fonds mon?taire international). A Madrid, berceau du mouvement n? le 15 mai, des dizaines de milliers de personnes ont converg? jusqu'? la Puerta del Sol, place embl?matique que les "indign?s" avaient occup?e pendant un mois au printemps. "Le probl?me, c'est la crise, r?volte-toi", proclamait une grande banderole en t?te de la marche. Dans la soir?e, une mar?e humaine a envahi la place, o? les manifestants se sont fig?s dans un "cri muet", symbole de l'oppression. Soutien d'Assange ? Londres A Londres, o? des heurts mineurs avec la police se sont produits ? la mi-journ?e. 800 "indign?s" se sont rassembl?s dans la City et ont re?u le renfort inopin? du fondateur de WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, en libert? conditionnelle pr?s de Londres en attendant une ?ventuelle extradition vers la Su?de o? il est poursuivi pour viol. "Nous soutenons ce qui se passe ici parce que le syst?me bancaire ? Londres est le b?n?ficiaire d'argent issu de la corruption", a-t-il lanc? sur les marches de la cath?drale Saint-Paul, o? ?taient mass?s les manifestants. Les "indign?s" ont b?n?fici? aussi de la compr?hension du gouverneur de la Banque d'Italie, Mario Draghi, qui doit prendre la t?te le mois prochain de la Banque centrale europ?enne. "Les jeunes ont raison d'?tre indign?s", a d?clar? M. Draghi ? des journalistes en marge de la r?union du G20 ? Paris. "Ils sont en col?re contre le monde de la finance. Je les comprends", a d?clar? cet ?conomiste de 64 ans, tout en d?plorant les incidents de Rome. Aux Pays-Bas, un millier de manifestants se sont rassembl?s ? La Haye, autant sur la place de la Bourse ? Amsterdam, et un millier aussi sur la Paradeplatz ? Zurich, place embl?matique de la finance suisse, tandis que Paris a rassembl? plusieurs centaines d'"indign?s". Dans les Balkans, les rassemblements ont r?uni environ 3.000 personnes ? Zagreb et des centaines dans d'autres villes, dont Sarajevo et Belgrade. Hauts lieux de la finance cibl?s Des rassemblements ont aussi eu lieu en Am?rique latine. Plus de 5.000 "indign?s" chiliens ont ainsi d?fil? ? Santiago. Les protestataires avaient cibl? les hauts lieux de la finance mondiale, telle la BCE ? Francfort, devant laquelle 5.000 ? 6.000 personnes se sont rassembl?es. "D'Am?rique jusqu'en Asie, d'Afrique ? l'Europe, les peuples se l?vent pour revendiquer leurs droits et r?clamer une vraie d?mocratie", affirme le manifeste du 15 octobre. "Les puissances travaillent pour le b?n?fice de quelques-uns, ignorant la volont? de la grande majorit?. Cette situation intol?rable doit cesser", proclame encore le texte. Le Nouvel Observateur - AFP From ths at psalience.org Sun Oct 16 15:47:26 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:47:26 +0200 Subject: [THS] Netherlands: Sell cannabis, just as long as you don't make it too strong Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111016154710.04348b98@mail.messagingengine.com> Netherlands: Sell cannabis, just as long as you don't make it too strong Times of India Sunday 09 Oct 2011 AMSTERDAM: Coffee shops in the Netherlands were left wondering on Saturday how to comply with restrictions announced by the Dutch government on the sale of "strong" cannabis, saying enforcement would be difficult given the laws on production. The Netherlands is famous for its liberal soft drugs policies. A Dutch citizen can grow a maximum of five cannabis plants at home for personal use but large-scale production and transport is a crime. On Friday, the coalition government said it would seek to ban what it considered to be highly potent forms of cannabis - known as "skunk" - placing them in the same category as hard drugs such as heroin or cocaine. But the industry said the guidelines were not clear enough. "Commercial cannabis growers are already breaking the law so how can testing be legal? It's not clear what coffee shops need to do," said Maurice Veldman, a lawyer from the Dutch cannabis retailers association who represents coffee shops in court. A pioneer of liberal drug policies, the Netherlands has backtracked on its tolerance in the last few years, announcing plans in May to ban tourists from coffee shops, which are popular attractions in cities such as Amsterdam. The government said it would now outlaw the sale of cannabis whose concentration of THC, seen as the main psychoactive substance, exceeds 15 percent. The average THC concentration in cannabis sold by Dutch coffee shops is between 16 and 18 percent, according to the Trimbos Institute. "All this will do is lead to people smoking more joints and me selling more grams. But as it's used with tobacco it will damage their health more," said Marc Josemans, who owns a coffee shop in the city of Maastricht. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-10-09/europe/30259828_1_cannabis-coffee-shops-hard-drugs From ths at psalience.org Sun Oct 16 23:21:20 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 23:21:20 +0200 Subject: [THS] American Islamophobes call for Immediate bombing of Iran. Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111016232031.06517e10@mail.messagingengine.com> [forwarded] American Islamophobes call for Immediate bombing of Iran. Led by Charles Krauthammer and Fox News, US islamophobes urge the Pentagon to attack Iran. Sean Hannity of Fox News and Bill Kristol of The Forward called for US bombardment of Iran. Michael Savage called for the neutron bombing of Pakistan - a tactic that is tantamount to genocide. All right-wing Islamophobes are harshly critical of the Obama administration for not immediately pressing the button to launch a shock and awe attack to initiate regime change in Iran. Greg Gutfeld of Fox News said bombing Iran would be politically advantageous for Republicans. On air, Gutfeld said, "This is also great for the Republican candidates, because you could be -- sound very hawkish on Iran and there's no blowback. You could say bomb Iran, everybody's for it." Michael Carmichael Planetary/USA 1818 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard Suite 111 Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514 USA www.planetarymovement.org The following message was sent to you by susants at gmail.com: Following the Justice Department's announcement that an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States has been foiled, right-wing media called for the bombing of Iran. Indeed, conservative media figures have repeatedly endorsed military action against Iran and other countries. DOJ Announces Alleged Assassination Plot By Two Iranian Nationals DOJ: "Two Men Charged in Alleged Plot to Assassinate Saudi Arabian Ambassador To The United States." On October 11, the Justice Department announced details of the alleged assassination attempt, charging two Iranian nationals in connection with the plot. From DOJ's press release: Two individuals have been charged in New York for their alleged participation in a plot directed by elements of the Iranian government to murder the Saudi Ambassador to the United States with explosives while the Ambassador was in the United States. The charges were announced by Attorney General Eric Holder; FBI Director Robert S. Mueller; Lisa Monaco, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; and Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. A criminal complaint filed today in the Southern District of New York charges Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen holding both Iranian and U.S. passports, and Gholam Shakuri, an Iran-based member of Iran's Qods Force, which is a special operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that is said to sponsor and promote terrorist activities abroad. Both defendants are charged with conspiracy to murder a foreign official; conspiracy to engage in foreign travel and use of interstate and foreign commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire; conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives); and conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism transcending national boundaries. Arbabsiar is further charged with an additional count of foreign travel and use of interstate and foreign commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire. Shakuri remains at large. Arbabsiar was arrested on Sept. 29, 2011, at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and will make his initial appearance today before in federal court in Manhattan. He faces a maximum potential sentence of life in prison if convicted of all the charges. [Department of Justice, 10/11/11] Right-Wing Media Call For Bombing Iran Over Alleged Plot Newsmax's Kessler: "The U.S. Should Bomb Their Nuclear Facilities." Reacting to the Justice Department's announcement, Newsmax chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler reportedly said that "the plot should be answered with a U.S attack on Iran's nuclear facilities." From a Newsmax article headlined, "Kessler: Bomb Iran Now for Washington Terror Plot": Ignoring the magnitude of the plot by treating it as a criminal conspiracy -- rather than an act of aggression by a rogue nation -- would be appeasement on a par with America's acts at the beginning of World War II, said Kessler, an intelligence expert and best-selling author of books on the CIA and FBI. "This plot shows how foolhardy it is to continue to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon without taking it out," said Kessler. "The U.S. should bomb their nuclear facilities before Iran gets a nuclear weapon which could be in the next year or two." Kessler described the plot to attack sites in our nation's capital as "an act of war," adding, "It's the first overt sign of what everyone has feared, that Iran is a totally out-of-control government, an enemy and a threat. "To just ignore it and be in denial, as the U.S. government has been, is risking our lives." [Newsmax, 10/11/11] Fox's Gutfeld: Foiled Iran Terror Plot Is "Great" For GOP Candidates Because "Everybody's For Bombing Iran." On Fox News' The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld said: GUTFELD: This is also great for the Republican candidates, because you could be -- sound very hawkish on Iran and there's no blowback. You could say bomb Iran, everybody's for it. [Fox News, The Five, 10/12/11] Fox's Dan Gillerman: "All Options, Including A Military Option Are On The Table." On Fox News' America Live, former Israeli ambassador and Fox News contributor Dan Gillerman said: GILLERMAN: I think what this means is that they are not taking sanctions seriously, they're not taking all this talk seriously, and they should be made to realize that the international community will not stand for a nuclear Iran and will not stand for Iran becoming a rogue nation, which harbors, perpetrates, and finances, and plots terror all over the world, and that all options including a military option are on the table to stop Iran. [Fox News, America Live, 10/12/11] Fox's McFarland: Iran's Behavior "Lends Credibility To The Idea That The Military Option Should Not Be Off The Table." On America Live, Fox's national security analyst KT McFarland said: MEGYN KELLY (host): I want to pick up on your point then that if this is, or can be considered, an act of war, what is that mean? Is that a decision that our government will make, whether to use that terminology, and if they do, does that not raise the stakes? McFARLAND: It raises the stakes enormously. What are things that we might do other than sanctions? I mean, we can scold them, but that's not very effective. We could put a blockade around Iran. You know, it's certainly -- if Iran continues with its nuclear weapons program and sort of thumbs its nose at the world, it lends credibility to the idea that the military option should not be off the table, for example. [Fox News, America Live, 10/11/11] Charles Krauthammer: "Even If We Are Not Going To Do An Attack ... Why Did We Take It Off The Table?" Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer criticized the Obama administration for the "usual rubbish about sanctions and isolation" and for taking an attack on Iran "off the table," saying: KRAUTHAMMER: [W]hat did we hear within moments of the announcement? As we heard earlier in the show, a statement that this was not an issue for a Pentagon response, this was not going to be a tripwire for a military action, but we'll hear the usual rubbish about sanctions and isolation which mean nothing. Even if we are not going to do an attack, say an attack on an al Quds camp, why did we announce it within hours, why did we take it off the table? Why do the Iranians always have to know that on this, on nuclear issues, on attacks on Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are always can act with impunity? [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 10/11/11] Conservative Media Repeatedly Call For Attacking Iran And Other Countries Hannity On Iran: "We'd Need Every Bunker Buster Bomb We've Got, But I Would Use Them." On his Fox News show, Sean Hannity advocated pre-emptive strikes against "every darn military site" in Iran. From the show: HANNITY: I would support Israel as soon as possible, physically, militarily, and I'd knock out every darn military site they have. You're asking what I would do? I would not let the world risk a madman, like Ahmadinejad, have nuclear weapons with multiple threats to wipe Israel off the map. I would take out those nuclear sites. [...] HANNITY: The Iranians, very smartly ... have spread it all throughout the country. We'd need every bunker buster bomb we've got, but i would use them -- every one of them. [Fox News, Hannity, 7/12/10] Hannity Suggested That "The Only Way To Stop" Iran Is To Attack The Country. During an interview with Middle East expert Walid Phares and Raphael Shore, the producer of Iranium, a documentary about Iran's nuclear program, Hannity suggested that striking Iran was the "only way to stop them." From the February 18 edition of Hannity: HANNITY: Do we have to take their facilities out? Is that the only way to stop them? SHORE: I think we've seen from recent events in Egypt and what's starting to happen now in Iran is that there is another way. Military option has to be considered, there's no question, but we see that revolution is possible. We see that regime change is possible, the people can rise up. HANNITY: So from the democracy movement within and try and bring them down from within first, if that fails, you have no choice. You've got to strike. Pretty fair? SHORE: It certainly has to be taken very seriously. PHARES: It is fair. It is fair. HANNITY: Well, I agree with you. The question is will the United States stand with Israel? Because I think Israel is the first target and the United States is the second one, and the West -- the entire West. [Fox News, Hannity, 2/18/11] Krauthammer Advocated A Series Of "Air Attacks" To Get The Iranians' Attention. On The O'Reilly Factor, Krauthammer discussed military options to get Iran's attention, saying, "You could do a lot of damage." From the broadcast: KRAUTHAMMER: Even if you're a believer in sanctions, the idea that sanctions or negotiations are gonna do anything in the absence of a credible stick, a credible threat is nonsense. And this administration has sort of, almost, ostentatiously stayed away from any discussion of a military attack. I mean, the implication is they're not even considering it. [...] BILL O'REILLY (host): Now say you were president -- President Charles Krauthammer. We have a big military expenditure in Iraq and a big military expenditure in Afghanistan. We simply don't have the forces to invade on the ground. That would be horrible anyway. So what would you do? What kind of a military Plan B would be realistic enough to get the Iranians' attention? KRAUTHAMMER: Well, the one that would be obvious would be an air attack. But it wouldn't be a one shot, one-day deal. It would be a series of attacks like a two-week campaign that the kind that we had in a much easier situation, of course, in Serbia. But if you unleash the U.S. Air Force with our carriers, you unleash our Cruise missiles, and you unleash our capacities from the bases nearby, you could do a lot of damage. And you return, as we did in Iraq, as we attacked in the early days of Iraq, we can do a lot of damage. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 4/20/10] Bill Kristol: "I Think We Have To Have A Credible Threat Of Force And The Preparation To Use Force Against Iran." On Fox News Sunday, Fox News contributor Kristol advocated "a credible threat of force and the preparation to use force against Iran": KRISTOL: I think that we are just feckless here in the sense that we're not being serious about the Iranian nuclear program. And we're not being serious -- CHRIS WALLACE (host): What does being serious mean in your terms? KRISTOL: Well, what'd be serious would be if the president of the United States and the secretary of the United States said that all options are on the table. And -- WALLACE: Well, that doesn't mean anything. They have -- and they do say that. KRISTOL: Well, Mrs. Clinton notice didn't say it in her most recent speech about this. And Obama keeps talking about how he wants to give diplomacy his chance for all this to -- I mean, I think we have to have a credible threat of force and the preparation to use force against Iran. It'd be much better if we used force against -- to delay the Iranian nuclear program than if Israel did, and there's no evidence that the U.S. government is being at all serious about the use of force there. [Fox Broadcasting Co., Fox News Sunday, 4/4/10] Instapundit On North Korea: "If They Start Anything, I Say Nuke 'Em. And Not With Just A Few Bombs. ... And It Would Be A Useful Lesson For Iran, Too." In a post on Instapundit, blogger Glenn Reynolds referred to an attack by North Korean on a South Korean island and wrote: If they start anything, I say nuke 'em. And not with just a few bombs. They've caused enough trouble -- and it would be a useful lesson for Iran, too. We can't afford another Korean war, but hey, we're already dismantling warheads. ... [Instapundit, 11/23/10] Big Peace: "Now Would Be The Right Time To Contemplate And Carry Out Limited Military Strikes On The Infrastructure Of The North Korean Government." In a post on Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace about North Korea's attack on a South Korean island, blogger Peter Schweizer wrote that "we need to take this opportunity to punish the North Korean government for what they have done." From the post: So how should we respond? Both ignoring their actions and giving them the aid they seek gives them what they want and rewards their behavior. Having lost strategic surprise, we need to take this opportunity to punish the North Korean government for what they have done. Now would be the right time to contemplate and carry out limited military strikes on the infrastructure of the North Korean government. Or more specifically, to strike at the heart of their nuclear capabilities. Doing nothing will only encourage more of the same behavior. And giving them aid in response to this temper tantrum will embolden them further. [Big Peace, 11/23/10] Michael Savage Pushed For Dropping "A Neutron Bomb On The Entire Tribal Region Of Pakistan." On his syndicated radio show, Michael Savage criticized President Obama's reported comments (Savage misattributed them to a Defense Department official) that the United States can "absorb a terrorist attack" and that the country "absorbed [9-11] and we are stronger," saying: SAVAGE: Now, I was furious when I read that because he shouldn't be telling me that. He should be telling the enemy that if he so much as set off a firecracker, we'll emolliate your nation, you bastard. Don't even dare tread on me. You set off a firecracker in America, we'll burn your house down. I never saw anything like this. Am I alone in this? [...] SAVAGE: I think that they should go after the terrorist in his homeland. I think we should attack them first. I think we should emolliate [sic] the entire tribal region of Pakistan. I think we should unleash a neutron bomb on the tribal region of Pakistan, after giving them 24 hours' notice that we're going to emolliate [sic] the entire tribal area, we want the women and children out. And let all the brave terrorists stay there behind and then just drop one. I'm sick of this. [Talk Radio Network, The Savage Nation, 10/12/10] You can find other news and actions at mediamatters.org