Videotaping Rights [ACLU]

The Whole World Is Watching: Your Right to Videotape Police

The Occupy protests are putting a spotlight on police actions, and the ease of taking video now is helping to ensure that officers are following the rules. Last night NBC Nightly News took a closer look at the impact of having a video camera in almost every pocket, speaking to the ACLU's Jay Stanley about the issue. Watch the story here, and an extended interview with Stanley here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

You can find a complete guide to your rights for taking photos and video in public at:
www.aclu.org/free-speech/know-your-rights-photographers
Learn more about free speech: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

How to Ditch Big Brother and Disappear Forever

So you've decided you want to drop off the map and leave Big Brother behind. It's harder than ever in our always-connected world, but if you're ready to plan your big vanishing act, here are a few tips to get you started.

If this looks familiar, you're not crazy. Our guide to dropping off the map is a perennial Evil Week favorite.

Who hasn't thought about how nice it would be to start fresh somewhere new, preferably with nicer weather and cheaper drinks? Whatever your reasons for wanting to disappear—maybe you just want to get The Man off your back—with enough diligence and planning you can vanish and start anew somewhere else.

For the low down on disappearing and starting your life over, we turned to the book How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace by Frank M. Ahearn and Eileen C. Horan. Frank Ahearn is the grizzled grandfather of the vanishing act. After 20 odd years working as a skip tracer—an investigator who specializes in finding people who don't want to be found—he realized he could make just as much money and incur a lot less risk helping people avoid investigators like himself. We've culled a few of Ahearn's tips below, but if you're really serious, his book is a great pocket guide to getting lost.  

How Not to Disappear

The cardinal sin in any serious disappearance is drama. You don't successfully vanish by staging an elaborate disappearing act that ultimately involves a tri-state search, police dogs, and your home town believing that you were mauled by a bear and dragged off into the dark night. Ahearn stresses the importance of disappearing in a legal fashion.

You shouldn't, for example, try and secure false papers: It's a felony to use false identification, and you have no idea if the papers you secured are legitimate. (What if your new social security number belongs to a dead guy or a criminal? What if the passport you bought is bogus and now you're staring down a customs agent?). Instead, you want to obfuscate your identity in a way that it's so difficult for people to follow you that anything short of a government task force will lack for the patience or funding to keep doggedly trying to find you. Here's a little about how that might work.

Minimize Your Social Connections

People who hurriedly throw all their crap in a suitcase and run out the back door are the ones who fail at disappearing. Instead, one of your most important jobs, prior to your successful disappearance, is to slowly cut the fat from your social life. Stop using Facebook—ditch all social networks—maybe under the pretense that you're spending too much time online (or any other pretense that people around you will accept besides "I'm going to torch my crappy life and move to Belize").

You want to minimize the social footprint you occupy so that when suddenly you're not standing in it anymore, few people will notice or care. If you're the most prominent member of the local social scene and you vanish tomorrow, people will notice. Minimizing your virtual trail is more important than minimizing your real life trail. It takes mere minutes for an investigator to comb through social networks and search results, but hours and additional expenses to investigate on foot and by phone. 

The one social connection most people are unwilling to ditch is communication with their immediate family. Unless your immediate family is the reason you're pulling a vanishing act, chances are you'll still want to talk to your parents or siblings. This can the toughest communication to break, and it's where almost everyone fails. All the planning in the world is worthless if you call your relatives from your new location and a skip tracer gets her hands on the phone records. If you want to communicate with your family or best friend after you've vanished from the less desirable people in your life, then you need to figure out, well in advance, how you will do so. Never communicate with them directly from any account linked to your new life or new residence. Anonymous email accounts and prepaid phone cards and cellphones are the only way you're going to be finding out if Grandma's hip surgery went well.

Ditch the Plastic; Cash Is King

Get used to the idea of ditching the luxuries you had in your former life. Gone are the credit cards, the convenience cards and loyalty cards, even simple things like a video rental card. Pay cash for everything and don't use anything that could link your new life and your plans to your old life. Don't check out books about Chile from your local library or buy them with a credit card. Don't use a credit card or frequent flier miles to book a flight out of the country. Your goal in everything you do is to minimize the number of connections between your old life and your new life. Whenever you undertake an interaction with another person or business, ask yourself "Is this the least traceable method I could use?" Paying cash for a cup of coffee at an old coffee shop? Obscure. Paying with a credit card for a cup of coffee at an airport kiosk under the eye of four different security cameras? Not stealthy in the least. Cash is king. 

Lie, Lie, and Lie Some More

Ahearn goes into intense detail on the topic of disinformation and its importance in disappearing. He notes that the thing skip tracers hope for most is just enough information—too little and they'll never find their prey, too much and they'll waste all their time and funding looking in the wrong places. Your goal is to create disinformation.

As you prepare to disappear, slowly but surely start fudging the information companies have on you. "Correct" the spelling of your name on file with the local utility company, tell them they have the wrong social security number and offer a correction, change your mailing address for your bills to a fake mail drop you set up through a private mailing company. If people come looking for you, you want them to waste their time looking in the wrong places. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 of Ahearn's book are all devoted entirely to disinformation, creating false leads (with examples from his work that are so clever you'll want to hire him just to see him in action), and establishing yourself securely in a new locale.

Incorporation, The Binding Glue

At this point you might be nodding your head, thinking that the plan sounds great so far, save for the one glaring detail. If you can't use anything but cash how on earth are you going to establish a new identity in your new location? Since you don't want to lead the life of an illegal alien in your new locale, you're going to need some way to have a legal presence that isn't intimately tied back to your old identity.

Creating a corporation to manage your assets is one way many people handle their affairs once they have disappeared.

Your corporation, only vaguely linked to you and not in the way that is readily identifiable to skip tracers, will be the entity that leases your apartment, pays your utility bills, and otherwise delegates your money out while serving as a shield between you and those looking for you. The details of this are best discussed between you and a lawyer or after careful research into what kind of corporation (and where) would be the best fit for you.

Lastly: Don't Bother If You're Not Committed

Disappearing is not easy. You don't just fake your own death, buy some false papers in an alley from a guy with an indiscernible accent, and then retire to a life of leisure on a small island nation. Disappearing, and doing so legally and without incurring a bigger headache than the one you're running away from, takes careful planning. You need to be willing to cut contact with nearly everyone you know (if not everyone), change how you shop, and even ditch your hobbies. Disappearing means beginning a game of chase with people who want to find you and being willing and strong enough to outlive them at that game. If you can't do that, you'll waste a lot of time and money trying to disappear but failing.

Further Reading

The total planning and execution of your disappearance is well beyond the scope of this article. If you're seriously entertaining the idea of disappearing, we highly recommend checking out Ahearn's book How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace. If you're serious about vanishing, it offers insights and tips you likely never even thought about. If, like most of us, you're not serious about vanishing, it's still packed with fascinating stories culled from the hundreds of clients Frank has helped vanish from their old life and start a fresh one more to their liking. Either way you'll end up a little more paranoid about your privacy and security and a lot more knowledgeable about the ways people abuse both.

 




Related Stories

• How to Use the Internet to Investigate Your Next Date, Coworker, or New Friend (Without Being Creepy)

• DroidSheep Brings Firesheep-Like Session-Hijacking to Android Devices

• Pipl Finds Your Long-Lost Friend, Co-worker, Ex, or Anyone Else You're Looking to Cyber-Stalk

Naomi Wolf - The End of America

Video on Columbus, OH's Issue 2

Mythbusting Herod the Great

[REPRINT]

By Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Herod the Great is an interesting guy. And as is usually the case, there is far more to his story than the black/white view offered by the Christian mythology still being pushed by today’s fundamentalists. Nuance (read as “truth”) has no place in such a simplistic worldview.


Am I saying Christian historians and theologians lied about Herod the Great? Yes, I am. And their lies persist today. Fact must fit doctrine, after all, and Herod suffers as Jesus suffers. They lie about Jesus because they aren’t interested in the truth about the historical Jesus – they want the theological Jesus instead. The same goes for Herod. The Herod of the New Testament is the theological, not the historical Herod.


The real Herod wasn’t put there by “God” in order to fulfill prophecy. He put himself there, through skill, luck, ruthlessness, and pragmatism.[1] He knew what he had to do to make himself acceptable to the Romans, and he was shrewd enough to understand that it was the Roman team to whom he should yoke his chariot, not the Parthians, who were the other major power on the Eastern stage.


Most Christians know Herod the Great through an old myth: We are assured that Herod went after the children and slaughtered them to make sure he got the one he was after – Jesus.


But the simple facts are he probably never knew that Jesus existed. After all, almost nobody else noticed, even after the supposedly dramatic moment of his death. One of the problems with accepting Acts’ truthfulness with regard to its wildly inflated conversion rates is that any cult growing so rapidly would certainly have attracted the notice of – someone, and as church historian W.H.C. Frend is force to admit, nobody did.^[2] A very literary first century Roman world missed entirely the advent of Jesus and Christianity.


It is an unpalatable fact for fundamentalists that there is no evidence at all to suggest Herod actually “slaughtered the innocents.” Nor is there any evidence that Jesus’ father, Joseph, was a troublemaker who would have attracted the king’s notice. He is presented in the New Testament as a simple carpenter.

Rubens' Massacre that never happened

10 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement

10 Ways to Support the Occupy Movement

There are many things you can do to be part of this growing movement—and only some of them involve sleeping outside.

by Sarah van Gelder
[REPRINT]
 

The #OccupyWallStreet movement continues to spread with more than 1,500 sites. More and more people are speaking up for a society that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent.

Here are 10 recommendations from the YES! Magazine staff for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement. Only two of them involve sleeping outside:

photo: Dave Bledsoe

1. Show up at the occupied space near you.

Use this link to find the Facebook page of an occupation near you. If you can, bring a tent or tarp and sleeping bag, and stay. Or just come for a few hours. Talk to people, participate in a General Assembly, hold a sign, help serve food. Learn about the new world being created in the occupied spaces.

2. Start your own occupation.

Use this Meetup site. Or call together friends, members of your faith group, school, or community group. Reach out to people from parts of your community you don’t normally work with. Unexpected alliances keep the movement from getting labeled as partisan or representing only some people.

3. Support those who are occupying.

Most sites need food, warm clothes, blankets, tarps, sleeping bags, communications gear, and money. Many need people to do loads of laundry, to help with medical care, to provide legal support, to serve food, and to spread the word. Some people call in pizza orders from nearby vendors. Support the folks at Liberty Square in New York here, or check in with your local occupiers to see what they need.

4. Speak out. Get into the debates and the teach-ins.

Many occupation sites have workshops and discussions on critical issues of our time. Get into the discussion. Bring your expertise and reading materials to share. YES! Magazine is offering free copies of the current New Livelihood issue to occupied sites (request them by emailing JobsIssue@yesmagazine.org). Bring the discussions to other groups you are part of. Listen to perspectives you haven’t heard before. This process represents a critical, but under-reported side of the movement: People are shifting from being passive, frustrated observers of politics to active, powerful players. Instead of waiting for our leaders to do the right thing, people from all walks of life are becoming leaders. It makes us unstoppable.

5. Share your story.

Post how you’re part of the 99 percent on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or in print. Through this movement, people are discovering others who are also losing jobs and homes, who are overwhelmed by debt or working a dead-end job. Through this sharing, humiliation turns into compassion and self-respect. And it builds understanding of the sources and the impacts of our crisis: A Wall Street system that funnels wealth to the top 1 percent is leaving the rest of us behind. Community plus insight makes us powerful.

6. Be the media.

Show up with your video recorder, camera phone, or laptop and share the stories of the occupation. You can download a selection of posters donated by graphic designers and spread them around. Highlight the human dimension of the protests. It is harder for critics to disparage a movement when people see the faces of those involved.

7. Name the meaning of this moment.

What will make the world better for the 99 percent? How has the power of the 1 percent gotten in the way of your hopes and dreams? Make a sign, write a blog, update your Facebook page, or speak out on the issue that means the most to you. Include the phrase, “I am the 99 percent.”

8. Insist that public officials treat the occupations with respect.

The eviction of the Liberty Square occupation on Wall Street was averted by massive public resistance from those in the square and from others. Other occupations also need support. The 99 percent don’t have the money, political access, and media empires of the 1 percent; the occupations are one of the few ways we are building power. Ask your local officials to respect people's right to assembly.

9. Study and teach nonviolent techniques.

There are many examples of outside provocateurs who spark violent incidents that can discredit nonviolent movements such as this. The corporate media is hungry for violent images. (There’s already been an example of an admitted provocateur from the right-wing "American Spectator" who provoked pepper spraying at the National Air & Space Museum). Learn how to lovingly and firmly interrupt and contain violence, and teach what you know. Here are some resources.

10. Be resilient.

This movement is here for the long term. Some efforts may fade because of cold weather or harsh police responses. Others may self-destruct through faulty process or violent outbreaks. The movement may be idealistic, but it won’t be ideal. Don’t get disillusioned; the demand for a society that serves the 99 percent won’t go away. The movement may morph, but it has become unstoppable. Help it evolve.

The genie is out of the bottle. People will no longer accept the systematic transfer of wealth and power from we the people to the 1 percent. In this remarkable, leaderless movement, each one of the 99 percent who gets involved helps shape history.


YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and executive editor of YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.

The Difficulty In Holding The Gov't Accountable When It Breaks The Law | Techdirt

The Difficulty In Holding The Gov't Accountable When It Breaks The Law | Techdirt

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Oct 20th 2011 2:03am

[REPRINT]

We've discussed in the past how the US government likes to use claims of sovereign immunity or national security to avoid being held accountable (and/or to hide the details). This opens the system up to widespread abuse, and it's hard not to imagine that's happening. Even if the vast majority of government workers are good and honest people, the system is structured with so little recourse, that it's impossible not to expect massive abuses of power.


In one recent case, we wrote about an EPA agent who pretty much made up an entire case against a guy, Hubert Vidrine, mostly because it allowed the EPA agent to spend more time with his mistress, with whom he was working on the case. While that's one rare example of the government being held accountable (it had to pay the guy), Vidrine's lawyer wants the world to know that the legal system is basically set up to stymie every effort by folks like Vidrine to respond to bogus criminal charges by the government. The lawyer, Gary Cornwell, was kind enough to pass along a letter he recently sent to Senator Rand Paul, following the Vidrine verdict. That letter is embedded below, but there are a few highlights.


First, he points out that while the facts of the case are certainly unusual, it's unfair to say that such abuses aren't common. The fact is, we just don't know, and the system makes it extremely difficult for anyone like Vidrine to fight back, even when there has clearly been a completely arbitrary and malicious prosecution:

I write principally to convey to you my disagreement with the suggestion of David Uhlmann, former chief of the environmental crimes section at the Justice Department, as reported in the New York Times on October 4, 2011, that "fortunately, this is an isolated situation." This probably is an unusual case; but not because it reflects an isolated problem. More probably, it is an unusual case because the Federal Tort Claims Act discourages lawyers from filing malicious prosecution cases.

When Mr. Vidrine came to me in September, 2005, I filed an administrative claim with the Department of Justice, as required by the Federal Tort Claim Act. By July, 2007, DOJ had failed (for nearly two years) to take any action on the claim, so I filed the civil suit in federal court in Lafayette, LA. I then fought with the government for over 3 ½ more years to get access to the EPA/FBI files documenting the perjury and other acts used by government agents to secure an indictment in December, 1999, and to get truthful deposition testimony uncovering how and why they had kept the prosecution going for nearly four more years (until September, 2003), when all charges were finally dismissed because there had never been a shred of evidence that any crime had been committed. I then tried the case in June, 2011.

Cornwell is hoping that Senator Paul will consider changing the law to make it easier for people to take the government to court if they're similarly wronged:

Plainly, what happened in this case just should not happen in our country, and to minimize the number of times it happens again the FTCA should be strengthened to make it a more effective form of relief for those injured by government misconduct. Most victims of governmental abuse of power simply cannot afford to pay a lawyer to pursue malicious prosecution cases, because the standard of liability (which requires proof of the lack of “probable cause”) is high, and because malicious prosecution cases (like this one) are often complex and involve many witnesses and thousands of documents. (The government produced over 15,000 documents in this case and then argued that their extensive investigation proved that they did have probable cause and were not acting maliciously.)


Given those realities, the Federal Tort Claim Act would better serve our country’s historical interests in preserving our freedom by preventing abuses of power (1) if it allowed the Court to award punitive damages (as the Federal Court noted in its opinion in this case, stating on page 142 that “. . . given the egregious conduct displayed by an agent of the government and the devastation wrought on otherwise law-abiding citizens, had punitive damages been allowable, this Court would have awarded punitive damages in the hope of deterring such reckless and damaging conduct and abuse of power in the future;” (2) if it allowed the Court to compensate Plaintiffs for the attorneys fees they incur in prosecuting the action, (3) if it did not cap attorney fees at 25% of the Plaintiff’s recovery, and (4) if – at least in those cases which are brought solely against the United States (and not against any prosecutor personally) – it expressly allowed “malicious prosecution” claims to be based on the acts of “prosecutors.”

Of course, for the most part, it appears that the government has been trying to move in the other direction, to shield itself from the very laws it passes and requires others to follow.

United States needs to reevaluate its assistance to Israel - The Washington Post

United States needs to reevaluate its assistance to Israel - The Washington Post

[REPRINT]

By Walter Pincus, Published: October 17

As the country reviews its spending on defense and foreign assistance, it is time to examine the funding the United States provides to Israel.


Let me put it another way: Nine days ago, the Israeli cabinet reacted to months of demonstrations against the high cost of living there and agreed to raise taxes on corporations and people with high incomes ($130,000 a year). It also approved cutting more than $850 million, or about 5 percent, from its roughly $16 billion defense budget in each of the next two years.


If Israel can reduce its defense spending because of its domestic economic problems, shouldn’t the United States — which must cut military costs because of its major budget deficit — consider reducing its aid to Israel?


First, a review of what the American taxpayer provides to Israel.


In late March 2003, just days after the invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush requested the approval of $4.7 billion in military assistance for more than 20 countries that had contributed to the conflict or the broader fight against terrorism. Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey were on that list.


A major share of the money, $1 billion, went to Israel, “on top of the $2.7 billion regular fiscal year 2003 assistance and $9 billion in economic loans guaranteed by the U.S. government over the next three years,” according to a 2003 study by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).


Then in 2007, the Bush administration worked out an agreement to raise the annual military aid grant, which had grown to $2.5 billion, incrementally over the next 10 years. This year, it has reached just over $3 billion. That is almost half of all such military assistance that Washington gives out each year and represents about 18 percent of the Israeli defense budget.


In addition, the military funding for Israel is handled differently than it is for other countries. Israel’s $3 billion is put almost immediately into an interest-bearing account with the Federal Reserve Bank. The interest, collected by Israel on its military aid balance, is used to pay down debt from earlier Israeli non-guaranteed loans from the United States.


Another unique aspect of the assistance package is that about 25 percent of it can be used to buy arms from Israeli companies. No other country has that privilege, according to a September 2010 CRS report.


The U.S. purchases subsidize the Israeli arms business, but Washington maintains a veto over sales of Israeli weapons that may contain U.S. technology.


Look for a minute at the bizarre formula that has become an element of U.S.-Israel military aid, the so-called qualitative military edge (QME). Enshrined in congressional legislation, it requires certification that any proposed arms sale to any other country in the Middle East “will not adversely affect Israel’s qualitative military edge over military threats to Israel.”


In 2009 meetings with defense officials in Israel, Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher “reiterated the United States’ strong commitment” to the formula and “expressed appreciation” for Israel’s willingness to work with newly created “QME working groups,” according to a cable of her meetings that was released by WikiLeaks.


The formula has an obvious problem. Because some neighboring countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are U.S. allies but also considered threats by Israel, arms provided to them automatically mean that better weapons must go to Israel. The result is a U.S.-generated arms race.


For example, the threat to both countries from Iran led the Saudis in 2010 to begin negotiations to purchase advanced F-15 fighters. In turn, Israel — using $2.75 billion in American military assistance — has been allowed to buy 20 of the new F-35 fifth-generation stealth fighters being developed by the United States and eight other nations.


Another military program, called U.S. War Reserves Stocks for Allies, begun in the 1980s, allows the United States to store arms and equipment on Israeli bases for use in wartime. In the 1990s, the arrangement was expanded to allow Israel to use the weapons, but only with U.S. permission. During the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the United States gave permission for Israel to use stored cluster artillery shells to counter rocket attacks. The use drew international complaints because the rockets struck civilian rather than military areas.


The initial limit was $100 million worth of stored missiles, armored vehicles and artillery munitions, but that has increased over time. It reached $800 million in 2010, $1 billion this year and by 2012, it is expected to grow to $1.2 billion.


Since the mid-1990s, the United States and Israel have been co-developing missile defense systems designed to meet threats from short-range rockets as well as longer-range ballistic missiles. All of the systems involved have gained support from Congress, which frequently earmarks additional funding for Israeli weaponry.


For example, the House and the Senate added $129.6 million to the $106.1 million the Obama administration had in the fiscal 2012 budget for these programs. In the 2011 bill, Congress added $205 million for the Iron Dome system, which defends against short-range rockets and mortars. That was on top of $200 million the administration sought for the U.S. contribution to other cooperative missile-defense systems.


Among reductions now being discussed in Israel is a delay in purchasing more Iron Dome systems beyond those to be paid for by the United States’ $205 million. In addition, the Israeli military may freeze its spending on other missile defense systems, the very ones for which Congress approved additional funding this year.


The question for the Obama administration, Congress and, in the end, perhaps the American public, is: Given present economic problems, should the United States supply the money to make up for reductions the Israelis are making in their own defense budget?

Who Are The One Percent in America?

Who Are The One Percent in America?

[REPRINT]

By Press TV

October 17, 2011 "Press TV" -- The following are the largest full-service global investment banks which usually provides both advisory and financing banking services, as well as the sales, market making, and research on a broad array of financial products including equities, credit, rates, currency, commodities, and their derivatives.

1. Bank of America
2. Barclays Capital
3. Citigroup
4. Credit Suisse
5. Deutsche Bank
6. Goldman Sachs
7. JPMorgan Chase
8. Morgan Stanley
9. Nomura Securities
10. UBS
11. Wells Fargo Securities

Diversified Financials

The following are the top eight diversified financials in the U.S. in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500

1. Fannie Mae .......... $153.82 billion
2. General Electric .......... $151.62 billion
3. Freddie Mac .......... $98.36 billion
4. INTL FCStone ........... $46.94 billion
5. Marsh & McLennan ........... $10.93 billion
6. Ameriprise Financial .......... $10.04 billion
7. Aon .......... $8.51 billion
8. SLM .......... $6.77 billion

Commercial Banks

The following are the top ten commercial banks in the U.S. in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500

1. Bank of America Corp. .......... $134.19 billion
2. JP Morgan Chase & Co. .......... $115.47 billion
3. Citigroup .......... $111.05 billion
4. Well Fargo .......... $93.24 billion
5. Goldman Sachs Group .......... $45.96 billion
6. Morgan Stanley .......... $39.32 billion
7. American Express .......... $30.24 billion
8. US Bancorp .......... $20.51 billion
9. Capital One Financial .......... $19.06 billion
10. Ally Financial .......... $17.37 billion

Petroleum Refining

The following are the top ten U.S. petroleum refining firms in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500

1. Exxon Mobil .......... $354.67 billion
2. Chevron .......... $196.33 billion
3. Conoco Philips .......... $184.96 billion
4. Valero Energy .......... $86.03 billion
5. Marathon Oil .......... $68.41billion
6. Sunoco .......... $35.54 billion
7. Hess .......... $34.61 billion
8. Murphy Oil .......... $23.34 billion
9. Tesoro .......... $20.25 billion
10. Holly .......... $8.32 billion

Oil & Gas Equipment, Services

The following are the top U.S. firms active in oil and gas equipment and services in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500

1. Halliburton .......... $17.97 million
2. Baker Hughes .......... $14.41 million
3. National Oilwell Varco .......... $12.15 million
4. Cameron International .......... $6.13 million

Aerospace & Defense

The following are the top ten U.S. corporations in aerospace and defense in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500

1. Boeing ........... $64.30 billion
2. United Technologies .......... $54.32 billion
3. Lockheed Martin ........... $46.89 billion
4. Northrop Grumman .......... $34.75 billion
5. Honeywell International ........... $33.37 billion
6. General Dynamics .......... $32.46 billion
7. Raytheon .......... $25.18 billion
8. L-3 Communications .......... $15.68 billion
9. ITT .......... $11.15 billion
10. Textron .......... $10.52 billion

Motor Vehicles & Parts

The following are the top ten U.S. manufacturing companies of motor vehicles and parts in terms of revenue in 2010. Fortune 500

1. General Motors .......... $135.59 billion
2. Ford Motor .......... $128.95 billion
3. Chrysler Group .......... $41.94 billion
4. Johnson Controls .......... $34.30 billion
5. Goodyear Tire & Rubber .......... $18.83 billion
6. TRW Automotive Holdings .......... $14.38 billion
7. Navistar International .......... $12.14 billion
8. Lear .......... $11.95 billion
9. Paccar .......... $10.29 billion
10. Oshkosh .......... $9.84 billion

American Millionaires

The number of Americans who are millionaires is about one percent of the population. NPR

Of the 435 members of the House, 244 current members of Congress are millionaires - that's about 46 percent and that includes 138 Republicans and 106 Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks money in politics. In fact, there are probably many more millionaires in Congress, since lawmakers don't have to include the value of their family home and other details. NPR

In 2010, the average winner of a House race spent $1.5 million for his/her campaigns. The average Senate winner spent close to $10 million. Closely contested races are much more expensive. And about half of that money, on average, comes from an elite group of very wealthy donors. NPR

Wealthy Americans have more access to lawmakers than most regular voters and constituents do, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. NPR

The median net worth for a current member of the U.S. House of Representatives was $725,000 in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and the media net worth of a U.S. Senator was $2.4 million. Open Secrets

The richest member of Congress is Darrel Issa, whose net worth was valued between $156 million and $451 million. Open Secrets

Here is a list of the 20 wealthiest current members of Congress and their average net worth, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, based on their financial reports covering calendar year 2009. (The Center plans to unveil its analysis of lawmakers' 2010 financial disclosures later this fall.) Open Secrets

1. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) .......... $303 million
2. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) .......... $238 million
3. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) .......... $174 million
4. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) .......... $160 million
5. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) .......... $160 million
6. Rep. Vernon Buchanan (R-Fla.) .......... $148 million
7. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) .......... $137 million
8. Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) .......... $109 million
9. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) .......... $98 million
10. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) .......... $94 million
11. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) .......... $77 million
12. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) .......... $76 million
13. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) .......... $58 million
14. Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.) .......... $51 million
15. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) .......... $50 million
16. Rep. Diane Lynn Black (R-Tenn.) .......... $49 million
17. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) .......... $43 million
18. Rep. Richard Berg (R-N.D.) .......... $39 million
19. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) .......... $39 million
20. Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) .......... $38 million

Top Donors to Obama in 2008

The following table lists the top donors to Barack Obama in the 2008 election cycle. Open Secrets

1. University of California .......... $1.6 million
2. Goldman Sachs .......... $1 million
3. Harvard University .......... $0.85 million
4. Microsoft Corp. .......... $0.83 million
5. Google Inc. .......... $0.80 million
6. Citigroup Inc. ........... $0.70 million
7. JPMorgan Chase & Co. .......... $0.69 million
8. Time Warner .......... $0.59 million
9. Sidley Austin LLP .......... $0.58 million
10. Stanford University .......... $0.58 million
11. National Amusements Inc. .......... $0.55 million
12. UBS AG .......... $0.54 million
13. Wilmerhale Llp .......... $0.54 million
14. Skadden, Arps et al .......... $0.53 million
15. IBM Corp .......... $0.52 million
16. Columbia University .......... $0.52 million
17. Morgan Stanley .......... $0.51 million
18. General Electric .......... $0.49 million
19. U.S. Government .......... $0.49 million
20.Latham & Watkins .......... $0.49 million

Top Donors to Bush in 2004

1. Morgan Stanley .......... $603,480
2. Merrill Lynch .......... $586,254
3. PricewaterhouseCoopers .......... $514,250
4. UBS AG .......... $474,325
5. Goldman Sachs .......... $394,600
6. Lehman Brothers .......... $361,525
7. MBNA Corp .......... $350,350
8. Credit Suisse Group .......... $326,040
9. Citigroup Inc. .......... $320,820
10. Bear Stearns .......... $313,150
11. Ernst & Young .......... $305,140
12. US Government .......... $295,786
13. Deloitte LLP .......... $292,250
14. Wachovia Corp. .......... $279,310
15. US Dept of Defense .......... $279,157
16. Ameriquest Capital .......... $253,130
17. US Dept of State .......... $225,330
18. Blank Rome LLP .......... $225,150
19. Bank of America .......... $218,261
20.AT&T Inc. .......... $214,920

American Billionaires

The following is a list of top 20 American billionaires issued by the Forbes 400 in 2011. Forbes

1. Bill Gates from Microsoft .......... $59 billion
2. Warren Buffet from Berkshire Hathaway .......... $39 billion
3. Larry Ellison from Oracle .......... $33 billion
4. Charles Koch from diversified .......... $25 billion
5. David Koch from diversified .......... $25 billion
6. Christy Walton from Wal-Mart .......... $24.5 billion
7. George Soros from hedge funds .......... $22 billion
8. Sheldon Adelson from casinos .......... $21.5 billion
9. Jim Walton from Wal-Mart .......... $21.1 billion
10. Alice Walton from Wal-Mart .......... $20.9 billion
11. S. Robson Walton from Wal-Mart .......... $20.5 billion
12. Michael Bloomberg from Bloomberg LP .......... $19.5 billion
13. Jeff Bezos from Amazon.com .......... $19.1 billion
14. Mark Zuckergerg from Facebook ........... $17.5 billion
15. Surgey Brin from Google .......... $16.7 billion
16. Larry Page from Google .......... $16.7 billion
17. John Paulson from hedge funds ........... $15.5 billion
18. Michael Dell from Dell .......... $15 billion
19. Steve Ballmer from Microsoft .......... $13.9 billion
20.Forrest Mars from candy .......... $13.8 billion

Occupied -- What Now?

Occupied -- What Now? By David Swanson

[REPRINT]

By David Swanson

13 October, 2011

War Is Crime

Thanks in large part to the New York and national corporate media a massive campaign to shift power away from giant corporations and into the hands of the people is now afoot all across this continent. It was inspired by peoples' nonviolent uprisings in other countries and sparked by courageous nonviolence on Wall Street.

Can we keep it going and growing despite the unreliability of the corporate media? When the television networks created Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, for us -- following the courageous stand taken by Cindy Sheehan -- they later turned against the movement and against Cindy. Already they are working to depict our occupations as violent, misdirected, undirected, and impotent.

Can we build the 99% awareness, the broad participation, the self-assurance, and the endurance to maintain on our own what we have never been able to create on our own without the cooperation of television? I think we can. I think this is different. There is broad popular support rapidly rising, but we will have to work extremely hard at communicating our purpose and our process. It must be universally understood that we want majority rule respected by our government for a change (including by ending the wars and taxing the rich) and that we will use no violence whatsoever to achieve our ends.

Communities

Occupations are becoming communities. We should be setting up permanent peoples' encampments in our public squares with free medical clinics and other services, with modeling of democratic decision making, and with sharing of strategies, friendships, and legal services for those nonviolently resisting the corporate plutopentagocratic agenda.

Civil Resistance

We should continue to engage in ever more serious civil resistance. We need to nonviolently interfere with the operations of our misrepresentatives and their financial masters. Symbolism is not enough. Actual interference is needed, and actual interference also makes the best symbolism. We should be careful to target the 1% and their servants, and to minimize disruptions for the 99%. In D.C. for example, I've been arguing against shutting down highways and in favor of shutting down driveways of those in power, bringing them early morning donuts and coffee and allowing them to leave their streets once they've answered basic questions about the direction in which they will take our country with our approval.

Our general principle of targeting the 1% and doing so nonviolently should be so well understood that when corporate columnists misrepresent us, or infiltrate us in order to instigate violence, at the very least we do not begin questioning each other in obedience to corporate propaganda.

Politics

Tom Hayden was just on Keith Olbermann and, I think, said some very important truths and a fundamental lie. He said that 10,000 people sitting down in New York Streets and insisting on trials by juries of their peers if arrested could shut down the whole system. The same is true in Washington, although the population from which to try to draw 10,000 people is much smaller there. We've had marches of hundreds of thousands of people in these cities on weekends. There's no reason we cannot have sit-ins of 10,000 on a weekday.

Hayden also said that President Barack Obama alone has the power to take huge steps to satisfy this movement. That's true. He could end the wars, save $1.5 trillion, and remove the threat to Social Security and Medicare. He could also commit to vetoing any revenue or spending legislation until the top 1% is taxed at the level last seen when President Dwight Eisenhower was in town.

But then Hayden said another option would be for Obama to "lay down the gauntlet" and declare that he couldn't do anything because the Republicans wouldn't let him. That is not an option that will have any impact on a movement like this one. We're not in this to elect somebody president. And we will not believe this kind of nonsense. As stated in the previous breath: Obama can end the wars if he chooses. 

The Next War

It is critical that this movement be on high alert and continue to make connections between who's paying in, what's being defunded, and the war machine that is swallowing our savings. There is an effort underway yet again to justify a military strike by the United States and/or Israel against Iran. We need to be crystal clear: we will not stand for another war. Bombing anything is war. We will not stand for it. No crime, whether fictional or real, whether individual or national, can justify the greatest crime there is: the launching of war.

Saturday

This Saturday is an international day of action. This is an opportunity to build an international movement to oppose the international corporations that fund the elections of U.S. politicians, write our trade policies, and set our national course toward that cliff just up ahead. Let's make this into a show of brotherhood and sisterhood across borders. 

Let's do this without politicians or parties. Let's make this a people's demand for global social justice.

And then our public servants will be permitted to do what their name suggests and serve us.

David Swanson is the author of "War Is A Lie"

JOIN HIM IN DC OCTOBER 6TH AT http://october2011.org

http://rootsaction.org

http://warisacrime.org

http://davidswanson.org

http://facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319

http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson

The 1% And Capitalism

The 1% And Capitalism By Shamus Cooke

[REPRINT]

By Shamus Cooke

13 October, 2011

Countercurrents.org

By definition, capitalism is: An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production (industry, banks, technology), where through the process of market competition, production occurs for private profit — if something cannot be sold for a profit it is not produced. 

In practice, private ownership has evolved into giant corporations, which monopolize production, markets, and government via campaign contributions, corporate lobbying (often legalized bribery) and promising politicians a cozy retirement from politics: "working" for corporations as consultants, lobbyists, etc.

There are certain policies that raise profits for corporations in general, including: destroying labor rights and attacking unions (since lower wages equals higher profits), slashing social spending (since corporations paying taxes cuts into their profits), cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (since corporations help pay for these too, lowering their profits), privatization, lowering corporate taxes, lowering taxes for the wealthy, etc.

These anti-worker, pro-profit policies strongly unite corporations, giving them a powerful organizational tool: corporations (and the wealthy who own them) pool their resources to pursue these policies through buying politicians, think tanks, news media, university donations, etc.

This fact is recognized by all corporations and their political lackeys; at bottom these common interests are what distinguishes the 1% from the 99%.

We must put forth demands that distinguish us from the 1%, not only because we don't want our movement taken over by the 1%, but because we need a strong and united movement too. Key demands that strongly unite the entire working class will draw in the labor movement, retirees, the unemployed, the homeless, and the general community of the 99%.

Such demands are obvious, since they effect the vast majority of working people: Good Jobs Now, No Cuts to Social Services, Save Social Security and Medicare, Health care for All, Save Public Education, End the Wars. Pay for these policies by TAXING THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS.

Putting forward a few demands that all working people can unite behind will give the movement a united, strong message, while allowing other demands of working people to find a safe place to express themselves.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org)

The American Dream: Myth or Reality?

The American Dream: Myth or Reality?

[REPRINT]

By Syed Roman Ahsan

10 October, 2011   

Countercurrents.org

The Scene: A fighter jet out of control is falling full speed towards the ground. The pilot wearing a white helmet fails to command the plane which finally crashes. The man barely survives. But wait! “They” had the technology to rebuild Steve Austin (Lee Majors) as the world’s first bionic man. After an operation in which they planted mechanical devices in his body, Steve was able to run faster than a stag, could punch through solid walls and carried an enhanced eye-vision enabling him to see the details of a tiny object 100 meters away.

I am talking about “Six Million Dollar Man”, the American TV series that seized the world by storm in the 1970s. Run on the local television network in Pakistan a little later like all other American TV shows, nevertheless the series got us enamored with the American way of life. We slowly started identifying ourselves with heroes like Steve Austin who like Spiderman were ready to crush evil by taking on the “bad guys” in the neighborhood. Week after week, new stories waited for us which would capture our innocent imaginations.

There were countless TV shows in the 1970s like “Little House on the prairie”, “Star Trek”, “Disney Show”, “The Persuaders”, “The Saint” etc. that catered to our fantasies. “Little House on the prairie” showed the day to day struggle of a modern farmer living with his wife and three daughters. Again, like the other good guys of the TV shows, the farmer was shown as a noble person who believed in making this world a better place to live in. Indeed, such people have to encounter more problems in their lives compared to others which provided spice for this TV show.

Five-minute cartoon shows like “Merrie Melodies” provided a different flair altogether making us desperately wait for our local TV transmission to begin since cartoons were aired at the very start. The theme in those cartoons mainly revolved around innocent pranks by the characters which were mostly animals. The sketches by the artists were sharp and the music simply lovable. Then of course, who could forget the big screen which cast a magic spell in those days with Hollywood classics like “Samson & Delilah”, “Crazy Boys (Sequels)”, “Yeti”, “Superman” (Series) etc. On the mini-screen, though movies were shown only twice a week and were mostly old yet they were also eagerly awaited by the crowd. Be it a comedy, a tough Western story, a romantic flick, a fun movie or an extended war movie with a heavy cast, the viewers would stay awake till late in the night to see them through.

Stepping into the teen years, what could have been a greater pastime than reading American novels especially during vacations? The 1980s had arrived, and it was difficult to escape the song numbers churned out by US music artistes with audio cassettes being an essential part of a teenager’s collection. Though magazines like Time, Newsweek and National Geographic fall in the sober category, but they had every capacity to grab the reader’s interest while lending us a different thought process. In a nutshell, we had then slowly become Americanized without even knowing the meaning of the word!

The references given above are mostly in the area of media attractions but it would be naïve not to mention the contribution made by the Americans to technology especially in the field of user-friendly devices. In the recent times, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are two Americans who have become household names, the world over. Apart from revolutionizing the way we communicate, study and work, these two gentlemen have no doubt imparted some valuable lessons to the whole world. Add to them the work by the American philosophers and intellectuals through books on almost every topic, it would be an understatement that we have gained from them.

Who could really discount the charismatic aura of the American Dream? Why are the Pakistanis (and the world in general) so mesmerized by its magic? There is just one word perhaps, “Perfection”. The Americans are perfectionists and they know how to present everything, be it a novel, a TV show, a movie, a product, a brand or an idea with a touch of class and appeal. Sadly, this includes their lies also! The American government gets away with any lies also because we are so blinded by the American dream that we are unable to recognize the truth. We also fail to realize that the American government is not the same thing as its people.

The Americans as portrayed in their TV shows stand for honesty, courage, generosity, integrity and compassion amongst other traits. The heroes in Hollywood movies are like saviors who act quickly to respond to challenging situations or to rescue the oppressed. The words “homicide” and “brutality” do not exist in their dictionary. The fictional American superhero “Superman” created in 1938 stands for the symbols of courage and chivalry as presented in comic strips, comic books, radio / TV shows and movies. But where are Superman and Batman now? 

Why are they not saving the world from the evil forces that are creating havoc through wars, invading one country after another on the pretext of different alibis?

For people like me who grew up loving the American dream, it is so shocking and disappointing that the US government backed by the Zionists has a different act than Superman, Archie, Indiana Jones or James Bond. The administrators of the US government are more like the villains as portrayed in Hollywood movies. Arrogance is their hallmark and subduing the weaker nations has become their tradition. For them the human life of the inhabitants of the countries who revolt against their unjust policies has a very cheap value. In their quest to acquire the natural resources of the gifted countries, they aim to promote their own godless agenda in the whole word. The crimes of US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are sufficient to tell us that ‘they’ really do not care about humanity. The US and NATO alliance attacked Libya to basically rescue the citizens from the so-called tyranny of Qaddafi. Just like the US government used the pretext of WMDs for the attack on Iraq, a different reason had to be invented for the air raids on Libya. We have become so immune to the global media lies and propaganda that we failed to notice that hospitals were one of the first targets of those air attacks.

Is it time to end our romance with the “American Dream”? All hope is not lost though. Many American activists are themselves exposing the lies of the US government. We just need to realize that on the one hand there is falsehood promoted by the global media which is in the hands of elite forces, on the other hand we cannot ignore truth. The truth has become lost in the sea of lies. Though we cannot deny that we need to beware of conspiracy theories, but it is not wise to always label a truth as a conspiracy theory. Are we ready to search for the truth which is always rare?

Syed Roman Ahsan is from Pakistan and works as a freelance writer/journalist. He has also worked for many years as an executive in a Marketing Research agency catering services to FMCG firms. In these times, when Pakistan is surrounded by chaos, Roman is a peace activist and runs an email campaign to make people aware of the truth!

US Must Stop Funding Israeli Crimes

US Must Stop Funding Israeli Crimes

[REPRINT]

An interview with Dr. Franklin Lamb

11 October, 2011

Press TV

An exclusive interview with Dr. Franklin Lamb, international lawyer from Beirut.

A prominent political lawyer says that the US cannot continue to supply arms or economic aid to Israel which yet again is under international pressure for its atrocities against humanity. In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Franklin Lamb tells us more about the future of the US-Israeli relationship.

Press TV: As violent as that video we just aired was, it really shouldn't come as a surprise because, well, this type of behavior by Israeli forces is pretty much done on a weekly basis in the occupied territories. But you tell us what you think based on the video that has been released by human rights activists.

Lamb: The crimes against humanity which these video documents constitute, yet again, a clear and unavoidable challenge to American values and to President Obama’s administration that requires a forceful response. And that response from the Obama administration must be that it's time for America to cut ties with the brutal Zionist occupier of Palestine and disengage politically, militarily and economically.

It's not public, yet, but it will be this week via pro-Palestinian sources on Capitol Hill—yes, there actually are a few courageous souls up there--- that US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke with Netanyahu in very, very strong terms last week. Panetta declared that the Israeli government, as it is today and the state of Israel itself, may well not survive the current Islamic and Arab awakening.

And this is exactly why.

The American people have no stomach anymore for this apartheid regime and I don't think that Obama can sustain the current course and his egregious groveling to Israel and its Congressional lobby and also in terms of the United Nations fiasco and now UNESCO.

This clear message ricocheting around the region, and increasingly in the West, is that Zionist Apartheid Israel has no place in the region, any region for that matter, and it has no basis for demanding its 6 billion dollars a year handout from the American tax payer, approximately $7 million dollars per day—every day of the year-rain or shine-- now in its 4th decade. We're fed up, we can’t afford it and God knows we have urgent domestic priorities that need our limited and shrinking available resources given the past decade of ill-advised wars of choice which have earned our good people the hatred of much of the world while making a mockery of American values and ruining our economy while depriving our youth of the opportunities they deserve. Regarding our youth, it’s the lack of hope, as much as the jobs, that hurts today's young unemployed.

Hopefully, Obama will sacrifice a second term, if that's what's necessary, in order to revive American principles and American values by standing up to the US Israel lobby as an American Profile in Courage and by acting in the interest of the American people who placed their confidence in him in 2008.

I think recent events show that it's that clear, it's essentially black and white. We can't waffle, we can't grovel anymore. It’s simply time for America to stand up to and reject the Zionist apartheid regime.

Press TV: You talked about the UN and, of course, the UN General Assembly wrapped up a couple weeks back. Tell us why it is that the UN does not really have any real effect about what Israel is doing? Of course, you can tell us more about the countless resolutions that Israel doesn't listen to. I want to talk about Ban Ki Moon, during the 2008 war, was standing in that debris in the Gaza Strip and seeing that this shouldn't be happening with smoke billowing from the background. But yet, we see time and again Israel committing these acts.

Lamb: Absolutely. As we know, the United Nations Security Council, as with NATO, has tragically been diminished to nothing more than an adjunct of the American-Israeli foreign policy. We have to revisit both of those international institutions. We must discard NATO as a dangerous out of control Cold War relic and reform the United Nations, frankly along the lines that President Ahmadinejad recommended during his 2010 lecture on this subject. A brilliant discourse that went largely ignored in the Western media.

It's true, as you say, we cannot rely on Israel to do anything of a humanitarian nature, but we can rely on the people in the streets, exiting the Mosques and gathering in American cities…inspired by the nine countries that are revolting here in this region and increasingly in the West and we now see also in Wall Street, Washington, and elsewhere.

It's up to us, individually, ultimately to bring about the necessary change. While we are very concerned about the inaction of these certain international institutions and our own governments, ultimately it's up to us to make change happen. That is the essence of Democracy isn’t it?

Regarding the demise of Israel, I think Panetta was right. And the report will be made public this week unless Israel can stop it and it argues that we're going to have to disengage. The quantum military edge which American has guaranteed to Israel that was incorporated into law in America in 2008 by Howard Berman, a pillar of the Zionist community, doesn't and shouldn’t apply anymore.

We're not going to be able to support Israel in terms of arms or economic aid, and we're going to have to discard our habit of putting Israel before our own interests and our own country. And that is what Panetta told Netanyahu in private. I think that's the direction we will be moving.

It's clear that this region is not turning back and that the genie is out of the bottle. All of this past when America put Israel above our own interests and sacrificed our real friends must be discarded and the new intifada from Tunisia to Yemen to Ramallah and increasingly to America is the future resistance era. I think all people of good will must support that and change the current apocalyptic direction and restore Palestine to her rightful inhabitants.

How Did It Take This Long For Courage To Get To Wall Street?

How Did It Take This Long For Courage To Get To Wall Street?

[REPRINT]

By Rand Clifford

03 October, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Perhaps we should begin by calling them financializers ...or, swine for short? Like all elite swine, they're so full of hubris it's made their tails curl. Whenever there's a major upward transfer of wealth debacle like the dot com bubble or the savings and loan scandal, they're always nearby.

These swine create overwhelming misery by diddling wealth from those who actually create value, plug it into their casino-juju machinery, extract vast profits through every kind of criminal manipulation and speculation, and end up controlling everything, including governments. Through government control they further bleed populations until they are turnips; then they demand ever-increasing public bailouts when their casino chicanery runs up against reality. Repeat cycle until the amount of toxic waste on the books from casino-derivative side bets equals more money than there is on the planet, and only WWIII might bail them out.

Their doomsday mission is to perpetually seek out new ways to bleed wealth with new and more complex leeches, and to boldly accumulate more debt slaves than any man before.

And now, at long last, vestiges of Americans that still cling to courage are protesting at the main sty, peaceful demonstrations aimed at those who have all but wrecked the country, much of the world—and have yet to get up a really good head of steam. And guess what?

It didn't happen. “Occupy Wall Street” continued not to happen for almost two weeks...or at least mainstream corporate media (CorpoMedia) has tried to bury it—but that pesky Internet, that thing the swine haven't been able to fully control, yet ; it blabbed about the protest all over the world. Time for a second line of defense.

Ad Hominem Attacks

Sure, standardized police brutality and intimidation are always there to fall back on, along with just about any inhumanity imaginable, but the Swine have earned an image problem; no sense expanding that problem if not absolutely necessary. Besides, Americans have been conditioned to get jollies from trash talk—look how much traction it's given repugnantcans (GOPers) and their rancid wings.

So attack the character of these upstart protestors in “Grand Old...(style)”. Sting them with choice adjectives, such as, “dirty hippies”, “aimless”, “spoiled brats”, “ungratefuls”, “juveniles”. Taunt them, jeer at the most courageous among us from lofty perches while sipping champagne and snapping cell-phone pictures for fellow swine to laugh at. Then, hammer home the “aimless”....

No Clear Message, No Leadership

Imagine a swine/corporate Malignancy gleefully attacking life on Earth—attacking the planet's ability to sustain life—in the blind pursuit of profit . A monstrous evil energized by pure greed, hell bent on destroying you, your world, and inevitably, itself, all in the name of insatiable reptilian drive for personal accumulation. And there are people among us courageous and focused enough to make amazing personal sacrifices protesting the Malignancy's culture of uncontrolled greed...and the Malignancy maligns the courageous for not having a “clear message”, or a defined CEO (leadership). Well, it's all unfolding in clear view for CorpoMedia to pull out a full-court suppress against. Sounds like the very definition of “malignant”.

If this were (their) Hollywood, perhaps the “clear message” might be: “Your mother sucks cocks in hell” (from “The Exorcist”, Warner Bros., 1973).

But instead of Hollywood, this is an unbelievably life-supporting speck of oasis in an unimaginably immense and hostile universe. Malignancy bent on destroying our oasis for profit employs as a second line of defense against its detractors, an attack for not having a “clear message”—that's almost beyond Hollywood.

The grievances are so expansive, hardly conducive to a nice, tidy, vetted, “clear message”. Anyway, a “clear message” would probably incite a full frontal assault of litigation involving hoards of parasitic Malignancy lawyers and going clear up to the corporate Supreme Court, where charges such as defamation would stick, maybe even charges that the protestors are terrorists that should be vaporized in the interest of national security.

Besides, if the Malignancy has to be told, has to have a “clear message”, it would at least pretend not to understand the message.

And regarding leadership: America has no leadership, simply Malignancy in utter control. So what's all the fuss about “no leadership”? Patent infringement?

How Might YOU Contribute to the Courage?

The rewards of freedom, or more accurately, liberty , and (representative) democracy (alas, we hardly knew you) requires sacrifice and eternal vigilance. The Malignancy must be hit where it's sensitive—the bottom line...where they can't obfuscate, deny, taunt, jeer, or wash away with Dom Perignon. Sure, they might try, but....

The truly courageous among us have touched off a spark! If the rest of us let it go out without burning out the Malignancy, so much for courage in America. And how much courage would it really take to disable your TV and cancel your subscription to the heart of CorpoMedia? Certainly nothing like the courage of those “dirty hippies” occupying “Wall Street”. But a little is better than nothing, and if multiplied by a million, it's not little anymore.

For a discussion of the advantages and challenges of kicking TV addiction, please go here .

If only a million American households—a tiny fraction—freed themselves from a debilitating habit, it would hurt the Malignancy. It's really one of the best ways to show solidarity with the courageous, to impact the Malignancy, help onself, and get courage in America off the endangered species list.

But What Will We DO?

For Christ's sake, how will we find out what's happening in the world?!

Okay, I know, excuses swarm in fast to pester you back into your comfort zone . Plus, if you think watching TV is actually doing something, and that CorpoMedia TV is anything but mind control—propaganda aimed not at informing you about what's going on, but at filling your head with what Malignancy wants you to believe, well...sorry I said anything.

But a new study just cited in “Parade magazine” (10/2/11)—the study found parts of the brain suppressed when watching TV, especially those involved in thinking and memory formation, they “...light up when TV is turned off.”

Courage is sparking around the country, finally , and the Malignancy is concerned. They might have to pull off a false-flag “terrorist attack” diabolical enough to declare martial law. They are capable of doing whatever it takes to snuff this courage thing permanently. Again, they continuously prove that nothing is beyond their inhumanity. Profit is all that matters.

But if millions of people have enough courage to sever their CorpoMedia mainline—cancel their expensive satellite/cable Malignancy feeds, that would be a stealth attack, which they never would have imagined could come from their programmed Americans. Open protest they can simply snuff if it gets too troublesome, but a show of courageous intelligence would really catch them off guard. Don't get me wrong, Occupy Wall Street is definitely courageous intelligence, but the brave and intelligent need massive reinforcements. And then, the real courage will have to kick in. The across-the-board hit to the bottom line would wound the Malignancy. A cornered wild animal is dangerous, but a wounded one is far more dangerous.

Since Supreme Court hijinks have ultimately, under the Constitution ( that goddam piece of paper ), bestowed upon corporations more rights than those of living persons, corporations are, if nothing else than legally ...wild animals.

Duck And Cover

Seems we might have only two choices, now that we've fiddled and shirked around seeking comfort zones plenty long enough for Malignancy to establish—almost—total control. One, we can keep our heads down, whimper for the best, and let Malignancy enjoy final consolidation of their power and render Earth uninhabitable. Two, We can muster courage to survive by burning down the Malignancy while we still might be able to. Peaceful protest in the face of confident, smug and smarmy Malignancy, hidden from awareness of so many CorpoMedia junkies is one thing; stealth protest aimed at the heart of a Malignancy getting scared is another.

Blood would be spilled, barrels of it—and WWIII could make the gushing Macondo wellhead blowout in the Gulf seem like a little squirt compared to the gushing of blood the Malignancy will set in motion if this “courage thing” doesn't die down.

The malignancy is already taking everything down; if they are forced down prematurely, they'll take everything else down with them.

Courage versus Malignancy. Life versus death. Our most courageous have given us a spark that I believe will be the last of such sparks of hope, our final chance. Whether or not enough courage exists in America to keep the spark from going out—even fuel a cauterization of the current controlling Malignancy...I am not optimistic. In fact, I have little hope that a nation of TV addicts has much courage left at all; certainly not the intelligence for a stealth attack.

A flash in the pan, few reinforcements on the way. A flash the Malignancy won't ever allow to happen again. I'm very sorry for believing this...but the overt courage of a few Americans has moved me so much I just had to say something. And of course, I've been wrong so many times; of all those times, being proved wrong here might be the best thing that ever happened...to all of us .

All that is Holy...please let me be wrong.

Rand Clifford's novel Castling , the classic "Story of the Power of Hemp", and the sequel, Timing , are published by StarChief Press http://starchiefpress.com/ The novels, Priest Lake Cathedral , and Voices of Vires will be available soon .

Why the police aren't on our side

Why the police aren't on our side | SocialistWorker.org

Amy Muldoon looks at the role of police and their attitude toward political protest.

October 6, 2011

[REPRINT]


Police force a protester to the ground in the midst of the Wall Street occupation (Adrian Kinloch)
"WE ARE all Sean Bell, NYPD go to hell!" "NYPD: Rape is a felony!" "Racist, sexist, anti-gay, NYPD go away!"

Over the past two weeks in New York City, lower Manhattan has been besieged by angry protesters responding to racism, sexism and the crimes of America's biggest financial institutions. While the issues are different, one common target among others has emerged in all these movements: the police.

Following the execution of innocent Georgia death row prisoner Troy Davis the night before, protestors gathered September 22 in Union Square for a Day of Outrage demonstration and began an un-permitted march downtown.

Repeatedly outwitting, outrunning and outnumbering police, marchers made it past several blockades to join the
ongoing Occupy Wall Street encampment. Davis himself was the victim of a lynch mob mentality within the police force when 25 officers were assigned to find a suspect for the murder of an off duty officer.

Two days after the Troy Davis march, an un-permitted march by Occupy Wall Street to Union Square was attacked without provocation, and the gratuitous pepper-spraying of a group of young women by a commanding officer made headlines nationally.

The following week, more than a thousand people marched on police headquarters to protest the assault. The next day, Saturday, thousands gathered to march across the Brooklyn Bridge. The police seemed to be guiding marchers into a single lane of traffic on the roadway, but a third of the way over the bridge, the cops stopped and fenced them in, arresting 700 people.

Inspired by protests after Toronto officers offered the advice to young women "not to dress like sluts" if they wanted to avoid being raped, SlutWalk came to New York City at the end of September, and it also took aim at the NYPD. In June of this year, two officers were acquitted of the rape of a woman who was intoxicated and requested an escort home. Days before the march, women in Brooklyn reported being told by police officers they were "the type of girls" a local rapist was looking for because they were wearing shorts or skirts.

In all of these instances, most people think the problem is that these are the acts of a "few bad apples." But taken together, one has to ask: Should an orchard producing so many bad apples be allowed to continue operating?

Another question is raised by the attitude of some activists in the Occupy Wall Street struggle who believe that the police are part of the "99 percent" that the movement is speaking for. For example, when the arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge were taking place, some marchers who hadn't been trapped appealed to police with chants of "Join us, you're one of us."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IS THERE something fundamentally wrong with the police, or can they actually protect and serve the people, and even come over to the side of the struggle?

This question is made more complicated by the attitude expressed by individual officers and even groups of them in support of certain struggles--most notably, during the occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol last winter, when the police union stated for a time that it wouldn't clear the building of protesters and even directed members to sleep over at one point.

But the truth is this: The police force is not, and cannot ever be, a force for social justice.
In reality, the police don't even do the job they're supposed to do: protect regular people from crime and violence.

This has nothing to do with the individual intentions of cops on the street--though that's not to say there are not murderous and bigoted people on the force--but the structure and purpose of the police is to protect the status quo: a state of affairs where a tiny minority benefit from the exploitation and oppression of the vast majority.

It is the nature of the police as an institution under capitalism to protect inequality and--in the U.S. in particular--to both act out and promote racism.

Occupy Wall Street's slogan "We are the 99 percent" both illuminates and confuses this reality. On the one hand, it is absolutely true that a tiny parasitical minority of economically powerful people who benefit from control over the immense wealth they have stolen from the rest of us.

However, this begs the question of how do they manage to hold on to what they have taken from us? While we are often ruled by ideological justifications for inequality in society--that we can't redistribute the wealth, or we shouldn't--in the final instance, we are prevented by the existence of a government (or, as Marxists would say, the state) that has the monopoly of violence and uses it to keep the intense inequality in place.

Society is not just a collection of autonomous individuals: institutions exist to mediate between the class of rich owners and directors of capital and the millions of people who must work for them in order for society to function.

As socialist Peter Morgan wrote:

The police are just one part of the state which, along with the courts and the army, is there to do one thing--protect the property of the minority who own it against the mass of the people who do not. Frederick Engels pointed out over 100 years ago, "The state is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel."

Capitalism is a society that is based upon the accumulation of capital and therefore needs a highly efficient state machine to protect its property. The police exist because the antagonisms between classes with conflicting interests can no longer be settled directly--they therefore require a power appearing to stand above society to regulate conflicts. The state does this by ensuring that it alone possesses a monopoly of power, although it claims to operate in the name of society as a whole. In fact, it operates as the instrument of one class to oppress the other, subordinate, class.

Despite the majority of cops coming from working-class backgrounds, the role of the police puts them directly at odds with the aspirations and needs of the rest of the class.

Police are a necessity in all class societies, not to stop crime, which they do a miserable job at, but to enforce a social order that will never allow the liberation of the oppressed or economic justice. In the U.S., police encounter a crime in progress on average once every 14 years.

Plus, the police force never addresses the causes of crime--overwhelmingly caused by poverty, but also drug addiction, mental health issues, domestic violence, racism, sexism etc. Instead, the culture of the police force is that society is held together by "law and order" consisting of punishment and violence--up to and including death--meted out by them.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE IMPORTANCE of the ability of the police to retain this power of life and death over average citizens--and non-citizens, who find themselves increasingly in the sights of the police--is made clear by the near-impossibility of prosecuting police for their crimes, especially against people of color.

In the past few years, the high-profile killings of Sean Bell in New York City and Oscar Grant in Oakland, Calif.--both clear-cut cases of racist murder--resulted in not one cop being found guilty. Much of the defense of cops is that it is a high-stress job, and the general population couldn't possibly understand the pressures of policing "high-crime areas."

Reading between the lines, the police are understandably afraid of Black men (even when they are unarmed and lay face-down on the pavement), and supposedly justified in killing them.

The strategic deployment of police in low-income, non-white neighborhoods inevitably leads to greater arrests and conflicts with these constituencies. It is a self-fulfilling logic that results in an attitude of occupation on the part of the cops.

The trend through the 1990's was toward militarization of the police, including assault weapons, armored cars, and special units known for their excessive use of force (such as the NYPD Street Crimes Unit which adopted the Klan's slogan "we own the night" and shot unarmed street vendor Amadou Diallo 41 times in his own doorway).

In New York City, the recent exposure of the Demographics Unit within the NYPD made explicit that certain nationalities or religions are automatically suspects (in this case Arabs, North Africans and Muslims). But the daily bread of harassment for the NYPD is the "stop and frisk" policy, which nominally targets gang members but is widely recognized to be a no-holds-barred racial profiling operation.

The obvious hypocrisy of claiming to be protecting neighborhoods from gangs by targeting huge numbers of Black and Latino youths prompted Bob Herbert to write in the New York Times:

From 2004 through 2009, city police officers stopped people on the street and checked them out nearly 3 million times. Many were patted down, frisked, made to sprawl face down on the ground, or spread-eagle themselves against a wall or over the hood of a car.

Nearly 90 percent of the people stopped were completely innocent of any wrongdoing.
An overwhelming majority of the people stopped were Black or Hispanic.Blacks were nine times more likely than whites to be stopped by the police, but no more likely than whites to be arrested as a result of the stops.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SO WHILE individuals may join the force with good intentions, the internal culture and practical experience of implementing policy that is racist and anti-working class either overrides the good intentions, or drives out anyone unwilling to go along. The internal culture of the police depends on separation from, and hostility to, the communities they are meant to "serve and protect." All the light-blue "Community Outreach" windbreakers in the world can't cover this fact.

While the armed forces are trained to dehumanize people of different nationalities overseas, the police are inculcated to dehumanize the domestic population--a much deeper training. The resulting culture of police leads to a kind of self-segregation where cops socialize together, marry, and live together and a kind of impenetrable loyalty keeps dissent out. As a result of an atmosphere saturated with bigotry, every year lawsuits by gay cops, female cops and non-white cops shows that behind the thin blue line is a world where discrimination is not just reserved for "perps."

As capitalism's crises deepen and spread, the antagonisms between the exploited and the exploiters will rise to the surface more clearly, and the 1 percent will call for the use of the police more explicitly as the protectors of property against those of the 99 percent who threaten their hold on power.

Even if the majority of police officers opposed such actions, the police force is not a democracy. The upper echelons of the police force are essentially political appointees, unaccountable to the public, who create policy to legitimize their own continuation and expansion as an institution.

Looking back to February, when thousands of union members and students occupied the capital in Madison, Wis., the notion that the cops were on our side made sense given the public statements and daily participation by the police against Governor Walker's bill.

Wisconsin Professional Police Association (WPPA) Director Jim Palmer said: "Law enforcement officers know the difference between right and wrong, and Governor Walker's attempt to eliminate the collective voice of Wisconsin's devoted public employees is wrong." But three days after making this statement, the police cleared the capitol building, breaking the momentum of the mobilization. In fact, some activists argued for compliance because of the good relationship with the police, putting that above the priority of maintaining the occupation.

The rallies and marches of the past several days have shaken the confidence of the police by refusing to stay within circumscribed protest areas; unfortunately for them, every attempt to use force and arrests to intimidate and divide the movements has backfired. If they are on good behavior now it is only because our side is growing stronger and they have been exposed.

They will try to claw back some legitimacy by appearing neutral and only interested in "order" and "keeping the peace," but by protecting a "peace" where Wall Street amasses profits while foreclosures pile up, bankruptcies mount, and unemployment increases they show their true nature, whether or not they bloody another nose or open another canister of pepper spray.

In cities like New York, which is majority non-white with a police force that routinely beats, frames, and kills people of color, our allies are people who have been targeted by police, not the police themselves. The aim of any movement against economic inequality must take into account the role of racism plays in capitalism. To become more inclusive of communities struggling against oppression, where the police play a repressive role ever day, reaching out to the NYPD is exactly the wrong direction to go.

If we are to advance our struggle in the name of justice and redistribution of the great wealth we ourselves create, then we must understand that the police as an institution are in our way, and must be dismembered along with capitalism, the system it protects. Only with the destruction of inequality will the existence of a separate, unaccountable, armed body disappear.

In the meantime, building a movement that is broad, inclusive, democratic and that draws in the largest numbers to radical action is the best way to push back against police powers in the here and now. Making friends with cops or trying to persuade individuals, no matter how sympathetic they might personally be, is a dead end.

The movements will never advance on terms that will preserve friendly relations with the police; our aims are fundamentally opposed.