From ths at psalience.org  Mon Oct 24 13:56:11 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:56:11 +0200
Subject: [THS] OccupyMarines are Preparing to Occupy America Nationwide
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024135414.064707e8@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.politicususa.com/en/occupy-marines-nationwide

OccupyMarines are Preparing to Occupy America Nationwide
October 21, 2011
By Anomaly100
61

United States Marine Corps. Sergeant Shamar Thomas in a spectacular moment defended the protesters of Occupy Wall Street while staring into the faces of thirty NYPD officers, and now countless other Marines have organized in an amazing show of solidarity.

Sgt. Thomas? gallant actions in standing up for American citizens being brutalized by the police were shown in a video which has gone viral with almost 2 million views. Marines have joined forces with #OccupyMarines in solidarity with the movement not just in New York, but nationwide:

?OccupyMARINES Are Currently Assessing The Current Situation To Ascertain What Is Currently Needed To Support OWS America. We Are Humbled At The Substantial Support OWS America Has Provided And Ask That Everyone Continue As You All Do While We Implement Organization Nationwide. As We All Know, ?Occupy? Groups Are Being Established Even Now And Would Like To See This Trend Continue.?

Their website OccupyMarines.org presents a post centering on continuing the Occupy movement throughout the upcoming winter. In their call for ?Non-Active ?Occupy? Military Supporters Only? they?re organizing a dress code in order to identify their branch affiliation.

Instead of ostracizing the police, the Marines are attempting to reach out to them much like Sgt. Thomas did.

#OrganizeMarines states, ?Security forces/police should be seen as potential recruits to our cause and message, not as adversaries. Ultimately, they are accountable to the people.?

During Sgt. Thomas? bold speech, the police presence became suddenly solemn hanging on his every word. Perhaps the presence of Marines will awaken the Police force which has been overwhelming the protests.

Presenting their group and the Occupiers as a peaceful movement, no matter what, including verbal attacks and/or propaganda brought forth from those opposing the protest they state, ?Defensive strategies never win. Do not respond to verbal attacks or hostile propaganda from Nay-Sayers by using the language of the opponent. Reframe.?

Meet Iraq veteran Alex E. Limkin:

?I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies both foreign, and domestic.?

Veteran Alex Limkin said:

?There is nothing more central to a free and democratic people than the right to dissent, the right to disagree, the right to stand up in the town square and be heard
 I feel quite sure that in standing in solidarity with the peaceful Occupy Wall Street movement, I am doing no less than upholding my oath as an American soldier.?

Sgt. Shamar Thomas was the catalyst in this movie-like scenario with our inactive military standing with the protesters side by side.

These Marines? actions are the definition of patriotism ? not donning flagpins or waving Old Betsy ? actions speak Red, White and Blue louder than feigning patriotism by displays which are born from a strong partisan stance.

Naysayers stand back, the Marines are coming.

#OccupyMarines, we are humbled.

Blogger Extraordinaire Anomaly100 is the owner of and progressive mastermind behind FreakOut Nation.


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Oct 24 16:41:04 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:41:04 +0200
Subject: [THS] MAPS replies to Paul Craig Roberts post - The Day America Died
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024135719.06470240@mail.messagingengine.com>

Dear MAPS people,
Once again I feel a necessity to try to inform you of the grave situation occurring on this planet - it is a situation not only political, but ecological, social, .../ it is an all-pervading situation and therefore must also be of significance to psychedelic researchers. 

My intense interest in such matters has evoloved over time. After several years of psychedelic research that I was involved in, of an underground nature (a close reading of some items at my website, The Psychedelic Library, would clarify matters best left unmentioned directly in this forum), and due to some unexpected developements, I found it necessary to end the work I had been doing, and next became interested in drug policy, "reappearing" and writing a series of reviews and editorials in the International Journal of Drug Policy. 

At the time, it seemed the best way I could use my talents to forward the interests of psychedelic research, which of course had been severely restricted due to the political aspects of drug policy and the use of drug prohibition by western governments and intelligence agencies for ulterior purposes. I soon wrote just about everything I had to say on the matter, of course to no avail, for drug prohibition had and has been installed and promoted and perpetuated by forces not at all on the surface of things, and thus prohibition resisted and continues to resist all efforts to reform and repeal it by means of logical argument and scientific research. The "ulterior purposes" will continue to prolong drug prohibition, and dominate the political climate, I believe, until ... "kingdom come", I guess, i.e., until those ulterior purposes change. And there seems little chance of that short of a politico-ecologico-socio-etc. mega-crisis of overwhelming proportions. Viz., prohibition will end when about the only thing left for us is finding ways to survive.

The next step in my "radicalization" was to focus on what those ulterior motives and purposes might be, and that involved of course, looking into matters that have been interest to us all since the 60's : the wars of aggression, invasions, assassinations, activities of intelligence organisations, perpetrated mostly by agencies of the United States and their lackeys... the "Deep Politics" defined and described by Peter Dale Scott. If you are interested in psychedelics, and psychedelic research, you cannot BUT be interested in such matters, for they are behind the squelching of research, the demonisation of psychedelics, the hidden scenes behind black market production of various substances for various club scenes et al., and the way in which recent and limited psychedelic research has been approved and for what reasons, and for what ulterior motives of those same behind-the-scenes forces that have brought us so much in the way of unexplained world events, for the most part atrocities.

My interest in such matters increased exponentially as the U.S. Supreme Court pulled off a coup d'?tat and got Bush installed in the White House. From that moment on, it became much more obvious that the forces-behind-the-scenes we suspected were not only involved in, but were the main perpetrators of idiocy and horror since the 60s, and weren't just some figment of our imaginations, but were actually far worse than we had suspected. And in the first decade of the 21st C, there is something new - those forces apparently don't even care anymore that they have become obvious - they are no longer interested in "believable denial" of their deeds and existence. "Why deny the U.S. practices torutre? Let's just get some lawyers to legalise it!" ...and so forth ad nauseam.

And thus we have the realisation of much of the agenda described in the PNAC, the Project for a New American Century, a policy and document formulated by the craziest of the neocons in the 1990s, among whose observations were the necessity of a "New Pearl Harbor" as a means to implement their plans, which of course were the wars, invasions, assassinations, torture et al. which have been the defining feature of the first decade of the new era. I hardly need add just what that New Pearl Harbor was or encourage speculation whether it was an incredibly unlikely "convenient happenstance" for the neocon agenda or.../.

The time has come when EVERYONE must start to become interested in these matters in the interests of the possiblity of the long term survival of modern civilization, if not human survival itself. And due to the involvement of these same forces behind the scenes that brought us the current disasterous situation, in first squelching and then approving very limited psychedelic research, it is astonishing to me that those of us fortunate enough to know some secrets about psychedelics would even BE ABLE to set aside interest in these matters, feeling perhaps that "it's not my job".

I apologise if this is long or boring for you, but the stakes are more than enormous, they threaten to be a double-or-NOTHING situation, with the latter's probability becoming very worrying, to understate the matter. And I have been asked by the moderators to justify my following post including an article by Paul Craig Roberts, and my position and felt imperative to try to inform you of this view. 

And perhaps as a re-assurance: yes, my main interest in life is still those miraculous substances. I recently wrote a chapter for a book by an Italian friend, in the 'game' for a very long time like myself. The subject of my chapter is a final, or at least updated take on my theory of an evolutionary psychedelic awakening for H. sapiens, the first version of which I presented to the 2006 Basel Celebration for Albert Hofmann's 100th. We are working on publishing an English translation of the book now. Yes, I am quite sure that proto-humans, who existed in E. Africa for 100,000 years or more, beings who had the exact same physical makeup as we moderns have, yet for that long period changed not at all towards becoming modern humans. Then suddenly, almost overnight.... I am interjecting this note because I intend to add a small comment in the English version, after my chapter, which should highlight for the book, and coincidentally for you all here, the importance of psychedelics for our survival, and why all people, especially professionals, who have an interest in psychedelics, CANNOT AVOID a reorientation of plans and priorities given our present world socio-ecologico-politico crisis. I am still composing the addendum, but it goes like this:

A Note on the chapter "Origins of Psychedelia  - The Most Human Universal"
from "THE DREAM ON THE ROCK - VISIONS OF PREHISTORY"
by Fulvio Gosso & Peter Webster.

(original title - Il Sogno Sulla Roccia - Visioni dalla Preistoria - Edizioni Altravista 2011)

If in fact we are products of a psychedelic awakening, and the change is truly evolutionary, what would that signify? Since I first presented these ideas in a home-made DVD (available at The Psychedelic Library) and a lecture on the subject I delivered at the 2006 Basel conference, I am rather surprised that no psychologists, psychiatrists, or professionals interested in these matters have contacted me, having taken up the subect. If our collective "birth" was caused by an institution of the use of psychedelic plants in the earliest manifestations of shamanism, and (as I claim) our sudden appearance as modern humans would not have otherwise occurred, this must have a very great significance for our present psychological makeup, our social imperatives and tendencies, even what we might still call our "instincts" as individuals and as a "tribe". It might parallel Grof's finding for individuals, where the perinatal experiences of an individual have life-determining effects, far more than Freud's early-childhood-experiences theory claims. What do the collective perinatal experiences of our race signify for our present collective life and situation?

Animals, plants too, but especially advanced animals change slowly and evolutionary developments require lengthy time periods for incorporation. A psychedelic awakening implies a very rapid evolutionary change, one that our species was perhaps ?not ready? to experience. Net result: the change can only be beneficial with continued psychedelic training - on a wide scale, especially for our 'leaders', and for our most intelligent and influential individuals, so that the change can be correctly assimilated in each succeeding generation. Our collective perinatal experience must be exposed to each of us and its difficulties counteracted, its meaning elaborated, ... Without that training, the more power we have as individuals and collectively, the more we will unfailingly use that power in destructive ways, i.e., ways not in the best interests of long term prosperity and equilibrium with Gaia, not to mention survival.
~~~~~~~~~

OK, still needs work.
It will have to suffice as the introductin of my post to MAPS-forum, previously rejected but tentatively to be approved with the addition of the above.

I don't really intend that this should lead to any great discussion, affirmation or denial, of its importance or insignificance, and I can say with some confidence that I do not intend to trouble any of you any further with such matters. It is time to choose, and no further evidence should be necessary. I remain at psalience at fastmail.fm if you want to comment privately. Please excuse any repetitions of ideas or recommendations.
~~~~~~~~~

At 02:43 21/10/2011, AskMAPS did write:
>Peter,
>Thank you for contacting MAPS. The article that you have shared with us is deeply >saddening and can easily leave one feeling hopeless... [continued below]

Hello Mason at AskMAPS,
Nice sentiment, but probably without much global effect. You may have noticed I unsubscribed from MAPS Forum as a result of the Paul Craig Roberts article (below) being rejected by the moderator as irrelevant to psychedelic research. Maybe so, in a narrow sense, but unless every possible individual and institution starts actively combatting what the USA has become both at home and on the world stage, and certainly not collaborating with it in any way, Paul Craig Roberts' worst fears will be completely relevant, since not only psychedelic research, but much else will become IRRELEVANT. It'll be brute survival and little else. 

It is no longer sufficient for MAPS members just to continue on as before, hoping for the best, resting on their admittedly significant laurels (but significant only to a time that is quickly drawing to a close) and hoping that somehow, just somehow, morality and justice, and clear thinking might somehow miraculously emerge from the halls of the U.S. Federal Government and/or its controlling institutions, if not in general then at least in some of its agencies and that tend to grow and influence other branches. It ain't gonna' happen. That's what Paul Craig Roberts writes below, with great force.

My purpose is NOT to "leave you feeling hopeless". As Alan Watts wrote in the 1950s, "The more alarming and destructive aspects of Western civilization should not blind us to the fact that at this very time it is also in one of its most creative periods." 

However, that "creative period" is today in greater danger than ever, and it will require not only a re-evaluation and re-orientation of our methods and plans both individual and collective, but certainly a level of radical activism not seen since the 1960s, and much more, on the part of us ALL, if we are to even hope that the current destructive trends - and the U.S. federal government is, more than any other institution, the main perpetrator of those trends - can be reversed before it is too late.

Exactly what should you do? I don't know. And even if I did you wouldn't want me to tell you. But previously I suggested that MAPS should be taking a far more radical and activist approach. Just as a for instance, if labor unions, professors, and others can lend their support to the Occupy Wall Street movement, why not MAPS? OWS is the only light I can see at the moment, and it is fragile. 

Professors support Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Movements Everywhere
[PETITION] http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Professors-supporting-Occupy/ 

and the U.S. Marines:
http://www.politicususa.com/en/occupy-marines-nationwide
OccupyMarines are Preparing to Occupy America Nationwide
October 21, 2011

And there are many reports (not on Fox News) about how the Occupy movment has spread around the world - see ICH or THS (details below)

Rick has said he protests, but not through MAPS. Why not? It is time for the U.S. government to realise that its support is rapidly crumbling EVERYWHERE, and indeed they fear that, as has been shown :

http://www.nationofchange.org/leaked-memo-corporate-board-rooms-fear-occupy-movement-occupying-their-board-rooms-targeting-individ
Leaked Memo: The Corporate Board Rooms Fear the Occupy Movement Occupying Their Board Rooms Targeting Individual Executives
October2011.org / Special Report
Published: Wednesday 19 October 2011


The time not only rapidly approaches, but has actually arrived when any individual, group, or organisation that has not actively become Part Of The Solution will be Part Of The Problem, to re-inaugurate a saying of the 60s.


AT LEAST you should subscribe to, and read daily, the headlines and a few articles at ICH, or at my own newsletter THS, you will NEVER get such a wide view of world events at any other single source. Without exposure to such a view you will not have the least  inkling what is going on, its gravity, and how the U.S. federal government is its #1 perpetrator. Nor will you be able to make best choices as how to react, how to protest, how to counteract, how to be part of the solution...

ICH
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
sign up:
http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr=iqnuv6bab&p=oi&m=1101581137416

[THS] TheHarderStuff : An activism-oriented daily newsletter of political, ecological, and drug policy news collected and retransmitted from internet and other sources.
TheHarderStuff  -  individual messages or digest option
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.psalience.org/mailman/listinfo/ths>,
        <mailto:ths-request at psalience.org?subject=subscribe>
Read the list archives at:
http://lists.psalience.org/pipermail/ths/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Paul Craig Roberts article follows the reply made to it by :

At 02:43 21/10/2011, AskMAPS did write:
>Peter,
>
>Thank you for contacting MAPS. The article that you have shared with us is deeply saddening and can easily leave one feeling hopeless. I get that feeling, as I am sure you do at this moment in US and global history. This feeling is informative, as it speaks to the intense desire within us to see what is right emerge in the world. That desire and ambition is alive and well here, and we feel that it is not a blinded ambition but one stepped in concrete successes. We have met many benchmarks that, I am sure at one point, were considered to be mere delusional aims by many, and we hope to meet more in the future.
>
>Sincerely,
>Mason Schreck
>MAPS
>askmaps at maps.org
>
>On Oct 5, 2011, at 5:31 AM, Peter Webster wrote:
>
>>At 02:19 05/10/2011, Brad Burge, MAPS did write:
>>
>>>Breaking News: Federal Committee Blocks
>>>Study of Marijuana for Vets with PTSD
>>>October 4, 2011
>>
>>I hope no one is surprised by intransigence and stupidity on the part of the U.S. Federal Government, and I also hope that no one expects one or another branch of that government to act in good faith and with an even minimal morality, when the primary branches of that government are doing such deeds as...
>>
>>please read the following by one who was a long-time conservative and member of that government ( see his bona fides following the article):
>>
>>http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29285.htm
>>
>>[quotations from the article following]
>>
>>"Now the US government not only can seize a US citizen and confine him in prison for the rest of his life without ever presenting evidence and obtaining a conviction, but also can have him shot down in the street or blown up by a drone."
>>
>>"Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless... Voting has no effect... To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare."
>>
>>
>>[For the moment it seems that only Muslims are targeted, but watch out - the ratchet of FASCISM goes in but one direction. Who will be in the next category of perceived threats? See below.  -ths newsletter]
>>
>>
>>
>>The Day America Died
>>
>>By Paul Craig Roberts
>>
>>October 03, 2011 "Information Clearing House" --  September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated.
>>
>>Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from ?patriots? who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe.
>>
>>In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long before 9/11 US law had ceased to be a shield of the people and had been turned into a weapon in the hands of the government. The event known as 9/11 was used to raise the executive branch above the law. As long as the President sanctions an illegal act, executive branch employees are no longer accountable to the law that prohibits the illegal act. On the president?s authority, the executive branch can violate US laws against spying on Americans without warrants, indefinite detention, and torture and suffer no consequences.
>>
>>Many expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law. Instead, he went further than Bush/Cheney and asserted the unconstitutional power not only to hold American citizens indefinitely in prison without bringing charges, but also to take their lives without convicting them in a court of law. Obama asserts that the US Constitution notwithstanding, he has the authority to assassinate US citizens, who he deems to be a ?threat,? without due process of law.
>>
>>In other words, any American citizen who is moved into the threat category has no rights and can be executed without trial or evidence.
>>
>>On September 30 Obama used this asserted new power of the president and had two American citizens, Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan murdered. Khan was a wacky character associated with Inspire Magazine and does not readily come to mind as a serious threat.
>>
>>Awlaki was a moderate American Muslim cleric who served as an advisor to the US government after 9/11 on ways to counter Muslim extremism. Awlaki was gradually radicalized by Washington?s use of lies to justify military attacks on Muslim countries. He became a critic of the US government and told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression and had the right to resist and to fight back. As a result Awlaki was demonized and became a threat.
>>
>>All we know that Awlaki did was to give sermons critical of Washington?s indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples. Washington?s argument is that his sermons might have had an influence on some who are accused of attempting terrorist acts, thus making Awlaki responsible for the attempts.
>>
>>Obama?s assertion that Awlaki was some kind of high-level Al Qaeda operative is merely an assertion. Jason Ditz concluded that the reason Awlaki was murdered rather than brought to trial is that the US government had no real evidence that Awlaki was an Al Qaeda operative.
>>
>>Having murdered its critic, the Obama Regime is working hard to posthumously promote Awlaki to a leadership position in Al Qaeda.  The presstitutes and the worshippers of America?s First Black President have fallen in line and regurgitated the assertions that Awlaki was a high-level dangerous Al Qaeda terrorist. If Al Qaeda sees value in Awlaki as a martyr, the organization will give credence to these claims. However, so far no one has provided any evidence. Keep in mind that all we know about Awlaki is what Washington claims and that the US has been at war for a decade based on false claims.
>>
>>But what Awlaki did or might have done is beside the point. The US Constitution requires that even the worst murderer cannot be punished until he is convicted in a court of law. When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged in federal court Obama?s assertion that he had the power to order assassinations of American citizens, the Obama Justice (sic) Department argued that Obama?s decision to have Americans murdered was an executive power beyond the reach of the judiciary.
>>
>>In a decision that sealed America?s fate, federal district court judge John Bates ignored the Constitution?s requirement that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law and dismissed the case, saying that it was up to Congress to decide. Obama acted before an appeal could be heard, thus using Judge Bates? acquiescence to establish the power and advance the transformation of the president into a Caesar that began under George W. Bush.
>>
>>Attorneys Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley point out that Awlaki?s assassination terminated the Constitution?s restraint on the power of government. Now the US government not only can seize a US citizen and confine him in prison for the rest of his life without ever presenting evidence and obtaining a conviction, but also can have him shot down in the street or blown up by a drone.
>>
>>Before some readers write to declare that Awlaki?s murder is no big deal because the US government has always had people murdered, keep in mind that CIA assassinations were of foreign opponents and were not publicly proclaimed events, much less a claim by the president to be above the law. Indeed, such assassinations were denied, not claimed as legitimate actions of the President of the United States.
>>
>>The Ohio National Guardsmen who shot Kent State students as they protested the US invasion of Cambodia in 1970 made no claim to be carrying out an executive branch decision. Eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen entered a self-defense plea. Most Americans were angry at war protestors and blamed the students. The judiciary got the message, and the criminal case was eventually dismissed. The civil case (wrongful death and injury) was settled for $675,000 and a statement of regret by the defendants.
>>
>>The point isn?t that the government killed people. The point is that never prior to President Obama has a President asserted the power to murder citizens.
>>
>>Over the last 20 years, the United States has had its own Mein Kampf transformation.
>>
>>Terry Eastland?s book, Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency, presented ideas associated with the Federalist Society, an organization of Republican lawyers that works to reduce legislative and judicial restraints on executive power. Under the cover of wartime emergencies (the war on terror), the Bush/Cheney regime employed these arguments to free the president from accountability to law and to liberate Americans from their civil liberties. War and national security provided the opening for the asserted new powers, and a mixture of fear and desire for revenge for 9/11 led Congress, the judiciary, and the people to go along with the dangerous precedents.
>>
>>As civilian and military leaders have been telling us for years, the war on terror is a 30-year project. After such time has passed, the presidency will have completed its transformation into Caesarism, and there will be no going back.
>>
>>Indeed, as the neoconservative ?Project For A New American Century? makes clear, the war on terror is only an opening for the neoconservative imperial ambition to establish US hegemony over the world.
>>
>>As wars of aggression or imperial ambition are war crimes under international law, such wars require doctrines that elevate the leader above the law and the Geneva Conventions, as Bush was elevated by his Justice (sic) Department with minimal judicial and legislative interference.
>>
>>Illegal and unconstitutional actions also require a silencing of critics and punishment of those who reveal government crimes. Thus Bradley Manning has been held for a year, mainly in solitary confinement under abusive conditions, without any charges being presented against him. A federal grand jury is at work concocting spy charges against Wikileaks? founder Julian Assange. Another federal grand jury is at work concocting terrorists charges against antiwar activists.
>>
>>?Terrorist? and ?giving aid to terrorists? are increasingly elastic concepts. Homeland Security has declared that the vast federal police bureaucracy has shifted its focus from terrorists to ?domestic extremists.?
>>
>>It is possible that Awlaki was assassinated because he was an effective critic of the US government. Police states do not originate fully fledged. Initially, they justify their illegal acts by demonizing their targets and in this way create the precedents for unaccountable power. Once the government equates critics with giving ?aid and comfort? to terrorists, as they are doing with antiwar activists and Assange, or with terrorism itself, as Obama did with Awlaki, it will only be a short step to bringing accusations against Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU.
>>
>>The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, is a regime that does not want to be constrained by law. And neither will its successor. Those fighting to uphold the rule of law, humanity?s greatest achievement, will find themselves lumped together with the regime?s opponents and be treated as such.
>>
>>This great danger that hovers over America is unrecognized by the majority of the people. When Obama announced before a military gathering his success in assassinating an American citizen, cheers erupted. The Obama regime and the media played the event as a repeat of the (claimed) killing of Osama bin Laden. Two ?enemies of the people? have been triumphantly dispatched. That the President of the United States was proudly proclaiming to a cheering audience sworn to defend the Constitution that he was a murderer and that he had also assassinated the US Constitution is extraordinary evidence that Americans are incapable of recognizing the threat to their liberty.
>>
>>Emotionally, the people have accepted the new powers of the president. If the president can have American citizens assassinated, there is no big deal about torturing them. Amnesty International has sent out an alert that the US Senate is poised to pass legislation that would keep Guantanamo Prison open indefinitely and that Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) might introduce a provision that would legalize ?enhanced interrogation techniques,? an euphemism for torture.
>>
>>Instead of seeing the danger, most Americans will merely conclude that the government is getting tough on terrorists, and it will meet with their approval. Smiling with satisfaction over the demise of their enemies, Americans are being led down the garden path to rule by government unrestrained by law and armed with the weapons of the medieval dungeon.
>>
>>Americans have overwhelming evidence from news reports and YouTube videos of US police brutally abusing women, children, and the elderly, of brutal treatment and murder of prisoners not only in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prisons abroad, but also in state and federal prisons in the US. Power over the defenseless attracts people of a brutal and evil disposition.
>>
>>A brutal disposition now infects the US military. The leaked video of US soldiers delighting, as their words and actions reveal, in their murder from the air of civilians and news service camera men walking innocently along a city street shows soldiers and officers devoid of humanity and military discipline. Excited by the thrill of murder, our troops repeated their crime when a father with two small children stopped to give aid to the wounded and were machine-gunned.
>>
>>So many instances: the rape of a young girl and murder of her entire family; innocent civilians murdered and AK-47s placed by their side as ?evidence? of insurgency; the enjoyment experienced not only by high school dropouts from torturing they-knew-not- who in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but also by educated CIA operatives and Ph.D. psychologists. And no one held accountable for these crimes except two lowly soldiers prominently featured in some of the torture photographs.
>>
>>What do Americans think will be their fate now that the ?war on terror? has destroyed the protection once afforded them by the US Constitution? If Awlaki really needed to be assassinated, why did not President Obama protect American citizens from the precedent that their deaths can be ordered without due process of law by first stripping Awlaki of his US citizenship? If the government can strip Awlaki of his life, it certainly can strip him of citizenship. The implication is hard to avoid that the executive branch desires the power to terminate citizens without due process of law.
>>
>>Governments escape the accountability of law in stages. Washington understands that its justifications for its wars are contrived and indefensible. President Obama even went so far as to declare that the military assault that he authorized on Libya without consulting Congress was not a war, and, therefore, he could ignore the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a federal law intended to check the power of the President to commit the US to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress.
>>
>>Americans are beginning to unwrap themselves from the flag. Some are beginning to grasp that initially they were led into Afghanistan for revenge for 9/11. From there they were led into Iraq for reasons that turned out to be false. They see more and more US military interventions: Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and now calls for invasion of Pakistan and continued saber rattling for attacks on Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. The financial cost of a decade of the ?war against terror? is starting to come home. Exploding annual federal budget deficits and national debt threaten Medicare and Social Security. Debt ceiling limits threaten government shut-downs.
>>
>>War critics are beginning to have an audience. The government cannot begin its silencing of critics by bringing charges against US Representatives Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. It begins with antiwar protestors, who are elevated into ?antiwar activists,? perhaps a step below ?domestic extremists.? Washington begins with citizens who are demonized Muslim clerics radicalized by Washington?s wars on Muslims. In this way, Washington establishes the precedent that war protestors give encouragement and, thus, aid, to terrorists. It establishes the precedent that those Americans deemed a threat are not protected by law. This is the slippery slope on which we now find ourselves.
>>
>>Last year the Obama Regime tested the prospects of its strategy when Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced that the government had a list of American citizens that it was going to assassinate abroad. This announcement, had it been made in earlier times by, for example, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, would have produced a national uproar and calls for impeachment. However, Blair?s announcement caused hardly a ripple. All that remained for the regime to do was to establish the policy by exercising it.
>>
>>Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless. They cannot do anything. The highly concentrated, corporate-owned, government-subservient print and TV media are useless and no longer capable of performing the historic role of protecting our rights and holding government accountable. Even many antiwar Internet sites shield the government from 9/11 skepticism, and most defend the government?s ?righteous intent? in its war on terror. Acceptable criticism has to be couched in words such as ?it doesn?t serve our interests.?
>>
>>Voting has no effect. President ?Change? is worse than Bush/Cheney. As Jonathan Turley suggests, Obama is ?the most disastrous president in our history.? Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who stands up for the Constitution, but the majority of Americans are too unconcerned with the Constitution to appreciate him.
>>
>>To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare.
>>
>>Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed by President Reagan Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and confirmed by the US Senate. He was Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and he served on the personal staffs of Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Orrin Hatch. He was staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee. He wrote the Kemp-Roth tax rate reduction bill, and was a leader in the supply-side revolution. He was professor of economics in six universities, and is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please, PLEASE decide people, how are you going to resist this tsumani of horror that will engulf us all unless we prevent it, and which will render moot ALL our life's projects and achievements to date. 
vbest regards,
peter


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Oct 24 21:00:23 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:00:23 +0200
Subject: [THS] MAPS Message Result : An Agent for Idiocy Bails Out
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024205009.0424c298@mail.messagingengine.com>

Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:59:26 -0400
From: Craig Schenk <murple at murple.net>
To: Peter Webster <psalience at fastmail.fm>
Subject: Re: MAPS: MAPS replies to Paul Craig Roberts post - The Day America
 Died

I am, after I believe nearly a decade of being on the MAPS list, finally 
unsubscribing as a result of this off-topic drek. The moderation of this 
forum has been sadly misdirected and/or non-existent for about 2 years, 
with all sorts of off topic stuff like this as well as hokey unscientific 
"on topic" stuff which makes me feel ashamed for MAPS as an organization 
for having this demented cousin dwelling under the stairs known as the MAPS 
Forum. It's sad, as this list was once one of the bastions of intelligent, 
scientific discussion of psychedelics on an internet full of sites like the 
Shroomery and Drugs Forum where the focus seems to be on getting F'd up as 
possible on as many drugs as possible - safety be damned (in fact, people 
attempting harm reduction often get ridiculed on many of those sites). Now, 
I see pretty much no connection between this list and the fantastic, 
downright heroic MAPS and the near superhuman dedication and accomplishment 
of Rick Doblin, Valerie Mojeiko, and other MAPS staffers, volunteers, and 
associate scientists beyond the fact that this list is still called "MAPS 
Forum" and perhaps a handful of you actually pay MAPS dues once or twice a 
decade when you're not busy flooding this formerly great forum with 
manifestos about non-drug politics, Masonic conspiracy theories, carrying 
around a DMT pipe as an alternative to aspirin for minor pain, or whatever 
other moronic topic of the week pops up. I've had it. I've secretly been 
hoping that MAPS would be kind and silently just take this list out of it's 
misery, but I suspect that most MAPS staffers have long since thrown up 
their hands in despair, pawned the forum off on some poor moderator who 
seems to just approve any and every rant submitted, either out of the same 
sense of despair that has driven me to unsubscribe or... well I can't 
imagine what the case could be. And I no longer care.

I'm not alone here, I've had numerous off-list "thanks for speaking up" 
emails when I've tried to counteract some of the dumber threads on here 
before... and I know many others who have either unsubscribed or simply 
directed maps-forum at maps.org to their spam folders.

I somehow doubt this post will be read by many, if it's even posted, and 
I'm sure this listserv will continue is sad descent into the intellectual 
sewage pipes of the online psychedelics community. For those who remain and 
enjoy this sort of thing, may you never run out of wingnut conspiracy 
theories and offtopic 30 page manifestos to keep your quasischizophrenic 
minds happy. For those who silently watch this forum with a tear in their 
eye... maybe one of you can some day speak up and try to make a difference. 
As for me, I join the ranks of those who wisely fled long ago, and feel a 
million tons lighter knowing I'll never again have my mail inbox polluted 
with this idiocy.

Goodbye.




On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 04:41:04PM +0200, Peter Webster wrote:
> Dear MAPS people,
> Once again I feel a necessity to try to inform you of the grave situation occurring on this planet - it is a situation not only political, but ecological, social, .../ it is an all-pervading situation and therefore must also be of significance to psychedelic researchers. 
> 


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Oct 24 21:02:10 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:02:10 +0200
Subject: [THS] At 19:59 24/10/2011, Craig Schenk did write:Re: MAPS
In-Reply-To: <20111024175926.GA20030@pachamama.murple.net>
References: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024135719.06470240@mail.messagingengine.com>
	<20111024175926.GA20030@pachamama.murple.net>
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024205246.04c69228@mail.messagingengine.com>



Helloo Mr. Part of the Problem,

If you yourself had not descended so completely into coarse ad hominem and foul language, you might have been read more thoroughly. As it is, I expect to have a wider readership in spite of ciruclating your screed to my newsletter and other locations where most won't get through even the following.

At 19:59 24/10/2011, Craig Schenk did write:
>I am, after I believe nearly a decade of being ... hokey  

you said it


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Oct 24 22:25:22 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:25:22 +0200
Subject: [THS] The guy just can't shut up
In-Reply-To: <20111024200130.GA21511@pachamama.murple.net>
References: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024135719.06470240@mail.messagingengine.com>
	<20111024175926.GA20030@pachamama.murple.net>
	<6.2.3.4.2.20111024205246.04c69228@mail.messagingengine.com>
	<20111024200130.GA21511@pachamama.murple.net>
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024222216.043834a8@mail.messagingengine.com>

Or, one down, 236,678,098 to go. (My figure might be somewhat imprecise, apologies)

At 22:01 24/10/2011, Craig Schenk did write:
>Kindly keep your paranoid, misinformed, delusional, and just plain retarded 
>garbage out of my inbox. Ideally, you should consider setting your self on 
>fire and burning to death and tell yourself you're a great hero like some 
>of the self-immolating protesters of history. 
>
>
>On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 09:02:10PM +0200, Peter Webster wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Helloo Mr. Part of the Problem,
>> 
>> If you yourself had not descended so completely into coarse ad hominem and foul language, you might have been read more thoroughly. As it is, I expect to have a wider readership in spite of ciruclating your screed to my newsletter and other locations where most won't get through even the following.
>> 
>> At 19:59 24/10/2011, Craig Schenk did write:
>> >I am, after I believe nearly a decade of being ... hokey  
>> 
>> you said it


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Oct 24 22:33:19 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:33:19 +0200
Subject: [THS] Paul Craig Roberts: Totally Corrupt America
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024223030.0436bd18@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29500.htm

[no further need of !!!!!!! for Paul Craig Roberts articles - read'em & weep -ths]

Totally Corrupt America

By Paul Craig Roberts

October 24, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Last March I reviewed Matt Taibbi?s important book Griftopia, an entertaining account of the through-going financial fraud that gave us the financial crisis.  Taibbi shows that the US ?superpower? can match any third world backwater in the magnitude of greed and fraud that is endemic in business and government. Taibbi?s Griftopia was published last year. This year Henry Holt publishers have provided us with Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner?s Reckless Endangerment.

Morgenson and Rosner tell the story again, but with less drama and provocation. Possibly, it might be more acceptable to those gullible Americans who wrap themselves in the flag and refuse to believe that their country could ever knowingly do anything that is wrong.

I am not suggesting that Morgenson and Rosner pull their punches.  To the contrary, the authors deliver enough knockouts to be contenders with Taibbi as world champions in exposing the reckless  fraud that the US financial sector and its regulators now epitomize.

The financial crisis, which is very much still with us, did not result from accident or miscalculation; neither did it result because of a flaw in Alan Greenspan?s theory, as he told Congress when a feeble effort was made to hold him accountable.   It was the intentional result of people motivated by short-term profits who wanted to get theirs and get out.

As Reckless Endangerment shows, fraud characterized every stage of the process from the fraudulent borrower incomes and credit scores that mortgage issuers gave to unqualified buyers, through the securitization of the mortgages and their triple-A investment grade ratings by the rating agencies (Standard & Poor?s especially, but also Moody?s and Fitch) to the investment banks that sold what the banks knew was junk to investors around the world as investment grade securities.  Indeed, Goldman Sachs was simultaneously betting against the mortgage derivatives that it was selling to clients.

Investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, which once considered it a matter of honor to represent the interests of customers, took advantage of the trust that had been built up in the past to commit fraud against customers in order to advance the banks? short-term profits and the out-sized multi-million dollar managerial bonuses that these fraudulent profits produced.

Morgenson and Rosner provide a number of unique accounts of how those benefitting from fraud were able to defeat laws that were passed that would have held them to account. For example, the state of Georgia passed perfect legislation that held predatory lending to account. William J. Brennan Jr. and Georgia Governor Roy E. Barnes got the Georgia Fair Lending Act through the state legislature. It was a model for other states.  As the federal regulators had thrown in the towel, the state laws would have prevent the worst part of the financial crisis, it not prevented the crisis altogether.

The Georgia law only lasted a few months, because the rating agencies saw that their enormous profits from issuing fraudulent investment grade ratings were threatened by the law. The corrupt rating agencies mischaracterized the consumer protection act as a jihad by regulators. Standard & Poor?s declared that it would no longer allow Georgia mortgages to be placed in mortgage securities that it rated.

In other words, Georgia mortgages could no longer be securitized.  This announcement banned Georgia  mortgage lenders from securitization. Thus, the law was overturned, and fraud ran wild.

These kind of mafia strong-armed tactics in order to protect at all costs the short-term mega-bonuses that drove the totally fraudulent system have never been held accountable or punished.  Totally innocent people are held indefinitely and tortured by the US government for no other reason than to convince the gullible public that they are endangered by terrorists, but those who wiped out the home ownership and retirement pensions of millions of Americans now hold high and honorable positions on corporate boards and US regulatory agencies.

Federal regulatory agencies totally failed. Brooksley Born tried to use her statutory authority to regulate over-the-counter derivatives, but she was blocked by the Federal Reserve chairman, the US Treasure secretary, and the SEC chairman and forced to resign. As University of Chicago Nobel economist George Stigler predicted, regulatory agencies are captured by those who are intended to be regulated.  This was the case.

Regulators turned a blind eye to obvious criminal fraud, and were rewarded with lucrative positions in the financial community. The same for the US senators and representatives who repealed Glass-Steagal and other financial regulations.

For example, former US senator Phil Gramm who spearheaded the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking, the repeal of which set up the financial crisis, was rewarded by being made vice chairman of the mega-bank UBS, a Swiss global financial services company.

What Taibbi, Morgenson and Rosner make clear is that while monster criminals continue to collect their multi-million dollar annual incomes, depressed single mothers, deserted by the men who fathered their child, are sent to prison for having small quantities of illegal drugs to boost their depressed spirits, and their children are put out to adoption.

This is ?justice? in America where there is ?freedom and democracy.?

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Oct 24 22:37:52 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:37:52 +0200
Subject: [THS] A Note from Michael Moore
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024223740.04367028@mail.messagingengine.com>

A Note from Michael Moore 

Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 

Friends, 

As my book, HERE COMES TROUBLE, wraps up its third god-awfully awesome week on the New York Times bestseller list, and tens of thousands of you have now read it or are reading it, I'd like to take this moment to first thank you for buying it, borrowing it, or stealing it -- however you acquired it, I'm just happy you've got it. I poured months -- years -- of my life into this work and it means the world to me that I get to share these stories with you. I have kept most of them "inside" for decades, waiting until I was ready to write them down and share them with you. Now is that time.

And the response has bowled me over, to say the least. Many have written about how deeply affected they've been by this book. Others have told me how much they've laughed out loud while reading it. Some of you have written to tell me your own stories. I am honored that you would share your writing and your life with me. Thank you.

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of HERE COMES TROUBLE, I hope you do. It is, as both I and the New York Times have said, my best book to date. It is unlike anything I have written before. I think most of you will be pleased -- and perhaps surprised. These two dozen short stories from my life (the life I lived before I made movies) will not only let you in on how the hell I turned out this way, but they will, most importantly, give you a goodly number of hours of (I believe) very satisfying reading pleasure and enjoyment.

This book also acts as a way for me to tell a piece of American history (1954-1989) through the life of a kid raised in a factory worker's family, a child who grows up during a time of post-World War II working class prosperity -- but it was a prosperity that had its dark side, one that would lead to a country numbed with despair and nearly destroyed by those who just couldn't get enough.

Here's a sample of what you'll find in HERE COMES TROUBLE:

? The story of how, in 1986, I snuck into a private meeting that was organized by the Reagan administration to literally plot the moving of factories and jobs overseas and south of the border ("I was there. I was a witness to the murder of the American Dream.");

? The story of how a police raid on my alternative newspaper, The Flint Voice (a raid in which the police, upon orders of the mayor, seized files in an attempt to arrest the source of a story on the mayor), helped lead to a law passed by Congress to prohibit police searches of newsrooms;

? The story of how my Catholic priest confessed to me some forty years later that he was the chaplain who personally blessed the bombs on the mornings they were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki;

? The stories of my encounters in my youth with Bobby Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan;

? The story of how I planned my escape to Canada should I be sent to Vietnam;

? The inside scoop on the only two dates I had in high school!

Over the next few weeks and months, I'd like to tell you more about all this, the stories behind the stories, and to hear your reactions to them. I'd love to answer any questions you have and discuss how, though these are stories from "the past," they relate very much to what we are all going through these days (except the dating story -- don't ask me about that). I'll be writing to you more often. I'm going to hold some online chats, and have some twisted Twitter contests. (If you're not on Twitter, please join even if just to get my daily 140-character rants! I now live on Twitter whenever I'm not playing Angry Birds.) I will even be reading you some "bedtime stories" from the book, live online each week. Think of it as a sort of virtual HERE COMES TROUBLE Book Club. Everyone's a member!

Meanwhile, the Trouble Tour continues across the country. Over the next few weeks I'll be visiting Chicago, Denver, Miami, Houston, White Plains, Oakland, Palo Alto, Nevada City, San Diego, Storrs, and a special Halloween party in Portland, OR! There's also going to be some big community-wide events in Flint, Traverse City and other towns in Michigan. Details will be posted on my website.

Finally, as you know, I have been very active in the Occupy Wall Street movement for the past month. To say that I am thrilled with how fast this has spread across the country would be an understatement. That 59% of the U.S. (according to the latest poll) is already in support of the Occupy movement is the most heartening thing I have witnessed in a very long time. I've been spending all the time given to me on TV during this book tour not talking about the book, but about the protests against Wall Street. I know of no other cause in my lifetime that has exploded this fast and achieved majority support this quickly. There is much more to be done, and I invite and encourage every single one of you to do what you can to "Occupy" your towns so that the message is heard loud and clear by the banks and corporations: "This is OUR country, WE are the people -- and a corporation is not a person." The richest 400 Americans having more than 150 million Americans combined is not only immoral and undemocratic, it is an act of violence. It kills people, here and abroad. Whether it's the $2 billion a week we throw away on the U.S. war in Afghanistan, or the 45,000 Americans who die every year because they lack adequate health insurance, the days of Greed are going to come to an end because The People have had it. (Each day I am posting on my website the latest Occupy Wall Street news, ideas and video plus my in-person participation and first-hand accounts down on Wall Street. I also provide breaking news updates on Twitter.)

That's it for today. Read the book! You won't regret it. You WILL like it! And you will be able to participate in my online Book Club! By Thanksgiving, you'll be able to tell your conservative brother-in-law everything he didn't want to know about my childhood!

Talk to you tomorrow ...
Michael Moore
MMFlint at michaelmoore.com
@MMFlint
MichaelMoore.com 

P.S. I have challenged the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, to come on CNN this Tuesday night and debate the issues with me. We have not heard back, but I will show up nonetheless: Tuesday, 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PM PT, on Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN. I have asked that they allow in a live studio audience made up of those from the 99% and the Occupy Wall Street protestors. CNN has agreed. Mr. Blankfein, please show up and answer our questions. 


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Oct 24 22:45:20 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:45:20 +0200
Subject: [THS] At 19:59 24/10/2011, Craig Schenk did write:Re: MAPS
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111024224024.03e19718@mail.messagingengine.com>

Craig Schenk did also then write large indeed:
Kindly keep your paranoid, misinformed, delusional, and just plain retarded 
garbage out of my inbox. Ideally, you should consider setting your self on 
fire and burning to death and tell yourself you're a great hero like some 
of the self-immolating protesters of history. 


Helloo again Mr. Part of the Problem,
I have been informed by an expert in such matters that you don't even know how to spell 'drek' (sic)

and I quote, "I am, after I believe nearly a decade of being on the MAPS list, finally 
unsubscribing as a result of this off-topic drek."


Flame wars with such as yourself are extremely entertaining but dangerous: I might have to stay up all night risking my health just to see if you might venture yet another idiocy of great import!


From ths at psalience.org  Tue Oct 25 00:21:41 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:21:41 +0200
Subject: [THS] Vultures' Picnic hits book stores on November 14
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111025002000.04612d18@mail.messagingengine.com>

The 1% who get the gold mine (we get the shaft) 

by Greg Palast 

[Wall Street, New York] No one here in Zuccotti Park is protesting "Wall Street." Wall Street is just an address, just a street sign on a post. 

The 99% Movement is about Them: the 1%. The 1% who own Wall Street and all our streets and have posted a foreclosure notice on the entire planet. 

The 1% who get the gold mine while we get the shaft. 

For five years, I've been quietly working on a four-continent investigation about Them, the 1%. 

I've put it all in a new book. I could have called it Lives of the Rich and Shameless, but I've chosen this: Vultures' Picnic?in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores. 

Vultures' Picnic hits book stores on November 14. Click on the images to see the films, the slideshow, the excerpts?and order it right now. 

In Vultures' Picnic, my crew of journalist-detectives chase down British Petroleum bag men, CIA operatives, nuclear power con men?and "The Vultures," billionaire financial speculators who, through bribery, flim-flam and political muscle, take entire nations hostage for mega-profits. 

The action begins when the Deepwater Horizon explodes in the Gulf of Mexico and a confidential cable arrives on Miss Badpenny's desk from a terrified insider. He has the real, hushed-up facts of the disaster?which can only be found hidden in the files of a Central Asian dictatorship. 

I set off for Baku to investigate the whereabouts of millions of dollars in a brown valise personally delivered by Lady Thatcher and BP's CEO. Then I jump the globe to an Eskimo village after receiving an extraordinary note from the Chief of Intelligence of the Free Republic of the Arctic. 

It doesn't stop: a nuclear industry executive's plane goes down with him?and his files of incriminating evidence. 

It's a tale of oil company hit men, nuclear fraudsters and financial jackals. 

But more, it's my own story; of an investigator on the hunt, not quite sure why I'm doing it?and honestly, failing as often as I succeed. 

This week, Pacifica radio called Vultures' Picnic, "Palast's best; a real-life espionage tale, a detective novel?but it's scarier because it's all true." 

It's pulp non-fiction. Columbo with marital issues and a dying father. 

I'm asking you to order it today to get us back to the top of the bestseller lists. 

The success of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy changed the way America looks at elections (yes, Virginia, they get stolen). Let's make Vultures' Picnic a "best spoiler," to spoil the feast of the 1% and expose the so-called "job creators" as the economic carnivores they are. 

Read the excerpts, watch the films embedded in the eBook editions, and check out the slide show at Vultures' Picnic.org 

**** 

Media requests: click here. 

Join us on our 15-city tour which begins November 13. Info at: VulturesPicnic.org -> Tour. 

If your organization would like to support the tour and add your name to our supporters' list, please go to VulturesPicnic.org -> Sponsors. 

Greg Palast's reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight, in The Guardian and on Democracy Now! 

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts. 
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter. 

GregPalast.com 


From ths at psalience.org  Tue Oct 25 00:35:06 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:35:06 +0200
Subject: [THS] War criminal Henry Kissinger to be honored by New York
 Historical Society
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111025003414.0464f6e8@mail.messagingengine.com>

From Brad Simpson:


On November 7, the New York Historical Society is holding a fund raiser honoring Henry Kissinger at the Waldorf Astoria. Tickets start at $1000 and go up to $100,000. The $100,000 tickets allow you to also see Gorbachev and Charlie Rose. 

Several groups, including the War Resisters League, Code Pink, War Criminals Watch, the East Timor and Indonesian Action Network , World Can't Wait are planning to protest outside the event 5:30 - 7:45 in front of the Waldorf, 301 Park Ave. between 49 & 50 St.. We need to remind people about Henry Kissinger's sordid and criminal history concerning East Timor,Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, South Africa, Cyprus, Bangladesh, Angola, El Salvador, West Papua, and elsewhere. Kissinger is responsible for millions of deaths, millions maimed, millions homeless etc in these war torn places. Some websites state that he is an advisor to the Dept of Defense ?anti insurgent? efforts in Iraq. Other websites report that Hillary Clinton hired him last October to give advice to the State Dept.

I am a member of the Anti Militarism Committee of Brooklyn For Peace and I am working on this protest . I am writing to you and other historian because I feel that historians should be shocked that the NY Historical Society is honoring one of the worst war criminals in the history of the last 50 years. 

Some organizations such as Brooklyn For Peace have written to the NY Historical Society to voice opposition to this event. I am asking historians , organizations of historians or groups of historians to write to the NY Historical Society to protest this event. We are contacting Historians Against War, and other groups. If you can suggest others to contact or pass this along that would be appreciated.

Attached is a letter that we are trying to get historians to sign and then we will send it to the trustees and chairman of the board of the New York Historical Society. John Miller of the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network  is gathering the signatures. He can be reached at 718-596-7668; 917-690-4391 (mobile)
fbp at igc.org

We would love to have you add your signature to this letter.


Tom Keough

Brooklyn For Peace  Anti Militarism Committee

718 768 6171

Dear Sirs and Madams:

We write to request that you withdraw the name of Henry Kissinger as an honoree of the New York Historical Society at the event scheduled for November 7, 2011, at the Waldorf Astoria. Henry Kissinger is the United States? most notorious living war criminal, whose many crimes as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State from 1969-1977 include the following:

?      Approval and direction of mass bombing campaigns targeted at civilians in both North and South Vietnam, and the mass civilian assassination campaign known as the Phoenix Program;

?      The military invasion of Cambodia starting in 1969, including the approval and direction of mass bombing campaigns targeted at civilians, followed by the overthrow of the legitimate government of Cambodia and diplomatic support for the Khmer Rouge regime;

?      Approval and direction of mass bombing campaigns in Laos, reducing areas like the Plain of Jars to veritable moonscapes;

?      Approval and direction of the  overthrow of the democratically-elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende in 1973, and unqualified support for brutal military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and other countries in Latin America; 

?      Unwavering diplomatic and intelligence support to the apartheid regime in South Africa, including the provision of military support to the apartheid government?s military intervention in Angola?and then lying to the U.S. Congress about it;

?      Collusion with the mass murder and rape campaign of the ?West? Pakistan military in Bangladesh in 1971;

?      Authorization of Indonesia?s illegal invasion and occupation of East Timor in 1975, and the continued provision of U.S. military aid in violation of U.S. law, which enabled an occupation that killed up to a third of the population of the country.

 

This list could be lengthened considerably. Some observers might contend that Kissinger?s efforts to defuse U.S. tensions with China or his emphasis on d?tente with the Soviet Union somehow redeem him, but this objection misses the point. A serial killer who occasionally donates to charity is still a serial killer. Kissinger remains one of the twentieth century?s worst war criminals, and to pretend otherwise is to condone his crimes. It is difficult to understand how the New York Historical Society could consider honoring such a man.

 

This action on the part of the Society makes a statement that these crimes are of no importance to us as 21st-century New Yorkers, as Americans, and as human beings. We raise Kissinger?s crimes to your attention because as William Faulkner said, ?The past is never dead. It?s not even past.? The failure to hold Kissinger to account for his myriad of crimes has allowed him to continue dispensing recommendations for new wars and foreign interventions. The failure to confront this record has facilitated the invasion of Iraq, the use of torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the policy of rendition and the detentions at Guant?namo Bay, and other the illegal actions of the ?war on terror.?

 

As historians you are no doubt aware that Henry Kissinger is wanted for questioning in England, France, Spain, Chile and Argentina. Our culture is being poisoned by the failure to remember Kissinger?s and others? crimes and to hold them to account. It is a terrible thing to participate in this process of enforced forgetting and impunity, and it also reflects very poorly on the United States in the international sphere.

 

Many other countries hold their criminal leaders accountable. It is time the United States did so as well. We protest this normalization of the worst kind of criminality and ask you to join us by rescinding this invitation.

 

Sincerely, 

[The Undersigned]


From ths at psalience.org  Tue Oct 25 00:39:46 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:39:46 +0200
Subject: [THS] Citizens Must Unite After 20 Years Of Clarence Thomas
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111025003919.0460e548@mail.messagingengine.com>

Judging The Judge: Citizens Must Unite After 20 Years Of Clarence Thomas


Clarence Thomas Swearing In by White House

by Andrew Kreig 

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Judging-the-Judge-Citizen-by-Andrew-Kreig-111019-688.html

On Oct. 18 this week, the nation reached an important symbolic moment for the Clarence Thomas era on the Supreme Court. That was the date 20 years ago for his swearing-in ceremony, portrayed above in a White House photo showing the associate justice and his wife, Virginia, with Associate Justice Byron White administering the oath of office. 

But the scene was pure hokum designed by the Bush White House to quiet Thomas critics ASAP after the 52-48 Senate confirmation on Oct. 15 -- and to allow his backers to celebrate his lifetime appointment in grand style. In sum, this was stage-craft to fool the public about our most respected branch of government at one of its most solemn transitional landmarks.

The real ceremony was a tiny one in private on Oct. 23. Chief Justice William Rehnquist administered the oath after he pulled himself together following his wife's then-recent death. Thomas acknowledged this chronology in his 2007 autobiography, and other biographers confirm it.

Thus, the Thomas era on the court began with a fraud upon the public and has expanded into ongoing infamy.

We can now be confident beyond any reasonable doubt, for example, that Thomas was a porno fan who lied under oath about it during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Instead of admitting his interest, he claimed that his former staffer, Anita Hill, falsely testified that he described to her porn star Long Dong Silver.

Books and news reports for years after the hearing identified witnesses who could have exposed his deceptions about porn. His denial was a key part of his impassioned and otherwise effective defense. It persuaded many in his prime-time television audience into thinking he was yet-another black victim of what he piously called, "a high-tech lynching."


Anita Hill by Brandeis University

Retired federal judge, prosecutor and law professor Lillian McEwen this year adds to this previous evidence with DC Unmasked and Undressed, her powerful memoir of enduring cruel parents in a segregated nation's capital as a child of mixed race. She then found happiness in the law. The former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee under Chairman Joe Biden dated Thomas for years in the early 1980s, overlapping entirely with her lover's time supervising Hill while he chaired the Reagan EEOC, the main federal agency to redress sex, race and other job bias. She later became an administrative law judge with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In her book and in her recent interview on my public affairs radio show, Washington Update, McEwen described the future justice's keen interest in porn and other sex. This included, she says, his admiration for Long Dong Silver, their romps with multiple sex partners, and their visit to the sex club Plato's Retreat in New York City.


Retired SEC Judge Lillian McEwen by Lillian McEwen

Thomas was and is, of course, entitled to entertain himself in private as he prefers.

But that was hardly the political or spiritual rationale for hundreds of ministers to come to Washington in 1991 to lobby for his confirmation. Neither was it the legal issue later in the 1990s when federal authorities spent millions of taxpayer dollars to investigate and impeach President Clinton over the language he used to describe his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a consensual partner and former intern at all relevant times of their sexual relationship.

Even more important than perjury is last year's ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. With Thomas in the 5-4 majority, the court held that the First Amendment protects corporate and union funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections.

The decision and similar radical changes in our election procedures threaten to turn our future federal elections into make-believe democracy. Cash-strapped ordinary voters -- from the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street or anywhere else -- are likely to try in vain to influence pols who are raking in big-dollar contributions from giant groups while pretending to care deeply about The Sheeple. 

As background, the conservative group Citizens United in 1991 prepared for its own success by co-sponsoring with the Conservative Victory Committee a $100,000 TV ad campaign entitled, "Who Will Judge the Judge?"

This was to frighten Biden, shown below in a more recent photo, and two other influential Democratic senators with TV reports about their own past scandals. It was one of the key factors enabling the Thomas appointment. Biden failed to call witnesses who could have supported Hill's sexual harassment claims by describing Thomas propensities. Instead, Biden and other Democrats in the majority consented to the rushed timetable demanded by Republicans.


Joseph Biden by U.S. Government

The basic facts about the Citizens United ads are well-documented, including in a 1991 Time Magazine report. That reporting is amplified in relevant books, including The Real Anita Hill by her former scourge, David Brock. He noted that Citizens United founder Floyd Brown previously created the notorious Willie Horton ads used in the 1988 Presidential campaign. 


So, Brown was well-versed in high-stakes attacks. Also, he was able to keep costs low by having the ad produced by the Republican National Committee, according to Capital Games, a book by Timothy Phelps and Helen Winternitz. 

But those facts are not well-known today except by a few progressive groups trying to educate the public about the court's recent history and the real-world impact.

One such group is Protect Our Elections.org, which has been encouraging Congress to support a criminal investigation of Thomas. The group's counsel is Kevin Zeese, an organizer of the Occupy DC movement that staged a sit-in at the Supreme Court on Oct. 15. That demonstration resulted in 19 arrests, including Dr. Cornel West's. Zeese told me this week he plans to urge others at Occupy DC to support a criminal probe of Thomas, with hopes that such a prosecution finds other widespread support nationally.

His group says it has been in touch with the FBI for months to help document of what they call criminal conduct requiring prosecution and impeachment. Part of their evidence is from their own Freedom of Information requests, part from similar research by Common Cause and part from recent investigative reports or commentaries. Among the latter are those published by the New York Times, the New Yorker and Counterpunch.

This month, Huffington Post reported that 46 House Democrats called for a House ethics probe of Thomas, citing his failure to disclose more than $1.6 million in income and gifts on his sworn, annual financial statements. His wife received most of the money, the justice reported after Common Cause exposed his deceit early this year.

Virginia Lamp Thomas, married in 1987, is a longtime advocate for right-wing causes and their corporate backers. One such job was her leadership in late 2000 of Bush transition planning at the Heritage Foundation. At that same time, her husband was voting in the 5-4 majority inBush v. Gore to intervene in the Florida recount and thereby enable a Bush Presidency that made his wife's job meaningful.

But the Thomas role in the Citizens United case -- arguably vastly more important for the nation's future than even Bush v. Gore -- deserves the most attention now. Here is a summary of the Protect Our Elections evidence, which is documented on their website and in a newspaper ad they plan to run shortly: 

In November 2009, they wrote, two months before the Citizens United decision, Virginia Thomas received from Texas construction magnate Harlan Crow $500,000 to launch Liberty Central, an entity poised to benefit from corporations seeking involvement in political campaigns. The ad continues: 
Two months later, she told the IRS that she was going to be taking $495,000 in salary from Liberty Central over the coming months. The Thomases also used the Citizens United decision to enrich themselves by raising money based on that decision.

In response, the Supreme Court's longtime spokeswoman, Kathleen Arberg, defended Thomas by telling the Huffington Post that his errors on the simple, sworn forms were "inadvertent." I'll update this report also with any reaction from Crow or the justice, who have declined comment to previous news reports.

Thomas avoids jousting with critics, as his colleague Antonin Scalia occasionally enjoys doing. Instead, Thomas tends to attack them from a distance, as in his memoir. Another way is in his private meetings with supporters. For example, he responded to reports of his financial irregularities obliquely in February by telling a Liberty University audience that he and his wife "are focused on defending liberty," according a Politico report that quoted sources at the meeting, which was sponsored by the Federalist Society and closed to the media. 

Ordinarily, the Supreme Court is impervious to criticism, in part because its members have lifetime appointments. Also, the major watchdog institutions, both civil rights groups and media organizations, themselves have cases and potential cases before the courts.

But the Thomas scandal that has now been festering for two decades requires something more than a wait-and-see attitude by traditional court-watchers. In The Case Against Clarence Thomas, Huffington Post blogger Andrew Reinbach on Oct. 19 blasted this reluctance by what he called "official Washington" to investigate .

The non-partisan Justice Integrity Project I lead endorses such efforts and will push ahead with our mixture of investigative reporting and legal reform advocacy. This is just as we did in opposing the Supreme Court confirmation of Democrat Elena Kagan on civil rights grounds and exposing irregularities in the federal convictions of Republicans Ted Stevens and Bernard Kerik.

Many logical follow-ups exist to the Thomas scandals. We'll share them with other reporters at a press conference we're hosting at the National Press Club next week featuring the fearless Lillian McEwen on a date TBA, or we'll pursue the stories ourselves if others won't.

We can all learn from each other in this process. Let's find inspiration, for example, in the 1991 TV ad campaign slogan of Citizens United. Do you remember its title?

"Who Will Judge the Judge?"


From ths at psalience.org  Tue Oct 25 15:33:57 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:33:57 +0200
Subject: [THS] Glenn Greenwald: How the Rich Subverted the Legal System
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111025153158.04725fd0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175458/tomgram%3A_glenn_g

Tomgram: Glenn Greenwald, How the Rich Subverted the Legal System
Posted by Glenn Greenwald at 7:27am, October 25, 2011.

What if, last Friday, President Obama had stepped to the podium at the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room and begun his remarks this way: ?Good afternoon, everybody.  As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end -- for the sake of our national security and to strengthen American leadership around the world.  After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011.  Today, I?m here to tell you that I?m breaking that pledge.  It will not happen.  Instead, I?m leaving 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops in that country indefinitely.?

Of course, the president made no such claim (nor, if things had turned out differently in Iraq, would he have done so).  Nonetheless, according to news reports, such an outcome -- thousands of American troops in Iraq, possibly for years -- was the administration?s first choice, while military commanders were evidently eager to leave tens of thousands of troops behind.  It was the outcome that Washington had been negotiating for and lobbying Iraqi politicians about all year.  Because the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to give U.S. troops legal immunity, full withdrawal (with the possibility of reinsertion later) became the administration's default position, and President Obama was left to take unreserved credit for fulfilling an election campaign pledge to bring all U.S. troops home by the end of 2011, the outcome he hadn?t wanted.  (?Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year...?)  Keep this in mind as well: given the State Department?s militarization there -- it plans to run a mercenary ?army? of perhaps 5,000 hired guns from its monster Baghdad embassy in 2012 -- and a recent, little-noted statement by Iraqi cleric and American opponent Muqtada al-Sadr, the American war will not necessarily end next year either.

Mainstream papers reported all this, including the preferred plans for staying in Iraq, even while hailing the president?s decision to leave and keep his pledge, with no hint of the striking hypocrisy involved.  (The New York Times front-page headline read: ?Last U.S. Soldiers to Exit From Iraq in 2011, Obama Says, Fulfilling Vow to End Eight-Year War -- Dispute With Baghdad Is Cited.?)  Whether anyone outside the mainstream media is impressed with this sort of presidential maneuver anymore is an open question. Certainly, Glenn Greenwald wasn?t and that shouldn't surprise anyone.  With his scathingly on-target regular columns at Salon.com, it would be no exaggeration to say that Greenwald has had a hand in making many of us immune to American political and financial hypocrisy of every sort.

Now, he?s written a new book, just out today, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, that -- again, who could be surprised? -- is surely the book for the Occupy Wall Street moment in this country.  Riveting to read, it?s a must for understanding how immunity and impunity became, economically and legally, a way of life for the Washington and Wall Street elite. Tom

    Immunity and Impunity in Elite America
    How the Legal System Was Deep-Sixed and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land
    By Glenn Greenwald

    As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding -- indeed, an integral part of it.

    Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression.  This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades.  As journalist Tim Noah described the process:

    ?During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth -- the ?seven fat years? and the ?long boom.? Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80% of total increase in Americans' income went to the top 1%. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts, but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20%. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads.?

    The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated the trend, but not radically: the top 1% of earners in America have been feeding ever more greedily at the trough for decades.

    In addition, substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in American political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American Founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised ?the natural aristocracy? as ?the most precious gift of nature? for the ?government of society.? John Adams concurred: ?It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the
 course of nature the foundation of the distinction.?

    Not only have the overwhelming majority of Americans long acquiesced to vast income and wealth disparities, but some of those most oppressed by these outcomes have cheered it loudly. Americans have been inculcated not only to accept, but to revere those who are the greatest beneficiaries of this inequality.

    In the 1980s, this paradox -- whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state -- became more firmly entrenched. That?s because it found a folksy, friendly face, Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clich?s that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. ?A rising tide,? as President Reagan put it, ?lifts all boats.? The sum of his wisdom being: it is in your interest when the rich get richer.

    Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality was justified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the rich were rich because they deserved to be. They innovated in industry, invented technologies, discovered cures, created jobs, took risks, and boldly found ways to improve our lives. In other words, they deserved to be enriched. Indeed, it was in our common interest to allow them to fly as high as possible because that would increase their motivation to produce more, bestowing on us ever greater life-improving gifts.

    We should not, so the thinking went, begrudge the multimillionaire living behind his 15-foot walls for his success; we should admire him. Corporate bosses deserved not our resentment but our gratitude. It was in our own interest not to demand more in taxes from the wealthiest but less, as their enhanced wealth -- their pocket change -- would trickle down in various ways to all of us. 

    This is the mentality that enabled massive growth in income and wealth inequality over the past several decades without much at all in the way of citizen protest. And yet something has indeed changed.  It?s not that Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income and wealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was the perception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality as legitimate.

    Many Americans who once accepted or even cheered such inequality now see the gains of the richest as ill-gotten, as undeserved, as cheating.  Most of all, the legal system that once served as the legitimizing anchor for outcome inequality, the rule of law -- that most basic of American ideals, that a common set of rules are equally applied to all -- has now become irrevocably corrupted and is seen as such.

    While the Founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasized -- over and over -- that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law?s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that ?the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.? Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce ?total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections? between rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against ?counterfeit nobles,? those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.

    After all, one of their principal grievances against the British King was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every Founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply the law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure a warped and unjust society.  In many ways, that was their definition of tyranny.

    Americans understand this implicitly. If you watch a competition among sprinters, you can accept that whoever crosses the finish line first is the superior runner. But only if all the competitors are bound by the same rules: everyone begins at the same starting line, is penalized for invading the lane of another runner, is barred from making physical contact or using performance-enhancing substances, and so on.

    If some of the runners start ahead of others and have relationships with the judges that enable them to receive dispensation for violating the rules as they wish, then viewers understand that the outcome can no longer be considered legitimate. Once the process is seen as not only unfair but utterly corrupted, once it?s obvious that a common set of rules no longer binds all the competitors, the winner will be resented, not heralded.

    That catches the mood of America in 2011.  It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why so many Americans seem instantly to accept and support it.  As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.

    It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality -- acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world -- without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people?s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.

    Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of Americans that the wealth of the top 1% is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s.  They can retroactively immunize themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation?s telecom giants for their role in Bush?s domestic warrantless eavesdropping program.  

    It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois?s Dick Durbin, blurted out in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks ?frankly own the place.? 

    If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation?s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged.  At exactly the same time that the nation?s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the world's largest and one of its harshest penal states, under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions. 

    In lieu of the rule of law -- the equal application of rules to everyone -- what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunized while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.

    The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimizing anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.

    That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fueling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities.  That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.

    Glenn Greenwald is a former constitutional and civil rights litigator and a current contributing writer at Salon.com. He is the author of two New York Times bestselling books on the Bush administration's executive power and foreign policy abuses. His just-released book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (Metropolitan Books), is a scathing indictment of America's two-tiered system of justice.  He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.

    Copyright 2011 Glenn Greenwald


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 00:34:47 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:34:47 +0200
Subject: [THS] The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026003333.04648ff0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imaginable

The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable

The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug ImaginableMaking small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.

About three weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service delivered an ordinary envelope to Mark's door. Inside was a tiny plastic bag containing 10 tabs of LSD. "If you had opened it, unless you were looking for it, you wouldn't have even noticed," Mark told us in a phone interview.

The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug ImaginableMark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit "check out." He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins?untraceable digital currency?worth around $150. Four days later the drugs, sent from Canada, arrived at his house.

"It kind of felt like I was in the future," Mark said.
View the gallery

Silk Road, a digital black market that sits just below most internet users' purview, does resemble something from a cyberpunk novel. Through a combination of anonymity technology and a sophisticated user-feedback system, Silk Road makes buying and selling illegal drugs as easy as buying used electronics?and seemingly as safe. It's Amazon?if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals.

Here is just a small selection of the 340 items available for purchase on Silk Road by anyone, right now: a gram of Afghani hash; 1/8th ounce of "sour 13" weed; 14 grams of ecstasy; .1 grams tar heroin. A listing for "Avatar" LSD includes a picture of blotter paper with big blue faces from the James Cameron movie on it. The sellers are located all over the world, a large portion from the U.S. and Canada.

But even Silk Road has limits: You won't find any weapons-grade plutonium, for example. Its terms of service ban the sale of "anything who's purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of mass destruction."

The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug ImaginableGetting to Silk Road is tricky. The URL seems made to be forgotten. But don't point your browser there yet. It's only accessible through the anonymizing network TOR, which requires a bit of technical skill to configure.

Once you're there, it's hard to believe that Silk Road isn't simply a scam. Such brazenness is usually displayed only by those fake "online pharmacies" that dupe the dumb and flaccid. There's no sly, Craigslist-style code names here. But while scammers do use the site, most of the listings are legit. Mark's acid worked as advertised. "It was quite enjoyable, to be honest," he said. We spoke to one Connecticut engineer who enjoyed sampling some "silver haze" pot purchased off Silk Road. "It was legit," he said. "It was better than anything I've seen."

Silk Road cuts down on scams with a reputation-based trading system familiar to anyone who's used Amazon or eBay. The user Bloomingcolor appears to be an especially trusted vendor, specializing in psychedelics. One happy customer wrote on his profile: "Excellent quality. Packing, and communication. Arrived exactly as described." They gave the transaction five points out of five.

"Our community is amazing," Silk Road's anonymous administrator, known on forums as "Silk Road," told us in an email. "They are generally bright, honest and fair people, very understanding, and willing to cooperate with each other."

Sellers feel comfortable openly trading hardcore drugs because the real identities of those involved in Silk Road transactions are utterly obscured. If the authorities wanted to ID Silk Road's users with computer forensics, they'd have nowhere to look. TOR masks a user's tracks on the site. The site urges sellers to "creatively disguise" their shipments and vacuum seal any drugs that could be detected through smell. As for transactions, Silk Road doesn't accept credit cards, PayPal , or any other form of payment that can be traced or blocked. The only money good here is Bitcoins.

Bitcoins have been called a "crypto-currency," the online equivalent of a brown paper bag of cash. Bitcoins are a peer-to-peer currency, not issued by banks or governments, but created and regulated by a network of other bitcoin holders' computers. (The name "Bitcoin" is derived from the pioneering file-sharing technology Bittorrent.) They are purportedly untraceable and have been championed by cyberpunks, libertarians and anarchists who dream of a distributed digital economy outside the law, one where money flows across borders as free as bits.

To purchase something on Silk Road, you need first to buy some Bitcoins using a service like Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchange. Then, create an account on Silk Road, deposit some bitcoins, and start buying drugs. One bitcoin is worth about $8.67, though the exchange rate fluctuates wildly every day. Right now you can buy an 1/8th of pot on Silk Road for 7.63 Bitcoins. That's probably more than you would pay on the street, but most Silk Road users seem happy to pay a premium for convenience.

The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug ImaginableSince it launched this February, Silk Road has represented the most complete implementation of the Bitcoin vision. Many of its users come from Bitcoin's utopian geek community and see Silk Road as more than just a place to buy drugs. Silk Road's administrator cites the anarcho-libertarian philosophy of Agorism. "The state is the primary source of violence, oppression, theft and all forms of coercion," Silk Road wrote to us. "Stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market."

Mark, the LSD buyer, had similar views. "I'm a libertarian anarchist and I believe that anything that's not violent should not be criminalized," he said.

But not all Bitcoin enthusiasts embrace Silk Road. Some think the association with drugs will tarnish the young technology, or might draw the attention of federal authorities. "The real story with Silk Road is the quantity of people anxious to escape a centralized currency and trade," a longtime bitcoin user named Maiya told us in a chat. "Some of us view Bitcoin as a real currency, not drug barter tokens."

Silk Road and Bitcoins could herald a black market eCommerce revolution. But anonymity cuts both ways. How long until a DEA agent sets up a fake Silk Road account and starts sending SWAT teams instead of LSD to the addresses she gets? As Silk Road inevitably spills out of the bitcoin bubble, its drug-swapping utopians will meet a harsh reality no anonymizing network can blur.

Update: Jeff Garzik, a member of the Bitcoin core development team, says in an email that bitcoin is not as anonymous as the denizens of Silk Road would like to believe. He explains that because all Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public log, though the identities of all the parties are anonymous, law enforcement could use sophisticated network analysis techniques to parse the transaction flow and track down individual Bitcoin users.

"Attempting major illicit transactions with bitcoin, given existing statistical analysis techniques deployed in the field by law enforcement, is pretty damned dumb," he says.


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 12:33:08 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:33:08 +0200
Subject: [THS] How cannabis causes 'cognitive chaos' in the brain
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026121623.06913730@mail.messagingengine.com>

<snort> <whoa!> oh man do these guys miss the point...
These 'findings' and especially some of the neurocognitive speculations presented as accepted truth may well illustrate, better than most such nonsensicals, the gaping flaws in The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. 'Philharmonic Orchestra' my ass. And, like that famous study of marijuana and creativity that didn't even use marijuana, neither does this one. Nor do they study the concerned species. Yet Another ratomorphic ratatouille presented as hard science.  -ths
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How cannabis causes 'cognitive chaos' in the brain

October 25th, 2011 in Neuroscience 

Cannabis use is associated with disturbances in concentration and memory. New research by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, has found that brain activity becomes uncoordinated and inaccurate during these altered states of mind, leading to neurophysiological and behavioural impairments reminiscent of those seen in schizophrenia.

The collaborative study, led by Dr Matt Jones from the University's School of Physiology and Pharmacology, tested whether the detrimental effects of cannabis on memory and cognition could be the result of 'disorchestrated' brain networks.

Brain activity can be compared to performance of a philharmonic orchestra in which string, brass, woodwind and percussion sections are coupled together in rhythms dictated by the conductor. Similarly, specific structures in the brain tune in to one another at defined frequencies: their rhythmic activity gives rise to brain waves, and the tuning of these brain waves normally allows processing of information used to guide our behaviour.

Using state-of-the-art technology, the researchers measured electrical activity from hundreds of neurons in rats that were given a drug that mimics the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana. While the effects of the drug on individual brain regions were subtle, the drug completely disrupted co-ordinated brain waves across the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, as though two sections of the orchestra were playing out of synch.

Both these brain structures are essential for memory and decision-making and heavily implicated in the pathology of schizophrenia.

The results from the study show that as a consequence of this decoupling of hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, the rats became unable to make accurate decisions when navigating around a maze.

Dr Jones, lead author and MRC Senior Non-clinical Fellow at the University, said: "Marijuana abuse is common among sufferers of schizophrenia and recent studies have shown that the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana can induce some symptoms of schizophrenia in healthy volunteers. These findings are therefore important for our understanding of psychiatric diseases, which may arise as a consequence of 'disorchestrated brains' and could be treated by re-tuning brain activity."

Michal Kucewicz, first author on the study, added: "These results are an important step forward in our understanding of how rhythmic activity in the brain underlies thought processes in health and disease."

Provided by University of Bristol

"How cannabis causes 'cognitive chaos' in the brain." October 25th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-cannabis-cognitive-chaos-brain.html


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 12:33:08 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:33:08 +0200
Subject: [THS] How cannabis causes 'cognitive chaos' in the brain
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026121623.06913730@mail.messagingengine.com>

<snort> <whoa!> oh man do these guys miss the point...
These 'findings' and especially some of the neurocognitive speculations presented as accepted truth may well illustrate, better than most such nonsensicals, the gaping flaws in The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. 'Philharmonic Orchestra' my ass. And, like that famous study of marijuana and creativity that didn't even use marijuana, neither does this one. Nor do they study the concerned species. Yet Another ratomorphic ratatouille presented as hard science.  -ths
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How cannabis causes 'cognitive chaos' in the brain

October 25th, 2011 in Neuroscience 

Cannabis use is associated with disturbances in concentration and memory. New research by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, has found that brain activity becomes uncoordinated and inaccurate during these altered states of mind, leading to neurophysiological and behavioural impairments reminiscent of those seen in schizophrenia.

The collaborative study, led by Dr Matt Jones from the University's School of Physiology and Pharmacology, tested whether the detrimental effects of cannabis on memory and cognition could be the result of 'disorchestrated' brain networks.

Brain activity can be compared to performance of a philharmonic orchestra in which string, brass, woodwind and percussion sections are coupled together in rhythms dictated by the conductor. Similarly, specific structures in the brain tune in to one another at defined frequencies: their rhythmic activity gives rise to brain waves, and the tuning of these brain waves normally allows processing of information used to guide our behaviour.

Using state-of-the-art technology, the researchers measured electrical activity from hundreds of neurons in rats that were given a drug that mimics the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana. While the effects of the drug on individual brain regions were subtle, the drug completely disrupted co-ordinated brain waves across the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, as though two sections of the orchestra were playing out of synch.

Both these brain structures are essential for memory and decision-making and heavily implicated in the pathology of schizophrenia.

The results from the study show that as a consequence of this decoupling of hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, the rats became unable to make accurate decisions when navigating around a maze.

Dr Jones, lead author and MRC Senior Non-clinical Fellow at the University, said: "Marijuana abuse is common among sufferers of schizophrenia and recent studies have shown that the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana can induce some symptoms of schizophrenia in healthy volunteers. These findings are therefore important for our understanding of psychiatric diseases, which may arise as a consequence of 'disorchestrated brains' and could be treated by re-tuning brain activity."

Michal Kucewicz, first author on the study, added: "These results are an important step forward in our understanding of how rhythmic activity in the brain underlies thought processes in health and disease."

Provided by University of Bristol

"How cannabis causes 'cognitive chaos' in the brain." October 25th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-cannabis-cognitive-chaos-brain.html


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 13:15:54 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:15:54 +0200
Subject: [THS] From Tahrir to Wall Street: Egyptian Revolutionary Speaks at
 OWS
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026131357.063f9fb0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/?akid=7771.234008.2x3p3V&id=685135&rd=1&t=1

From Tahrir to Wall Street: Egyptian Revolutionary Speaks at Occupy Wall Street

 Occupy Wall Street received a surprise visit Monday from several leading Egyptian activists, including 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz. She is one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, which is the group credited with helping to organize the January 25 protests that eventually toppled the regime of former president Hosni Mubarak. Prior to the protest in January, Mahfouz recorded a YouTube video urging people to fill Tahrir Square. Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman spoke to her at Occupy Wall Street. "Many of U.S. residents were in solidarity with us," Mahfouz said. "I am here to be in solidarity and support the Wall Street Occupy protesters, to say to them, ?the power to the people,' and to keep it on and on, and they will succeed in the end."     Read more
By Amy Goodman | Democracy Now!
Posted on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 @ 09:04 AM
Share
-
 
 
Police in Albany Refuse to Arrest Protesters--Will the 99% in Law Enforcement Ever Join the Rest of Us?

You could make an argument that clashes with police turned the media narrative about Occupy Wall Street from a rabble of confused hippies to a force to be reckoned with. Nate Silver at the New York Times ran the numbersand saw significant spikes in coverage after every run-in, most significantly when innocent protesters were hit with pepper spray and when police were said to lead protesters onto the Brooklyn Bridge only to arrest them in droves. Tension between the NYPD ? and police departments in other cities as the protests have spread ? and protesters continues to run high.    Read more
By Bryce Covert | New Deal 2.0
Posted on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 @ 08:58 AM 

 
 
Occupy Oakland Raided by Police, Reports of Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets

Today, Oakland occupiers were swept out of two encampents amid claims of excessive force. The livestream, which is going in and out, is embedded at the bottom of this post. 

Here's the tweet from Occupy Oakland sent out just after it happened early this morning:

    occupyoakland : #occupyoakland attacked by 500 cops in suprise assault. tear gas, rubber bullets, shotguns, flash bang grenades. Many injured.

The Oakland occupation's website goes into some more detail, saying over 70 (some reports now say 85) were arrested:     Read more
By Sarah Seltzer | AlterNet
Posted on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 @ 07:14 AM 


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 13:18:20 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:18:20 +0200
Subject: [THS] Why Hippie Culture Is Still Important to Our Protests
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026131710.06905848@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.alternet.org/story/152863/don%27t_diss_the_drum_circles%3A_why_hippie_culture_is_still_important_to_our_protests?page=entire

   
Dissent Magazine / By Danny Goldberg

Don't Diss The Drum Circles: Why Hippie Culture Is Still Important to Our Protests
It is precisely the mystical utopian energy that most professional progressives so smugly dismiss that has aroused a salient, mass political consciousness on economic issues.
October 25, 2011  |  
 
Photo Credit: Canadian Veggie via Flickr
 

Progressives and mainstream Democratic pundits disagree with each other about many issues at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street protests, but with few exceptions they are joined in their contempt for drum circles, free hugs, and other behavior in Zuccotti Park that smacks of hippie culture.

In a post for the Daily Beast Michelle Goldberg lamented, ?Drum circles and clusters of earnest incense-burning meditators ensure that stereotypes about the hippie left remain alive.? AtEsquire, Charles Pierce worried that few could ?see past all the dreadlocks and hear
over the drum circles.? Michael Smerconish asked on the MSNBC show Hardball if middle Americans ?in their Barcalounger? could relate to drum circles. The New Republic?s Alex Klein chimed in, ?In the course of my Friday afternoon occupation, I saw two drum circles, four dogs, two saxophones, three babies....Wall Street survived.? And the host of MSNBC?s Up, Chris Hayes (editor at large of the Nation), recently reassured his guests Naomi Klein and Van Jones that although he supported the political agenda of the protest he wasn?t going to ?beat the drum? or ?give you a free hug,? to knowing laughter.

Yet it is precisely the mystical utopian energy that most professional progressives so smugly dismiss that has aroused a salient, mass political consciousness on economic issues?something that had eluded even the most lucid progressives in the Obama era.

Since the mythology of the 1960s hangs over so much of the analysis of the Wall Street protests, it?s worth reviewing what actually happened then. Media legend lumps sixties radicals and hippies together, but from the very beginning most leaders on the left looked at the hippie culture as, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a saboteur of pragmatic progressive politics. Hippies saw most radicals as delusional and often dangerously angry control freaks. Bad vibes.

Not that there is anything magic about the word ?hippie.? Over the years it has been distorted by parody, propaganda, self-hatred, and, from its earliest stirrings, commercialism. In some contemporary contexts it is used merely to refer to people living in the past and/or those who are very stoned.

The hippie idea, as used here, does not refer to colloquialisms like ?far out? or products sold by dope dealers. At their core, the counterculture types who briefly called themselves hippies were a spiritual movement. In part they offered an alternative to organized religions that too often seemed preoccupied with rules and conformity, especially on sexual matters. (One reason Eastern religious traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism resonated with hippies was because they carried no American or family baggage.) But most powerfully, the hippie idea was an uprising against the secular religion of America in the 1950s, morbid ?Mad Men? materialism, and Ayn Rand?s social Darwinism.

The hippies were heirs to a long line of bohemians that includes William Blake, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Hesse, Arthur Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley, utopian movements like the Rosicrucians and the Theosophists, and most directly the Beatniks. Hippies emerged from a society that had produced birth-control pills, a counterproductive war in Vietnam, the liberation and idealism of the civil rights movement, feminism, gay rights, FM radio, mass-produced LSD, a strong economy, and a huge quantity of baby-boom teenagers. These elements allowed the hippies to have a mainstream impact that dwarfed that of the Beats and earlier avant-garde cultures.

In the mid-sixties rock and roll?s mass appeal fused with certain elements of hip culture, especially in San Francisco bands like the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and the Holding Company (as well as Seattle?s Jimi Hendrix). That mood was absorbed and expanded by much of the popular music world, including the already popular Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles. John Lennon?s songs ?Instant Karma,? ?Give Peace A Chance,? ?Across The Universe,? ?Revolution? (?But when you talk about destruction / Don?t you know that you can count me out?), and ?Imagine? are probably as close to a hippie manifesto as existed, and the Woodstock festival as close to a mass manifestation of the idea as would survive the hype.

It is easy to cherry pick a few idiotic phrases from stoners in the 1970 documentaryWoodstock, but what made the event and its legacy meaningful to its fans?aside from the music?was the example of people in the hip community taking care of each other, as shown in the Wavy Gravy documentary Saint Misbehavin?. No two hippies had the same notion of what the movement was all about, but there were some values they all shared. As Time put it in 1967, ?Hippies preach altruism and mysticism, honesty, joy and nonviolence.?

Like any spiritual movement (or religion) hippies attracted pretenders, ranging from undercover cops to predators such as Charles Manson, who used their external trappings for very different agendas. By October of 1967, following the so-called ?Summer of Love? (during which more than a hundred thousand long-haired teenagers overloaded and permanently changed the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco), exploitation of the word ?hippie? had become sufficiently prevalent that a group of counterculture pioneers in the Bay Area held a ?Death of the Hippie? mock funeral. A flier announcing the ceremony warned young seekers against the existential perils of hype.

    Media created the hippie with your hungry consent. Careers are to be had for the enterprising hippie. The media casts nets, create bags for the identity-hungry to climb in. Your face on TV. Your style immortalized without soul in the captions of the [San Francisco] Chronicle. NBC says you exist, ergo I am. Narcissism, plebian vanity.

The pure of heart were exhorted to ?Exorcize Haight-Ashbury. Do not be bought by a picture or phrase. Do not be captured in words. You are free, we are free. Believe only in your own incarnate spirit.? Woodstock shows that by 1969 even the long-haired masses had taken to calling themselves ?freaks.?


A YEAR ago, shortly before the 2010 mid-year election, a left-wing blogger on a conference call with President Obama?s adviser David Axelrod complained that dismissive comments by the administration about its left-wing base amounted to ?hippie punching.? The phrase was used to emphasize the contempt that the administration had shown for the progressive base, but it was also a reminder of the disdain that most of the Left has for the word ?hippie,? as if to complain, ?You think that we are as irrelevant as hippies!? Like those who ostentatiously distanced themselves from the Wall Street drum circles, the bloggers wanted to distinguish the modern Left from actual hippies (or who they thought hippies were).

The anti-hippie ethos on the left runs deep. Many 1960s radicals claimed that the hippies had squandered a chance to mainstream left-wing political ideas. In Black Panther leader Bobby Seale?s book Seize the Time he quotes white radical Jerry Rubin as saying that he and others had formed the ?Yippies? because hippies had not ?necessarily become political yet. They mostly prefer to be stoned.? In the real world, the Yippies never got a mass following, but the Grateful Dead did.

Early in 1967 writers for the Haight-Asbury psychedelic paper the Oracle, along with local poets, musicians, and mystics, organized the first Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park. They were chastised by a group of Berkley radicals, including Rubin, for rejecting their proposal that the gathering should have ?demands,? a suggestion that the amused hippie conveners saw as a contradiction of the whole idea. (There are echoes of this argument in criticisms of the Occupy Wall Street protesters as insufficiently specific in their demands?as if the interests of 99 percent are not a clear enough litmus test for any proposed laws or regulations.)

Bill Zimmerman, an antiwar activist of the Vietnam era, summarized the radical attitude toward hippies in his excellent memoir Troublemaker:

    Not believing they could alter the juggernaut of American capitalism through politics, the hippies tried culture instead?starting with [Timothy] Leary?s slogan, ?Turn on, tune in, drop out?....While we [?the political people in the antiwar movement?] all accepted a subsistence lifestyle without expensive clothes, cars or other luxuries, they were about enjoyment, friendship, shared experiences, and whatever transcendence could be achieved through mind-altering drugs, music, and sex.

This both exaggerates the political viability of the non-hippie radicals of the day and underestimates the social conscience and commitment of many of those who chose to develop communes and new age spiritual communities. One example is the SEVA Foundation, founded by Wavy Gravy and Ram Dass in the early 1970s. Over the course of thirty years, the nonprofit organization has raised enough money from rock benefits to pay for over three million eye operations in third-world countries to rescue people from blindness. And of course the modern environmental movement owes as much to a mystical belief in the sanctity of the earth as it does to science.

Some on the left maintained that hippies scared off socially conservative liberals who otherwise would have been more sympathetic to the antiwar movement. In There but for Fortune, a wonderful documentary about radical singer-songwriter Phil Ochs, the artist can be heard complaining that freakish looking protesters undermined the credibility of antiwar demonstrations with middle Americans. In a piece for the Nationin 1967, Ochs?s friend Jack Newfield complained, ?Bananas, incense, and pointing love rays to the Pentagon have nothing to do with redeeming America.?

Republicans leaders including Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and Ronald Reagan eagerly used cartoon versions of hippies as part of their successful attempt to break up the New Deal coalition. ?A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah,? quipped then California Governor Reagan in 1969. Jefferson R. Cowie?s Stayin? Alive theorizes that America?s rightward trend began when Nixon lured working-class whites into Republican arms by contrasting the hippie myth of Woodstock with country singer Merle Haggard?s anti-hippie anthem ?Okie from Muskogee.?

    One was southern, gritty, masculine, working class, white, and soaked in the reality of putting food on the table; the other was northern, eastern, radical, effete, leisurely, affluent, multi-cultural, and full of pipe dreams. One was real, the other surreal; one worked, the other played; one did the labor, the other did the criticism; one drank whiskey, the other smoked dope; one built, the other destroyed; one was for survival, the other was for revolution; one died in wars, the other protested wars; and one was for Richard Nixon, the other for George McGovern.

Cowie?s book is terrific, but this is nonsense. The lion?s share of the decline in Democratic votes for President occurred between 1964 (61 percent) and 1968 (43 percent), when Hubert Humphrey was the nominee. Most of those formerly Democratic votes went to the racist Alabama Governor George Wallace, who garnered 13 percent of the vote on a third-party ticket?an explicit reaction against civil rights legislation. The demonstrations outside of the Democratic Convention in 1968 in which many Americans sympathized with cops more than protesters had nothing to do with hippies; they were orchestrated by radical non-hippies like Rubin. (Hippie icon Allen Ginsberg argued in vain against the Chicago protests, because he presciently feared violence).

Four years later, there were no hippies involved with the McGovern campaign?s mistakes, like the ill-advised selection of Thomas Eagleton as the vice-presidential nominee and the breakdown of the relationship between the campaign and organized labor. Those mistakes were made by well-intentioned but inept liberal political consultants, many of whom would self-righteously characterize themselves as ?pragmatists? in future years.

It is possible that some non-racist, older, white Democrats switched sides because they were offended by aspects of hippie culture, but it seems likely that more of their children and grandchildren rejected conservative orthodoxy because of their attraction to that very culture. The Allman Brothers and other southern rock bands developed a following that dwarfed that of Haggard, and ended up being a source of funding for Jimmy Carter?s primary campaign in 1976.

Modern heirs to the hippie idea include millions of ?New Age? believers, inspired by the likes of Baba Ram Dass, Joseph Campbell, Deepak Chopra, and in some cases Oprah Winfrey, whose non-hierarchal spirituality exists outside the confines of traditional churches and synagogues. Although very few neo-hippie groups have explicit political agendas, many in the progressive public interest world benefit from their largess.


WHAT POSSIBLE relevance does any of this have to American politics in 2011? For one thing, many of those young people who like to beat on drums and who devised some of the subtle infrastructure of Occupy Wall Street are clearly tuned into an energy that exists outside of the parameters of political science.

Spiritual movements do not adhere to ?party lines,? which is one reason why conventional political activists find them so maddening. Martin Scorsese?s recent documentary on the life of George Harrison reminded us not only of the Beatle?s passionate embrace of Hinduism and the funds he raised for Bangladesh but also of his perverse anger at paying his taxes. Nonetheless, it doesn?t take a poll or a focus group to know that people who identify with the hippie idea are unlikely to vote Republican. (Ron Paul?s people are trying. They give out fliers at Occupy Wall Street while, as of this writing, Democrats still fear to do so.)

Conservatives have effectively peddled the notion that all politics are corrupt. The resulting apathy, and opposition to government, conveniently leaves big business more in charge than ever. The price that Democrats and progressives pay for belittling or ignoring contemporary devotees of the hippie idea, who share the opinion that politics are corrupt, is to reinforce the impulse to ?drop out? in a cohort that would otherwise be, for the most part, natural allies.

Spiritual values can expand the reach of political action, especially at a time when progressives struggle to connect to mass consciousness. Their causes have been mired in phrases like ?single-payer? and ?cap-and-trade.? For all of their virtues, policy wonks didn?t come up with ?We are the 99 percent.? People with drum circles did.

The Right understands the subtle connections between ideology and practical politics. Few Republican leaders distance themselves from right-wing Christians or demagogues like Glenn Beck. And Ayn Rand?s doctrine of selfishness, despite elements that conservative politicians would be afraid to avow, is celebrated by right-wing oligarchs and wanna-bes. Alan Greenspan, the long-time head of the Federal Reserve, was a personal disciple of Rand, and Congressman Paul Ryan, who drafted the Republican budget that would?ve eliminated Medicare, cites Rand as his intellectual hero.

Any bohemian movement will attract goofballs. Drum circles may inspire and unify a crowd in one situation, but simply drown out conversation in another. It is one thing for a polite protester to offer ?free hugs,? and quite another for a sweaty inebriate to impose them. The way to deal with this is to rebuke individual jerks, not to dismiss a vibrant section of mass culture.

As Martin Luther King pursued his strategy of nonviolent protest, the NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, who oversaw most of the legal strategy for the civil rights movement, mocked him by asking, ?How many laws have you changed?? King replied, ?I don?t know, but we?ve changed a lot of hearts.? Obviously, the civil rights movement needed both spiritual and legal efforts to achieve its goals. So do modern progressives. As Nick Lowe asked in the song made famous by Elvis Costello, ?What?s so funny about peace, love, and understanding??


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 13:28:05 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:28:05 +0200
Subject: [THS] The Stunning Victory That Occupy Wall Street Has Already
 Achieved
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026132729.068f6b48@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.alternet.org/story/152860/the_stunning_victory_that_occupy_wall_street_has_already_achieved?page=entire

   
AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

The Stunning Victory That Occupy Wall Street Has Already Achieved
In just one month, the protesters have shifted the national dialogue from a relentless focus on the deficit to a discussion of the real issues facing Main Street.
October 26, 2011  |  
 
 
Occupy Wall Street has already achieved a stunning victory ? a victory that is easy to overlook, but impossible to overstate. In just one month, the protesters have shifted the national dialogue from a relentless focus on the deficit to a discussion of the real issues facing Main Street: the lack of jobs -- and especially jobs with decent benefits -- spiraling inequality, cash-strapped American families' debt-loads, and the pernicious influence of money in politics that led us to this point.

To borrow the loosely defined terms that define the Occupy movement, these ordinary citizens have shifted the conversation away from what the ?1 percent? -- the corporate right and its dedicated media, network of think-tanks and PR shops -- want to talk about and, notably, paid good money to get us to talk about.

Peter G. Peterson, a Wall Street mogul and Nixon administration cabinet member, has reportedly dedicated a billion dollars of his fortune to the effort since the 1980s. How successful have he and his fellow travelers been? In 2009, the Washington Post came under fire for running an article ? in its news section, not its opinion pages ? written by Peterson's Fiscal Times, which the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting described as ?a propaganda outlet 
 [formed] to promote cuts in Social Security and other entitlement programs.? (It was Peterson Foundation employees, among those from other outside groups, who staffed Obama's ?bipartisan deficit commission.?) 

As I noted back in May, a study done by the National Journal that month quantified what the Washington Post's Greg Sargent, described as a ?deficit feedback loop,? in which ?the relentless bipartisan focus on the deficit convinces voters to be worried about it, which in turn leads lawmakers to spend still more time talking about it and less time talking about the economy.?

According to the Journal, ?major U.S. newspapers have increasingly shifted their attention away from coverage of unemployment in recent months while greatly intensifying their focus on the deficit.?

    The analysis -- based on a measure of how often the words "unemployment" and "deficit" appear in major publications -- portrays a dramatically shifting landscape of coverage over the past two years, as the debate over how to fix the federal deficit has risen to prominence and the question of how to handle still-high unemployment has faded from the media's consciousness.

Consider the impact that relentless focus on the deficit ? and declining coverage of the jobs crisis and housing meltdown -- had on public opinion until very recently:

Click for larger version
(click for larger version) 

Now fast-forward five months, and we see an entirely different media landscape. According to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, the economy dominated last week's news, grabbing 24 percent of the mainstream media's ?news hole.? Occupy Wall Street accounted for 10 percent of the news hole, up from 7 percent the week before, and 2 percent the week before that. (The death of Libyan leader Moammar Ghaddafi drew more attention to foreign policy issues this week, but the economy continued to be a dominant topic.)

Last week, Zaid Jilani of Think Progress offered some data which tell the tale of a dramatically shifting media landscape. He noted that ?at the beginning of August, when Washington, DC was debating the debt ceiling crisis, the national debt dominated the airwaves.?

    While it was appropriate for the media then to be covering the deficit due to the debt ceiling debate at the time, there was a stunning lack of coverage of the jobs crisis. A ThinkProgress review of the media coverage of the last week of July found that the word ?debt? was mentioned more than 7,000 times on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, and ?unemployed? was only mentioned 75 times.

But, writes Jilani, a recent ?review of the same three networks between Oct. 10 and Oct. 16 finds that the word 'debt' only netted 398 mentions, while 'occupy' grabbed 1,278, Wall Street netted 2,378, and jobs got 2,738.?

This sea-change can't be attributed only to the Occupy movement ? it also correlates with the White House's ?pivot? toward jobs and the economy ? but there is no doubt that Occupy Wall Street has played a major role in bringing attention to the plight of working America. Even House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, acknowledged the occupiers' grievances when his office announced that he would be giving an address ?about income disparity and how Republicans believe the government could help fix it.? One would be na?ve to believe Cantor would ever support such measures, but it nonetheless marked a dramatic departure from the GOP's usual class-war stance. (Cantor later canceled the speech when he learned he would be greeted by protesters.)

The real-world impact of this shift is difficult to predict, but the problems on which our mainstream discourse focuses are the ones most likely to be addressed. 
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy: And Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America.


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 13:36:23 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:36:23 +0200
Subject: [THS] "Stage Two" of the BP Gulf of Mexico Environmental Disaster
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026133609.062c0cc8@mail.messagingengine.com>

"Stage Two" of the BP Gulf of Mexico Environmental Disaster
New Drilling Permits amid 28,000 Unmonitored Abandoned Wells

By Rady Ananda

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27279

Global Research, October 25, 2011
Food Freedom


24,486 permanent and 3,593 temporarily abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico [Image]


Since BP?s catastrophic Macondo Blowout in the Gulf of Mexico last year, the Obama Administration has granted nearly 300 new drilling permits [1] and shirked plans to plug 3,600 of more than 28,000 abandoned wells, which pose significant threats to the severely damaged sea. Among those granted new permits for drilling in the Gulf, on Friday Obama granted BP permission to explore for oil in the Gulf, allowing it to bid on new leases that will be sold at auction in December.

Reports Dow Jones: ?The upcoming lease sale, scheduled for Dec. 14 in New Orleans, involves leases in the western Gulf of Mexico. The leases cover about 21 million acres, in water depths of up to 11,000 feet. It will be the first lease auction since the Deepwater Horizon spill.? [2]

Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey objected to BP?s participation in the upcoming lease sale, pointing out that: ?Comprehensive safety legislation hasn?t passed Congress, and BP hasn?t paid the fines they owe for their spill, yet BP is being given back the keys to drill in the Gulf.?

Environmental watchdog, Oceana, added its objection to the new permits, saying that none of the new rules implemented since April 2010 would have prevented the BP disaster. ?Our analysis shows that while the new rules may increase safety to some degree, they likely would not have prevented the last major oil spill, and similarly do not adequately protect against future ones.? [3]

Detailing the failure of the Dept. of Interior?s safety management systems, Oceana summarizes: 

    Regulation exemptions (?departures?) are often granted, including one that arguably led to the BP blowout;
    Economic incentives make violating rules lucrative because penalties are ridiculously small;
    Blowout preventers continue to have critical deficiencies; and
    Oversight and inspection levels are paltry relative to the scale of drilling operation.

Nor have any drilling permits been denied [4] since the BP catastrophe on April 20, 2010, which still spews oil today [5].

28,079 Abandoned Wells in Gulf of Mexico

In an explosive report at Sky Truth, John Amos reveals from government data that ?there are currently 24,486 known permanently abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico, and 3,593 ?temporarily? abandoned wells, as of October 2011.? [6]

Over a year ago, the Dept. of Interior promised to plug the ?temporarily abandoned? (TA) wells, and dismantle another 650 production platforms no longer in use. [7] At an estimated decommissioning cost of $1-3 billion [8], none of this work has been started, though Feds have approved 912 permanent abandonment plans and 214 temporary abandonment plans submitted since its September 2010 rule. [9]

Leaking abandoned wells pose a significant environmental and economic threat. TA wells are those temporarily sealed so that future drilling can be re-started. Both TA wells and ?permanently abandoned? (PA) wells endure no inspections.

Over 600 of those abandoned wells belong to BP, reported the Associated Press last year. ?Experts say abandoned wells can repressurize, much like a dormant volcano can awaken. And years of exposure to sea water and underground pressure can cause cementing and piping to corrode and weaken.? [10]

The AP added that some of the permanently abandoned wells date back to the 1940s.  And Amos advises that some of the ?temporarily abandoned? wells date back to the 1950s.

A three-month EcoHearth investigation revealed that a minimum of 2.5 million abandoned wells in the US and 20-30 million worldwide receive no follow up inspections to ensure they are not leaking. Worse:

    ?There is no known technology for securely sealing these tens of millions of abandoned wells. Many?likely hundreds of thousands?are already hemorrhaging oil, brine and greenhouse gases into the environment. Habitats are being fundamentally altered. Aquifers are being destroyed. Some of these abandoned wells are explosive, capable of building-leveling, toxin-spreading detonations. And thanks to primitive capping technologies, virtually all are leaking now?or will be.? [11]

Sealed with cement, adds EcoHearth, ?Each abandoned well is an environmental disaster waiting to happen. The triggers include accidents, earthquakes, natural erosion, re-pressurization (either spontaneous or precipitated by fracking) and, simply, time.?

As far back as 1994, the Government Accountability Office advised that there was no effective strategy in place to inspect abandoned wells, nor were bonds sufficient to cover the cost of abandonment. Lease abandonment costs estimated at ?$4.4 billion in current dollars ... were covered by only $68 million in bonds.? [12]

The GAO concluded that ?leaks can occur... causing serious damage to the environment and marine life,? adding that ?MMS has not encouraged the development of nonexplosive structure removal technologies that would eliminate or minimize environmental damage.?

Not only cement, but seals, valves and gaskets can deteriorate over time. A 2000 report by C-FER Technologies to the Dept. of Interior identified several  different points where well leaks can occur, as this image (p. 26) reveals.  [13]


To date, no regulations prescribe a maximum time wells may remain inactive before being permanently abandoned. ?The most common failure mechanisms (corrosion, deterioration, and malfunction) cause mainly small leaks [up to 49 barrels, or 2,058 gallons]. Corrosion is historically known to cause 85% to 90% of small leaks.?

Depending on various factors, C-FER concludes that ?Shut-In? wells reach an environmental risk threshhold in six months, TA wells in about 10-12 years, and PA wells in 25 years.  Some of these abandoned wells are 63 years old.

The AP noted that none of the 1994 GAO recommendations have been implemented. Abandoned wells remain uninspected and pose a threat which the government continues to ignore.

Agency Reorganization

Not only was nothing was done with the 1994 GAO recommendations to protect the environment from abandoned wells, its 2003 reorganization recommendations [14] were likewise ignored.  In a June 2011 report on agency reorganization in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, the GAO reports that ?as of December 2010,? the DOI ?had not implemented many recommendations we made to address numerous weaknesses and challenges.? [15]

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) was renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) last May after MMS drew heavy fire for malfeasance, including allowing exemptions to safety rules it granted to BP. An Office of Inspector General investigation revealed that MMS employees accepted gifts from the oil and gas industry, including sex, drugs and trips, and falsified inspection reports. [16]

Reorganization proceeded.  Effective October 1, 2011, the Dept. of the Interior split BOEMRE into three new federal agencies: the Office of Natural Resources Revenue to collect mineral leasing fees, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) ?to carry out the offshore energy management and safety and environmental oversight missions.? The DOI admits:

    ?The Deepwater Horizon blowout and resulting oil spill shed light on weaknesses in the federal offshore energy regulatory system, including the overly broad mandate and inherently conflicted missions of MMS which was charged with resource management, safety and environmental protection, and revenue collection.? [17]

BOEM essentially manages the development of offshore drilling, while BSEE oversees environmental protection, with some eco-protection overlap between the two agencies. [18]

Early this month, BSEE Director Michael Bromwich spoke at the Global Offshore Safety Summit Conference in Stavanger, Norway, sponsored by the International Regulators Forum. He announced a new position, Chief Environmental Officer of the BOEM:

 

?This person will be empowered, at the national level, to make decisions and final recommendations when leasing and environmental program heads cannot reach agreement. This individual will also be a major participant in setting the scientific agenda for the United States? oceans.? [19]

Bromwich failed to mention anything about the abandoned wells under his purview. Out of sight, out of mind.

Cost of the Macondo Blowout

Today, the GAO published its final report of a three-part series on the Gulf oil disaster. [20]  Focused on federal financial exposure to oil spill claims, the accountants nevertheless point out that, as of May 2011, BP paid $700 million toward those spill claims out of its $20 billion Trust established to cover that deadly accident. BP and Oxford Economics estimate the total cost for eco-cleanup and compensatory economic damages will run to the ?tens of billions of dollars.? [21]

On the taxpayer side, the GAO estimates the federal government?s costs will exceed the billion dollar incident cap set by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (as amended). As of May 2011, agency costs reached past $626 million.

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund?s income is generated from an oil barrel tax that is set to expire in 2017, notes GAO.

With today?s District Court decision in Louisiana, BP also faces punitive damages on ?thousands of thousands of thousands of claims.? U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier denied BP?s appeal that might have killed several hundred thousand claims, among them that clean up workers have still not been fully paid by BP. [22]

Notes

[1] U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, ?Status of Gulf of Mexico Well Permits,? n.d. http://www.bsee.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Permits/Status-of-Gulf-of-Mexico-Well-Permits.aspx

[2] Tennille Tracy, ?US Govt Approves First BP Deepwater Exploration Plan in US Gulf Under New Rules,? Dow Jones News Wire, 24 Oct. 2011. Reproduced at http://www.firstenercastfinancial.com/news/story/45441-us-govt-approves-first-bp-deepwater-exploration-plan-us-gulf-under-new-rules

[3] Michael Craig and Jacqueline Savitz, ?False Sense of Safety: Safety Measures Will Not Make Offshore Drilling Safe,? Oceana, 20 Oct. 2011 http://na.oceana.org/sites/default/files/reports/OffshoreSafetyReport_Oceana_10-18-11.pdf

Also see Oceana?s online appendix showing an analysis of each new safety measure?s effect on safety. http://na.oceana.org/sites/default/files/OnlineAppendix_SafetyReport_Oceana_10-19-11.pdf

[4] U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, ?Application for Permit to Drill (APD) Approval Process and Definitions,? n.d. http://www.bsee.gov/uploadedFiles/APD_Facts_and_Definitions_BSEE.pdf

[5] See, e.g.: David Edwards, ?New evidence of a massive oil slick near Deepwater Horizon site,? Raw Story, 1 Sept. 2011. http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/new-evidence-of-a-massive-oil-slick-near-deepwater-horizon-site/

Frank Whalen, ?Oil Still Gushing from Bp Well in Gulf,? American Free Press, 2 Sept. 2011. http://americanfreepress.net/?p=341 

Dahr Jamail, ?Environmental Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: The Escalation of BP?s Liability,? Global Research, 5 Oct. 2011. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26947

Luis R. Miranda, ?Gulf of Mexico Sea Floor Unstable, Fractured, Spilling Hydrocarbons,? The Real Agenda, 10 Oct. 2011. http://real-agenda.com/2011/10/10/gulf-of-mexico-sea-floor-unstable-fractured-spilling-hydrocarbons/

[6] John Amos, ?Over 28,000 Abandoned Wells in the Gulf of Mexico,? 18 Oct. 2011. http://blog.skytruth.org/2011/10/abandoned-wells-in-gulf-of-mexico.html

[7] U.S. Dept. of the Interior, ?Interior Department Issues ?Idle Iron? Guidance,? 15 Sept. 2010. http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Interior-Department-Issues-Idle-Iron-Guidance.cfm

[8] Siobhan Hughes, ?Plugs Ordered on Idle Wells: Move to Permanently Seal Sites in Gulf Could Cost Billions but Create New Work,? Wall Street Journal, 16 Sept. 2010. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703743504575493782591743858.html

[9] U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, ?Idle Iron Update,? n.d. (pp. 9-16) https://www.noia.org/website/download.asp?id=47290

[10] Jeff Donn and Mitch Weiss, ?Gulf of Mexico hides 27,000 abandoned wells,? Associated Press, 7 July 2010. http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20100707-Gulf-of-Mexico-hides-27-000-1068.ece

[11] Steven Kotler, ?Planet Sludge: Millions of Abandoned, Leaking Oil Wells and Natural-Gas Wells Destined to Foul Our Future,? EcoHearth, 17 Aug. 2011. http://ecohearth.com/eco-zine/green-issues/1609-abandoned-leaking-oil-wells-natural-gas-well-leaks-disaster.html 

[12] U.S. Government Accounting Office, ?Offshore Oil and Gas Resources: Interior Can Improve its Management of Lease Abandonment,? (GAO/RCED-94-82) May 1994. http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat3/151878.pdf

[13] J.R. Nichols and S.N. Kariyawasam, ?Risk Assessment of Temporarily Abandoned or Shut-in Wells,? C-FER Technologies, Oct. 2000. http://www.boemre.gov/tarprojects/329/329AA.pdf

[14] U.S. Government Accounting Office, ?Results-Oriented Cultures: Implementation Steps to Assist Mergers and Organizational Transformations,? (GAO-03-669) 2 July 2003. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-669

[15] U.S. Government Accountability Office, ?Oil and Gas: Interior?s Restructuring Challenges in the Aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill,? (GAO-11-734T) 2 June 2011. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11734t.pdf

[16] U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Office of Inspector General, ?Investigative Report ? Island Operating Company, et al.,? 31 March 2010. http://www.govexec.com/pdfs/052510ts1.pdf

[17] U.S. Dept. of the Interior, ?Interior Department Completes Reorganization of the Former MMS,? 30 Sept. 2011. http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Interior-Department-Completes-Reorganization-of-the-Former-MMS.cfm#

[18] U.S. Dept. of the Interior, untitled document distinguishing the areas of responsibility between the BOEM and the BSEE. n.d. http://www.bsee.gov/uploadedFiles/A%20to%20Z%20Guide%20web%20version%281%29.pdf

[19] U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, ?BSEE Director Delivers Remarks at the International Regulators Forum 2011 Global Offshore Safety Summit Conference,? 4 Oct. 2011. http://www.boemre.gov/ooc/press/2011/press1004.htm

[20] U.S. Government Accountability Office, ?Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Actions Needed to Reduce Evolving but Uncertain Federal Financial Risks,? (GAO-12-86), 24 Oct. 2011. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1286.pdf

[21] U.S. Government Accountability Office, ?Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Preliminary Assessment of Federal Financial Risks and Cost Reimbursement and Notification Policies and Procedures,? 9 Nov. 2010. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d1190r.pdf

[22] Sabrina Canfield, ?Judge Denies BP Appeal That Might Have Killed Thousands of Claims, Courthouse News Service,? 24 Oct. 2011. http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/10/24/40864.htm

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From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 14:01:14 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:01:14 +0200
Subject: [THS] Chris Hedges: Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026135104.068f6eb0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.nationofchange.org/occupiers-have-convince-other-99-percent-1319548239#

Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent
Chris Hedges

The occupation movement?s greatest challenge will be overcoming the deep distrust of white liberals by the poor and the working class, especially people of color. Marginalized people of color have been organizing, protesting and suffering for years with little help or even acknowledgment from the white liberal class. With some justification, those who live in these marginalized communities often view this movement as one dominated by white sons and daughters of the middle class who began to decry police abuse and the lack of economic opportunities only after they and their families were affected. This distrust is not the fault of the movement, which has instituted measures within its decision-making process to make sure marginalized voices are heard before white males. It is the fault of a bankrupt liberal class that for decades has abandoned the core issue of economic justice for the poor and the working class and busied itself with the vain and self-referential pursuits of multiculturalism and identity politics.

The civil rights movement, after all, achieved a legal victory, not an economic one. And for the bottom two-thirds of African-Americans, life is worse today than it was when Martin Luther King marched in Selma in 1965. King, like Malcolm X, understood that racial equality was impossible without economic justice. The steady impoverishment of those in these marginal communities, part of the Faustian deal worked out between the Democratic Party and its corporate sponsors, has been accompanied by draconian forms of police control, from stop-and-frisk to militarized police raids to the establishment of our vast complex of prison gulags. More African-American men, as Michelle Alexander has pointed out, are in prison or jail or on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began. The corporate state keeps some two-thirds of poor people of color in the United States trapped in internal colonies?either in the impoverished inner city or behind bars. And the abject failure on the part of the white liberal establishment to stand up for the rights of the poor, as well as its decision to throw its support behind Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who abet this institutionalized and economic racism, has left many in these marginal communities disdainful of protesters from the newly dispossessed white middle class.

?The black community and the community of color have been dealing with these issues for decades,? the Rev. Raymond Blanchette, an African-American preacher from Queens, said in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan one day last week as we closed our jackets against a chilly wind whipping down the canyons of the financial district. ?Now the white community around the country is beginning to see it and experience it firsthand. It?s pretty shocking to them. The African-American community and other communities of color are saying, ?Welcome to the world I live in.? That?s why you don?t see that many of those [nonwhite] faces here. It?s like, OK, now you decided you are going to speak up because now you?re the one that?s affected by it. One of the reasons I?m here is because I see the viability of this movement. I want to bring those communities together.?

The power elite have desperately tried to tar the movement with a series of calumnies, branding protesters as hippies, anti-Semites, drug addicts, leftists, anarchists and communists. They have so far been unable to blunt the fundamental truth the movement imparts: We have undergone a corporate coup. It has to be reversed. But this truth has yet to resonate among those who for decades have been betrayed and ignored by white liberals.

The decision by protesters from Occupy Wall Street to join Cornel West in Harlem last Saturday to protest the New York City Police Department?s stop-and-frisk policy was an important step in taking the message of the occupy movement to our impoverished internal colonies. West, who led the protest outside the 28th Precinct at West 123rd Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard and who was arrested along with about 30 others, was part of a crowd that chanted: ?Stop-and-frisk don?t stop the crime. Stop-and-frisk is the crime.?

The power elite are frantically searching for the ideological weapon that will discredit the movement. But the clarity of the protests, the painful personal stories of dislocation that are the heart of its message, and, most important, the self-discipline, despite police provocation, which has kept these protests nonviolent have advanced the movement and discredited the forces of control. The power elite, held together by the glue of force and fraud, are seeking ways to communicate in the only language they know they can master?unrestrained force. And as we enter the second month of demonstrations, the power elite fear that the core message and the calls for resistance, which resonate with a majority of Americans, will lead to a direct confrontation with the corporate state. If the movement starts to pull hundreds of thousands of people together, if it leaps across class lines, as I saw during the peaceful revolutions in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, then the corporate state is probably finished. Our corporate overlords know this. And they are doing everything in their power to make sure this does not come to pass.

The divisions between the poor and the working class on the one hand and the white, liberal middle class on the other reach back to the Vietnam anti-war movement. The New Left in the 1960s was infused with the same deadly doses of hedonism that corrupted earlier 20th century counterculture movements such as the bohemians and the beats. The antagonism between the New Left during the Vietnam War and the working class and the poor, whose sons were shipped to Vietnam while the sons of the white middle class were usually handed college deferments, was never bridged. Working-class high schools, including many high schools with large numbers of African-Americans, sent 20 to 30 percent of their graduates to Vietnam every year while college graduates made up only 2 percent of all troops sent to Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. Anti-war activists were seen by those locked out of the white middle class as spoiled children of the rich who advocated free love, drug use, communism and social anarchy. 

The unions and the white working class remained virulently anti-communist. They spoke in the language of militarism and the Cold War and were unsympathetic to the anti-war movement as well as the civil rights movement. When student activists protested at the AFL-CIO?s 1965 convention, chanting ?Get out of Vietnam!? the delegates taunted them by shouting ?Get a haircut.? AFL-CIO leader George Meany ordered the security to ?clear the Kookies out of the gallery.? United Automobile Workers President Walter Reuther, once the protesters were escorted out, announced that ?protesters should be demonstrating against Hanoi and Peking 
 [who] are responsible for the war.? The convention passed a resolution that read: ?The labor movement proclaim[s] to the world that the nation?s working men and women do support the Johnson administration in Vietnam.?

Those that constituted the hard-core New Left, groups like Students for a Democratic Society, found their inspiration in the liberation struggles in Vietnam and the Third World and figures such as Mao and Leon Trotsky rather than the labor movement, which they considered bought off by capitalism. They saw the working class as part of the problem. Many came to embrace the cult of violence. The Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam and the Weather Underground Organization became as poisoned by this lust for blood, quest for ideological purity, crippling paranoia and internal repression as the state system they defied. 

The bulk of the white protesters in the 1960s found their ideological roots not in the moral imperatives of King or Malcolm X but the disengagement championed earlier by beats such by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs. It was a movement that, while it incorporated a healthy dose of disrespect for authority, focused on self-indulgent schemes for inner peace and fulfillment. The use of hallucinogenic drugs, advocated by Timothy Leary in books such as ?The Politics of Ecstasy,? and the rise of occultism that popularized transcendental meditation, Theosophy, Hare Krishna, Zen and the I-Ching were trends that would have dismayed older radical movements such as the Wobblies and the Communist Party. The counterculture of the 1960s, like the commodity culture, lured adherents inward. It set up the self as the primary center of concern. It offered affirmative, therapeutic remedies to social problems and embraced vague, undefined and utopian campaigns to remake society. There was no real political vision. Hermann Hesse?s novel ?Siddhartha? became emblematic of the moral hollowness of the New Left. These movements and the celebrities who led them, such as the Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, catered to the stage set for them by television cameras. Protests and court trials became street theater. Dissent became another media spectacle. Anti-war protesters in Berkeley switched from singing ?Solidarity Forever? to ?We All Live in a Yellow Submarine.?

The power of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it has not replicated the beliefs of the New Left. Rather, it is rooted in the moral imperatives of justice and self-sacrifice, what Dwight Macdonald called nonhistorical values, values closer to King than Abbie Hoffman. It seeks to rebuild the bridges to labor, the poor and the working class. The movement eschews the hedonism of the New Left; indeed it does not permit drugs or alcohol in Zuccotti Park. It denounces the consumer culture and every evening shares its food with the homeless, who also often sleep in the park. But, most important, it eschews, through a nonhierarchical system of self-governance, the deadly leadership cults that plagued and ultimately destroyed the movements of the 1960s. The political and moral void within the New Left meant that, like the counterculture of the beats or the bohemians, it was seamlessly integrated into the commercial culture. At its core the New Left shared the same hedonism, entrancement with mass entertainment, love of spectacle and preoccupation with the self. And the degeneration of the New Left is personified by politicians such as Clinton, who mouthed the usual platitudes about the poor and working men and women while he and both major political parties, awash in corporate dollars, betrayed and impoverished them.

Murray Bookchin wrote: ?Radical politics in our time has come to mean the numbing quietude of the polling booth, the deadening platitudes of petition campaigns, carbumper sloganeering, the contradictory rhetoric of manipulative politicians, the spectator sports of public rallies and finally, the knee-bent, humble plea for small reforms?in short, the mere shadows of the direct action, embattled commitment, insurgent conflicts, and social idealism that marked every revolutionary project in history. 
 What is most terrifying about present-day ?radicalism? is that the piercing cry for ?audacity???L?audace! L?auduce! Encore l?auduce!??that Danton voiced in 1793 on the high tide of the French revolution would simply be puzzling to the self-styled radicals who demurely carry attach? cases of memoranda and grant requests into their conference rooms 
 and bull horns to their rallies.?

Macdonald argued that those who wanted change had to base all actions on the nonhistorical and more esoteric values of truth, justice and love. They had to retain Danton?s call for audacity. Once any class bows to the practical dictates required by effective statecraft and legislation, as well as the call to protect the nation, it loses its moral authority and its voice. The naive belief in human progress through science, technology and mass production, which this movement understands is a lie, erodes these nonhistorical values by placing faith in state power and fantasy. The choice is between serving human beings or serving history, between thinking ethically or thinking strategically. Macdonald excoriated Marxists for the same reason he excoriated the liberal class: They subordinated ethics to another goal. They believed the ends justified the means. The liberal class, like the Marxists, by serving history and power capitulated to the state in the end. This capitulation by the liberal class, as Irving Howe noted, ?bleached out all political tendencies.? Liberalism, he wrote, ?becomes a loose shelter, a poncho rather than a program; to call oneself a liberal one doesn?t really have to believe in anything.?

In line with the occupy movement, we must not extol the power of the state as an agent of change or define progress by increased comfort, wealth, imperial expansion or consumption. The trust in the beneficence of the state?which led most liberal reformers to back the wars in Vietnam and Iraq at their inceptions, as well as place faith in electoral politics long after electoral politics had been hijacked by corporate power?ceded uncontested power to the corporate state. Liberals and liberal groups, such as MoveOn, which urge us to appeal to formal structures of power that no longer concern themselves with the needs or rights of citizens have become forces of disempowerment. 

The only effective tool for change will come through movements such as those that stand in direct opposition to state power and seek through the sheer force of numbers and civil disobedience to discredit and weaken the corporate state. The corporate state cannot be the repository of our hopes and dreams. And the liberal establishment has, by making concession after concession, merged itself into the corporate apparatus and has nothing left to say to us. It is part of the elaborate and hollow political theater that has replaced genuine political participation. The dismantling of our radical social and political movements in the early and even middle part of the 20th century in the name of anti-communism left the liberal class, as well as the wider society, without a repository of new ideas. The utopian fantasies of globalism and naive acceptance that the dictates of the marketplace should be permitted to determine human behavior became not just the creed of the corporatists but finally the creed of liberal apologists such as Thomas Friedman and most professors in university economic departments. And the strength of the new movements is that they have exposed this lie.

What we are witnessing in parks and squares across the United States is not simply widespread revulsion over the greed and cruelty of corporate capitalism, but the articulation of a new and potent radicalism. This radicalism challenges the right of corporations to poison our ecosystem and turn greed and self-promotion into the highest good at the expense of human life. If this movement can cross class lines, if it can articulate its vision to those in marginalized communities, especially poor people of color, it can tap into a force and power that was never part of the New Left. It can make possible the shaking of the foundations and, let us hope, the toppling of the corporate state.

This article was originally posted on Truthdig.

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ABOUT Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges is a weekly Truthdig columnist and a fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is ?The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.?
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?If this movement can cross class lines, if it can articulate its vision to those in marginalized communities, especially poor people of color, it can tap into a force and power that was never part of the New Left.?

    * Chris Hedges
    * Occupy Wall Street
    * United States

19 comments on "Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent"
Shaun Loftus

October 26, 2011 2:38am

Ok - I don't buy this. History is written by the victors, and often written by the media as it is happening. His dismissal of the New Left of the 60's is based on some idea that it was a completely bought out escapade, led by hedonists who only cared about justice for the sons of the white middle class.

This manages to magically delete all of those who were fighting for economic justice, those who were desperately fighting for programs for the inner cities, those who were fighting to end the war and bring our kids home. Just because the establishment was able to paint a whole movement as a 'bunch of drug dropping hippies' does NOT make it so.

As to black people feeling disenfranchised by "white liberals" - you know? It was a whole lot of white 'liberals' who were fighting like hell for Troy Davis' life. We white 'liberals' have been here, all the time - and we have cared, and we have spoken up, but we have been shut out by black on white racism, listened patiently while we are accused of being racists ourselves, and have been continually treated with mistrust and contempt. It's hard to help a cat trapped in a pipe when the cat keeps biting you no matter your intentions.

Finally - as to the 'liberal establishment' - tell me who belongs to it so I can write to them. I do not see a 'liberal establishment' in the US. I see a Right Wing, a Far Right Wing, and a cowering, cowardly, 'Establishment somewhere just a little bit right of Center'

    * reply

MalleusMaleficarum's picture
MalleusMaleficarum

October 25, 2011 10:40pm

Hedges says that toppling the corporate state will lead to economic justice. In calling for the anarchic destruction of the state, Hedges sounds hauntingly like Grover Norquist, who wants to shrink the size of government then drag it into the bathroom to drown it in the bathtub. To top that dream of the reactionaries and Libertarians in the Tea Party, Hedges bashed the counterculture movement of the sixties, and then he attacked hedonism. But, Hedges didn't stop there, along the way he lashed out at: the Beat Generation; Jack Kerouac; Alan Watts; William Burroughs; inner peace and fulfillment; occultism; hallucinogenic drugs; transcendental meditation; Hare Krishna; Zen and the I-Ching in a homily worthy of Pat Robertson or Franklin Graham calling the faithful to return to their old time religion. Then, Hedges called for the black and the working poor to ally themselves with the OWS movement at Zucotti Park while jettisoning their drugs, alcohol and consumerism as part of a neo-temperance component to the OWS movement. At the core of his urgent message, is Hedges calling for a new wave of Puritanism? It certainly sounds as though he is, if this column is anything to go by. While arguing against the cult of leadership he says destroyed the counterculture movement of the sixties (he singled out Abbie Hofmann as the opponent of King - a risible tactic) Hedges appears to be setting himself up for the position of Moral Arbiter modelled on the moral tyrants of the Reformation: John Calvin and Oliver Cromwell. Hedges' unique vision has become so clouded, so murky, so unintelligible, that he alone can reveal it. This column sounds more like the echoes of the principles of a Robespierre, rather than the teachings of Gandhi. In his Principles of Political Morality, Robespierre argued, "To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty." and, "Death to the villain who dares abuse the sacred name of liberty or the powerful arms intended for her defence." Ultimately, the zealous excesses of Robespierre to guillotine people with little or no reason created enemies leading to his arrest and execution along with about a dozen of his supporters, including Saint-Just. This column seems to be evidence that Hedges has appointed himself to be the self-appointed director of a committee on public safety in a leaderless movement in pursuit of economic justice by collapsing every mechanism that could deliver it. Hedges case is far from proven, and he has yet to provide a convincing prima facie argument for the huge swathes of presumptions in this, his latest frenzied homily.

    * reply

damani

October 25, 2011 9:37pm

I reject the juxtaposition of multiculturalism to a more working class oreinted left posed by Hedges. Dr. King did not have the language, but he was working for economic justice in a multiracial society, when he was gunned down. He was working to run discussion of race to discussions of class, but it the context of multiracialism/culturalism. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s was a tack in the sme direction, but Reverend Jackson can be ctriricized for spending more time seeking respect form the Democratic Party than building a social movment. Identity politics is not just navel-gazing in a society so profoundly built upon racism, sexism and environmental degradation. And let' not forget that the white working class of the twentieth century was profoundly racist and sexist, so the youngsters were ruight to rebel against all that!

    * reply

alice.rabbit

October 25, 2011 8:16pm

cultural/racial differences is a whole other layer inside and outside the occupy and other movements. it's a cultural thing. it's an american thing. it's a separateness thing. it's a safety and comfort thing to stay within the group. it's something we need to get over. and reach out for each other. race is definitely still an issue and something to work out among ourselves right along with the protests. just like gender issues. our lives are multilayered. let's just break it down and patiently work each part..

    * reply

alice.rabbit

October 25, 2011 8:15pm

cultural/racial differences is a whole other layer inside and outside the occupy and other movements. it's a cultural thing. it's an american thing. it's a separateness thing. it's a safety and comfort thing to stay within the group. it's something we need to get over. and reach out for each other. race is definitely still an issue and something to work out among ourselves right along with the protests. just like gender issues. our lives are multilayered. let's just break it down and patiently work each part..

    * reply

todd saed

October 25, 2011 6:02pm

getting to the point here, armed self defense when all else fails, bullet proof vests standard issue, Che's guerilla warfare required reading, but it is education and self sacfrifice, not the glamor of seizure of power that counts the most. We must act, the articulation and verbalization of it all will fall out easily in the aftermath, slowly the masses are learning to disregard the nay sayers and critics, an attack by the enemy is an honor to yourself, with action our sense ofworth returns ,until we live and see and know again the ultimate truths, all are equal, rich, poor, men, women, children, minorities, and deserve a living wage, respect , love, and meaningful work, because we are human, corporations are built by humans, are to serve humans, how that has become so obscured defies reason and understanding, and is Gothic ignorance that subdues the patience

    * reply

Joe Befumo

October 25, 2011 5:12pm

http://www.kickthemout.org/2011/10/25/on-the-limitations-of-passive-resi...

Even Jesus knew there was a time for PEACEFUL resistance, and a time to take up the whip and DRIVE the moneychangers out of the temple!

Liberal icon Noam Chomsky wrote: "?Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That?s pretty obvious. You can?t have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp,to take an extreme case
."

Want to gain the trust of the "other 99%" - think about supporting the 2nd Amendment, for starters. The Founding Fathers included it NOT for hunting cuddly little critters, but for defending the freedom they gave us against an armed invading force. We ALL prefer to speak softly, but it only works if we still have that big stick.

    * reply

dcampbell

October 25, 2011 3:26pm

In this essay Chris is half right- but only half right about organized labor. It is accurate that some of labor attacked the anti war activists in the Vietnam war. But, what he did not say was that communists and socialists had been purged from much of labor prior to this event.
here is what M.L. King had to say about the role of organized labor.

Martin Luther King Jr.
"The Labor Movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.
Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.
The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome."
So, when you discuss working class folks, you need an accurate reporting on the role of the leading representation of working people- organized labor.

    * reply

Ann Ferguson

October 25, 2011 2:59pm

While Hedges makes some good points, he does a typical put down of identity politics characteristic of the Old white male left. Identity politics per se is not bad--after all the Civil Rights movement, women's movement and GLBT movements were based on this; and the lack of a left working class movement wasn't due to these movements, but the inability of the Old Left and the leaders of mainstream trade union movements to understand the need to deal with discrimination within their ranks and broaden their demands. But I agree with him that class politics is important and OWS people need to be sensitive to it. The reform question is a thorny one and I don't see either OWS or Hedges having made clear how you bring unconvinced people into a radical movement in the US without some concrete demands for reforms within the existing system, for example, by requiring that banks bail out all those whose mortgages have been foreclosed, which will then raise consciousness when the corporatocracy doesn't bring that about.

    * reply

Barbara O'Brien

October 25, 2011 2:19pm

A lot of us white middle-class and working-class people have been ground down by the system for a great many years; it didn't just happen last week. And we've been looking around the political landscape for at least 30 years and not finding anyone, or any movement, who represents us, either. One of the reasons so many whites have been taken in by the demagoguery of the Right is that no one on the Left has been speaking to them for years. My impression of OWS so far is that it means well, but parts of it seem to be falling into the same self-obsessions that always sank the New Left. Are they presenting something that will inspire the down-and-out in the rust belt, or struggling West Virginia mining communities, or family farmers in Nebraska? I'm not seeing it so far, but they're part of the 99 percent, too.

    * reply

Ron Suarez

October 25, 2011 1:03pm

Chris, I am one of the people who launched v2.0 of the web site for NYC General Assembly. I chose the "social networking" technology (WordPress/ BuddyPress) that we're using, configured and hosted the test server for the first 10 days. If you're interested, I can share with you the experience of someone born in Spanish Harlem in 1950 and the ups and downs of working with young white kids. DM me @drron

    * reply

Don

October 25, 2011 12:23pm

while i usually love Chris's articles, this one is of little use and is only destructive. I have not use for any kind of distraction from the current real problems that the occupiers are addressing. Get with it or be quiet.

    * reply

Richard Cottingham

October 25, 2011 12:11pm

This is an excellent article (though a bit more lengthy than need be) and I agree with its content. I spend 5 days of each week at Freedom Plaza with the October 2011 occupation (october2011.org) and I make financial contributions. This article coupled with my first hand observations causes me to raise two questions.
1. How will the poor, the people of color, the working class who have traditionally been ignored, or worse, exploited by the Liberals benefit in any way from shunning this movement. Isn't this the best opportunity they have had to help force a basic change from individual to social responsibility?
2. Why must support or non-support of the movements be an either - or situation. I do not believe that the vast majority of the 99% can be expected to camp out on the grass and concrete of a park or to send in financial donations. I do believe that compelling ideas about what must be done to remedy the injustices of unregulated capitalism, money in politics, unequal wealth distribution, illegal foreign occupations, environmental degradation, and the withholding of the right to healthcare will evolve from the Occupy Movements. Then the vast majority will support these ideas in polls, in conversations, and in interactions with others like themselves. When this happens the system will change or fail.

    * reply

DelawareDave

October 25, 2011 11:30am

I guess that makes the occupiers the one percenters...a bunch of pseudo-down-and-outers. If these protests really represented the disadvantaged in the big cities where they're taking place, they would have an entirely different shade.

    * reply

Lawrence Neal

October 25, 2011 9:05am

Go to the internet. Protests draw attention to issues, but only action brings change. They should contact everyone they know and ask them to stop doing business with the culprits that brought on the crash. Not to mention, businesses that have outsourced jobs.

The people who had something constructive to say have said it and gone home. Those remaining give an image of unwashed freeloaders. This only plays into the hands of those who want to discredit the movement. For example, this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHbwH-skURY&feature=share

The interviewer obviously picked the lamest fringe elements to film. This is a longstanding tactic of the lame stream media and it's owners, the 1%.

The banks have trillions in assets sitting unused. Let them pay for the damage they have done, say, 3 trillion, if they want to avoid going to jail. Of course, they won't, voluntarily, and their creature, the government, won't make them. The only thing that can be done is for people to refuse to pay, or to do business with them.

JOIN THE RESISTANCE!

www.mortgageresistanceofamerica.com

www.studentloanresistanceofamerica.com

    * reply

Amybear

October 25, 2011 9:26pm

Much of what he says is exceedingly true, a few passages are gobbledygook and some of it is, in a word, "spin" to bolster his conclusions. I think the problem has been with the leadership all along. We the people, the rank & file of every political and social segment have been helpless in the thrall of fake leftist movements and more so by the right-wing tyranny.

All of the liberal groups & institutions have been co-opted. Take the DLC, perfect example. wimmens movement--Gloria Steinem & the CIA. There was planning in all of this, an agenda to subvert and water down anything that came from the grass roots "yearning to be free". I have learned all about this from Alex Jones, ad nauseum, especially regarding the ecology movement. That's why "liberal" is a dirty word, I guess you would say a "fighting word". Like "hippie", an appellation which I have proudly claimed for forty years. It certainly started well before 1980, but Reagan was the best puppet the evil-doers ever had...Bush the Lesser was just not likeable enough, but he sure got a lot done for the corporations, even without public support. Crime families are like that.

blah, blah, blah...I don't like it that he paints the racial minorities as gutless whiners. The protest sign I see myself, (former privileged middle-class preppie) holding with my mouth taped over with a dollar bill is:

MARGINALIZED my whole life
MARGINALIZED as a girl
MARGINALIZED as a woman
MARGINALIZED as a single mother
MARGINALIZED by disability
MARGINALIZED by poverty, and soon to be
MARGINALIZED by old age

I certainly have more in common with the non-white underclass than I do with upper middle-class white men. So I guess what he is saying is: you white boys did nothing to help the poor or fight the drug war, which is one of the main tools of the Owners to keep us down. I agree on this point: the white middle class non-profits as a class have done NOTHING but make things worse. ACLU lawyers and their ilk are just about the biggest bunch of dithering old tabbies I have ever seen. "To the barricades? Let me check my day-planner and see if it's OK with my wife." KARMA calling! It is not time to save ourselves, it is time to save the world! Everything in our lives has led us to this point.

I believe the call to arms will be heard when each person realizes that THEY are the 99% and stops whining and gets their black/brown/red/yellow & pasty white asses out in the street. Those kids are giving every disenfranchised minority cover--and hope!

Oh California! "This is just a dream some of us had" even has it's own Facebook page. I am hoping now that I can live long enough to see liberty and justice for all...not "just us". #Occupy Oakland!

    * reply

Lucas

October 25, 2011 6:50am

I guess I'm the liberal apologist who foolishly continues to work so that I can afford to donate to liberal causes, including #OWS. While I respect Chris's perspective, I have to disagree with the position in this article. I don't think Chris will win over any of the rest of the 99% with a literal, and figurative philosophical drubbing of the middle-class left. Sorry Chris, some of us think we might be more effective if we work within the system so that we may support and encourage reform movements when the time arises. Forgive us for not all occupying the streets for the past three decades. You think the Occupiers are immune to hedonism? We'll see...

    * reply

Amybear

October 26, 2011 12:13am

I call them Obamapologists! Donate to liberal causes? How effective were you? At this point it should be apparent to all 99% of us that the game is fixed, the house always wins and those who work within the system are only making things worse. Those who work for certain corporations just might be called complicit. No one wants to hear about how you were just putting food on your family--or that you were only following orders... So you sneer " we may support and encourage reform movements when the time arises."

I believe that time arose on December 12, 2ooo. Everyone has their own opinion. 1913, 1937, 1963, 2001. Along with many other seniors, (once again) I've been out on the street for years. The way things are going, I thought I'd better see what it was like. We've missed you. Reform "movements" require action.

Forgive you?

We will never forgive
We will never forget
Expect us
~Anonymous

    * reply

Amybear

October 26, 2011 12:19am

"Foolishly"? You said it, not I. To work within a corrupt system is in itself corrupt.

    * reply

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From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 14:05:23 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:05:23 +0200
Subject: [THS] Drug War : "We Are Not Winning" - Former Deputy Chief Stephen
 Downing's Open Letter to
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026140337.062c0cc8@mail.messagingengine.com>

"We Are Not Winning" - Former Deputy Chief Stephen Downing's Open Letter to California Police


By Stephen Downing, AlterNet
Posted on October 24, 2011, Printed on October 25, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152858/%22we_are_not_winning%22_-_former_deputy_chief_stephen_downing%27s_open_letter_to_california_police

Dear Fellow Law Enforcers,

The federal government has put up another $72 million in "war-on-drugs-grants" to redirect your police resources once again from true public safety duties in order to extend their failed war on drugs; this time with a savage assault on California's 15-year-old medical marijuana law. Are you going to take the money and enforce federal law in lieu of upholding the will of the people of California or are you going to honor your sworn oath to uphold the laws of our sovereign state and send the money back?

August Vollmer, the police chief whose name is synonymous with the origins of professionalism in American policing, would urge you to send it back. 

In his work as president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Wickersham Commission Vollmer contributed to the successful campaign that led to the repeal of alcohol Prohibition. In an address to the IACP he stated ?drug addiction is not a police problem; it never has and never can be solved by policemen, but by scientific and competently trained medical experts...?

Unfortunately Vollmer wasn't around when Nixon decided to wage his war on drugs against the American people in 1971. I was a police commander in South Central Los Angeles at the time, and most of us believed Nixon's propaganda; that it was a just war, that the ?druggies? were evil and comprised a threat to our communities. 

We saw our resources dedicated to public safety bought off by Department of Justice and White House grants so that we could leverage their political priorities at the expense of our communities. Using their grant money and the lure of budget dollars though asset seizures they co-opted our public safety priorities and our role as public servants in deciding what was best for our communities. Evidence based budgeting and responsible, prioritized policing went out the window in favor of the war on drugs. We morphed from public servant to drug warrior; blindly serving their interests and their agreements with those who benefited most by a continuation of their war on drugs. We helped them invade and occupy our poorer communities. Their money allowed us to build war machines to batter down doors, purchase sophisticated weapons, surveillance equipment and intelligence apparatus. We arrested and imprisoned thousands and then hundreds of thousands, and while most users were white, the majority we sent to prison were from our minority communities.

Most of us stood proudly at the show and tells hovering over tons of drugs, mountains of cash and hundreds of weapons as a compliant media snapped our pictures and hailed our progress toward winning Nixon's war on drugs.

But, many of us came to see that we were not winning. We saw the gangs grow, fueled by drug money, the cartels better armed, death squads trained by our own military unleashed across Mexico and our border states. The bodies began to stack up, the gangs became more and more violent, the cartels outgunned us and many of our police officers, our public servants, were killed and maimed for life while the communities we were sworn to protect and serve huddled in their homes dodging bullets and watching their children die by gunfire, night after night after night. For what? 

That's what I asked myself when we lost our department's first officer to Nixon's war. For what? And then another ended up in a wheel chair for life. For what? So that we could continue the futile effort to keep a recreational or medical cannabis user from getting what he or she wanted? So we could continue failed programs keep an addict from getting a fix? So we could continue to rake in federal funds and shape our budgets around asset seizures rather than evidence based policing aimed at criminals who impose actual harm? For what?

I answered that question for myself and took a hard look at all of it. I came away from that "look" convinced that we were creating more economic and physical harm for the people we served than we prevented by taking their autonomy away and subjecting them to punishments far harsher than would have resulted from drug abuse alone. We destroyed generations of young people by labeling them as drug offenders, denying them education and job opportunities, we fueled the violence in our communities by allowing a black market to thrive, rather than providing the leadership to oppose Washington and the federal drug warriors. We allowed our children access to dangerous drugs by serving as catalyst that allowed an army of pushers to thrive rather than regulating the market for adults and drying up the pushers and the hierarchy of gangsters and drug lords that fed them. We threw soft-drug users into prisons awash in hard drugs. People entered jail with a diploma in marijuana and left jail with a doctorate in fraud, extortion and rape. We built more and more prisons while we fired more and more schoolteachers. And in the end, today, sadly, our communities have lost respect for the rule of law.

The one bright light came from the people of California when they took the first step toward regulation. They passed Prop 215, the medical marijuana law, in 1996. And after 15 years of regulated sales to those under doctors' supervision, we find the sky has not fallen and society has not suffered. In fact, not only has cannabis been more fully researched as a medicine, but crime has decreased in the areas that have allowed medical marijuana dispensaries, legal job opportunities have increased dramatically and tax dollars have gone into our treasuries.

This experience of the advantages of regulation of cannabis sales in California, though not perfect, has mirrored the experience in Holland, where drug policy experts have concluded that closing down safe, regulated, supervised points of marijuana sales would shift to the streets and that young people would become dependent on the criminal underworld for the purchase of drugs.

And yet, regardless of the successes, on October 6, 2011 U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy delivered Obama's declaration of war against the sovereignty of the people of California when she declared on his behalf that: ?Under United States law, a dispensary's operations involving sales and distribution of marijuana are illegal and subject to criminal prosecution and civil enforcement actions. Real and personal property involved in such operations are subject to seizure by and forfeiture to the United States...regardless of the purported purpose of the dispensary.?

Obama's weapons had already been fired. The IRS launched a devastating attack on tax-paying dispensaries by denying standard business expense deductions. The Department of Treasury has brow beaten banks into closing accounts of medical marijuana collectives. The ATF has warned firearms dealers not to sell firearms to medical marijuana users. The DEA has blocked a nine-year-old petition to reschedule marijuana for medical use, ignoring extensive scientific evidence of its medical efficacy. NIDA has blocked proposed research on medical marijuana to treat post-traumatic stress disorder for our veterans and - - in order to once again invade our communities with mass arrests, prosecutions and jailing of our citizens - - they have resorted to their tried and true strategy of buying you off - - this time with $72 million designed to divert 192 of your peace officers to drug warrior duty, once again, in order to carry out their assault on the sovereignty of the people of the State of California.

So, if you have taken that ?hard look? as I did many years ago, you too have come to that fork in the road.

Down one path we can continue to attack and destroy the lives of harmless people - often sick and dying people - for exercising their free will


...Or you can look to the words of August Vollmer, the father of professional policing in America, and return your share of the $72 million with a note explaining you would rather the money go to finding missing women and children ? investigating crimes with victims.

You can also vocally and economically support efforts such as the Regulate Marijuana Like Wine Act of 2012. 

Vollmer would tell us that we don't have to be the stormtroopers following orders from the Obama administration and its dedicated horde of prohibitionists - we can use our time-honored option ? our duty ? to prioritize crime according to public sentiment and evidence based policing as well as our own growing awareness over the relative seriousness of the harms to justify putting our energies elsewhere.  

With our help, society may one day awake from this nightmare called drug prohibition in the same way that August Vollmer helped bring America out of the nightmare called alcohol prohibition nearly 80 years ago. It's never too late to start doing the right thing.

Sincerely,

Stephen Downing, Deputy Chief, LAPD (ret.)

Executive Board Member, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Member and co-author: Regulate Marijuana Like Wine initiative


? 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152858/


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 14:30:54 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:30:54 +0200
Subject: [THS] Obama Admin Seeks Permission To Lie In Response To FOIA
 Requests
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026142909.04ad3908@mail.messagingengine.com>

Obama Admin Seeks Permission To Lie In Response To Freedom Of Information Requests - Even To The Courts

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Transparency-In-Government-by-Jerry-Policoff-111025-906.html

By Jerry Policoff

One of the President Obama's first promises after becoming President of the United States was a commitment to usher in a new era ofunprecedented government transparency. Instead the Obama administration has exhibited what may be an unprecedented obsession with government secrecy including blocking numerous law suits by invoking the doctrine of"State Secrets."   The administration has even come up with an interpretation of the Patriot Act which many in Congress who have seen it claim is overly broad and bestows more power on the Executive Branch than was intended by Congress when they passed it.  

Unfortunately those in Congress who have seen this document are not permitted to divulge its content, and we, the public, cannot see it because the administration has chosen to classify it as a "State Secret."   In other words, you might be doing something that the Obama Administration believes violates the Patriot Act, but you won't know it until they indict you for breaking a law you did not know existed (I might be breaking it just by penning and publishing this article).

Now the Obama/Holder Justice Department is attempting to re-write the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), empowering or even compelling government agencies to deny the very existence of records they know to exist if they believe they are legitimately exempted from disclosure.  Of course they are most likely the sole arbiter of whether they are indeed exempt from disclosure.  In effect the Obama/Holder Justice Department wants to be free to legally lie about the existence of records in response to FOIA requests.  Apparently they want to avoid the embarrassment and inconvenience of being officially rebuked by the courts for doing exactly that (lying to a Federal judge), as occurred earlier this year when, in a   strongly worded opinion, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney wrote that the "Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court."   The solution is simple:   re-write the law so the government, in many circumstances, can affirmatively mislead the co
 urt.

Despite substantial opposition by such groups as the ACLU, The National Press Club, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, OpentheGovernment.org., Judicial Watch, et al to this radical re-write of the FOIA Law , this controversial effort by the Obama Administration to evade the very transparency it so passionately promised to deliver has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media which is supposed to the guardian of the people's right to know.

Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or neither, this move by the Obama administration should trouble you deeply.  Is this change we can believe in???

Below are snippets of reports on this controversy, none of them from a mainstream media source.   That was not my intent.   I just could not find any.   I learned about it just this morning in an e-mail from the National Law Journal:

National Press Club Urges Administration to Reconsider Draft Rule on Freedom of Information

"Under the new Department of Justice proposal, in replying to a request for information under the freedom-of-information law, if the information is allowed to be withheld under certain statutory exceptions, then federal officials "will respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist"--even if that is not the case.

"No rule or law should allow, let alone require, the government to mislead the press or the public about anything," said Mark Hamrick , a broadcast journalist with the Associated Press who is the 2011 president of the National Press Club. "If enacted, it appears that this proposed rule would offend the precepts that informed the Freedom of Information Act, and it would tarnish the government's credibility.

"What's more, the change seems unnecessary,"  he said. "If agencies are exercising legally allowable exceptions to the law and withholding certain records, they can just continue to do as they do today: neither confirm nor deny the information's existence.""
Justice Dept. proposes lying, hiding existence of records under new FOIA rule 

"The Justice Department has proposed the change as part of a large revision of FOIA rules for federal agencies. Specifically, the rule would direct government agencies who are denying a request under an established FOIA exemption to "respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist," rather than citing the relevant exemption.

The proposed rule has alarmed government transparency advocates across the political spectrum, who've called it "Orwellian" and say it will "twist" public access to government.

In a public comment regarding the rule change, the ACLU, along with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and OpenTheGovernment.org, said the move "will dramatically undermine government integrity by allowing a law designed to provide public access to government information to be twisted to permit federal law enforcement agencies to actively lie to the American people."

"Conservative government watchdog Judicial Watch has also lambasted the proposed rules change

"Upon taking office, President Obama released a memorandum declaring his administration was "committed to operating with an unprecedented level of openness. Specifically, he pledged to bolster the strength of the FOIA act, calling it "the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government."
<SNIP>  not to mention <SNORT>


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 14:32:10 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:32:10 +0200
Subject: [THS] Glenn Greenwald: Why Is the Elite Class Protected Under
 America's Justice System?
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026143153.04ad3678@mail.messagingengine.com>

Tuesday 25 October 2011 
Glenn Greenwald: Why Is the Elite Class Protected Under America's Justice System?

by: Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview
 

Glenn Greenwald, author of "With Liberty and Justice for Some.? (Photo: Wikimedia)

http://www.truth-out.org/why-elite-class-protected-under-americas-justice-system/1319566022

Receive Glenn Greenwald's book, "With Liberty and Justice for Some? by making a minimum one-time donation of $35, or a monthly commitment of $10 or more to Truthout.

Mark Karlin: Although your book, "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful," is primarily on the increasingly adverse climate for civil liberties at the federal level, needless to say, your title seems made to order for what is happening with Occupy Wall Street. Protesters are getting arrested, while the elite perpetrators of Wall Street malfeasance and fraud go free. Is this a localized application of "how the law is used to destroy equality and protect the powerful"?

Glenn Greenwald: Actually, what is happening with the Occupy Wall Street protests is as perfect an illustration of the book's argument as anything I could have imagined. The book's central theme is that law is no longer what it was intended to be - a set of rules equally binding everyone to ensure that outcome inequalities are at least legitimate - and instead has become the opposite: a tool used by the politically and financially powerful to entrench their own power and control the society. That's how and why the law now destroys equality and protects the powerful.

What we see with the protests demonstrates exactly how that works. The police force - the instrument of law enforcement - is being used to protect powerful criminals who have suffered no consequences for their crimes. It is simultaneously used to coerce and punish the powerless: those who are protesting and who have done nothing wrong, yet are subjected to an array of punishment ranging from arrest to pepper spray and other forms of abuse.

That's what the two-tiered justice system is: elites are immunized for egregious crimes while ordinary Americans are subjected to merciless punishment for trivial transgressions.

MK: In your columns on Salon, you have been a relentless upholder of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties regardless of what political party is in power. This has put you at odds with both the Bush and Obama administrations. To many progressives, your dissection of the current White House's growing constraint on civil liberties is shocking. To what do you attribute the Obama administration's actions to go further than the Bush administration did in curbing civil liberties?

GG: It's difficult to assess motives, but one major difference between Bush and Obama is that Bush at least had one major political party pretending to find his abuses objectionable. By contrast, Obama has very little opposition: Republicans are being consistent by cheering for limitless executive power and civil liberties abuses carried out in the name of fighting Terrorism, but now, Democrats are either indifferent to those actions or outright supportive because they're now being carried out by their own party's leader. Bush's radicalism was seen as controversial right-wing dogma, but Obama has transformed it into bipartisan consensus, and thus strengthened it.

Part of what is happening is likely political: Democrats have often been accused of being soft on Terror, and if Obama were to abandon Bush's policies - the ones he promised to reverse when campaigning - he'd likely be politically vulnerable if there were another terrorist attack on US soil. Embracing the Bush/Cheney template is a means of immunizing himself from those attacks.

Finally, people convinced of their own Goodness often view restraints on their own power as unnecessary. After all, he's a Good Progressive and well-intentioned - unlike those evil Republicans - and we should therefore trust him to do things in total secrecy, without oversight and accountability. I think that extremely flattering self-image is part of what motivates these actions as well.

MK: There has been much speculation on this, but why do you think the Obama administration did not prosecute Bush officials who violated US and international standards of law?

GG: Both parties - and successive Presidents - benefit from elite immunity. They know that if they protect each other, then they, too, can commit crimes with impunity. A November, 2008 New York Times article was incredibly telling in this regard. It reported on Obama's opposition to investigations into Bush crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping - opposition revealed only after he was safely elected - and it explained that "because every President eventually leaves office, incoming chief executives have an incentive to quash investigations into their predecessor's tenure." As I wrote in the book about this article: "In other words, by letting criminal bygones be bygones within the executive branch, presidents uphold a gentleman's agreement to shield either other from accountability for any crimes they might want to commit in office."

It's the same reason that media elites and others are so opposed to these investigations as well: elites obviously benefit from elite immunity, and so have an interest in not subverting it when other elites commit crimes. I have no doubt that part of Obama's reluctance was political - a belief that applying the rule of law to Bush, Cheney and others would create political turbulence for him - but a significant motivating factor was undoubtedly the desire not to have his own actions investigated once he leaves office if the GOP controls the Executive Branch (and, thus, the Justice Department).

MK: The Iran-contra scandal is an excellent example of how officials at the highest levels of the US government broke the law (although Reagan had the excuse of "not remembering" what he authorized). Special Prosecutor Walsh had a pretty tight case. But ultimately, John Poindexter and Oliver North had their convictions reversed on a questionable legal technicality by partisan GOP judges. The "smoking gun" was found in the Iran-contra case, but still the perpetrators got off. How come?

GG: The Iran-contra travesty was the first time the template of elite immunity - solidified by Ford's pardon of Nixon - was applied to a new case. Basically, just a month before he was to leave office after being defeated by Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush pardoned his Defense Secretary, Casper Weinberger, and four other defendants, just as they were about to go on trial. What made that so remarkable was not only, as you say, that the case against them was so airtight: Weinberger got caught red-handed telling multiple lies to investigators in order to protect himself and Reagan when a diary he never turned over was found. Far worse was that Bush himself was implicated in many of these crimes, so these pardons were really a way of ending the investigation and thus protecting himself.

But no matter. Most media stars and outlets banded together to praise the pardons. After all, Cap Weinberger was one of them: a member in good standing of Washington's elite class. He did not belong in prison, even if he committed serious crimes. Of course, the fact that they live in a city - Washington, D.C. - where huge numbers of mostly poor and minorities are consigned to prison every day for far less serious infractions (such as minor drug offenses), and they never object to any of that, isn't something that concerned them. That's the two-tiered justice system personified.

The special prosecutor in charge of Iran-contra, life-long Republican Lawrence Walsh, warned that the Weinberger pardon "undermines the principle that no man is above the law" and "demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office." That's exactly the principle this episode entrenched, and our "watchdog press" led the chorus cheering it, just as they did the Nixon pardon.

MK: What role does the Republican domination of so many federal benches play in protecting the political and oligarchical elite from accountability?

GG: In general, those who get appointed to the federal bench, and then get approved by the Senate, are basically establishment-serving conservatives. With some exceptions, that's true whether they are appointed by Democratic or Republican Presidents, though obviously, the GOP appointees are more extreme in this regard.

Many of them have spent their whole careers as lawyers serving power. They are corporate lawyers, or prosecutors, or party activists. So their empathy and understanding is reserved exclusively for those in their circles: the powerful. They also know that their future career aspirations as judges - especially lower court judges looking to advance - depend on their not alienating those in power. That produces high levels of deference to the powerful and an instinct to protect large institutions over powerless individuals. Again, there are some exceptions, but this is largely what the federal judiciary has become, and that is the opposite of what it should be: it was meant to level the playing field by applying blind justice, not exacerbating it through insular, self-regarding socio-economic biases.

MK: Continuing with the issue of the courts, aren't they essential in sanctioning this double standard of justice? Can the 2000 Bush Supreme Court decision be fit into this model?

GG: They are absolutely essential. Courts are supposed to be the last resort to correct injustice. They are supposed to be immunized from political influences - that's why federal judges have life tenure and aren't elected - and thus able freely to vindicate the rights of the powerless over the powerful when the law calls for that. Few institutions have abdicated their institutional duties as much as the federal courts. I see Bush v. Gore more as naked partisanship in a war between two competing power factions (the 2 political parties) than I do as a double standard of justice, but it does reflect how corrupted the judiciary has become and how far astray they are from how they are supposed to function.

MK: In your introduction, you state: "The central principle of America's founding was that the rule of law would be the prime equalizing force, the ultimate guardian of justice." We may be a nation of inequality in other areas of life, but we are supposed to be equal before the law - regardless of wealth or power. When did that concept start to deteriorate in the United States?

GG: It has, of course, always been the case that being rich and powerful bestows advantages in every aspect of American life, including in courts and under the law. The nation was founded steeped in extreme inequality. But even when that was true, we at least affirmed the principle of blind justice - of equality under the law - as an aspiration, even when we violated it. It was affirming that principle which enabled the advances of the last century in terms of legal equality.

What has changed is that we no longer even affirm the principle. It is common to find arguments from political and media elites explicitly arguing that elites should not be subjected to the rule of law. I highlight many examples of that in the book. And the book documents that the genesis of this express repudiation of the rule of law was Ford's pardon of Nixon; that is when the country for the first time explicitly declared that one's status as a political elite meant they should be exempt from the legal precepts and punishments applied to ordinary Americans. That has now spilled over into not only the political class generally, but especially private-sector elites as well.

MK: How did it happen that there were no high-level prosecutions after the most recent near-catastrophic collapse on Wall Street, just a few lower-level targets? In fact, not only were there no high-level prosecutions, these guys are still running a good part of the nation's economy.

GG: Financial elites own and control the government, so it's not surprising that the government they own and control failed to hold them accountable for their crimes. As I say in the book, expecting the government to prosecute their Wall-Street-owners is like expecting a tenant to evict his landlord.

Beyond that, the ethos of elite immunity is that the more important someone is, the more urgent it is that they not be subjected to things like investigations, prosecutions, and especially prison, even if they were caught committing serious crimes. After all, this propaganda teaches, we need Wall Street tycoons (or CIA torturers, or NSA eavsdroppers) for our own security and prosperity, so shielding them from punishment is in the common good. The rationale for elite immunity is really that Orwellian.

Geithner said, just a few days ago, that there were Wall Street prosecutions and that more are coming, "stay tuned." Can he be taken even remotely seriously?

Absolutely not. Periodically, the U.S. Government will commence civil enforcement actions against Wall Street firms, and they almost always end with some absurdly low amount in payments that the firms simply write off as the cost of doing business. This is designed to cast the appearance of accountability, but given the magnitude of the fraud and other crimes, the "penalties" are negligible. The last thing the Obama administration is going to do heading into an election year is meaningfully sanction the industry that played such a key role in funding the President's 2008 campaign and which they want to fund his re-election bid.

MK: If the rule of law is split into two levels - one for the elite and one for the rest of us - doesn't democracy as we know it cease to exist? Doesn't it then become an oligarchy with the veneer of democracy on it to give it credibility?

GG: Absolutely. This is the key point. That's why I began the book highlighting how central was the rule of law in all of the Founders' writing. And by "rule of law," they meant equal application of law to all. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that "the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar." Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce "total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections" between rules and those they ruled.

One of their principal grievances against the British King was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every Founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure tyranny; in many ways, that is the definition of tyranny. That failure - to apply law equally - has clearly come to define the core of American justice. That's what motivated me to write this book.
Creative Commons License


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 17:13:45 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:13:45 +0200
Subject: [THS] Ending the Global War on Drugs: Cato Institute invites you to
 a Conference
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026171145.04c00890@mail.messagingengine.com>

The Cato Institute invites you to a Conference
Ending the Global War on Drugs
November 15, 2011 

Ending the Global War on Drugs 


Tuesday, November 15, 2011
9:00 a.m. ? 5:15 p.m. 

Due to the expansion project at Cato, this conference will be held at the
NAHB Auditorium
1201 15th Street, N.W., Washington D.C.
(Corner of 15th St. and M St., N.W.)
 
Although the global prohibition of drugs has manifestly failed to stem the use of narcotics, it has generated enormous costs and perverse outcomes. In the United States, the war on drugs is generating alarming violations of civil liberties, weakening the rule of law, and compromising law enforcement efforts. The U.S.-led drug war is also undermining legitimate foreign policy goals around the world, including the spread of liberal democracy and an effective war on terror. This conference will bring together prominent scholars and international leaders to analyze current policy and propose practical alternatives such as legalization.

Speakers will discuss
The impact of the drug war in Mexico, on the U.S. border, and in Central America 
 
How prohibition helps fund terrorist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond 
 
How Washington's anti-narcotics campaign violates the Constitution 
 
The effects of criminalization on minorities in the United States 
 
Lessons from South America 

[BUT! , No speakers will discuss how these effects are precisely the results the neocon agenda wants! -ths]
 
The evolution of drug policy in the United States and what decriminalization or legalization would look like in practice
  

Featuring
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Former President, Brazil 
Jorge Casta??eda, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mexico 
Tucker Carlson, Editor-in-Chief, Daily Caller 
Glenn Greenwald, Columnist and Blogger, Salon 
Mary Anastasia O???Grady, Member of the Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal 
Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director, Drug Policy Alliance 
Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou, Speaker of the House of Deputies, Uruguay 
Leigh Maddox, Board Member, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition 

Special Video Messages from Vicente Fox, Former President of Mexico, and George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State.

For further information, visit
www.cato.org/drugconference

Description: Register

To register, visit www.cato.org,
fax (202) 371-0841, or call (202) 789-5229
by Friday, November 11, 2011.

News media only, register here or call (202) 789-5200.

This conference is supported in part by a generous grant from the Open Society Foundations. Additional funding was provided by Mr. Peter Lewis.


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 17:58:54 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:58:54 +0200
Subject: [THS] !!! Occupy Student Debt
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026175838.048670e8@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://thefightback.org/2011/10/occupy-student-debt/

Listen to Stef Gray HERE

Occupy Student Debt

?I?d like to tell my 99 percenter story,? 23-year-old Stef Gray said yesterday at Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park, now renamed Liberty Plaza. One of the two signs Gray held as she spoke read, ?3 degrees cum laude. Facing eviction. Parents dead. $135K debt.? The other said, ?Will work any damn job. Not ?unpaid internships.??

?I grew up poor and orphaned,? Gray said. ?My dad passed when I was six. My mother passed when I was twelve. I spent my teens bouncing between homes of different family members where I was not necessarily wanted. I was told to stay in school and work hard
 [so] I started college when I was sixteen [and] I got great grades.?

?I?ve worked two jobs to make ends meet pretty much the entire time while I?ve been in school,? said Gray, who?s in jeopardy of defaulting on her student loans. ?Starting in January, I owe $700 a month on my $130,000 of student loan debt. That?s at 9.75 percent interest. The total amount just keeps snowballing higher and higher as I keep looking for jobs desperately. Right now, I can?t even pay my rent and I live in fear of homelessness and eviction.?

She?s not alone. USA Today recently reported that student loan debt in the U.S. is already greater than credit card debt and will soon surpass the $1 trillion mark. On top of that, the protections normally afforded debtors don?t apply to student loans, as Salon?s Alex Pareene noted:

?Thanks to the horrific 2005 bankruptcy bill, one of the most venal modern examples of Congress serving the interests of the rentiers and creditors over the vast majority, debtors cannot discharge student loans through bankruptcy.?

In addition to getting their pound of flesh irrespective of personal bankruptcies, the all-powerful creditors don?t offer students the chance renegotiate their loans if they?re experiencing under- or unemployment. ?Half of my student loan debt is private through Sallie Mae [and] there?s no income-based repayment,? said Gray. ?Even if I?m taking home $900 a month they can still demand the full $700. There?s no deferment for unemployment. There?s no interest rate caps
 I just want to pay off my debt, but I don?t even have a fair chance.?

View piece at TheFightBack.org
 
Website: TheFightBack.org
Facebook: Facebook.com/TheFightBack
Twitter: @FightBackRadio


From ths at psalience.org  Wed Oct 26 18:11:40 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:11:40 +0200
Subject: [THS] The world according to Noam Chomsky
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111026181012.0653a488@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://newsstore.smh.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac?&docID=SMH1110223K7M57LQVMJ
http://www.sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/

The world according to Noam Chomsky

Author: Jane Wheatley   Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 22/10/2011        Section: Good Weekend
Words: 3737             Page: 22
Source: SMH

He is "the most important intellectual alive" and, at 82, Noam Chomsky
still has plenty to say. Jane Wheatley visits the anti-establishment
icon in his Boston office and meets a man whose public utterances
conceal a private sadness.

When it comes to noam chomsky, the world, roughly speaking, is divided
into three camps: those who deride him as an obsessively anti-American,
left-wing ideologue and liar; disciples who worship him as an
implacable truth teller and meticulous defender of human rights; and
the rest, who might have vaguely heard of the name but don't really
know who he is.

And maybe a fourth camp, the fourth estate represented by The New York
Times, which acknowledged the softly spoken academic as "arguably the
most important intellectual alive" without necessarily agreeing with him.

For readers in the third "Who is this Chomsky anyway?" camp - a number
of whom I met not many kilometres from his office in the modernist
ivory tower of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology (MIT) in
Boston - here is a pen portrait.

Born in 1928, the son of Jewish immigrants, in Philadelphia, he wrote
his first article at 10, about the rise of fascism in Europe. By 13 he
was taking the train to New York by himself, haunting bookshops by day
and hanging out at his uncle's newsstand at night listening to
political discussion. In his 20s, he developed the radical theory that
the structure of language is not learnt but innate, a universal grammar
common to all humans.

Chomsky is MIT's professor of linguistics and philosophy, but the
rarified, ascetic title cloaks the soul of a prizefighter: a vigorous
and unforgiving critic of American foreign policy and of what he calls
the Anglosphere - governments in Britain and Australia acting as
lieutenants in his country's quest for global dominance. His books and
lectures sell out all over the world even though he rarely, if ever,
writes for the mainstream press, which he considers to be hobbled by
"orthodox power structures". Bizarrely, he did once contribute an
article to Hustler magazine, claiming later - and no doubt truthfully -
that he had no idea what sort of publication it was.

He was a prime mover in anti-Vietnam War protests and frequently
arrested for his trouble. The writer Norman Mailer once found himself
sharing a cell with Chomsky after a demonstration at the Pentagon and
later described him as having "an air of gentle but absolute moral
integrity". Chomsky went on to pursue what one observer called "a
lifetime of compulsive dissent", and appeared on former US president
Richard M. Nixon's "enemies list". After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he
invited traumatised Americans to consider whether the attack on the
Twin Towers was any worse an atrocity than US president Bill Clinton's
bombing of Sudan in the late 1990s. In the same vein, he criticised the
assassination earlier this year of Osama bin Laden: how would Americans
feel, he wondered, if Iraqi commandoes dropped into Washington,
murdered George W. Bush and ditched his body in the ocean.

this year, chomsky has been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize - a decision
not without its dissenters - and will arrive in Australia next month to
collect his award and a cheque for $50,000. It is for this reason that
I find myself in Boston, on a matchless golden morning in the northern
autumn, strolling through the MIT campus towards my rendezvous with
"the Chomster", as my son calls him. Such familiarity does little to
allay my anxiety at the prospect of an encounter with the man who knows
everything, knows what he thinks about everything and has every
supporting source and reference at his fingertips. As another
journalist on the same mission noted, the idea of pinning him down or
catching him out seems absurd. A book in which Chomsky debated ideas
with leading philosophers was like "watching a grandmaster play,
blindfolded, 36 chess matches against the local worthies".

The building that houses his eighth-floor office is apparently an
architectural marvel but looks like a giant has been prodding bits of
it so they lean at odd angles. Later, Chomsky tells me the sloping
walls are a damn nuisance because you can't fix bookshelves to them. I
am met by Bev Stohl, his assistant of 10 years, and her spaniel Roxy,
who has soft, chocolate curls and sleeps on a cushion in the corner.
There are several photos of Chomsky above the desk, including one of
him, dark-haired and dashing, which Stohl says was in GQ magazine.

She is famously stern about rationing time with her boss - interviewers
complain that their allotted hour turns out to be only 50 minutes - so
I'm fretting when I find Chomsky is still holed up with a visitor well
after our appointment time. "I'll get rid of him," says Stohl briskly,
reappearing minutes later to usher me into Chomsky's presence. Dressed
in jeans and an open-necked shirt, the 82-year-old greets me politely
enough but with a discernible lack of enthusiasm - forgivable, I
suppose, when he spends half of each day responding to a stream of
requests from people wanting a piece of him.

On the wall beside us is a striking portrait of Bertrand Russell:
"Yeah," drawls Chomsky, "one of the few people I admire." He and
Russell were largely of similar mind, so I ask him if there are people
who disagree with his views whom he also admires? There is a longish
pause, followed by a sigh: "Actually, there isn't," he says. "It's hard
to say; there isn't much critical discussion of my views - a lot of
shrieking, but no commentary."

Presumably he has noted the attacks in the Australian press following
the announcement of the Peace Prize award? "People sent me some stuff,
yeah." Critics brought up old saws - he was an apologist for Pol Pot in
Cambodia, a Holocaust denier, a proponent of revolutionary killings -
as well as his more recent "role" as bin Laden sympathiser. One ad
hominem attack accused him of possessing "a sordid underside of moral
depravity and intellectual dishonesty".

Chomsky gives a faint smile: "Actually, one of those pieces was
interesting," he says. "It impressed me very much. One of the Murdoch
papers said I was a supporter of Hezbollah and they had proof - which
was accurate. I was in Lebanon in 2006, travelling with friends in the
south, which is more or less run by Hezbollah. It was fearsomely hot,
so we stopped at a roadside stand to buy caps. In fact, I have mine
here." He gets up, fetches a dark green cap from his desk and puts it
on: "My Hezbollah cap." I can tell he's enjoying this. "But what
interests me is how did they know? It had to be Israeli intelligence;
there is no way the Australian press has people wandering around
Lebanon watching what you're doing. That is what I thought was
impressive journalism."

(Looking through my notes later I realised that, entertaining though
this story was, it didn't answer the accusation, so I emailed him - did
he support Hezbollah? - and received this reply: "By rights, I should
not answer. The fact that the organisation is condemned by power
systems - the US, Australia, Israel - provides no justification for
raising this question. If the Iranian press asked me whether I support
the Likud Party in Israel, I would refuse to respond. The answer,
however, is, 'Of course not.'")

What about the oft-repeated accusation that he minimised or excused the
atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? "I wouldn't change
a comma of what I wrote," he says. His argument was twofold: first,
that the Americans bombed the hell out of Cambodia in the first place,
driving ordinary Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, which
otherwise would have had little chance of gaining power. Second, that
there was a comparable atrocity happening in East Timor, where the
Indonesians killed a quarter of the population with the support of the
US, Britain and Australia.

"Both were awful," he says, "but the difference was that in the case of
Cambodia you could blame it on someone else and you couldn't do a thing
about it. Nobody had a suggestion as to what to do. East Timor was easy
to stop; we just had to stop participating. In fact, when Clinton
finally, after 25 years, told the Indonesians, 'It's over', they pulled
out the next day. Yet [then Australian foreign affairs minister] Gareth
Evans, the 'great peacemaker', signed the treaty recognising East Timor
as an Indonesian province and when asked about the deaths he said -
lovely statement - 'The world is an unfair place.'" Chomsky shrugs:
"Nobody wrote about what I said on East Timor; they only concentrated
on what I said about Cambodia."

Chomsky's point is that we voice great moral indignation about other
people's atrocities but not our own. The first 9/11, he says, was in
Chile in 1973 when the CIA supported a military coup against the
democratically elected Allende government. "Thousands were killed and
tortured under the military dictatorship," he says. "But it didn't
matter - it was, as [former US secretary of state Henry] Kissinger
said, 'of no historical significance' - because we did it. In 1956
everyone was lamenting the horrid atrocities committed by the Russians
in Hungary while at the same time British soldiers were torturing
Kenyans - yet that has only just been acknowledged."

He opens his palms on the table: "Thomas Aquinas called it intentional
ignorance - when something is not nice to think about."

We trot through a few examples: the West's support of Saddam Hussein
during and after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War - "as long as Saddam
followed orders, he was okay; [Iraq's 1990 invasion of] Kuwait was
against orders"; the "war on terror", which has devastated Iraq's
economy; the Arab Spring - "America is against it, democracy is a
dangerous thing"; NATO's bombing of Libya - "huge civilian casualties
in the name of 'protection'"; Israel's blockade of Gaza and Barack
Obama's "free pass" to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to
continue building and expanding illegal Jewish settlements in the
occupied West Bank. Chomsky, though Jewish himself, is now banned from
Israel because of his support for Palestine, but how, I wonder, did he
get labelled a Holocaust denier?

It turns out to be a complicated little story: essentially, a French
academic called Robert Faurisson was suspended from teaching at his
university for questioning the existence of Nazi gas chambers. Chomsky,
along with other eminences, wrote in defence of the man's right to free
speech. The notion that support for freedom of expression does not
imply agreement with the views expressed did not trouble Chomsky's
critics, who gleefully rushed to accuse him of anti-Semitism and denial.

What does he think of Australian support for boycott, divestment and
sanctions (BDS) against Israel? "It is meant well but I often don't go
along with it. You have to pick and choose. It's complex."

Chomsky uses this word several times and, of course, he's right -
nothing is as straightforward as the easily digestible sound bites we
are delivered on nightly television news programs. The evening before
we meet, I attended a lecture at Harvard Law School where one of the
speakers suggested that video - and footage captured on mobile phones -
was the new universal human language. What does Chomsky think of
citizen journalism, which brings us action from the streets of Tehran
or Tripoli before we see it on the TV?

"It's a mixed story," he says. "It's a good thing there are lots of
openings, a lot of young people doing documentaries, investigating
things. The downside is it's very shallow. People read blogs and draw
things from the internet; I get hundreds of emails and letters every
day from people asking me for information, for the source of something
they saw me say that was put up on YouTube. I say, 'Why don't you read
what I wrote?' They are stumped; they wouldn't think of reading
something where there is a nuanced discussion and footnotes. If it's
not on YouTube it doesn't exist, but you can't say things appropriately
in two minutes."

Didn't technology hugely help the organisation of the Arab uprisings?
"True, but one shouldn't exaggerate. The core of the Arab Spring was
really labour organisation. Take a look at Egypt; that was attributed
to tech-savvy young people with Twitter. That's not false, but there is
a close correlation between long-term labour activism and the
effectiveness of democracy movements."

At this point, bev stohl puts her head around the door: it's time for a
lunch break. During our conversation I've been intrigued by a poster
displaying a photograph of a beautiful, silver-haired woman: it is
Carol, Chomsky's wife of 59 years who died of cancer in 2008. He
explains the poster: a forest has been planted in her name by a group
of Colombian campesinos whose struggle he had supported: "They have
nothing but they are very good people." He takes me over to the desk
where there are more photos: a younger Carol, vital and smiling, a huge
just-landed fish at her feet; Carol with a grandchild; 19-year-old
Carol on the day of her wedding.

He is, I discover, in all ways outside work, lost without her. There is
a farmers' market on the campus today: stalls are set out in the shade
of elm trees and Chomsky wanders along with his basket, picking up
celery, tomatoes, apples and oranges. The asparagus looks tempting, but
he shakes his head: "I don't do cooking, I'm a schnorrer." (This is
Yiddish for a sponger and later Stohl tells me that she regularly cooks
extra at home and brings it into the office for Chomsky to put in his
microwave in the evening.)

Asked once about love, Chomsky said he couldn't explain it: "All I know
is life is empty without it." How is he consoled now? "Family," he
says, "and memories." It makes no sense, he says, for a woman to die
before her husband. Why? "Oh, because women manage so much better, they
talk and support each other. My oldest and closest friend is in the
office next door to me; we haven't once talked about Carol."

What about female friends? Did they not rally round? "Well, they've all
died or are very ill; for some reason most of our friends were older."
That must feel lonely. "Yes, it's very strange."

He and Carol first met as children in Philadelphia. "I remember her
very well, sitting on the floor playing. The families knew each other,
it was a kind of Jewish ghetto then - not geographically but
culturally." They met again as working students. "The main reason we
got married is we never had time to see each other.

On our first night away from home we rebelled - only if you come from a
Jewish family can you understand this - we did not eat dinner!

We went out and got banana splits instead."

That was wild? "Yes, it was. That's what revolt looked like back then."

Rebellion took a different form later, with a sustained campaign of
protest against the Vietnam War. By then the couple had three children:
"The first time I was arrested our eldest daughter went to school and
for 'show and tell' said, 'My dad is in jail.'"

Chomsky says none of the children showed any interest in politics while
they were growing up: "But then the eldest one went to work for the
United Farm Workers [trade union], the younger one went to Nicaragua to
work for the Sandanista newspaper; she still lives there." His son is a
computer software engineer in California, "But his main thing is music;
he plays the violin pretty well."

After this pleasant lunch interlude, we reconvene in the office under
Bertrand Russell's steady gaze. Chomsky has been fairly dismissive of
Barack Obama - "he is a blank slate" - and wrote recently that most
Americans are politically to the left of both Republican and Democratic
parties. So how does he explain popular support for the Tea Party?
"Actually," he says, "Tea Party supporters are social democrats. They
don't think they are; when they are polled they say, 'Get rid of
government.' But when asked about health spending they say it should be
increased; same with education and assistance for poor women with
children. They think foreign aid should be increased and we should
reduce spending on defence."

So would it matter if the Tea Party got into power? "It would - it
would be horrible. This is a very undemocratic country. Popular opinion
has almost no effect on policy and if they got in, then Goldman Sachs
and Citibank would do what they like: the wealth sector uses
politicians like their storm troopers."

This morning there is a front-page story in The New York Times that
Chomsky says he has been expecting for some time: "The wealthy sectors
in America are getting worried about the Republican primary because
[Texan Governor] Rick Perry is a total lunatic and way ahead in the
polls. They don't mind as long as he is attacking taxes, the labour
movement, teachers, but they're afraid he may get out of control. The
wealthy need a powerful state to get them out of trouble - as just
happened - but they want a conservative state and they are afraid these
guys [Tea Party extremists] mean what they say and might loose the
reins of government."

Chomsky hesitates fractionally: "I don't want to make too much of this,
but it is somewhat reminiscent of late Weimar Germany: German
industrialists liked to use the Nazis as a battering ram to get rid of
social democrats and unions. They thought they could control them; it
didn't turn out like that."

Sometimes I wonder if in chomsky's world view only the poor and
powerless can be good. For example, he loves the Colombians who planted
trees for Carol - "they are amazingly compassionate". But they are
oppressed victims, I point out. Does he not see where I'm going with
this? "Yes, I do," he concedes, "but it's hard to be a decent person
when you have your boot on someone's neck. In a patriarchal family, the
abusive father doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. If you oppress
people, you have to have a reason for doing it; in order to look
yourself in the mirror, you have to make up a story."

There is a clear message in Chomsky's writings that in the pursuit of
profit, merchants and corporations will always, inevitably, do people
down. But what about the local trader, the village store providing a
community with the necessities of life? "When I was a kid, there was a
grocery, the storekeeper was friendly and helpful, he'd give you
credit. Then the supermarket arrived and my mother went there." If you
build it they will come? "Yes, and it wiped out the community."

Greed, self-interest, warmongering ... this is what Chomsky goes to
work on every day: it must be exhausting. Two amusing YouTube clips
show Gore Vidal and Christopher Hitchens each telling the same story of
how Chomsky went to the doctor with a painful jaw. The doctor asked
Carol if her husband ground his teeth in his sleep. "No," she said, "he
grinds them in the morning when he reads The New York Times."

Chomsky says it was not a joke but true. "I have two lawsuits," he says
with the glimmer of a smile. "One against the Times for damage to my
teeth and another against National Public Radio." (Normally a careful
driver, Chomsky was once so incensed by what he was hearing from NPR on
the car radio that he broke the speed limit and was fined.)

In his many public lectures, Chomsky is as quietly and evenly spoken as
he is in interview, eschewing rhetoric and relying instead on the
"self-evident truth" of his arguments. But anger and deep scorn simmer
below the surface. Shades of doubt are inadmissible: "No one with a
shred of honesty could deny" is a typical opener to another withering
assault on alleged US sophistry. The goal with the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, for example, was "unequivocally" to ensure that the US had a
client state in the heart of oil-producing regions: "If you believe
that this was all about extending democracy, then you will also believe
that Stalin was, as he claimed, extending democracy to the countries of
Eastern Europe."

He was interviewed recently by Britain's rottweiler of the airwaves,
Jeremy Paxman, who demanded, "Why haven't you mellowed?" Chomsky
replied, "Because I watch the world." Does he ever take his eye off the
world and relax? "When Carol was alive we did things: movies and
concerts; in the summers we used to take off to Cape Cod. Carol was a
water skier till she was 75, racing around the bay on one ski. She was
famous: the lady with the white hair. She liked fishing and we had a
small sailboat, used to go out in the late afternoon."

Was there ever a day when he didn't work? "No, no. When the kids were
little I'd sit in our small cottage - you could fit it in this office -
and work with them climbing all over me. It never bothered me." He used
to read novels, he says. "I haven't been able to recently; I've taken
on more work than I used to." Is he filling a gap? "Maybe," he nods. "I
didn't do much for a year after Carol died, but then I went off into a
kind of frenzy." If he had to choose one novel to take to a desert
island? "[Dostoevsky's] The Brothers Karamazov. I always find something
new in that book."

Out of the corner of my eye I can see Bev Stohl hovering in the
doorway: time to wrap up. Chomsky gets up and puts an arm around her
shoulders: "Have to keep on her good side," he says. There is a lot of
business to get through, she says, including a request from a young man
who wants to accompany Chomsky to a lecture. Some time ago, explains
Stohl, the fellow had emailed with a problem: his girlfriend had been
pestering him to get a job but he couldn't because he was an anarchist.
What would Chomsky advise?

"I gave that to Bev to deal with," says Chomsky. Stohl says she can't
recall her reply. "Oh, I can," says Chomsky. "You told him to grow up."
I gather up my things and leave them chuckling.


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 13:32:38 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:32:38 +0200
Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?NEW_SCIENTIST=3A_Revealed_=96_the_capitalist?=
 =?iso-8859-1?q?__network_that_runs_the_world?=
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027133133.04c12708@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500

NEW SCIENTIST
Revealed ? the capitalist network that runs the world

    * Updated 13:15 24 October 2011 by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie
    * Magazine issue 2835.

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core's tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. "If one [company] suffers distress," says Glattfelder, "this propagates."

"It's disconcerting to see how connected things really are," agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system's behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

One thing won't chime with some of the protesters' claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. "Such structures are common in nature," says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, "is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups". Or as Braha puts it: "The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy."

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

When this article was first posted, the comment in the final sentence of the paragraph beginning "Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power
" was misattributed.
The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Soci?t? G?n?rale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

Graphic: The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 13:53:49 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:53:49 +0200
Subject: [THS] !!!!! Timothy Leary on the Wall Street Occupation Movement
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027134719.06f56960@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.truth-out.org/timothy-leary-wall-street-occupation-movement/1319050501

see also http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/wp/?p=2984

Timothy Leary on the Wall Street Occupation Movement
Wednesday 26 October 2011
by: Dr. Timothy Francis Leary, Truthout | Op-Ed

In one of his last published writings, Timothy Leary foresaw the current generation of youth making use of the exploding technology of new communication software and devices to challenge the control exerted by centralized governments and corrupt institutions. The following was written in 1990 and revised in 1994. (Michael Horowitz and Lisa Rein)

The Function of Post-Democratic Government

The primary function of a free society in the post-democratic age is the protection of individual freedom from politicians who attempt to limit it.

This individual-freedom movement is new to human history because it is not based on geography, politics, class or religion. It has to do with changes, not in the power structure, not in who controls the police, but in the individual's mind. It is a "head" revolution: a consciousness-raising affair.

Questioning Authority and Thinking for Yourself

This cultural meme involves intelligence, personal access to information, an anti-ideological reliance on common sense, mental proficiency, consciousness raising, street smarts, intelligent consumerism-hedonism, personal communication skills. The meme is not new. Countercultures go back at least as far as Hermes Trismegistus, and include Socrates and Sappho, Voltaire and Thoreau, Gurdjieff and Ginsberg.

But the rapid spread of this mutational meme from 1960 to 1990 was due to the sudden mass availability of neurochemical and electronic technology. Chemicals and screens spraying electronic information into eyedrums and earballs, activating brains. Suddenly, youth all over the world are wearing jeans and listening to John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance." The individuality meme that swept American youth during the 1960s has infected the world. The McLuhan epidemic keeps spreading.

The signs of this awakening are always the same. Young minds exposed to electronic information suddenly blossom like flowers in the spring. The June 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square were a classic replay of Chicago 1968 and Kent State 1970.

Power, Mao said, comes from the barrel of a gun. That may have been true in the industrial past, but in the cybernetic 1990s the very notion of political power seems anachronistic, kinky, sick. For the new breed, the concept of "political power" is hateful, evil, ghastly. The idea that any group should want to grab domination, authority, supremacy or jurisdiction over others is a primitive perversity - as loathsome and outdated as slavery or cannibalism.

It was not the Berlin Wall of concrete and guard houses that protected the "evil empire"; it was the electronic wall that was easily breached by MTV. McLuhan and Foucault have demonstrated that freedom depends upon who controls the technologies that reach your brain-telephones, the editing facility, the neurochemicals, the screen.

Mass Individualism Is New

This sudden emergence of humanism and openness on a mass scale is new and revolutionary.

In tribal societies, the role of the individual is to be a submissive, obedient child. The tribal elders do the thinking. Survival pressures do not afford them the luxury of freedom.

In feudal societies, the individual is a serf or vassal, peasant, chattel, peon, slave. The nobles and priests do the thinking. They are trained by tradition to abhor and anathematize openness and thinking for yourself.

After the tribal (familial) and feudal (childlike) stages of human evolution came the industrial (insectoid) society, where the individual is a worker or manager; in later stages, a worker-consumer.

In all these static, primitive societies, the thinking is done by the organizations that control the guns. The power of open-minded individuals to make and remake decisions about their own lives, to fabricate, concoct, invent and reinvent is severely limited.

Youth had no power, no voice, no choice.

The post-political information society does not operate on the basis of obedience and conformity to dogma. It is based on individual thinking; scientific know-how; quick exchange of facts around feedback networks; high-tech ingenuity; and practical, frontline creativity. The society of the future no longer grudgingly tolerates a few open-minded innovators. The cybernetic society is totally dependent on a large pool of such people, communicating at light speed within and without geographical boundaries. Electrified thoughts invite fast feedback, creating new global societies that require a higher level of electronic know-how, psychological sophistication and open-minded intelligence.

This cyber-communication process is accelerating so rapidly that to compete in the world information marketplace of the 21st century requires the navigational skills of change-oriented, innovative individuals who are adept in communicating via the new cyber-electronic technologies.

The new breeds are simply much smarter than the old guard. They inhale new information the way they breathe oxygen. They stimulate each other to continually upgrade and reformat their minds. People who use cyber technology to make fast decisions on their jobs are not going home and passively letting aging, close-minded politicians make decisions about their lives.

The emergence of this new open-minded caste in different countries around the world is the central historical issue of the last 40 years.

Excerpted from Timothy Leary, "The New Breed" (KnoWare, 1990); revised, Chaos and Cyber Culture (Ronin, 1994).

Published with permission of the Leary Estate.

Article edited by Michael Horowitz and Lisa Rein.
Creative Commons License

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Dr. Timothy Francis Leary

Dr. Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 - May 31, 1996) was a highly influential American psychologist and writer, known in later life for advocating advanced research into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs. A controversial figure during the 1960s and 1970s, he defended the use of the drug LSD for its therapeutic, emotional and spiritual benefits, and even believed it showed incredible potential in the field of psychiatry. Leary also popularized the phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Both proved to be hugely influential on the 1960s counterculture. Largely due to his influence in this field, he was attacked by conservative figures in the United States, and described as "the most dangerous man in America" by President Richard Nixon.


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 13:55:53 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:55:53 +0200
Subject: [THS] Last night, downtown Oakland resembled a war zone
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027135455.06df62f0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://action.ellabakercenter.org/site/R?i=sQ5RQOxYswxK8VIVroaDgg

Dear Friend,

Last night, downtown Oakland resembled a war zone. The Ella Baker Center is appalled at the City of Oakland's violent response to peaceful protestors. Speak up now against the violence. 

Pete, from Oakland, age 31, was one of the many folks injured while exercising his freedom of speech. "I felt it was ridiculous that the City raided the Occupy Oakland camp in the middle of the night using violent tactics. Right when people tell you to shut up is the moment to stand up and speak. That is why I marched in downtown Oakland last night." 

Pete heard the police give a 5 minute dispersal warning. He was surrounded by other protestors - he saw nothing thrown at the cops, no violence, and no destruction of property. He joined others chanting, "Who are you protecting? We are the 99%!" Without further warning, the police began launching canisters. Pete turned to walk away when he felt something hit his ankle, heard a loud noise, and saw a huge flash of light. A friendly stranger helped him get medical assistance for his ankle which remains bruised and injured today. 

Pete remains resolved to continue to stand up for the Occupy movement's right to be heard and to resist further threats of violence.  "I can't believe Oakland would take that level of aggression against people doing nothing threatening. I still can't believe it. But I will go back. This is our city, I hella love Oakland, and I am going to fight to protect our freedoms." 

Pete's is just one story of Occupy Oakland's attack from the City and the police. Join us now in denouncing the violence and demanding the immediate release of any Occupiers.

This is not the end of Occupy Oakland. Or of political activism in Oakland. In fact, it is just the beginning. Right now, the Mayor and Police Department should apologize and change their course. But tomorrow, they should join us all in fighting for the 99%.

The Ella Baker Center Team 


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 13:58:08 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:58:08 +0200
Subject: [THS] After 2 tours in Iraq, Marine has his skull fractured by cops
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027135729.043f8eb0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/reports-veteran-from-wisconsin-injured-during-occupy-oakland-protest-132648173.html


Marine from Onalaska injured in protest in California

By Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel

Updated: Oct. 26, 2011 8:01 p.m. 

A Marine from Onalaska, Wis., suffered a fractured skull during an Occupy Wall Street protest in California and was in critical condition Wednesday.

Scott Olsen, 24, who served two tours of Iraq, was struck by an unidentified object as Oakland police and Occupy Wall Street demonstrators clashed. Some witnesses said Olsen was hit by a tear-gas canister; others said it was a rubber bullet fired by police.

Olsen was conscious when he was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland on Tuesday night but was unconscious Wednesday, suffering from brain swelling, said his roommate Keith Shannon, who served in the same Marine unit as Olsen.

Aaron Hinde, who knows Olsen from Iraq Veterans Against the War, said Olsen suffered a seizure at the hospital. A hospital spokesman confirmed that Olsen was in critical condition Wednesday.

Olsen, whose uncle served in the Marines, signed up for the military when he was 17 and still in high school. As a member of 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, he was deployed to Iraq from August 2006 to May 2007 and again in 2008-'09. Olsen was not injured in his deployments, but his unit was hit by numerous IEDs, said Shannon, who served with Olsen on Olsen's first deployment and helped him get a job in information technology in the San Francisco Bay area.

Olsen left the military in 2010.

"It wasn't what he wanted to do for a career; he didn't agree with the war and the way it was going. He thought he could best serve people from outside the military," Shannon said.

As members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Olsen and Shannon participated in Occupy San Francisco demonstrations. When Oakland Occupy Wall Street organizers put out a call for people to participate in a rally Tuesday night, Olsen, wearing his Marine uniform shirt, decided to attend.

The demonstrators had been making an attempt to re-establish a presence in the area of a disbanded protesters' camp when they were met by police officers in riot gear. The clash Tuesday came as officials complained about what they described as deteriorating safety, sanitation and health issues at the dismantled camp.

Photos posted on the Internet show Olsen on the ground, bleeding and being helped by other protesters who took him to the hospital.

Olsen's mother was traveling from Wisconsin to California on Wednesday to be with her son, Hinde said.

Shannon said Olsen is a quiet guy who loves to play hockey, listen to Bay-area bands, has a hamster named Agent Carmichael and moved to California when he got a job as a systems network administrator.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 14:00:15 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:00:15 +0200
Subject: [THS] Police Attack Peaceful 'Occupy Oakland' Demonstrators
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027135850.06dd0ba0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://youtu.be/QEc3P1l7WZE

MCM
FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8869 

Police Attack Peaceful 'Occupy Oakland' Demonstrators, Veterans with Rubber Bullets, Tear Gas, Flash Grenades and Dishonor

Are they TRYING to set the scene for an #OccupyDNC2012? If so, it's working...

Once again, late last night, as is becoming a too-regular nightly ritual, after the 11p news was over, police moved in again to violate the Constitutional First Amendment right "of the people peaceably to assemble". And, for the second night in a row, late last night in Oakland, CA, it resembled a war zone as police in riot gear unleashed a punishing onslaught of flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas --- hour after hour, round after round --- injuring demonstrators, including women, the disabled and even Iraq War veterans...

Unlike the police in Albany a few nights ago, where they defied orders from NY's Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo to arrest demonstrators, and more like Chicago where the police followed the advice of Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel to break down the demonstrations over the weekend and haul more than 175 in, the Oakland Police Department, with the approval of Democratic Mayor Jean Quan, unleashed a punishing assault on those gathered "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The results were horrific, according to video, photos and eye-witness reports as it all happened and was reported on Twitter, including this scene appearing to show a member of Veterans for Peace knocked out by either a concussive grenade or a tear gas canister or a rubber bullet, and being carried away...


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 14:02:35 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:02:35 +0200
Subject: [THS] ADBUSTERS TACTICAL BRIEFING #16
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027140147.0468db88@mail.messagingengine.com>

From: Adbusters Magazine <campaigns at adbusters.org>
Subject: ADBUSTERS TACTICAL BRIEFING #16
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:46:35 -0700

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET 

robinhoodtax.org

ADBUSTERS TACTICAL BRIEFING #16

Alright you rebels, redeemers and believers out there,

At the height of the global uprisings in 1968, protesters confidently heralded "The Beginning of a New Epoch." To this bravado, Zbigniew Brzezinski, then the national security advisor to the president of the United States, retorted that the protests were nothing but "the death rattle of the historical irrelevants." And indeed the first global revolution the world had ever seen suddenly fizzled out. To this day no one quite knows why.

For the moment, #OCCUPY has the magic and the ear of the world, and anything seems possible. We could see a soft regime change in America and a resurgence of the political left worldwide.

As winter approaches, many occupiers will dig in for the long haul. Others will decamp until spring and channel their energy into myriad projects. Many of the big ideas for rejuvenating and reenchanting the world that have been swirling around the left for the last 20 years will pick up steam. From revoking corporate personhood to de-commercializing the cultural commons, to separating money from politics, to the birth of a True Cost Party of America 
 we are entering a sustained period of boots-on-the-ground transformation.

And every now and again we will have a worldwide blast reminiscent of the global march against the Iraq war eight years ago. The next of these blasts could happen as early as this Saturday when #ROBINHOOD strikes the G20. Imagine a few million people rising up and sending a message to the G20 leaders meeting November 3/4 in France: "This austerity vs. stimulus debate you've foisted on us doesn't mean a damn thing
 It's obvious you have no idea how to get us out of this economic mess you put us in. So now we are telling you what we want: a radical transformation of casino capitalism
 we want you to slow down fast money with a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades."

#ROBINHOOD marches have already been announced in over a dozen cities. Bring it up at your general assembly 
 then create some edgy Robin Hood graphics for the world to digest and let's march out there millions strong this Saturday 
 Let's leverage the G20!

This could be the first great upheaval of the financial regime 
 and the first delicious fruit of our movement.

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

There are #ROBINHOOD actions currently planned in San Antonio, Las Vegas, Montreal, Durango, Calgary, Washington DC, Santa Fe, Denver, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sydney, Amarillo, Edmonton, Salt Lake City, Berlin and more


occupywallstreet.org / 29october.net / occupytogether.org / Twitter / Facebook

P.S. On Tuesday, the nonviolent protestors at #OCCUPYOAKLAND were assaulted with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash grenades. Disturbing footage of police violence is now emerging. That same day, #OCCUPYATLANTA was foreclosed and over 50 protestors arrested. The counter-revolution of money has begun but our commitment to nonviolence will win.

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From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 14:09:28 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:09:28 +0200
Subject: [THS] Stephen Lendman: Obama's Imperial Arrogance
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027140750.04b6c9e0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29464.htm

Obama's Imperial Arrogance

By Stephen Lendman

October 20, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Candidate Obama promised peace. As president, he double downed Bush and then some, waging multiple direct and proxy wars.
 
The business of America is war. Washington has a permanent war policy. Republicans and Democrats perpetuate it.
 
Obama's latest mission adds another to dozens of similar ones ongoing globally. On October 14, New York Times writers Thom Shanker and Rick Gladstone headlined, "Armed US Advisors to Help Fight African Renegade Group," saying:
 
Obama ordered "100 armed military advisers to central Africa to help regional forces combat the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity." 

Independent journalist, war correspondent, African expert, and human rights investigator Keith Harmon Snow challenges major media distortions and lies.
 
He calls the LRA "a Ugandan guerrilla force....wag(ing) a low-intensity war against" Uganda's Museveni regime since 1987. Ugandan factions back LRA resistance. It's also "clandestinely supported by unnamed factions in Congo, Europe and Washington."
 
Some believe it's "a tool of the Museveni government used to manipulate public opinion, create chaos across the region, gain international sympathy from foreign donors, (and serve as a) perfect ruse to facilitate permanent foreign military intervention."
 
In 2001, the State Department named it a terrorist organization. Since 2008, it's been called a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.
 
US intervention also targets China's growing African influence to feed its insatiable resource needs, especially oil and gas. WikiLeaks disclosed a February 17, 2010 US cable, saying: 

"China's economic ties to Uganda continue to accelerate on all fronts making it one of the country's top foreign investors."
 
It's also true in other African countries, including resource rich Congo.
 
"Greater Chinese investment and assistance in Uganda has generated some resentment due to local perceptions that Chinese investments favor their own businesses."
 
China, in fact, prefers partnership arrangements benefitting both sides in contrast to Washington's one-way deals.
 
In 1986, Yoweri Museveni seized power in a bloody conflict. Holding it ruthlessly, he remains Uganda's Western-supported dictator. He provides proxy military services and serves corporate interests at the expense of his own people.
 
Obama, in fact, deployed Special Forces assassins. Others like them perform death squad services in dozens of countries. More on that below.
 
Obama told Congress that US troops will "assist African forces in the removal of (LRA leader) Joseph Kony and the leadership of the LRA from the battlefield."
 
AFRICOM (US Africa Command) was activated on October 1, 2008. Its mission is to secure and solidify unchallenged US control over the continent's resource riches.
 
Besides oil and gas, they include uranium, gold, diamonds, other precious stones, cobalt, and columbite-tantalite (coltan) essential for computer chips, circuit boards, mobile phones, laptops, and other electronic devices.
 
Other US Special Forces and troop contingents operate throughout Africa. Obama called those sent to Uganda "time-limited" for a few months. He lied. He concealed Washington's mission to secure continental imperial control.
 
>From Djibouti's Camp Lemonier, killer drones bomb Somalia and Yemen. An expanding drone base network is being readied worldwide. Major media scoundrels ignore it, including Washington's Uganda mission.
 
Special Forces Death Squads Deployed Globally
 
In September 2009, then Central Command head General David Petraeus issued a secret directive. It ordered covert US Special Operations forces sent to friendly and hostile states in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Horn of Africa.
 

In fact, it suggested sending them anywhere to "penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy" terror threats and "prepare the environment" for planned military attacks.
 

On June 4, 2010, Washington Post writers Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe headlined, "US 'Secret War' Expands Globally as Special Operations Forces Take a Larger Role," saying:
 

The Obama administration "has significantly expanded a largely secret US war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups with Special Ops forces in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year."
 

Petraeus' order "also allowed for US special forces to enter Iran to gather intelligence" for potential future operations.
 

The Pentagon's Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order authorized Special Ops forces sent anywhere. Moreover, its Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) deploys covert elements to kill targeted suspects, including US citizens.
 

No one anywhere is safe from Washington's war on humanity. Obama nominally heads it. So did Bush, his predecessors, and whoever becomes America's next president.
 

In fact, Pentagon power today is a rogue global force. In his book titled, "House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power," James Carroll discussed its bigger than life source of power and significance.
 

Even though civilians nominally head it, they operate by military rules. Its ethos is war to achieve unchallenged dominance. Its ceremonial groundbreaking occurred on September 11, 1941. Today it's a force unto itself.
 

America "only knows how to exercise one kind of power, the hard brutal power of military force." Enemies don't exist, so they're invented. At issue now is changing a destructive dynamic or "we're going to lead the globe right over the edge into the disaster" that's plagued humanity since the atom was split.
 

Waging global wars hastens the day. So does deploying trained killers anywhere worldwide to kill targeted enemies.
 

Special Forces now operate in 120 or more countries. Expect that total to rise. Pentagon power reaches everywhere. Established in 1987, US Special Forces Command (SOCOM) involves all service branches.
 

Its units include Army Rangers, Delta Force, and Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Air Force Air Commandos, Marine Corps Special Operations teams, specialized helicopter crews, boat crews, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, battlefield air traffic controllers, and Special Operations weathermen.
 

Their covert missions involve targeted assassinations, counterterrorism, snatch-and-grab-kidnapping, reconnaissance, intelligence, directing and training foreign forces, as well as any mission requiring special skills. They also participate in interrogating high-value targets in secret black site torture prisons.
 

Former commander Adm. Eric Olson calls SOCOM forces "the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and the most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."
 

If America had more diplomats than combatants, humanity would be safe from their scourge, including SOCOM's "hunter-killers."
 

Middle East Saber Rattling
 

On October 11, the Department of Justice charged Iranian involvement in a fake terror plot to kill Saudi Arabia's US ambassador, blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Argentina, and smuggle opium into Mexico.
 

Charges were brazen, fabricated and laughable on their face. Responding perhaps to rage across America against corporate power, government corruption, and Main Street hard times, Obama, Vice President Biden and Attorney General Holder changed the subject.
 

In the process, they became laughing stocks, outdoing Larry, Moe and Curley Three Stooges tomfoolery. More serious, however, is what comes next.
 

On October 16, DEBKA/file headlined, "Big US Airlift drill starts Monday," saying:
 

A large-scale Middle East exercise will involve "41 giant transports of the 22nd Airlift Squadron....The US Transport Command and its Air Forces Transportation will be testing its ability to provide a rapid strategic airlift response to major crises and contingencies."
 

Command and control elements will be involved with combat units. Transports will practice landings in Israel and Saudi Arabia.
 

After completing the exercise on October 21, US air contingents will remain "in Middle East skies ready to land at any moment" for any purpose.

 

Israeli, Saudi and Egyptian armies "are on a high state of preparedness." In addition, the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier group is heading from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.
 

It includes eight warships, nuclear armed and dangerous. Its Air Wing CVW-9 is also involved, ready to provide combat troops support and lay mines in strategic locations.
 

Middle East saber rattling is common US policy. Iran is target one. Relations have been tense for decades. Other inflammatory charges accuse Tehran of threatening Israel and world peace, as well as involvement in targeting US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 

In fact, Washington and Israel alone jeopardize regional peace and stability. Iran hasn't attacked another country in over 200 years. It threatens none now.
 

America wages permanent wars. Israel's ready to help when asked. and practices state terror as official policy like Washington.
 

Whether Iran will be attacked isn't known. Threats come and go. Eventually one may be real, but if war's planned, expect no announcement.
 

So far, previous harsh rhetoric and saber rattling has been just that. Hopefully it'll stay that way.
 

Rage across America wants imperial wars ended. Hopefully it'll prevent new ones, but never underestimate the intent of a rogue state to incite fear to attack any targeted state.
 

Given Pentagon power and a warrior president, anything is possible. Hopefully street protesters know it and will strongly oppose further aggression before it starts, besides taking a stand against current US imperial wars.
 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net.
 

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 14:12:15 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:12:15 +0200
Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?NAT_HENTOFF=3A_Obama_drones_kill_citizens=3A?=
 =?iso-8859-1?q?_Where=92s_the_law=3F?=
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027141127.0468dcd0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.argus-press.com/opinion/guest_commentaries/article_b40e1ab2-fa61-11e0-8a17-001cc4c03286.html


Posted: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 12:00 pm

HENTOFF: Obama drones kill citizens: Where?s the law? By NAT HENTOFF, NEA Columnist The Argus-Press | 0 comments

The New York Times? incisive public editor, Arthur Brisbane, asks a question that has not been raised by any Republican battlers for the presidency. Congressional Democrats loyal to the incumbent are also silent: ?There remains,? says Brisbane, ?no clear accounting of the legal principles or the process the executive branch is applying to support secret killings by the CIA, which carries out strikes far from the battlefield ? in this case against a native-born American. The CIA will not even acknowledge that the program exists.?

Two U.S. citizens were killed when the Hellfire missiles struck. Alongside Anwar al-Awlaki was Samir Khan, editor of a magazine in the Arabian Peninsula that was part of the al-Qaida operation. As the Times reported, ?he was apparently not on the targeting list, making his death collateral damage.?

The term, ?collateral damage,? is used when civilian victims of our drones are wiped out. Since we are forbidden to know what crimes this al-Qaida promoter was charged with, it may well be that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

His family has raised the specter of the Fifth Amendment, which says: none of us can be ?deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.? Samir Khan?s family asks ?whether it was necessary for the government to have ?assassinated two of its citizens. Was this style of execution the only solution? Why couldn?t there have been a capture and trial???

But we now know a shadow of the process by which these two Americans were exiled from our rule of law. Anonymous administration leakers have told Reuters (and other media) that ?American militants? (no further definition of that word) ?are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions.?

Of course, in the reign of Obama, ?there is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House?s National Security Council, several current and former officials said.?

I hear an echo of our Declaration of Independence addressing King George III: ?He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws.?

Now dig this serpentine turn of criticism of the Obama administration?s killing of its citizens, from the Reuters story of the secret hit list from on high: ?Conservatives criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing al-Awlaki. They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on publishing Bush-era administration legal memos justifying the use of interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but (Obama) refused to make public its rationale for killing a citizen without due process.?

Look who is entering this debate: John Yoo, the main author ? when he was with the Bush Justice Department?s Office of Legal Counsel ? of the memos that became known globally as ?the torture memos.?

In the Oct. 11 New York Post, the proudly notorious Yoo writes in praise of Obama?s killing of Anwar al-Awlaki: ?We should be thankful that Obama officials have quietly put aside the arguments they made during the Bush years that any terrorist outside the Afghani battlefield was a criminal suspect who deserved his day in federal court (under the Fifth Amendment).?

Yoo lessens his praise of this Obama assassination because ?according to the reports, the Obama administration believed that force could only be used against al-Awlaki because arrest was impractical and he posed an imminent threat to the United States. This is plainly wrong.?

To return to public editor Arthur Brisbane of The New York Times: ?The public has a right to know, and assess, the legal rationale for these extraordinary and highly visible state killings. The public should have documented details concerning civilian casualties of the drone strikes. And The Times should do all it can to force this information out into the open.?

All media, blogs, congressional committees, et al ? and those citizens aware that, as David Cole warns, if ?we continue to justify such practices in only the vaguest of terms, we should expect other countries to take them up, and almost certainly in ways we will not find to our liking.? Killer drones are being built and perfected in many countries in the world, and not only by our friends.


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 14:14:35 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:14:35 +0200
Subject: [THS] NATO has bombed Libya back to Stone Age
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027141313.04a2e3e0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://rt.com/news/nato-libya-machon-former-219/

?NATO has bombed Libya back to Stone Age?

Published: 19 October, 2011, 22:21
Edited: 21 October, 2011, 21:39

Sirte: Smoke billows from the Libyan town of Sirte as the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters launch their final assault on loyalist troops (AFP Photo/Philippe Desmazes)
(34.0Mb) embed video


Former MI5 agent Annie Machon says that the US wants to reinforce the myths that public has been told about NATO?s ?humanitarian? intervention, while Libya is being bombed beyond the point of no return.

During her visit to Libya, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has used unusually blunt terms to describe what the United States wants to see happen in Libya, namely the country's former leader Muammar Gaddafi being killed or captured.

Machon says even though Gaddafi was a thorn in the side of Western countries for three decades, for the majority of Libyans their quality of life was perfectly fine.

?They?ve had free education, free health, they could study abroad. When they got married they got a certain amount of money. So they were rather the envy of many other citizens of African countries. Now, of course, since NATO?s humanitarian intervention the infrastructure of their country has been bombed back to the Stone Age. They will not have the same quality of life. Women probably will not have the same degree of emancipation under any new transitional government. The national wealth is probably going to be siphoned off by Western corporations. Perhaps the standard of living in Libya might have been slightly higher than it perhaps is now in America and the UK with the recession,? she said.

Machon agrees the US have been quite unashamed in their statements about wanting regime change in Libya, which she believes is highly illegal.

?It is also interesting to see that they are saying this openly when, of course, in the 1990s they were trying to assassinate him covertly through proxy organizations in Libya,? she said.

NATO countries have sent advisors to Libya and Machon believes that it was done to insure that humanitarian aid and human rights are upheld. However that might prove to be difficult. She says that nobody seems to be really trying to protect civilians in Benghazi or Sirte. Advisors or not, ?Libya is descending into one awful mess.?

?Let?s not forget that the UN sanctions change of heart was put in place now on very dubious moral grounds ? unsubstantiated rumors of genocide in Benghazi,?she argued. ?[Advisors] are probably going there to try and help, but what?s been going on in places like Sirte has been breathtaking hypocrisy. NATO goes in to bomb Gaddafi?s regime out of existence because they are threatening civilians in Benghazi. And now we are looking at a whole range of human rights abuses.?

?Meanwhile, for Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire website, the desired result of US intervention ? to see Gaddafi killed or captured, as stated by Hillary Clinton ? was also not ?surprising.?

?The policy of targeted assassination is very much a part of US foreign policy,?  Azikiwe told RT. ?Gaddafi was also targeted for the last eight months for assassination
They put it out broadly with the international community that they want to, in fact, assassinate Gaddafi.?

And Clinton?s latest visit to Libya was ?designed to bolster the NTC government there,? Azikiwe believes.

embed video

?An eyewitness of NATO atrocities in Libya, Ali Alkasih, has recently returned from the besieged town of Sirte. He says the humanitarian situation is dire there and ordinary Libyans are tired of it, but if they were given a choice they would still prefer Gaddafi to the American presence.

?There is no water there, no medication, they don?t have even oxygen in the hospitals,? he told RT. ?I have seen the situation in Sirte, I can assure you it is a disaster. It is a catastrophe. The international law or the international community came with the Resolution 1973, as they said, to protect civilians, but this is not happening at the moment."

?Most of the Libyans would rather live peacefully than having NATO or Gaddafi. We don?t want neither Gaddafi, nor NATO [sic]. If the solution was NATO, than Gaddafi is better, our life was better [[under Gaddafi]],? concluded Alkasih.


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 14:16:38 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:16:38 +0200
Subject: [THS] Son of Stuxnet? Researchers Warn of Coming Cyber Attack
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027141622.04b661b8@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/stuxnet-returns-duqu-researchers-warn-similar-cyber-attack/story?id=14763854

Son of Stuxnet? Researchers Warn of Coming Cyber Attack
By LEE FERRAN
Oct. 18, 2011
PHOTO: Researchers claim a new virus, dubbed "Duqu", could be the first step in a new Stuxnet-like cyber attack.
Researchers claim a new virus, dubbed "Duqu", could be the first step in a new Stuxnet-like cyber attack. (Getty Images)

A new computer virus using "nearly identical" parts of the cyber superweapon Stuxnet has been detected on computer systems in Europe and is believed to be a precursor to a new Stuxnet-like attack, a major U.S.-based cyber security company said today.

Stuxnet was a highly sophisticated computer worm that was discovered last year and was thought to have successfully targeted and disrupted systems at a nuclear enrichment plant in Iran. At the time, U.S. officials said the worm's unprecedented complexity and potential ability to physically sabotage industrial control systems -- which run everything from water plants to the power grid in the U.S. and in many countries around the world -- marked a new era in cyber warfare.

Though no group claimed responsibility for the Stuxnet worm, several cyber security experts have said it is likely a nation-state created it and that the U.S. and Israel were on a short list of possible culprits.

READ: Could Cyber Superweapon Be Turned on the U.S.?

Whoever it was, the same group may be at it again, researchers said, as the authors of the new virus apparently had access to original Stuxnet code that was never made public.

The new threat, discovered by a Europe-based research lab and dubbed "Duqu", is not designed to physically affect industrial systems like Stuxnet was, but apparently is only used to gather information on potential targets that could be helpful in a future cyber attack, cyber security giant Symantec said in a report today.
PHOTO: Researchers claim a new virus, dubbed "Duqu", could be the first step in a new Stuxnet-like cyber attack.
Getty Images
Researchers claim a new virus, dubbed "Duqu",... View Full Size
PHOTO: Researchers claim a new virus, dubbed "Duqu", could be the first step in a new Stuxnet-like cyber attack.
Getty Images
Researchers claim a new virus, dubbed "Duqu", could be the first step in a new Stuxnet-like cyber attack.
S.P.O.T. the Terrorist Watch Video
Is the US Government a Slumlord? Watch Video
Monkey Business Watch Video

"Duqu shares a great deal of code with Stuxnet; however, the payload is completely different," Symantec said in a blog post.

READ: Beware the Cyber War Boomerang?

Duqu is designed to record key strokes and gather other system information at companies in the industrial control system field and then send that information back to whomever planted the bug, Symantec said.

If successful, the information gleaned from those companies through Duqu could be used in a future attack on any industrial control system in the world where the companies' products are used -- from a power plant in Europe to an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Right now it's in the reconnaissance stage, you could say," Symantec Senior Director for Security Technology and Response, Gerry Egan, told ABC News. "[But] there's a clear indication an attack is being planned."

Duqu is also not designed to spread on its own, so researchers believe its targets were the computer systems it had already infiltrated, Egan said.

The Department of Homeland Security's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team issued an alert today to "critical infrastructure owners and operators" on Duqu, urging them to take steps to secure their systems.

"The extent of the threat posed by [Duqu] is currently being evaluated," the alert says.

Another cyber security company, F-Secure Security Labs, also examined Duqu and said on its website that parts of its code were so similar to Stuxnet that its virus-detection system believed it was dealing with the same virus over again.

A representative for Symantec said they were made aware of the new threat after the unnamed European research lab forwarded them a sample of the code along with their analysis comparing it with Stuxnet, which Symantec then confirmed. McAfee Labs, another cyber security power player, said they too had been given a sample of the Duqu code for analysis.

"One thing for sure is the Stuxnet team is still active..." McAfee said on its website.

READ: Symantec's 'W32.Duqu, the Precursor to the Next Stuxnet' (PDF)


From ths at psalience.org  Thu Oct 27 14:27:17 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:27:17 +0200
Subject: [THS] Robert Scheer: Thirty Years of Unleashed Greed
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111027142649.03f00488@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/thirty_years_of_unleashed_greed_20111026/

Thirty Years of Unleashed Greed

Posted on Oct 26, 2011
AP / Jay Finneburgh

Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, 24, lies bleeding in Oakland, Calif., after being struck by a projectile apparently fired by police. He suffered a skull fracture while marching with other demonstrators attempting to re-establish a presence near a protest camp disbanded by authorities, said Dottie Guy of the Iraq Veterans Against the War.

By Robert Scheer

It is class warfare. But it was begun not by the tear-gassed, rain-soaked protesters asserting their constitutionally guaranteed right of peaceful assembly but rather the financial overlords who control all of the major levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is they who subverted the American ideal of a nation of stakeholders in control of their economic and political destiny.

Between 1979 and 2007, as the Congressional Budget Office reported this week, the average real income of the top 1 percent grew by an astounding 275 percent. And that is after payment of the taxes that the superrich and their Republican apologists find so onerous.

Those three decades of rampant upper-crust greed unleashed by the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s will be well marked by future historians recording the death of the American dream. In that decisive historical period the middle class began to evaporate and the nation?s income gap increased to alarming proportions. ?As a result of that uneven growth,? the CBO explained, ?the distribution of after-tax household income in the United States was substantially more unequal in 2007 than in 1979: The share of income accruing to higher-income households increased, whereas the share accruing to other households declined. ... The share of after-tax household income for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income more than doubled. ...?

That was before the 2008 meltdown that ushered in the massive increase in unemployment and housing foreclosures that further eroded the standard of living of the vast majority of Americans while the superrich rewarded themselves with immense bonuses. To stress the role of the financial industry in this march to greater income inequality as the Occupy Wall Street movement has done is not a matter of ideology or rhetoric, but, as the CBO report details, a matter of discernible fact.

The CBO noted that in comparing top earners, ?The [income] share of financial professionals almost doubled from 1979 to 2005? and that ?employees in the financial and legal professions made up a larger share of the highest earners than people in those other groups.?

Advertisement
No wonder, since it was the bankers and the lawyers serving them who managed to end the sensible government regulations that contained their greed. The undermining of those regulations began during the Reagan presidency, and so it is not surprising that, as the CBO reports, ?the compensation differential between the financial sector and the rest of the economy appears inexplicably large from 1990 onward.? Citing a major study on the subject, the CBO added, ?The authors believe that deregulation and corporate finance activities linked to initial public offerings and credit risks are the primary causes of the higher compensation differential.?

So much for the claim that excessive government regulation has discouraged business activity. The CBO report also denies the charge that taxes on the wealthy have placed an undue burden on the economy, documenting that federal revenue sources have become more regressive and that the tax burden on the wealthy has declined since 1979.

In the face of the evidence that class inequality had been rising sharply in the United States even before the banking-induced recession, it would seem that the Occupy Wall Street protests are a quite measured and even timid response to the crisis.

Actually, the rallying cry of that movement was originally enunciated not by the protesters in the streets, but by one of the nation?s most respected economists. Last April, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote an article in Vanity Fair titled ?Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%? that should be required reading for those well-paid pundits who question the logic and motives of the Wall Street protesters. ?Americans have been watching protests [abroad] against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few,? Stiglitz wrote. ?Yet, in our democracy, 1% of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation?s income?an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.?

Maybe justice will prevail despite the suffering that the 1 percent has inflicted on the foreclosed and the jobless. But to date those who have seized 40 percent of the nation?s wealth still control the big guns in this war of classes. 


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 00:04:27 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:04:27 +0200
Subject: [THS] Occupy Updates: Oakland, NY,
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028000317.03f6a178@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/?akid=7782.234008.czfN7v&id=686295&rd=1&t=1

 
 
Occupy Updates: Oakland Protesters Tear Down Fence to Reclaim Space, NYPD Gets Violent During Solidarity March

The latest from the Occupy movement:

--Thousands strong, Occupy Oakland protesters reclaimed their park last night by tearing down the fence that had been erected after Tuesday night's violent clash with the police. The police presence was light this time around, likely because Oakland Mayor Jean Quan had a change of heart about the Occupy movement (she now promises a "minimal police presence" in the short-term). Here's a great shot of last night's crowd, via ThinkProgress.

--San Francisco was also spared a police crackdown last night. Although cops had gathered outside the protest site earlier in the day, the raid and eviction appear to have been called off.    Read more
By Lauren Kelley | AlterNet
Posted on Thursday, October 27, 2011 @ 10:19 AM
Share
-
 
 
A Voice From the 1%

The impetus behind the Occupy Wall Street movement - a vague sense that the rich are getting ever richer while everyone else suffers - was confirmed by a recent report from the Social Security Administration showing that while total employment and average wages remained stagnant, the number of people earning $1 million or more grew by 18% from 2009 to 2010.  Those figures give real substance to the "We are the 99%" slogan, yet Republicans continue to insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that if anything those "job creators" deserve an even greater share of our national income.  The Tea Party, meanwhile, has launched its own "53%" movement, inexplicably rallying the working class to the defense of the wealthy.  The one group rarely heard from in this rancorous debate is the 1%, whose incomes and taxes are its focus.  I am one of them, and here is my perspective, which may surprise you.    Read more
By Gaius | Daily Kos
Posted on Thursday, October 27, 2011 @ 09:15 AM
Share
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Jean Quan's About-Face: Oakland Mayor Now Supports the Occupy Movement, Orders "Minimal Police Presence"

This is rather incredible. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan released a statement late last night saying she now supports the Occupy Oakland protesters and will minimize police presence for the time being. The statement comes less than 48 hours after local police used excessive force against protesters, including rubber bullets, stun grenades, sound cannons, and tear gas. One protester, an Iraq war veteran named Scott Olsen, was shot with a projectile at close range, fracturing his skull and landing him in critical condition. [Update: Olsen's condition has since been upgraded to fair.]    Read more
By Lauren Kelley | AlterNet
Posted on Thursday, October 27, 2011 @ 08:30 AM
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How the 1% Pillage the Environment

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.

What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet?s life-support systems -- its atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere -- goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power, and control by that corrupt and greedy 1% we are hearing about from Zuccotti Park?  What if the assault on America?s middle class and the assault on the environment are one and the same?    Read more
By Chip Ward | TomDispatch.com
Posted on Thursday, October 27, 2011 @ 08:04 AM
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A Poem for Scott Olsen, the Veteran and Protester Put in a Coma by Oakland Police

The Cop Who Shot Scott Olsen

My rubber bullets smashed in the face of a veteran

and then I picked up a kitten ever so gently.

I was the perfect picture of a policeman.

I was only one person in one battalion

just doing his job, and doing it superbly.

My rubber bullets smashed in the face of a veteran

but orders are orders. I followed the game plan,

and my bosses said I acted honorably.

I was the perfect picture of a policeman

with my dark uniform, black helmet and shotgun.

Who cares if I shot a dirty fucking hippy?    Read more
By Steven D | Booman Tribune
Posted on Thursday, October 27, 2011 @ 07:21 AM
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Jon Stewart: Unless Godzilla Himself Was Out There, the Oakland PD's Use of Violence Was Way Out of Line

Last night Jon Stewart took on the Oakland Police Department's over-the-top use of violence against peaceful Occupy Oakland protesters. As Stewart noted, "They were concerned about a public safety threat, so they did this? [cue footage of tear gas clouds and exploding stun grenades]." He then showed images of some of the "ruffians" who the police were targeting: a teenage boy, a middle-aged college professor type, and a person in a wheelchair.

Watch it, here:


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 00:13:52 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:13:52 +0200
Subject: [THS] Greg Palast: Goldman Attacks Occupy Wall Street's Non-Profit
 Bank
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028001333.041ba868@mail.messagingengine.com>

Sachs Fiend:
Goldman Attacks Occupy Wall Street's Non-Profit Bank
When Goldman got huffy at a credit union honouring OWS and pulled its anniversary dinner funding, much more was at stake 

Exclusive for The Guardian
by Greg Palast, the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores. Out November 14. 
With Arun Gupta, founding editor of The Occupied Wall Street Journal. 

Greg Palast reports from Occupied Wall Street for Democracy Now! 

 

[Zuccotti Park, Wall Street, New York.] 

Mega-bank Goldman Sachs (assets $933 billion), has declared war on one of the smallest banks in New York (assets $30 million), the customer-owned community bank that happens to also be the banker for Friends of Liberty Plaza, Inc, also known as Occupy Wall Street. And you thought Goldman didn't care. 

The trouble began three weeks ago when the occupiers suddenly found their donation buckets filling with thousands of dollars, way more than needed for their pizza dinners. Suddenly, the anti-bank protesters needed a bank. Citibank and Chase certainly wouldn't fit. So OWS opened an account at the not-for-profit Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union. Peoples has a unique federal charter - designated to open accounts for low-income folk from all over NewYork, available to those families earning less than $38,000 per year. (Disclosure: the CEO of the Peoples bank is my dearly beloved ex. But that's another story.) 

Goldman Sachs had also joined up with the Peoples bank. Goldman partners reportedly earn a bit more than $38k per annum, yet Goldman's association so far was limited to giving the credit union $5,000 toward the little bank's 25th anniversary celebration dinner. Goldman's largesse was acknowledged on the dinner invites - along with the night's honoree: Occupy Wall Street. 

When a Goldman exec saw its gilded name next to Occupy Wall Street, the financial giant expressed much displeasure. In fact, my sources say, Goldman threatened legal action unless the credit union gave up the $5,000 and reprinted the invite sans the Sachs moniker. Goldman Sachs did not respond to our requests for comment on the affair. 

So far, it's a cute story: tiny bank uses Goldman's money to fete some tent-dwellers who are denouncing Sachs as the Giant Vampire Squid. 

But there's a lot more at stake in this battle than a $5,000 donation gone wrong. Underneath, it's a battle royal for control of tens of billions of dollars in government mandated "community reinvestment" funds. 

In 2008, the US Treasury handed Goldman Sachs a check for $10 billion from the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (Tarp), the bailout funds given to desperate commercial banks. A few eyebrows were raised: Goldman was not desperate, and it certainly was not a commercial bank. Yet - abracadabra! - Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson transformed investment bank Goldman into a commercial bank overnight. (Paulson's prior post was chairman of Goldman Sachs. Just saying.) 

But there was a catch: Goldman would have to return a chunk of the public's billions in the form of loans for low-income customers and members of its "community", as required by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. Problem: Goldman has, it seems, no low-income customers, nor a "community". Goldman was directed to find poor people and a community and hand over some cash. 

So Goldman looked down from its riverfront tower in lower Manhattan and discovered Peoples. Over 80% of Peoples member-owners have low incomes. At least 65% are Latino. 

For the big money-center banks, the CRA is good deal. They pay some blood money into community banks and offload their low-income customers. Indeed, bank branches catering to the carriage trade often hustle would-be customers from housing projects out the door with an admonition to take their undesirable business to Lower East Side Peoples. 

Goldman's circuits blew when the credit union's management appeared in Zuccotti Park to endorse Occupy Wall Street's call to "Move Your Money" from commercial banks to community credit unions. Heeding Peoples' and Occupy's call, 23 protesters marched to their local Citibank branches to close their accounts - and were promptly arrested. 

Peoples' Chairwoman Deyarina Del Rio tells me that Peoples sees itself in agreement and alliance with the protesters' demands to radically shift the American finance system away from profit-first to people-first banking. But not with our money, seems to be Goldman's attitude. But of course, it's not Goldman's money but our money - effectively, the tax payer dollars that were supposed to come back in the form of loans in return for the Tarp bailout. 

The billions of dollars in CRA funds (Citibank alone committed $115 billion over ten years) have given community banks tremendous political authority at the local level. Notably, Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez will be honored alongside Occupy Wall Street at the credit union's 3 November dinner. "We didn't mean to draw a line in the sand with Goldman," Peoples Chairman Del Rio told me, standing inside the bank's vault, the only place in the cramped back office with room to meet. 

But Goldman did draw the line. And other bankers are stepping back across it, too. Capital One also pulled its name off the dinner invites. 

Goldman has so far only passed out its legally-required CRA funds with an eye-dropper: the $5,000 for Peoples (now withdrawn), and a few other dabs here and there. The big cash investments from the Goldman fund are dangling, hoping to lure only those community banks and low-income funds that will dance to Goldman's tune. My sources told me that Goldman's "Urban Investment Group" representative had stated in a phone conversation that Occupy's credit union will never get another dime from any big bank, but, again, Goldman refused to speak with me to confirm or deny this. 

Peoples' Del Rio dismisses such threats, but I don't. These Community Reinvestment funds ultimately come from public pockets, so why should the titans of Wall Street be allowed to bully community credit unions, which are answerable to their members, not Goldman's partners? 

*** 

Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, which will be released on November 14 by Penguin USA. 


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 11:06:36 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:06:36 +0200
Subject: [THS] Medical Cannabis in Colorado - Stories
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028110223.04b112b8@mail.messagingengine.com>

Pubdate: Thu, 27 Oct 2011
Source: Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO)
Copyright: 2011 The Fort Collins Coloradoan
Contact: http://www.coloradoan.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.coloradoan.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1580
Author: Steve Ackerman
Note: Steve Ackerman is a 39-year resident of Fort Collins and the
president of Fort Collins Medical Cannabis Association.

LET FACTS, NOT EMOTIONS, GUIDE VOTE

When people hear the term "medical marijuana" these days, it likely
sparks a strong reaction one way or the other. Though many
"sensational" stories have made their way into the public eye via the
media, much of the reality of the medical cannabis community as it
stands today remains largely misunderstood by the average person.

It is true that the medical marijuana program remained relatively
small from it's inception in the year 2000 until the latter part of
2009 when the total number of patients in Colorado barely topped
4,000. Today, more than 137,000 patients are registered cardholders in
the medical cannabis program. So what in fact changed to account for
the increase in participants to the program? Many people who are not
part of the community have been left with the impression that the
program is fraught with abuses and lack of regulation; I propose this
is far from an accurate picture of the truth.

Having educated the chronically ill population in our community since
early in 2008, I have witnessed the growth of the medical cannabis
community firsthand. Some facts: A person must first be suffering with
one of eight qualifying conditions to be able to receive a physician
recommendation and apply for the program. The registration is valid
only for a period of one year, after which a person's condition must
be re-evaluated by a physician and the application process starts anew.

During this "explosion" of the medical cannabis community that many
are concerned about, countless people already suffering with a chronic
condition came to learn about this mild herb that could help them to
feel better with little to no side effects; they wanted to know more.
It was affordable, and it was in many cases life-changing to those who
came to discover its magnificent therapeutic properties. People were
drawn to this option, which could effectively and sustainably treat
their conditions.

Though many in our Fort Collins community might not realize it, the
medical cannabis community has undergone major regulatory changes
during that time frame, as well. Though at one point there were not
detailed rules, now extensive regulations have been put into place
regarding physicians, patients, caregivers and regulated centers. All
are part of a system overseen by the state and, further, by the local
municipalities.

The fact is the overwhelming majority of participants in the program
are legitimate patients benefiting from the positive effects of
medical cannabis. Because of the safe, available access, these
patients are able to continue the effective therapy they have found.
If regulated cannabis is banned, it will serve only to extinguish
access for those who need it and push it back into our neighborhoods
in an attempt to supply those who have a right to use it as medicine.
Untaxed and unregulated, this is the biggest potential impact on our
community.

Let the state and local regulatory agencies do their jobs with clearly
defined regulations to follow. Let patients continue to have safe
access to something that effectively treats chronic conditions. Let
your vote be guided by the facts and not emotional, fear-based arguments.

Vote "No" on 300 and save patient access. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pubdate: Tue, 25 Oct 2011
Source: Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO)
Copyright: 2011 The Fort Collins Coloradoan
Contact: http://www.coloradoan.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.coloradoan.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1580
Author: John Clarke
Note: John Clarke is a former county commissioner, former City
Council member, photographer and 600 KCOL host.

LET'S CLOSE MMJ CENTERS, IMPROVE JAIL

With an election a week away, I have some thoughts on the issues and
candidates:

Pot shops: I talked with County Clerk and Recorder Scott Doyle and he
told me that a lot of Fort Collins voters already have voted in the
current election. Maybe it is because of Initiated Question 300 - the
city ordinance that would prohibit medical marijuana centers in Fort
Collins.

I am opposed to allowing these centers to remain in operation in our
town and will vote in favor of Question 300. (This is an issue where
you vote "yes" if you are opposed to marijuana shops.) Larimer County
and other municipalities already have banned them.

We are sending a bad message to the youths of Fort Collins by allowing
pot shops to exist in the city. The Poudre School District reports
that drug-related expulsions have gone up by 300 percent during the
time these "clinics" have come into our community. In addition,
marijuana is illegal under federal law, so the U. S. government could
come in and arrest anyone selling or possessing pot. If this stuff
were really medicine, there are many places that could legally sell it
- pharmacies.

A campaign report filed by the committee opposing Question 300 shows
it has thousands of dollars that were contributed by unions from
Washington, D.C.; Schaumburg, Ill.; and Wheat Ridge. It paid $5,000 to
a District of Columbia-based political consultant to advise the
campaign. I find this outside interference in a local issue to be outrageous.

Please vote "yes" on Question 300.

Jail tax: That brings me to the extended reduced tax for public
safety (Referred Issue 1A). As a former county commissioner, I know
how important it is to operate a safe and effective jail and urge you
to vote "yes" on this issue. It will lower the current sales tax rate
in the county and provide important funding to improve our ability to
deal with crime and criminals in Larimer County.

The tax will provide needed money for jail operations and alternative
sentencing. One of the important aspects of the funding is that it
will also restore mental health and drug treatment programs for
offenders. Statistics show that the vast majority of arrests involve
individuals with drug addiction and/or mental health issues. The tax
also will provide dollars to expand the jail - something that is
desperately needed.

School board: My ballot will be marked for Barbara Schwerin, Tom
Balchak, Stephen Yurash and Teresa Affleck. These folks will provide
the policy direction needed to help our schools become accountable to
parents and taxpayers while providing our children with a more
effective education.

Proposition 103: This is a state-wide ballot issue that will raise
income and sales taxes with the proceeds earmarked for schools.

I was raised by a teacher and have two sons and a daughter-in-law who
teach in Colorado. I have six grandkids attending Colorado public
schools where the taxpayers spend $8,167 per student to educate them.
I have five grandkids who attend Utah public schools where the
taxpayers only spend $5,683 each. While they are all receiving a good
education, overall test scores in Utah are higher - go figure. Vote
"yes" if you want more money for Colorado schools. Vote "no" if you
don't want a tax increase.

Happy voting! 
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pubdate: Thu, 27 Oct 2011
Source: Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO)
Webpage: http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20111027/OPINION04/110270341
Copyright: 2011 The Fort Collins Coloradoan
Contact: http://www.coloradoan.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.coloradoan.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1580
Authors: D. Michael and Nancy R. Smith
Note: D. Michael and Nancy R. Smith, Ph.D.s, are psychotherapists
living in Fort Collins.

COMMERCIAL MARIJUANA DEALERS HAVE CREATED A PERFECT STORM

Without resorting to hyperbole or what the other side calls "reefer
madness," we believe two factors have come together at this time to
create what we think is the perfect storm, to enable the worst
possible scenario for us and our future in Fort Collins: commercial
marijuana dealerships and those who've made a mockery of the medical
marijuana card.

The 20 commercial pot shops in Fort Collins and the geometric
proliferation of those obtaining cards who have no legitimate need for
them has led to a massive increase in the numbers of those using
marijuana without fear of the legal, physical or psychological
consequences. These bode ill for our future together.

We are not referring to the relatively small number of those who
actually need marijuana to palliate the symptoms of end-stage or
chronic illness. These folks were well cared for by existing
caretakers allowed by Amendment 20. Regardless of the pro-MMD lobby's
claims, they will be well cared for when the commercial dealerships
are gone because their actual number is relatively small. Patients in
true need are not the issue.

The issue that hasn't been well discussed is the huge "new base" of
recreational and potentially addicted users that has been essentially
created or at least facilitated by the easy access and perceived
reduction in risk to health, especially among adolescents. The fact is
virtually anyone 18 or older can get a card to obtain marijuana from a
pot doctor. Other writers have noted the dramatic increase in
marijuana incidents in local schools since the pot dealers came to
town. Absolutely no coincidence here. And Sheriff Justin Smith and
others have documented cardholders purchasing their "regulated limit"
from multiple pot shops. This creates an overabundance of pot, some of
which is being sold to kids and to markets across the country.

So here's what we mean by the "perfect storm." It is an undeniable
fact that increased substance use and abuse leads to increased crime.
When people are drunk, stoned or high (impaired by substances), they
take more risks, do more outrageous things, get into more fights
(verbal and physical), have more accidents and commit more crime.
Witness the chaos, property destruction, injuries and arrests that
resulted from the riot at Rams Pointe near Colorado State University
the first week of school. Most all were drunk. It's a safe bet that
many were stoned, as well.

Regardless of pot dealers and their advocates' claims of how
"regulated" and "safe" their shops and internal transactions are,
simply their presence and "doing business" in the community leads to
more people using pot, which leads to more crime, which is not in the
best interest of our life together. As Jerri Howe noted in her recent
Soapbox (referencing the Office of National Drug Control Policy), a 3
million person increase in the number of those regularly using drugs
(primarily marijuana) since 2007 is attributable to the increasing
number of states permitting the use of medical marijuana. More
substance use and abuse always equals more crime.

For us, this means that allowing commercial pot dealerships to
continue will most certainly continue contributing to the exponential
increase in crime in the city. A perfect storm has been created that
can be substantially abated by your voting for Citizens' Initiative
300, to ban the pot dealerships in Fort Collins. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pubdate: Thu, 27 Oct 2011
Source: Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO)
Copyright: 2011 The Fort Collins Coloradoan
Contact: http://www.coloradoan.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.coloradoan.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1580

ENDORSE BAN ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES

Vote 'Yes' On Proposition 300

Not here, not now.

Fort Collins is at the epicenter of an experiment as to whether the
federal government will choose to enforce the illegality of marijuana
as a Schedule 1 controlled substance in communities that have approved
medical marijuana dispensaries.

The federal government appears to have opened this experimental door,
but it's a door that could close at any moment with a change in
presidential administrations or even a change of heart by the current
administration. Waiting and wondering if enforcement will occur places
the city, its residents, medical marijuana customers and even
dispensary owners themselves in far too vulnerable a position.

Thus, the Coloradoan editorial board endorses Proposition 300, a ban
on medical marijuana dispensaries in Fort Collins.

We question the legitimacy of a medical marijuana dispensary model
that is only now being more formally regulated to address access and
security. We look askance on a model in which hundreds of medical
marijuana applicants in Colorado were allowed to buy medical marijuana
without documentation because the state couldn't process the
overwhelming number of applications for registry cards within 35 days.
We wonder why and how the number of medical marijuana registry cards
issued in Larimer County soared from the 500 that were issued during
the entire nine years following passage of Amendment 20 to a whopping
8,500 in the two years since dispensaries were approved. We dispute a
model that does not hold doctors responsible for marketing medical
marijuana recommendations. All this places the legitimacy of the MMD
model in question.

But what is not in question is that there are hundreds of people in
Fort Collins who genuinely use medical marijuana to ease pain or
chronic symptoms. They are the victims in this debate. The current MMD
model does not adequately distinguish between those who reasonably use
marijuana for medical reasons and those seeking to exploit the
dispensary model for their own gain. Until this gap can be eliminated,
a return to the more limited caregiver approach - which is much less
convenient - is the only option.

This is a not a unanimous opinion by the Coloradoan editorial board. A
strong argument exists that the current approach remains the best
option not only to provide safe and convenient access for those
suffering from illnesses that are effectively treated with marijuana,
but also because a proliferation of uncontrolled caregiver grows will
only make marijuana more accessible on the black market. The
dispensary model more closely controls cultivation and distribution
and forces the schools and parents to have those tough conversations
about the use and abuse of all medicine. The onus will be placed on
local law enforcement to keep the caregiver model secure if the ballot
issue passes.

Despite the endorsement, supporters of Proposition 300 are cautioned
not to be misled into believing that a ban on medical marijuana
dispensaries is a solution when it comes to discouraging our youth
from using marijuana. Even if dispensaries disappear along with their
marketing techniques, the fact is that marijuana is still widely
available to young people. Those who so vocally support this ban
should apply equal energy to a frank and factual discussion about
illegal marijuana use in our community.

Vote "Yes" on Proposition 300. 


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 11:16:01 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:16:01 +0200
Subject: [THS] Farmed Salmon Warning
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028111450.04b10d98@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/2011/10/2011-1018-pops-farmed-salmon-fatten-mice/

Farmed salmon diet fattens mice.
Oct 20, 2011

Ibrahim, MM, E Fj?re, EJ Lock, D Naville, H Amlund, E Meugnier, B Le Magueresse Battistoni, L Fr?yland, L Madsen, N Jessen, S Lund, H Vidal and J Ruzzin. 2011. Chronic consumption of farmed salmon containing persistent organic pollutants causes insulin resistance and obesity in mice. PLOS One http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025170.
	

Synopsis by Roxanne Karimi and Wendy Hessler

2011-1018-atlantic-salmon
E. Peter Steenstra/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
 

A study with mice provides more evidence that a diet high in farmed salmon contaminated by persistent organic pollutants - POPs - contributes to weight gain and increases the risk of diabetes.

The results are consistent with a growing body of research on people, linking POPs exposure to type 2 diabetes.  Mice fed contaminated salmon gained twice as much weight and developed more severe insulin resistance measures than mice that ate no salmon but the same amount of fat.

When the researchers fed the mice salmon whose POPs levels had been reduced by around 50 percent, the health effects were also reduced.

The researchers could not say whether these effects are due entirely to POPs or other factors inherent in the fatty fish diet. Further work should test whether a complete avoidance of POPs further reduces weight gain and insulin resistance.
 
Context

Obesity is a growing problem around the world. The excessive weight gain is almost epidemic ? especially in the United States, the European Union and other Western cultures where high-fat diets and low activity prevail.

At the same time, diabetes and other metabolic-related diseases also are increasing. These health conditions generally share an underlying cause: insulin resistance, which occurs when insulin becomes ineffective. Normally, the pancreas releases the hormone insulin to help cells take in and process glucose sugars. Cells use glucose as energy to fuel metabolism. Insulin resistence leads to too much insulin and glucose in the blood ? and that affects metabolism.

Obesity, lack of exercise, genetics and high blood pressure are risk factors for insulin resistance. Collectively, the risks are called metabolic syndrome, and if left untreated, can lead to type 2 diabetes, stroke and other serious health issues.

In the United States, 25 percent of adults have metabolic disorders linked to insulin resistance. Diabetes alone affects 25.8 million people, about 8 percent of the population, according to the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse.

Farmed salmon is one of the most commonly eaten fish worldwide. Fish are important sources of nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids that benefit brain development and lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. But, eating fish may not deminish ? and may in fact add to ? the risk of diabetes, according to recent studies.

Like all fish, farmed salmon contain environmental contaminants. Among these are persistent organic pollutants (POPs). POPs are a large and varied group of chemical compounds that share certain traits, including persistence, toxicity to health and an ability to accumulate in tissues and fat. POPs were made and used in a variety of industrial and consumer applications. They are also byproducts of industrial processes.

A large survey comparing farmed with wild salmon has shown that POPs levels are significantly higher in farmed salmon than in wild.

The United States and other countries have banned the use and production of many POPs, yet, they still occur in wildlife, people and the environment at levels that can cause health concerns. POPs are linked to a long list of health effects, including cancer and diabetes.
What did they do?

In a new experiment using mice, scientists tested the effects of eating farmed salmon on weight gain and metabolism changes including insulin resistance, an indicator of diabetes. The researchers also tested whether POPs played a role in these factors.

The scientists fed groups of 8-week-old male mice different diets for eight weeks. These included a control diet, a very high-fat diet (72 percent fat) without farmed Atlantic salmon, a very high-fat diet with commercially-farmed Atlantic salmon and a lower fat/high carbohydrate Western-style diet (29 percent fat) with or without salmon.

Another group of mice was fed salmon whose POPs levels had been reduced by approximately 50 percent.

The researchers measured weight gain, body fat to track obesity and insulin resistance and glucose tolerance, both of which indicate increased risk of developing diabetes. They also measured levels of POPs in tissues and fat, including organochlorine pesticides, dioxins, furans and different types of polychlorinated biphenyls.
What did they find?
They found the mice fed the high-fat diet with farmed salmon gained roughly twice as much weight as mice fed the high-fat salmon-free diet, even though the diets contained the same total amount of fat. A big difference is the type of fat in each diet. The salmon diet had lower omega-6 fatty acids and higher omega-3 fatty acids than the diets without salmon.
 
The higher weight gain was due to greater absorption of fat into the body.
 
The high-fat, contaminated-salmon diet also worsened insulin resistance and glucose intolerance, indicating a diabetic state in the mice.
 
Interestingly, the authors found similar patterns when they tested the effects of salmon in the lower-fat, Western diet. Though the effects were smaller, the mice fed salmon gained more weight and had increased insulin resistance.
 
Finally, mice fed the salmon diet with reduced POPs had slightly less weight gain, lower body fat and decreased indicators of type 2 diabetes compared to mice fed salmon with higher POPs levels.

What does it mean?

The study with mice provides more evidence that eating a prolonged diet with contaminated fatty fish may increase obesity and raise the risk of insulin resistence that may lead to diabetes. While the exact reasons for the changes aren't clear, pollutants in the fish contributed some to the increased risk of metabolic disease seen in the study, the researchers report.

The results show that eating the POPs-contaminated farmed salmon led to greater weight gain and higher predisposition to type 2 diabetes compared to a salmon-free diet with the same amount of total fat.

The findings raise a number of questions, including whether this pattern is true for all fish ? farmed or not ? or seafood in general and if it carries over to other fatty,  foods, such as meat and dairy, which may also contain POPs. The researchers could not say whether these effects are due entirely to POPs or other factors inherent in the fish diet. Further research should test whether a complete avoidance of POPs further reduces weight gain and insulin resistance.

Prior research has tried to understand the influence of fish intake on type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases. Yet, the interplay between the two remains ambiguous. Overall, recent long-term human studies from the United States and Europe suggest a connection.

This experimental study is one of the first to test the idea in animals. The study supports those past human studies because it finds similar results.

Other lab and animal studies by the same research group have found POPs can interfere with the beneficial effects of salmon oil and impair insulin actions. This study suggests the same but provides a new twist. It is unique because whole fish fillets ? not just fish oil alone ? were used.

POPs levels in the fish's fatty tissues were similar to what has been measured in the people. This agrees with past research showing that environmentally relevant levels of one type of POPs ? polycyclic byphenyls (PCBs) ? can affect insulin resistance. 

Since salmon are a complex mix of many different nutrients and contaminants, it will require more intensive study to uncover the mechanism behind these patterns. For right now, the researchers suggest that limiting "daily and long-term exposure to POPs may therefore represent a novel and attractive approach to slow down the uncontrolled rise of metabolic diseases."
Resources

Djousse L, JM Gaziano, JE Buring and IM Lee. 2011. Dietary omega-3 fatty acids
and fish consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 93:143-150.

Grundy SM, JI Cleeman,SR Daniels, KA Donato, RH Eckel, BA Franklin, DJ Gordon, RM Krauss, PJ Savage, SC Smith, Jr, JA Spertus and F Costa. 2005. Diagnosis and management of the metabolic syndrome: an American Heart Association/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute scientific statement. Circulation:112:2735-2752.

Hites, RA, JA Foran, DO Carpenter, MC Hamilton, B Knuth, and SJ Schwager 2004. Global Assessment of Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon. Science 2004: 226-229.

Kaushik. M, D Mozaffarian, D Spiegelman, JE Manson, WC Willett and FB Hu. 2009. Long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, fish intake, and the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 90:613-620.

Lee D-H, Steffes MW, Sjo? din A, Jones RS, Needham LL, et al. (2011) Low Dose Organochlorine Pesticides and Polychlorinated Biphenyls Predict Obesity, Dyslipidemia, and Insulin Resistance among People Free of Diabetes. PLoS ONE 6(1): e15977.

Meyer, KA, LH Kushi, DR Jacobs and AR Folsom. 2001. Dietary fat and incidence
of type 2 diabetes in older Iowa women. Diabetes Care 24:1528-1535.

Ruzzin, J, R Petersen, E Meugnier, L Madsen, EJ Lock, et al. 2010. Persistent
organic pollutant exposure leads to insulin resistance syndrome. Environmental Health
Perspectives 118:465-471.

van Woudenbergh, GJ, AJ van Ballegooijen, A Kuijsten, EJG Sijbrands, FJA van
Rooij, JM Geleijnse, A Hofman, JCM Witteman and EJM Feskens. 2009. Eating Fish and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes A populationbased, prospective follow-up study. Diabetes Care 32:2021-2026.


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 11:16:56 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:16:56 +0200
Subject: [THS] Someone Got Rich and Someone Got Sick
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028111205.03ec7ce8@mail.messagingengine.com>

From Tom Engelhardt:

If your child has asthma and it?s getting worse, then news about the White House?s recent retreat on ozone (that is, smog) standards for the air over your city wasn?t exactly cause for cheering. Thank our environmental president for that, but mainly of course the Republicans, who have been out to kneecap the Environmental Protection Agency since the 2010 election results came in.  We may be heading for an anything-blows environmental future, even though it couldn?t be more logical to assume that whatever is allowed into the air will sooner or later end up in us.

With a helping hand from that invaluable website Environmental Health News, here?s a little ladleful of examples from the chemical soup that could be not just your air, soil, or water, but you.  It's only a few days' worth of news reports on what?s in our environment and so, for better or mostly worse, in us: In Dallas-Ft. Worth, there?s lead in the blood of children, thanks to leaded gasoline, banned decades ago, but still in the soil.  In New York?s Hudson River, ?one of the largest toxic cleanups in U.S. history? (for PCBs in river sediments) is ongoing.  Researchers now suspect that those chemicals, already linked to low birth weight, thyroid disease, and learning, memory, and immune system disorders,? are also associated with to high blood pressure.  Then there?s mercury, that ?potent neurotoxin that is especially dangerous to the developing brains of fetuses and children.? If allowed, it will enter the environment via a proposed open-pit gold and copper mine to be built in Alaska near ?one of the world's premier salmon fisheries.?

And speaking of fish, there is ancient DDT, plus more modern PCBs and spilled oil in ocean sediments off California?s Palos Verdes Peninsula, a toxic superfund site, whose cleanup is now being planned.  And don?t forget that uranium mill near Ca?on City, Colorado, which ?has the state's backing to permanently dispose of radioactive waste in its tailings ponds, despite state and independent reports over a 30-year period showing the ponds' liners leak.?  Or consider bisphenol-A, a chemical most of us now carry around in our bodies.  It is used in the making of some plastic containers and ?may cause behavior and emotional problems in young girls? according to a new study (as older studies indicated that it might effect ?the brain development of fetuses and small children?).  Or think about the drinking water tested recently by the University of Tennessee Center for Environmental Biotechnology from six of 11 Tennessee utilities statewide that ?contained traces of 17 chemicals found in insect repellent, ibuprofen, detergents, a herbicide, hormones, and chemical compounds found in plastics.?  And that's just to dip a toe in polluted waters. 

Increasingly, with the environment a chemical soup of our industrial processes, so are our bodies.  No wonder TomDispatch regular and environmentalist Chip Ward suggests that activists occupying Wall Street should think even bigger. 

Tom


Someone Got Rich and Someone Got Sick 
Nature Is the 99%, Too 
By Chip Ward

What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet?s life-support systems -- its atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere -- goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power, and control by that corrupt and greedy 1% we are hearing about from Zuccotti Park?  What if the assault on America?s middle class and the assault on the environment are one and the same?

Money Rules: It?s not hard for me to understand how environmental quality and economic inequality came to be joined at the hip.  In all my years as a grassroots organizer dealing with the tragic impact of degraded environments on public health, it was always the same: someone got rich and someone got sick.

In the struggles that I was involved in to curb polluters and safeguard public health, those who wanted curbs, accountability, and precautions were always outspent several times over by those who wanted no restrictions on their effluents.  We dug into our own pockets for postage money, they had expense accounts.  We made flyers to slip under the windshield wipers of parked cars, they bought ads on television.  We took time off from jobs to visit legislators, only to discover that they had gone to lunch with fulltime lobbyists.

Naturally, the barons of the chemical and nuclear industries don?t live next to the radioactive or toxic-waste dumps that their corporations create; on the other hand, impoverished black and brown people often do live near such ecological sacrifice zones because they can?t afford better.  Similarly, the gated communities of the hyper-wealthy are not built next to cesspool rivers or skylines filled with fuming smokestacks, but the slums of the planet are. Don?t think, though, that it?s just a matter of property values or scenery.  It?s about health, about whether your kids have lead or dioxins running through their veins.  It?s a simple formula, in fact: wealth disparities become health disparities.

And here?s another formula: when there?s money to be made, both workers and the environment are expendable.  Just as jobs migrate if labor can be had cheaper overseas, I know workers who were tossed aside when they became ill from the foul air or poisonous chemicals they encountered on the job.

The fact is: we won?t free ourselves from a dysfunctional and unfair economic order until we begin to see ourselves as communities, not commodities.  That is one clear message from Zuccotti Park.

Polluters routinely walk away from the ground they poison and expect taxpayers to clean up after them.  By ?externalizing? such costs, profits are increased.  Examples of land abuse and abandonment are too legion to list, but most of us can refer to a familiar ?superfund site? in our own backyard.  Clearly, Mother Nature is among the disenfranchised, exploited, and struggling.

Democracy 101: The 99% pay for wealth disparity with lost jobs, foreclosed homes, weakening pensions, and slashed services, but Nature pays, too.  In the world the one-percenters have created, the needs of whole ecosystems are as easy to disregard as, say, the need the young have for debt-free educations and meaningful jobs.  

Extreme disparity and deep inequality generate a double standard with profound consequences.  If you are a CEO who skims millions of dollars off other people?s labor, it?s called a ?bonus.?  If you are a flood victim who breaks into a sporting goods store to grab a lifejacket, it?s called looting.  If you lose your job and fall behind on your mortgage, you get evicted.  If you are a banker-broker who designed flawed mortgages that caused a million people to lose their homes, you get a second-home vacation-mansion near a golf course. 

If you drag heavy fishnets across the ocean floor and pulverize an entire ecosystem, ending thousands of years of dynamic evolution and depriving future generations of a healthy ocean, it?s called free enterprise.  But if, like Tim DeChristopher, you disrupt an auction of public land to oil and gas companies, it?s called a crime and you get two years in jail.   

In campaigns to make polluting corporations accountable, my Utah neighbors and I learned this simple truth: decisions about what to allow into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat are soon enough translated into flesh and blood, bone and nerve, and daily experience.  So it?s crucial that those decisions, involving environmental quality and public health, are made openly, inclusively, and accountably.  That?s Democracy 101.

The corporations that shred habitat and contaminate your air and water are anything but democratic.  Stand in line to get your 30 seconds in front of a microphone at a public hearing about the siting of a nuclear power plant, the effluent from a factory farm, or the removal of a mountaintop and you?ll get the picture quickly enough: the corporations that profit from such ecological destruction are distant, arrogant, secretive, and unresponsive.  The 1% are willing to spend billions impeding democratic initiatives, which is why every so-called environmental issue is also about building a democratic culture.   

First Kill the EPA, Then Social Security: Beyond all the rhetoric about freedom from the new stars of the Republican Party, the strategy is simple enough: obstruct and misinform, then blame the resulting dysfunction on ?government.?  It?s a great scam.  Tell the voters that government doesn?t work and then, when elected, prove it.  And first on the list of government outfits they want to sideline or kill is the Environmental Protection Agency, so they can do away with the already flimsy wall of regulation that stands between their toxins and your bloodstream. 

Poll after poll shows that citizens understand the need for environmental rules and safeguards.  Mercury is never put into the bloodstreams of nursing mothers by consensus, nor are watersheds fracked until they are flammable by popular demand.  But the free market ideologues of the Republican Party are united in opposition to any rule or standard that impedes the ?magic? of the marketplace and unchecked capital.

The same bottom-line quarterly-report fixation on profitability that accepts oil spills as inevitable also accepts unemployment as inevitable. Tearing apart wildlife habitat to make a profit and doing the same at a workplace are just considered the price of doing business. Clearcutting a forest and clearcutting a labor force are two sides of the same coin.    

Beware of Growth: Getting the economy growing has been the refrain of the Obama administration and the justification for every bad deal, budget cut, and unbalanced compromise it?s made.  The desperate effort to grow the economy to solve our economic woes is what keeps Timothy Geithner at the helm of the Treasury and is what stalls the regulation of greenhouse gasses.  It?s why we are told we must sacrifice environmental quality for pipelines and why young men and women are sacrificed to protect access to oil, the lubricant for an acquisitive economic engine.  The financial empire of the one percenters and the political order it has shaped are predicated on easy and relentless growth.  How, we are asked, will there be enough for everyone if we don?t keep growing? 

The fundamental contradiction of our time is this: we have built an all-encompassing economic engine that requires unending growth.  A contraction of even a percent or two is a crisis, and yet we are embedded in ecosystems that are reaching or have reached their limits.  This isn?t complicated: There?s only so much fertile soil or fresh water available, only so many fish in the ocean, only so much CO2 the planet can absorb and remain habitable. 

Yes, you can get around this contradiction for a while by exploiting your neighbor?s habitat, using technological advances to extend your natural resources, and stealing from the future -- that is, using up soil, minerals, and water your grandchildren (someday to be part of that same 99%) will need.  But the limits to those familiar and, in the past, largely successful strategies are becoming more evident all the time. 

At some point, we?ll discover that you can?t exist for long beyond the boundaries of the natural world, that (as with every other species) if you overload the carrying capacity of your habitat, you crash.  Warming temperatures, chaotic weather patterns, extreme storms, monster wildfires, epic droughts, Biblical floods, an avalanche of species extinction
 that collapse is upon us now.  In the human realm, it translates into hunger and violence, mass migrations and civil strife, failed states and resource wars.

Like so much else these days, the crash, as it happens, will not be suffered in equal measure by all of us.  The one percenters will be atop the hill, while the 99% will be in the flood lands below swimming for their lives, clinging to debris, or drowning. The Great Recession has previewed just how that will work.

An unsustainable economy is inherently unfair, and worse is to come.  After all, the car is heading for the cliff?s edge, the grandkids are in the backseat, and all we?re arguing about is who can best put the pedal to the metal.

Occupy Earth: Give credit where it?s due: it?s been the genius of the protesters in Zuccotti Park to shift public discourse to whether the distribution of economic burdens and rewards is just and whether the economic system makes us whole or reduces and divides us.  It?s hard to imagine how we?ll address our converging ecological crises without first addressing the way accumulating wealth and power has captured the political system.  As long as Washington is dominated and intimidated by giant oil companies, Wall Street speculators, and corporations that can buy influence and even write the rules that make buying influence possible, there?s no meaningful way to deal with our economy?s addiction to fossil fuels and its dire consequences.

Nature?s 99% is an amazingly diverse community of species.  They feed and share and recycle within a web of relationships so dynamic and complex that we have yet to fathom how it all fits together.  What we have excelled at so far is breaking things down into their parts and then reassembling them; that, after all, is how a barrel of crude oil becomes rocket fuel or a lawn chair. 

When it comes to the more chaotic, less linear features of life like climate, ecosystems, immune systems, or fetal development, we are only beginning to understand thresholds and feedback loops, the way the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.  But we at least know that the parts matter deeply and that, before we even fully understand them, we?re losing them at an accelerating rate.  Forests are dying, fisheries are going, extinction is on steroids. 

Degrading the planet?s operating systems to bolster the bottom line is foolish and reckless.  It hurts us all.  No less important, it?s unfair.  The 1% profit, while the rest of us cough and cope. 

After Occupy Wall Street, isn?t it time for Occupy Earth?

Chip Ward co-founded and led Families Against Incinerator Risk and HEAL Utah. A TomDispatch regular, he wrote about campaigns to make polluters accountable in Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West and about visionary conservationists in Hope?s Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land.

Copyright 2011 Chip Ward


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 11:30:28 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:30:28 +0200
Subject: [THS] Wall Street Firms Spy on Protesters in Tax-Funded Center
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028111913.04436460@mail.messagingengine.com>

[I think that what is most worrying is that: much of the information we see on such matters might be thought to show that the feds and their henchmen are totally nuts, with all this Homeland Security idiocy that anyone with a few functioning neurons can see is just a load of unadulterated lunacy. Surely the rulers know this. What it indicates, however, since we can see from history that U.S. federal agencies and their controllers and think tanks do their planning for contingencies many years down the road, is this: the powers-that-be project that to remain 'in control' 5, 10, 20 years from now, they are going to need all this infrastructure and more, all the servile and violent cops they can muster, all the prisons and detention sites they've built and many more, all the non-Constittutional judges and courts, and all the you-name-it that looks so stupid at the present. And scary as hell, it is most likey to be self-fulfilling prophecy. -ths]


Wall Street Firms Spy on Protesters in Tax-Funded Center


By Pam Martens, CounterPunch
Posted on October 26, 2011, Printed on October 27, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152875/wall_street_firms_spy_on_protesters_in_tax-funded_center

http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152875/wall_street_firms_spy_on_protesters_in_tax-funded_center?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet

The following article is original to CounterPunch.

Wall Street?s audacity to corrupt knows no bounds and the cooptation of government by the 1 per cent knows no limits. How else to explain $150 million of taxpayer money going to equip a government facility in lower Manhattan where Wall Street firms, serially charged with corruption, get to sit alongside the New York Police Department and spy on law abiding citizens.

According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech facility on lower Broadway dates back six years. In correspondence from 2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission?s archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a Goldman Sachs? Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD ?is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan
One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.?

At the time, Goldman Sachs was in the process of extracting concessions from New York City just short of the Mayor?s first born in exchange for constructing its new headquarters building at 200 West Street, adjacent to the World Financial Center and in the general area of where the new World Trade Center complex would be built. According to the 2005 documents, Goldman?s deal included $1.65 billion in Liberty Bonds, up to $160 million in sales tax abatements for construction materials and tenant furnishings, and the deal-breaker requirement that a security plan that gave it a seat at the NYPD?s Coordination Center would be in place by no later than December 31, 2009.

The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock. Under the imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States, 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the streets in lower Manhattan to the center. Once at the center, they can be integrated for analysis. At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD, MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside high-wage personnel from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.

In addition to video analytics which can, for example, track a person based on the color of their hat or jacket, insiders say the NYPD either has or is working on face recognition software which could track individuals based on facial features. The center is also equipped with live feeds from license plate readers.

According to one person who has toured the center, there are three rows of computer workstations, with approximately two-thirds operated by non-NYPD personnel. The Chief-Leader, the weekly civil service newspaper, identified some of the outside entities that share the space: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, the Federal Reserve, the New York Stock Exchange. Others say most of the major Wall Street firms have an on-site representative. Two calls and an email to Paul Browne, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information, seeking the names of the other Wall Street firms at the center were not returned. An email seeking the same information to City Council Member, Peter Vallone, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, was not returned.

In a press release dated October 4, 2009 announcing the expansion of the surveillance territory, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly had this to say:

?The Midtown Manhattan Security Initiative will add additional cameras and license plate readers installed at key locations between 30th and 60th Streets from river to river. It will also identify additional private organizations who will work alongside NYPD personnel in the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, where corporate and other security representatives from Lower Manhattan have been co-located with police since June 2009. The Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center is the central hub for both initiatives, where all the collected data are analyzed.? [Italic emphasis added.]

The project has been funded by New York City taxpayers as well as all U.S. taxpayers through grants from the Federal Department of Homeland Security. On March 26, 2009, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) wrote a letter to Commissioner Kelly, noting that even though the system involves ?massive expenditures of public money, there have been no public hearings about any aspect of the system
we reject the Department?s assertion of ?plenary power? over all matters touching on public safety
the Department is of course subject to the laws and Constitution of the United States and of the State of New York as well as to regulation by the New York City Council.?

The NYCLU also noted in its letter that it rejected the privacy guidelines for the surveillance operation that the NYPD had posted on its web site for public comment, since there had been no public hearings to formulate these guidelines. It noted further that ?the guidelines do not limit police surveillance and databases to suspicious activity
there is no independent oversight or monitoring of compliance with the guidelines.?

According to Commissioner Kelly in public remarks, the privacy guidelines were written by Jessica Tisch, the Director of Counterterrorism Policy and Planning for the NYPD who has played a significant role in developing the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. In 2006, Tisch was 25 years old and still working on her law degree and MBA at Harvard, according to a wedding announcement in the New York Times. Tisch is a friend to the Mayor?s daughter, Emma; her mother, Meryl, is a family friend to the Mayor.

Tisch is the granddaughter and one of the heirs to the now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch who built the Loews Corporation. Her father, James Tisch, is now the CEO of the Loews Corporation and was elected by Wall Street banks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York until 2013 representing the public?s interest. (Clearly, the 1 per cent think they know what?s best for the 99 per cent.)

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is the entity which doled out the bulk of the $16 trillion in bailout loans to the U.S. and foreign financial community. Members of Tisch?s family work for Wall Street firms or hedge funds which have prime broker relationships with them. A division of Loews Corporation has a banking relationship with Citigroup.

The Tisch family stands to directly benefit from the surveillance program. In June of this year, Continental Casualty Company, the primary unit of the giant CNA Financial which is owned by Loew?s Corp., signed a 19-year lease for 81,296 square feet at 125 Broad Street ? an area under surveillance by the downtown surveillance center.

Loews Corporation also owns the Loew?s Regency Hotel on Park Avenue in midtown, an area which is also now under round-the-clock surveillance on the taxpayer?s dime.

Wall Street is infamous for perverting everything it touches: from the Nasdaq stock market, to stock research issued to the public, to auction rate securities, mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, credit default swaps with AIG, and mortgage securitizations. Had a public hearing been held on this massive surveillance sweep of Manhattan by potential felons, hopefully someone might have pondered what was to prevent Wall Street from tracking its employee whistleblowers heading off to the FBI offices or meeting with a reporter.

One puzzle has at least been solved. Wall Street?s criminals have not been indicted or sent to jail because they have effectively become the police.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street?s private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms. She has been writing on public interest issues for CounterPunch since retiring in 2006. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She can be reached at pamk741 at aol.com.


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 11:31:56 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:31:56 +0200
Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?Clarence_Thomas=97perjurer=2C_tax_cheat=2C__?=
 =?iso-8859-1?q?fanatic?=
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028113112.04b109c0@mail.messagingengine.com>

[forwarded from MCM list]

Here's the video of Judge McEwen's call for CT's resignation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmT1JowduwI   

And here's an ad for a new campaign connecting Thomas's corruption to the larger issues raised by #OWS: OccupyforAccountability.org 


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 11:44:05 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:44:05 +0200
Subject: [THS] Chossudovsky: The War on Libya and the Broader US-NATO
 Military Agenda
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028114332.0431ecc0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27237

The War on Libya and the Broader US-NATO Military Agenda
Is a World War III Scenario Unfolding?

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

	
Global Research, October 30, 2011
- 2011-10-24


With the killing of Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi this past week, NATO is celebrating what, in their view, is a great victory. However, this so-called "victory" has nothing to do with democracy, freedom or justice; it is part of a broad, insidious geopolitical strategy that has been on NATO's drawing board for years. And what is even more frightening than the bloodlust being shamelessly splashed across the mainstream media is the fact that this latest manoeuver is merely a small part of a much wider military agenda with potentially catastrophic consequences.

In his latest e-book, "Towards a World War III Scenario", Prof. Michel Chossudovsky outlines the strategies and real motives behind the war on Libya, what we can expect next from NATO (the world's deadly "humanitarian" force), and the necessary steps for dispelling disinformation and preventing war on an unprecedented scale.

The object of this e-book is to forcefully reverse the tide of war, challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support them.

The following extracts by Prof. Chossudovsky reveal several key issues facing humanity today. (The full version of "Towards a World War III Scenario" is available to purchase from Global Research in convenient PDF format.)


Towards a World War III Scenario

The war on Libya is an integral part of the broader military agenda in the Middle East and Central Asia which until recently consisted of three distinct areas of conflict: Afghanistan and Pakistan (the AfPak War), Iraq, Palestine.

These four war theaters are interrelated. They are part of a broader region of conflict, which extends from North Africa and the Middle East, engulfing a large part of the Mediterranean basin, to China's Western frontier with Afghanistan, and Northern Pakistan.

The Battle for Oil

More than 60 percent of the world?s oil and natural gas reserves lie in Muslim lands. ?The Battle for Oil? waged by the US-NATO-Israel military alliance requires the demonization of the inhabitants of those countries which possess these vast reserves of oil and natural gas.

Iran possesses ten percent of global oil and gas reserves. The US is the first and foremost military and nuclear power in the world, but it possesses less than two percent of global oil and gas reserves.

The US-led war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region consists in gaining control over more than sixty percent of the world?s reserves of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region.

Demonization is applied to an enemy which possesses three-quarters of the world?s oil reserves. ?Axis of evil?, ?rogue states?, ?failed nations?, ?Islamic terrorists?: demonization and vilification are the ideological pillars of America?s ?war on terror?. They serve as a casus belli for waging the battle for oil.

The Battle for Oil requires the demonization of those who possess the oil. The enemy is characterized as evil, with a view to justifying military action including the mass killing of civilians. The Middle East Central Asian region is heavily militarized. The oil fields are encircled by NATO war ships stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean (as part of a UN ?peacekeeping? operation), US Carrier Strike Groups and Destroyer Squadrons in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea deployed as part of the ?war on terrorism?.

The ultimate objective, combining military action, covert intelligence operations and war propaganda, is to break down the national fabric and transform sovereign countries into open economic territories, where natural resources can be plundered and confiscated under ?free market? supervision. This control also extends to strategic oil and gas pipeline corridors (e.g. Afghanistan).

Demonization is a psy-op, used to sway public opinion and build a consensus in favor of war. Psychological warfare is directly sponsored by the Pentagon and the US intelligence apparatus. It is not limited to assassinating or executing the rulers of Muslim countries; it extends to entire populations. It also targets Muslims in Western Europe and North America. It purports to break national consciousness and the ability to resist the invader. It denigrates Islam. It creates social divisions. It is intended to divide national societies and ultimately trigger ?civil war?.

Is a World War III Scenario Unfolding?

The US and its NATO allies are preparing to launch a nuclear war directed against both Iran and North Korea with devastating consequences. This military adventure in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity. While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from present-day wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using ?new technologies? and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality.

The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace. ?Making the world safer? is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.

It is not Iran and North Korea which are a threat to global security but the United States of America and Israel.

Humanity is at a dangerous crossroads. War preparations to attack Iran are in an advanced state of readiness. Hi-tech weapons systems including nuclear warheads are fully deployed.

This military adventure has been on the Pentagon?s drawing board since the mid-1990s: first Iraq, then Iran, according to a declassified 1995 US Central Command document.

Escalation is part of the military agenda. While Iran is the next target together with Syria and Lebanon, this strategic military deployment also threatens North Korea, China and Russia.

The American Inquisition: Building a Political Consensus for War

In chorus, the Western media has branded Iran as a threat to global security in view of its alleged (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. Echoing official statements, the media is now demanding the implementation of punitive bombings directed against Iran so as to safeguard Israel?s security.

The Western media is beating the drums of war. The purpose is to tacitly instill, through repeated media reports, ad nauseam, within people?s inner consciousness, the notion that the Iranian threat is real and that the Islamic Republic should be ?taken out?. A consensus-building process to wage war is similar to the Spanish Inquisition. It requires and demands submission to the notion that war is a humanitarian endeavor.

Known and documented, the real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance, yet realities in an inquisitorial environment are turned upside down: the warmongers are committed to peace, the victims of war are presented as the protagonists of war.

Reversing the Tide of War

A good-versus-evil dichotomy prevails. The perpetrators of war are presented as the victims.

Public opinion is misled: ?We must fight against evil in all its forms as a means to preserving the Western way of life.?

When a US-sponsored nuclear war becomes an ?instrument of peace?, condoned and accepted by the world?s institutions and the highest authority including the United Nations, there is no turning back: human society has indelibly been precipitated headlong onto the path of self-destruction.

The main factor which could prevent this war from occurring comes from the base of society, requiring forceful antiwar action by hundreds of millions of people across the land, nationally and internationally.

People must mobilize not only against this diabolical military agenda, the authority of the state and its officials must also be challenged.

This war can be prevented if people forcefully confront their governments, pressure their elected representatives, organize at the local level in towns, villages and municipalities, spread the word, inform their fellow citizens as to the implications of a nuclear war, initiate debate and discussion within the armed forces.

The holding of mass demonstrations and antiwar protests is not enough. What is required is the development of a broad and well organized grassroots antiwar network which challenges the structures of power and authority.

What is required is a mass movement of people which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of war and the New World Order, a global people?s movement which criminalizes war.

To reverse the tide, the spreading of information at all levels which counteracts the propaganda campaign is required.

The truth undermines and overshadows the lie.

Once this truth becomes fully understood, the legitimacy of the rulers will collapse like a deck of cards.

This is what has to be achieved. But we can only achieve it by effectively counteracting the official propaganda campaign. This initiative requires the spreading of information in an extensive grassroots network, with a view to weakening and ultimately disabling the administration?s propaganda machine.

When the lies ? including those concerning September 11 ? are fully revealed and understood by everybody, the legitimacy of the US-NATO-Israel military agenda will be broken.

What Has To Be Achieved

Reveal the criminal nature of this military project.

Break once and for all the lies and falsehoods which sustain the ?political consensus? in favor of a pre-emptive nuclear war.

Undermine war propaganda, reveal the media lies, reverse the tide of disinformation, wage a consistent campaign against the corporate media.

Break the legitimacy of the warmongers in high office.

Dismantle the US-sponsored military adventure and its corporate sponsors.

Bring home the troops.

Repeal the illusion that the state is committed to protecting its citizens.

Expose the ?fake crises?, such as the global flu pandemic, as a means to distract public opinion away from the dangers of a global war.

Uphold 9/11 Truth. Reveal the falsehoods behind 9/11 which are used to justify the Middle East/Central Asian war under the banner of the ?Global War on Terrorism? (GWOT).

Expose how a profit-driven war serves the vested interests of the banks, the defense contractors, the oil giants, the media giants and the biotech conglomerates.

Challenge the corporate media which deliberately obfuscates the causes and consequences of this war.

Reveal and take cognizance of the unspoken and tragic outcome of a war waged with nuclear weapons.

Call for the Dismantling of NATO.

Implement the prosecution of war criminals in high office.

Close down the weapons assembly plants and implement the foreclosure of major weapons producers.

Close down all US military bases in the US and around the world.

Develop an antiwar movement within the armed forces and establish bridges between the armed forces and the civilian antiwar movement.

Forcefully pressure governments of both NATO and non-NATO countries to withdraw from the US-led global military agenda.

Develop a consistent antiwar movement in Israel. Inform the citizens of Israel of the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israeli attack on Iran.

Target the pro-war lobby groups including the pro-Israeli groups in the US.

Dismantle the homeland security state, call for the repeal of the PATRIOT legislation.

The World is at the Crossroads of the Most Serious Crisis in Modern History

The US has embarked on a military adventure, ?a long war?, which threatens the future of humanity.

It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war.

To purchase the full-text version of "Towards a World War III Scenario" by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, visit our ONLINE STORE.

"Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War" by Michel Chossudovsky 


















E-Book Series No. 1.0
Global Research Publishers
Montreal, 2011

ISBN 978-0-9737147-3-9
76 pages (8.5x11)
Tables, color photographs, maps, text boxes. 
Active hyperlinks to major references in the text, hyperlinked footnotes.  

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DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE 

A New War Theater in North Africa                               
Operation Odyssey Dawn  
Nuclear Weapons against Libya? How Real is the Threat?       
America's Long War: The Global Military Agenda                         
How to Reverse the Tide of War                                   
World War III Scenario 
Acknowledgments     

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION    
                             
The Cult of Killing and Destruction                                 
America?s Mini-nukes 
War and the Economic Crisis                                     
Real versus Fake Crises                             

CHAPTER II: THE DANGERS OF NUCLEAR WAR 
                     
Hiroshima Day 2003: Secret Meeting at Strategic Command Headquarters           
The Privatization of Nuclear War: US Military Contractors Set the Stage             
9/11 Military Doctrine: Nuclear Weapons and the ?Global War on Terrorism?         
Al Qaeda: ?Upcoming Nuclear Power?                               
Obama?s Nuclear Doctrine: The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review                 
Post 9/11 Nuclear Doctrine                                       
?Defensive? and ?Offensive? Actions                                 
?Integration? of Nuclear and Conventional Weapons Plans                     
Theater Nuclear Operations (TNO)                                   
Planned Aerial Attacks on Iran                                     
Global Warfare: The Role of US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM)             
Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization                             
Israel?s Stockpiling of Conventional and Nuclear Weapons                     
The Role of Western Europe                                   
Germany: De Facto Nuclear Power                                 
Pre-emptive Nuclear War: NATO?s 2010 Strategic Concept                   
The World is at a Critical Crossroads                                 

CHAPTER III: AMERICA?S HOLY CRUSADE AND THE BATTLE FOR OIL           

America?s Crusade in Central Asia and the Middle East                       
?Homegrown Terrorists?                                       
The American Inquisition                                     
Washington?s Extrajudicial Assassination Program                         
The Battle for Oil       
The Oil Lies in Muslim Lands                                     
Globalization and the Conquest of the World?s Energy Resources               

CHAPTER IV: PREPARING FOR WORLD WAR THREE                   

Media Disinformation   
A ?Pre-emptive? Aerial Attack Directed Against Iran would Lead to Escalation         
Global Warfare     
US ?Military Aid?     
The Timetable of Military Stockpiling and Deployment                       
World War III Scenario                                       
The United Nations Security Council                                 
The American Inquisition: Building a Political Consensus for War               

CHAPTER V: TARGETING IRAN WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS                 

Building a Pretext for a Pre-emptive Nuclear Attack                         
?Theater Iran Near Term?                                       
The Military Road Map: ?First Iraq, then Iran?                           
Simulated Scenarios of a Global War: The Vigilant Shield 07 War Games             
The Role of Israel       
Cheney: ?Israel Might Do it Without Being Asked?                       
US Israel Military Coordination                                     
Tactical Nuclear Weapons directed against Iran                           
Radioactive Fallout   
?The Mother of All Bombs? (MOAB) Slated to be Used Against Iran               
Extensive Destruction of Iran?s Infrastructure                             
State of the Art Weaponry: ?War Made Possible Through New Technologies?         
Electromagnetic Weapons                                       
Iran?s Military Capabilities: Medium and Long Range Missiles                 
Iran?s Ground Forces   
US Military and Allied Facilities Surrounding Iran                         

CHAPTER VI: REVERSING THE TIDE OF WAR                         

Revealing the Lie     
The Existing Anti-War Movement                                   
Manufacturing Dissent 
Jus ad Bellum: 9/11 and the Invasions of Yugoslavia and Afghanistan             
Fake Antiwar Activism: Heralding Iran as a Nuclear Threat                     
The Road Ahead       
The Antiwar Movement within the State Structure and the Military               
Abandon the Battlefield: Refuse to Fight                               
The Broader Peace Process                                     
What has to be Achieved    

Order your pdf of this important new book from Global Research here 

Introductory offer: $5.00 (plus $1.50 processing fee. Sent directly to your email!)
OR receive this book FREE with your Global Research Annual Membership! Click to learn more.
292

Michel Chossudovsky is a frequent contributor to Global Research


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 11:53:07 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:53:07 +0200
Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?The_=93Best_Evidence=94_Indicates_Flaws_in__?=
 =?iso-8859-1?q?the_Official_9/11_Narrative?=
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028114655.0431e8e8@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27331

The 9/11 Consensus Panel: 
The ?Best Evidence? Indicates Flaws in the Official 9/11 Narrative

by Brian A. Burchill

	
Global Research, October 27, 2011
Foreign Policy Journal - 2011-10-26


There is a structured communication technique called the Delphi Method that draws upon the collective intelligence of a panel of experts to achieve consensus on an issue/theory/proposition. Wikipedia has a thorough explanation of the technique and some of its variations. Briefly, a facilitator provides a questionnaire to survey panelists on an issue, and then receives back the panelists? responses, judgments and reasons. The facilitator then sends all of these replies to all panelists, and each panelist is invited to revise their own response in light of the responses of the other expert panelists. This process is repeated until the range of answers converges on a single answer with an accepted degree of agreement (consensus).

Typically, the identity of each panelist is hidden from the other panelists, and the authorship of each response is also hidden. This procedure overcomes issues of group dynamics that can be impediments to true consensus, and encourages unfettered expression of opinion and critique. The Delphi method has been used successfully since the 1950s to advance knowledge in such fields as social policy, medicine, and science and technology.

A contentious issue, which has persisted for a decade now, is whether or not the US Government?s official narrative of the events of September 11, 2001, is substantially flawed. The 9/11 Commission was supposed to provide a thorough account of those events, but has failed to quell the debate. Even members of the Commission, including the Chair and Vice-Chair, have publicly criticized the Commission?s proceedings and final report. According  to Harry Levins, in his September 6, 2009 article in the St Louis Post-Dispatch, the Commission?s senior counsel, John Farmer,  stated that ?what government and military officials had told Congress, the Commission, the media, and the public about who knew what when ? was almost entirely, and inexplicably, untrue.? He also said that ?At some level of the government, at some point in time 
 there was a decision not to tell the truth about what happened
.?

To encourage further investigation of this issue, a Delphi survey of 22 expert panelists has been conducted regarding the ?best evidence? that indicates flaws in the official narrative of 9/11. This Panel included professors of chemistry, physics, aeronautics, and engineering; air force and commercial pilots; journalists; authors and film makers; an aircraft accident investigator; a public health officer; a lawyer; and a politician. This multi-disciplinary team of professionals has achieved consensus on 13 points of this evidence, and the degree of consensus was at least 90%, which means that there is a high degree of certainty that that evidence truly does refute the official narrative.

The diverse knowledge and expertise of the panelists, and the methodology used, give this 9/11 Consensus Panel a high degree of distinction, integrity, authority and credibility. This, along with the professional videos and documented references that accompany each of the 13 consensus points, provides the mainstream media with opportunity to confidently promote serious discussion, even challenge the official narrative, about this world-changing event with its continuing fallout. The 13 Points developed by the Panel are available at Consensus911.org.

Brian A. Burchill is a Mechanical Engineer and Certified Traffic Accident Reconstructionist. He was a campaign manager in Canada's 1993 federal election, and was a candidate himself in the 1997 and 2000 federal elections. He currently manages a business that recycles scrap plastics into products. Read more articles by Brian A. Burchill.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.consensus911.org/

The Importance of September 11, 2001

?September 11, 2001 seems destined to be the watershed event of our lives and the greatest test for our democracy in our lifetimes. The evidence of government complicity in the lead-up to the events, the failure to respond during the event, and the astounding lack of any meaningful investigation afterwards, as well as the ignoring of evidence turned up by others that renders the official explanation impossible, may signal the end of the American experiment. It has been used to justify all manner of measures to legalize repression at home and as a pretext for behaving as an aggressive empire abroad. Until we demand an independent, honest, and thorough investigation and accountability for those whose action and inaction led to those events and the cover-up, our republic and our Constitution remain in the gravest danger.?

Lt. Col. Shelton F. Lankford, US Marine Corps (ret.)

The Purpose of the 9/11 Consensus Panel

The purpose of the 9/11 Consensus Panel is to provide the world with a clear statement, based on expert independent opinion, of some of the best evidence opposing the official narrative about 9/11.

 The Authority of the 9/11 Consensus Panel

The Consensus Points were derived from a Delphi survey of over 20 expert panelists, who, blind to each other?s identities and responses, ranked each proposed point on a scale of 1-6  through three rounds of review and feedback.

The Delphi Method is a standard consensus tool which uses an established methodology to advance scientific knowledge in fields such as medicine.
The ranked Consensus Points have thus achieved at least 90% agreement by over 20 people.  (This is considered a high percentage in scientific literature.)

Together with the professional video-clip accompanying each Point, this controlled survey of Panel Members should help to reduce the confusion and controversy concerning the events of 9/11, and to thereby embolden the media to deal with both sides of the issue.

The Consensus Points are also supported by a comprehensive list of documented references in the form of witness testimonies, oral histories of firefighters, early newspaper and television reports, and scholarly books and articles.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.consensus911.org/the-911-consensus-points/

The 9/11 Consensus Points

 
Factual Evidence Contradicts the 9/11 Story


The official account of the events of September 11, 2001, has been used:

    * to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; which have resulted in the deaths of millions of people;
    * to authorize torture, military tribunals, and extraordinary rendition; and
    * to suspend freedoms guaranteed by the American Constitution such as habeas corpus in the USA, and similar freedoms in Canada, the UK, and other countries.

The official claims regarding 9/11 are contradicted by facts that have been validated by a scientific consensus process, and which include the following points of ?best evidence?:

 
Point 1: A Claim Regarding Osama Bin Laden


The Official Account

Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

The Best Evidence

The FBI did not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which Osama bin Laden is wanted.
When asked why, Rex Tomb, when he was the head of investigative publicity for the FBI, stated that the FBI had no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.
Also, although Secretary of State Colin Powell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the 9/11 Commission promised to provide evidence of Bin Laden?s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, they also failed.


Point 2: A Claim about the Destruction of the Twin Towers: Impact, Jet Fuel, and Fire Only


The Official Account

The Twin Towers were brought down by airplane impacts, jet fuel, and office fires.

The Best Evidence

Experience, based on physical observation and scientific knowledge, shows that office fires, even with the aid of jet fuel, could not have reached temperatures greater than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius).
But multiple scientific reports show that metals in the Twin Towers melted. These metals included steel, iron, and molybdenum ? which normally do not melt until they reach 2,700?F (1482?C), 2,800?F (1538? C), and 4,753?F (2,623?C), respectively.

 
Point 3: A Claim about the Destruction of the Twin Towers: Impact, Fire, and Gravity Only

 

The Official Account

The Twin Towers were destroyed by three and only three causes: the impacts of the airliners, the resulting fires, and gravity.

The Best Evidence

During the destruction of the Twin Towers, huge sections of the perimeter steel columns, weighing many tons, were ejected horizontally as far as 500 to 600 feet, as seen in multiple photographs and maps. These high-speed ejections of heavy structural members cannot be explained by the fires, the pull of gravity, or the airplane impacts (which had occurred about an hour earlier).
Human bone fragments approximately 1 cm long were found in abundance on the roof of the Deutsche Bank following the Towers? destruction, which further points to the use of explosives. Pancaking or tamping of floors from above would tend to trap bodies, not hurl splintered bones over 500 feet horizontally.


Point 4: A Claim Excluding Explosions in the Twin Towers


The Official Account

NIST wrote as if no one ? including members of the Fire Department of New York ? gave evidence of explosions in the Twin Towers.

The Best Evidence

Over 100 of the roughly 500 members of the FDNY who were at the site that day reported what they described as explosions in the Twin Towers. Similar reports were given by journalists, police officers, and WTC employees.


Point 5: A Second Claim Excluding Explosions in the Twin Towers


The Official Account

On 9/11, the Twin Towers came down because of damage produced by the impact of the planes combined with fires ignited by the jet fuel. After burning for 101 and 56 minutes, respectively, the north and south towers came down rapidly but without the aid of explosives.

The Best Evidence

The Twin Towers were built to withstand the impacts of airliners having approximately the size and speed of those that struck them. And office fires, even if fed by jet fuel (which is essentially kerosene), could not have weakened the steel structure of these buildings sufficiently to collapse as suddenly as they did.
Only the top sections of these buildings were damaged by the impacts and the resulting fires, whereas their steel structures, much heavier towards the base, were like pyramids in terms of strength. So the official account, which ruled out explosives, cannot explain why these buildings completely collapsed.


Point 6: The Claim that WTC 7 Collapsed from Fire Alone


The Official Account

NIST originally suggested that WTC 7 was brought down by structural damage combined with a raging fire fed by diesel fuel. However, in its Final Report (of November 2008), NIST declared that neither diesel fuel nor structural damage played a role in this building?s collapse, and that this building, which was not struck by a plane, was brought down by fire alone.

The Best Evidence

Before or after 9/11, no steel-frame high-rise building had ever collapsed due to fire. If fire were to cause such a building to collapse, the onset would be gradual, whereas the videos show that WTC 7, after being completely stable, suddenly came down in virtual free fall. This building?s straight-down, symmetrical collapse, with the roofline remaining essentially horizontal, shows that all 82 of WTC 7?s support columns had been eliminated by the time the top started down.


Point 7: The Claim in NIST?s Draft Report that WTC 7 Did
Not Come Down at Free Fall Acceleration


The Official Account

Having denied for years that WTC 7 came down at free fall acceleration, NIST repeated this position in August 2008, when it issued a report on WTC 7 in the form of a Draft for Public Comment.
Shyam Sunder, the head of NIST?s WTC project, said ? speaking within the framework of its claim that the building was brought down by fire ? that free fall would have been physically impossible.

The Best Evidence

Scientific analysis by mathematician David Chandler shows that WTC 7 came down in absolute free fall for a period of about 2.25 seconds. NIST?s Draft for Public Comment had been challenged by Chandler and Dr. Steven Jones in a public review, and NIST then re-analyzed the fall of WTC 7.
In its Final Report, NIST provided a detailed analysis and graph that conceded that WTC 7 came down at free-fall acceleration for over 100 feet, or about 2.25 seconds, consistent with the findings of Chandler and Jones.


Point 8: The Claim in NIST?s Final Report that WTC 7 Came
Down in Free Fall Without Explosives


The Official Account

In its Final Report on WTC 7, issued in November 2008, NIST finally acknowledged that WTC 7 had entered into free fall for more than two seconds. NIST continued to say, however, that WTC 7 was brought down by fire, with no aid from explosives.

The Best Evidence

Scientific analysis shows that a free-fall collapse of a steel-framed building could not be produced by fire, that is, without explosives (a fact that NIST?s lead investigator, Shyam Sunder acknowledged in his discussions of NIST?s Draft Report for Public Comment in August 2008).


Point 9: The Claim that the World Trade Center Dust
Contained no Thermitic Materials


The Official Account

Although NIST did not perform any tests to determine whether there were incendiaries (such as thermite) or explosives (such as RDX and nanothermite) in the WTC dust, it claimed that such materials were not present.

The Best Evidence

Unreacted nanothermitic material, ?which can be tailored to behave as an incendiary (like ordinary thermite), or as an explosive,? was found in four independently collected samples of the WTC dust (as reported in a multi-author paper in a peer-reviewed journal).


Point 10: A Claim Regarding Hijacked Passenger Jets

 

The Official Account

The 9/11 Commission Report holds that four airplanes (American Airlines flights 11 and 77, and United Airlines flights 93 and 175) were hijacked on 9/11.

The Best Evidence

Pilots are trained to ?squawk? the universal hijack code (7500) on a transponder if they receive evidence of an attempted hijacking, thereby notifying FAA controllers on the ground. But leading newspapers and the 9/11 Commission pointed out that FAA controllers were not notified.
A CNN story said that pilots are trained to send the hijack code ?if possible.? But entering the code takes only two or three seconds, whereas it took hijackers, according to the official story, more than 30 seconds to break into the pilots? cabin of Flight 93.
The fact that not one of the eight pilots performed this required action casts serious doubt on the hijacker story.


Point 11: The Claim that Flight 93 Crashed Near Shanksville, Pennsylvania

 

The Official Account

The 9/11 Commission reported that United Flight 93, having been taken over by an al-Qaeda pilot, was flown at a high speed and steep angle into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

In response to claims that United Airlines Flight 93 was shot down, the US military and the FBI said that United 93 was not shot down.

The Best Evidence

Residents, the mayor, and journalists near Shanksville reported that no airliner was visible at the designated crash site; that contents were found as far as eight miles from the designated crash site; and that parts ? including a thousand-pound engine piece ? were found over a mile away.

 
Point 12: The Claim Regarding Hani Hanjour as Flight 77
Pilot


The Official Account

The 911 Commission Report holds that American Flight 77, a Boeing 757, was flown by al-Qaeda pilot Hani Hanjour into the Pentagon. After disengaging the autopilot, he executed a 330-degree downward spiral through 7000 feet in about three minutes, then flew into Wedge 1 of the Pentagon between the first and second floors at 530 mph.

The Best Evidence

Several former airliner pilots have stated that Hanjour could not possibly have maneuvered a large airliner through the trajectory allegedly taken by Flight 77 and then hit the Pentagon between the first and second floors without touching the lawn.

 
Point 13: The Claim About the Time of Dick Cheney?s Entry
into the White House Bunker


The Official Account

Vice President Dick Cheney took charge of the government?s response to the 9/11 attacks after he entered the PEOC (the Presidential Emergency Operations Center), a.k.a. ?the bunker?.
The 9/11 Commission Report said that Cheney did not enter the PEOC until almost 10:00 AM, which was at least 20 minutes after the violent event at the Pentagon that killed more than 100 people.

The Best Evidence

Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta told the 9/11 Commission that, after he joined Cheney and others in the bunker at approximately 9:20 AM, he listened to an ongoing conversation between Cheney and a young man, which took place when ?the airplane was coming into the Pentagon.?
After the young man, having reported for the third time that the plane was coming closer, asked whether ?the orders still stand,? Cheney emphatically said they did. The 9/11 Commission Report, by claiming that Cheney did not enter the PEOC until long after the Pentagon was damaged, implies that this exchange between Cheney and the young man ? which can most naturally be understood as Cheney?s confirmation of a stand-down order ? could not have occurred.
However, testimony that Cheney was in the PEOC by 9:20 was reported not only by Mineta but also by Richard Clarke and White House photographer David Bohrer. Cheney himself, speaking on ?Meet the Press? five days after 9/11, reported that he had entered the PEOC before the Pentagon was damaged.
The 9/11 Commission?s attempt to bury the exchange between Cheney and the young man confirms the importance of Mineta?s report of this conversation.

 
References


Millions:

G. Burnham, R. Lafta, S. Doocy, and L. Roberts, ?Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: A cross-sectional cluster sample survey,? Lancet, October 11, 2006: 21;368 (9545):1421-28.
Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore.
This epidemiological study estimated 654,965 excess deaths in Iraq related to the war, or 2.5% of the population, through the end of June 2006.
Dr. Gideon Polya, author of Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality Since 1950, estimated by January 2010 that more than four million Afghanis died (from both violent and non-violent causes) since the 2001 invasion, who would not have died without the invasion. See: ?January 2010 ? 4.5 Million Dead in Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide.?
Dr. Gideon Polya, ?Iraqi Holocaust: 2.3 Million Iraqi Excess Deaths,? March 21, 2009.

Was responsible: The 9/11 Commission Report (2004).
Did not list: Federal Bureau of Investigation, ?Most Wanted Terrorists.?
Stated: Ed Haas, ?FBI says, ?No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11?? Muckraker Report, June 6, 2006.
No hard evidence:

Federal German Judge Dieter Deiseroth, in a December 2009 statement, stated that no independent court has verified the evidence against bin Laden.
?Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over,? Guardian, October 14, 2001. The Taliban said they would turn bin Laden over if the US provided evidence of his guilt.
?Taliban Met With U.S. Often: Talks centered on ways to hand over bin Laden,? Washington Post, October 29, 2001. The Taliban asked for evidence of bin Laden?s guilt but it was not forthcoming.
?The investigation and the evidence,? BBC News, October 5, 2001. ?There is no direct evidence in the public domain linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks.?

Promised:

Powell: ?Meet the Press,? NBC, September 23, 2001.
Blair: Tony Blair: Office of the Prime Minister, ?Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States,? BBC News, October 4, 2001

Failed:

Powell: ?Remarks by the President, Secretary of the Treasury O?Neill and Secretary of State Powell on Executive Order,? White House, September 24, 2001.
Seymour M. Hersh, ?What Went Wrong: The C.I.A. and the Failure of American Intelligence,? New Yorker, October 1, 2001.
Blair: Tony Blair: Office of the Prime Minister, ?Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States,? BBC News, October 4, 2001. The government?s document stated that it ?does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law.?
9/11 Commission Report (2004). All statements of bin Laden?s responsibility were based on interrogations of KSM, under torture. See 9/11 Commission Report notes at Ch. 5, notes 1, 10, 11, 16, 32, 40, and 41.

Brought down by: NIST, Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, September 2005, p. 15. Regarding airplane impacts, see pp. 150-51; Jet fuel, pp. 24, 42; Fires, pp. 91, 127, 183.
Scientific reports:

RJ Lee Group, ?WTC Dust Signature Study: Composition and Morphology,? December 2003, p. 21.
RJ Lee Group, ?WTC Dust Signature,? Expert Report, May 2004, p. 12.
Heather A. Lowers and Gregory P. Meeker, US Geological Survey, US Department of the Interior, ?Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust,? 2005.
Steven E. Jones et al., ?Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction,? Journal of 9/11 Studies 19 (January 2008).
For discussion and summary, see David Ray Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7, pp. 39-44.

Gravity: NIST, Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, September 2005, 144-45.
Photographs: The Scientists for 9/11 Truth website shows a photo of ?Impaled Steel Columns at the 20th Floor of the World Financial Center Building 3 (WFC3).?
See also video one and video two showing horizontal ejections.
Maps: In addition to WFC 3 (American Express Building), the FEMA Report, ?7. Peripheral Buildings?, shows that similar debris hit the Winter Gardens, 500-600 feet distant, and includes a map showing the location of these buildings:
Human bone fragments: ?Remains bring hope, frustration for 9/11 families,? USA Today, April 20, 2006.
Wrote: NIST, ?Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,? August 30, 2006, Question 2.
Reported: Graeme MacQueen, ?118 Witnesses: The Firefighters? Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers,? Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 2/August 2006, 47-106.
Reports by journalists, police officers, WTC employees: David Ray Griffin, ?Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral Histories,? 911Truth.org, January 18, 2006.
Without the aid: ?NIST found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to September 11, 2001.? NIST NCSTAR 1, Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, September 2005, p. xxxviii.
Built:

Federal Emergency Management Agency, (2002), World Trade Center Building Performance Study: Data Collection, Preliminary Observations, and Recommendations.

?Towers collapse shocks engineers,? MedServ, 9/11/01.
?Twin Towers Engineered To Withstand Jet Collision,? Seattle Times, February 2, 1993.

Could not have weakened: ?Twin Tower Fires Not Hot Enough to Melt or Weaken Steel.?
Like pyramids: Architect Mario Salvadori explains: ?The load on the columns increases with the number of floors of the building, and their weight must vary in the same proportion.? (Dr. Mario Salvadori, ?Why Buildings Stand Up? [New York: W.W. Norton, 1980], p. 117). The lower the floors, the stronger the steel structures. So even if the impacts and fires had caused the top sections of these buildings to collapse, the collapses would have been arrested by the lower floors.
Originally suggested:

FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, Ch. 5, Sect. 6.2, ?Probable Collapse Sequence.?
Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can?t Stand Up to the Facts: An In-Depth Investigation by Popular Mechanics, ed. David Dunbar and Brad Reagan (New York: Hearst Books, 2006), 53-58. This semi-official book contained quotations from NIST showing what it was thinking at the time.

Final Report: NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (brief report), November 2008, xxxv. In NIST?s words, the collapse of WTC 7 was ?the first known instance of the total collapse of a tall building primarily due to fires.
No steel-framed high-rise building: See a discussion of other skyscraper fires, and see videos here, here, and here.
Report: NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7. Draft for Public Comment. August 2008.
Sunder said: ?
you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place. Everything was not instantaneous? (?WTC 7 Technical Briefing,? NIST, August 26, 2008). Although NIST originally had a video and a transcript of this briefing at its Internet website, it removed both of them. However, the video is now available elsewhere. Also available is its transcript, under the title ?NIST Technical Briefing on Its Final Draft Report on WTC 7 for Public Comment.?
Scientific analysis: David Chandler, ?WTC7: NIST Finally Admits Freefall,? Part I, December 7, 2008, at 9:07. Chandler?s report of free fall was supported by NIST itself: NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (brief report), November 2008, p. 45.
Final Report: NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (brief report), November 2008, p. 45.

Final Report: NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (brief report), November 2008, p. 45.
Scientific analysis: Chandler, ?WTC7: NIST Finally Admits Freefall (Part III),? January 2, 2009, at 1:19 minutes.
This analysis has been confirmed by NIST itself, in ?Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,? NIST, August 2008 (originally at www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html). This version of the document, which was posted at NIST?s website at the time its Draft version of its WTC 7 report was published, has been replaced by a version that was updated September 17, 2010, in which NIST continues to acknowledge a 2.25-second stage of ?gravitational acceleration (free fall).?
Acknowledged: Sunder said: ?[A] free fall time would be [the fall time of] an object that has no structural components below it. . . . [T]he . . . time that it took . . . for those 17 floors to disappear [was roughly 40 percent longer than free fall]. And that is not at all unusual, because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case. And you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place. Everything was not instantaneous? (?WTC 7 Technical Briefing,? NIST, August 26, 2008). Although NIST originally had a video and a transcript of this briefing at its Internet website, it removed both of them. However, the video is now available elsewhere. Also available is its transcript, under the title ?NIST Technical Briefing on Its Final Draft Report on WTC 7 for Public Comment.?
Did not perform: NIST, Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (August 30, 2006), Question 12.
Claimed: NIST conducted only a hypothetical experiment and ?found no evidence of any blast events.? NIST NCSTAR 1-9. Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7, Draft for Public Comment. August 2008, p. 357.
Tailored: The quoted phrase is from Dr. Niels Harrit, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Nano-Science Center, University of Copenhagen. Email to Elizabeth Woodworth, copied to Dr. David Ray Griffin, June 19, 2011.
Explosive: The Amptiac Quarterly Newsletter from the Spring of 2002 said: ?The 221st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society held during April 2001 in San Diego featured a symposium on Defense Applications of Nanomaterials. One of the 4 sessions was titled Nanoenergetics. This session featured speakers from government labs (DOD and DOE) and academia. . . . A number of topics were covered, including . . . Metastable Intermolecular Composites (MICs), sol-gels, and structural nanomaterials. . . . At this point in time, all of the military services and some DOE and academic laboratories have active R&D programs aimed at exploiting the unique properties of nanomaterials that have potential to be used in energetic formulations for advanced explosives and propellant applications. . . . [N]anomaterials, especially nanoenergetics, could be used for improving components of munitions. . . . [N]anoenergetics hold promise as useful ingredients for the thermobaric (TBX) and TBX-like weapons, particularly due to their high degree of tailorability with regards to energy release and impulse management?? (pp. 43-44).
Independently collected: Dr. Steven Jones discusses the ?chain of custody? of the dust samples in ?9/11: Explosive Testimony Exclusive, Part 1,? at 3:30 and 7:58 minutes, and at 0 minutes at Part 2 of 2.
Reported: Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, and Bradley R. Larsen, ?Active Thermitic Material Observed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,? The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009, 2: 7-31.
Holds: 9/11 Commission Report (2004), Chapter 1.
Hijack code (7500):

Ref: ?To facilitate NORAD tracking, every attempt shall be made to ensure that the hijacked aircraft is squawking Mode 3/A, code 7500.? Source: Federal Aviation Administration, ?Order 7610.4J: Special Military Operations, Chapter 7. ESCORT OF HIJACKED AIRCRAFT,? July 12, 2001.
Ref: ?Hijack Code a Secret Signal of Distress,? ABC News, June 3, 2005.

Leading newspapers: The Christian Science Monitor reported the failure to squawk as an ?anomaly? (Peter Grier, ?The Nation Reels,? Christian Science Monitor, September 12, 2001).
9/11 Commission: The 9/11 Commission Report itself acknowledged the failure: ?FAA guidance to controllers on hijack procedures assumed that the aircraft pilot would notify the controller via radio or by ?squawking? a transponder code of ?7500? ? the universal code for a hijack in progress,? p.17.
CNN Story: ?Flight 11 was hijacked apparently by knife-wielding men. Airline pilots are trained to handle such situations by keeping calm, complying with requests, and if possible, dialing in an emergency four digit code on a device called a transponder. . . . The action takes seconds, but it appears no such code was entered.? ?(America Under Attack: How could It Happen?? CNN Live Event, September 12, 2001).
More than 30 seconds: According to the purported tapes from the cockpit recorder of United 93, it took over 30 seconds for the intruders to break into the pilot?s cabin (Richard A. Serrano, ?Heroism, Fatalism Aboard Flight 93,? Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2006). Flight 11's failure to squawk is discussed here.
It clearly would have been ?possible? for the pilots to have squawked the hijack code. According to a famous Sherlock Holmes story, the theory about an intruder in a racing stable was disproved by ?the dog that didn?t bark.? The intruder theory about the 9/11 airliners, one could say by analogy, is disproved by the pilots that did not squawk.
Not one: For discussion, see David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, 2008, pp. 175-79.
Reported: 9/11 Commission Report, 2004, p. 14.
No airliner was visible:

?9/11 Flight 93 Shanksville: Mayor Says No Plane Crashed.?
?9/11 Flight 93 Shanksville: No Plane, No Crash.? A 1994 US Geological Survey showed the same crater and scar that was allegedly left by the crash of Flight 93.

?Flight 93 Crash Exposed: Rare Footage Never Again Seen on TV.?
?Nothing there except a hole in the ground.?

Eight miles:

Bill Heltzel and Tom Gibb, ?2 Planes Had No Part in Crash of Flight 93,? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 16, 2001: ?Debris from the crash has been found up to 8 miles from the crash site.?
?America Under Attack: FBI and State Police Cordon Off Debris Area Six to Eight Miles from Crater Where Plane Went Down,? CNN, September 13, 2001.
Debra Erdley, ?Crash Debris Found 8 Miles Away,? Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 14, 2001.

Thousand-pound engine piece: Richard Wallace, ?What Did Happen to Flight 93?? Daily Mirror, September 12, 2002.
For further discussion, see David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, 2008, pp. 120-21.
Holds:

9/11 Commission Report (2004), pp. 225, 334.
National Transportation Safety Board, ?Flight Path Study ? American Airlines Flight 77? (February 19, 2002). The NTSB video is available on YouTube.

Stated:

See Commanders Ted Muga and Ralph Kolstad, where Pilots and Aviation Professionals Question the 9/11 Commission Report, at ?Patriots Question 9/11.?
Russ Wittenberg, who flew large commercial airliners for 35 years after serving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot, says it would have been ?totally impossible for an amateur who couldn?t even fly a Cessna? to have flown that downward spiral and then ?crash into the Pentagon?s first floor wall without touching the lawn.?
?Former Vietnam Combat and Commercial Pilot Firm Believer 9/11 Was Inside Government Job,? Lewis News, January 8, 2006.
Ralph Omholt, a former 757 pilot, said: ?The idea that an unskilled pilot could have flown this trajectory is simply too ridiculous to consider.?

Said: 9/11 Commission Report (2004), note 213, p. 464.
Told: ?911 Commission: Trans. Sec. Norman Mineta Testimony?
Richard Clarke: Richard Clarke, Against all Enemies (New York: Free Press, 2004), pp. 2-5.
David Bohrer: See ?9/11: Interviews by Peter Jennings,? ABC News, September 11, 2002.
Cheney himself: ?The Vice President Appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert,? MSNBC, September 16, 2001


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 11:58:14 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:58:14 +0200
Subject: [THS] American Crisis Politics: Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028115745.042ff468@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27329

American Crisis Politics: Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney

by Eric Walberg

	
Global Research, October 27, 2011


Is a constitutional amendment or a real third-party candidate the silver bullet that Americans need next year,

American voters now have a clear view of who they can vote for next year, with Barack Obama as the Democrats' certain candidate and Mitt Romney as the Republicans'. Both candidates offer much the same prescriptions for the multiple crises facing their country -- more war and military spending, lower taxes (certainly no big hike for the rich), more bank bailouts, trickle-down economics for the unemployed and the disintegrating environment.

If Barack and Mitt are the best the political elite can come up with, we can only conclude that the entire American ruling class is suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia -- fearing commies-turned-Muslims under their beds, shedding tears over the odd child hit by a stray bullet in, say, Syria, while joyously bombing hapless Afghans, Iraqs and Libyans into the Stone Age, wiping out hundreds of thousands in the process.

Obama said Saturday that the US now must tackle its "greatest challenge as a nation" -- rebuilding a weak economy and creating jobs -- with the "same urgency and unity that our troops brought to their fight". More like: with the "same cold-blooded disrespect for human life ..." Is it possible Obama will promote a Swift-like "modest proposal" to unemployment, and exhort Americans to eat their children?

Despite overwhelming evidence that the chaos and destruction the US brings the world has induced only hate and disgust for America and its values, he preened himself for helping murder Gaddafi and for pretending to withdraw US troops from Iraq: "This week, we had two powerful reminders of how we've renewed American leadership in the world."

Of course, there is an explanation for this raving. The chaos is caused by the logic of profit in the economy, and the rhetoric -- by the need to control the political process to ensure profit's uninterrupted flow. But Obama's fine rhetoric is not even convincing Americans anymore, as Occupy Wall Street and demonstrations across the country show. As for Congress; just 6 per cent of registered voters think sitting members deserve re-election -- the lowest percentage since CBS News Polls began 20 years ago.

What is the poor -- literally, at this point -- voter to do? There are stirrings, even in the ruling class. Warren Buffett is spreading a chain letter calling on citizens to demand "a constitutional amendment which would make all sitting members of Congress ineligible for re-election anytime there is a deficit of more than 3 per cent of GDP." If only it were that simple.

As analyst William Cook puts it, "Representatives no longer serve the citizen seeking their consent to govern, they are servants of the corporations and lobbies that control the economic system. Presidents no longer lead, they are the obedient lackeys of their corporate overseers." If Buffett's amendment passed, it would merely bring in another crop of time-servers, with no noticeable effect except higher unemployment and more poverty.

Oblivious to the obvious, Libertarian Ron Paul is battling it out with the Mitts in Republican cuckoo-land to slash both the budget deficit and taxes. At least Paul wants less war. He is determined to end what he calls the "welfare-warfare state", undeterred by the plight of the record 46 million Americans on food stamps (whose welfare expenditures are a crucial stimulus to local economies), and the fact that his very own campaign manager in 2008 died of pneumonia in 2011 from lack of medical insurance.

Then there is the perennial Ralph Nader, who is bowing out from a full-scale campaign so far, and working with left Democrats to field primary challengers to Obama in the desperate hope to move him to the left.

What about a third-party/ independent presidential campaign? The Green Party always fields someone, and Nader ran many times in the past as both the Green candidate and as an independent. There is a new such campaign this year -- an Internet campaign called Americans Elect, intending to nominate ?a competitive, nonpartisan ticket? that ?answers directly to voters". A Republican must team up with a Democrat. Give me a break.

It is impossible for such a dark horse to actually win, given the Republicrat control of the media and corporate financing of elections. However, American third-partiers, or rather non-partiers, have a venerable history in the US. Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive Bull Moose) captured 27 per cent of the vote in 1912, and Progressive Robert La Follette -- 27 per cent in 1924. Billionaire Ross Perot created his own Reform Party, running on a confusing mix of balanced budget, war on drugs, gun control, trade protectionism and environmentalism, to gain almost 20 per cent of the vote in 1992.

If, say, the Green candidate miraculously takes off, s/he will at best be a spoiler, like Republican Party-pooper Roosevelt in 1912 (allowing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win), Ross Perot in 1992 (allowing Democrat Bill Clinton to win) and possibly Nader in 2000, whose 2.74 per cent of the vote might have been the cause of Al Gore's loss to George W Bush.

Whichever Republicrat takes over in January 2013 will continue the failed policies of yesteryear as the US people continue to sink into poverty. But the end is already in sight, as the American long spring continues to gain momentum, both on the ground and in the ether. Ipads can distract from reality, but they are also a powerful tool to fight it, as Egyptians found out this January.

The bottom line is, of course, to dismantle the "reality of corporate control", as Cook puts it. He rightly argues that "the rights of citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness require the government to ensure these rights", which means universal health care, freedom from want; in short, a government that serves the people, not the corporations. While this may sound trite, it is the stark truth. "Rights before privilege."

There is strong US precedent for this. In 1944, shortly before he died, president Franklin Roosevelt presented Congress with a new Bill of Rights, which included ?the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment?, as well as farmers? and businessmen's rights ?to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition by monopolies?. Of course, Congress being Congress, it dismissed out of hand this parting gift of FDR. 

Another stark truth is that real change in America requires the defeat of America in its imperial wars. This uniquely happened in 1975, when the last helicopters carried panicked remnants of the US puppet regime in Saigon to safety. It resulted in a shift towards d?tente, exposure of CIA black-ops, limits on US promotion of regime-change and assassination, and on the presidential right to launch undeclared war. Alas, this reversal was short-lived. Memories are short. Rhetoric (then, it was the folksy Reagan) and the ease of spinning circles around do-nothing Congress (a truly worthy whipping boy) have brought us to the current impasse. 

Obama's attempts to paint Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as triumphs of "American leadership" ring hollow as the economy continues to sink under the weight of its military might. In 1944, America was on top of the world, and FDR's wistful reminder of the dark 1930s was easily brushed aside. His vice president from 1941-44, Henry Wallace, ran as a Progressive Party candidate in 1948 largely on FDR's wish list, but his third-party campaign of racial equality and socialism was greeted by boycotts and rotten eggs, and netted him only 2.4 per cent of the vote. America's long journey into the imperial wilderness had begun in earnest.

To resuscitate FDR's dashed dreams today means acknowledging, even welcoming, defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, as their peoples throw off their American shackles. Any thought that Libya will save the Yanks' bacon is a pipedream. The smoke of civil war there will remain in the air for a long time to come, as a constant reminder of the follies of such imperial games.

The American pacifist Gene Sharp, author of Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (2005), is credited with ushering in the so-called Coloured Revolutions in countries as disparate as Yugoslavia and Egypt during the past two decades. Ahmed Maher, one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement that sparked the Egyptian revolution, was inspired by Sharp, and is returning the favour by advising ?our brothers?, the Occupy Wall Streeters, on Twitter. It is a nice touch that Sharp's techniques for facing down police states (Congress be damned) are now being turned on the American police state itself, as the ?99 per cent? of Americans try to pick up where FDR's Bill of Rights left off.

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/ His Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games is available at http://claritypress.com/Walberg.html


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 12:01:09 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:01:09 +0200
Subject: [THS] Libya Stories
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028115927.041d6158@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27336

	Who Was Muammar Qaddafi? Libya's Wealth Redistribution Project
With an Introduction by Cynthia McKinney
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2011-10-27
In 2008, Qaddafi announced his plans for a Wealth Redistribution Program. Washington was intent upon undermining this project through military intervention and regime change.

	The Destruction of Libya and the Murder of Muammar Gaddafi. NATO's Moral Defeat
- by P. Ngigi Njoroge - 2011-10-26

	NATO?s Genocidal Role and the Invasion of Libya: Serving the Interests of the Yankee Oil Giants
Part II
- by Fidel Castro Ruz - 2011-10-26

	Western Corporations "Fight" for Libyan Oil. Who Will Get the Spoils of War?
- by A. Tagiyeva - 2011-10-26
	VIDEO: Gaddafi Murder Highlights the Hypocrisy of NATO's "Humanitarian" Intervention
Find out more on GRTV
- by James Corbett - 2011-10-26

	VIDEO: US Media on Gaddafi - In Praise of Lynching
- 2011-10-26

	VIDEO: Examining the OWS Movement and the War on Libya
New interview now on GRTV
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-10-26

	The US and Gaddafi: The murderer calls for an investigation of the crime
- by Bill Van Auken - 2011-10-26


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Oct 28 22:29:38 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:29:38 +0200
Subject: [THS] Life Among the 1% ...a letter from Michael Moore
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111028222924.04371da0@mail.messagingengine.com>



Life Among the 1% ...a letter from Michael Moore

October 27th, 2011

Friends,

Twenty-two years ago this coming Tuesday, I stood with a group of factory workers, students and the unemployed in the middle of the downtown of my birthplace, Flint, Michigan, to announce that the Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., had purchased the world rights to distribute my first movie, 'Roger & Me.' A reporter asked me, "How much did you sell it for?"

"Three million dollars!" I proudly exclaimed. A cheer went up from the union guys surrounding me. It was absolutely unheard of for one of us in the working class of Flint (or anywhere) to receive such a sum of money unless one of us had either robbed a bank or, by luck, won the Michigan lottery. On that sunny November day in 1989, it was like I had won the lottery -- and the people I had lived and struggled with in Michigan were thrilled with my success. It was like, one of us had made it, one of us finally had good fortune smile upon us. The day was filled with high-fives and "Way-ta-go Mike!"s. When you are from the working class you root for each other, and when one of you does well, the others are beaming with pride -- not just for that one person's success, but for the fact that the team had somehow won, beating the system that was brutal and unforgiving and which ran a game that was rigged against us. We knew the rules, and those rules said that we factory town rats do not get to make movies or be on TV talk shows or have our voice heard on any national stage. We were to shut up, keep our heads down, and get back to work. If by some miracle one of us escaped and commandeered a mass audience and some loot to boot -- well, holy mother of God, watch out! A bully pulpit and enough cash to raise a ruckus -- that was an incendiary combination, and it only spelled trouble for those at the top.

Until that point I had been barely getting by on unemployment, collecting $98 a week. Welfare. The dole. My car had died back in April so I had gone seven months with no vehicle. Friends would take me out to dinner, always coming up with an excuse to celebrate or commemorate something and then picking up the check so I would not have to feel the shame of not being able to afford it.

And now, all of a sudden, I had three million bucks! What would I do with it? There were men in suits making many suggestions to me, and I could see how those without a strong moral sense of social responsibility could be easily lead down the "ME" path and quickly forget about the "WE."

So I made some easy decisions back in 1989:

1. I would first pay all my taxes. I told the guy who did my 1040 not to declare any deductions other than the mortgage and to pay the full federal, state and city tax rate. I proudly contributed nearly 1 million dollars for the privilege of being a citizen of this great country.

2. Of the remaining $2 million, I decided to divide it up the way I once heard the folksinger/activist Harry Chapin tell me how he lived: "One for me, one for the other guy." So I took half the money -- $1 million -- and established a foundation to give it all away.

3. The remaining million went like this: I paid off all my debts, paid off the debts of some friends and family members, bought my parents a new refrigerator, set up college funds for our nieces and nephews, helped rebuild a black church that had been burned down in Flint, gave out a thousand turkeys at Thanksgiving, bought filmmaking equipment to send to the Vietnamese (my own personal reparations for a country we had ravaged), annually bought 10,000 toys to give to Toys for Tots at Christmas, got myself a new American-made Honda, and took out a mortgage on an apartment above a Baby Gap in New York City.

4. What remained went into a simple, low-interest savings account. I made the decision that I would never buy a share of stock (I didn't understand the casino known as the New York Stock Exchange and I did not believe in investing in a system I did not agree with).

5. Finally, I believed the concept of making money off your money had created a greedy, lazy class who didn't produce any product, just misery and fear among the populace. They invented ways to buy out companies and then shut them down. They dreamed up schemes to play with people's pension funds as if it were their own money. They demanded companies keep posting record profits (which was accomplished by firing thousands and eliminating health benefits for those who remained). I made the decision that if I was going to earn a living, it would be done from my own sweat and ideas and creativity. I would produce something tangible, something others could own or be entertained by or learn from. My work would create employment for others, good employment with middle class wages and full health benefits.

I went on to make more movies, produce TV series and write books. I never started a project with the thought, "I wonder how much money I can make at this?" And by never letting money be the motivating force for anything, I simply did exactly what I wanted to do. That attitude kept the work honest and unflinching -- and that, in turn I believe, resulted in millions of people buying tickets to these films, tuning in to my TV shows, and buying my books.

Which is exactly what has driven the Right crazy when it comes to me. How did someone from the left get such a wide mainstream audience?! This just isn't supposed to happen (Noam Chomsky, sadly, will not be booked on The View today, and Howard Zinn, shockingly, didn't make the New York Times bestseller list until after he died). That's how the media machine is rigged -- you are not supposed to hear from those who would completely change the system to something much better. Only wimpy liberals who urge caution and compromise and mild reforms get to have their say on the op-ed pages or Sunday morning chat shows.

Somehow, I found a crack through the wall and made it through. I feel very blessed that I have this life -- and I take none of it for granted. I believe in the lessons I was taught back in Catholic school -- that if you end up doing well, you have an even greater responsibility to those who don't fare the same. "The last shall be first and the first shall be last." Kinda commie, I know, but the idea was that the human family was supposed to divide up the earth's riches in a fair manner so that all of God's children would have a life with less suffering.

I do very well -- and for a documentary filmmaker, I do extremely well. That, too, drives conservatives bonkers. "You're rich because of capitalism!" they scream at me. Um, no. Didn't you take Econ 101? Capitalism is a system, a pyramid scheme of sorts, that exploits the vast majority so that the few at the top can enrich themselves more. I make my money the old school, honest way by making things. Some years I earn a boatload of cash. Other years, like last year, I don't have a job (no movie, no book) and so I make a lot less. "How can you claim to be for the poor when you are the opposite of poor?!" It's like asking: "You've never had sex with another man -- how can you be for gay marriage?!" I guess the same way that an all-male Congress voted to give women the vote, or scores of white people marched with Martin Luther Ling, Jr. (I can hear these righties yelling back through history: "Hey! You're not black! You're not being lynched! Why are you with the blacks?!"). It is precisely this disconnect that prevents Republicans from understanding why anyone would give of their time or money to help out those less fortunate. It is simply something their brain cannot process. "Kanye West makes millions! What's he doing at Occupy Wall Street?!" Exactly -- he's down there demanding that his taxes be raised. That, to a right-winger, is the definition of insanity. To everyone else, we are grateful that people like him stand up, even if and especially because it is against his own personal financial interest. It is specifically what that Bible those conservatives wave around demands of those who are well off.

Back on that November day in 1989 when I sold my first film, a good friend of mine said this to me: "They have made a huge mistake giving someone like you a big check. This will make you a very dangerous man. And it proves that old saying right: 'The capitalist will sell you the rope to hang himself with if he thinks he can make a buck off it.'"

Yours, 

Michael Moore
MMFlint at MichaelMoore.com
@MMFlint
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. I will go to Oakland tomorrow afternoon to stand with Occupy Oakland against the out-of-control police. 


From ths at psalience.org  Sat Oct 29 13:54:38 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 13:54:38 +0200
Subject: [THS] Bleak Prospects for Avoiding Dangerous Global Warming
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111029134444.06422148@mail.messagingengine.com>

Bleak Prospects for Avoiding Dangerous Global Warming

[never was the term 'toast' more accurate -ths]

by Richard A. Kerr on 23 October 2011, 1:00 PM
 
sn-climate.jpg [picture of wind farm]
Picturesque and essential. Renewable energy sources and lots of them will be essential in the coming decades if dangerous global warming is to be avoided. 
Credit: Fotosearch

The bad news just got worse: A new study finds that reining in greenhouse gas emissions in time to avert serious changes to Earth's climate will be at best extremely difficult. Current goals for reducing emissions fall far short of what would be needed to keep warming below dangerous levels, the study suggests. To succeed, we would most likely have to reverse the rise in emissions immediately and follow through with steep reductions through the century. Starting later would be far more expensive and require unproven technology. 

Published online today in Nature Climate Change, the new study merges model estimates of how much greenhouse gas society might put into the atmosphere by the end of the century with calculations of how climate might respond to those human emissions. Climate scientist Joeri Rogelj of ETH Zurich and his colleagues combed the published literature for model simulations that keep global warming below 2?C at the lowest cost. They found 193 examples. Modelers running such optimal-cost simulations tried to include every factor that might influence the amount of greenhouse gases society will produce ?including the rate of technological progress in burning fuels efficiently, the amount of fossil fuels available, and the development of renewable fuels. The researchers then fed the full range of emissions from the scenarios into a simple climate model to estimate the odds of avoiding a dangerous warming. 

The results suggest challenging times ahead for decision makers hoping to curb the greenhouse. Strategies that are both plausible and likely to succeed call for emissions to peak this decade and start dropping right away. They should be well into decline by 2020 and far less than half of current emissions by 2050. Only three of the 193 scenarios examined would be very likely to keep the warming below the danger level, and all of those require heavy use of energy systems that actually remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. That would require, for example, both creating biofuels and storing the carbon dioxide from their combustion in the ground. 

"The alarming thing is very few scenarios give the kind of future we want," says climate scientist Neil Edwards of The Open University in Milton Keynes, U.K. Both he and Rogelj emphasize the uncertainties inherent in the modeling, especially on the social and technological side, but the message seems clear to Edwards: "What we need is at the cutting edge. We need to be as innovative as we can be in every way." And even then, success is far from guaranteed. 
Follow ScienceNOW on Facebook and Twitter
 
Source Science:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/10/bleak-prospects-for-avoiding-dangerous.html?ref=em&elq=c84c18b2eb05432c9a4393767032f0a8
 


From ths at psalience.org  Sat Oct 29 14:05:58 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:05:58 +0200
Subject: [THS] Mystical Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111029140518.042f6718@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://jop.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/09/28/0269881111420188

Mystical Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin Lead to Increases in the Personality Domain of Openness

   1. Katherine A MacLean katherine.a.maclean{at}gmail.com
         1.
            Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

   1. Matthew W Johnson
         1.
            Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

   1. Roland R Griffiths
         1.
            Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences & Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

Abstract

A large body of evidence, including longitudinal analyses of personality change, suggests that core personality traits are predominantly stable after age 30. To our knowledge, no study has demonstrated changes in personality in healthy adults after an experimentally manipulated discrete event. Intriguingly, double-blind controlled studies have shown that the classic hallucinogen psilocybin occasions personally and spiritually significant mystical experiences that predict long-term changes in behaviors, attitudes and values. In the present report we assessed the effect of psilocybin on changes in the five broad domains of personality ? Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Consistent with participant claims of hallucinogen-occasioned increases in aesthetic appreciation, imagination, and creativity, we found significant increases in Openness following a high-dose psilocybin session. In participants who had mystical experiences during their psilocybin session, Openness remained significantly higher than baseline more than 1 year after the session. The findings suggest a specific role for psilocybin and mystical-type experiences in adult personality change.

    * ? 2011 British Association for Ps


From ths at psalience.org  Sat Oct 29 14:19:19 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:19:19 +0200
Subject: [THS] The bankers' blockade of WikiLeaks must end
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111029141857.04b9b2a0@mail.messagingengine.com>

The bankers' blockade of WikiLeaks must end


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/bankers-wikileaks-free-speech

Whether you support WikiLeaks or not, the blockade by Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and others is a sinister attack on free speech

James Ball 
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 October 2011 11.30 EDT 

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange 
Julian Assange has announced that WikiLeaks will suspend operations until the banking blockade is lifted. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

In December 2010 three of the world's biggest payment providers, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, cut off funding to WikiLeaks. Ten months later, Julian Assange has announced the whistleblowing site will suspend operations until the blockade is lifted ? and warned WikiLeaks does not have the money to continue into 2012 at current levels of funding.

On the surface, it appears as if the bankers' blockade ? encouraged by several US senators, including Joe Lieberman ? may have come close to accomplishing its goal. WikiLeaks is, for now, silenced ? though not before publishing the full cache of 251,000 diplomatic cables, and the files of prisoners at Guant?namo Bay.

The real picture is murkier. As Reuters journalist Mark Hosenball noted at the WikiLeaks press conference, it's not clear exactly which operations WikiLeaks has to suspend: WikiLeaks has not released a single file since the publication of the Guant?namo Bay material ? obtained independently by the Guardian and New York Times ? in April. The site's primary submissions system has been offline since Daniel Domscheit-Berg and others walked away from WikiLeaks in the summer of 2010. Assange says a replacement will be online by the end of November.

Assange also claims WikiLeaks has over 100,000 documents waiting to be released ? but this claim might not bear scrutiny. WikiLeaks has previously been publicly criticised for claiming to hold five million documents when in reality it did not, by John Young of Cryptome.org, in whose name the WikiLeaks website was originally registered.

In reality, WikiLeaks' cupboard presently stands almost bare: Assange has laid the responsibility for the non-appearance of a much-heralded cache of documents relating to Bank of America on sabotage by ex-employees. However, sources close to the site believe the real issue is more mundane: journalists at more than one financial outlet have been given access to review the material, and found nothing of interest.

WikiLeaks' financial claims are similarly questionable. Assange declared the site will need $3.5m to continue operations at their current level. Questions as to who needs $3.5m to publish nothing new in six months aside, this figure is highly dubious.

In 2010, when the Collateral Murder video was published (and a crew flown to Iraq), the Afghan and Iraq war logs were released, and the massive cache of diplomatic cables was unveiled to the world, WikiLeaks spent just ?400,000. Given Assange also requested ? but was refused ? access to WikiLeaks funds towards his bail surety, WikiLeaks' track record on financial claims is also not unblemished.

So given WikiLeaks' status as an unreliable purveyor of financial information, and given its operations might have crashed to a halt with or without financial restrictions, is the banking blockade a mere non-issue? In short, it is not. The banking blockade against WikiLeaks is one of the most sinister developments in recent years, and perhaps the most extreme example in a western democracy of extrajudicial actions aimed at stifling free speech ? made all the worse by the public support of numerous people sitting in the US House of Representatives.

Payment companies representing more than 97% of the global market have shut off the funding taps between WikiLeaks and those who would donate to it. Unlike many of the country's leading corporations, WikiLeaks has neither been charged with, nor convicted of, any crime at either state, federal, or international level.

When the Department of Justice mounted a lawsuit against Microsoft in 1998, the idea that payment companies might cut it off due to state disapproval would rightly have been seen as ludicrous and illiberal. Yet when payment companies do exactly this to WikiLeaks, who have never appeared in court opposite the US state, many tacitly accept the action.

Visa, Mastercard and Paypal are none-too-choosy about who they provide payment services for. Want to use your credit card to donate to the Ku Klux Klan? Go right ahead. Prefer to support the English Defence League? Paypal will happily sort you out. Prefer to give cash to Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, who oppose the "radical homosexual agenda"? Feel free to use your Visa, Mastercard or Paypal.

Visa and Mastercard are already inescapable. As the world becomes ever-more digital, and cash continues its journey to obsolescence, they will become still more pervasive. If they are allowed to cut off payment to lawful organisations with whom they disagree, the US's first amendment, the European convention on human rights' article 10, and all other legal free speech protections become irrelevant.

Those who value free expression, whether they like WikiLeaks or loathe it, should hope it wins its current battle.


From ths at psalience.org  Sat Oct 29 14:21:09 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:21:09 +0200
Subject: [THS] Tell MSNBC: Fire Pat Buchanan
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111029142055.042f6860@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/buchanan/


Tell MSNBC: Fire Pat Buchanan

 

For years, Pat Buchanan has passed off white supremacist ideology as legitimate mainstream political commentary. And MSNBC continues to pay him and give him a platform on national TV to do it.

Buchanan just went on a white supremacist radio show to promote his new book -- which argues that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the "End of White America."

Please join us in demanding that MSNBC fire Pat Buchanan now.
-----

Below is the message we'll send to MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC News President Steve Capus on your behalf. You can add a personal message using the box on the right.

I'm writing to demand that you fire Pat Buchanan immediately. Buchanan has a long and consistent history of peddling white supremacist ideology as legitimate political commentary, on your network and elsewhere. He recently went on a white supremacist radio show to promote his new book -- which argues that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the "End of White America."

Pat Buchanan has the right to express his views, but he's not entitled to a platform that lets him broadcast bigotry and hate to millions. If MSNBC and NBC want to be seen as trusted, mainstream sources of news and commentary, you need to fire Buchanan now.

Here are a few examples of what Buchanan has said in the past:

- "This has been a country built basically by white folks ... "[3]

- "Sonia Sotomayor does believe in race-based justice basically at the
expense of white males and to advance people of color. The truth is that's
what Barack Obama believes as well."[4]

- "America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here
that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a
community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached
the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known . no
people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold
trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent
supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services,
Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring
the African-American community into the mainstream."[5]

- "[Former KKK Grand Wizard] David Duke is busy stealing from me. I have a
mind to go down there and sue that dude for intellectual property theft."[6]

These are just a few of many, many examples of Buchanan's barely-disguised
bigotry.[7,8] Buchanan has defended Hitler.[9] He's said that "in a way,
both sides were right" during the civil war.[10] Buchanan often implies that
white people are more intelligent than people of color, and just this
weekend (in a different radio interview), he refused to disavow the idea
that white people have superior genes.[11]

In general, Buchanan is pushing a vision of America that portrays white
people and "white culture" as genuinely American, and diversity and
multiculturalism as a threat to America. Buchanan tries to blame the
country's economic problems on programs like affirmative action, welfare,
and food stamps - programs which help vulnerable and disadvantaged Americans
of every race, but which Buchanan and others on the far right have portrayed
as only helping lazy and undeserving minorities. He takes every opportunity
to stoke the racial anxiety and fear that exists among some white people. In
short, Buchanan wants to pit white people against people of color. He
believes in it, he thinks it's good political strategy, and in his new book
he encourages the GOP to become "the white party."

If Buchanan didn't have a powerful media platform, he'd be just another
person with outdated, extremist ideas. But it's irresponsible and dangerous
for MSNBC to promote his hateful views to an audience of millions.

Please join us in calling on MSNBC to fire Pat Buchanan immediately:

http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/buchanan/?referring_akid=2257.1013230.moKE
AL&source=mailto

Thanks.

References

1.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/twelve_pretty_racist_or_ju
st_crazy_quotes_from_pat_buchanans_new_book.php?ref=fpblg
2. http://mediamatters.org/blog/201110230003
3.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/16/rachel-maddow-duels-with_n_237036.h
tml
4.
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/bob-shrum-explodes-over-pat-buchanans-r
?highlight=%22Pat+Buchanan%22
5. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25634
6. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2553
7. http://mediamatters.org/research/201107290005
8. See reference 6.
9. http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909020026
10. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004080046
11. http://mediamatters.org/blog/201110210018

-- 


From ths at psalience.org  Sat Oct 29 14:27:08 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:27:08 +0200
Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?_Bill_Will_Allow_U=2ES=2E_Gov=92t_To_Shut_Of?=
 =?iso-8859-1?q?f_Any_Website=2C_Anywhere=2E=2E=2E?=
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111029142620.06546698@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/27/new-bill-being-considered-in-congress-could-shut-down-social-media-sites-crucial-to-occupy-protests/

In what would be a stunning disregard for First Amendment rights, rumors are swirling that the Republican controlled Congress is now considering a new bill that could blackout sites such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other sites that utilize content generated by users. Phones such as iPhone, Android, AmazonCloud, Pandora, Grooveshark and even your email accounts would be adversely affected.

Some provisions in the bill would make it a ?felony to stream unlicensed content ? including cover band performances, karaoke videos, video game play-throughs, and more.? Major profit driven corporations are the driving force behind such a bill.

This bill could also effectively silence the ?Occupy? movement that has swept the nation by killing information sharing. Most Americans currently get most of their news about ?Occupy? through social media. If social media sites were to shut down because of the bill, Americans would be less likely to see ?Occupy? footage and would thus be in the dark, forcing us all to rely on corporate owned media sources. This bill is dangerous and would be a major blow to constitutionally protected freedom of speech. This is nothing more than government sponsored censorship and must be stopped.

Please make your voice heard and demand that Congress kill this bill. You can take action here.



New Bipartisan Bill Will Allow U.S. Gov?t To Shut Off Any Website, Anywhere, For Any Reason


http://wonkette.com/455343/new-bipartisan-bill-will-allow-u-s-govt-to-shut-off-any-website-anywhere-for-any-reason
By KEN LAYNE
4:52 PM OCTOBER 27, 2011
217 COMMENTS 4999 VIEWS

You know how the politicians are always saying we need to be competitive with China? Well, we are about to get super competitive when it comes to internal censorship of the global Internet.Everybody except for a handful of malcontent ?privacy activists? is behind the bold new plan to make all Internet service providers in the United States turn off any domainwithin five days, if Washington says ?turn it off.? As usual, this new legislation is cloaked in bullshit terminology about copyright and lost profits for media conglomerates, but the result is exactly the same as China?s ?great firewall? ? except, this being the land of ?corporations are people, my friends,? the ISPs will be responsible for the dirty work instead of some top-level government technological agency.

Via Cryptogon, here?s the relevant chunk of the legislation:

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

How? The whole Internet domain system requires a constantly updated Domain Name Server database that connects your computer to whatever server holds your ?Tranny Hunter? porn or Communist Revolution/Buffy slash-fiction forum. Your ISP might be Verizon or AT&T for your ?smart phone? or it might be dial-up AOL for confused old people who still have $9.95 a month charged to their Discover card. Either way, the ISP ?resolves? the domain name you?re trying to reach with the computer servers that have that content, wherever it might be. (All you actual tech people in the comments can correct this if necessary.) So when the Government sends a ?turn off these domains? order to your ISP, the ISP will have no choice but to block the offending websites. Problem solved! You know they?ve been working on this feverishly since the WikiLeaks outrage, right?

Here?s a Forbes blog post that explains just how the law will be used:

The PROTECT IP Act would allow copyright owners ? movie studios and other content providers ? simply to accuse a website of infringement, which could lead to that site being shut down by court order and entire links to the site being wiped clean from the Internet. Any website with a hyperlink, such as Twitter, Facebook or a blog, would be subject to liability. More, non-infringing sites could be inadvertently shut down under the proposal. Indeed, the law is so far-reaching that it would force Internet providers like Comcast to block all access to the allegedly illegal site.

The potential for abuse by the notoriously litigious content industry is clear. Last year, when the government sought to shut down one child pornography site, it ended up affecting some 70,000 legitimate sites for several days, even notifying visitors that the sites ? many of which were business sites ? were purveyors of child pornography.

For instance, the bill is so broadly written that, in theory, it would allow any copyright owner to shut down a legitimate retail website, such as Amazon or Best Buy, by alleging that one product being sold on the site could ?enable or facilitate? an infringement.

But in practice, it won?t be giant business websites like Amazon that get the plug pulled. It will be the little guys, the alternative press, the OccupyWhatever sites, anything that gets in the way of the Internet?s actual role in America: retail advertising and shoe shopping and lonely online pursuits shown to lower people?s actual engagement with the world, like sport teams or pornography or gadget blogs or orc-battle games or anything shit out by the Murdoch empire of diversions.

Oh well. It was really an aberration that the Internet functioned as openly as it has these past two decades. But that era is already over, as proven by the U.K. national police shutting down mobile messaging during the summer riots or, just two months ago, San Francisco?s BART stations easily turning off all the cell phone signals within the stations to prevent protesters from organizing an action there against police brutality. 



House Introduces Controversial Anti-Piracy Act


http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/26/idUS105209665820111026


By Brent Lang at TheWrap

Wed Oct 26, 2011 11:43am EDT

The House Judiciary Committee unveiled new legislation Wednesday designed to crack down on online piracy.

The proposed legislation would grant the federal government broad powers to cripple websites that host illegal content.

Labelled the Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill would allow content creators and the government to effectively shut down websites they claim are violating copyright laws by pulling ads and disabling their credit card processors.

Also read: Anti-Piracy Bill Passes Committee; Senator's Objections May Derail It

It also allows the Attorney General to seek injunctions against foreign websites that traffic in pirated U.S. movies and television shows.

Copyright groups and content creators hailed the proposal as an important means to safeguard intellectual property rights, but consumer advocacy groups warned that the punishments dictated by the new legislation were overly harsh.

"There is no need for a bill this sweeping and this Draconian,? Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, said in a statement. ?There are simple, easily implemented solutions on which industry and others agree -- such as cutting off the ability of credit-card companies to fulfill payments to sites that traffic in copyright infringement.?

In an opinion piece on Forbes, Consumer Electronics Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro echoed Sohn's concerns, writing Wednesday that the legislation is so expansive it threatens legitimate web retailers. 

"... the bill is so broadly written that, in theory, it would allow any copyright owner to shut down a legitimate retail website, such as Amazon or Best Buy, by alleging that one product being sold on the site could 'enable or facilitate' an infringement," Shapiro wrote. 

Yet, the bill received a rapturous response from the business community and some big-name support in the entertainment industry.

?Our creative industries provide good jobs for millions of Americans and represent one of the country?s most important exports. However, we face an increasingly difficult battle against entities overseas that shamelessly steal our valuable products and illegally market them online for their own gain,? Philippe Dauman, Viacom president and CEO said in a statement. ?[The bill] provides the Department of Justice and rights holders critical tools to ensure that the creative work of Americans across the country is protected from offshore internet parasites.?

?Websites that blatantly steal the creativity and innovation of American industries violate a fundamental right to property,? Thomas J. Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber, said in a statement. ?Operators of rogue sites threaten American jobs, endanger consumer safety, and undermine the vitality of the online marketplace. I commend Representatives Smith, Goodlatte, Conyers, and Berman for standing up to the mass theft of American intellectual property.?

House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced the bill along with committee members Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.).

It is similar to the PROTECT IP Act, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last May, but stalled after Sen. Ron Wyden, (D-Oregon) placed a hold on the bill. Wyden argued that the bill infringed on free speech and would discourage innovation.

Even though Hollywood and its top lobbyist, MPAA chief Chris Dodd, have launched a full on assault on lawmakers to get tough on piracy, discomfort within the technology industry will likely mean that the new legislation will face a fierce battle before it becomes law.  


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Oct 30 16:06:15 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:06:15 +0100
Subject: [THS] Appalling American media bias
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111030160523.0680e728@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/appalling-american-media-bias-1.920123

Appalling American media bias

The press has focused on the Israel soldier in the prisoner swap, neglecting the agony of the Palestinians

    * By George S. Hishmeh, Special to Gulf News
    * Published: 00:00 October 29, 2011
    * Gulf News


Much to the credit of the Arab Spring, noted for bringing about the overthrow, so far, of three autocratic Arab regimes, the American media has by and large responded positively to the events in the Arab world.

The coverage in the press, especially in the leading US newspaper, The New York Times, was excessive, sometimes running two or three pages. And what was more eye-catching has been that many of the correspondents, staff or part-timers, were Arabs or Arab-Americans including Anthony Shadid, the Pulitzer prize winner for his coverage of the Iraq War. (His wife, Nada Bakri, is also a reporter for the Times.)

"These Arab reporters and commentators, many of whom have been trained in the US," said Raphael Calis, a former executive editor of United Press International (UPI) and now living in Washington, D.C., "have a much better understanding of what is happening in each of these countries and their coverage over the past few months have proved that." Their knowledge of the language and the culture, let alone the complex political developments, he continued, makes them "able to present a clearer picture of what is happening on the ground than many of their counterparts."

In contrast what has been most disturbing, if not agonising, has been the opinion expressed in some major US papers concerning the recent exchange of prisoners between Hamas, the Palestinian movement in control of the Gaza Strip, and Israel. The Palestinian group was promised to receive 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier ? only less than half of the number were turned in earlier this month and the remainder expected to be freed in two months time. The released Israeli, Staff Sergeant Gilad Shalit, who incidentally was promoted twice during his captivity in a place that surprisingly the well-equipped Israeli troops had failed to find during the last five years, left for home as soon as the agreement was signed.

Regrettably, the US media has throughout this debacle focused prominently on the lone Israel soldier, neglecting to a large extent the agony of the Palestinians, including women, some of whom have been in jail for than two decades. The language that was used to describe the Palestinians, as has been the case in The Washington Post, was appalling, a paper that I have worked for in the early seventies. For example, it noted, editorially, that the "Palestinians, including President Mahmoud Abbas, celebrated the returning murderers and would-be suicide bombers as heroes." Of course, we all know, that one's "suicide bomber" may be considered another's hero.

Described as the "most emotional part of this swap deal" has been the case of the deported Palestinian prisoners whom Israel insisted ? and Hamas surprisingly agreed ? to be sent to other regions rather than immediately join their families in either of the Palestinian regions known as the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

A mother who had waited for many years to see her son, Mondoweiss.net reported, had to travel from occupied Jerusalem via Jordan and Egypt to Gaza where she would give her son ?a big hug.' Of the first 477 Palestinian prisoners who were released, 205 were not be reunited with their families ? one woman included ? but deported or transferred elsewhere, an action that is described as being in violation of international law. Moreover, only 27 of the 35 women held in Israeli jails were included in the first batch of released Palestinian prisoners.

Aggressive colonists

"While the exchange deal should be a cause for celebration, notably for the 1,027 concerned families," a press release from Addameer (Arabic for conscience), the Palestinian Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association, says "it is [still] overshadowed by the continued incarceration of approximately 4,437 Palestinian political prisoners."

Shawan Jabarin, director of Al Haq, an internationally recognised Palestinian human rights organisation, said last week that the prospects for the release of the remaining prisoners "continues to be dictated by Israeli political interests, just as the fate of 1,027 prisoners was staked on the release of a single Israeli soldier, whose capture has further adversely affected the rights of countless more Palestinians living under the Israeli blockade in the Gaza Strip."

Over and above this issue, a UN release from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that monitors violence in the occupied Palestinian territory, underlined the aggressiveness of the illegal Israeli colonists. It reported that "[colonist] violence [has] increased ... with the onset of the annual olive harvest" in the West Bank. In one incident the illegal Israel [colonists] have "set fire, cut down and uprooted around 250 olive, fig and almond trees belonging to Palestinians in the Bethlehem and Nablus governorates."

Much as the increasing reporting on this turbulent region has gratified ? and enlightened ? many in the US and abroad, the question remains on how long is it going to take the Americans to be less biased and fairer in their commentaries.

 

George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh at gulfnews.com