Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Ed Jewett]

From Dave Pollard's http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2011/11/19/l...r-19-2011/ :

http://howtosavetheworld.ca/images/hurwitt.jpg

http://howtosavetheworld.ca/images/maril...50x650.jpg

[Lauren Johnson]

Was absolutely mesmerized last night watching the viral video of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying. It was totally amazing, simultaneously one of most depressing and inspiring things I've seen in many years.

To recap for those who haven't seen it: police in paramilitary gear line up in front of a group of Occupy protesters peacefully assembled on a quad pathway. Completely unprovoked, police decide to douse the whole group of sitting protesters with pepper spray. There is crying and chaos and panic, but the wheezing protesters sit resolutely in place and refuse to move despite the assault.


Finally, in what to me is the most amazing part, the protesters gather together and move forward shouting "Shame On You! Shame On You!" over and over again. You can literally see the painful truth of those words cutting the resolve of the policemen and forcing them backwards.


Glenn Greenwald's post at Salon says this far better than I can, but there are undeniable conclusions one can draw from this incident. The main thing is that the frenzied dissolution of due process and individual rights that took took place under George Bush's watch, and continued uncorrected even when supposed liberal constitutional lawyer Barack Obama took office, has now come full circle and become an important element to the newer political controversy involving domestic/financial corruption and economic injustice.


As Glenn points out, when we militarized our society in response to the global terrorist threat, we created a new psychological atmosphere in which the use of force and military technology became a favored method for dealing with dissent of any kind. As Glenn writes:

The U.S. Government in the name of Terrorism has aggressively para-militarized the nation's domestic police forces by lavishing them with countless military-style weapons and other war-like technologies, training them in war-zone military tactics, and generally imposing a war mentality on them. Arming domestic police forces with para-military weaponry will ensure their systematic use even in the absence of a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil… It's a very small step to go from supporting the abuse of defenseless detainees (including one's fellow citizens) to supporting the pepper-spraying and tasering of non-violent political protesters.

Why did that step turn out to be so small? Because of the countless decisions we made in years past to undermine our own attitudes toward the rule of law and individual rights. Every time we looked the other way when the president asked for the right to detain people without trials, to engage in warrantless searches, to eavesdrop on private citizens without even a judge knowing about it, we made it harder to answer the question: What is it we're actually defending?


In another time, maybe, we might have been able to argue that we were using force to defend the principles of modern Western civilization, that we were "spreading democracy."


Instead, we completely shat upon every principle we ever stood for, stooping to torture and assassination and extrajudicial detention.


From the very start we unleashed those despotic practices on foreigners, whom large pluralities of the population agreed had no rights at all. But then as time went on we started to hear about rendition and extralegal detention cases involving American citizens, too, though a lot of those Americans turned out to be Muslims or Muslim-sympathizers, people with funny names.


And people mostly shrugged at that, of course, just as they shrugged for years at the insane erosion of due process in the world of drug enforcement. People yawned at the no-knock warrants and the devastating parade of new consequences for people with drug convictions (depending on the state, losing the right to vote, to receive educational aid, to live in public housing, to use food stamps, and so on).

They didn't even care much about the too-innocuously-named new practice of "civil asset forfeiture," in which the state can legally seize the property of anyone, guilty or innocent, who is implicated in a drug investigation a law that permits the state to unilaterally deem property to be guilty of a crime.


The population mostly blew off these developments, thinking that these issues only concerned the guilty, terrorists, drug dealers, etc. And they didn't seem to worry very much when word leaked out that the state had struck an astonishingly far-reaching series of new cooperative arrangements with the various private telecommunications industries. Nobody blinked when word came out that the government was now cheerfully pairing up with companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth to monitor our phone and Internet activities.


Who cared? If you don't have anything to hide, the thinking went, it shouldn't bother you that the government might be checking your phone records, seeing what sites you've been visiting, or quietly distributing armored cars and submachine guns to every ass-end suburban and beyond-suburban police force in America.


We had all of these arguments in the Bush years and it's nothing new to assert that much of our population made a huge mistake in giving up so many of our basic rights to due process. What's new is that we're now seeing the political consequences of those decisions.


Again, when we abandoned our principles in order to use force against terrorists and drug dealers, the answer to the question, What are we defending? started to change.


The original answer, ostensibly, was, "We are defending the peaceful and law-abiding citizens of the United States, their principles, and everything America stands for."

Then after a while it became, "We're defending the current population of the country, but we can't defend the principles so much anymore, because they weigh us down in the fight against a ruthless enemy who must be stopped at all costs."

Then finally it became this: "We are defending ourselves, against the citizens who insist on keeping their rights and their principles."


What happened at UC Davis was the inevitable result of our failure to make sure our government stayed in the business of defending our principles. When we stopped insisting on that relationship with our government, they became something separate from us.


And we are stuck now with this fundamental conflict, whereby most of us are insisting that the law should apply equally to everyone, while the people running this country for years now have been operating according to the completely opposite principle that different people have different rights, and who deserves what protections is a completely subjective matter, determined by those in power, on a case-by-case basis.


Not to belabor the point, but the person who commits fraud to obtain food stamps goes to jail, while the banker who commits fraud for a million-dollar bonus does not. Or if you accept aid in the form of Section-8 housing, the state may insist on its right to conduct warrantless "compliance check" searches of your home at any time but if you take billions in bailout aid, you do not even have to open your books to the taxpayer who is the de facto owner of your company.


The state wants to retain the power to make these subjective decisions, because being allowed to selectively enforce the law effectively means they have despotic power. And who wants to lose that?


The UC Davis incident crystallized all of this in one horrifying image. Anyone who commits violence against a defenseless person is lost. And the powers that be in this country are lost. They've been going down this road for years now, and they no longer stand for anything.


All that tricked-up military gear, with that corny, faux-menacing, over-the-top Spaceballs stormtrooper look that police everywhere seem to favor more and more all of this is symbolic of the increasingly total lack of ideas behind all that force. It was bad enough when we made police defend the use of torture and extrajudicial detention. Now they're being asked to defend mass theft, Lloyd Blankfein's bailout-paid bonus, the principle of Angelo Mozilo not doing jail time, and 28% credit card interest rates.


How strong can anyone defending those causes be? These people are weak and pathetic, and they're getting weaker. And boy, are they showing it. Way to gear up with combat helmets and the the full body armor, fellas, to take on a bunch of co-eds sitting Indian-style on a campus quad. Maybe after work you can go break up a game of duck-duck-goose at the local Chuck E Cheese. I'd bring the APC for that one.


Bravo to those kids who hung in there and took it. And bravo for standing up and showing everyone what real strength is. There is no strength without principle. You have it. They lost it. It's as simple as that.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blo...p-20111122

[Peter Lemkin]

Great and very sad, very true article by Taibbi! Thanks for posting that one. America is SO close to the edge and few inside the Beast yet realize it. Thank goodness a few [and growing] number DO! Surely the last chance to turn America around is now, it will not be possible after this, IMHO. It is very soon, or never again. That bad!

[Christer Forslund]

In an April AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the "US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments." The report went on to explain that the US "organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world ..."

Did the Occupy Movement in the US recieve anything of this help ... ?

[Albert Doyle]

Did the Occupy Movement in the US recieve anything of this help ... ?

America has reached a new level where check and balance is no longer necessary and government operates from an assumption of infallible credibility and authority. Protests against oppression are for other countries, that should be understood...

[Peter Lemkin]

Did the Occupy Movement in the US recieve anything of this help ... ?

America has reached a new level where check and balance is no longer necessary and government operates from an assumption of infallible credibility and authority. Protests against oppression are for other countries, that should be understood...

True, dissent, even questioning the status quo is not really allowed any more in the USA....despite the lip service still given toward it for propaganda and psyop purposes, only. DHS and FBI, as well as others are working hard on destroying and subverting in all ways the occupy movement.

[Keith Millea]

DHS and FBI, as well as others are working hard on destroying and subverting in all ways the occupy movement.

The FBI ???

Published on Thursday, November 24, 2011 by The Nation

Two Scandals, One Connection: The FBI link between Penn State and UC Davis

by Dave Zirin

Two shocking scandals. Two esteemed universities. Two disgraced university leaders. One stunning connection. Over the last month, we've seen Penn State University President Graham Spanier dismissed from his duties and we've seen UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi pushed to the brink of resignation. Spanier was jettisoned because of what appears to be a systematic cover-up of assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's serial child rape. Katehi has faced calls to resign after the she sent campus police to blast pepper spray in the faces of her peaceably assembled students, an act for which she claims "full responsibility." The university's Faculty Association has since voted for her ouster citing a "gross failure of leadership." The names Spanier and Katehi are now synonymous with the worst abuses of institutional power. But their connection didn't begin there. In 2010, Spanier chose Katehi to join an elite team of twenty college presidents on what's called the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which "promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI."

Spanier said upon the group's founding in 2005, "The National Security Higher Education Advisory Board promises to help universities and government work toward a balanced and rational approach that will allow scientific research and education to progress and our nation to remain safe." He also said that the partnership could help provide "internships" to faculty and students interested in "National Security issues."

FBI chief Robert Mueller said at a press conference with Spanier, "We knew it would not be necessarily an easy sell because of the perceived tension between law enforcement and academia. But once we've briefed President Spanier on the national security threats that impact all of you here at Penn State and at other universities, it became clear to all of us why this partnership is so important. "

But the reality of this partnership is far different. Its original mandate was about protecting schools from "cyber theft" and "intellectual property issues." As has been true with the FBI since Hoover, give them a foothold, and they'll take off their shoes and get cozy. Their classified mandate has since expanded to such euphemisms as "counter-terrorism" and "public safety." It also expanded federal anti-terrorism task forces to include the dark-helmeted pepper-spray brigades, otherwise known as the campus police.

As Wired magazine put it in 2007, "presidents are being advised to think like Cold Warriors' and be mindful of professors and students who may not be on campus for purposes of learning but, instead, for spying, stealing research and recruiting people who are sympathetic to an anti-U.S. cause."

Chancellor Katehi said in 2010 that despite these concerns, she was proud to join the NSHEA because "it's important for us to learn from the FBI about the smartest, safest protocols to follow as we do our work, and it is equally important that the FBI has a solid understanding of matters of academic freedom."

Sacremento's FBI special agent in Charge, Drew Parenti, praised her involvement, saying, "The FBI's partnership with higher education is a key component in our strategy of staying ahead of national security threats from our foreign adversaries…. we are very pleased that Chancellor Katehi has accepted an appointment to serve on the board."

As for the actual meetings between the presidents of academic institutions and the FBI, those discussions are classified. If you are a rabble-rousing faculty member or a student group stepping out of line, your school records can become the FBI's business and you'd be none the wiser.

Chris Ott, from the Massachusetts ACLU, said of the NSHEA, "The FBI is asking university faculty, staff, and students to create a form of neighborhood watch against anything that is so called suspicious.' What kinds of things are they going to report on? Who has the right to be snitching? One of the scary things is who [on the campuses] will take it upon themselves to root out spies?"

In the wake of the scandals that have enveloped and now destroyed the careers of Spanier and Katehi, the very existence of the NCHEA should now be called to question. Given the personal character on display by these two individuals, why should anyone trust that the classified meetings have stayed in the realm of "cyber theft" and intellectual property rights? What did the FBI tell Chancellor Katehi about how to deal with the peacefully assembled Occupiers? Was "counter-terrorism" advice given on how to handle her own students?

As for Spanier, how much of Sandusky's actions at Penn State, which were documented on campus but never shared with the local police, was the FBI privy to? Why did the school hire former FBI director Louis Freeh to head up their internal investigation? Does that in fact represent a conflict of interest? And most critically, did the "chilling effect" of a sanctioned FBI presence at Penn State actually prevent people from coming forward?

When Spanier was asked in 2005, if he was concerned about whether a formal partnership with the FBI would cause objections he said, "If there is an issue on my campus, I'd like to be the first person to hear about it, not the last." In the context of recent events, it's probably best to let those words speak for themselves. But fear not for the futures of these two stewards of higher education and academic freedom. Maybe Spanier can put his experience as a federal informant to good use from inside a federal prison. As for Katehi, if, as suspected, she'll be unemployed shortly, perhaps she can take advantage of one of those fabulous internship opportunities having the FBI on campus provides.

© 2011 The Nation

[Magda Hassan]

In an April AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the "US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments." The report went on to explain that the US "organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world ..."

Did the Occupy Movement in the US recieve anything of this help ... ?

Probably not. I expect that money has gone to the companies which sell the technology in Syria to both the government and the protesters. It's a win-win for US corporations. And that's what it is all about. Play and pay both sides. If the pesky Occupiers have their way there will be less hand outs and less space at the trough for corporations.

[Peter Lemkin]

Yeah, sure, the FBI is good [and always has been] at finding true crime and not starting their own - J. Edgar showed the way and they still follow in his [high heeled pink] shoes [with the bows]. That is one sick organization or disorganization! Anyone who'd join any compact or subunit of them - more so in academia - is both sick themselves, and doesn't know anything of their [or America's] history. everything has been 'militarized' - the police, the universities, the production of the nation, the news, the mind set, the intelligence [sic] agencies, and all else - sick, sick Nation!

[Ed Jewett]

Van Jones and Democratic Party Operatives: You Do Not Represent the Occupy Movement

Make Your Own Program Don't Try to Steal Ours
by Kevin Zeese / November 24th, 2011
The corporate media is anointing a false leader of the Occupy Movement in Van Jones of Rebuild the Dream.
The former Obama administration official, who received a golden parachute at Princeton and the Democratic think tank Center for American Progresswhen he left the administration, is doing what Democrats always dosee the energy of an independent movement, race to the front, then lead it down a dead end and essentially destroy it. Jones is doing the dirty work of a Democratic operative and while he and other Dem front groups pretend to support Occupiers, their real mission is to co-opt it.
Glenn Greenwald says in a recent blog, "White House-aligned groups such as the Center for American Progress have made explicity clear that they are going to try to convert OWS into a vote-producing arm for the Obama 2012 campaign."
Before he ran to the front of the Occupy Movement, Jones' Rebuild the Dream had been saying that its first task was to elect Democrats. Now he is claiming there will be 2000 "99% candidates" in 2012. These Democrats will be re-branded as part of the 99% movement. Democrats will now be re-labeled and marketed as part of the 99% movement. Republican operatives did the same thing to the Tea Party. Tea Party candidates, who often used to be corporate "Club for Growth" candidates, ran in the Republican Party. See, e.g. Senator Pat Toomey before and after.
Jones is urging the Occupy Movement to "mature" and move on to an electoral phase. This would only make us a sterile part of the very problem we oppose. The electoral system is a corrupt mirage where only corporate-approved candidates are allowed to be considered seriously. At Occupy Washington, DC, we recognize that putting our time, energy and resources into elections will not produce the change we want to see. What we need to do right now is build a dynamic movement supported by independent media that stands in stark contrast to both corporate-bought-and-paid-for parties.
Democratic operatives want to steal the energy of the Occupy Movement because they do not have any of their own. These Dem front groups operate within the confines of the two corrupt parties and their agenda is limited by what big business interests say is politically realistic. Rebuild the Dream is more of the same that has been seen over and over from groups like MoveOn and Campaign for America's Future elect Democrats is their mantra. It is their only program. And, it is bankrupt.
Democrats need to derail and co-opt the Occupy Movement because it calls attention to what's really happening. The American people need a real jobs bill, not one that is merely a political tactic for an election year. We also need a truly progressive tax systemone that taxes wealth more and workers less. The poorest Americans pay taxes on necessities like food and clothing, so why is it that neither party urges a tax on the purchase of stocks, bonds and derivativesa tax that could raise $800 billion over a decade? And finally, we need an end to the wars and militarism maintained and expanded by both parties, bringing huge profits to the arms industry and immense suffering to millions.
The Occupy Movement is not part of either corporate-dominated party and Van Jones is not our leader. It is corporate rule we oppose. The Obama administration and the Democrats as well as the Republicans maintain the rule of Wall Street. Occupiers have organized an independent movement that challenges the rule of the 1% and their Republican and Democratic lackeys. Bought and paid for with millions of dollars from Wall Street, the health insurance industry and big energy interests, Obama and the Democrats are part of the problem, not the solution.
Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters for Peace. Read other articles by Kevin, or visit Kevin's website.
This article was posted on Thursday, November 24th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Activism, Democrats, Employmrent, Military/Militarism,Obama, Right Wing Jerks.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/11/van-jo...more-39549