Taking Control of Our Money (Sept 19, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvTDTL55K1U
Our sovereign currency and credit has been usurped for private gain instead of public good. Let's take back control of our money from Wall Street and build prosperity on Main Street by creating state, county, and municipal public banks. Public tax monies should be leveraged by public officials, not speculators and swindlers. Check out http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org for more information. - Video recommended by Judith (brightlightbeing@comcast.net) who had the following complementary info in her email from the man who did put together this superb video, Robert A Bows (rabows@mric.coop): (...) "The book I’m working on is titled “Turning the Tables on the Money Changers—The Great Economic and Spiritual Transformation.” But the financiers who control the world’s central and large investment and commercial banks used this power to gain control over governments, military and intelligence services, media, voting processes, and all key corporations. So, taking back control of our money addresses the root cause on the material level. The solution is a network of public banks on the municipal, county, state, and national levels. I’m going to run as a delegate from the Boulder house district on that platform. You saw our recent video on this that I edited and mixed?"
Note from Jean: The solution proposed (creating public banks) almost sounds too simple. I hope that such banks will be swiftly created across America and around the world (they already exist in Brazil, Russia and India, concurrently with private banks, and have a proven track record of greater efficiency as explained HERE and HERE) and that everyone will then quickly close their bank account at the big corrupted "too big to fail" banks and deposit instead their money in these public-serving banks. I'll recommend right away to the people of the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the World movement recommend this video to all their affiliated groups and add this near the top of their demands as they've already started considering - Check A Real People's Bank: Occupy Wall Street's Call For A Public Banking Option (A must read!).
"It's time to get serious about using our tax monies for public purposes and stop paying ridiculous interest? rates to private banks (which eat up 40-50% of public projects. Any reasonably sized political subdivision can do this. It works so well that private banks have done everything in their power to take down public banks. publicbankingtv"
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
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THE QUOTES
"The occupy movement is critical for America's future.The path we are on is disastrous; endless wars, torture, targeted killings (even of Americans), severe unemployment, loss of jobs, home foreclosures, bankruptcies, homelessness, wide disparity of income between the rich 1% and the 99%, no health insurance for 50 million, severe college debt and diminished job prospects for graduates, teacher lay-offs, union busting through the curtailment of collective bargaining, severe environmental degradation, infrastructure deterioration along with austerity measures and the cutting back of the safety net being placed on the backs of the most vulnerable by the mania of deficit hawks in the House of Representatives and some state houses (both underwritten and funded by ultra right moneyed special interest PACS) not to mention the dysfunctional political theatre and corrupted machinations in Washington that is incapable of any real problem solving as it serves the plutocracy of oligarchs that reign supreme for their benefit only while destroying the middle class and making for a society increasingly becoming one of masters and serfs. That system must be uprooted and discarded. That won't happen in some violent overthrow or coup. That would be tantamount to disaster. No it has to be non-violent and bloodless while at the same time be unrelenting in demanding because the current system is so flawed, dysfunctional and incapable of being of, by and for the people."
"The Occupy Wall Street movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters. It proposes something new. It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power. It holds fast to moral imperatives regardless of the cost. It confronts authority out of a sense of responsibility. It is not interested in formal positions of power. It is not seeking office. It is not trying to get people to vote. It has no resources. It can't carry suitcases of money to congressional offices or run millions of dollars of advertisements. All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back. It has no other way of defying the corporate state. This rebellion creates a real community instead of a managed or virtual one. It affirms our dignity. It permits us to become free and independent human beings. (...) The truth of America is understood only when you listen to voices in our impoverished rural enclaves, prisons and the urban slums, when you hear the words of our unemployed, those who have lost their homes or cannot pay their medical bills, our elderly and our children, especially the quarter of the nation's children who depend on food stamps to eat, and all who are marginalized. There is more reality expressed about the American experience by the debt-burdened young men and women protesting in the parks than by all the chatter of the well-paid pundits and experts that pollutes the airwaves. What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line? What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters? What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates? What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators? What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens? What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children's children?"
Hideen From History: The Canadian Holocaust http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/
The Untold Story of the Genocide of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. This horrible story was brought to my attention by Hunt Henion (hunt@eurekadsl.net) who wrote: "Are you aware of this information on Canadian genocide of Indian children? I have been studying it for two days and the evidence is solid. Very disturbing, shocking, and some serious humanity violations have occurred AFTER Canada's fairly recent apology to the indigenous people! Makes direct connections to corruption of Christianity regarding land and resource grabbing. As I am reeling about it, want others to know about this." A video documentary on this has been produced. View the Promotional Trailer - Full Length Film on Google Video: UNREPENTANT: KEVIN ANNETT AND CANADA'S GENOCIDE (documentary) Note from Jean: I started watching this video and couldn't take it any longer after 15 minutes, so harrowing and heart-wrenching are the tales of inhumane treatments and actual torture these survivors from the Christian death camps received at the hands of those who were part of this government-sanctioned hidden genocide of aboriginal people in Canada. To find out much more on this, I recommend you read Hidden No Longer: Genocide in Canada, Past and Present below in this compilation. This is so disturbing, I feel I should apologize to you all for bringing such horrendous facts to your awareness... but it can no longer remain hidden, not only because those responsible for these atrocities and those who, to this day, continue to prevent the truth from coming out, need to be brought to justice and due compensations need to be paid to the survivors - just like Germany did for the crimes of the Nazis (see Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany), but most importantly because all Canadians need to make amend and let our brothers and sisters of aboriginal descent know that we are deeply sorry for the torments they have had to endure, as well as for the rejection and despise that still exist to some degree in our collective heart towards them, and above all, that we love them and cherish the precious heritage they carry in their culture and collective soul as members of our global human family. The same recognition and love should also be urgently expressed and acted upon towards all the first people whose ancestors inhabited the Americas and thrived before the plague of destruction and death brought by the European immigrants brought them all to the brink of extinction.
Servants of the Empire (October 15, 2011) Hidden History of America http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/96762.html
(...) Below is a fascinating chapter out of that hidden history with which most of you will not be familiar. I have been following this story of the "secret team" or shadow government, and CIA drug running and money laundering for over two decades. This account is a great summary for those new to these nefarious affairs.
(...) "This underground empire is controlled by a handful of people for money — that's the only secret of the temple."— Investigative reporter Danny Casolaro, prior to his murder by the Octopus
(...) Some of these are the same players who moved into other Central American countries, setting up security services (death squads) for U.S.-backed dictators, and profiting handsomely from the cocaine trade.If anyone thinks these are outrageous allegations, consider the statements of Mike Levine, one of the DEA's most highly decorated veterans: "For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers," including the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, the Contras in Central America, the DFS in Mexico, the Shan United Army in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, and "any of a score of other groups and/or individuals like Manuel Noriega. Support of these people has been secretly deemed more important than getting drugs off our streets."
(...) "By the end of 1988," added Castillo, "I realized how hopelessly tangled the DEA, the CIA, and every other U.S. entity in Central America had become with the criminals. The connections boggled my mind." "The CIA — they're making deals with the Devil," adds Mike Levine. "Unfortunately, the Devil is smarter than they are."
(...) Those we call the "Shadow Government," the "Parallel Government," the "Enterprise," the "Octopus," or a half-a-dozen other names, are carefully hidden behind an endless roster of official titles and duties, and a plethora of familiar-sounding organizations and institutions. These same faceless little gray men would pop up in the Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy like interminable weeds between the cracks of the pavement.From the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra to Oklahoma City, the names, faces, and players would coalesce for a brief moment in time into an indistinguishable menagerie of politicos and spooks, terrorists and assassins — to commit their terrible deed, then fade into the seamless world were little distinction is made between assets and criminals. CLIP
Hidden History: Where Organized Crime and Government Meet (September 3, 2008) http://www.lewrockwell.com/burris/burris10.html
The concept of the State is the greatest criminal conspiracy ever perpetuated upon humanity. As Nock details in his book above, all States originate in conquest and exploitation, and as elite oligarchies, continue to exercise this monopoly of crime over their subject peoples through war, taxation, conscription, and indoctrination. The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, a decisive influence upon Nock and other cogent scholars of the origin and practice of this criminal institution, observed: "The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against the revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion has no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors." The StateThis has been the case in every State throughout recorded history. From the primitive city-states of ancient Sumer located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Southern Mesopotamia, to the most sophisticated and powerful State-apparatus yet organized — that of the United States of America — presently engaged in an act of criminal conquest, occupation, and savage exploitation of those very lands and peoples in what is presently labeled Iraq.
(...) Over the past several months, Lew Rockwell and other diligent scholars on this website have provided visitors with excellent articles and podcast interviews detailing the essential background on the Fed, fractional reserve banking, the Great Depression, etc. to better understand our present monetary meltdown and banking crisis as we slip into another Depression. Events do not happen outside of a historical context. As they have repeatedly stressed, what is happening in the financial sector is not accidental; it is deliberate, calculated policy on the part of our governing elites. The Fed is the great enabler of the welfare-warfare State and its empire abroad. So it is with modern American history as it relates to government, the intelligence community and organized crime. Virtually every presidential administration from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to George Walker Bush has been tainted with ties to organized crime. The catalog of volumes below document these sinister connections, overt and covert, from "underworld" crime syndicates to the "upperworld" power elite.
(...) A careful and reflective study of our hidden history can teach us much. In particular, it can teach us the enduring importance of freedom. Freedom has always been the genius of American civilization, indeed, of all civilization. It is time for each of us, as Americans and, more importantly, as human beings, to solemnly renew our civic religious legacy, and swear in our hearts with Thomas Jefferson, "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."It is time for each of us to be in the vanguard of this worldwide renascence of human liberty in the first decade of the 21th-century, joining in solidarity with our brothers and sisters abroad in declaring war upon the State, all governments, as destroyers of rights and plunderers of the common heritage of humanity.
Dillon Read & Co. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits - How the System Works: A Case Study by Catherine Austin Fitts - 2006 Note from Jean: Or you could call this Greed Gone Beserk... in pure capitalistic fashion! http://www.dunwalke.com/introduction.htm
Catherine Austin Fitts served the Clinton Administration in the capacity of President of The Hamilton Securities Group after having served as Assistant Secretary of Housing-FHA Commissioner in the first Bush Administration. This article is an exposition of "how the system works". It explains in detail the blur of people cycling between high-level Wall Street and Washington positions and helps one to understand the extent to which "there is no longer any sovereign government". To put it bluntly: this is a long and dark read. It is also a piece born of hope. Fitts writes, "My hope is that as your powers grow to see the financial game and the true dividing lines, you will be better able to build networks of authentic people inventing authentic solutions to the real challenges we face. My hope is that you will no longer invite into your lives and work the people and organizations that sabotage real change. If enough of us come clean and hold true to the intention to transform the game, we invite in the magic that comes in dangerous times. (Editor's note: This piece, written by a person who has been both a Wall Street and Washington insider and is an individual of remarkable integrity, does an extraordinary job of illuminating how this country has come to find itself in its current situation. Although written five years ago, if anything, it is even more bitingly relevant now.)
Why I wrote this story... I made the decision to write “Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits” in the middle of a vegetable garden in Montana during the summer of 2005. I had come to Montana to develop a venture capital model to support a healthier, fresher local food supply. If we want clean water, fresh food, sustainable infrastructure, and healthy communities, we are going to have to finance and govern these resources ourselves. We cannot invest in the stocks and bonds of large corporations, banks and governments that are harming our food, water, environment and all living things and then expect these resources to be available when we need them. Surviving and thriving as a free people depends on creating and transacting with currencies and investments other than those printed and manipulated by Wall Street and Washington to the eventual end of our rights and assets.What I found in Montana, however, was what I have found in communities all across America. We are so financially entangled in the federal government and large corporations and banks that we cannot see our complicity in everything we say we abhor. Our social networks are so interwoven with the institutional leadership — government officials, bankers, lawyers, professors, foundation heads, corporate executives, investors, fellow alumni — that we dare not hold our own families, friends, colleagues and neighbors accountable for our very real financial and operational complicity. While we hate "the system," we keep honoring and supporting the people and institutions that are implementing the system when we interact and transact with them in our day-to-day lives. Enjoying the financial benefits and other perks that come from that intimate support ensures our continued complicity and contribution to fueling that which we say we hate.
(...) My hope is that “Dillon, Read & the Aristocracy of Stock Profits” will help you to see the game sufficiently to recognize the dividing line between two visions. One centralizes power and knowledge in a manner that tears down communities and infrastructure as it dominates wealth and shrinks freedom. The other diversifies power and knowledge to create new wealth through rebuilding infrastructure and communities and nourishing our natural resources in a way that reaffirms our ancient and deepest dream of freedom. CLIP - Recommended by David Creighton (dcr8on@sympatico.ca) who wrote: "Corruption in high places, drugs, money laundering, war, profits, corruption, collusion, connivance, conspiracy, profits, did I mention corruption, drugs, money laundering, war, profits ... A long but fundamentally rewarding read." Note from Jean: Here is a "juicy" excerpt from http://www.dunwalke.com/4_Narco_Dollars.htm :
(...) No history of the 1980s is complete without an understanding of the lawyers and legal mechanisms used to legitimize drug dealing and money laundering under the protection of National Security law. Through the MOU, the DOJ relieved the CIA of any legal obligation to report information of drug trafficking and drug law violations with respect to CIA agents, assets, non-staff employees and contractors. Presumably, this included the corporate contractors who, by executive order, were now allowed to handle sensitive intelligence and national security outsourcing.With the DOJ-CIA Memorandum of Understanding, in effect from 1982 until rescinded in August 1995, a crack cocaine epidemic ravaged the poorer communities of America and disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of poor people into prison who, now classified as felons, were safely off of the voting roles. Meantime, the U.S. financial system gorged on what had grown to an estimated $500 billion-$1 trillion a year of money laundering by the end of the 1990s. Not surprisingly, the rich got richer as corporate power and the concentration of investment capital skyrocketed on the rich margins of state sanctioned criminal enterprise.Yale Law School trained Stanley Sporkin was appointed by Reagan in 1985-86 to serve as a judge in Federal District court, leaving the CIA with a legal license to team up with drug dealing allies and contractors. From the bench many years later, he helped engineer the destruction of my company Hamilton Securities while preaching to the District of Columbia bar about good government and ethics. He retired from the bench in 2000 to become a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Enron's bankruptcy counsel. Gary Webb died in 2004, another casualty of an intelligence, enforcement and media effort that keeps global narcotics trafficking and the War on Drugs humming along by reducing to poverty and making life miserable for those who tell the truth. At the heart of this machinery are thousands of socially prestigious professionals like Sporkin who engineer the system within a labyrinth of law firms, courts and government depositories and contractors operating behind the closely guarded secrets of attorney client privilege and National Security law and the rich cash flows of the U.S. federal credit. CLIP
CAFR: US agencies have billions, trillions in investments while crying budget deficits (May 22, 2010) http://www.examiner.com/la-county-nonpartisan-in-los-angeles/cafr-us-agencies-have-billions-trillions-investments-while-crying-budget-deficits
Gerald Klatt and Walter Burien are unrecognized heroes. These individuals are national leaders who have communicated how government agencies conceal American taxpayers’ money in surplus accounts that collectively total trillions of our dollars. The data is found in government agencies’ Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs). What CAFRs reveal is a communist-style policy whereby the US taxpayers surrender enormous assets to the state, who then “invest” these collective trillions that swell in these accounts. Concurrently, taxpayers are informed of budget deficits to either squeeze more taxes from them and/or cut public services. To add insult to injury, the state lies in omission by never reminding Americans of their hard-earned and withheld trillions as they eliminate jobs, reduce education, and attack the quality of our lives. The American Constitution is a contract of limited government whereby the public informs and is informed by our representatives. CAFRs are damning public documents that expose “leadership” from Left and Right as exactly what leading economic voices have said: an absolutely corrupt and self-serving oligarchy. Let’s look at the economic data revealed in CAFRs. For example, California has a budget deficit of ~$20 billion. The combined investments of CAFRs for the state of CA, Los Angeles County, and the City of Los Angeles is over $450 billion; over 22 times the amount of the budget shortfall (documentation page numbers below). CLIP
UPDATE ON THE GROWING GLOBAL PROTESTS AGAINST CORPORATISM AND GREED
Nearly a Third of ‘Occupy’ Protesters Advocate Violence (October 18, 2011) http://www.prisonplanet.com/nearly-a-third-of-occupy-protesters-advocate-violence.html
Some demonstrators favor giving government power to enforce socialist system of wealth redistribution at gunpoint -- Research conducted by polling firm PSB reveals that almost one third of the Occupy Wall Street protesters support using violence to enforce their ideas, which is somewhat disconcerting given the fact that many of the demonstrators also support concentrating that force into the hands of government to oversee a program of radical wealth redistribution at gunpoint. “On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York’s Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion,” writes pollster Douglas Schoen in the Wall Street Journal today. The interviews with the demonstrators revealed that “nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.”In their hit song “Revolution,” which is being trumpeted by the Obama-supporting, George Soros-funded MoveOn.org group as an anthem for the demonstrators, the Beatles sung about the need for people to come together to change the world, but they made it very clear that violence and Communist rhetoric, which has unfortunately been adopted by many ‘Occupy’ adherents, was not the way to do it. However, as we have witnessed, this violence would not be used to bring in some ‘glorious’ grass roots revolution, the revolt of the “99 percent,” as the demonstrators have characterized themselves, it would in all likelihood be entrusted to government who would then abuse such power to use even more heavy-handed force than they already do. In the interview below, Adam Kokesh follows the “solution” many ‘Occupy’ protesters are advocating to its logical conclusion, the government being empowered to use violence against the American people to enforce “the public good”. NOTE from Jean: this misguided notion that violence can somehow be a justified means to implement the 99% agenda (something that will forever remain undefinable because there is no central "authority" to this galaxy of local groups to trumpet any kind of agreed-upon collective agenda) will most likely be used by the Obama regime and the Illuminati Cabal controling the strings of this puppet 'benign dictator' to divert the popular support for this grass root movement towards fulfilling their own devious agenda of Total Global Domination and the following is probably a sign that they are already moving in that direction...
Obama on Occupy Wall Street: ‘We Are on Their Side’ (October 18, 2011) http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-on-occupy-wall-street-we-are-on-their-side.html
Comment: As we predicted right from the start, Obama and the Democratic machine have attempted to co-opt the protests as an election campaign gimmick. Obama is trying to pose as a populist in appearing to side with American citizens against Wall Street, when his 2008 campaign was funded by Wall Street, his cabinet is stuffed with former Wall Street insiders, and his 2012 campaign is even more reliant on Wall Street. In an interview that will be aired tonight on ABC News, President Obama continues to express his commitment to the Occupy Wall Street protesters. “The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama tells ABC News. “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.” The president also compares the protesters to the Tea Party. “In some ways, they’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party,” Obama says. “Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.” Full story here. Note from Jean: IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM - as shown by the initial outrageous police repression - JOIN THEM, ONLY TO BETTER CO-OPT THEM. That's what behind this move by Obama. Yet they just cannot control something as unprecedented and as global as this Occupy the World movement. I trust the collective wisdom of the people - especially the soul-guided ones among them! - will ultimately prevail over any shenanigan the Illuminati might try to throw at them/us. As Matthew often reiterated, Light and Love have already won in the Continuum and it is just a matter of time before this Reality fully manifests in this illusory dimension.
I AM NOT MOVING - Short Film - Occupy Wall Street (11 oct. 2011)
SEEN BY OVER 700,000 PEOPLE IN 10 DAYS. MUST WATCH! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGRXCgMdz9A
The height of hypocrisy of the Obama regime is graphically exposed...
Immortal Technique Warns OWS About Elite Infiltrating Movement (Oct 10) - VERY LUCID AND MUST WATCH!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j8a9RgFHKrQ
Occupy Wall Street has brought out tens of thousands of demonstrators to speak out against corporations across America. Some celebrities and activists have come out to support the masses and use their celebrity to strengthen the movement. Immortal Technique, hip hop artist and political activist, speaks out about the movement.
How to Identify an Agent Provocateur (08/14/2011) http://takethesquare.net/2011/08/14/how-to-identify-an-agent-provocateur/
As governments around the world, including our own, face more and more popular resistance, we’re witnessing a revival of the use of agent provocateurs. An agent provocateur is the well-used tactic of using undercover military or police to join a dissenting group or protest in order to provoke others in the group to carry out illegal actions and violence. The goal is to discredit the group from the inside. Sometimes the group gets discredited with those outside. Other times the group is enticed into internal divisions and collapses.The most recent and clumsy attempt was the Egyptian government’s use of plain-clothes police officers to incite violence amid the largely peaceful anti-Mubarak protests. They tried to resemble the genuine protesters at first, but then the Mubarak agents showed their true colors. They rode horses and camels, carrying weapons and throwing fire bombs. Even the international media wasn’t fooled. For the first time, mainstream media started using the language of agent provocateurs.
(...) In recent years, the FBI has used a growing number of agent provocateurs to infiltrate Muslim communities in the U.S., the most notable being exposed agent Craig Monteith in Orange County, California. He said he had been paid between $2500 and $11,000 a month to help radicalize Muslims. As the paranoia common to governments grows, the question arises: will your group or church or political action committee be targeted with agent provocateurs at some point? Why not? The targets have been quite various, with government certainly not always focused on so-called radicals. At the same time, governments’ definitions of what groups are risky can change quickly and silently. It certainly wouldn’t be advertized. Many groups haven’t discovered their agent provocateurs until years after their activity. Would you be able to spot an agent provocateur? They try to blend in and make friends. They appear to share your interests. Drawing from several sources, experienced observers have suggested some tips for identifying such agents. They’re not foolproof, but they’re a start. CLIP
Occupy Assange: 'Corrupt banks, corrupt cash' (Oct 15, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDqguz5MmkM&feature=relmfu
The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, attended the protests in London that are part of a worldwide action against corporate greed and austerity measures. Assange said that he was there to show his solidarity with the Occupy London movement, which was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests in the US.
Remember, Remember the 5th of November: BANK TRANSFER DAY http://ampedstatus.org/remember-remember-the-5th-of-november-bank-transfer-day/
Together we can ensure that corrupt crony-capitalist banking institutions will ALWAYS remember the 5th of November! If the 99% removes our funds from major banking institutions to non-profit credit unions on or by this date, we will send a clear message to the 1% that conscious consumers won’t support companies with unethical business practices. CHECK ALSO Big Banks Refuse To Let People Close Accounts "The big banks are trying to preempt the efforts of their customers to move their money to smaller banks. This week, protesters were arrested when they tried to close their Citibank accounts"
October 23: Occupy Brussels HQ European Union – Solidarity with Greece! http://takethesquare.net/2011/10/21/october-23-occupy-brussels-hq-european-union-solidarity-with-greece/
Papandreou’s welcome in Brussels this Sunday, October 23 at 10:00 Parc du Cinquantenaire. We all followed the events in Athens the last two days. We are all aware of the monumental failure of George Papandreou to govern. Millions of people are mobilized, are we going to remain inactive? This Sunday, we give our message and express our outrage in front of the failure and the cynicism of PASOK! Occupy Brussels HQ European Union Sunday, October 23, 2011 1:00 p.m. METRO SCHUMAN We are the 99% • We are the solution. We demand public banks under the control of people.
Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now by Naomi Klein (Oct 6, 2011) http://www.thenation.com/article/163844/occupy-wall-street-most-important-thing-world-now
(...) If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over. And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.
(...) The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.
We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to build the kind of society we need. The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I’m not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that’s important.I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it’s also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult. That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says, “I care about you.” In a culture that trains people to avoid each other’s gaze, to say, “Let them die,” that is a deeply radical statement.
A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that don’t matter. What we wear. Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs. Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite. And here are a few things that do matter. Our courage. Our moral compass. How we treat each other. We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets—like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win. Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less. Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.
AMONG THE COMMENTS POSTED THERE: "Thank you, Naomi Klein! The Network of Spiritual Progressives has some programs for creating a caring economy and a civil society. The Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment is an antidote to Citizens United, it calls for corporate charters to be awarded and renewed based on the corporation's contribution to the community and environmental sustainability. Rep. Dennis Kucinich has introduced a related bill in Congress. They also have the Global Marshall Plan to end both domestic and global poverty, to be funded through cutbacks in military expenditures, a tax on global financial transactions and on the super-wealthy. Rep. Keith Ellison has introduced this plan of generosity and caring in Congress. These proposals fit right into the spirit of love and moving beyond the myth of scarcity."
USMC Sgt Shamar Thomas on Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yEm87vZ82E
Sgt. Shamar Thomas interviewed on Countdown with Keith Olbermann re his rant Saturday night against the NYPD brutality at this past weekend's Occupy Wall Street protest, in Times Square.
Marine veteran rant against NYPD brutality - times square - Oct 15 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEgymHDUYVQ
US Military veteran (Sgt Shamar Thomas, USMC) rants at NYPD over their brutality and reprehensible tactics, including kettling & mounted units (animals on horses), during the Times Square protest organized by Occupy Wall Street. All of our veterans are heroes... Veterans like Sgt Thomas, in this video, truly represent the home of the brave. Hopefully, the ranks will swell, with more brave veterans who're willing to continue standing-up/fighting for our freedom... only this time, where it counts the most, on the streets of America. CHECK ALSO The Morality Of OWS: U.S. Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas vs. The Christian Right Establishment - "I was involved in a RIOT in Rutbah, Iraq 2004 and we did NOT treat the Iraqi citizens like they are treating the unarmed civilians in our OWN Country. No one was brutalized because our mission was to 'WIN the hearts and minds.' why should I expect anything less in my OWN Country. As a man who loves his country and its citizens, Thomas may have intended to point out the particular immorality in the NYPD's handling of the protesters. But an underlying sentiment was stronger: the morality of OWS itself. "
Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) Watch full screen http://vimeo.com/30081785
A new angle on Occupy Wall Street reveals the strong micro community that has formed there.
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"There are lots of signs of greater economic collapse coming. The article below lays out 8 warning signs. If it occurs it is likely to result in rapid expansion of occupations and demands for transformational change, especially getting the corruption of money out of government and the end of corporate rule." Introductory comment taken from HERE
Commentary: 8 warnings for Washington and Occupiers
By Paul B. Farrell - Oct. 18, 2011
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Worst-case scenario’s closing fast: Occupy Wall Street growing. But no political power or allies yet. Feared yes, attacked by GOP proxy tea party. Soon the Occupation will explode into a new American Revolution. When? A string of European bank collapses is dead ahead. And like the Arab Spring, they will trigger an economic disaster for American banks. Yes, coming soon says Martin Weiss in his “7 Major Advance Warnings,” which is “bound to have a life-changing impact on nearly all investors in the U.S. and around the globe.” His new Weiss Ratings warnings are the “most important” in a 40-year career. The stress on Wall Street banks will force them back to Congress for more bailouts. Warning eight: No new bailouts. That will push the economy into a deep recession.Then what? New Glass-Steagall? Not enough. Tax the rich? Not enough. Perp walks? Not enough. Presidential commission? Useless promises. Occupy Wall Street will fail without a fundamental constitutional change. No compromise. Or Wall Street wins, again. We go back to the same free market, deregulated, too-greedy to-fail, conservative Reaganomics policies that have been destroying democracy for a generation.All this was so obvious, so predictable. America is at a crossroads. Occupy Wall Street buildup has emerged as America’s last great hope to restore democracy. Last week when USA Today called the Occupiers a “ragtag assortment of college kids, labor unionists, conspiracy theorists and others” hinting they’re a flash-in-the-pan “devoid of remedies,” I smiled, reminded of that famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas 1776, leading what historians also called a “ragtag” Continental Army, surprising the British, and winning the Battle of Trenton.
America’s collective conscience wants true democracy restoredYes, USA Today sees a “ragtag” army: No mission, no goals, no organization, no agenda, no leaders, and no staying power. Wrong. Look deeper: The Occupiers are the voice of America’s collective conscience demanding a return to our 1776 roots, to a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”Our collective inner voice knows America’s moral compass is broken. We’ve become a government “of, by and for” special interests, the wealthiest 1%, Wall Street insiders, CEOs and Forbes-400 billionaires. It happened fast: In one generation the Super Rich grabbed “absolute power,” killing the middle class American dream.Wall Street banks are already dismissing the Occupiers … planning bigger bonuses this year… lifting limits on their license to gamble Main Street deposits in the $600 trillion global derivatives casino … they already spend hundreds of millions lobbying every year … they’re convinced they can defeat the Occupiers with campaign donations in the back rooms of Congress … writing off the fight as another business expense … ultimately expecting the Occupiers will vanish into the cold winter months.
One citizen. One dollar. One vote. Anything less is failure -- Warning: Don’t be fooled. Occupy Wall Street knows exactly want it wants. The tea party, GOP’s proxy, isn’t fooled. They feel threatened, counter-attacking, worried their role will be lost in the 2012 elections, fearful they’ll lose sway over Republicans, so they’ve got a smear campaign against Occupy Wall Street. Won’t work: Amid all the noise surrounding Occupy Wall Street we hear their “one simple demand.” Missed by most outsiders, that demand echoes down through American history, first heard in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence. Earlier the Occupiers voiced their one simple demand: “We demand that integrity be restored to our elections. One citizen. One dollar. One vote. Only citizens should make campaign contributions. Campaign contributions by citizens should not exceed $1 to any political candidate or party. Help us reclaim democracy.” Yes, one simple demand: “Stop the monied corruption at the heart of our democracy.” That one simple demand echoed over and over. And no compromise when dealing with so fundamental a principle of democracy. Compromises the last generation surrendered America to Wall Street and the Super Rich. Compromise this principle again, and we all lose, destroy America. No compromise. Period.
Phase 2: EU bank collapse gives Occupiers new political power - The Occupiers Revolution enters a new phase soon: First Arab Spring rippled into American Fall. Next, EU bank collapses will ripple through Wall Street. For a long time we’ve been warning the 2008 meltdown never ran its course, foiled by mega-bailouts … bankers never shared the sacrifice … fought all reforms … are back to business-as-usual … learned no lessons … now even more delusional, expecting bigger bonuses … trapped in denial for three years … cannot see what’s ahead … a perfect setup for a bigger crash.That’s why my eye locked on Martin Weiss’ “7 Major Advance Warnings.” Weiss has been a champion of the little guy for 40 years, author of “The Ultimate Money Guide for Bubbles, Busts, Recession and Depression.” Weiss Ratings of domestic and foreign debt markets downgraded U.S. debt before the S&P. Both of us were warning well in advance of the 2008 crash. It was so predictable: Weiss warned of “failure of Bear Stearns Lehman, Washington Mutual, near-failure of Citigroup and the demise of Fannie Mae years before it collapsed.” So listen closely to his “7 Major Advance Warnings,” which are “the most important in the 40-year history of my company.” Many will dismiss them, distracted by today’s campaign noise. Others will dismiss them as “over there,” problems for Europeans. Weiss warns: EU banks problems are “bound to have a life-changing impact on nearly all investors in the U.S. and around the globe.”So listen and discount what Wall Street is selling you. Protect your portfolio. Here are edited highlights:
1. Greece will default very soon ...
”Banks must bite the bullet and take some big hits in their Greek loans. … Whether banks accept this ‘solution’ voluntarily or not, it will mean Greece is in default.” 2. The contagion of fear will spread …
Global investors know “if one major Western government can default, so can others.” They will refuse to lend “to highly indebted governments” or “demand outrageously high yields.” 3. European megabanks will collapse …
Some of the “largest banks will collapse under the weight of defaulting sovereign debts and … mass withdrawals … Spain … French banks” … the impact will ripple across “J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup … All three are in danger.” 4. EU governments suffer new credit rating downgrades ...
”France and Germany, will scramble to rescue their failing banks.” But “bank bailouts are seriously flawed” as “governments gut their own fiscal balance … suffer big downgrades,” or pay “far higher interest rates.” 5. Spain and Italy next to face default on their massive debts ...
With “$3.4 trillion in debt, or about 10 times more than Greece” they too risk default. 6. Global debt markets will suffer a critical meltdown ...
Anticipating “default by a country as large as Spain or Italy, nearly all debt markets in the world will freeze.” Withdrawals, panic “not only crush the borrowing power of the PIIGS” but threaten meltdowns in “France, Germany, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S.” 7. Vicious cycle: sovereign defaults, bank failures, global depression ...
Government defaults trigger more bank failures, “cut off the flow of credit to businesses and households, sink the global economy into a depression, and perpetuate the vicious cycle.”
Warning to investors: No bank bailouts, power to Occupation
History inevitably repeats itself: Arab Spring triggered Wall Street Fall. Next, the raging European monetary collapse will ripple through America’s banking system, completing the 2008 meltdown that never ended because Wall Street fought all reforms.
But now, a bigger meltdown as history repeats a dangerous cycle like the 1929 Crash and Great Depression.
History will also deal a fatal blow to Wall Street. Weiss adds a key warning: No bank bailouts. America’s banking system is bankrupt, structurally and morally. Washington is broken. And thanks to the Occupiers Revolution the masses will never accept new bank bailouts. Never. They’ll toss politicians and overthrow government first. No new bailouts will be the stake in the heart of Wall Street, ending the “greed is good” power of America’s “bloodsucking vampire squid,” handing the Occupiers new political power in Washington.
Weiss’s worst-case scenario highlights everything we’ve both been warning investors about for a long time. The 2008 meltdown never ended, lessons never learned. But now the end game is accelerating. Listen closely: Weiss final warning to all investors: “Get all or most of your money out of danger immediately … above all, stay safe!” Prepare for the coming bank collapse. And discover how this historic scenario will empower the Occupiers message to get money out of elections: “One citizen. One dollar. One vote.”
Compromise on that principle and Wall Street wins, again.
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MEMO TO THE #OCCUPY MOVEMENT (A Post Growth Economy) by Richard Heinberg (Oct 5, 2011) http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/523782-memo-to-the-occupied-movement-a
Here’s a fact that's hard for most Americans to swallow: economic growth is over. Given the finite nature of our planet and its resources, the recent trend of global economic expansion was destined to end. No stimulus package or slashing of social programs is going to flip the economy back to an expansionary trajectory. We’ve hit the proverbial wall, and this will be the defining reality of our lives from now on.The growth-seeking political-economic system has failed us. Today that system is dominated by Wall Street. “Goldman Sachs rules the world,” trader Alessio Rastani told us in a now-viral BBC interview. I met people like Rastani in researching my book, The End of Growth. At one lavish conference, 800 global investors packed a hotel ballroom to consider climate change. There was no talk of how to avert or mitigate floods and droughts. Instead, the discussion focused on profiting from warming with — no joke — weather derivatives. These folks were just doing their job, despite any private feelings of concern, remorse, or dread. And each was getting paid enough to single-handedly fund a midsize school district. Both Wall Street and Washington are trying to do something impossible: grow human consumption forever in a world of limited energy, minerals, water, topsoil, and biodiversity, all while protecting and expanding the riches of the top one percent. If economic growth is over, that means we can no longer count on a rising tide to lift all boats. Under these conditions, extreme income inequality is not just unfair, it is socially unsustainable. It’s strategic to bring protest to Wall Street rather than Washington. We must go directly to the crime scene — not with a request for reforms, but with an arrest warrant from the people.
You courageous people in the #occupy movement are absolutely right in saying the system is broken, greedy, and unfair. But when our discussion turns to replacing the current system, we’ve got to embrace a bigger view of reality than the one held by stock traders and politicians. It's not just our wealth they want to control, it's our vision for what is both possible and necessary. We need a post-growth economy that works both for people (all of them) and for the rest of nature: a localized economy based on renewable resources harvested at nature’s rates of replenishment, not a fossil-fueled global economy driven by the imperative of ever-higher returns on investment. There will be life after growth — and it can be a better life if our nation’s priority is the quality of life of our people and the integrity of the biosphere, rather than stock prices and corporate profits. With support, Richard Heinberg Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute http://www.postcarbon.org Get The End of Growth http://www.postcarbon.org/eog - Watch the animation Who Killed Economic Growth? http://bit.ly/whokilledgrowth
Leaked Memo: The Corporate Board Rooms Fear the Occupy Movement Occupying Their Board Rooms Targeting Individual (19 October 2011) http://www.nationofchange.org/leaked-memo-corporate-board-rooms-fear-occupy-movement-occupying-their-board-rooms-targeting-individ
Below is a memorandum leaked to the Freedom Plaza occupation of Washington, DC that comes from a corporate consultant and shows the fear they are developing of the Occupy Movement. The memorandum from Fay Feeney, a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, describes how corporations should prepare to combat the Occupation Movement.Corporations fear their leaders being held personally accountable for the actions of concentrated corporate interests. They especially fear their names and addresses being known and their board rooms being invaded by OccupyTheBoardroom.org. Feeney suggests: "board members and corporate counsels prepare themselves for a bumpy ride by future-proofing their companies." Among the steps taken to protect themselves is to use social networks to gather intelligence so "board chairs and CEOs should always remain one step ahead in protecting their boardroom." These executives should be afraid. There is a legitimate anger at the unfairness of the economy. Where the 400 wealthiest Americans have wealth equal to 154 million Americans, while paying an average of 17.4% in federal taxes. Many working Americans pay double that rate. The unfairness in the economy and economic insecurity of Americans is energizing this movement and people will want those who collapsed the economy for their personal and corporate profits to be held accountable. CLIP
How Can We Rouse Police and Other Protectors of the Corporatocracy -- "Guards" of the Status Quo -- to Join the OWS Rebellion? By Bruce Levine (October 20, 2011) http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/how-can-we-rouse-police-and-other-protectors-corporatocracy-guards-status-quo-join
Police, teachers, the corporate press, mental health professionals -- the guards of the system -- are given small rewards to pacify and control the population. -- “In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers. . . . They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.”—Howard Zinn, from “The Coming Revolt of the Guards,” A People’s History of the United States.
For those of us who have demonstrated and marched in the Occupy movement, it is obvious that the police and the corporate press serve as guards—buffers between the vast majority of the American people and the ruling “corporatocracy” (the partnership of giant corporations, the wealthy elite, and their collaborating politicians). In addition to the police and the corporate press, there are millions of other guards employed by the corporatocracy to keep people obedient and maintain the status quo. Even a partial revolt of the guards could increase the number of protesters on the streets from the thousands to the millions. When did Zinn predict the revolt would occur, and how can this revolt be accelerated? CLIP
Is Occupy Wall Street Planning A National Convention In 2012?
by Beth Buczynski October 19, 2011
Now that Occupy Wall Street has shown that it’s not going away, many have begun to ask where it’s headed. Aside from a short declaration of grievances released in late September, the movement has issued no official demands or goals.
An OWS Working group has undertaken the task of debating, organizing and implementing the 99% Declaration (which contains a Petition for the Redress of Grievances and an Action Plan) and unveiled its proposal for the election of a National General Assembly to convene on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia.
The National General Assembly would consist of 870 Delegates elected from the 435 Congressional districts. Each Congressional district would elect one woman and one man by direct ballot voting.
These Delegates will attend the National General Assembly in July where a final Petition for the Redress of Grievances will be voted upon and delivered to all three branches of the federal government before the 2012 election, states the official forum.
The feasibility of such an Assembly has not yet been fully debated or voted upon by the General Assembly, and there are some who still oppose any sort of structured demands. But if successful, a National General Assembly of the 99% could completely alter the results of the 2012 election and the future of the American people.
…Once organized and the delegates have been elected by direct ballot in all 435 districts. They must demand that our elected leaders take action. If they do not take action within one year of the demand, we will demand their mass resignations and that new elections be held so we can take back our democracy from the corporations and those who BUY power and influence with MONEY. Yes this includes unions and lobbyists.
Is this the beginning of the third political party that so many Americans have asked for? Maybe. But it’s also something more. It’s about taking the desire for a people-led government out of the discussion phase and into the action phase. It’s about telling crooked politicians and the corporations that own them we’re tired of their deceit, and if they’re not willing to change, the 99% will occupy streets, parks, Capitol buildings and banks until they’re removed from office.
If the final Petition for the Redress of Grievances is not acted upon by the government, the Delegates shall organize a nationwide, grassroots, non-partisan effort to elect independent candidates in the 2014 midterm election. This election of independent candidates will seek to replace ALL of the existing members of the House of Representatives and ALL Senators up for election in 2014.
The demanding tone of this proposal has irritated some Occupy Wall Street organizers, however. So there’s a chance that none of these ambitious plans will ever see the light of day in their current form. But the good news is that the General Assembly is at least talking about the ways in which this movement can be legitimately leveraged to create political and economical change in the very near future.
It’s about to get cold out there, and I’m sure the 99% is pleased to know their discomfort and bravery won’t be in vain.
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From: "October2011.org" (info@october2011.org)
Date: 22 Oct 2011
Subject: October2011.org News: Jim Hightower, Community Teach-ins and Talks and Actions!
Dear Friend,
It has been an active week at Freedom Plaza with lots of challenges and opportunities.
The week began with great speech from Cornel West that led to an impromptu march to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Freedom Plaza occupiers held signs on the Supreme Court steps urging an end to corporate personhood, claiming money is not speech and seeking human needs not corporate greed. It is illegal to hold signs on the Supreme Court steps – that’s right with a Constitution that says “Congress shall make no law abridging” our Freedom of Speech, you can’t hold a sign on the Supreme Court steps. Nineteen people were arrested, including Dr. West, and in an unusual move they were all held overnight in the DC lock-up. Video here. The next day they dropped the charges, so they were essentially punished for exercising their Freedom of Speech and not given a trial.
Thursday and Friday, Freedom Plaza had actions where we shut down Citibank. See article and video here and here. After they reported their 7th consecutive quarter of immense profits and they made a deal with the SEC where they paid a $280 million dollar fine for profiting $1 billion in sales of corrupt mortgage derivatives. With that lack of accountability where Citibank profits over $700 million after paying the fine, they are sure to be a repeat offender.
The challenges we face are large. The Park Police are regularly coming by to videotape our activities. We have been told they are building a case to evict us. While we have a permit, the tents, sleeping out and some of the food services violate the permit. We believe our permit is the First Amendment which says we have the Freedom to Assemble to redress grievances. That is exactly what we are doing and we are having an impact on the political debate. We wanted to alert you to this because we will need support if the police come to remove us.
We keep our needs list updated. You can see it here.
Please join us Saturday at 12 noon for a visit by Jim Hightower and Sunday at 4 pm for a teach-in by members of the April 6 Revolutionary Movement of Egypt. The evening discussions on Saturday and Sunday are Education and the Environment. There will be a teach-in by Free My City, an educational group in DC, at 5 pm on Saturday. See the Current Schedule of Events.
On Monday, we have an action planned regarding Housing. Not only are there record foreclosures in the US, but now legislation has been introduced providing automatic visas to people from other countries who can buy at least $500,000 worth of real estate. We need you to make it a success. Please join us Monday at 9 am on Freedom Plaza for a march to the action.
Thanks for all your support. We are working hard to turn this country around. We all know how off track it is and that only the people united, in solidarity, can shift power to the people and end corporate rule.
'Doomsday' Comet Elenin Zips by Earth in Pieces (17 October 2011) http://www.space.com/13302-doomsday-comet-elenin-pieces-earth-flyby.html
We can all breathe a sigh of relief: The so-called "doomsday comet" Elenin made its closest flyby of Earth Sunday (Oct. 16), and no cataclysms ensued. Some skywatching soothsayers had predicted that Elenin's approach Sunday would trigger catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis. Others had sounded even more dire alarms, suggesting that Elenin was not a comet at all but a rogue planet called Nibiru whose Earth encounter could usher in the apocalypse. But none of that came to pass, as Elenin zipped by our planet at the safe remove of 22 million miles (35.4 million kilometers) and sped off into deep space. Or crumbs of the comet did, anyway.
The comet began breaking up after getting hammered by a powerful solar storm in August (or "someone" blew it up!), and a close pass by the sun on Sept. 10 apparently finished Elenin off, scientists say. So what cruised by Earth over the weekend was likely a stream of debris, not an intact comet."Now it's just a cloud of particles that will follow along in the comet's path and exit the solar system, and we won't see any of the particles for at least another 12 millenia," said astronomer Don Yeomans, of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. A small, unremarkable comet - Comet Elenin was discovered in December 2010 by Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin. The comet's core likely measured 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 km) across before it broke up, scientists say. The apocalyptic rumor mill generated by Elenin's arrival on the skywatching scene was completely unwarranted, Yeomans said. The comet was far too small to influence Earth gravitationally, and it never posed a danger of hitting our planet. About 2 percent of newly discovered comets disintegrate when making their closest approach to the sun, Yeomans added. So Elenin's demise was fairly unremarkable, just like the comet itself."It's just Mother Nature putting an end to another mediocre comet," Yeomans told SPACE.com. CLIP
UFO COMPILATION 2011 - Evidences from the 90s till our days (1/3) (2/3) (3/3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj-U4LkwwG4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzHs0evntb8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImDcAs_vy0A
A trilogy of about fifty of the most convincing UFO footages that I have collected over the years, also including some recent plausible sightings. I just managed to keep the best sequences, with the most impressive close-ups and significant commentaries. Through these close (and sometimes remote) comparisons, you will notice that there exists different kinds of UFO shapes. Triangle orbs being in my opinion the most recurring one. Concerning their nature, drones, unknown natural phenomenons, holograms, other civilizations watching at us, or else... I let you make your own conclusions.
UFO-Like Stealth Drone Soars in Navy Test Flight (11 October 2011) http://www.space.com/13255-ufo-x37b-navy-stealth-drone-flight.html
Military drones have already begun edging out manned fighter jets and bombers over the past decade, and the U.S. Navy doesn't plan on being left behind. Its vision for unmanned aerial warfare includes a tailless robotic aircraft resembling a UFO that is scheduled to begin landing on aircraft carriers in 2013. As a step toward that goal, the X-47B drone recently made its first flight in cruise mode with retracted landing gear. CLIP
A Golden Age May Be Just Around The Corner (PHOTOS)
A FASCINATING SLIDESHOW CREATED BY DAVID WILCOCK WITH TANTALIZING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES FEATURED IN HIS RECENTLY RELEASED BOOK. Make sure to read the caption for each picture! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-wilcock/ufos-government_b_933641.html#s336273&title=What_is_consciousness
Ancient prophecies foretold a coming Golden Age in our very near future - and the U.S. government may well have encoded these predictions into a variety of mysterious symbols. Antigravity, teleportation, time travel, energetic DNA evolution and consciousness transformation could create a world few of us ever even dreamed of. Space, time, matter, energy and biological life may be the result of a Source Field that is conscious and alive in its own unique way - on a scale far too vast for the finite mind to fathom. Over 1000 different references, predominantly from mainstream scientists, make the case.
Great collection of pictures and channelings on the global Occupy movement http://www.galacticchannelings.com/english/major_happenings.html
Two major happenings are going on at the moment. While the #Occupy movement is emerging all over the planet, the Galactic Federation is shutting down underground bases of the Dark Cabal. In other words: the people on Earth are rising up, and our galactic friends are coming down. It’s just a matter of time before they come together! CLIP - Check also New message from Wanderer of the Skies (Oct 14, 2011)
Warped Galaxies Reveal Signs of Universe's Hidden Dark Matter (13 October 2011) http://www.space.com/13269-dark-matter-warped-galaxies-hubble-photo.html
Warped visions of distant galaxy clusters are offering a reflection of the invisible matter inside them that astronomers are using to map the unseen side of the universe. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have observed the first of a number of galaxy clusters that they hope to use to build a cosmic census of hidden dark matter. Dark matter, thought to make up 98 percent of all matter in the universe, cannot be seen, only felt through its gravitational pull. To find out where dark matter lies, and how much of it there is, scientists look for an effect called gravitational lensing. This bending of light is caused when mass — including dark matter — warps space-time, causing light to travel a crooked path through it. The end effect is a curvy, funhouse-mirror type view of distant cosmic objects. CLIP
NASA confirms: Aliens are among us (Dec 2, 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jcLexFjklA
NASA held a press conference Thursday afternoon in which they revealed the discovery of arsenic-based life forms on Earth. Many believe that this proves there is the possibility life was or is on other planets already. Space Entrepreneur Jeff Manber says this is a huge discovery because it changes the way scientists view how life can be sustained.
Le film "Contagion" ou comment préparer l'opinion publique aux futures pandémies tant attendues (17 octobre 2011) THE TRAILER IS IN ENGLISH avec sous-titres français http://initiative.citoyenne.over-blog.com/article-le-film-contagion-ou-comment-preparer-l-opinion-publique-aux-futures-pandemies-tant-attendues-86724785.html
Le dernier film de Steven Soderbergh qui rassemble un casting racoleur (Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, ...) va bientôt sortir. Il s'agit d'un film qui pose la question paniquante "Sommes nous vraiment préparés pour une pandémie?", l'habituelle question dont se servent les autorités pour justifier leurs préparatifs obsessionnels et plus que suspects en matière de préparation pandémique. Le contexte du film est clair: un virus qui se transmet par l'air et la peau ( par la respiration et le toucher), qui fait plusieurs décès et contre lequel il n'existe "ni traitement ni vaccin". On voudrait essayer de "rééduquer" le public pour qu'il repense au "réflexe vaccin" qu'on ne s'y prendrait pas autrement. Comme souvent, on finit par "rendre désirable" ce qui est représenté comme "rare ou inaccessible": c'est d'ailleurs aussi un peu le principe à l'oeuvre dans le "dépéchez-vous, il n'y en aura pas pour tout le monde!" CLIP - RECOMMANDÉ PAR Gilboux Françoise (gilbouxf@yahoo.fr) QUI A ÉCRIT: « Il semble qu'on nous prépare un méga tour de cochon (ou autre) car c'est une caractéristique du Nouvel Ordre Mondial que d'imprégner les esprits de ce qu'il veut faire advenir via des films à grand spectacle, mélangeant subtilement les mensonges à la vérité !
Communiqué: Eau Secours! s’implique de nouveau dans le débat sur le fluor à Mont-Joli (20 octobre 2011) http://eausecours.org/2011/10/communique-eau-secours-s’implique-de-nouveau-dans-le-debat-sur-le-fluor-a-mont-joli/
La Coalition québécoise pour une gestion responsable de l’eau – Eau Secours! réitère son appui au comité de citoyens de Mont-Joli qui souhaite avoir un droit de parole lors de la séance d’information sur la fluoration de l’eau potable organisée par le maire de Mont-Joli.Le directeur de la santé publique, Alain Poirier, sera à Mont-Joli le lundi 24 octobre pour convaincre la population des avantages de la fluoration. Le maire a refusé que le Comité Eau Courant de Mont-Joli se fasse entendre lors de cette séance. Le Comité souhaite un véritable débat où tous les impacts de la fluoration seront présentés à l’assistance. Les arguments de la santé publique sont connus, et interdire aux opposants de parler est une atteinte grave aux droits des citoyennes et des citoyens de Mont-Joli. « Les citoyennes et les citoyens doivent être informés des risques de la fluoration de l’eau potable sur leur santé et leur environnement et devraient surtout avoir le droit de s’exprimer sur la question. La fluoration soulève des inquiétudes chez la population et tous les points de vue doivent être entendus » déclare Martine Chatelain, présidente d’Eau Secours! CLIP
THE EMPIRE OF LIES: Why the US government is pushing a war against Iran? (Oct 14, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWAkOSJIXjQ
Despite the fact that the blatant bogus "terrorist plot" made up by the US government is totally discredited, the White House is clearly creating a scenario for attack Iran. It looks like a desperate move of the Illuminati-zionist elites to start the Armageddon. Obama seems to have sold his soul to make them achieve this objective, in exchange of a second term. But what could be the sordid details behind this agenda?? NOTE from Jean: Could this whole charade, reminiscent of the faked killing of CIA asset Obama Bin Laden, be part of a secret deal with Israel whereby the US regime ramps up its public opinion programming in preparation for an all-out attack against Iran - despite the alleged opposition of the Pentagon brass but certainly to the delight of the military industrial complex whose bottom line will be well served by another war - in return for Netanyahu accepting to make a deal with its convenient nemesis, Hamas, for the exchange of one Israeli prisoner (Gilad Shalit) for 1027 Palestian ones (in 2 stages), thus revamping Israel's badly damaged image? Anyway make sure to watch this whole video (THE EMPIRE OF LIES) as it also suggests other convincing arguments - such as Iran demanding on Oct 12 from India to be paid in gold for its oil (see Iran to open accounts with Indian banks for oil payment which they must do to go around the US imposed sanctions that means no bank wants to process the money due to Iran for its oil sales abroad - see also Indian refiners experiment with Turkish bank accounts to pay Iran and India may use gold to settle oil trades with Iran : ET), thus threatening the international currency status of the US dollar - just like Saddam Hussein did when he asked to be paid in Euros (see Foreign Exchange: Saddam Turns His Back on Greenbacks), which led to the famed Shock and Awe attack and his downfall. Meanwhile the U.S. is preparing massive arms deal for Saudi Arabia ($60 billion!!!), and as they point in this video, this could also be part of the calculus for this fraudulous claim of an Iran plot to kill a Saudi Arabia ambassador on US soil, so as to force the hand of the US Congress to approve this sale under the pretext of giving Saudia Arabia ever more means to defend itself against Iran and ensuring over 77,000 jobs only at the Boeing plants in the US...
Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake - Not even good propaganda by Justin Raimondo, (October 12, 2011) http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/10/11/iranian-terror-plot-fake-fake-fake/
(...) This is another one of US law enforcement’s manufactured “anti-terrorist” triumphs, where the feds set somebody up, fabricate a “crime” out of thin air, and then proceed to “solve” a case that never really existed to begin with. This has been the general pattern of our “anti-terrorist” operations in the US since the beginning – because finding and catching real terrorists is much too hard, at least for our Keystone Kops. Instead of going out and actually, you know, looking for the Bad Guys, and then apprehending them, they lure some unsuspecting Muslim immigrant into a trap, and spring it when the time is right. CLIP
Barack Obama: “America’s First Jewish President” By James Petras (12.12.2008) http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1768
According to a nationally prominent Zionist spokesperson, former Congressman, Federal Judge, White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton and early backer of Obama, Abner Mikvner, “Barack Obama is the first Jewish President”. Mikvner’s affirmation reflects both Obama’s one-sided and longstanding commitment to the State of Israel and loyalty to the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the United States, as well as the long-term and successful effort of a network of financially and politically powerful Jewish Zionists to ‘embed’ Obama to their ‘Israel First’ political apparatus. What is striking about the latter is the demeaning and arrogant claims made by some leading Jewish Zionist about their ‘central roles’ in the making of Obama’s professional and political careers – in effect denying the President-Elect any credit for his own academic or professional success. (Historically this has been mirrored in the continuous claims of some American Jews to have fought and won the battle of Civil Rights in the 60’s on behalf of African Americans – essentially denying black Americans any independent political role in their own struggle.) Even their personal flattery about his ‘wisdom’, ‘brilliance’ and ‘intellectual acuity’ is always linked with his unconditional support of the State of Israel. One can envision how quickly his Zionist colleagues would replace their plaudits with crude insults regarding his intelligence if he suggested Israel end its starvation blockade of Gaza… Needless to say the Zionists know their man, as they confidently proclaim, he is a cautious and prudent politician, who measures power before he speaks, especially as he has filled the White House, economic councils and security apparatus with Zionist zealots.
(...) The ZSP exclude from their ‘revisionist and Judaized’ biography of Obama, the central importance of Reverend Jeremiah Wright who transformed Obama from an elite Ivy university graduate into an effective social activist. Obama was able to participate and get involved in community organizing in Chicago’s African-American neighborhoods because of Wright’s endorsement and broad credibility. If it were not for Rev. Wright, Obama would never have had a social base or organizational experience to engage in Chicago politics. It is only after Obama had gained these skills and popular appeal that the Zionist politicos noticed him and went to work on his ego and ambitions, recruiting him to their pro-Israel agenda and financing his political career.The Zionist re-write of his biography has gone curiously unchallenged by Obama. To suit his new mentors, the Israel-First ideologues and financial backers, he has willfully discarded and insulted his former mentors, as well as any current policy advisers and political colleagues who doesn’t adhere to the Zionist line of unconditional support for Israel. CLIP
James Petras’ New Book: “The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack” http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1852
FROM THE PREFACE: The popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have overthrown the public face of the imperial-backed dictatorships in the region, and inspired supporters of popular democracy worldwide.As the Arab revolt spreads from North Africa to the Gulf and deepens its demands to include socio-economic as well as political demands, the Empire is striking back. The ruling military junta in Egypt has cracked down on the prodemocracy movement and looks to its autocratic “partners” in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula to drown the civil society movements in a blood bath. While standing by the crumbling dictatorships elsewhere in the region, the United States, France and the United Kingdom raced to intervene when it seemed the revolt had spread to Libya. NATO was deployed, using the UN’s new “responsibility to protect” doctrine authorizing humanitarian intervention. Already NATO intervention has exceeded the UN mandate by bombing the Libyan capital and inflicting civilian casualties. Meanwhile, western governments openly pursue regime change in Libya while seeking to forestall it elsewhere.These essays chronicle the growing militarization of US policy in North Africa and the Gulf and the historic confrontation between the Arab democratic revolution and the imperial backed satraps; between Libyans fighting for their independence and the Euro-American naval and air forces ravaging the country on behalf of their inept local clients.
OTHER RECOMMENDED NEWS AND INFORMATION
Supermax Confinement in U.S. Prisons By The Committee on International Human Rights http://www2.nycbar.org/pdf/report/uploads/20072165-TheBrutalityofSupermaxConfinement.pdf
During the past three decades, “supermax” confinement has become a widespread and integral element of prison administration in the United States. As many as 80,000 prisoners are held in supermax facilities or in isolation units within prisons. These prisoners endure conditions of extreme sensory deprivation for months or years on end, an excruciating experience in which the prisoner remains isolated from any meaningful human contact. Access to a telephone, books, magazines (...) The policy of supermax confinement, on the scale which it is currently being implemented in the United States, violates basic human rights. We believe that in many cases supermax confinement constitutes torture under international law according to international jurisprudence3 and cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution. The time has come to critically review and reform the widespread practice of supermax confinement.
(...) RECOMMENDATIONS - Supermax confinement has become so embedded in the culture of prison administration that it will take a significant effort to reverse this abhorrent practice. In recent years, there has been some indications that the expansion of solitary confinement has slowed. New York has passed legislation limiting solitary confinement for mentally ill persons, and the legislatures of Maine (which has begun limiting the pract CLIP
Study Confirms Establishment is Terrified of Ron Paul (October 17, 2011) http://www.prisonplanet.com/study-confirms-establishment-is-terrified-of-ron-paul.html
A new study by Pew Research Center confirms that the establishment is terrified of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign gaining momentum – figures show that despite his top tier showing in national polls, the Texan Congressman has received the least media coverage out of all the Republican candidates.“Ron Paul loyalists have been vindicated. After months of observations that the mainstream media was ignoring the libertarian standard-bearer, a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism shows just that: the Texas Congressman, who has consistently polled in the high single digits — Real Clear Politics’s aggregate poll currently has him at 8 percent — has received the least overall coverage of any candidate. From May 2 to October 9, Paul appeared as the “primary newsmaker in only 2% of all election stories,” reports the Atlantic Wire’s John Hudson. The figures, compiled from a list of 52 of the top mainstream news sources encompassing newspapers, cable news, and broadcast television, show that even the likes of Tom Pawlenty, who quit his candidacy last month due to lack of support, and John Huntsman, have received significantly more mainstream press coverage than Paul.It’s not just news coverage where Paul has been deliberately sidelined. A scientific study undertaken by the University of Minnesota also shows that Paul has been given the least speaking time out of all the candidates during the Republican debates so far. Indeed, Mitt Romney has enjoyed more than double the amount of time afforded to Ron Paul over the course of the last three debates.
Of course, this only confirms what we already knew after CNN talking heads admitted there was a media policy to deliberately ignore Ron Paul, even after he placed second in the influential Ames straw poll back in August.These figures really bring to the fore how the establishment is terrified of Ron Paul’s campaign gaining traction. Paul routinely wins straw polls and habitually places second, third or fourth in national polls. He is a top tier candidate despite being almost completely ignored by the mainstream media. Imagine what his numbers would be if he was given merely double the amount of attention he currently receives, which still would barely touch that afforded to the likes of Romney or Perry. If Ron Paul was allowed to compete on a level playing field, he would trounce all the other candidates and go on to defeat Obama by a landslide. Polls show that Paul would already narrowly defeat Obama in a hypothetical run-off despite the media campaign to blacklist him. These statistics once again highlight how grass roots alternative media organizations need to pick up the baton and preach Ron Paul’s message of liberty to the general public, because they’re not even going to be informed of Ron Paul’s existence by the corporate media, never mind what his campaign stands for.
Environmental network forced to close doors (Oct 14, 2011) http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/14/pol-.html
A 34-year-old national environmental network that has served as a link between people and the federal government shut its doors Friday afternoon after Environment Canada cut its funding. The Canadian Environmental Network was told Thursday that its funding from the federal government won't be renewed. "It was a real kick in the pants," said Dan Casselman, the group's senior national caucus co-ordinator. "If they'd given us some warning we might have had time to find money somewhere else."The network acted as a link between 640 small environmental groups across the country and the federal government. In the past, if Ottawa needed advice on policies or new laws it would ask the network for input. The organization would then help the various smaller groups discuss issues and take part in formal consultations across the country. The grassroots organization has helped craft important environmental legislation over the past three decades, including the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Casselman said the group received notice in May that the government was expecting to renew its $547,000 budget for another year. However, it didn't hear anything about the final approval, so the network made contingency plans and warned staff at its national office they could be laid off. Its financial picture became clear when the group received a letter Thursday from Environment Canada saying it had decided not to enter into the contribution agreement this fiscal year. Five people at the national head office in Ottawa have lost their jobs. Only a few of the network's offices in some provinces will stay open because they have funding from provincial governments. "But the pan-Canadian network is in jeopardy," said Casselman. Environmental groups are furious about the decision. The executive director of the Sierra Club, John Bennett, said the Environmental Network was key in helping the government find out what Canadians think about environmental issues across the country. "It was a way to find out what people are thinking about on the ground. I guess it shows that Environment Canada doesn't care," Bennett said. He thinks it's all part of the ongoing cuts to anything environmental in Canada. More than 700 positions with Environment Canada itself, many of them scientific, could be affected by budget cuts by the end of the fiscal year. CLIP - NOTE from Jean: This is what happens when you give a majority to a bunch of corporate, military industrial complex and oil industry henchmen. This government is a disgrace with regard to the traditional values of 99% of Canadians. Harper prefers to waste nearly 30 billion dollars to buy F-35 military aircrafts whose sole purpose will be to kill innocent people as the 'Royal' Canadian Air Force just did in the past months in Libya (733 bombing sorties!) rather than investing a dime to protect our beleaguered environment. At least, he is consistent with his own folly. He is all for the ransacking and despoilation of the environment of Alberta's oil sands - a planetary disaster of epic proportions! - while he cuts back on essential environmental protection budgets across the board. Unless we take back this country from the clenching claws of the greedy oiligarchs in Ottawa through massive street protests and a permanent occupation of the boardrooms of this planet's destroyers, I can easily see there a prime cause for a secession of Quebec before the end of Harper's reign and a profound reversal in the rest of Canada against the tide of corporatism that has engulfed this once pristine land.
“Greedy Lying Bastards” Exposes Big Oil’s Dirty Secret (October 20, 2011) http://www.care2.com/causes/greedy-lying-bastards-exposes-fossil-fuel-industry-crimes.html
Over the past month, the Occupy Wall Street protests have brought the reality of corporate dishonesty to the forefront of the American consciousness.In what seems like perfect harmony with the current sentiments of the Occupiers, filmmaker and political activist Craig Rosebraugh has announced the 2012 release date of his unapologetic documentary, “Greedy Lying Bastards.” The film follows Rosebraugh as he documents the impact of a fossil fuel industry that puts profits before people, wages a campaign of lies to thwart measures to combat climate change, uses its clout to minimize infringing regulations and sustain unnecessary federal subsidies that are crushing the economy. By interweaving the stories of the victims of the Gulf oil spill and the global climate crisis, the film lays bare the industry’s deliberate pattern of irresponsibility. More than a year after the tragic Deepwater Horizon explosion, documentary shows how Gulf Coast residents continue to suffer. Settlements promised by BP are proving largely insufficient and thousands of claims remain outstanding. “This film is an investigation into an industry that is simply out of control,” Rosebraugh contends. “The fossil fuel industry has shown that it will stop at nothing to maximize profits for shareholders, whether it’s cutting corners on safety, employing highly paid lobbyists to impact the political process, giving huge amounts to climate change deniers to ensure that no legislation is passed that would impact the bottom line, or complicity in the murder of individuals who speak up against environmental degradation.” To find out more information about the topics discussed in the film and how to get involved, visit http://www.GreedyLyingBastards.com. Related Reading: Poll: Most Americans Worry About U.S. Oil Consumption - Wildlife Is Footing The Bill For Our Oil and Coal Addiction - House Republicans Push For Renewed Offshore Drilling
Slashing the Canadian Environmental Network http://www.cbc.ca/informationmorningns/2011/10/19/slashing-the-canadian-environmental-network/
Hear about the implications of the Federal government's decision to cut funding to the country's biggest environmental umbrella organization. Recommended by long-time ERN subscriber Sheila Cole who wrote: "It's important to focus on what we DO want...ie, reinstatement of the core funding for our world-class Canadian Environmental Network, the primary constituency of Environment Canada. Here's a link to CBCs interview with me on the subject on October 19th. Perhaps people will take time to contact their MPs and the Environment Minister, Peter Kent to let them know how important it is to keep the national network and its provincial affiliates strong. We are the voice of Canadians from rural and urban communities across Canada and this is how we contribute directly to decisions regarding environmental policy and stewardship in our country."
World's largest beef company breaks commitment on avoiding Amazon deforestation (October 19, 2011) http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1019-jbs_broken_promises.html
In a campaign launched in Italy on Wednesday, Greenpeace accused Brazilian beef giant JBS-Friboi of breaking its commitment to exclude cattle connected with illegal deforestation and slave labor from its supply chain. Greenpeace says it has uncovered evidence of JBS breaking its 2009 commitment on responsible cattle sourcing. The agreement signed by JBS commits it to avoid buying cattle from properties that have been blacklisted by the Labor Ministry, embargoed by Brazil's environmental protection agency IBAMA, or are situated within indigenous territories. Greenpeace says the discovery "demonstrates weaknesses in the supply chain for responsible leather and meat products." "Consumers buying products originating from JBS’ supply chain cannot be assured their products are responsibly sourced, meaning not contributing to deforestation and slave labour," said Greenpeace in Broken Promises: How the cattle industry in the Amazon is still connected to deforestation, slave labour and invasion of indigenous land [PDF], a report launched as part of the campaign. CLIP
Five ways to feed billions without trashing the planet (October 13, 2011) http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1013-hance_feedtheworld.html
At the end of this month the UN predicts global population will hit 7 billion people, having doubled from 3.5 billion in less than 50 years. Yet even as the Earth hits this new milestone, one billion people do not have enough food; meanwhile the rapid expansion of agriculture is one of the leading causes of global environmental degradation, including greenhouse gas emissions, destruction of forests, marine pollution, mass extinction, water scarcity, and soil degradation. So, how do we feed the human population—which continues to rise and is expected to hit nine billion by 2050—while persevering the multitude of ecosystem services that supporting global food production? A new study in Nature proposes a five-point plan to this dilemma. "Lots of other scholars and thinkers have proposed solutions to global food and environmental problems. But they were often fragmented, only looking at one aspect of the problem at one time. And they often lacked the specifics and numbers to back them up," says Navin Ramankutt, a co-author of the study from McGill University. "This is the first time that such a wide range of data has been brought together under one common framework, and it has allowed us to see some clear patterns. This makes it easier to develop some concrete solutions for the problems facing us."
Number one: stop the destruction of ecosystems for agricultural expansion, especially rainforests. Tropical forests harbor an estimated half the species on Earth and provide vital services from freshwater to carbon sequestration. The study argues that it is possible to preserve remaining ecosystems, including forests and grasslands, without diminishing agricultural production. Next, the authors—from afar afield as Canada, US, Sweden, and Germany—suggest focusing on upping agricultural yields by improving crop varieties, genetics (as in Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs), and overall better management of current farmland. Improving agricultural yields on existing land could increase production by 60 percent, they say. Third, more equitable distribution of agriculture supplements, such as water, fertilizer and agricultural chemicals. In other words, using the right amount for each agricultural region. Currently some regions suffer from too much agricultural supplements while other have too little. Prime crop land should not be used to grow animal feed or biofuels, the authors further argue. Currently a third of the world's arable land is used to grow livestock feed, but focusing instead on crops grown for direct human consumption would up the calories produced per person by almost 50 percent. Eventually this will require a global shift in diet towards less meat. In addition, biofuels are taking prime cropland away from feeding people. Finally, the study argues that food waste must be tackled, since a third of all food produced globally is either throw-away, spoiled, or consumed by pests. Dealing with waste would boost food availability by 50 percent without expanding cropland.
The researchers predict these five changes would allow farmers to double food production worldwide, while preserving the environment that ultimately supports agricultural production. "For the first time, we have shown that it is possible to both feed a hungry world and protect a threatened planet," lead author Jonathan Foley, head of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, said. "It will take serious work. But we can do it." However, other researchers have argued that the only way to feed the planet going forward and lessen environmental impact is to focus on small-scale agriculture and organic farming, which deems chemicals, such pesticides and herbicides, GMO foods, and chemical fertilizers, anathema.
How Solar Flares Are Affecting Our Bodies (Sep 28, 2011) http://merliannews.com/Consciousness/How_Solar_Flares_Are_Affecting_Our_Bodies_by_Dena_Ventrudo.shtml
(...) How Solar Flares Affect Our Bodies -- From my research I have deduced that there is some connection between the Sun’s solar storms and our human biology, especially after an M or X class solar flare. These flares effect the magnetic field and impact Earth’s weather. Human beings also have a physical magnetic field, so it stands to reason that we too are impacted by solar activity. After strong solar activity on the sun, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes, and wind storms appear to occur more frequently. Geomagnetic Activity on the Sun & It's Influence On Our Thought Patterns -- According to Heather Carlini, "...solar activity is known to influence human consciousness. Solar flares affect the Central Nervous System (stomach lining), all brain activity (including equilibrium), along with human behaviour and all psycho-physiological (mental-emotional-physical) response. Solar flares can cause us to be nervous, anxious, worrisome, jittery, dizzy, shaky, irritable, lethargic, exhausted, have short term memory problems, heart palpitations, feel nauseous, queasy, and to have prolonged head pressure and headaches." CLIP
Health Petition: Stop Funding Harmful Smart Meter Electrosmog http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-funding-harmful-smart-meter-electrosmog
The Center for Electrosmog Prevention is asking that President Obama issue an order to stop funding wireless, pulsed-radiation-emitting portions of the smart grid. I hope you'll sign and distribute this petition far and wide to your entire email list and Facebook Friends! Why this is Important... With President Obama's full approval, the federal government is spending $3.4 billion on the development of hazardous, pulsed radiation technologies for the smart grid, and placing devices on every home that are making people sick. We want the federal government to issue a halt on the use and funding of smart meters and wireless infrastructure that is harming all Americans NOW! This money is going to monopoly multi-national utility corporations that do not have the health of Americans as their priority. www.electrosmogprevention.org - Check also Smart Meter Dangers http://www.smartmeterdangers.org/ - American Coalition Against Smart Meters www.causes.com/acasm
Wi-Fi alters brain activity in young adults http://www.buergerwelle.de:8080/helma/twoday/bwnews/stories/3290/
Two new studies have found that electromagnetic fields from Wi-Fi transmitters can alter electrical brain activity and decrease a measure of attention in young adults when performing a memory task. These are the first reports to look at the effects of Wi-Fi on brain function. The attractiveness of Wi-Fi as a learning tool in schools is significantly decreased if it could be damaging the cognitive abilities and brain development of pupils. CLIP
What has your mobile phone got to do with Project Blue Beam, HAARP, Chemtrails, etc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjEh9hDobGg
STRANGE AND SPECULATIVE - even outright paranoid! It gets interesting at 2 min 30 sec into it. The suggested connection with the pineal gland is a possibility I think
Bernstein Liebhard LLP Reports On Study Faulting Cell Phone Radiation Testing http://www.prweb.com/releases/cell-phone-radiation/consumer-injury-lawyers/prweb8896622.htm
On October 17, 2011, the Environmental Health Trust published a study in the journal Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, which concluded that cell phone radiation exposure is severely underestimated under currently used cell phone radiation testing processes.* Specifically, the report found that cell phones kept in pockets or around the waist exceed Federal Communications Commission guidelines on cell phone radiation exposure and that cell phone radiation testing practices should be revised. Researchers highlighted a major flaw with current cell phone radiation testing.
(...) Dr. Devra Davis, a former senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services under the Clinton Administration and an author of the report, stated “The standard for cell phones has been developed based on old science and old models and old assumptions about how we use cell phones, and that’s why they need to change.”** Bernstein Liebhard LLP partner Jeffrey S. Grand, who is currently reviewing cell phone radiation lawsuits on behalf of individuals harmed as a result of cell phone radiation exposure, echoed these sentiments, commenting “Common sense and our own personal experiences tell us that most people don’t talk on a cell phone with the device held an inch away from their ear. It’s very concerning that in light of recent studies demonstrating the dangers of cell phone radiation, that this is still the safety standard being employed. It’s also very disturbing that given the rising use of cell phones by children and teenagers, that their heightened susceptibility to radiation is not being taken into account.” CLIP
EMF-Omega-News 22. October 2011 http://www.buergerwelle.de/en/news/newsletter/newsletter_20111021.html
Wi-Fi alters brain activity in young adults - Young men should not carry cellphones in pants pockets - The source of the problems was radiation - Electromagnetic radiation: The worst environmental disaster ever - Study: Most Cell Users Exposed To Alarming Radiation Levels - Cell Phone Safety Guidelines Underestimate Harmful Radiation Absorbed by Children and Small Adults - Global Diabetes Epidemic Rages On - A towering problem for birds and bees - Misleading Danish Mobile Phones and Brain Tumour Study - Paris tackles radiation from the roofs - MPs approve ban on phone mast permits - Phone mast on church is up the pole - Protesters face new battle to stave off mobile mast - Smart meters do not seem like a smart idea - MLA builds case against Smart meters - Next-up News - News from Mast Sanity
EMF-Omega-News 15. October 2011 http://www.buergerwelle.de/en/news/newsletter/newsletter_20111015.html
Cell Phone Radiation and Our Health - Medical Effects of Electromagnetic Fields and Cell Phone Towers - Toxic Energy: The Truth and Consequences of Technology - Request for health report as cancer cases increase - More Evidence That Cell Phone Use Is Bad for You - On the run from radio frequencies - Mobile towers hurting biological systems of birds: Study - Protect wildlife from cellphone towers - Questioning Heath Canada guideline for our health - Advice for Health Canada - A current global view of environmental and occupational cancers - Second Ontario School Removes Wifi Due to Health Concerns - Proposed legislation will study electromagnetic fields and cancer - Parents protest against phone mast near school - Residents' joy as mobile phone mast bid is rejected - Residents' health fears over mobile phone mast plan - Peterborough City Council disagrees with cell tower site - Smart-meter battle arrives - Citizens take up smart meter fight
Can you hear it? Taste it? Smell it? See it? Touch it? … Can you feel it? The people of the world are waking up, rising up, acting up, fed up, not giving up, but getting up, standing up, climbing up… looking up. Around the world, in every place, in every case, in every situation, circumstance, and altercation, the powers of our world, sitting firm in their positions, atop the institutions of our domination, proffering the ideas of our indoctrination, seek to confuse, divide, control, co-opt, crush, define, repress, overrun, undermine, and cause distress… to all those people, everywhere, who look forward with new eyes, crying out to the world, and in to themselves, “We want to be free!”
No cry, echoed through all eternity, ever carried such prominence, such eternal relevance and for all past and present circumstance. “We want to be free!”
No single idea, before or hereafter, has such enormous power, such overwhelming possibility, such unsurpassable resonance with the potential for such everlasting permanence. “We want to be free!”
From Tunisia, to Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Palestine… to Greece, France, and Spain, Germany, England, Iceland, and Italy… across the lands of Asia, and the sea itself, to Canada, America (even the South)… Honduras, Chile, and Brazil, from Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, to the birthplace of humanity in that continent across the ocean, that great and wonderful landmass with those great and wonderful people in Africa. Everywhere, people cry out the same. “We want to be free!”
Everywhere, at all times and in all places, there are those among us, not separate, but indeed, very much human, who have lost their way, thrown their heart to the wind, love only themselves and their bank accounts, who seek to dominate, obfuscate, eradicate, the earth they plunder, and push the rest of us under, control, corrupt, and devastate. Their cause is profit and power, their means are deception and dehumanization, and yet their greatest weakness is their own deprivation, their disassociation, endless demoralization and reckless devastation. All they touch and control, has no warmth of heart, no hope of happiness, no joy of love like that which may be found in the smallest country, in the poorest village, with the poorest family, with the saddest story and the hardest life. For even in the greatest of tragedies, humans reach out to one another and find each other in their hearts and minds, hopes and dreams, actions and interactions.
Do not hate and despise those who sit above, in their towers of despair, in their prisons of profit, their cells of control, for they live, daily, paying the price for power. By segregating themselves from everyone else, they deprive themselves of all the humanity they can experience, learn, and love. Do not hate them, for they are weak and petty. Pity them for their self-isolation, love them for their human weakness, which we all share alike. Any such position of power can turn the most benevolent of beings into the most treacherous of tyrants. It is not the human which is depraved, but the society built up around us which makes the human depraved. Don’t hate the people, help the people! For they too, know not what freedom tastes, smells, sounds, looks and feels like. Let us show them the way, let all of us, together and forever, cry out, “We want to be free!”
Let them hear us, fear us, hate us, hurt us, push us, press us, crush us, curse us, and let them see us stand back on our feet, look above and beyond their petty positions, and again cry out, “We want to be free!” Let them see what humanity is capable of creating, instead of destroying. Let them see how humanity can cooperative, not segregate. Let them see, and tremble, and falter and fail, for when they come crashing down to the earth upon which we all stand, from which we all are provided our necessities of life, let us offer them a hand, lift them up, and join the call, “We want to be free!”
This is not the beginning of the end, this is the end of the beginning. This struggle will not be fought and won in the streets of New York, in the sands of the Middle East, in the mountains of Asia or the plains of Africa. This struggle will be fought and won inside every individual human being on this planet, in your heart and mind. But we come together, these new and wonderful days, to see and meet one another, as if for the first time, and to feel what it is to be ‘human’, to be standing side by side, crying out, “No more!” No more war, no more injustice, no more racism and militarism and hatred and dehumanization, no more plundering and destruction, no more segregation and isolation, no more empire and domination, no more institutions and executions, no more division and deprivation. No more. No more. We want to be free!
We want to be free!
We want to be free.
And so, some day, not today, perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not this year or the next, perhaps not in my lifetime or those of all the rest, but some day… free, we will be. You can feel it, today, everywhere. Always. It’s within each of us and between all of us. It’s here, just see it, take it, and make it yours!
In our struggle for freedom, to throw off the chains that bind us, we become the idea that unites us. The very act of demanding and seeking freedom, requires all the efforts to release those chains and shackles which hold your mind in thinking that there is no way, no chance, no point. The very call, “We want to be free!” is an act of freedom. For all the institutions and ideas of power built up around us, individually and collectively, have been put there to prevent us from ever making such a call, from every standing up against them, from ever speaking from our hearts and acting from our instincts.
If you want freedom, be freedom. The only way to get it, is to act like you already have it. And indeed, in truth, you do.
So stand, unite, and call out to the world as they call back to you, “We want to be free!”
(Reuters) - Anti-greed protesters rallied globally on Saturday, denouncing bankers and politicians over the international economic crisis, with violence rocking Rome where cars were torched and bank windows smashed.
Demonstrators rallied Saturday across the world to accuse bankers and politicians of wrecking economies, but only in Rome did the global “day of rage” erupt into violence.
Galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protests began in New Zealand, rippled east to Europe and were expected to return to their starting point in New York. Demonstrations touched most European capitals and other cities.
They coincided with the Group of 20 meeting in Paris, where finance ministers and central bankers from the major economies were holding crisis talks.
While most rallies were small and barely held up traffic, the Rome event drew tens of thousands of people and snaked through the city center for kilometers (miles).
Some protesters in masks and helmets set fire to cars, smashed the windows of stores and banks and trashed offices of the defense ministry. Police fired water cannon at demonstrators who were hurling rocks, bottles and fireworks.
Smoke bombs set off by the protesters cast a pall over a sea of red flags and banners bearing slogans attacking economic policies the protesters say are hurting the poor most. The violence sent many demonstrators running into hotels for safety.
PEACEFUL RALLIES
In contrast, small and peaceful rallies got the ball rolling across the Asia-Pacific region Saturday. In Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, 3,000 people chanted and banged drums, denouncing corporate greed.
About 200 gathered in the capital Wellington and 50 in a park in the earthquake-hit southern city of Christchurch.
In Sydney, about 2,000 people, including representatives of Aboriginal groups, communists and trade unionists, protested outside the central Reserve Bank of Australia.
Hundreds marched in Tokyo, including anti-nuclear protesters. In Manila a few dozen marched on the U.S. embassy waving banners reading: “Down with U.S. imperialism” and “Philippines not for sale.”
More than 100 people gathered at the Taipei stock exchange, chanting “we are Taiwan’s 99 percent,” and saying economic growth had only benefited companies while middle-class salaries barely covered soaring housing, education and health care costs.
They found support from a top businessman, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC) Chairman Morris Chang.
“I’ve been against the gap between rich and poor,” Chang said in the northern city of Hsinchu. “The wealth of the top one percent has increased very fast in the past 20 or 30 years. ‘Occupy Wall Street’ is a reaction to that.”
In Paris protests coincided with the G20 finance chiefs’ meeting there. In the working class neighborhood of Belleville, drummers, trumpeters and a tuba revved up a crowd of a few hundred that began to march to the city hall.
“This is potentially the start of a strong movement,” said Olivier Milleron, a doctor whose group of trumpeters played the classic American folk song “This land is your land.”
Waitress Tiodhilde Fernagu, 26, took a day off work to attend. “For the first time in France there is a uniquely citizens’ movement” outside party politics, she said.
“THE INDIGNANT ONES”
The Rome protesters, who called themselves “the indignant ones,” included unemployed, students and pensioners.
“I am here to show support for those don’t have enough money to make it to the next paycheque while the ECB (European Central Bank) keeps feeding the banks and killing workers and families,” said Danila Cucunia, a 43-year-old teacher from northern Italy.
“At the global level, we can’t carry on any more with public debt that wasn’t created by us but by thieving governments, corrupt banks and speculators who don’t give a damn about us,” said Nicla Crippa, 49.
“They caused this international crisis and are still profiting from it. They should pay for it.”
In imitation of the occupation of Zuccotti Park near Wall Street in Manhattan, protesters have been camped out across the street from the headquarters of the Bank of Italy for days.
The worldwide protests were a response in part to calls by the New York demonstrators for more people to join them. Their example has prompted calls for similar occupations in dozens of U.S. cities from Saturday.
In Madrid, seven marches were planned to merge in Cibeles square at 1600 GMT and then head to the central Puerta de Sol.
In Germany, where sympathy for southern Europe’s debt troubles is not widespread, thousands gathered in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig and outside the ECB in Frankfurt, called by the Real Democracy Now movement.
Demonstrators gathered peacefully in Paradeplatz, the main square in the Swiss financial center of Zurich.
In London, several hundred people assembled outside London’s St Paul’s Cathedral for a protest dubbed “Occupy the London Stock Exchange.” Several hundred people protested in Vienna, Sweden and Helsinki.
Greek protesters called an anti-austerity rally for Saturday in Athens’ Syntagma Square.
“What is happening (debt-driven financial meltdown) in Greece now is the nightmare awaiting other countries in the future. Solidarity is the people’s weapon,” the Real Democracy group said.
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Related video:
Occupy World St.: From NYC to Everywhere http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73gtsiWu8g4&feature=relmfu
All over the globe people are rising up and demanding their rights in a worldwide rally of discontent as protests inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement spread around the world on Saturday.
4.
Note from Jean: ERN subscriber (since Oct 2008) Clinton Callahan (clinton@nextculture.org) from Germany has recommended to my/our attention his latest article (just posted on OpEd News) which, according to what he suggests "might be useful for empowering your other readers to take direct action." Before reading it, check first what I found on one of his many websites:
What is Next Culture? http://nextculturetrainings.org/WHAT-IS-NEXT-CULTURE.348.0.html
(...) In modern culture’s reasoning it makes total sense for corporate decision-makers to deplete global resources and promote widespread social inequality, pollution, overpopulation, climate change, war, and economic corruption. These things make absolutely no sense in the reasoning of next culture. Modern culture ignores the inability of mega-governments to provide a bright future for humanity. Modern culture rewards irresponsibility, teaches how to externalize costs, and supports a few people to derive economic profits no matter the social and ecological costs to the future of humanity. In modern culture’s eyes, nature has no value unless money changes hands. None of these things make sense in next culture. CLIP - Make sure to go HERE to check his most interesting Map of Comparing Cultural Attributes.
The Jabberwock, of course, is the modern capitalist / patriarchal / empire meme-virus that is infecting the global ethnosphere and, in addition to wiping out cultural diversity by putting a 7/11 and a Starbucks on every corner, is threatening to exterminate life on Earth. This article is a mini-handbook empowering global #OCCUPY teams to build nonlinear, interconnected, resilient, leaderless social systems that make the Jabberwock irrelevant.
NOTE 1: Most of what follows I extracted from an astonishing series of blogs and comments (with permission) penned by John Robb posted at http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/ . John is the author of Brave New War.
#OCCUPY is not a legal conflict. It is political insurgency.
The bad news is: as the ruling system tries to suppress the insurgency it engages in low-intensity warfare. In other words, we are already at war. The good news is: states don't know how to win this war. "No state has ever defeated an indigenous insurgency." - Jerry Boyle
The Jabberwock is a loose affiliation of psychopathic personalities using single-mind intelligence passing orders down through their hierarchies.
In comparison, #OCCUPY is open-source (leaderless), and uses many-mind (swarm) intelligence, which is nonlinear and which tends to generate an abundance of parallel (unpredictable/uncontrollable) actions. Therefore, if #OCCUPY persists, then the Jabberwock has no chance!
Persistence is enhanced through intelligent understanding of #OCCUPY strategies and technologies, thus, this mini-handbook, in which you will find the following sections:
1. GENERAL #OCCUPY STRATEGIES
2. WHAT #OCCUPY IS REALLY ABOUT
3. SPECIFIC #OCCUPY STRATEGIES
4. HOW TO DISARM A POLICE OFFICER
5. AND HAST THOU SLAIN THE JABBERWOCK?
6. HOW TO MANUFACTURE A TRIBE
7. RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING
1. GENERAL #OCCUPY STRATEGIES
Superempowerment - #OCCUPY increases the ability of individuals and small groups to accomplish tasks through rapid improvements in decentralized decision-making, teamwork, nonlinear strategy, and the use of technology to access global networks. Many-to-many collaborations enable small groups to radically increase their productivity in protests. For example, if many small groups disrupt a system by attacking its weak points simultaneously in diverse modalities (such as walkouts, flashmobs, media campaigns, street theater pieces) this can multiply the effectiveness to achieve as much as a 1,400,000 percent return on investment. That is superempowerment.
Open-source warfare - #OCCUPY gains diverse intelligences by remaining leaderless so it can be sourced by the whole swarm rather than by individual leaders. Through self-organizing its nonviolent noncompliance with what-is-not-sustainable, #OCCUPY acts in parallel through a large collection of small, superempowered groups. These small groups can work together to take on much larger foes (usually hierarchies). Open-source organizing enables high rates of wildly diverse innovation, increased survivability among the participant groups, more frequent protests, and an ability to swarm targets.
How is #OCCUPY sourcing a long-term superempowered open-source insurgency? Two steps:
A) MAKING A PLAUSIBLE PROMISE
Establish an idea that holds the open-source insurgency together. The plausible promise is composed of:
An enemy. The enemy serves as the target of protests. This enemy can either be perceived or manufactured (any group or organization that can be depicted as a threat, in this case: the Jabberwock.). The enemy can be any group that currently holds and exerts power: invader, the government, a company, an ethnic group, or a private organization. It's all the Jabberwock.
A goal. This goal animates the group. Because of the diversity of the groups and individuals that join together in an open-source insurgency, the only goal that works is one that is simple and extremely high level. More complex goal setting is impossible, since it will fracture or fork the insurgency.
A demonstration. A successful demonstration proves the viability of the insurgency. People see it is actually possible to win against the enemy. The demonstration deflates any aura of invincibility that the enemy may currently enjoy. The demonstration serves as a rallying cry for the insurgency.
B) MANAGING ITS FOCO
Every open-source insurgency is ignited by a small founding group, a foco in guerrilla parlance. The foco sets the original goal and conducts the operation that provides the insurgency with its demonstration of viability. It's important to understand that in order to grow an open-source insurgency, the founding group or individuals must follow a simple path:
Relinquish. Give up any control over the insurgency gained during its early phases. In practice, this means giving up control of how the goal is achieved, who may participate, how to communicate, etc. The only control that remains is the power of example, the respect gained through effectively serving the goal. If ever a leader attempts to fork the protest by trying to lead it towards an agenda or policy or politics only they care about, they should be immediately ignored / rejected / blocked.
Resist (resist your hidden temptations). This means: stay small. Don't grow the foco to a size that makes the original group easy for the enemy to target (allow very few new members in the first group). Further, don't establish a formal collection of groups, a hierarchy of control, or set forth a complex agenda. This will only serve to alienate and fragment the insurgency. In some cases, it will make the foco a target of the insurgency itself. It will also slow any advancement on the objective since it limits potential pathways of innovation that naturally emerge from a large, loose network of self-organized superempowered groups.
Share. Rapidly give away your best resources, ideas, information, knowledge, recruits, etc. to other groups that join the insurgency. Share everything possible that doesn't directly compromise the foco's integrity (its operational security or viability). Expect sharing in return.
2. WHAT #OCCUPY IS REALLY ABOUT
#OCCUPY is comparable to what we are seeing in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc. Remember, these are actions that have already toppled governments.
The big difference between #OCCUPY and those other protests is that #OCCUPY is not directed at governments. It is aimed at companies, but not just any companies. It's aimed at the banks that own and run the global economy. #OCCUPY is replacing the heart of the global Capitalist system with a new human agenda on the planet.
#OCCUPY ignores governments and standard political processes because:
• Governments are much weaker than the global economy (they are bankrupt hollow shells of what they were at the end of the Cold War).
• Governments are too ineffectual and/or corrupt to change anything even if they are coerced (see the US, Ireland and Greece for recent examples).
• Too little will change even if the government changes parties (see the US for how lame politics and politicians have become).
What's the real goal of #OCCUPY? It's a recognition that the center of world power doesn't reside in Washington or London or Moscow or Beijing anymore. It's in the executive suites and luxury resorts behind the global corporate hegemony. This protest dispenses with the middle men (governments) and goes straight after the real power to divest it of whatever credibility it still tries to claim.
The reason we are seeing this movement right now is because Capitalism, the last great ideological system, is in crisis. This isn't merely a crisis of outcomes (economic depression, financial panic, etc.). It's a crisis of BELIEF. While people generally believe in the idea of capitalism, a critical mass of people now think that the global capitalist system we currently have is so badly run, so corrupt, so terrible at delivering results that it needs either A) a complete overhaul or B) to be replaced with something new (which equates to the same thing, because the Jabberwock cannot be overhauled. Don't fool yourself! A Japperwock cannot become anything other than a Jabberwock.).
3. SPECIFIC #OCCUPY STRATEGIES
There is no difference between a person and their absolute responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The concept that a person's responsibility is subsumed by the corporation they work for (corporate personhood) or the government they serve (national laws, or the customs of the bureaucracy) is a false paradigm. Believing in this false paradigm leads to global suicide.
How do you know you are thinking in the false paradigm? You can catch yourself if you are:
1. Assuming you must ignore social and environmental consequences in your decisions because they seem too expensive to consider.
2. Strategizing ways to externalize costs so that the general public, future generations, or third world countries pay to deal with your toxic wastes.
3. Thinking you can manufacture a product without including its recycle costs in your manufacturing and pricing.
4. Thinking you can cut old growth forests in Borneo, make products in China, and sell them through Ikea or Walmart.
5. Thinking that you can follow orders from a superior and kill people with robot planes in Afghanistan.
6. Thinking you can manufacture, sell, transport, or fire depleted uranium weapons.
7. Thinking that it does not matter if you consume false-paradigm products. (If most people stopped using Shell Oil or McDonald's hamburgers for two weeks these firms would be bankrupt.)
8. Thinking you can be pissed off at your neighbor without changing yourself.
9. Thinking you can order someone else to stop a third party from creating a better world and not face the personal consequences...
For example, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thought he could have the owners of Zuccotti Park --Brookfield Properties - shut down #OccupyWallStreet early in the morning of 14 October using the ruse of "cleaning the park." He thought he could avoid the personal consequences of this decision. He was thinking inside the false paradigm.
#OCCUPY perceived the cleaning order as:
- Bloomberg vs. #OCCUPY.
- One Mind vs. Many Minds.
- Linear Thinking vs. Nonlinear Thinking.
From the very beginning Bloomberg had no chance. (This is true for whatever authority figure tries to subdue or suppress the people united. Meshwork meeting technologies far outpower hierarchical intelligence. )
How did #OCCUPY do it? #OCCUPY took immediate actions to delegitimize Bloomberg's complaint that the park was dirty and unsafe. #OCCUPY reorganized itself and brought in power-washers, brooms, and mops. They deep-cleaned Liberty Square. They hired their own dump truck. They even offered to let cleaners into the square to clean 1/3 of it at a time!
With the Mayor's complaint de-legitimized, #OCCUPY went on the offensive. It personalized the eviction move. It located Bloomberg. He was at a gala dinner at Ciprianis (a Wall Street restaurant!). They surrounded the restaurant and tried to enter it to deliver a petition with 310,000 signatures. Bloomberg hid, departed from the rear. In short order the deputy mayor announced that the eviction was cancelled!
Remember, every situation is unique, but general group intelligence strategies apply.
Here are some guidelines:
Go straight for the man. Maximize the taint of an authority's actions on his personal brand. Blame him personally. Pierce his shield of bureaucratic impersonality. For example, #OCCUPY branded the park eviction with the name: BLOOMBERG. This is a global stage. Let's use it. The reputation of the president /mayor /CEO /general /police chief may not matter much to you, but it certainly matters to him.
Confuse him. Respond to his attack with lots and lots of flashmobs. Go for non-violent system disruption. Shut down bridges and major streets. Overwhelm the system with actions of unprecedented speed and unpredictable volume. As soon as the police arrive in force, disperse and reassemble at new locations. Bikes plus Kids. Disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. More flashmobs equals more disruption. As long as you are under attack in one place, keep the city tied up in knots at other places. NOTE: If they lock down your area, flashmobs are the best way to participate. (Plus, as an added benefit, in running from location to location you get some needed exercise!)
Connect with more people than him. Best way to do this: Eyes in the sky. Get cameras above your action, for example. Stream the feed. The better the quality the more impact it will have. It will play across the world. Think about how important AJs video feed over Tahrir was when things got hot. Better yet, get AJ to cover it and stream it.
Success story. The flashmob tactic was tried in Panama a couple of years ago by the SUNTRACS construction workers union. With very small groups pre-planted all over the city they drove the police absolutely crazy. Police would show up at location A, the mob would disperse immediately, two text messages and then flashmobs would simultaneously block streets at locations B and C. This worked very well and with much fewer people than #OCCUPY has available. Encourage multiple #OCCUPY flashmob teams to self-organize and operate in parallel!
Continue to exist. Logistics are important. Think ahead. Cold weather is coming fast freezing food, water, everything in a few weeks. #OCCUPY will get tough, impossible with snow blowing. Instead of slowly giving it up and going home with frostbite, consider abandoning the parks. Why not do the "very small groups pre-planted all over the city for flashmobs" all winter long from warm apartments? Print an apartment hospitality directory, or put it online, like the Mennonite Your Way Directory www.mennoniteyourway.com/ It's time for tribal living.
Become Lady Randomfactor. Many random events that are out of control will wear down and use up the Jabberwock's resources. With such a disproportionate cost ratio between your actions and the Jabberwock's reactions, the Jabberwock is nonviolently bleeding itself to death.
Then become Lord Critical Mass. Except, instead of every Friday, pick one random, unpredictable day (or a couple days) each week to #OCCUPY with a critical mass of people (meaning, enough people to attract attention and cause an impact). Five hundred police come out on Monday expecting the crowd from Sunday to still be there, but people have mysteriously vanished and downtown looks like a Police State. By Wednesday there are only fifty police left, and then suddenly thousands of #OCCUPYers show up there, warm, fed, showered, shaved, and feeling quite chipper, even in the middle of winter.
4. HOW TO DISARM A POLICE OFFICER
These are notes from a video taken October 11, 2011, featuring Chicago lawyer Jerry Boyle of National Lawyers Guild giving a street workshop to #OCCUPYCHICAGO. It contains valuable legal and strategic information for protesters everywhere. It's an hour long, but completely engaging and well worth watching. It is posted at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17807926 by Linda Ross.
Police are trained to think within five legal definitions of force:
1. Physical presence -- a show of force is equal to the use of force.
2. Verbal direction -- instructions and commands.
3. Empty hand control -- no weapons. Physical contact.
4. Intermediate weapons systems -- pepper spray, baton.
5. Lethal force.
In an interaction with police, you have the power to determine to what degree of force the situation escalates. For example, if an officer speaks to you and you ignore him, you force him to escalate his force. He must speak louder or get angry to get your attention.
Therefore, in non-violent #OCCUPY actions, you can de-escalate force by looking police officers directly in the eyes. Most police officers already sympathize with the goals of #OCCUPY. You can demonstrate compliance with their physical presence and verbal direction by acknowledging them, listening to what they say, and repeating back what you understood. You do not necessarily have to do what they say, but if you stay in relationship with them, acknowledging them, listening and speaking with them (perhaps even being kind to them) then there is a good chance the force can be kept at the verbal level.
You can also determine whether or not you will be arrested. If you do not wish to be arrested then create it so interactions stay within the first two levels of force. By the time an officer goes to empty hand control and grabs you by the arm, you are being arrested.
Police may be tired, angry, scared, or overwhelmed. They may regard dealing with street protests as a distraction from their true work of dealing with criminals. Being frustrated, they may (unconsciously) wish to escalate the level of force in an interaction so that if they do go to the trouble of arresting you, you will be charged with a higher crime. For example, police are trained in pain points. If an angry police officer grabs you he may intentionally apply pressure at a pain point causing you to automatically flail about, which on a video would be hard to distinguish from resisting arrest or attacking the officer, an automatic felony charge for you. Your flailing is also a good excuse for him to use pepper spray, a knee, or his club on you.
Some people recommend that if you are grabbed you should go limp, but if you do, you will likely be trampled or dragged around and might get hurt. If you already know a police officer might grab you in a pain point you can prepare yourself to not react aggressively no matter what. Often, these days, to avoid escalation of force, white shirt police do the actual arresting, with blue-shirt police as their backups.
To disarm a police officer, use the first three levels of force on him before he uses them on you.
For example, at level one: physical presence, to maximize the apparent show of force at a scene, the police may be outfitted in riot gear, head to toe armor, shields, batons, helmets, etc. This is the police officer's power costume.
Well, you can wear a power costume too.
Consider this, if you wear a suit and tie, the police will have a very difficult time hitting you because blue-shirt police take their orders from people wearing a suit and tie. If you wear a pink bunny suit, it will look very bad on TV seeing a police officer beating on girls dressed in pink bunny suits. If you wear a V mask with your suit and tie they don't know what you are. This is powerful.
Using the first three levels of force (presence of force, verbal direction, and empty hand control) on a police officer before he uses it on you disarms him. It can look like this: When the police arrive, you scan the group and locate the highest ranking officer. Then, in your suit and tie you smile professionally, make eye contact, hold out your open hands, walk enthusiastically up to the him, shake hands and introduce yourself, "My name is David Applebee. I am a possibility manager. If there are any problems here, let me know what I can do for you. I'll be right over there." Physical presence, verbal direction, empty hand control. Sweet.
5. AND HAST THOU SLAIN THE JABBERWOCK?
There's no question that the #OCCUPY groups have done a great job with constructing a foundation for resilient communities in the heart of many of our most dense urban areas.
People are already considerate with each other, despite personal discomforts. They pitch in to work. Food gets served. The area gets cleaned. There is entertainment. There's innovation (circle meetings, improvised tech solutions, creative workarounds). There is education (lots of seminars being taught). There is open, leaderless, participatory governance with consensus decision-making. There is streaming media 24x7x365 (interviews, opeds, confrontation scenes, theater pieces). There is legal support for dealing with the complexities of congregating and living in an urban, public space.
A permanent camp in each location means that there is a gathering point for HUGE protests in the near future (quick responses to shocks/events/etc.). These are seed crystals for protests that span hundreds or thousands of cities simultaneously.
All of this is great and this experience will definitely pay off over the next decade as the global economy deteriorates, panics, and dissolves. It will make building resilient communities easier (there are lots of ways to build a resilient community, we're trying to document all of the ways how on MiiU).
However, is this experience building a next-culture tribal identity? A global #OCCUPY tribe? Something that can go beyond protest and build something new? A tribe that is woven tightly enough to create new resilient economic and social networks that step into the breach as the current models fail?
6. HOW TO MANUFACTURE A TRIBE
How do we manufacture a resilient community that protects, defends and advances the interests of its members? We build a tribe. Tribal organization is the most survivable of all organizational types, being the dominant cultural form for 99.99% of human history. Like a cockroach, it has proved it can withstand the onslaught of the harshest of environments. Global depression? No problem. (for more, see: Tribes!)
To build a tribal #OCCUPY identity, we will need to manufacture fictive kinship amongst ourselves, that is, we will need to tell each other and the world the story of who we are together. That kinship is built through the following (see Ronfeldt's paper for some background on this):
- Story telling. Shared histories and historical narratives.
- Rites of passage to authentic adulthood (not just a driver's license and the right to drink and vote) (for more on this see Of Water and the Spirit by Malidoma Somé, and Secrets of the Talking Jaguar by Martin Prechtel). There are rituals of membership and life transitions. Membership is earned, not given due to the geographic location of your birth, or who your parents happen to be.
- Obligations. Rules of conduct and honor. The ultimate penalty being expulsion.
- Egalitarian and often leaderless organization. Sharing is prized.
- Multi-skilled. Segmental organization (lots of redundancy among parts).
- Two-way loyalty. The tribe protects the members and the members protect the tribe. If this isn't implemented, you don't have a tribe, you have a Kiwanis club.
As the #OCCUPY tribe we seem to be building a stable and recognizable identity. We are experiencing in certain moments the bondedness fictive kinship. Our relationships and commitments to each other, and to our future together, are deepening. As the 99% we are regaining our individual and tribal voices. We are taking back our authority after 6,000 years of patriarchal servitude.
Going to an occupy location and helping out is a rite of passage. There are rules of conduct (growing from a shame culture to an appreciation and personal development culture). #OCCUPY is definitely egalitarian and leaderless. It's spread out over different geographies. Given the efforts put in to keep the #OCCUPY locations intact, it appears that people have become loyal to the tribe. The only question is whether the tribe truly protects the members. Is the loyalty two way?
How to slay the Jabberwock? Use your inner sword of clarity to establish and live within a set of distinctions that are not contained inside the Jabberwock. Then the Jabberwock dies of attrition.
Deeply enjoy the benefits of the #OCCUPY culture. Keep sharing your new distinctions and the ways you got them. Soon you become a bridge to sustainable culture that other people can also cross. We can only go there together.
"Directing the Power of Conscious Feelings can help us peel off decades of pain and numbness to unearth our powerful, authentic selves. Genuine, here-and-now feelings are messages to help us behave appropriately and courageously, and to make the changes we need in our lives. Callahan’s book is full of potent, accessible tools for clear, effective communication and responsible action. This – our ability to be real and true – is what activists, ecovillage pioneers, and all of us (in my opinion) need to make the world a better place."
- Diana Leafe Christian, author of Creating a Life Together and Ecovillage Newsletter www.ecovillagenews.org
"Learning to feel is essential to us being able to stay alive as a species. We need to open our hearts and minds to the shift that is happening on the planet, allow it to penetrate deep into the center of our being, allow the pain to be felt and released, feel ourselves re-awaken to who we are as sentient, pulsing human beings, deeply connected to the Earth and the universe at once. Numbness is suicidal."
Note from Jean: To find out more about Clinton Callahan, may I suggest you go HERE and read his entire introduction to DIRECTING THE POWER OF CONSCIOUS FEELINGS and make sure to click on the Read more link to discover also what he wrote about his previous book "Radiant Joy Brilliant Love". Pure spell-binding stuff!
You may also wish to check his previous articles at OpEd News...
Scientists Take Action If They Trust Their Own Evidence (February 9, 2009) http://www.opednews.com/articles/Scientists-Take-Action-If-by-Clinton-Callahan-090208-244.html
How much longer will you continue believing that the system that created global warming and financial collapse has the capacity to fix it? (Einstein's bomb worked, remember, so he may be right about this too.) How much longer will you wait before taking action? Here is a clear list of what you can do now.
BEWARE THE PSYCHOPATH, MY SON... (May 8, 2008) http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_clinton__080508_beware_the_psychopat.htm
Since psychopaths have no limitations on what they can or will do to get to the top, all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths. Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history is the actual insanity of psychopaths, fighting to preserve their disproportionate power while we behave like sheep. Psychopaths lack a genetic sense of remorse or empathy with others, and this deficit shows up in brain scans!
How To Camp / How To Occupy http://howtocamp.takethesquare.net/
This is designed in order to promote the methods, techniques and knowledges on taking the square. This is the place to all of those who are keen on researching about how to starting by him/herself a pro-democratic and non-violent uprising in its region. We are opened to the whole world, we are an open community of sapience, we believe in the power of synergy applied to information, creative commons, copyleft. We want to establish a global network which could be able to offer to worldwide community the necessary tools of rising up. We are in the beginning and our project will depend of everybody. We plan to install more features to this platform soon, as we develop and unite. Be welcome, let's make it together! Explore the MANY links under CONTENT on the right...
How to build constructive assemblies (October 11, 2011) http://usuncutmn.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-to-build-constructive-assemblies.html
This text is a synthesis of documents of methodology we analysed, but it is also inspired by our experience built along the assemblies we collaborated from Barcelona to Brussels, passing by Lisbon and Athens.
(NOTE: une version française abrégée - que j'ai réalisée - est disponible ICI)
Quick guide on group dynamics in people’s assemblies http://takethesquare.net/2011/07/31/quick-guide-on-group-dynamics-in-peoples-assemblies/
This text has been prepared by the Commission for Group Dynamics in Assemblies of the Puerta del Sol Protest Camp (Madrid). It is based on different texts and summaries which reached consensus in the internal Assemblies of this Commission and from the experiences gained in the General Assemblies held in this Protest Camp up until 31st May 2011. CLIP - Also available in Spanish, French and Italian - abd soon in Portuguese
A Manifesto for the Impending Second American Revolution
By Carmen Yarrusso
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."--John F. Kennedy
The vast social injustice rife throughout the world has finally reached a tipping point. The smell of revolution is ripe in the air. We the people of planet earth have finally had enough. The immense human suffering caused by collaborating, corrupt governments throughout the world is about to awaken all humanity to a common cause.
When Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire, he ignited a fire of revolution for social justice that will eventually engulf every corrupt government on earth. This fire won't die until we the people of planet earth unite in revolution and take back our respective governments from the elite oligarchs who now own and control them.
Soon this fire will burn hot in America, the world's epicenter of corrupt government. Each year, lobbyists transfer millions in legal bribes from corporate special interests to our government "representatives" in return for billions of our tax dollars. For example, last year alone, big oil, the richest industry on earth, gave our "representatives" $28,000,000 in return for $3,800,000,000 in tax breaks.
The elite oligarchs are getting fabulously rich while a record 44,000,000 Americans live in poverty, a record 40,000,000 Americans rely on food stamps, 30,000,000 Americans are unemployed or underemployed, a record 6,000,000 Americans have given up looking for a job, millions of Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure by the same banksters bailed out by billions of our tax dollars, and, unlike our privileged "representatives" in Washington, 51,000,000 Americans have no health insurance. America is ripe for revolution.
Our government actively facilitated the banksters' robbery of billions from the American people and then audaciously bailed out these crooks with billions of our tax dollars. While accepting millions in corporate bribes from the health insurance industry, our government refused to even discuss single-payer -- a proven health care system that costs half what we Americans pay, provides superior health care, and covers every citizen! These two examples alone show our government's complete contempt for social justice and intellectual honesty. America is ripe for revolution.
Years ago, politicians tried to hide their dishonesty. Our current government openly sells out the American people with impunity. Obama made a deal with the big pharmaceuticals that will cost the American people billions more for their medicine. Most Americans were against continuing the billions in tax cuts for the very rich, but that didn't matter to our "representatives." They patted themselves on the back for passing a "compromise" bill extending the tax cuts for the very rich (with a few crumbs thrown to the American people), while freezing federal worker's pay (a de facto tax increase for millions of middle-class Americans), reducing heating oil subsidies for the poor, and slashing at many other programs that help ordinary Americans -- just when that help is desperately needed. America is ripe for revolution.
WikiLeaks confirmed that our government often lies to us about its foreign policies. Our government bribes, threatens, or severely punishes foreign governments that resist US hegemony. Our government invaded Iraq based on a pack of lies that ultimately will cost the American people trillions (not to mention thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives). Showing utter contempt for our intelligence, our government called this illegal invasion, "Operation Iraqi Freedom." International law means nothing to our government. Our government recently stood alone in killing a UN resolution condemning Israel's expansion of illegal settlements on stolen, occupied land (France, Germany, UK, Brazil, South Africa, and India all voted in favor). Yet, our government tells us they hate us because of our freedoms. America is ripe for revolution.
EVERY year our government gives billions of our tax dollars to various violent, oppressive governments ($3 billion goes to Israel alone), where millions of human beings live in extreme poverty without any real political voice. If these oppressed people dare to rise up and fight for life and dignity, they're labeled "terrorists" and billions more of our tax dollars are spent killing these "terrorists" created by our government's unjust foreign policies. Charging us hundreds of billions EVERY year, which could be spent actually benefiting the American people, our government now spends more on war and war preparation than all other countries on earth combined. But they hate us because of our freedoms. America is ripe for revolution.
Why our deeply corrupt political system can't be reformed
Trying to reform a deeply corrupt political system using the same deeply corrupt political system is like trying to fix your broken arms using your broken arms. The vast majority of Americans understand that voting in new "representatives" is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (meet the new boss, same as the old boss). Both political parties are bribed by and beholden to the same big money. The only thing our just-for-show elections change is which special interests get our tax dollars and how much they get.
There are many honest members of Congress. But they're virtually powerless against a deeply corrupt political system where various mischief mechanisms can be used to obstruct legislation benefiting the American people or to expedite legislation benefiting special interests. For example, legislation benefiting the American people can be killed by filibuster or killed in a standing committee without even getting a floor vote. This is obviously a highly rigged system.
Members of Congress know if they don't play by the rigged rules, they'll soon be out of a job. Our "representatives" regularly coerce their colleagues to vote against their consciences by using various deals, bribes, and threats. Many votes are split right down party lines. Political expediency and re-election necessarily rank higher than the interests of the American people.
Even a cursory look at the workings of our political system shows reason is easily trumped by deal-making or coercion (the various mischief mechanisms available to our "representatives" guarantee this). That's precisely why we see so many examples of patently unreasonable legislation that unambiguously favor special interests at the expense of the American people. Be clear though, our political system is designed to work exactly this way.
Unless the world's most powerful government's deeply corrupt political system (based on deals, coercion, and especially deceit) is overthrown and replaced by a political system based on reason, things will surely get much worse for all the people of planet earth.
Why a second American revolution is our only option
Quite simply, it's either revolution or business as usual. Our political system is openly rigged to prevent any real reform. Besides, the elite oligarchs controlling our government would never give up their power (and massive source of money) short of a revolt by the American people. Could any sensible person doubt this?
To change our government from one that's for sale to the highest bidder to a government that looks out for the best interests of the American people is no small change. It's not even a big change. It's a revolutionary change. Our task is to replace night with day, wrong with right. We must replace our political system with its exact opposite. We must overthrow a patently unreasonable political system (by design) and replace it with a political system based on reason that forces congressional accountability and intellectual honesty.
A political system based on reason would turn government upside down
A political system based on reason would destroy the multi-million-dollar lobbying industry because special interests only pay big money for unreasonable legislation (or protection from unreasonable legislation bought by competitors). Philanthropic groups aside, special interests wouldn't pay much for reasonable legislation. Congressional bribe money would virtually disappear under a reasonable political system.
That would mean our "representatives" would lose their major source of cash since they wouldn't be able to sell their political influence for very much ("Psst, give my campaign $100,000 and I'll work hard to get your very reasonable bill through the Senate.")
President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have led increasingly successful efforts to pit Americans against one another through the politics of hate and envy. Attacking CEO salaries, the president – last year during his Midwest tour – said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
Let's look at CEO salaries, but before doing so, let's look at other salary disparities between those at the bottom and those at the top. According to Forbes' Celebrity 100 list for 2010, Oprah Winfrey earned $290 million. Even if her makeup person or cameraman earned $100,000, she earned thousands of times more than that. Is that fair? Among other celebrities earning hundreds or thousands of times more than the people who work with them are Tyler Perry ($130 million), Jerry Bruckheimer ($113 million), Lady Gaga ($90 million) and Howard Stern ($76 million). According to Forbes, the top 10 celebrities, excluding athletes, earned an average salary of a little more than $100 million in 2010.
According to The Wall Street Journal Survey of CEO Compensation (November 2010), Gregory Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media, earned $87 million, Oracle's Lawrence Ellison ($68 million) and rounding out the top 10 CEOs was McKesson's John Hammergren, earning $24 million. It turns out that the top 10 CEOs have an average salary of $43 million, which pales in comparison with America's top 10 celebrities, who earn an average salary of $100 million.
When you recognize that celebrities earn salaries that are some multiples of CEO salaries, you have to ask: Why is it that rich CEOs are demonized and not celebrities? A clue might be found if you asked: Who's doing the demonizing? It turns out that the demonizing is led by politicians and leftists with the help of the news media, and like sheep, the public often goes along. Why demonize CEOs? My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell explained it in his brand-new book, The Thomas Sowell Reader. One of his readings, titled "Ivan and Boris – and Us," starts off with a fable of two poor Russian peasants. Ivan finds a magic lamp and rubs it, and the jinni grants him one wish. As it turns out, Boris has a goat, but Ivan doesn't. Ivan's wish is for Boris' goat to die. That vision reflects the feelings of too many Americans. If all CEOs worked for nothing, it would mean absolutely little or nothing to the average American's bottom line.
For politicians, it's another story: Demonize people whose power you want to usurp. That's the typical way totalitarians gain power. They give the masses someone to hate. In 18th-century France, it was Maximilien Robespierre's promoting hatred of the aristocracy that was the key to his acquiring more dictatorial power than the aristocracy had ever had. In the 20th century, the communists gained power by promoting public hatred of the czars and capitalists. In Germany, Adolf Hitler gained power by promoting hatred of Jews and Bolsheviks. In each case, the power gained led to greater misery and bloodshed than anything the old regime could have done.
Let me be clear: I'm not equating America's liberals with Robespierre, Josef Stalin and Hitler. I am saying that promoting jealousy, fear and hate is an effective strategy for politicians and their liberal followers to control and micromanage businesses. It's not about the amount of money people earn. If it were, politicians and leftists would be promoting jealousy, fear and hate toward multimillionaire Hollywood and celebrities and sports stars, such as LeBron James ($48 million), Tiger Woods ($75 million) and Peyton Manning ($38 million). But there is no way that politicians could take over the roles of Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and LeBron James. That means celebrities can make any amount of money they want and it matters not one iota politically.
The Occupy Wall Street crowd shouldn't focus its anger at wealthy CEOs. A far more appropriate target would be the U.S. Congress.
The Son of Africa Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels
by John Pilger, October 21, 2011
On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo, and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defense," says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.
Obama’s decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising," even "weird." It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region’s richest hoard of natural resources …the greatest prize." Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America’s subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defense" or "humanitarian," words long emptied of their dictionary meaning.
In Africa, says Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which "has murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa." This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa’s most venal tyrant.
Obama’s other justification also invites satire. This is the "national security of the United States." The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has fewer than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US "national security" usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda’s "president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military "aid" – including Obama’s favorite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America’s latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al-Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories.
However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalized paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American "threat." When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, "Asymmetric threats … asymmetric threats." These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle.
Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilization, the Chinese bring roads, bridges, and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa’s greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gadhafi was one of China’s most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and NATO backed the "rebels" with a fabricated story about Gadhafi planning "genocide" in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that allowed the west’s "humanitarian intervention" was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French government by the "rebel" National Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya’s gross national oil production "in exchange" (the term used) for "total and permanent" French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in "liberated" Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: "We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!"
The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the "scramble for Africa" at the end of the 19th century.
Like the "victory" in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified "Gadhafi" fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, "celebrate." According to General Petraeus, there is now a war "of perception … conducted continuously through the news media."
For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo, provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s "defense strategy" plan, America simply wishes to rule the world.
That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the "Son of Africa," is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in Black Skin, White Masks, what matters is not so much the color of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.
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Related articles:
Gaddafi death: Envoy slams 'sadistic' triumphalism (22 October, 2011) http://rt.com/politics/blasts-western-leaders-gaddafis-417/
Russia’s NATO envoy has written in his microblog that the Western elation over the death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi could have sadistic grounds.“The faces of the leaders of ‘world democracies’ are so happy, as if they remembered how they hanged stray cats in basements in their childhoods,” Russian envoy to NATO and the leader of the Congress of Russian Communities, Dmitry Rogozin, wrote in his twitter status on Friday.
(...) On Thursday evening Rogozin told Russian radio Echo of Moscow that NATO was directly involved in the operation to kill the former Libyan leader. “Apparently there were orders that oriented the military servicemen who are in Libya and that directed them to ensure the physical elimination of Gaddafi,” Rogozin said. The official added that Russia must make a conclusion from the existing situation. “We must bear in mind who we are dealing with in the face of Western democracies,” Rogozin said. CHECK ALSO Martyrdom for Muammar Gaddafi?
Now that the CIA’s proxy army has murdered Gadhafi, what next for Libya?
If Washington’s plans succeed, Libya will become another American puppet state. Most of the cities, towns, and infrastructure have been destroyed by air strikes by the air forces of the US and Washington’s NATO puppets. US and European firms will now get juicy contracts, financed by US taxpayers, to rebuild Libya. The new real estate will be carefully allocated to lubricate a new ruling class picked by Washington. This will put Libya firmly under Washington’s thumb.
With Libya conquered, AFRICOM will start on the other African countries where China has energy and mineral investments. Obama has already sent US troops to Central Africa under the guise of defeating the Lord’s Resistance Army, a small insurgency against the ruling dictator-for-life. The Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, welcomed the prospect of yet another war by declaring that sending US troops into Central Africa “furthers US national security interests and foreign policy.” Republican Senator James Inhofe added a gallon of moral verbiage about saving “Ugandan children,” a concern the senator did not have for Libya’s children or Palestine’s, Iraq’s, Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s.
Washington has revived the Great Power Game and is vying with China. Whereas China brings Africa investment and gifts of infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases. Sooner or later Washington’s aggressiveness toward China and Russia is going to explode in our faces.
Where is the money going to come from to finance Washington’s African Empire? Not from Libya’s oil. Big chunks of that have been promised to the French and British for providing cover for Washington’s latest war of naked aggression. Not from tax revenues from a collapsing US economy where unemployment, if measured correctly, is 23 percent.
With Washington’s annual budget deficit as huge as it is, the money can only come from the printing press.
Washington has already run the printing press enough to raise the consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) to 3.9% for the year (as of the end of September), the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W) to 4.4% for the year, and the producer price index (PPI) to 6.9% for the year.
As statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) has shown, the official inflation measures are rigged in order to hold down cost of living adjustments to Social Security recipients, thus saving money for Washington’s wars. When measured correctly, the current rate of inflation in the US is 11.5%.
What interest rate can savers get without taking massive risks on Greek bonds? US banks pay less than one-half of one percent on FDIC insured savings deposits. Short-term US government bond funds pay essentially zero.
Thus, according to official US government statistics American savers are losing between 3.9% and 4.4% of their capital yearly. According to John Williams’ estimate of the real rate of inflation, US savers are losing 11.5% of their accumulated savings.
As retired Americans receive no interest on their savings, they are having to spend down their capital. The ability of even the most prudent retirees to survive the negative rate of interest they are receiving and the erosion by inflation of any pensions that they receive will come to an end once their accumulated assets are exhausted.
Except for Washington’s favored mega-rich, the one percent that has captured all of the income gains of recent years, the rest of America has been assigned to the trash can. Nothing whatsoever has been done for them since the financial crisis hit in December 2007. Bush and Obama, Republican and Democrat, have focused on saving the 1 percent while giving the finger to the 99 percent.
Finally, some Americans, though not enough, have caught on to the flag-waving rah-rah “patriotism” that has consigned them to the trash bin of history. They are not going down without a fight and are in the streets. Occupy Wall Street has spread. What will be the fate of this movement?
Will the snow and ice of cold weather end the protests, or send them into public buildings? How long will the local authorities, subservient to Washington as they are, tolerate the obvious signal that the population lacks any confidence whatsoever in the government?
If the protests last, especially if they grow and don’t decline, the authorities will infiltrate the protestors with police provocateurs who will fire on the police. This will be the excuse to shoot down the protestors and to arrest the survivors as “terrorists” or “domestic extremists” and to send them to the $385 million dollar camps built under US government contract by Cheney’s Halliburton.
The Amerikan Police State will have taken its next step into the Amerikan Concentration Camp State.
Meanwhile, lost in their oblivion, conservatives will continue to bemoan the ruination of the country by homosexual marriage, abortion, and “the liberal media.” Liberal organizations committed to civil liberty, such as the ACLU, will continue to rank a woman’s right to an abortion with defense of the US Constitution. Amnesty International will assist Washington in demonizing its next target for military attack while turning a blind eye to the war crimes of President Obama.
When we consider what Israel has got away with, being as it is under Washington’s bought protection–the war crimes, the murders of children, the eviction in total disregard of international law of Palestinians from their ancestral homes, the bulldozing of their houses and uprooting of their olive groves in order to move in fanatical “settlers,” the murderous invasions of Lebanon and Gaza, the wholesale slaughter of civilians–we can only conclude that Washington, Israel’s enabler, can get away with far more.
In the few opening years of the 21st century, Washington has destroyed the US Constitution, the separation of powers, international law, the accountability of government, and has sacrificed every moral principle to achieving hegemony over the world. This ambitious agenda is being attempted while simultaneously Washington removed all regulation over Wall Street, the home of massive greed, permitting Wall Street’s short-term horizon to wreck the US economy, thus destroying the economic basis for Washington’s assault on the world.
Will the US collapse in economic chaos before it rules the world?
They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway - an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein's "hole" - he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) "rebels". And then duly executed.
Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a Libyan doctor who accompanied Gaddafi's body in an ambulance and examined it, said he died from two bullets, one to the chest, one to the head.
The TNC - which has peddled lies, lies and more lies for months - swears he died in "crossfire". It may have been a mob. It may have been Mohammad al-Bibi, a 20-year-old sporting a New York Yankees baseball cap who posed to the whole world brandishing Gaddafi's golden pistol; his ticket perhaps to collect the hefty $20 million dangled as the bounty for Gaddafi "dead or alive".
It gets curioser and curioser when one remembers that this is exactly what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her lightning visit to Tripoli, had announced less than 48 hours before; Gaddafi should be "captured or killed". The Fairy Queenie satisfied Clinton's wishes, who learned about it by watching the screen of a BlackBerry - and reacting with the semantic earthquake "Wow!"
To the winners, the spoils. They all did it; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Pentagon and the TNC. From the minute a United Nations resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya became a green card to regime change, plan A was always to capture and kill him. Targeted assassination; that's Barack Obama administration official policy. There was no plan B.
Let me bomb you to protection
As for how R2P ("responsibility to protect" civilians), any doubters should cling to the explanation by NATO's secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen; "NATO and our partners have successfully implemented the historic mandate of the United Nations to protect the people of Libya." Anyone who wants to check NATO's protection of civilians just needs to jump on a pick-up truck and go to Sirte - the new Fallujah.
Reactions have been quite instructive. TNC bureaucrat Abdel Ghoga went Colosseum in the Roman Empire, saying, "The revolutionaries have got the head of the tyrant."
United States President Barack Obama said the death of Gaddafi means "we are seeing the strength of American leadership across the world". That's as "we got him" as one can possibly expect, also considering that Washington paid no less than 80% of the operating costs of those dimwits at NATO (over $1 billion - which Occupy Wall Street could well denounce would be more helpful creating jobs in the US). Strange, now, to say "we did it", because the White House always said this was not a war; it was a "kinetic" something. And they were not in charge.
It was up to that majestic foreign policy strategist, US Vice President Joe Biden, to be starkly more enlightening than Obama; "In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past."
World, you have been warned; this is how the empire will deal with you from now on.
Feel my humanitarian love
So congratulations to the "international community" - which as everyone knows is composed of Washington, a few washed-up NATO members, and the democratic Persian Gulf powerhouses of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This community, at least, loved the outcome. The European Union (EU) hailed "the end of an era of despotism" - when up to virtually Thursday they were caressing the helm of Gaddafi's gowns; now they are falling over themselves in editorials about the 42-year reign of a "buffoon".
Gaddafi would have been a most inconvenient guest of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as he would have relished recalling all the hand-kissing, the warm embraces and the juicy deals the West was begging to clinch after he was promoted from "Mad Dog" (Ronald Reagan) to "our bastard". He would also relish detailing all the shady backgrounds of those opportunists now posing as "revolutionaries" and "democrats".
As for the concept of international law, it lies in a drain as filthy as the one Gaddafi was holed up in. Iraqi dictator Saddam at least got a fake trial in a kangaroo court before meeting the executioner. Osama bin Laden was simply snuffed out, assassination-style, after a territorial invasion of Pakistan. Gaddafi went one up, snuffed out with a mix of air war and assassination.
Power vultures are congesting the skies. London-based Mohammed El Senussi, the heir to the Libyan throne (King Idris was overthrown in 1969) is ready for his close-up, having already established that he "is a servant to Libyan people, and they decide what they want". Translation; I want the throne. He's obviously the favorite candidate of the counter-revolutionary House of Saud.
And what about those Washington think-tank donkeys mumbling that this was the Arab Spring's "Ceausescu moment"? If only the Romanian dictator had improved his country's standard of living - in terms of free healthcare, free education, incentives for the newlywed, etc - by a fraction of what Gaddafi did in Libya. Plus the fact that Nicolae Ceausescu was not deposed by NATO "humanitarian" bombing. v Only the brain dead may have swallowed the propaganda of NATO's "humanitarian" 40,000-plus bombing - which devastated Libya's infrastructure back to the Stone Age (Shock and Awe in slow motion, anyone?). This never had anything to do with R2P - the relentless bombing of civilians in Sirte proves it.
As the top four BRIC members knew it even before the voting of UN Resolution 1973, it was about NATO ruling the Mediterranean as a NATO lake, it was about Africom's war against China and setting up a key strategic base, it was about the French and the Brits getting juicy contracts to exploit Libya's natural resources to their benefit, it was about the West setting the narrative of the Arab Spring after they had been caught napping in Tunisia and Egypt.
Listen to the barbaric whimpers
Welcome to the new Libya. Intolerant Islamist militias will turn the lives of Libyan women into a living hell. Hundreds of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans - those who could not escape - will be ruthlessly persecuted. Libya's natural wealth will be plundered. That collection of anti-aircraft missiles appropriated by Islamists will be a supremely convincing reason for the "war on terror" in northern Africa to become eternal. There will be blood - civil war blood, because Tripolitania will refuse to be ruled by backward Cyrenaica.
As for remaining dictators everywhere, get a life insurance policy from NATO Inc; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh were clever enough to do it. We all know there will never be R2P to liberate the Tibetans and Uyghurs, or the people in that monster gulag Myanmar, or the people in Uzbekistan, or the Kurds in Turkey, or the Pashtuns on both sides of the imperially drawn Durand Line.
We also know that change the world can believe in will be the day NATO enforces a no-fly one over Saudi Arabia to protect the Shi'ites in the eastern province, with the Pentagon launching a Hellfire carpet over those thousands of medieval, corrupt House of Saud princes.
It won't happen. Meanwhile, this is the way the West ends; with a NATO bang, and a thousand barbaric, lawless whimpers. Disgusted? Get a Guy Fawkes mask and raise hell.
The US power grab in Africa (Oct 20, 2011) http://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/the-us-power-grab-in-africa/
(...) The trillion-dollar question ahead is how China – which plots strategic moves years in advance – is going to react. As for Amazon Clinton, she must be beaming. In Iraq, Washington meticulously destroyed a whole country over two long decades just to end up with nothing – not even a substantial oil contract. Clinton at least got a private army – the “advisers” who will be stationed in the bigger-than-the-Vatican US Embassy in Baghdad. And considering that Obama’s new African “advisers” will be paid by the State Department, now Clinton’s also got her own African private army. After November 2012, Clinton might well consider a move into the contractor business. In the sacred name of R2P, naturally.
10.
From: "Larry Stell" (lstell@glasgow-ky.com)
Subject: What Will Happen in Iran?
Date: 16 Oct 2011
Iran won't be the same as Iraq...
I am not sure how it will go down, if it will go down.
Here is what Ray McGovern says as of today via Alex Jones:
(Ray McGovern is the most reliable inside the CIA and DI source I have ever met and knows the whole history in detail of the Imperial crimes of the past 30 years; he does not speculate)
his good news: the military and intelligence circles and cliques, sans corporate, are predominately opposed to scaling up conflict with Iran. As it was 4 years ago, there is simply no reason to expand warfare in Asia over the politicians and policies in Iran. They have 0 impact on the U.S. and not even all that much on Israel. The current government in Iran is the most benign government in Persia ever. Even important Zionist factions have concluded the same. (Michael W. Mandeville adds: U.S. professionals in the know are no more convinced than four years ago, even less so, to pick a fight with a terribly insecure, nervous group of people who have the ability to tank western economies and flatten a great number of U.S. assets in the Middle East even after absorbing a heavy first strike against their assets. The aftermath is likely to be a 30 year war with enough support from covert allies in Eurasia to bankrupt the Anglo-American Empire. The big time losers who will lose the most will be the Jews collectively and individually).
his bad news: Zionazi kooks really are in control of the U.S. government, Netanyabayababooboo is a disconnected, incoherent sociopath who believes, rightly, that the naive, dependent Obama is easily intimidated by Zionists and can be coerced into doing whatever they prescribe. Accordingly, now completely isolated and losing support and status by the month, Netanyabayaba intends on going to complete his booboo - sufficient destruction mass disruption in Iran to destroy it as a nation. What we have seen in Lebanon and Gaza is merely the lower order fractile testing of what they hope to do to Iran. The entire assassination plot is entirely Zionist in origin and they have set in motion the cats to bring home to the White House and Foxynews a whole string of disgusting things during the next weeks and months to provocateur the U.S. people into passively supporting a Jewpsy-devised regime change in Iran (which of course will turn into a 30 year World War). If we go this way there will be open warfare ranging across Northern Africa through deep into Central Asia, over a much greater swath of land than WWII was fought over.
So it all hangs in the balance, can the kooks be kept isolated enough to prevent them ginning up war fever? We can count on a large number of sources in the U.S. at all levels everywhere to leak prodigiously. We can expect the presstitutes to gin up a chorus for more war. We can expect Obama cliques and the finger puppets in congress to fall in line with what they hope will become the new reality. We can expect practically everybody to retch occasionally when the fumes of lies reaches occasional highs. We can expect the real reality, often called alt. news, to expand prolifically as people desperately try to convince the sheeple that they need new programming to replace the crap which muddles their current thinking. We can expect economics to seem very scary at cliff's edge (all a boogeyman scam) for the next many months. And above all else we can expect the Booboo cliques to act in haste, in desperation, using a variety of thinly disguised skits and humbugs. Already laughing stocks, the Zionazi Booboo faction is highly likely to manufacture the mistakes and lies (errors made by phony people doing desperate things) by which they can and hopefully will be hanged (metaphorically speaking, I am far more interested in seeing this generation's political cliques spend time in FEMA camps for 10 year stretches to document their part of these stories so that all succeeding generations will be able to grasp the magnitude, depth, and depravity of their corruption).
Climate change is making many plants and animals smaller: study
October 16, 2011
By Marlowe Hood
PARIS — Climate change is reducing the body size of many animal and plant species, including some which supply vital nutrition for more than a billion people already living near hunger’s threshold, according to a study released Sunday.
From micro-organisms to top predators, nearly 45 percent of species for which data was reviewed grew smaller over multiple generations due to climate change, researchers found.
The impact of rapidly climbing temperatures and shifts in rainfall patterns on body size could have unpredictable and possible severe consequences, they warned.
Previous work established that recent climate change has led to sharp shifts in habitat and the timing of reproductive cycles. But impact on the size of plants and animals has received far less attention.
Jennifer Sheridan and David Bickford at the National University of Singapore looked at scientific literature on climate-change episodes in the distant past and at experiments and observations in recent history.
Fossil records, they found, were unambiguous: past periods of rising temperatures had led both marine and land organisms to became progressively smaller.
During a warming event 55 million years ago — often seen as an analogue for current climate change — beetles, bees, spiders, wasps and ants shrank by 50 to 75 percent over a period of several thousand years.
Mammals such as squirrels and woodrats also diminished in size, by about 40 percent.
The pace of current warming, though, is far greater than during this so-called Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).
It, too, has begun to shrink dozens of species, the study found.
Among 85 examples cited, 45 percent were unaffected. But of those remaining, four out of five had gotten smaller, while a fifth got bigger.
Some of the shrinkage came as a surprise. “Plants were expected to get larger with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide,” but many wound up stunted due to changes in temperature, humidity and nutrients available, the researchers said.
For cold-blooded animals — including insects, reptiles and amphibians — the impact is direct: experiments suggest that an upward tick of one degree Celsius translates into roughly a 10 percent increase in metabolism, the rate at which an organism uses energy. That, in turn, results in downsizing.
The common toad, for example, has measurably shriveled in girth in only two decades, along with some tortoises, marine iguanas and lizards.
Overfishing has been blamed for decreased body size in both wild and commercially-harvested aquatic species, threatening the key source of protein of a billion people around the world, mainly in Africa and Asia.
But experiments and observational studies have shown that warming waters play a role as well, especially in rivers and lakes.
Birds — including passerines, goshawks and gulls — and mammals such as soay sheep, red deer and polar bears, have also trended towards less bulk.
Some of the most worrying changes are at the bottom of the food chain, especially in the ocean, where tiny phytoplankton and calcium-building creatures are dwindling in size due to acidification and the reduced capacity of warmer water to hold oxygen and nutrients.
Carbon pollution has probably locked in an additional 1.0 C increase in average global temperatures, and continued emissions of greenhouse gases could push up the thermometre another 4.0 to 5.0 C (7.4 to 9.0 F) by centuries end, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Because warming is occurring at unprecedented rates, “may organisms may not respond or adapt quickly enough”, especially those with long generation times, the authors noted in an email.
“We do not yet know the exact mechanisms involved, or why some organisms are getting smaller while others are unaffected,” they added. “Until we understand more, we could be risking negative consequences that we can’t yet quantify.”
The study is published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change.
By Garth Lenz (with dramatic pictures at the URl above!)
Although not widely known, Canada’s Alberta Tar Sands are both the world’s largest oil reserves outside Saudi Arabia and America’s single greatest source of oil. The mining operations and tailings ponds are so vast they can be seen from outer space by the naked eye. These tailings ponds are the largest toxic impoundments on Earth and lie in unlined dykes mere meters from the Athabasca River and downstream from indigenous communities, which are being poisoned by toxic seepage into the food chain. And, the Tar Sands are Canada’s single largest source of carbon emissions. Located in northern Alberta, they lie in the heart of what is considered by many to be the largest remaining forest ecosystem on the planet. Canada’s boreal forest region is estimated to be up to 95 percent intact, and it stretches across northern Canada from the Labrador Sea and Atlantic Ocean to the coastal mountains of northern British Columbia.
Refining the tarry bitumen, which lies under the wetlands and boreal forests of northern Alberta, requires more water than other oil refining processes. Three to five barrels of freshwater are used to produce one barrel of tar sands oil. Ninety percent of the water taken from the Athabasca River is then dumped into vast toxic tailings ponds adjacent to it. Syncrude alone – just one of many operations in the Tar Sands – dumps 500,000 tons of toxic tailings into just one of their tailings ponds everyday. Enough toxic sludge is produced each day to fill 720 Olympic-sized pools. Toxins leak into the Athabasca River from Suncor’s now “reclaimed” Tar Island pond at a rate of one million gallons per day – the equivalent of about two Olympic-sized pools. Approximately 20 of these toxic lakes lie on either side of the Athabasca River.
Several scientific studies now indicate that a cocktail of deadly carcinogenic toxins from leaking ponds, watershed destruction and air pollution are finding their way into the river and food chain of downstream indigenous communities like Fort Chipewyan. In Fort Chipewyan, rare cancers previously unknown in the community are now appearing with alarming frequency. For example, bile duct cancer, which usually appears once per 100,000 individuals, has appeared in three separate cases in the past few years within a community of just twelve hundred.
Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has called the Tar Sands “an enterprise of epic proportions akin to the building of the pyramids or China’s Great Wall, only bigger.” He also maintains that they’re the key to securing Canada’s place as a “global energy super power.” More accurately, the Alberta Tar Sands are an immediate threat to the region and its 40,000 indigenous people who live downstream in the Mackenzie Basin. And, they have far-reaching global implications as well. The Tar Sands have been called “the world’s dirtiest oil” as their carbon footprint is almost double conventional oil. They are Canada’s single largest, and fastest growing, source of carbon emissions, producing as much CO2 as some nations, such as Denmark.
The Alberta Tar Sands have turned Canada into a petro state. The Canadian Federal government sees their development as the single most important economic engine for its future. And, the Tar Sands
dictate, to a large extent, Canadian economic, environmental and foreign policy. They’re why, in spite of being one of the original signatories to the Kyoto accord, Canada has not made the slightest attempt to meet its commitments and has instead taken every opportunity on the world stage to undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions to combat global warming. Canada now has full-time Washington, D.C. lobbyists dedicated to promoting the Tar Sands and to undermining American attempts to develop new carbon fuel standards. The Alberta Tar Sands have led Canada to abandon its role as a voice for global environmental sustainability. The country is very quickly going from being a respected moral and ecological voice on the world stage to being generally seen as an obstacle to progress on global warming.
The Alberta Tar Sands are considered to be the largest energy project in the history of the world. While bitumen deposits lie underneath 140,000 sq km of forest, the government has already leased or approved a remarkable area for either mining or in-situ production: 1.5 million hectares. That’s 20 times the size of the city of Calgary, 40 times the size of Denver or 17 times the size of Berlin. (Source: BioCarbon: http://www.globalforestwatch.ca/climateandforests/bitumenbiocarbon/BioCarbon_WEB_LR.pdf.) Approximately $200 billion have been invested in the Alberta Tar Sands. They currently produce more than 1.5 million barrels of oil per day. Within 20 years, they’re projected to produce four million barrels per day, increasing to five million a few years thereafter. Alberta Energy has boasted that the landscape being industrialized by rapid tar sands development could eventually accommodate one Florida, two New Brunswicks, four Vancouvers and four Vancouver Islands.
In terms of global warming, Tar Sands’ impacts are devastating and multiple. The vast forests and wetlands of the boreal forest, which they lie under, are considered the most carbon-rich forest ecosystem on the planet. Storing almost twice as much carbon per hectare as tropical rainforests, the boreal forest is the planet’s greatest terrestrial carbon storehouse. To the industry, these diverse and ecologically significant forests and wetlands are referred to as an overburden – the forest to be stripped and the wetlands dredged and replaced by mines and tailings ponds. As tar sands’ expansion consumes more boreal forest and wetlands, it is releasing to the atmosphere all the carbon stored in this ecosystem. At the same time, Earth loses the long-term future carbon sequestration of these forests and wetlands. In turn, they are replaced by an industrial operation, which, as mentioned, produces almost twice as much carbon as conventional oil production.
However, the global reach of the tar sands is even greater than that. Pipelines pump this bitumen to the American Midwest and Texas for refining. In the process, these areas are importing many of the Tar Sands’ toxic impacts to their jurisdictions. The building of the proposed Alberta Clipper and Keystone pipelines will only increase this trend and its impacts.
And, the Tar Sands present further destruction. The rapid development of shale gas in northeastern British Columbia is driven by the Tar Sands’ energy needs. The proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline was recently given government approval and will result in a $10 billion, 1200 kilometer pipeline and industrial highway built to bring natural gas from the Arctic Ocean to the Alberta Tar Sands. This will result in the rapid industrialization of the world’s third largest, and only largely intact, watershed basin. Only the Amazon and Mississippi basins are greater. Unlike these, the Mackenzie Basin is almost 100 percent intact.
On the west coast, the Enbridge “Gateway” pipeline will bring Tar Sands bitumen to Kitimaat on British Columbia’s northern coast, which is immediately south of Southeast Alaska. From there, massive tankers will navigate some of the most treacherous coastal waters, through the world’s largest remaining intact temperate coastal ecosystem, to deliver Tar Sands bitumen to Asia. Only a few years ago, a British Columbia Ferry full of passengers sunk in these waters. If, or more likely when, this happens to a Tar Sands supertanker, the ecological impacts of the BP Horizon oil spill may pale by comparison. Not only will such a disaster dramatically impact coastal British Columbia, but also Southeast Alaska, one of the last pristine places on Earth. Such a disaster will also, undoubtedly, create political tension between America and Canada.
That one project should have so much power to destroy so many lives and devastate Earth in such a profound manner is without measure or conscience. Only by working together can caring citizens of both countries stop this continuing catastrophe.
Deadly Star to cause an Extinction Level Event Next year: Scientists
OCTOBER 19, 2011
It’s name is Eta Carinae. It’s a star—or to be absolutely accurate—a binary star. And it’s getting ready to destroy anything within 50,000 light years of it…like Earth.
Although few have ever heard of Eta Carinae, if things go wrong—horribly wrong—it could be the final, gasping words spilling from the gnarled lips of the last dying humans on Earth.
Once and for all, Doomsday really will have arrived.
Although it might sound like some Grade-B Hollywood End-of-the-World thriller, the scenario is very real. All too real. And it’s too close for comfort in more ways than one.
If ever there was a ticking time bomb in our galaxy, it would be Eta Carinae—at least as far as life on Earth is concerned.
But the truly horrifying reality is it may have struck already, and we don’t even know it yet.
When pushed on the issue, all astronomers agree that Eta Carinae could easily destroy all life on Earth, or at the very least, the side facing the death star when its celestial greetings of doom come knocking on our door.
When will that be? It’s anyone’s guess. Some scientists think it could be within our lifetimes, even as early as—dare it be said?—2012.
How dangerous is this unstable star?
The calculations are in, and they’re not looking good.
Grim astronomers grudgingly admit that when the massive Eta Carinae detonates it could well be a hypernova, not a supernova. The terrible truth is, it’s more likely than not to be a hypernova.
What is a hypernova? It’s an explosion that’s also termed a type 1c Supernova that happens to hypergiant stars with a mass 100 to 300 times larger than the sun. When hypergiant stars explode they release incredible energy all at once—an explosion equivalent to 100 or more supernovae exploding simultaneously.
The killer star’s light will be so intense it will be visible across millions of light years reaching to other galaxies. In fact, it might, for a time, outshine all the light generated by all the other stars in our own galaxy.
Eta Carinae will release off-the-scale gamma ray bursts. According to scientists, if that burst hits Earth the radiation flux at the fringe of our planet’s atmosphere will equal a one kiloton nuclear explosion over every square mile that takes the direct hit.
Nothing can absorb such titanic fury. The total energy slamming Earth would be roughly 200 million kilotons. Next to that an all out thermonuclear war would look like a Fourth of July fireworks show.
Saturation blast can sterilize Earth
A hypernova will create a lethality zone radiating outwards as far as 50,000 light years.
Unfortunately, the Earth is well within that death zone as the killer star lies only 7,500 light years away from us.
“Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known in the universe, capable of releasing as much energy as our sun would during its entire 10 billion-year lifetime in anywhere from milliseconds to a minute or more.” [Wikipedia]
Scientists believe such massive bursts are the cause of some mass extinction events during the Earth’s past.
A team led by astrophysicist Brian Thomas at Washburn University theorizes a hypernova might have initiated the Ordovician-Silurian mass erxtinctiopn event that occured about 440 million years ago.
Many researchers now believe that short, hard gamma ray blasts occur on average every 100 million years. If so, Earth has been hit by at least several during its 4.5 billion year existence.
Right now, the killer star is radiating energy at a mind-boggling rate: 5 million times more than our sun. Because of its energy—like a gigantic fusion reactor gone wild—Eta Carinae is the brightest star in the Milky Way galaxy.
It also dwarfs our star, which is tiny in comparison, for Eta Carinae is more than 100 times as massive as our sun.
What some experts say Dave Pooley, at the University of California at Berkeley, says if Eta Carinae were observed to explode “it would be so bright that you would see it during the day, and you could even read a book by its light at night.”
Of course, that assumes you’re still alive.
Mario Livio, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland warns that Eta Carinae could be “seen to explode at any time.” [BBC News]
Esteemed NASA scientist Stefan Immler at the Goddard Space Flight Center thinks Eta Carinae could very well explode in our lifetime, or even in the next few years.
Well, maybe Earth has a little more time, right? Well, maybe not.
Some astrophysicists at the European Space Agency have suggested it’s quite possible, based on observational analysis, that the killer star has already gone hypernova thousands of years ago and the speeding death rays could inundate Earth in as little as a year.
Meanwhile, at the Russian space agency Roscosmos, more space scientists concur that planet-wide death from the violent star could come unexpectedly swift.
The consensus among scientists—and the apprehension—is growing.
---
Note from Jean: I checked the following relevant Wikipedia entry to see if it confirms the claim made above and it appears there is indeed a slight possibility this could happen, but this is of course very speculative and uncertain and should NOT be any cause for concern... Still, I had never heard of hypernovae and of such astounding destructive power. Amazing!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae#Future_prospects
Because of their disproportionately high luminosities, very large stars such as Eta Carinae use up their fuel very quickly. Eta Carinae is expected to explode as a supernova or hypernova some time within the next million years or so. As its current age and evolutionary path are uncertain, however, it could explode within the next several millennia or even in the next few years. LBVs such as Eta Carinae may be a stage in the evolution of the most massive stars; the prevailing theory now holds that they will exhibit extreme mass loss and become Wolf-Rayet stars before they go supernova, if they are unable to hold their mass to explode as a hypernova. CLIP (Much more at the URL above)
Hidden No Longer: Genocide in Canada, Past and Present
By Kevin D. Annett, M.A., M.Div.
(WARNING: The first part of this book begins with a VERY disturbing graphic picture of an infected child)
This book is dedicated to the more than 50,000 children who died in “Indian residential schools” operated jointly by the government of Canada and the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada – and to those who continue to suffer and die from the consequences of these crimes.
(...)
Preamble to Hidden No Longer
by Kevin D. Annett
If James Joyce is right, and history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken, then it is also true that victory belongs to those who can remember.
Twenty years ago, soon after my ordination as a clergyman in the United Church of Canada, I first began to hear stories of what my church had done to innocent children in its Indian residential schools. Like most people, I didn’t believe the accounts of murder and torture I was hearing. And if I had have kept my ears and heart closed to these tales, I would have been spared an enormous personal loss and liberation.
But fate, and choice, forced me not only to listen, but give voice and a platform to hundreds, and then thousands of indigenous men and women whose stories you will read in these pages. And as a result, the face of Canada has been changed forever.
But the ones you won’t hear from are the more than 50,000 children who died from beatings, starvation, rape and torture, or being deliberately exposed to tuberculosis and left to cough their lives away in squalor and terror: all at the hands of Christian men and women who have never been prosecuted for their crimes.
These murdered children lie in nearly-forgotten graves across Canada, or their ashes are scattered on sea and land after they were incinerated in residential school furnaces, to hide the crime that killed them. But they have not vanished, and their day is coming, thanks in part to the work and campaigns associated with this book.
I wrote the first version of this book ten years ago now, at a time when nobody in Canada, or anywhere else, was publicly talking about murdered children at Indian residential schools. Now, if not respectable, at least the issue has become a matter of some discourse, even in the cloistered and censoring halls of academia and government.
But what’s most remarkable about the revelation of this “little matter of genocide” is that it’s occurred in the face of enormous opposition and repression: the kind that, until now, has ensured that those slaughtered children would remain out of sight and mind.
I thank my own persistence for this miracle, and the courage of survivors who have stepped forward to tell the truth and indict the guilty, despite the efforts of all the King’s Men and their self-appointed “truth and reconciliation commissions” to protect the perpetrators and silence the witnesses.
But the miracle hasn’t stayed confined to Canada. This past year, the truth of the Canadian Holocaust has finally won a hearing among politicians and media in Europe, and men and women in America, Ireland, England, Australia and elsewhere who have suffered identical tortures from the Roman Catholic Church and others, and who have faced the same obstacles to justice and fill disclosure.
The truth is that the same culture of religious conquest that caused the residential school inferno in Canada swept across Europe centuries before Columbus ever set foot in the Americas - and only now is the world tearing the mask off the lie that murdered so many millions of people in the name of Jesus Christ.
Protesting recently with survivors of brutal Catholic orphanages and sweatshops outside the Irish Parliament, or in vigil for the disappeared at the Vatican under the harassing stare of the Italian state police, I finally began to realize the enormity of what I have been uncovering since 1995 - and how many souls now look to this work and to my efforts.
What I am part of now is a centuries old epic battle to recover the soul of my own people, and overturn the lie in Christian garb that has caused more suffering and death than any institution in human history. For the genocide of native people in Canada and the Americas is part of the same mad sickness that destroyed traditional peoples across Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia – and which now threatens the life of our planet, and our species.
At the risk of being misunderstood, I would venture to call this battle a spiritual one, for behind the beguiling appearance of things lies an older and untold story about how it is that we came to conquer, mutilate and destroy one another, again and again: and the unseen forces that are responsible.
In 1987, a defrocked priest named Fidel who labored among Mayan refugees, and who was eventually killed by a landowner’s gunman in Chiapas, Mexico, told me that, like him, I would one day have to choose between Christ and the church; and that in that choice, whenever I was confused, I should simply go to the poorest child and ask her what I should do.
I’ve tried to do so, and honor the fallen and the still suffering children whom we call aboriginal, in preparing this book. But my effort will mean but a struggling seed unless it finds soil in the minds and will of you, the readers, who must act on the responsibility given to you by what you will learn in these pages.
It isn’t an easy task, to peer beneath the appearance of things into the awful truth, and be changed by what you encounter. It’s simply a necessary one. And I hope that the knowledge in these pages will equip and inspire you to engage in this battle to stop the slaughter of the innocents, and bring an end to the reign of those and that which is causing these crimes.
By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group ... Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.
- Raphael Lemkin, from his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944)
The understanding of “genocide” has been so ravaged by revision, political misuse and sabotage since Raphael Lemkin first conceived it that we must avoid simply applying the existing United Nations definition of “genocide” to what happened to indigenous people.
Rather, we need to return to the broad spirit of the term, and augment it with what we have learned about the origins and manifestation of that crime in the world, if we are to do justice to the crime and its victims, and to the promise of its eradication.
For this reason, in this section of our study, we will apply our broad historical-political-spiritual sense of genocide to what occurred in Indian residential schools and hospitals, rather than be restricted by the formal and legalistic understanding of the crime imposed by nations and international bodies which themselves are complicit in the crime.
That understood, it is nevertheless vital to state that even by the existing, restricted definitions of genocide contained in the United Nations Convention on the Crime and Prevention of Genocide (1948), every act known as genocide under this Convention has been proven to have occurred, deliberately and systematically, in Canadian Indian residential Schools.
For instance, under Section Two of that Convention, five acts constitute genocide. These are:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
As will be demonstrated, these acts were common and rampant in Indian residential schools and hospitals for well over a century.
A Long View of Genocide, and its Evidence within Canada
We begin with this new working definition of the crime of genocide:
1. Genocide is a philosophy of divinely or morally-sanctioned conquest and extermination of others which manifests in a plan to destroy those others.
2. This plan involves the deliberate and systematic destruction of the essential foundations of the life of targeted groups, with the aim of exterminating the groups over time, by assaulting, dehumanizing and killing its members, transporting their children to other groups, annihilating their political and social institutions, families, culture, language and worldview, religion, personal security and liberty, health and dignity, economic livelihood and land ownership, and the capacity to produce life – and creating conditions which over time will cause their ultimate destruction.
3. Emerging from within the worldview and culture of the conquering power, and expressing its core values, this plan is not accidental or periodic, but inherent and institutionalized, and does not cease until final extermination is achieved.
It is the general position of this study that all three of these definitions of genocide manifested within Canada since the beginning of the European presence, according to exhaustive personal testimonies, archival evidence, legislation and written documentation.
It is also our position that every act related to the aim of genocide began with the arrival of Europeans, occurred within Indian residential schools and hospitals across Canada between the years 1889 and 1996, and that this genocide is continuing.
CLIP - Note: If you explore the rest of this document, you will find LOTS of evidence of this genocide and read for instance: "In April of 2008, the author released to the world media a list of twenty eight mass graves containing the remains of children who died in Indian residential schools across Canada. (See Appendix 8) Physical surveys, eyewitness accounts and archival information have established that these sites span a century and contain possibly thousands of corpses."
and...
"Killings in the Indian residential school system were not the result of unplanned or random acts of violence, but of a deliberate policy that encouraged, permitted and protected the killing of aboriginal children. And the foremost method of this policy was the systematic exposing of healthy children to communicable diseases, primarily tuberculosis, followed by denial of all treatment or aid to them. This practice was common and normative in every Indian residential school in Canada, according to inspector Dr. Peter Bryce, who was commissioned to do a health study of the schools in the spring of 1907. As described earlier, Bryce discovered that both Catholic and Protestant Indian schools had an average death rate of between 35% and 60%, and that “invariably ... the leading cause of death is a practice of deliberately exposing children to tuberculosis.” Further, Bryce found that church staff were hiding evidence of these deaths because of their complicity in forcing healthy children to sleep with and play alongside children dying of tuberculosis."
and...
"Even more direct attempts to kill children with tuberculosis were practiced with impunity. As discussed earlier, Mabel Sport’s husband Willie nearly died from the deliberate poisoning of him and other boys with tuberculosis by Principal F.W. Pitts at the United Church’s Alberni residential school, in 1934.
“That Principal Pitts was trying to kill us. I was the only kid who survived. Pitts took eight of us and he fed us this special canned meat. He didn’t give it to anybody else. Then we all got sick with the TB. Every other boy died, but my Dad broke into the infirmary and got me out, and took me to my grandfather who was a medicine man. He sucked the black poison out of each of my lungs three times, then spit it out, I seen it. But all the other ones died thanks to Pitts.” (March 28, 1998, Port Alberni, B.C.)
This practice of what amounted to deliberate germ warfare was common in the Indian residential schools and hospitals, particularly in the western provinces. Federally funded Indian hospitals, like the Coqualeetza Sanitarium in Sardis, B.C. and the Nanaimo Indian Hospital operated as fronts for these murderous practices, under the guise of being tuberculosis sanitariums.Rather than treating children for tuberculosis, these hospitals were the means to infect large numbers of them with the sickness and let them die untreated, or be sent back into their communities to infect others – especially children of traditional native elders.
Joan Morris of the Songhees Nation of southern Vancouver Island was incarcerated in the Nanaimo Indian Hospital for over six years when she was a little girl during the early 1960’s.
“The Indian agent came and got me when I was five years old. I wasn’t sick at all but he said I had tuberculosis and needed treatment. So they shipped me off to the Nanaimo Indian hospital where they used me like a guinea pig. They broke the bones in my feet. They took out parts of my lung and made me drink this bad stuff that I later learned was radioactive iodine. I came down with TB when I was in there so I believe they infected me.
“I saw lots of other Indian kids in there too, all of them the same: healthy when they showed up, then they got TB and a lot of them died off. The nurses just let them die. I remember the doctors there, Dr. Weinrib, Lang, Connolly and Schmidt, they were all taking notes but never helping anybody. They’d give kids shots and they’d get sick with TB and die.” (August 21, 1999)
Such murderous practices began at the inception of European settlement of Canada. As discussed earlier, in 1749, British General Geoffrey Amherst – who has had towns and colleges named after him – kept a journal of his efforts to wipe out the Miq ‘Maq and other east coast tribes with smallpox.
In a letter he wrote to a subordinate, Major Bouquet, Amherst ordered him to take smallpox infected blankets from their army hospital and distribute them among the Miq ‘Maqs and other tribes potentially allied with the French. Amherst instructed,
“You will do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to Extirpate this execrable race.” (Fig. 12)
Similarly, in 1864 in the newly formed crown colony of Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island, delegations of Kwakiutl and Haida people were given presents of infected Hudson’s Bay blankets after negotiating with former company director and colonial governor James Douglas. Within two years, more than half of the Kwakiutl and a third of the Haida were dead from smallpox.
To quote a white commentator at the time, Alfred Waddington, as he wrote in The Victoria Colonist on June 13, 1864,
Did not the whites also, about the same time, bring the small-pox to Bella-Coula where it [has] spread to Nacoutloon, and as far as the Benshee and Chisient Lakes, when myself saw the graves of perhaps 500 Indians; and was not one-third of the population carried off by that first visitation; for there was a second one of which I shall have to speak presently? And did not the white settlers communicate another contagion to those tribes, of which the second Chief at Bella Coula is now slowly dying?
According to Harriett Nahanee of the Pacheedaht Nation of Vancouver Island,
“In 1861 the first white man’s census of our village of Clo-ose north of Victoria listed over 3,400 people there. By 1890 there were only 44 people left. That’s 98% of our people wiped out in a generation. There were so few people left that only five children went to the first residential school in Port Alberni.” (December 21, 1995)
Part Three: Summary of the Evidence concerning Genocide in Canadian Indian Residential Schools
1. There is considerable evidence to indicate the existence of a plan and a criminal conspiracy by the government and the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and United churches of Canada to exterminate indigenous populations, primarily children, and steal their lands, under the guise of religion and education through what is termed the Indian residential school system.
2. This plan and conspiracy was commenced in 1889 with the establishment of the Department of Indian Affairs, and was codified in a contract signed by all these parties in Ottawa in November 1910, by which all parties were financially and legally responsible for the operation of these schools.
3. As a result of this plan and conspiracy, between 50,000 and 100,000 indigenous children died or disappeared in the residential schools between 1889 and 1996.
4. The average annual mortality rate in these schools ranged between 30% and 65% from the years 1889 to at least 1950.
5. The primary cause of the death of this huge number of children was a policy and regular practice by school staff of deliberately housing healthy native children alongside those infected with tuberculosis, and then denying them aid or treatment.
6. The death and disposal of these children, and all other crimes committed in these schools, was aided and abetted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), by every level of government and these churches, and by local police, coroners, doctors, social workers and state-funded aboriginal chiefs.
7. These parties are in clear and direct violation of every provision of the United Nation’s Convention on the Crime of Genocide (1952) because of their complicity in operating the residential schools and concealing the evidence of their crimes.
8. Every act described as genocide under the aforementioned U.N. Convention took place in Indian residential schools and their associated Indian hospitals, which were also operated by the government of Canada and these churches.
9. The government and churches of Canada were completely aware of the enormous mortality rate in these residential schools as early as 1891, and not only took no steps to prevent the deaths but actively facilitated and caused them, as follows:
a) In 1919, the government abolished all medical inspection in these schools, despite the huge mortality rate, causing a marked increase in deaths from tuberculosis.
b) In 1920, the government then made it mandatory under federal law for every native child seven years and older to be placed in these schools.
c) In 1929, the government transferred legal guardianship over children in these schools to the churches that ran them.
d) Between 1928 and 1933, provincial laws allowing the legal, involuntary sterilization of children in residential schools were passed in those western regions with the largest remaining concentrations of unassimilated, non-Christian Indians.
e) In the same period, provincial laws in the same regions stripped all Indians of the right to hire a lawyer or sue in courts of law.
f) As early as 1910, the government and churches of Canada adopted an informal policy not to hospitalize or treat Indians who were suffering or dying from tuberculosis.
10. Children within residential schools and Indian hospitals were subjected to routine and systematic tortures, rapes, beatings, involuntary sterilizations, medical experimentation, slave labor, child sex trafficking and other crimes against humanity by clergy, school staff and others under a cloak of official secrecy and legal protection.
11. These acts of violence and torture were not isolated, random or unauthorized in nature but were planned and institutionalized,and were legitimated, sanctioned and protected by every level of police, Church and government.
12. At least twenty eight mass graves containing the remains of the children who died in these facilities are located across Canada at or near to the grounds of these former facilities. The RCMP and other police have systematically refused to investigate these sites and may be involved in destroying them.
13. Not one person or organization in Canada has been arrested, tried or convicted for the death or disappearance of a child in an Indian residential school.
14. None of the aforementioned church, government or private organizations have taken responsibility or been charged for the death or disappearance of these children, or identified their buried locations.
15. Despite having found these churches and government jointly liable for damages to children in the residential schools, the courts of Canada have refused to charge or prosecute any of these institutions or their officers for these crimes, or for the death of these children, and have ruled the charge of genocide to be legally inadmissible and “ultra vires” (outside its jurisdiction).
16. These crimes have had a devastating inter-generational impact on native people in Canada, with the result that the effects continue as if the crimes described were still taking place.
17. A widespread system of organized child trafficking continues to operate across Canada which uses and exploits aboriginal children and women, and involves the active collusion of police, church, aboriginal and government officials.
18. These crimes and facts meet the accepted international legal criteria and standards of Genocide.
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Recommendations Arising from these Findings
We find that the aforementioned government and churches of Canada are guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, and of conspiracy to commit and conceal genocide.
An international Inquiry should be convened to examine this and other evidence in order to bring charges of Genocide and Conspiracy to commit genocide against the aforementioned government, churches and parties.
This Inquiry must be established and operate independently of these accused parties, and especially of the government of Canada.
Until such an Inquiry can be convened, we consider all citizens of Canada to be absolved from all responsibility and duty towards these guilty parties of church and state, and can and must refrain from paying these bodies all taxes, tithes and other monies, and from obeying their laws and procedures, according to the Nuremburg Legal Standards adopted at the U.N. in 1950.
The government and churches of Canada are hereby considered and named publicly as criminal and pariah bodies under International law, and an international consumer, tourist and trade embargo and a public boycott is declared against Canada and these churches.
April 15 is proclaimed as an Annual and International Day of Remembrance of the Aboriginal Holocaust in Canada.
Citizens and groups are urged to create local tribunals of Inquiry to gather the forensic, eyewitness and documentary evidence to indict these bodies for Genocide.
Public memorial sites and Aboriginal Holocaust Museums must be established on the sites of former Indian residential schools to depict the full story of their crimes, including the names of the children who died there and their cause of death.
In the event of the failure of international human rights bodies and other nations to launch such an Inquiry into genocide in Canada, indigenous and common law courts of justice are to be established across Canada in which the perpetrators of these and other crimes can be tried and sentenced.
To ensure the survival of such popular courts of Justice, the authority of the institutions responsible for the Canadian genocide – the Crown of England and the Roman Papacy – is annulled on the territory formerly known as Canada, and a sovereign Republic of Kanata is hereby proclaimed. (see Fig. 83)
Respectfully submitted to world opinion and to The Executive of The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State
Kevin Daniel Annett, M.A., M.Div.
Secretary, ITCCS
September 1, 2010
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A Comprehensive List of Crimes Committed in Canadian Indian Residential Schools and Hospitals
The following offenses occurred at Indian residential schools and hospitals in every Canadian province save Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland between the years 1891 and 1996.
They were perpetrated against indigenous children and youths of both sexes between the ages of three and nineteen. The perpetrators were clergy, school staff, government agents, doctors, nuns, police, and in some cases other aboriginals. In many cases these offenses resulted in the death of the victim.
These crimes were witnessed and attested to by 287 survivors of thirty-eight separate facilities, and were verified independently by other parties, by archival documentation, and by cursory forensic examinations and surveys.
Between 50,000 and 100,000 children died or disappeared as a result of these offenses in schools and hospitals established and operated by the government of Canada and the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and United churches of Canada.
Signed affidavits and videotaped testimonies are recorded separately and are stored in trust by The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State.
1. Murder, by beating, flogging, rape, sodomy, imprisonment, hanging, starvation, poisoning, strangulation, electric shocks, medical experiments, being thrown from windows and kicked or thrown down stairs.
2. Criminal negligence.
3. Rape, by individuals and groups.
4. Sexual assault on a daily basis.
5. Daily, unprovoked beatings by staff and clergy using standard-issue whips and belts, sticks, leather harnesses, conveyor belts, iron bars, studded belts, pool cues and bare fists.
6. Public floggings followed by public confinement in restraining stocks and in manacles.
7. Routine administering of electric shocks in a specially-designed electric chair as a punishment and disciplinary device, and for the entertainment of staff and visitors.
8. Repeated administering of electric shocks to the genitals, tongues, and other body parts.
9. Applying electric shocks to the heads to eradicate memory, language and intelligence.
10. Prolonged exposure to X ray radiation to induce sexual sterility.
11. Tubal ligation, vasectomies and other intrusive methods to induce sexual sterility.
12. Deliberate contamination with tuberculosis and other communicable diseases through forced contact between the healthy and the sick in unventilated quarters, and through contaminated food, while denying all medical aid or treatment.
13. Inducing abortions in those made pregnant by clergy and staff.
14. Killing newborn babies resulting from the rape of students.
15. Slave labor regimens in which students of all ages were used as field workers, domestic servants and in manual labor projects, including by the “renting out” of students by the staff in return for monetary rewards.
16. Administering of drugs by medically incompetent persons, resulting in death.
17. Involuntary removal of teeth, tonsils, and other organs for experimental or training purposes.
18. Conducting dental work without pain killers. 19. Denial of food and water for days as punishment. 20. Systematic and routine physical and mental torture, including:
- tightening fish twine and wire around boys’ penises - sticking needles through tongues, ears, penises - forcing children to eat excrement or their own vomit - wrapping heads or bodies in urine soaked sheets
- holding children over open graves and burying them alive
- stripping children naked in front of others and degrading them, sexually and physically
- ripping hair from heads
- smashing heads against hard surfaces
- forcing children to stand for hours in ice water
- forcing children to sleep outside and in unheated dormitories
- forcing children to strangle animals or beat them to death
- forcing them to fondle or assault other children
- making children “run the gauntlet” as punishment and endure beatings
- confining children for days in closets without food and water
Medical experimentation, without their knowledge or consent, and under coercion, including:
- injections with experimental drugs and toxins
- receiving skin grafting and eye color altering drugs
- deliberate exposure to fatal diseases
- prolonged exposure to radiation
- injections with cancer-causing agents
- sexual sterilization methods and being inserted with experimental birth control devices
- behavior modification and mind-altering methods, including sensory deprivation, electric shocks, prolonged isolation and torture
- prolonged exposure to sub-zero cold while naked - forcing children to observe dead bodies of other children
22. Involuntary sexual sterilization of all non-Christian Indians as a matter of policy
23. Imprisoning children on school premises to extort money or compliance from their parents
24. Renting out and trafficking children to pedophiles
25. Regularly forcing children to eat contaminated or maggoty food and regurgitated remains
26. Providing children to pharmaceutical testing companies, the military and universities for experimental purposes
27. Obstruction of justice and police investigations
28. Blackmailing, threatening and killing witnesses to these and other crimes.
29. Displacing native families from their homes and lands to ensure attendance by children in the residential schools
30. Forcibly kidnapping children from their homes and territories
31. Stealing and speculating in indigenous lands and resources
32. Operating a reign of terror against non-Christian Indians and their children through special courts and police constables outside the law
33. Secretly interring the remains of children who died because of these acts, and disinterring and disposing of them through incineration
34. Systematically concealing these crimes and others by murder, falsification and destruction of records, disinterring of human remains, and fabricating false histories of the residential schools, with the collusion of others.
These crimes occurred in but were not restricted to the following institutions – Residential schools and Indian Hospitals – operated by the aforementioned government and churches, to which eyewitnesses have attested.
Statement of Aims for The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State
(Founded June 15, 2010)
Note: The term "Church" refers to both Catholic and Protestant denominations, and any religious organization complicit in these crimes.
1. Full Reparations: Genuine restorative measures and payments are required, on terms dictated by survivors and their families. The Church must pay for all costs incurred by their victims as a result of their abuse by the Church, including all medical bills, counseling, vocational retraining, loss of income and education, and other expenses. The Church must return all land and property taken from their victims, evacuate illegally occupied land of indigenous people, and restore all the wealth generated by their exploitation of their victims.
2. Full Disclosure: The Church must be compelled to surrender all evidence, documentation and forensic remains, and all witnesses and perpetrators, connected to crimes against persons under their care or in their institutions. The Church must openly and fully participate without conditions in public and legal inquiries into their crimes.
3. Repatriation and Memorials: The Church must surrender for a proper burial the remains of all those who died under their care or in their institutions, without conditions and at church expense. Public memorial sites and museums must be established to record these crimes, the names of the dead, their cause of death and the names of those responsible.
4. Criminal Prosecution: The persons and institutions responsible for the suffering and death of children must be arrested, tried and sentenced in courts of law and as part of an International Commission of Inquiry. No form of immunity, exemption or protection regarding the Church, diplomatic or otherwise, can impede this legal process.
5. Preventative Measures: To ensure that these crimes against the innocent never happen again, the Church must lose all special privileges and immunities which set it above and beyond the law, and be re- established as a public, accountable institution. All clergy and church officials must be licensed and monitored as public servants, and be subject to review, discipline and loss of licensing. All Church tax exemptions must be abolished, and the Church and its property and wealth nationalized. All diplomatic recognition and governmental status of the Vatican must be annulled. All Church laws and policies which harm others and conceal criminal acts by the Church will be abolished. Known offenders among clergy and other Church personnel will be publicly identified and registered, and monitored by the community. No Church body larger than an individual congregation will be allowed to legally exist or operate.
This statement has so far been endorsed by over fifty individuals and the following organizations:
Templemore Forgotten Victims ( Antrim, Ireland )
Survivors of Clergy Abuse Australia
Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared ( Canada )
Shuswap Association for the Promotion of Eco-Development (SAPED - Canada )
Against Church Terror (ACT) - United States Cultural Foundation Native Expressions ( Canada ) Republican Party of Kanata ( Canada ) Akha Heritage Foundation ( United States - Thailand )
CLIP
Much more through http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/ - You may also review the entry and my comment on this in the WORTH NOTING RIGHT AWAY section at the top of this compilation. You may also want to sign this petition: STOP COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE - Please note that a Spanish version of this book exists, ainsi qu'une version française...
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