Occupy London protesters and church in harmony at Christmas

By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, December 24, 2011
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Anti-capitalist protesters camped outside London's St Paul's Cathedral on Saturday prepared to ring in Christmas along with the church as previous squabbles were put firmly to one side.
Spirits within the Occupy Londoon camp were "perfect" after a High Court judge hearing the case for their removal said Friday he would not reach a verdict until next year.
The protesters and the Church of England (CoE) have not always sung from the same hymn sheet, but the two camps have now found a common message.
Worshippers filing out of St Paul's after a Christmas Eve carol service largely ignored the rag-tag collection of tents on the iconic cathedral's doorstep, but protesters spoke of a new-found bond with the clergy.
"We're working together very well," demonstrator Michael Bell told AFP.
"They performed a service for us on the steps with the clergy singing as the choir," he added. "I'm not religious at all, but I really enjoyed it and so did other people who were there.
"They invited us to Midnight Mass and I will most certainly be attending."
Bell added that their shared values of "community and supporting one another" resonated particularly strongly at Christmas, and explained there had been a spike in numbers of people visiting to pledge support over the festive period.
Also resonating strongly were the booming bass and distorted guitars that entertained a handful of party-minded campers late Saturday, offering a stark contrast to the angelic melodies performed at the earlier church carol service.
On top of impromptu live music events, Occupy London also plans a New Year's Eve concert, a special performance of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and ukulele jamming.
One protester, who wished not to be named, said the "vibe was perfect" after judge Keith Lindblom announced he would not rule on an eviction request from The City of London Corporation the local authority in London's financial district before January 11.
"It'll take months," the protester predicted. "We're going to stay here until March or April."
Those involved in the case were "all over the place" with happiness, according to Bell.
Up to 200 demonstrators are based at the makeshift camp, which sprang up on October 15 in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street action in New York.
David Forsdick, the counsel for the City of London Corporation, called on Lindblom to issue immediate eviction orders, saying the camp had become a "magnet" for crime, drunks and drug addicts.
The accusations "didn't surprise us," said the unnamed demonstrator, adding that Lindblom had been to the site himself and found no evidence to support the claims.
If eviction orders are issued, demonstrators said they would remain until forcibly removed, and then would "move together, somewhere else."

Police Block Protesters From Bringing Food To Zuccotti Park For Christmas Celebration | Occupy Wall Street protesters convened for a Christmas celebration at their old campsite in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan yesterday, but when volunteers showed up with bags of cookies and food for a planned afternoon potluck, New York Police Dept. officers prevented them from entering the square, Manhattan news site DNAinfo.com reports. An NYPD spokesperson offered no comment on why the volunteers, who instead distributed the food along the sidewalk outside the park, were not allowed in. The protesters, meanwhile, celebrated the holiday by taking communion and singing Christmas carols.

Retired police Captain Ray Lewis had worked for the Philadelphia police department for 24 years and had been retired from law enforcement for 8 when he decided to heed a call of duty from Liberty Plaza. He was not planning on becoming a voice in the Occupy Wall Street protests on November 17th when he was arrested along with many other protestors that day. It was his 60th birthday and it was the two-month anniversary of the movement. His new mission has since become to help the police understand that they are part of the 99%. Captain Lewis believes that it is possible to win the hearts, minds, and peaceful cooperation if not outright support of the police.

Captain Lewis and his radical friends used to protest against The Vietnam War. He had long hair in the 70's, which he shaved off in order to join the police force so as to change the system from within. His friends were supposed to do the same with him but he was the only one who followed through on it. He feels he has the experience of having been on both sides of the barriers. He understands the mind of a police officer and can share that knowledge with protesters. He realizes that many protestors may be frustrated and angry with the police because they see them as protectors of the 1% and so they share their anger and frustration with the police rather than with the 1%. Captain Lewis believes that there is a tremendous amount of potential to get the police to support the Occupy Movement which should not be wasted. He personally believes that without their acceptance and support that the movement will not be fully successful.

Captain Lewis does not watch TV or read newspapers because they represent corporate America. He gets his news from the internet where there are millions of true Occupy stories. The videos he saw online inspired him. He said he would not be able to feel comfortable with himself had he not joined the movement after witnessing the protests online. He had wanted to visit Liberty Plaza sooner however he was occupied with something no less important at his home in upstate New York. "Fracking is a major issue. Corporate America is raping the earth." He organized a grass roots campaign in his highly conservative town, with barely a dozen neighbors, to replace two incumbent Republicans with two members of the community who had no political experience but who were anti-fracking. He stood for 12 hours outside the polling station handing out leaflets on Tuesday November 8th. He didn't take a single break, because he was determined not to lose a single vote. He was afraid that the vote would be close however it wasn't. They shocked the town by wining 2 to 1. The following Monday he came to New York City and he was shocked again to learn that Liberty Plaza had been violently evicted.

On N17 Captain Lewis carried a sign that read, "NYPD watch Inside Job and join us." He closely watched the interaction between the NYPD and the protesters that day. He wondered why white shirt cops engaged in the fight when their mission is supposed to be to supervise? He also wondered who was supervising since the supervisors were engaged in the fight! He believed that this was a bad example to set for the other officers. He was inspired by the moral character and dedication of the protestors toward social justice and freedom. "They inspired me to get arrested. They gave up their freedom for justice." In spite of all the medals on his uniform, Captain Lewis doesn't hesitate to say that the moment he crossed the line of protesters and was handcuffed was the proudest of his life.

He did not resist arrest. In fact he made it as easy as possible for the officers to arrest him in order to win their sympathy. Although he knows all of them were curious as to why he allowed himself to be arrested, none of them dared to ask him anything for fear of being observed doing so by their supervisors. But he had planted the seed: "You are one of us" was the message. "I'm showing you I'm here and that it is ok for you to be here too. No police officer wants to be the first to enter this arena. If one does, then others will feel more comfortable." Even if they can't yet physically enter the protests, they can begin to identify with them through Captain Lewis.

He believes that a whole new dynamic between police and protestors is possible. He has expressed his views in the General Assembly of New York City. Like everyone else he is careful not to force his opinions or offend anyone else. "I come and leave inconspicuously, anonymously. I never asked who the leaders or the goals are. I just did my own individual protest and I only express my opinions when I'm asked to."

He believes that the police are susceptible to the cause of the Occupy Movement because things have grown difficult for them and their families over the years as well. "When I first joined the police we had lifetime health care. Then it went down to 3 years of healthcare after you retire. Now they are currently in negotiations to make it zero. The police know that. Ten years ago we didn't have as much money deducted from our paycheck to support our pensions as officers do now. New recruits are having more money deducted from their weekly paycheck to get the same pension as the old timers are getting. We always got at least a cost of living increase in salary. Now there is no pay raises, not even a cost of living. As you can see the economic problems in this country also affect the police."

Expressing anger with the police will not help the movement according to Captain Lewis. He believes that the police will dig their own grave by pepper spraying innocent people. "No one on Main Street America believed that the people at UC Davis deserved to be pepper sprayed. That sociopathic cop contributed to the movement's cause beyond his wildest imagination. Any brutality against peaceful people will put Main Street America on the side of the movement. However if America sees the protesters fighting back against the police, they will assume that the protestors started it and that the use of brutality will be justified.

His advice for those who agree with his insights is simple. "Go to the barricades where the police are and express your hard feelings without screaming. Keep it short, 3 or 4 minutes. Start politely with something like, "good morning, officer, I would like to tell you why I'm here." They won't even look up at you. They are trained not to be distracted, but they will hear you and they will hear your respect. They will hear your suffering and your family's suffering. And this is a very important message for them to hear. I understand that it takes a lot self-discipline and a lot of will power to control one's rage and anger with injustice, but what's more important? To vent your frustrations or to help the movement? There are millions of Americans like the police who are open to changing the system. They will be supportive if they can relate to the messenger."

One reporters attempts to witness what went on over a month ago at Zuccotti Park in NYC [and why I'm not as optimistic about the Police joining up for the most part, as is Capt. Lewis]
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By about 4 a.m. today, New York City police had pushed the media out of Zuccotti Park and were preparing to evict the few dozen protesters who remained. Yet there I was, standing in the park amid a gaggle of high-ranking officers, quietly watching the whole thing unfold.

"You gonna occupy awhile?" one officer cracked to another.

"Yeah," the other guy smiled.

I stood next to them against a short granite wall, trying to avoid notice.

Like the other reporters who'd swarmed to Lower Manhattan to cover the eviction, I'd quickly discovered that the media was not allowed here. The police had created a one-block buffer zone around the parkin some areas two or three blocksand were refusing to admit even the most credentialed members of the press. A New York Times reporter had already been arrested, a member of the National Lawyers Guild told me. I feared that Occupy Wall Street's big day was being censored.

As occupiers streamed out of the park, harried by baton-wielding cops, I resolved to get inside. Shielded from view by a car, I slipped under a barricade and came to another blockade across the street from the park's southeast corner, where I cut through a hole and was quickly approached by a police officer. "I'm not an occupier," I told him, holding out my business card.

"That's great, he said, pointing away from the park. "But you are going to have to wait on the other side of the street."

I waited, and when nobody was looking, I crossed back over as confidently as I could and entered a scrum of suit-wearing police brass and cleanup workers scrubbing the park's sidewalk. Nobody bothered to stop me as I strode up to the park's northern entrance and stopped against a wall, a few yards from where police in helmets surrounded the the remaining occupiers.

Next to me, an officer was telling an important-looking guy named Eddie about "the intel we've had over the past couple of months" about "the severely mentally retarded, the ones that are real fucked up in the head, and have been violent in the past." He went on: "They are a little off kilter. They're off their meds. They haven't had meds in 30 days."

"I'm only 24 hours off mine," Eddie joked.

"It's good for you, Eddie," the cop said. "You've got to come clean every once in a while."

As the two men talked, a sweaty-faced man wearing a neon vest over a business suit walked up and started tearing protest signs off the wall."I couldn't wait," he said. "Destroying things never felt so good."

"Really," someone said, almost inflecting the word as a question.

"They're fucking assholes," the guy in the suit shot back.

Another guy came up to Eddie. "How are we about hooking up the fire hydrants?" he asked. "We talkin' to somebody?"

"Do it. Do it," Eddie said over the roar of a garbage truck.

A few yards away, the last occupiers took turns waving a large American flag. Huddled inside the park's makeshift kitchen, they seemed as diverse as Occupy Wall Street: There was a shaggy punk in a spiky leather jacket. A young girl in a red sweatshirt that read "Unity." Clean-shaven guys wearing glasses. A shirtless occupier named Ted Hall, who has led an effort to hone the movement's "visions and goals." All of them surrounded a smaller group of occupiers who'd chained their necks to a pole.

A white-shirted officer moved in with a bullhorn. "If you don't leave the park you are subject to arrest. Now is your opportunity to leave the park."

Nobody budged. As a lone drum pounded, I climbed up on the wall to get a better view.

"Can I help you?" an burly officer asked me, his helpfulness belied by his scowl.

"I'm a reporter," I told him.

"This is a frozen zone, all right?" he said, using a term I'd never heard before. "Just like them, you have to leave the area. If you do not, you will be subject to arrest."

By then, riot police were moving in, indiscriminately dousing the peaceful protesters with what looked like pepper spray or some sort of gas. As people yelled and screamed and cried, I tried to stay calm.

"I promise to leave once the arrests are done," I replied.
"This is a frozen zone," one cop insisted. "You could be injured." His meaning was clear.

"No, you are going to leave now."

He grabbed my arm and began dragging me off. My shoes skidded across the park's slimy granite floor. All around me, zip-cuffed occupiers writhed on the ground beneath a fog of chemicals.

"I just want to witness what is going on here," I yelped.

"You can witness it with the rest of the press," he said. Which, of course, meant not witnessing it.

"Why are you excluding the press from observing this?" I asked.

"Because this is a frozen zone. It's a police action going on. You could be injured."

His meaning was clear. I let myself be hustled across the street to the press pen.

"What's your name?"

His reply came as fast as he could turn away: "Watch your back."
Josh Harkinson

[URL="http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153530/7_of_the_nastiest_scams%2C_rip-offs_and_tricks_from_wall_street_crooks/?page=entire"]7 of the Nastiest Scams, Rip-Offs and Tricks From Wall Street Crooks
How many high-level Wall Street players have been put in jail for the crimes that led to the financial crisis? Not Even One.
[/URL]December 26, 2011 |

Last week several executives from the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, known as "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,"were sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for civil fraud. They were charged with misleading investors about the quality of the loans they were buying. But this is a civil suit, not a criminal prosecution, so they face no possibility of jail time. And the SEC is notoriously ready to settle these cases, accepting fines without admission of guilt. Meanwhile, last month Bloomberg News revealed that the Federal Reserve secretly loaned $1.2 trillion to banks on Dec. 5, 2008, their neediest day, even as some of their CEOs were assuring investors their banks were healthy. Are these CEOs facing prosecution or even civil fraud suits for doing the very same thing? Not so much.

These stories barely even reveal the tip of the iceberg of financial malfeasance. We have been hearing for years now about the scams, frauds, rackets, schemes, tricks and various other ways that people on Wall Street made gazillions while crashing the economy. The one thing we haven't heard anything about is anyone at the top being held criminally accountable … for anything!

Given these recent developments, the end of a bad year seems like a good time to take a look back at just a few examples of what was, and in too many cases, still is going on. So here is a little holiday-season nudge to all the attorneys general who may be hesitant to take them on -- if not with jail time, then at least The banksters still have faced no accountability.

They got bailed out … will We, the People continue to get sold out?

Fraudclosure/Robosigning

After the housing bubble collapsed, and the "innovative" mortgage "products" that were created by the financial industry began to blow up, with people's payments rising into the stratosphere just as housing prices dropped and people were losing their jobs, the banks were faced with literally millions of foreclosures to process. But, being Wall Street outfits, they didn't want to be responsible for doing any actual work themselves. Best to outsource the work to someone … cheap. And that is what they did and are still doing.

The banks hired "robosigning" outfits to process the foreclosures, which resulted in accusations of documentation fraud, where the outfits file affidavits claiming to have documents they do not have. The original mortgages often did not include proper paperwork to clearly prove who signed the loans or who had title, etc. These firms would forge signatures, sign affidavits saying they had proper paperwork when they did not, and a number of other ruses to speed foreclosures. And courts set up what were called "rocket dockets" to assist the process. David Dayen at Firedoglake (Sept 2010): Foreclosure Fraud as Cover-Up for Mortgage Fraud,

Banks never had the proper documentation for these loans, after handing them out to anyone with a pulse, and slicing and dicing them through securitization. The fraud allows banks and the state and local governments explicitly facilitating this by setting up special, speedy foreclosure courts the ability to paper over these objections. If the lenders had to obey the law and use a deliberative process to affirm the title ownership, practically nobody would get evicted. If enough of those struggling can be forced out of their homes, and the fraudulent mortgages thrown in the dumper, the banks can save their balance sheets.

This fraudulent process caught up with the banks, and once again the government offered "settlements" that, instead of prosecuting the fraud, offered immunity from prosecution before the states even had a chance to fully investigate charges. California's Attorney General Kamela Harris backed away from this deal. Several other state Attorneys General, including New York's Eric Schneiderman and Delaware's Beau Biden are independently investigating foreclosure fraud, along with those in Nevada, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Kentucky.

We'll see if the "settlement" comes through, blocking a more comprehensive investigation and possible prosecutions. Recently Massachusetts filed the first foreclosure-fraud lawsuit, followed by Nevada.

Pushing Subprime Loans

The initial wave of mortgages to go bad were the "subprime" mortgages that were given to people barely able or even unable to make their payments. Why were there so many of these mortgages in the system? These mortgages were pushed on people by "predatory lenders" who would make a quick buck on upfront fees and commissions and then sell the loans to Wall Street to be repackaged into "CDOs" the "toxic assets" that took down much of the financial system.

You may have come across the recent story in the news about the Sheriff and movers refusing to evict a 103-year-old woman and her 83-year-old daughter from the home they have lived in for 53 years. So here is a question: Why does a 103-year-old woman who has been in her house for 53 years even have a mortgage? Because many banks were pushing minority borrowers into expensive subprime loans, even if they qualified for standard mortgages.

According to Think Progress, "Wells Fargo had perhaps the most horrifying practices in this department, calling the subprime loans that they pushed in poor, black neighborhoods "ghetto loans."

Predatory lending isn't just about steering borrowers into very expensive loans, it is also about hard-selling people into borrowing money in the first place. According to The Leadership Conference, "Predatory lending occurs when a lender uses unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices when selling a loan to a consumer. Borrowers are steered toward unaffordable loans, or charged higher fees or interest rates than those they qualify for. "
Predatory and subprime lending has died down, thanks to some degree of a restoration of sanity and new lending standards. But no one stepped in and stopped it when the practice was at its … prime.
Meanwhile yet another "settlement" with no criminal charges is occurring. On Wednesday the government announced a $335 million settlement with Bank of America's Countrywide Financial unit for overcharging minorities and pushing them into subprime loans.

Betting Against Designed-to-Fail Bonds

Even in collapsing markets there is money to be made by placing bets against assets that are overvalued, and then when their price drops the bets pay off. And if you know where the toxic assets are, in advance, you can make a ton of money. The best way to know where toxic assets are is if you put them there, on purpose, in order for them to collapse. A ProPublica story, Did Citi Get a Sweet Deal? Bank Claims SEC Settlement on One CDO Clears It on All Others, says CitiBank created toxic assets on purpose in order to make bets that they would fail,

In the run-up to the global financial collapse, Citigroup's bankers worked feverishly to create complex securities. In just one year, 2007, Citi marketed more than $20 billion worth of deals backed by home mortgages to investors around the world, most of which failed spectacularly. Subsequent lawsuits and investigations turned up evidence that the bank knew that some of the products were low quality and, in some instances, had even bet they would fail.

Citibank made a lot of money from these bets because they knew where the toxic assets were, because they put them there, on purpose, in order to bet against them. CitiBank created these CDO toxic assets in a way that was designed to fail, and sold them to customers as solid investments, and then made bets that these assets were worthless. When the designed-to-fail assets failed, CitiBank made money, the customers were wiped out.

The Securities and Exchange Comission (SEC) offered to "settle" this case with CitiBank, accepting a cash fine in exchange for dropping any prosecution or even making CitiBank admit wrongdoing. But promsingly this was rejected by the judge. DailyKos: Judge Rakoff stands up to SEC and Citigroup,

Today, Judge Rakoff added to his legacy of independence by rejecting the SEC's efforts to settle with Citigroup for $285M over mortgage-backed securities fraud allegations.

… Under the law, Judge Rakoff was obligated to determine whether this settlement was "fair, reasonable, and in the public interest"; the SEC argued that no, the public interest didn't actually matterand, if it did, the SEC itself could assess what the public needed. No no no, said the Judge.

Goldman Sachs also received a earlier settlement-without-prosecution for operating a similar scheme. Washington Post: Goldman Sachs to pay record settlement in fraud suit, change business practices,

Goldman Sachs agreed Thursday to pay $550 million to settle a fraud suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission that accused the storied Wall Street bank of selling a subprime-mortgage investment that was secretly designed to fail.

The crux of the case alleges that Paulson & Co., a hedge fund, was looking for a way to bet on a drop in the housing market and that it asked Goldman to help create a financial product that would allow such a wager. Paulson, led by hedge fund manager John Paulson, essentially bought insurance against the investment -- much like taking out an insurance policy on a person who secretly has a potentially deadly disease. …

The investment ultimately lost virtually all its value, costing investors $1 billion.

Word is these schemes were not uncommon. Ney getting that an investment is going to blow up if you're the one who put the bomb in it and set the timer in the first place.

An "Epidemic" Of Mortgage Fraud

For years regulators were warned about "an epidemic" of mortgage fraud, but looked the other way. For example, a CNN news story is from 2004, years before the financial collapse, FBI warns of mortgage fraud 'epidemic', warned,

Rampant fraud in the mortgage industry has increased so sharply that the FBI warned Friday of an "epidemic" of financial crimes which, if not curtailed, could become "the next S&L crisis."

… The FBI has dispatched undercover teams across the country in an urgent investigation into dealings by suspect mortgage brokers, appraisers, short-term investors, and loan officers, Swecker, flanked by FBI executives and Justice Department prosecutors, revealed.

The Bush administration's reaction was to pull FBI agents off of white collar crime like mortgage fraud, reducing the numer of agents looking at banking fraud from 1,000 during the S&L Crisis investigation down to around 100.

Ratings Agencies Gave AAA to CDOs

Subprime and just fraudulent mortgages were getting bundled up into complex bonds and sold by the big Wall Street banks to investors looking for higher yields than they could get from other investments. (They didn't even bother to make sure they had proper documentation proving who had signed the loans, and who should receive the payments. More on this later.)

But investors wanted to buy bonds that were safe. So they turned to the ratings agencies. These are the companies responsible for determining the safety of investments. The ratings agencies had conflicts of interest, being paid in various ways by Wall Street to help mislead investors and tell them that the "toxic assets" bonds that Wall Street was selling had the highest safety rating of AAA. Then the investors lost, the economy was tanked and the taxpayers are now and into the future paying the bill.

William Black was a regulator during the S&L crisis. He explains at the Huffington Post, writing in, The Two Documents Everyone Should Read to Better Understand the Crisis,

The first document everyone should read is by S&P, the largest of the rating agencies. The context of the document is that a professional credit rater has told his superiors that he needs to examine the mortgage loan files to evaluate the risk of a complex financial derivative whose risk and market value depend on the credit quality of the nonprime mortgages "underlying" the derivative. A senior manager sends a blistering reply with this forceful punctuation:

Any request for loan level tapes is TOTALLY UNREASONABLE!!! Most investors don't have it and can't provide it. [W]e MUST produce a credit estimate. It is your responsibility to provide those credit estimates and your responsibility to devise some method for doing so.

The rating agencies never reviewed samples of loan files before giving AAA ratings to nonprime mortgage financial derivatives. …

…Worse, the S&P document demonstrates that the … banks … engaged in the same willful blindness. They did not review samples of loan files because doing so would have exposed the toxic nature of the assets they were buying and selling. The entire business was premised on a massive lie -- that fraudulent, toxic nonprime mortgage loans were virtually risk-free. The lie was so blatant that the banks even pooled loans that were known in the trade as "liar's loans" and obtained AAA ratings despite FBI warnings that mortgage fraud was "epidemic."

In other words, superiors at the ratings agencies told their underlings to just make up fraudulent credit ratings.

Today the people who were at the top of the ratings agencies and the Wall Street firms have millions and live in big houses. How many of the rest of us now or will have to live in cars and cardboard boxes because of what they did?

Banksters Who Made Out Like … Bandits

Many financial-company executives made millions (hundreds of millions, actually) while they were doing questionable things that ended up crashing their companies and the economy. But they got to keep the money. For example, when you hear that Wall Street firm "Lehman Brothers" went bankrupt, you might think, "serves them right." But what actually happened was that a lot of regular people ended up losing their jobs while a few people at the top got really, really rich. CEO Richard Fuld, for example, ended up with almost half a billion. (Really, really rich.) Business Week: How Much Did Lehman CEO Dick Fuld Really Make?

"Mr. Fuld will do fine," Waxman said. "He can walk away from Lehman a wealthy man who earned over $500 million. But taxpayers are left with a $700 billion bill to rescue Wall Street and an economy in crisis."

So, no, "they" didn't get what they deserved and neither did top executives like Fuld.

Insiders Profiting From Being … Insiders

Stephen Friedman was a member of the Board of Goldman Sachs at the same time as he was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has to resign from the NY Federal Reserve, keeping his position with Goldman Sachs, after it was revealed that he had purchased $3 million worth of Goldman Sachs stock while the Federal Reserve was regulating the company after it became a bank holding company in September 2008. This was around the time that the NY Fed negotiated for Goldman Sachs to receive payments from AIG, that would be paid at 100 cents on the dollar, even though AIG was in default. According to an Oct. 27, 2009 Bloomberg report, New York Fed's Secret Choice to Pay for Swaps Hits Taxpayers,

The deal contributed to the more than $14 billion that over 18 months was handed to Goldman Sachs, whose former chairman, Stephen Friedman, was chairman of the board of directors of the New York Fed when the decision was made. Friedman, 71, resigned in May, days after it was disclosed by the Wall Street Journal that he had bought more than 50,000 shares of Goldman Sachs stock following the takeover of AIG. He declined to comment for this article.

Congress finally, finally voted to audit the Federal Reserve. It was a one-time, limited audit, but that is a lot more than We, the People were allowed to know about the Fed before the audit. What did we learn? Rolling Stone's Matt Tiabbi, in The Real Housewives of Wall Street, tells us,

The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. "Our jaws are literally dropping as we're reading this," says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "Every one of these transactions is outrageous."

For just one example of what has been going on with the Fed, one company, named Waterfall TALF Opportunity, received nine loans totaling around $220 million. Among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches. Tiabbi explains why you care, writing,

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley's investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.

Insiders getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Fed, in secret. That is just one example of the shenanigans discovered when the Fed was audited. Is there any investigation of this underway? Not that the public has been told, and not likely ever.

More recently there was another example of insiders potentially profiting from being on the inside track was in the news recently. President Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may have tipped off a group of hedge fund managers with specific information about what the government would be doing.

Again, no one is being prosecuted.

Impunity?

There are so, so many other outrages. And these are only the things that have hit the news. Are some or all of these not just outrages, but actual crimes? After the "S&L Crisis" there were 1,100 prosecutions and more than 800 bank officials went to jail. This time even with the appearance of widespread criminality in the financial industry not so much. In fact, not any.

Were crimes committed by people high up in the financial industry? It looks that way, but we really have no way of knowing if our government again and again offers "settlements" that block the comprehensive investigations that come with prosecutions.

Why won't our legal system prosecute anyone on Wall Street for anything? We see outrage after outrage, and they put poor people in jail for life for stealing a hot dog when they are hungry. Meanwhile Wall Street is funding an effort to blame government for the financial collapse, to block regulation and defund the regulatory agencies. This is an effort to subvert government and turn people against democracy so that plutocracy government of by and for the 1% can reign.

We should all be demanding that the legal system do its job to sort this out instead of actively blocking prosecutions by approving "settlements." People lose faith in government when it looks like the 1% can get away with any outrage. And now we know that when We, the People gather to demand something be done about this we are met with pepper spray and batons.

Cleveland and Pittsburgh City Councils Officially Support Occupy Wall Street
December 12, 2011
By Sarah Jones

Why aren't more cities getting behind Occupy? As grateful as we can be for the few who are, it begs the question why our local governments are so hesitant to back the stated agenda of a movement of the people.

The city of Cleveland recently passed an emergency resolution to support Occupy Cleveland and the Occupy movement in general. Their particular resolution is stronger than some others we've seen in other cities who have shown official support of Occupy, such as Pittsburgh's, but all support shown for Occupy is a tremendous improvement over where we were before the American Autumn.

The Cleveland City Council resolution will be sent to Congress and President Obama, and reads in part (emphasis mine):

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CLEVELAND:

Section 1. That this Council recognizes and supports the principles of the Occupy Movement and the peaceful and lawful exercise of the First Amendment as a cherished and fundamental right in the effort to seek solutions for economically distressed Americans at the federal, state and local levels.

Section 2. That this Council commits to working with the Jackson administration to continue taking steps to minimize economic insecurity and destructive disparities in the City of Cleveland.

Section 3.That this Council requests our Congressional leaders generate solutions for economically distressed Americans.

Section 4.That the Clerk of Council is directed to transmit copies of this resolution to President Barack Obama and all members of the U.S. Congress.

Section 5.That this resolution is hereby declared to be an emergency measure and, provided it receives the affirmative vote of two-thirds of all the members elected to Council, it shall take effect and be in force immediately upon its adoption and approval by the Mayor; otherwise, it shall take effect and be in force from and after the earliest period allowed by law.

The resolution is dated as adopted on Dec 5, 2012, which we hope and assume is a typo.

Pittsburgh's resolution was strong in its support:

WHEREAS, the Occupy Wall Street movement is a non-violent, people powered movement for direct democracy that began in the United States on September 17, 2011 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City; and

WHEREAS. the Occupy Wall Street movement and its offshoot movements around the world, including here in Pittsburgh, exemplify a new and exciting surge of popular resistance to the dominance of multi-national banks and corporations over the lives of millions of working families,

WHEREAS, solidified by a march and rally on October 15, 2011, from Freedom Corner to Market Square, and continuing through the ongoing encampment at Grant Street and Sixth Avenue, Occupy Pittsburgh represents our local contribution, and has become one of the more sophisticated organizations in this worldwide movement; and

WHEREAS, the Allegheny County Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and other organizations, in addition to many cities and other municipalities, have gone on record in support of the Occupy movement;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Council of the City of Pittsburgh does support and declare solidarity with Occupy Pittsburgh and the Occupy Wall Street movement, exercising First Amendment rights in a free, open, peaceful, and productive manner, toward the better condition of our citizens and of these United States.

SPONSORED BY COUNCIL PRESIDENT DARLENE M. HARRIS

CO-SPONSORED BY COUNCIL MEMBERS:
RICKY V. BURGESS, PATRICK DOWD, THERESA KAIL-SMITH, BRUCE A. KRAUS, R. DANIEL LAVELLE, WILLIAM PEDUTO, NATALIA RUDIAK, AND DOUGLAS SHIELDS

Isn't Bloomberg ashamed? Why would any mayor treat the people as an enemy, when they should be willing to meet with the people in order to hear their complaints and should be supporting the precious First Amendment rights of their citizens. We saw early on the mayor of Austin using the Occupy protests as a way of being more in touch with the people, instead of hiding in the ivory tower of privilege. That's just smart politics and it happens to also be the right thing for them to do.

Of course, in most cities the police answer to the Mayor and not the City Council, so we can't expect police brutality against the protesters to fall in line with these resolutions. One was, in fact, introudced in New York as well.

Other cities with similar resolutions are Seattle, LA and Chicago; so we're seeing a melding of progressive cities with labor cities. If I were a Republican standing for the 1%, that would make me nervous; but then again, if I were a Republican standing for the 1%, I wouldn't care what the cities or her people did, because I would think the riches of this country existed for those who were greedy enough and privileged enough to have a piece of the pie already.

The actions of the city councils in Cleveland and Pittsburgh serve as a reminder that the battle isn't strictly the 99% versus the governmental puppets of the 1%. Movements are comprised of individuals, and individuals within governments are being forced to confront the realities of our American corruption and inequality.

Cleveland and Pittsburgh have done the right thing. Here's hoping that the protests continue until more cities, states, and finally our federal government gets the message.

NEW YORK More than a month after Occupy Wall Street activists were removed from a Manhattan park, the bronze bull where the movement started is still surrounded by police barricades and some New Yorkers want them down.
Arthur Picollo, who chairs the Bowling Green Association community alliance, tells the New York Post that it's "outlandish" to keep visitors away from one of the city's most popular monuments. Occupy protesters first gathered by the bull on Sept. 17, before building their encampment in nearby Zuccotti Park.
Police evicted them from the privately owned public park in mid-November.
Authorities say the bull that symbolizes Wall Street wealth must be protected because it's a possible target of vandalism.

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While I keep this updated best I can of what I consider to be a very important movement, with posts both by, for and occasionally against OWS and Occupy, I'd be interested and welcome others posting or commenting on posts, as they see fit. It now seems to be on some search engines as a choice on keeping up on the Occupy Movement - and there are many - so some not on our Forum seem to be regularly following it or catching it here and there - perhaps only once.
While the Occupy Movement is far, FAR from extinct, the very visible and larger occupations were to a large extent decimated by the Police in various cities. Not all; and even in those removed the Movement continues with indoor meetings, GAs, group meetings and planning, actions, livestreaming, etc. There are big plans mostly in the D.C. area on January 16, 17, 18 and much excitement about the coming Spring when most, if not all, destroyed physical occupations will attempt re-occupations at previous or new locations. Occupy is also increasingly becoming involved or relevant to upcoming elections - including the Presidential one and may become a decisive factor in many of them. The press continues [for the most part] to declare its demise and growing lack of public support - something I find quite the opposite of the truth.
Anyway, feel free to post significant items I've missed or your reactions to those I've posted - even just your thoughts/hopes/fears about the Occupy Movement and its prospects in the coming year and beyond. It is my belief the the 'apparent' diminution of visibility is mostly attributable to the Winter, the destruction of physical occupations and the intentional assignation in the MSM. Spring will show OWSs real power, IMO - and the fourth month anniversary events in DC are expected to be large and cause quite a stir among the Powers That Be. Stay tuned.

Utah Doctors Join "Occupy" Movement
by Brian Moench

Taking inspiration from the Occupy Movement, last week a group of doctors and environmental groups in Salt Lake City, Utah announced a law suit against the third largest mining corporation in the world, Rio Tinto, for violating the Clean Air Act in Utah. This is likely the first time ever that physicians have sued industry for harming public health.

Air pollution causes between 1,000 and 2,000 premature deaths every year in Utah. Moreover, medical research in the last ten years has firmly established that air pollution causes the same broad array of diseases well known to result from first and second hand cigarette smoke--strokes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, virtually every kind of lung disease, neurologic diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, loss of intelligence, chromosomal damage, higher rates of diabetes, obesity, adverse birth outcomes and various cancers such as lung cancer, breast cancer and leukemia.

[Utah's Bingham Canyon mine] Utah's Bingham Canyon mineMost of Utah's cities are in violation of many of the EPA's national air quality standards, and for several days during a typical winter Utah is plagued by the worst air pollution in the country. The American Lung Association routinely gives Utah's largest cities an "F" for our air quality. Last February, Forbes magazine, hardly a cheerleader for excessive environmental protection, rated Salt Lake City as the nineth most toxic city in the country, and the biggest contributor to that ranking was the mining and smelting operations at the Bingham Canyon mine, run by London-based mining conglomerate Rio Tinto/Kennecott (RTK).

This mine is the world's largest man made excavation and has created the largest mining related water pollution problem in the world. The mine is located on the western doorstep of Salt Lake City, home to well over one million people. There is no comparable juxtaposition of an enormous mining operation this close to such a large urban center. RTK's mine and smelter operations account for 30% of the particulate matter emitted into the atmosphere over Salt Lake County, making it by far the largest source of industrial pollution in the urban areas of Utah.

The smelting operations and fugitive dust from the 1,100 foot high waste rock piles and tailings ponds are a constant source of highly toxic heavy metal contamination--lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium-- to the air, water, and soil of Utah's largest city. The mining industry watchdog, Earthworks, states that before the most recently approved expansion, RTK was releasing 695 million pounds of toxic material into the Salt Lake City environment every year. Because heavy metals do not degrade, are not combustible and cannot be destroyed, that heavy metal toxic burden steadily increases year after year, as it has for over 100 years. Despite this extreme burden on public health, predictably, the Utah Division of Air Quality recently issued a permit for RTK to expand their operations by 32% which will make their pollution emissions even worse.

RTK is making record profits--$15 billion last year. In August Chairman of the Board, Jan du Plessis bragged, "Rio Tinto has produced another set of record breaking results." du Plesses apparently specializes in delivering pollution, he is also chairman of the Board of British American Tobacco. Tom Albanese, Rio Tinto's CEO who made almost $8.5 million in compensation last year, recently lamented, "[Rio Tinto must do] a better job at managing the curse of resource nationalism... and the activism of stakeholder engagement." Let me translate that for you: local people throughout the world are tired of being exploited for profit, they're starting to stand up for themselves, and Rio Tinto doesn't like it. Utah citizens tired of RTK's pollution would be considered part of that "curse" to Rio Tinto executives.

This issue is simple: RTK can well afford to clean up, but they won't, and no one is making them. Their contribution to our pollution is hurting all the residents of Salt Lake City and adding to the premature death total mentioned above. For environmental and public health advocates, RTK pursuing and receiving an approval to expand was "the last straw."

If the core tenet of the Occupy Movement is that corporations and the 1% manipulate every level of government to serve their profit driven agendas and simultaneously disregard, if not openly undermine, the interests of the 99%, then there is no better example than RTK's operation of Utah's Bingham Canyon mine.

UPHE estimates that the mortality, health and environmental costs to the community from RTK pollution is between $2 billion and $4 billion, several times the value of the wages and taxes that they pay. Nonetheless, a massive PR budget allows RTK to heavily advertise themselves as "job providers", and take virtually no responsibility for the various environmental and health consequences of their operations.

Frederick Douglass, the19th century civil rights leader, said,"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them." Let it be known that the people in Utah will no longer "quietly submit" to more pollution, more deaths, shortened life spans and poorer health to fatten the wallets in the London board room of Rio Tinto. We are going to "take back" the air we breathe.
Brian Moench

Dr. Brian Moench is President of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He can be reached at: drmoench@yahoo.com

When most people think of the Occupy movement, a very specific set of images likely pops up: tent cities, Zuccotti Park, Scott Olsen, Third Eye Blind, etc.

But in the minds of many protestors, they aren't occupying any specific place so much as a state of mind--a stance against the global financial and economic elite, the much-vilified one percent.

The proof comes in the form of Occupy Bernal Heights, a neighborhood group focused on fighting evictions in the close-knit San Francisco neighborhood that had its inaugural meeting earlier this month.

"Occupy Bernal started as one of many possible ways to bring the Occupy movement into the neighborhoods," said Stardust, one of the group's organizers. "Some of the neighbors here in Bernal have participated in Occupy SF and other Occupy camps, meetings, and protests, but the politicians and cops were raiding the camps and focusing a lot of organizing energy into camp defense and police brutality issues, rather than other important causes. From the beginning of the Occupy movement, many participants have understood that we occupy not only tents in a camp, but also our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our hearts, and our minds. Moving into the neighborhoods is a natural extension of the activities of the Occupy encampments, even if no tents are involved."

"There are 54 houses in foreclosure or in financial dispute [in the neighborhood] -- it's just horrible," Elizabeth Stephens, another Bernal Heights resident who helped start the neighborhood Occupy movement, told SF Weekly.

Stephens said that the first home they're targeting belongs to a 72-year old veteran named Thomas who is currently on the verge of eviction. "We will approach the bank and ask if they will renegotiate his loan," she said. "They will probably say forget it, but we are going to try. If that doesn't work, there are people willing to sit inside his house when police come to evict him."

This action is typical of the nascent organization's strategy--employing legal experts to sift though mountains of paperwork in lieu of activists camping out in tents.

For many Bernal Heights occupiers, this is their first direct involvement with the movement, but its unlikely to be their last. The group plans on taking action in coordination with other Occupy groups nationwide during the National Day of Action on January 20.

"Housing is a human right," proclaims the Occupy Bernal Heights website, an especially relevant sentiment in an area where both home ownership and evictions are on the higher end of the spectrum for San Francisco neighborhoods.