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

[Peter Lemkin]

As I write this Philadelphia and Los Angeles being raided by the Police...thanks DHS! NOT! In L.A. they are DNA sampling everyone arrested! Brave New World! TWO LRADs waiting in the wings...not yet used. Cherrypickers removing people from trees. Many of the police wearing HazMat suits over their Ninja suits! Tents were 'removed' with bulldozers. Several Police pulled out huge long knives on the protesters! Some bicycle Police hit protesters with their bikes repeatedly. Some people were injured by Police horses and even some people obeying Police orders were arrested or beaten, etc. Press being removed - even an ABC TV reporter threatened with arrest....the usual and the unusual [now the usual]. One OWS livestreamer had a police gun pulled on him....so much for freedom of the press.

Again, I say the Powers that be are MORE afraid of the OWS Movement than anything or anyone or any group or any nation on the Planet...as OWS Movement is the ONLY one that can defeat them! May it happen in my lifetime. The system can not be repaired - it must be replaced by a new peaceful, loving, sharing, fair, lawful, environmentally sound, sane new paradigm!

[Peter Lemkin]

It's not unprecedented for an inventor to voice regrets when a creation turns out to have harmful uses. It is widely believed the Swedish industrialist, Alfred Nobel, created the Peace Prize bearing his name in response to feelings of guilt around his invention of dynamite and ballistite, both of which were used in violent acts during his lifetime. The famed physicist, Albert Einstein, was said to be greatly distressed for unintentionally advancing the development of the atomic bomb through his work. Today in the aftermath of the crackdown on Occupy Wall Street protesters nationwide, there is a new name to add to the list, Kamran Loghman. In the 80's Loghman was the expert responsible with the FBI in developing weapons grade pepper spray. He also collaborated with police departments to develop guidelines for pepper spray's use. But now after seeing footage of police using pepper spray on non-violent Occupy Wall Street protesters nationwide, including students at UC Davis, protesters with the Occupy movement in New York and 84 year old protester Dora Lee Rainey in Seattle, Kamran Loghman is speaking out against what he calls the most inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents he has ever seen. Loghman will join us in a minute, but first I want to play an excerpt from when the campus police officers at UC Davis pepper sprayed students earlier this month. The students were sitting down during a peaceful protest when officers began pepper spraying them at close range.

CROWD: [Shouting] The whole world is watching. [Shouting] Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you.

PROTESTER: I want your name. I want his name. [Shouting]

AMY GOODMAN: UC Davis police pepper spraying students two weeks ago as they peacefully protested at UC Davis. We're joined now by Kamran Loghman who helped the FBI develop weapons grade pepper spray in the 80's and developed guidelines for police departments using the spray. He is joining us from Washington, DC. Welcome to Democracy Now!. Talk about your reaction to the use of the chemical agent that you helped the FBI develop.

KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Shocked and bewilderment. I mean, I saw it and the first thing that came to my mind wasn't police or students but my own children sitting down, having an opinion, and their being shot and forced by chemical agents.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you develop this in the 80's? How did you help develop pepper spray, Kamran Loghman?

KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Pepper spray was available in those days as a dog repellant, but it did not have the strength to be a weapon grade product for law enforcement and military application, so it went through a series of research and development and a lot of field testing and by the time it became available, it went under three years of study at the FBI Firearms Training Unit in Virginia and became a standard issue with almost every police department in the United States. I was involved in all the research and development and basically development of the product.

AMY GOODMAN: So explain how it went from pepper spray to weapons grade pepper spray and then why the FBI was interested in developing this, and then how it came to be used by police departments all over the country.

KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Well, what you have is that in chili peppers or capsicum peppers or cayenne pepper, as you call it, is the family of capsicum pepper. You have an ingredient which is called capsaicinoids. Capsaicinoid is the active ingredient which actually causes inflammation of the mucous membranes, the eyelids, the nose, the respiratory system, anything that basically is moist in the human body and causes irritation and inflammation in that regard. So that part was manipulated, concentrated, strengthened so it was no longer something you see just in chili pepper but was fortified to many more degree. Then it was formulated under pressure in a canister in aerosol with a variety of chemicals which are not pepper spray such as alcohol or water, depending on the brand, different kinds of propellants or gasses in order to eject this spray. That's how the military specification would be applied making sure that it works every time you pull the trigger, let's call it. In regards to why FBI was interested in it, is because prior to that in the use of force by law enforcement, when you encounter somebody who is aggressive, let's say somebody was under the influence of narcotics or alcohol, and you arrest them and the highway patrol wants to take him out of the car and they become combatant. At that time police officers had really little choice, it was either baton or go to deadly force. By introduction of pepper spray, it was very quick and police officers were trained to do that. They could arrest the individual, take him back to the jail, wash their face, give them proper decontamination and that was the end of the story. In that regard, it was a great weapon. It saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the last 20 years.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what you are seeing today, how it is being used, because you also work with police departments around the country in developing a protocol in how weapons grade pepper spray should be used, Kamran Loghman.

KAMRAN LOGHMAN: One of the original training manuals that was developed for the FBI, as well as many federal law enforcement around the country, as well as the state agencies, was actually authored by me and several other people. In there we made it very specifically clear what the intention of use of pepper spray is and that is how every police officer gets trained, even today. That's how they get certified when they learn how to use the pepper spray. What occurred here is that in UC Davis you see a complete improper and inappropriate use. Normally pepper spray is used when there is a physical threat to the police officers or bystanders or there is a possibility of property damage and you see that things are going haywire. In that situation, police officers are justified to bring things under control by using a force that is not deadly, such as pepper spray. In the case of UC Davis, individuals are totally quiet. They are not saying anything and they are not harming anybody and they are not being aggressive to police officers. So the use was just absolutely out of ordinary and was not in accordance with any training or policy of any department that I know of. I personally certified 4000 police officers in the early 80's and 90's and I have never seen this before and that's why I was shocked. That's why I have come up and I feel it is my civic duty to explain to the public that this is not what pepper spray was developed for.

AMY GOODMAN: Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize winning science writer and professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin Madison told KPCC that the US military is banned by international law from using pepper spray on the battlefield. Kamran Loghman, is this true?

KAMRAN LOGHMAN: It is true, but it is not the complete picture. It is not just pepper spray. According to Geneva Convention, any use of chemical agent is not legal anywhere in the world by any country in the world at the time of war.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to Egypt for a minute. The Egyptian military is reportedly in the process of purchasing 21 tons of tear gas from the Jamestown, PA, company called Combined Systems. Workers at the Suez seaport say an initial 7 ton shipment of the US made tear gas has already entered the port. Of course, we have seen and talked with people on the ground in Cairo about what many are saying is what can be lethal teargas, that people are choking or being asphyxiated by this. Talk about the difference and about tear gas being used in this way.

KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Well, pepper spray is, as I mentioned to you, the active ingredient that is derived from what is called oleoresin capsicum which is the oily resin of capsicum chili peppers. In a scientific way you extract that out of capsicum and it is from chili peppers where as tear gasses are manmade chemicals or synthetic and the one that you see being used in Egypt is called CS and it stands for a long term chemical which means autochlorobenzylmalononetrial. It has been in use since the 60's, tear gasses, and what it is supposed to do is cause tearing of the eye, that's why it's called tear gas, a lot of itching and when you inhale it, because it's in the air in a form of dust or cloud, and then you start the coughing and having shortness of breath. Tear gasses have what we call LD50. LD50 is the lethal dosage of 50% of population. How much chemical do you introduce into the air before 50% of the population can have fatality. It is becoming more and more fashionable this day and age to use chemical on people who have an opinion and that, to me, is a complete lack of leadership both in the police department and other people who cannot really deal with the root of the problem and they want to spray people to quiet them down and it is really not supposed to be that. It is not a thing that solves any problem, nor is it something that quiets people down. It is just a temporary tool in which it is justified to use in crowds when, as I mentioned to you, there is property damage and you want to quietly and quickly take care of that spot and not just the masses of people so that you can bring order and peace. It is not meant to take the mass of people, such as Egypt, and just tell them basically go home, shut up and don't say anything. That is not what tear gas is meant to be.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a clip of Fox News anchor, Megan Kelly, who made some controversial comments to Bill O'Reilly on Monday's edition of the O'Reilly Factor. The two Fox hosts were discussing the UC Davis police that pepper sprayed the protesters.

BILL O'REILLY: First of all pepper spray, that just burns your eyes, right?

MEGAN KELLY: Right, I mean its like a derivative of actual pepper. It's a food product essentially; but a lot of experts are looking at that and saying is that the real deal, has it been diluted, because …

BILL O'REILLY: Yeah, they should have more of a reaction than that..

MEGAN KELLY: Yeah, that's really beside the point. I mean, it was something that was obviously abrasive and intrusive and several went to the hospital.

BILL O'REILLY: Right, they just wanted them to get out of there, stop blocking what they were blocking and wanted to scatter them.

MEGAN KELLY: This was on the chancellor's orders. The chancellor ordered the police to go in and force these students to disburse.

BILL O'REILLY: That's Linda Catalli or Catay.

MEGAN KELLY: Yes, and it is a crime. They were charged. Ten of them were charged with unlawful assembly and failure to disperse because they were posing a sit-in, you know, a student protest and you can do that. That is very American, but it may also happen to break the law.

BILL O'REILLY: They wanted to get these people off the campus and they didn't want to lay hands on them so there's two ways to do this. You can do the pepper spray or, you know, you can physically drag them out of there.

MEGAN KELLY: They then did lay hands on them….

BILL O'REILLY: But you don't lay hands on someone..

MEGAN KELLY: No, but what I'm saying is the police would respond by saying, you pepper spray first to allow the hands-on part to be less confrontational because you are going to less resistance when you got somebody who just got pepper sprayed. Listen, I know the tape looks bad, I agree it looks bad. All I'm saying is that from a legal standpoint, I don't know that the cops did anything wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: Fox's Megan Kelly and Bill O'Reilly. Kamran Loghman, your response.

KAMRAN LOGHMAN: Well, first of all, in regards to pepper spray being a food ingredient. Aspirin also comes from bark of a tree so does wild yam is a natural herbal thing, but then again, what you derive from that becomes birth control pill. That doesn't mean the end product is still something that you can eat. It is true that it is being derived from capsicum and chili pepper, but by the time it is weaponized and becomes a weapon grade product, you can't eat it. I mean, it is impossible to eat the end product. So that's that. But in regards to the way the officer handled the situation, well it is obvious that many things went wrong. They did not use pepper spray justifiably according the use of force policy that they are trained for. They used a canister that was too large and was not meant for that kind of environment at such a close range. They did not properly decontaminate students where students were screaming and yelling for water, but what is really important is that we keep focusing on what happened at that moment. I really want to take that back because I go around the country and talk about leadership and I just finished one at US Naval Academy. I think the lack of leadership was very important because that is one of the things I train police officers. One of the most important things here was for someone to go back, bring the professor who has some affinity and wisdom to talk to the students and say listen, you made your point. Why don't we create a group? Why don't we go to an amphitheater? Let's do all of us help. Let the whole college help you guys so the world can all hear your voice. I don't think anybody was interacting with these people in the right way and they would just let them sit there and then treat them like insects. Let's go ahead and spray them as if you are watering plants.

AMY GOODMAN: Kamran Loghman, I want to thank you for being with us. He is the expert who helped develop weapons grade pepper spray with the FBI in the 1980's as well as helped develop guidelines for police departments around the country.

[Peter Lemkin]

Scott Olsen out of hospital. He doesn't talk about it, but his attorneys are preparing a searing lawsuit against OPD, City of Oakland and no doubt others.

[Peter Lemkin]

Every Man, Woman and Child In USA Gave Almost $100,000 to Banks angryfire

[Peter Lemkin]

Rather amazing.....how the future will look? How the present!

[Peter Lemkin]

Top GOP Strategist Admits He's Scared' Of Occupy Wall Street Because It's Having An Impact'

By Zaid Jilani on Dec 1, 2011 at 10:15 am
Pollster Frank Luntz

The The Republican Governor's Association met in Florida this week and featured pollster Frank Luntz, who offered a coaching session for attendees about how they should communicate to the public. Yahoo! News' Chris Moody was there, and captured some of Luntz's comments on Occupy Wall Street.Luntz told attendees that he's "scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death." The pollster warned that the movement is "having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism." So the pollster offered some advice for them about how to fight back. Here's a few snippets of what he said, according to Moody:

Don't Mention Capitalism: Luntz said that his polling research found that "The public…still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we're seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we've got a problem."
Empathize With The 99 Percent Protesters: Luntz instructed attendees to tell protesters that they "get it": "First off, here are three words for you all: I get it.' … I get that you're. I get that you've seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system."
Don't Say Bonus: Luntz told Republicans to re-frame the concept of the bonus payment which bailed-out Wall Street doles out to its employees during holidays as "pay for performance" instead.
Don't Mention The Middle Class Because Americans Don't Trust Republicans To Defend It: "They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers," Luntz instructed the audience. "We can say we defend the middle class' and the public will say, I'm not sure about that. But defending hardworking taxpayers' and Republicans have the advantage."
Don't Talk About Taxing The Rich: Luntz reminded Republicans that Americans actually do want to tax the rich, so he reccommended they instead say that the government "takes from the rich."

Frank Luntz is no minor pollster. He is considered to be one of the top political communications experts in the world, having provided consulting to many of the world's top corporations, politicians, and special interest groups. That Luntz is admitting the impact of Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent and telling closed-door meetings of Republicans that it frightens him is a huge victory for the movement.

[Peter Lemkin]

Being mayor of New York is awesome, Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday during a speech at MIT.

"I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world," Bloomberg said, :finger:

[Peter Lemkin]

In Arizona, police in riot gear have pepper-sprayed and arrested demonstrators protesting the American Legislative Exchange Council. At least seven people were arrested Wednesday after some 200 protesters affiliated with the Occupy movement marched to a resort in Scottsdale where ALEC was hosting a meeting between large corporations and conservative state lawmakers to draft model bills.

In Boston, the Police arrested a sink! BOSTONPolice have arrested three protesters from the Occupy Boston movement, accusing them of disorderly conduct after dozens of activists surrounded a patrol wagon and refused to let it move.
The protesters prevented the police vehicle from moving Thursday night after officers confiscated a kitchen sink that was being taken to the encampment at Dewey Square.
Authorities have banned protesters from bringing material that could be used to convert the encampment into a permanent dwelling. The so-called contraband includes construction material such as wood and kitchen sinks.
Police say between 75 and 100 protesters surrounded the police wagon and additional patrol vehicles were called to the scene.

I saw it with my own eyes...the Police took the sink and put it in a police wagon. The wagon was surrounded so it couldn't move away and some were arrested. One man was injured and needed medical attention trying to save the sink.
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After all the court cases, lawyers, celebrities and General Assemblies, apparently all it comes down to for Occupy Boston is a kitchen sink. Yes, you read that correctly. At about 8:30pm on Thursday evening, the Boston Police Department sent their Emergency Deployment team down to Dewey Square to remove an industrial kitchen sink brought into the encampment for hygiene purposes.

As the police loaded the sink into the van, things started heating up when Occupy Boston protesters refused to let the van drive away. According several tweets from protesters and bystanders, the police began moving in on the camp, surrounding Atlantic Avenue with flex plastic handcuffs at the ready. Eventually, protesters backed down, allowing the van to drive away peacefully and undoubtedly avoiding a much larger scuffle that could have resulted in arrests similar those on October 11 at Dewey Square.

Tonight's strange turn of events is a perfect example of the mounting tensions between the city and Occupy Boston, piqued by a legal battle in the Suffolk Superior Court on Thursday. Thus far, the case has largely rested on a debate between the protesters' First Amendment rights and public health and safety issues at Dewey Square. A decision for the injunction will be on or by December 15.

Several questions remain unanswered from tonight's kitchen sink scuffle: Who gave the orders to remove the sink? Under what grounds was the sink removed? Will Occupy Boston be allowed to bring in another sink for hygiene purposes?

[Peter Lemkin]

The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loan - Now Do You Understand Occupy Wall Street?

[Peter Lemkin]