Demonstraties VS #3: Wanneer valt 'the wall'?

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Op woensdag 19 oktober 2011 21:13 schreef arucard het volgende:
In andere landen worden ze doodgeschoten.

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GAO Finds Serious Conflicts at the Fed

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - A new audit of the Federal Reserve released today detailed widespread conflicts of interest involving directors of its regional banks.

"The most powerful entity in the United States is riddled with conflicts of interest," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said after reviewing the Government Accountability Office report. The study required by a Sanders Amendment to last year's Wall Street reform law examined Fed practices never before subjected to such independent, expert scrutiny.

The GAO detailed instance after instance of top executives of corporations and financial institutions using their influence as Federal Reserve directors to financially benefit their firms, and, in at least one instance, themselves. "Clearly it is unacceptable for so few people to wield so much unchecked power," Sanders said. "Not only do they run the banks, they run the institutions that regulate the banks."

Sanders said he will work with leading economists to develop legislation to restructure the Fed and bar the banking industry from picking Fed directors. "This is exactly the kind of outrageous behavior by the big banks and Wall Street that is infuriating so many Americans," Sanders said.

The corporate affiliations of Fed directors from such banking and industry giants as General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers pose "reputational risks" to the Federal Reserve System, the report said. Giving the banking industry the power to both elect and serve as Fed directors creates "an appearance of a conflict of interest," the report added.

The 108-page report found that at least 18 specific current and former Fed board members were affiliated with banks and companies that received emergency loans from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

In the dry and understated language of auditors, the report noted that there are no restrictions in Fed rules on directors communicating concerns about their respective banks to the staff of the Federal Reserve. It also said many directors own stock or work directly for banks that are supervised and regulated by the Federal Reserve. The rules, which the Fed has kept secret, let directors tied to banks participate in decisions involving how much interest to charge financial institutions and how much credit to provide healthy banks and institutions in "hazardous" condition. Even when situations arise that run afoul of Fed's conflict rules and waivers are granted, the GAO said the waivers are kept hidden from the public.

The report by the non-partisan research arm of Congress did not name but unambiguously described several individual cases involving Fed directors that created the appearance of a conflict of interest, including:

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To read the full GAO report, click here.

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Op donderdag 20 oktober 2011 02:10 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

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Op donderdag 20 oktober 2011 05:30 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:
How to Regain Our Democracy

28th Amendment

Corporations are not people. They have none of the constitutional rights of human beings. Corporations are not allowed to give money to any politician, directly or indirectly. No politician can raise over $100 from any person or entity. All elections must be publicly financed.

Now, it's our time. Get up, it's time to get them back.

----
super initiatief

The Corporation Full Length Documentary + Multiple Subtitles

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Op donderdag 20 oktober 2011 10:53 schreef Aether het volgende:
Leuke reacties op http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/(...)naar-de-53-beweging/

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Op donderdag 20 oktober 2011 11:19 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

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Bah, wat een kruiperigheid.

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Op donderdag 20 oktober 2011 10:53 schreef Aether het volgende:
Leuke reacties op http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/(...)naar-de-53-beweging/

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Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

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Something’s Happening Here

When you see spontaneous social protests erupting from Tunisia to Tel Aviv to Wall Street, it’s clear that something is happening globally that needs defining. There are two unified theories out there that intrigue me. One says this is the start of “The Great Disruption.” The other says that this is all part of “The Big Shift.” You decide.

twitter:

AnonymousPress twitterde op donderdag 20-10-2011 om 15:56:53 ✔ #OWS News: SF Police Commission decided will no longer raid #OccupySF camp 1st Amendment Rights take precedence #Winning v @CalFireNews reageer retweet

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Anonymous Calls On Occupy Wall Street To Form A New Political Party Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/anonymous-is-against-a-revolution-and-wants-a-new-political-party-2011-10#ixzz1bLB8BnAv

Anonymous central just posted a notice on its website calling for the Occupy Wall Street Movement to avoid a full blown revolution and put its weight behind forming a new political party.

The statement says a vote for either party is a vote for the status quo and the two party system is entirely insufficient to carry the country through its problems and into the future.

This new party would work in the interests of th 99%.

The full proposal is below.

Read more: http://www.businessinside(...)011-10#ixzz1bLAy7eRw

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What the NYPD Really Thinks of Occupy Wall Street

As midnight approached in New York City's Washington Square Park on Saturday, 14 occupiers sat in the center of an empty fountain playing Woody Guthrie songs. "If you would like to remain in the park past midnight, you will be subject to arrest," a policeman had just broadcast through a bullhorn, sending thousands who'd come for a political rally fleeing. Backed by some 100 riot cops in face shields, an exhausted-looking community affairs officer moved in to try to talk reason. "We marched with you guys; we treated you with respect," he said, pointing out that some officers had been on duty since 3 a.m. "We understand your cause. We understand your voice. We understand what you are saying. But all we want is for you to vacate the park."

"This is political," said a man in black glasses, between drags on a cigarette.

"C'mon guys," the officer pleaded. "Why get arrested?"

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And it seems like every time the police are learning to get along with the occupiers, they overreact in one way or another. On Tuesday night, it was the arrest of well-known feminist author Naomi Wolf, who was hauled off in plastic zip cuffs for doing nothing more than standing on a sidewalk in an evening gown in front of a Huffington Post event in SoHo, where sheand Gov. Andrew Cuomowere invited guests.

Angry at police for barring anti-Cuomo protesters from assembling there, Wolf occupied the sidewalk herself in solidarity. She was tossed in a police van and hauled off to a "faeces- or blood-smeared cell," she later wrote. The protesters responded by marching on a nearby police station, the same one where I'd interviewed Jim, to demand her release.

When they got there, they found that the police had calmed down. A community affairs officer used the "people's mic," a method of group communication devised by the protesters, to announce that Wolf had been released. Then the occupiers asked him for a "temperature check" on whether they should go back to Zuccotti. Adopting their hand signal for "yes," the officer held his hands up in the air and wiggled his fingers.

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Op donderdag 20 oktober 2011 14:12 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies
1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

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From:NPR Communications
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 6:12 PM
Subject: From Dana Rehm: Communications Alert

To: All Staff
Fr: Dana Davis Rehm
Re: Communications Alert

We recently learned of World of Opera host Lisa Simeone’s participation in an Occupy DC group. World of Opera is produced by WDAV, a music and arts station based in Davidson, North Carolina. The program is distributed by NPR. Lisa is not an employee of WDAV or NPR; she is a freelancer with the station.

We’re in conversations with WDAV about how they intend to handle this. We of course take this issue very seriously.

As a reminder, all public comment (including social media) on this matter is being managed by NPR Communications.

All media requests should be routed through NPR Communications at 202.513.2300 or mediarelations@npr.org. We will keep you updated as needed. Thanks.

##

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This is how they do it. It was how it was done under McCarthy, for those not old enough to remember. It was also how it was done in the Soviet Union after they effectively shut down the Gulag. This is how they do it.

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Op donderdag 20 oktober 2011 11:20 schreef Aether het volgende:

[..]

Artikel of reacties?

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Op vrijdag 21 oktober 2011 14:37 schreef deelnemer het volgende:
Het NRC is zelf ook uitgekleed door Apax. Heeft het iets te maken met de nieuwe eigenaar van het NRC, de private equity maatschappij Egeria?

http://weblogs.nrc.nl/gel(...)-van-private-equity/

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Op vrijdag 21 oktober 2011 17:11 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

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Ik denk dat het probleem algemener is. De media volgen al jaren de logica van Wall Street, waarschijnlijk omdat die lekker simplistisch is en in hapklare brokken wordt aangeleverd. "En dan gaan we nu naar het economisch nieuws, de beurs... " Volgens mij is er op de beurs zelden nieuws in die zin dat het weerbericht met een temperatuursverandering van 2 graden ook geen nieuws is, en de economie is heel wat anders dan de beurs.

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Op vrijdag 21 oktober 2011 14:37 schreef deelnemer het volgende:
Het NRC is zelf ook uitgekleed door Apax. Heeft het iets te maken met de nieuwe eigenaar van het NRC, de private equity maatschappij Egeria?

http://weblogs.nrc.nl/gel(...)-van-private-equity/

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Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn't Get It

I'll have more coming out about this in a few days, but there have been two disgusting developments in the realm of plutocratic intervention on behalf of Wall Street that everyone protesting should take note of.

The fact that both of the following things took place in the middle of the full fever of OWS, when everyone is supposedly trying to placate anti-banker sentiment and Obama and the DCCC are supposedly pledging support of the protesters, shows how completely bankrupt this system is and how necessary street-level protests have become. Popular uprising is probably the only move left to stop developments like the following:

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Op zaterdag 22 oktober 2011 19:20 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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http://www.occupationalist.org/

Occupationalist is an impartial and real-time view of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Covering history as it unfolds. No filters. No delays.

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Police brutality charges sweep across the US

From Naomi Wolf's arrest in New York to shootings in Tucson and Florida, forces face allegations of abuse of power

Officer Michael Daragjati had no idea that the FBI was listening to his phone calls. Otherwise he would probably not have described his arrest and detention of an innocent black New Yorker in the manner he did.

Daragjati boasted to a woman friend that, while on patrol in Staten Island, he had "fried another nigger". It was "no big deal", he added. The FBI, which had been investigating another matter, then tried to work out what had happened.

According to court documents released in New York, Daragjati and his partner had randomly stopped and frisked a black man who had become angry and asked for Daragjati's name and badge number. Daragjati, 32, and with eight years on the force, had no reason to stop the man, and had found nothing illegal. But he arrested him and fabricated an account of him resisting arrest. The man, now referred to in papers only as John Doe because of fears for his safety, spent two nights in jail. He had merely been walking alone through the neighbourhood.

The shocking story has added to a growing sense that there are serious problems of indiscipline and law-breaking in US police forces. Last week the feminist author Naomi Wolf was arrested outside an awards ceremony in Manhattan. She had been advising Occupy Wall Street protesters of their rights to continue demonstrating outside the event. Instead, as she joined the protest, she was carted off to jail in her evening gown. That incident is only the most high-profile of many apparently illegal police actions around the protests. One senior officer, deputy inspector Anthony Bologna, created headlines worldwide when he pepper-sprayed young women behind a police barricade.

A report from the New York Civil Liberties Union recently looked at police use of Taser stun guns in the state, and revealed that in 60% of incidents where they were used, the incident did not meet the recommended criteria for such a weapon. Some cases involved people already handcuffed and 40% involved "at risk" subjects such as children, the elderly or mentally ill. "This disturbing pattern of misuse and abuse endangers lives," said the NYCLU's executive director, Donna Lieberman.

In Los Angeles, officers in the sheriff's department are accused of physically abusing some prison inmates and having sex with others. An internal report, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, revealed allegations that included beating people visiting relatives in jail. In Pittsburgh, there is the case of Jordan Miles, a high-flying high-school student stopped by three plainclothes policemen. Miles, 18 at the time, was walking to his grandmother's house and had no idea who the men were, as they did not identify themselves. He ran, but the officers caught him and beat him so badly that he ended up in hospital. He is undergoing neurological treatment for memory problems and has had to drop out of college.

Yet it was Miles who was charged with aggravated assault – a case that a judge later threw out. His mother, Terez Miles, said: "We are no strangers to police brutality in the city of Pittsburgh, but what they did was terrible and then they lied about it."

In Chicago, Jimmel Cannon, 13, was shot eight times by police who claimed that he had a BB gun in his hand. His family said that he had his hands in the air. In Tucson, Arizona, former marine Jose Guerena was killed by a Swat team on a drugs raid. They found nothing illegal, but Guerena was shot 23 times.

The list goes on. Miami is still dealing with the fallout of the fatal shooting of Raymond Herisse. He had been driving a car out of which police claimed gunshots came. However, it took three days before they produced a weapon. They also confiscated and destroyed the phones of people trying to record the incident.

"There is a widespread, continuing pattern of officers ordering people to stop taking photographs or video in public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply," said Chris Calabrese, of the American Civil Liberties Union. Campaigners say the spread of camera phones is why so many incidents of brutality are appearing.

In another recorded call, Daragjati complained to a friend: "I could throw somebody a beating, they catch me on camera, and I'm fired." Some activists have taken that to heart. Diop Kamau, a former officer, runs the Florida-based Police Complaint Centre, which investigates allegations of police abuse nationwide. "Police are now facing an onslaught of scrutiny because everyone has a cellphone," he said.

Kamau said that many police departments still had a culture of secrecy and many officers believed that there was little likelihood of punishment even if caught. "The police fill in the blanks. They say what happened and they will be believed," he said.

One weakness is that there is no central organisation for the police, and local departments do not release data on complaints or allegations of abuse. "The problem is that there is an absence of research," said Professor John Liederbach, an expert in American policing at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. As the list of complaints and incidents grows, that might be about to change.

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Op zondag 23 oktober 2011 11:58 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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"[The protests] will end when they tire out or when they start getting jobs"

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Op zondag 23 oktober 2011 12:42 schreef Aether het volgende:
Suits Who Work Around Occupy Wall Street Tell Us What They Really Think

[..]

Ja, dat is het
Hoezo, het niet willen snappen...

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"Everyone of us suits has debts and everything else," said Alex Malano of New Jersey. "Just because you wear a suit doesn't mean you have money."

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Chicago police arrest 130 Occupy protesters

Demonstrators erected tents and refused to leave Grant Park at its closing time, police say

About 130 protesters have been arrested at an Occupy Chicago demonstration after they erected tents and refused to leave a park at its closing time, police said.

The breakup of the protest in Grant Park, next to Lake Michigan, was the second mass arrest of demonstrators from Occupy Chicago in the past week. Last weekend, about 175 protesters were arrested.

The protesters were charged with violating a city ordinance and most were released after agreeing to appear in court, Chicago police said.

Grant Park, the site of major anti-war protests during the Democratic convention in 1968, is closed after 11pm.

The Occupy protests began more than a month ago in New York and focus on anger at government bailouts of big banks and persistent high unemployment.

Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have been arrested in New York and there have also been numerous arrests in Tampa, Cincinnati, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Denver and other cities.

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http://youranonnews.tumbl(...)-bail-chicago-police

We posted funds for bail. Chicago Police Department refusing to allow us to post bond, forcing protesters to stay overnight for a noncriminal citation and exercising their 1st amendment rights. Arrestees are being denied phone call, legal counsel, food, sleep basic human rights.

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Message To Occupy Wall Street: You’ve Already Won…

You’ve already won occupiers because there are more of you then there are of “them”. You’ve already won because you are right, and the folks in the media who have been pretending all along that they simply did not know what has been happening to this country over the past thirty years are going to be, one-by-one, shamed by you into admitting that they know that yes, our economic and political systems have been dominated all this time by the worst of the worst.

You’ve already won because the time has finally come where everybody in the nation has got to stop pretending that they did not know all along that the Emperor indeed has no clothes. The time has finally come when it is no longer permissible for polite (and otherwise) people to make believe that we were not all living in a monstrous and kleptocratic system where wholesale theft, abuse, and outright political fraud was simply business as usual. We played out that game all the way to the point where we became occupiers of a foreign country for no reason at all, and in it, we built our own style of prison camps where we tortured both the people in it, as well as the logic that we used to justify everything that we did in connection with it.

We as Americans created an economic system where the primary business model was based on fraud. Our banks lied to potential borrowers in order to get them to take out expensive mortgage products, and we as borrowers lied to the banks about our incomes so we could quality for these mortgages. We took out these mortgages so that we could speculate in the rapidly rising real estate market, and when that bubble burst, we all looked at each other in astonishment and wonder at how this all could have all happened to us.

A bank cannot do very much with one or two bad loans issued to borrowers who lack the ability to repay them, but if you have enough of them, then you can pool them up in a very large portfolio of mortgages and get them rated “Triple A” so that they are fit to be used as collateral for very large bond offerings. “Triple-A” of course, — as safe as U.S. Government treasury securities. And why not? We are the people who created Hollywood and Disneyland are we not?

You have already won Wall Street occupiers because after much more time it will be too ridiculous for any of us to think that we can go back to pretending that nothing was wrong all this time. Our banks have gotten bigger, and much more ill-behaved than they were before they got bailed out. Our political leaders are at the present time looking increasingly foolish as they continue to play the game of pretending that they are leading us and crafting laws that serve and protect us, and not the corporations who buy them at auction. Your victory has come about because the images of you on the television make us all quite aware that the real truth can no longer be ignored and obfuscated by the weaselly language of the media message crafters and their corporate whores. It is too late now, and the jig is up.

It started about thirty years ago. The slow, grinding process of making the middle class go away. They did it gradually in order to make the game last a while longer, and they did it in the same way that a Monopoly game winner doles out cash to the losers to keep the game from ending too soon. They wouldn’t let you earn more money at your job to support your illusionary lifestyle because they wanted that for themselves. Instead, they relied upon you to figure out how to work two jobs and take on more personal debt in order to finance it that way. When the credit cards got maxed out, we turned to the equity in our homes, and after that, to the equity in our second homes that we did not own yet, but might be able to if we could find a bank with “flexible” enough terms.

Sooner or later, and I am betting that it will be sooner, it will come to our collective realization that there is no actual solution to what we are going through at present other than to accept what we have done to ourselves and make the best of it. We are not going back to what we thought we had over the past 30 years, and even if we could, what intelligent person would want that? Once it becomes apparent that we are never going back to what we once had, then it will become apparent to the politicians that govern us that they no longer have the power to motivate us to do anything, because there is nothing that they can offer us by way of policy that will make our lives any better than they are right now. Once that happens then they will have no choice but to admit that we are on our own, and when that happens what do we need them for?

The corporations did this, and they are not coming back to save us any time soon. They are done with us and have gone to other “markets” in other hemispheres where the population is eager to make buck or two is not so “whiny”. The corporations did this, and they do not feel any sense of urgency to fix what they did. Corporations do not need clean air to breathe. They do not need safe food to eat, and they do not need any good schools to send the kids they don’t have to.

If you are a young person with a student loan, you have to ask yourself what you are going to do about that loan if the job that you anticipated getting after graduation simply does not exist anymore. This is something that has never happened in this country before, and as such, we have no answers for it. When the dimmest among us starts to realize that nobody is coming to save us, then indeed everyone will know for sure that it is time to give up pretending that we had a fair and honest system all along. When that happens, then everyone will know that you have won.

Much has been written about in the empty-headed media about your own “lack of a purpose”. They cannot see that your purpose is to simply shame THEM into understanding that you (the 99%) know that the emperor has no clothes, and that THEY can now stop pretending that we don’t live in a system that is steeped in corruption.

Do not allow yourselves to become suckered or bullied into generating some kind of “manifesto” or declaration of principles. They will only pick that apart. The only weapon you need is shame, and your objective is to simply shame everyone into admitting that yes, they know that the game was rigged all along, and we can now all stop pretending. That is all.

Much good luck in your praiseworthy struggle. You are the best among us.

J. Mark. Soveign

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Marines Are Calling In Reinforcements To Occupy Wall Street Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/occupy-marines-shamar-thomas-2011-10#ixzz1be5BojU6

Last week's dressing down of the NYPD by Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas at Occupy Times Square has started a movement of its own.

Thomas unleashed on the police at length about the use of abusive tactics on unarmed civilians and the YouTube video of the exchange went viral.

Since then, #OccupyMARINES has sprung up, calling for former Marines to don a civilian uniform and join the Occupy protests.

OccupyMARINES have now called on veterans of other branches of the military to lend their support to help "talk sense" to police and recruit them into supporting the Occupy movement.

Because active members of the armed forces are prohibited by military law from joining the protests, only former servicemembers are being called upon and even they have restrictions. (via Jill Klausen and Addicting Info)

Veterans may wear their uniforms, but only if they do not protest. The OccupyMARINES website says:

Should Non-Active Military Supporters Present Themselves At Demonstrator Groups In Military Dress Uniform We Ask They Do Not Actively Participate With Group Activities; We Will Honor Our Military Uniforms And The Sacrifices Of Our Brothers And Sisters. Only Non-Dress Uniform Supporters May Actively Participate.

The dress code for protesting veterans is:

- An OccupyMARINES shirt or sweatshirt with military service affiliation and Occupy Wall Street logo
- Dicky's EMT black cargo pants
- Ranger Joe's Corcoran Boots-I XC Jump Black Aviator Boots
- And blouse bands. Elastic bands used by military members to fold the hem of their pants up and drape over the top of their boots.

While requesting donations, the group's website asks that contributors wait until OccupyMARINES has achieved 501(c)(3) status.

In addition to the Marines' initiative, the police have formed a separate organization called #OccupyPolice that is "for police in support of the 99%." The OP website goes on to say that "Police in America are part of the 99 too #OccupyPolice."

Read more: http://www.businessinside(...)011-10#ixzz1be5K42jl

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Op zondag 23 oktober 2011 12:47 schreef arucard het volgende:

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 21:41 schreef ComplexConjugate het volgende:
De verenigde fascistische staten van Amerika

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/24/new-york-cops-defy-order-to-arrest-hundreds-of-occupy-protesters/

Occupy Albany protesters in New York’s capital city received an unexpected ally over the week: The state and local authorities.

According to the Albany Times Union, New York state troopers and Albany police did not adhere to a curfew crackdown on protesters urged by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Albany mayor Gerald Jennings.

Mass arrests seemed to be in the cards once Jennings directed officers to enforce the curfew on roughly 700 protesters occupying the city owned park. But as state police joined the local cops, moved past the property line dividing city and state land.

With protesters acting peacefully, local and state police agreed that low level arrests could cause a riot, so they decided instead to defy Cuomo and Jennings.

“We don’t have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble,” a state official said. “The bottom line is the police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor.”

Occupy Albany, an offspring of Occupy Wall Street, has seen its protesters remain as committed as those located at its parent site. At least 30 tents have remained in the park over the weekend.

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Police, Wall Street protesters fall into uneasy truce

(Reuters) - After a rough start marked by mass arrests and allegations of heavy-handed behavior, the New York Police Department has settled into an uneasy standoff with the protesters of Occupy Wall Street.

Officers say they are frustrated by people they think are willfully flouting the law -- protesters marching without permits, erecting tents, breaking noise and curfew regulations, publicly defecating and so on. Meanwhile, protesters say the cops should be with them, not against them, in their fight.

Five weeks after the first protest in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, a nervous stalemate has evolved as the movement mushroomed and drew the world's scrutiny.

Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association of the NYPD and a 30-year veteran of the force, finds the mixed messages from above frustrating. "At times we don't have to - or they don't want us to - do things, and at times they do want us to do things. There's no real clear message as to what right and wrong is," he said. "In many ways we are almost the pawns in this situation."

The early days of the protest, which routinely draws at least a few hundred people, were marked by more contentious relations. There was a high-profile incident of an occupier being pepper-sprayed by a senior officer, who has since been disciplined. On October 1, more than 700 people were arrested after a march on the Brooklyn Bridge; many accused the police of entrapping them.

Paul Browne, the NYPD's chief spokesman, was widely quoted after those arrests saying the protesters had been given ample warning to get off the bridge's roadway before being detained.

Browne did not return phone calls or emails over the course of a week seeking comment on the police's relations with the protesters or its tactics in dealing with the movement.

But as the Occupy Wall Street protests have grown larger and drawn more attention, the tone of relations has changed.

When a group of protesters was arrested in Washington Square Park in Manhattan early on October 16 for an act of civil disobedience - failing to obey a midnight curfew - the atmosphere, by all accounts, was relatively calm.

A branch movement has even popped up - OccupyPolice - to try and convince officers to join the protests. Its website lists contact information for police departments and attorneys general nationwide to further the effort.

CAUGHT ON FILM

The police are also under pressure because they know they are potentially on film at all times. The overwhelming majority of demonstrators have smartphones, and many have handheld cameras as well, such that anything the police do, day or night, can be captured from multiple angles.

One expert on policing policy said the constant scrutiny by protesters and the media had a clear effect.

"Police departments around the country and the world, and that includes the NYPD ... are very much concerned with visible accountability," said Maki Haberfeld, the chairwoman of the department of law and police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Still, she said that despite the presence of cameras "you cannot demand of police officers that they perform their duties in an emotionless manner."

One officer who has become something of a media darling over the course of the protests said there was an unease between the sides but behind that there was also dialogue.

"There's mistrust on their end, there's mistrust on our end, but we're trying to maintain a relationship," said Detective Rick Lee, a non-uniformed officer who has been dubbed the "hipster cop" by a number of websites for his trendy dress and ongoing dialogue with the protesters.

Some protesters are willing to concede that not all the police guarding them are against them.

"They're asking people questions, they're intrigued, they want to know," said protester Andrew Carbone of Brooklyn. "The cops, you see them a lot of times smiling, laughing at stuff."

RUNNING COUNT

In keeping with the core role social media plays in the Occupy movement, a Twitter account has popped up, @OccupyArrests, to keep a running count of those who have been arrested for participating in some capacity. As of Monday afternoon, the account tallied 2,382 arrests worldwide, though that figure is not independently verified.

Fears of a crackdown have spawned parody. A Facebook page called "Occupy Lego Land," urging peaceful protests by the popular children's' toys, carried pictures of toy police roughing up toy protesters during a "demonstration."

Joke or not, cops chafe at such images.

"If anything rankles a police officer it's that kind of stuff, it's the kind of stuff that makes the cops look like they're out of control," said one retired police official now involved with an association of officers.

The protesters tell police they too are "the 99 percent" -- working and middle-class Americans who struggle to pay bills and chafe at the inequities in the financial system.

For the dozens of cops circling the park, who spend most days doing little more than standing cross-armed and staring at the crowd, there is some financial upside.

"There's so much of this stuff going on, our guys tend to look at it as 'great I'll get some overtime,'" the retired official said.

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz, editing by Martin Howell)

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 21:41 schreef ComplexConjugate het volgende:
De verenigde fascistische staten van Amerika

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 21:06 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 23:49 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Occupy Phoenix with AR-15's

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Bloomberg says Occupy Wall Street is good for tourism

It's not easy to describe Mayor Michael Bloomberg's attitude towards the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

On October 17, Bloomberg said they were trying to "take the jobs away from people working in this city" and that the demonstrations were "not good for tourism."

On October 21, Bloomberg said, in response to a caller on his weekly radio show who wanted to know why the mayor couldn't just force the protesters out of Zuccotti Park, "It's a tourist attraction."

Today, when a reporter asked the mayor about these two comments, the mayor said, "In some sense it is good for tourism."

He then went on to repeat a point he's made before: complaining about a problem isn't the same as coming up with a solution to the problem.

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 21:41 schreef ComplexConjugate het volgende:
De verenigde fascistische staten van Amerika

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Goldman Sachs v. Occupy Wall Street: A Greg Palast Investigation

A controversy in the banking community has arisen around the Occupy Wall Street movement. Greg Palast investigates the story behind Goldman Sachs’ recent decision to pull out of a fundraiser for the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union in New York City after it learned the event was honoring the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. The investment bank withdrew its name from the fundraiser and also canceled a $5,000 pledge. Was the $5,000 a Goldman Sachs donation or actually American taxpayer bailout money Goldman set aside for community banks?

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GREG PALAST: Its not about $5,000 donation. First of all, its not a donation. The issue is about a multi-billion-dollar battle over TARP money and the finance community. Back in 2008, Goldman Sachs, which is an investment bankthat meant that all their losses were therewas turned into a commercial bank, within 24 hours, so they could qualify for $10 billion in bailout funds. But as part of the dealas part of the deal, Amy

AMY GOODMAN: And explain commercial bank.

GREG PALAST: OK, commercial bank is the types where you put in your savings, and we, the taxpayers, and the government guarantees the profits, or guarantees the solvency of that bank. So, for Goldman to get into the $10 billionto get their $10 billion check for bailout, they had to becomego from a gambling house, an investment bank, into a nice commercial bank. But they had to agree that they would then be subject to whats called the Community Reinvestment Act and return some of that money, a chunk of itmost banks put in a billion dollarsreturn a chunk of it back into low-income communities. Well, Goldman doesnt have any branches, so they gave money to the designated low-income bank of New York, Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union, andbut theyve been giving out the money in eyedroppers, like this $5,000. Now remember, its not a donation. Its a required payment under the law that they got in return for our $10 billion, OK? So its not a donation. This is mischaracterized. Its a payment required by law, with an eyedropper.

But what they are doing is starting off something very dangerous and new, which is to saythere are literally tens of billions of dollars in these funds for community reinvestment, boosted by the bailout funds. They see this as a political weapon, as a hammer to control the political discussion. These community development credit unions have been joining the Occupy Wall Street movement nationwide. Its about moving your money from the big banks to the small banks. And theyre not worried about losing little deposits. What they are worried about is losing political control of the discussion. Right now, people like Paul Volcker are calling for removing the rights of banks like Goldman, now a commercial bank, to stay in the gambling trading business. Well, Goldman is very much afraid of that. So the Occupy Wall Street movement has put back on the table these issues of bank deregulation, these issues of community reinvestment.

And Goldman, I think theyre actually quite smart. They figured out, "Well, weve gottheres like a hundred billion dollars on the table here. Why dont we start saying, Youre not going to get any of it unless you dance to our tune?" And I have to tell you, from inside, it wasnt minor. It wasnt just, "Oh, takegive us back our donation money." It was legal threats saying, if youyou cannotif youre going to get our money, you may not back Occupy Wall Street and the "move your money" movement, without getting approval from us at Goldman Sachs. Thats a whole new business. So, its very dangerous, because it involves billions of dollars in public money. Its not Goldmans money. Its our money. And thats what theyre doing with it.

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Bill O’Reilly Admits That Fox News Is Waging A War Against Occupy Wall Street

By trying to defend the Fox News smear campaign against Occupy Wall Street as self-defense, Bill O’Reilly accidentally admitted that Fox is waging war on the 99%.

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Op maandag 24 oktober 2011 23:49 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Occupy Phoenix with AR-15's

J.T. Ready A Confirmed Neo Nazi Raw & Unedited

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Op donderdag 20 oktober 2011 18:49 schreef ComplexConjugate het volgende:

[..]

En AEGON.... de grootste criminelen van de lage landen

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The OccupyUSA Blog for Wednesday (Oct. 26), With Frequent Updates

1:10 Atlanta newspaper report on arrests there a few minutes ago -- including a state senator. Now they are searching tents for more. "Some of the people waiting to be arrested waved small American flags. About 40 to 50 people remained inside the park after midnight, including Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta), former Atlanta city councilman Derrick Boazman and Joe Beasley, the southern regional director of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Several hundred others were in the street, chanting and carrying signs. Fort was arrested around 1 a.m."

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How the Rich Subverted the Legal System and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land

..that catches the mood of America in 2011. It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why so many Americans seem instantly to accept and support it. As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.

It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality—acts that destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world—without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.

Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of Americans that the wealth of the top 1 percent is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunize themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping program.

It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, blurted out in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks “frankly own the place.”

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OWS's Beef: Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating

Think about it: there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich – after keeping it strategically hidden for decades – is crazy.

Where was all that class hatred in the Reagan years, when openly dumping on the poor became fashionable? Where was it in the last two decades, when unions disappeared and CEO pay relative to median incomes started to triple and quadruple?

The answer is, it was never there. If anything, just the opposite has been true. Americans for the most part love the rich, even the obnoxious rich. And in recent years, the harder things got, the more we've obsessed over the wealth dream. As unemployment skyrocketed, people tuned in in droves to gawk at Evrémonde-heiresses like Paris Hilton, or watch bullies like Donald Trump fire people on TV.

Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

We cheer for people who hit their own home runs in this country– not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.

That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.

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Top Earners Doubled Share of Nation’s Income, Study Finds

WASHINGTON — The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, in a new report likely to figure prominently in the escalating political fight over how to revive the economy, create jobs and lower the federal debt.

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In its report, the budget office found that from 1979 to 2007, average inflation-adjusted after-tax income grew by 275 percent for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income. For others in the top 20 percent of the population, average real after-tax household income grew by 65 percent.

By contrast, the budget office said, for the poorest fifth of the population, average real after-tax household income rose 18 percent.

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Police Fire Tear Gas at Protesters in Oakland, Calif.


8:38 a.m. | Updated Riot police in Oakland dispersed hundreds of protesters with tear gas on Tuesday night as crowds tried to re-enter a plaza outside of City Hall that the authorities had cleared of an encampment earlier in the day.

The forceful response by the police to protesters in Oakland came as the police in Atlanta moved in early Wednesday morning to clear an encampment from the city’s central Woodruff Park. At least 53 people connected to the protest group Occupy Atlanta were arrested, and the park was cleared by 2 a.m. Eastern time, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

By Wednesday morning in downtown Oakland, a dim cloud of gas still hung in the air over Frank Ogawa Plaza, according to images broadcast on CNN. A small number of police in riot gear stood by barricades around the plaza and a handful of protesters held signs nearby.

“It sounded like bombs,” said Joaquin Jutt, 24, a digital animator who was among the protesters on Tuesday night. “There was a stinging and burning in my throat, eyes and nostrils. My eyes burned like there was hot sauce in them.”

Protesters, many affiliated with the group Occupy Oakland, can be seen scurrying away from billowing clouds of gas and what appear to be flash grenades in video recorded from a high vantage point in a nearby office building:

Occupy Oakland Protest

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Op woensdag 26 oktober 2011 15:17 schreef popolon het volgende:
Ah, een linkdump topic is het geworden.

Maar goed, niet zo raar dat ze er wat opgepakt hebben: Hele parken werden ondergescheten, tentenkampen in openbare parken met enorm veel troep wat men dus niet netjes wist op te ruimen met als gevolg een plaag van ongedierte (raccoons, eekhoorns, ratten), verfbommen gooien naar de politie etc. Ja, zo kweek je veel sympathie!

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Op woensdag 26 oktober 2011 16:00 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Ik ben blij dat je de drogredenen even opsomt die gebruikt worden om democratie af te schaffen.

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Op woensdag 26 oktober 2011 16:17 schreef Bananenman het volgende:

[..]

Wat zijn precies de drogredenen volgens jou en wat heeft dit met democratie te maken?