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Wednesday, December 26

26.Dec.2012 - FBI Documents Reveal Occupy Monitoring, Congress Protects Gun Industry, US Government Redistributes Wealth to Rich, Origins of Middle East Mess, US to Sell S. Korea Drones, Wake Up from the American Dream, Homeowners Associations Threaten Banks with Foreclosures, Economy Artificially Maintained, Rip-Off Wars, Case for a Living Wage, more. (plus Documentary: Truth About Secret Weapons)


FBI Secret Documents Reveal Nationwide Occupy Monitoring
The FBI and other federal agencies monitored Occupy from the beginning. (photo: Occupy Portland)
BI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF's Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did "not condone the use of violence" at occupy protests.

Why Is Congress Protecting the Gun Industry?
Is Congress ready to give up protecting gun manufacturers? (photo: NY Magazine)

Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings, there have been widespread calls for Congress to pass gun control laws - and it should. But there has been less talk about another important tool that could be used to reduce gun violence: lawsuits against the gun industry. Some of these suits can succeed despite the PLCAA - as the Daniel Williams case shows - and we need more of them to be filed. But if Congress wants to get serious about gun violence, it should repeal the PLCAA.

U.S. Government Redistributes Wealth… to the Rich
For about thirty years now, the federal government has been implementing policies that take tax dollars from middle class Americans and give them to the rich, supposedly as a way to spur economic growth. Although Americans actually want greater economic equality, the net effect has been to redistribute wealth to the rich and create the most unequal developed society on earth.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33436.htm

American Pro-Israel Groups Warm Up to Kerry as Top Diplomat
The bond Kerry has forged with the Jewish community because of his roots and because of his interest in the Middle East has helped smooth over rough patches when he has criticized Israel.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33433.htm

America`s Retreat? What next for Afghanistan after NATO’s scheduled pullout?

afghanmap2On a snap visit to Kabul a few days ago, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declined to clarify what is in store for Afghanistan after NATO’s announced pullout in 2014. The American-led forces arrived in Afghanistan 11 years ago on a United Nations mission to combat terrorism. In a recent interview with Afghan television, Russian Ambassador Andrei Avetisyan said this mission is far from accomplished, as is the task of equipping Afghanistan with modern armed forces.


The origins of the Middle East mess
Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan explained


RQ-4 Global Hawk

US to sell $1.2bn in spy drones to S. Korea

The Pentagon has informed Congress of its plans to sell four Global Hawk high-altitude spy drones to South Korea. Under the deal Seoul’s surveillance capabilities would be greatly improved, even though the US DoD itself wanted to retire the aircraft.

Slavery, Gun control and the Jewish elites

Abraham Foxman, head of Israel-Jewish lobby group ADL has called Minister Louis Farrakhan (born 1933), head of the Nation of Islam (NOI), an antisemite for later’s criticism of Steven Spielberg’s latest movie ‘Lincoln‘ for ignoring the fact that Jewish elites funded both sides during the American Civil War, played a major role in African slave trade but also hated president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Rabbi Isaac M. Wise in his eulogy had said: “The lamented Abraham Lincoln believed himself to be bone from our bone and flesh from our flesh. He supposed himself to be a descendant of Hebrew parentage. He said so in my presence“.


FBI Monitored Occupy Wall Street from Earliest Days




Generation Y Wakes Up From The American Dream, Faces An American Nightmare

Generation Y professionals entering the workforce are finding careers that once were gateways to high pay and upwardly mobile lives turning into detours and dead ends. Average incomes for individuals ages 25 to 34 have fallen 8 percent, double the adult population’s total drop, since the recession began in December 2007. Their unemployment rate remains stuck one-half to 1 percentage point above the national figure.




FBI Had Counterterrorism Agents Investigate Occupy Movement

It's the latest example of counterterrorism officials looking into domestic protest groups.


Payback! Hundreds of Homeowners Associations Threaten Banks with Foreclosure

In Florida, banks who slack on maintaining their properties are getting a taste of their own medicine.

"Blood on Your Hands": CODEPINK Interrupts NRA’s Wayne LaPierre as He Calls for Guns in U.S. Schools



As U.S. Faces Gun Epidemic Post-Newtown, Obama Urged to Break With NRA & Back Global U.N. Arms Treaty


OWS Activists Called Domestic Terrorists
US history is littered with repressive laws. Constitutional protections and civil liberties have been targeted. The 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts restricted First Amendment freedoms. So did the 1917 Espionage Act, 1919 anti-communist Palmer raids, 1934 Special Committee on Un-American Activities, its House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) successor, FBI COINTELPRO crackdowns, 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 2001 USA Patriot Act, and other post-9/11 measures.

Is Our Economy Being Artificially Maintained and Propped Up? If So, How and Why?
Out of one side of the establishment's mouth we hear excitement about "green shoots," and out of the other side comes breathless warnings of fiscal cliffs and the urgent need forunlimited bailouts   by the Fed in the form of ongoing "quantitative easing," which consists of the Federal Reserve Bank creating $85 billion a month out of thin air, and using it to buy two things:   1) huge amounts of government bonds from the US Treasury Department, and 2) huge amounts of near-worthless mortgage-backed securities from private banks (i.e. banksters).     What this amounts to is a kind of ongoing bailout and gift, which, at its core, is an ongoing transfer of wealth to rich banksters and other Wall Streeters, from the rest of us.    

No Glory, No Spoils, No Closure - The Double Whammy of Rip-off Wars
Today's easy riddle: what will cost more, last longer, and accomplish less than our troop-heavy, anachronistic, perpetual overseas occupations? Nothing, nada, rien -- certainly not annual deficits, Bush tax cuts, or formal defense budgets. Put aside human suffering and unbelievable dislocation: we've all shouldered a four trillion dollar price tag on two failed wars, plus the double whammy that both Iraq and Afghanistan remain unstable havens for mayhem. Is any fiscal cliff that might happen worse than two indeterminate rat holes that have happened? 

Wage History and The Case for A Living Wage
A conservative friend of mine was astonished to learn that a couple with two children in his town would need an income of  $52,000 per year to live there. "I'm a CPA and I've had partners who didn't make $57,000 some years," he said.



God Particle or Hype Particle? What the Higgs Boson Means to You

Laws of War Violated During Gaza-Israel Fighting: Report


Occupy Homes, one year on and growing daily

occupyhomesMNOn December 6, the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Homes movement, Meusa and Wheeler were only two among thousands of people who gathered for coordinated direct actions focused on the human right to housing. Building on a year filled with eviction blockades, house takeovers, bank protest and singing auction blockades, the anniversary of Occupy Homes demonstrated that the groups were still committed to risking arrest to keep people sheltered. Yet, even more significantly, the day’s events demonstrated a crystallization of the movement’s central message: that decent and dignified housing should be a human right in the United States.

Zero Dark Thirty: Why the Film's Makers Should Be Defended And What Deeper bin Laden Controversy Has Been Stirred

To those critics of Zero Dark Thirty who claim the film misleads the public on the role that waterboarding and other torture played in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, I suggest they look forward to the making of some other film that represents their ideals rather than make Zero Dark Thirty their scapegoat for the many conflicting and misinformed statements issued by American policy makers concerning the use of torture (I will not here legitimize the misleading euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques") during the War on Terror. 



There Are Now As Many Nonreligious Americans As Evangelicals -- 6 Ways Politicians Can Court Their Vote



DOCUMENTARY OF THE DAY:
THE TRUTH ABOUT STREET WEAPONS

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