Natasha Lennard - Robocops vs Occupy Wall St -- The Rise of Paramilitary Police Tactics

By Natasha Lennard, Salon

Posted on November 23, 2011

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/robocops_vs_the_occupiers/ 

Since the Occupy Wall Street movement began in mid-September, protesters and reporters have been learning the hard way how diverse police departments handle large-scale street demonstrations — sometimes with rubber bullets, sometimes, as in Davis, Calif., with pepper spray in the face.

While police departments have deployed tear gas in cities including Denver, Seattle and on more than three separate occasions in Oakland, Calif., in response to Occupy street demonstrations, protesters in New York have been met with the sheer force of numbers, pepper spray, kettling nets to hold in crowds, and batons. Dozens have been hospitalized by a variety of crowd control tactics.

The tactics vary from city to city, but the most aggressive policing originates in methods developed by law enforcement agencies in Miami in response to large protests against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement in November 2003. Miami’s approach, in the words of Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez Rundle, created,  “a model … for the rest of the world to emulate in the future when these sort of events take place.”

In Miami more than 10,000 demonstrators converged on the downtown area, where a conference of trade ministers from 34 countries met to discuss the FTAA, which many South American nations opposed. Police in riot gear used rubber bullets, projectiles and batons to aggressively clear the streets of protesters. An estimated $8.5 million was spent on security for the FTAA conference and police forces from around the state were pulled in.  The ministers didn’t reach any agreement and at least 140 protesters were arrested. Many more were forcibly blocked from assembling.

“Downtown Miami is built on a grid structure, so in terms of city planning it’s almost a gift to law enforcement. They kettled protesters, unembedded press, everyone together into giant squares and would push into them and beat people severely with batons. During all this there were helicopters overhead nonstop,” explains Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, who helped produce an Indymedia film about the FTAA protests and their suppression, titled “The Miami Model.”

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SEED DAILY - China to look to Africa for food: study

by Staff Writers, SEED DAILY
Johannesburg (AFP) Nov 23, 2011

http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/China_to_look_to_Africa_for_food_study_999.html

China will increasingly look to Africa over the next decade as the world's most populous nation seeks to ensure it has sufficient food supplies, according to a study published Wednesday.

While China has is recent years turned to Africa to secure energy and raw material resources to fuel its rapidly-growing economy, it will soon be for food commodities, according to Standard Bank research analysts Simon Freemantle and Jeremy Stevens.

"Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) immense and largely untapped agricultural potential is being increasingly viewed by China as a cog in an unfolding and inclusive food security strategy," they said in their report.

They noted Africa's underperforming agricultural sector gives China an opportunity to build and improve bilateral ties with the provision of developmental and technical assistance.

They noted it is already clear that Beijing is seeking to build deeper relationships in agriculture with land-rich and politically stable countries that are friendly to China, such as Mozambique where China has made extensive agricultural investments.

"For now, China's strategy is overtly developmental and, though commercialism inspires many of the cooperative farming projects, profits are generated almost entirely in local and regional markets," said the report.

"Most of these initiatives will look to bolster China's agricultural trade ties with Africa, though some, as has been evident in nascent moves in Latin America, will position Chinese firms to control the external source of production," they added.

The authors noted that China can offer Africa capital and skills that are desparately needed, but authorities will need to ensure that investmentsare properly structured to ensure that domestic food security interests are protected.

"Managed well, partnerships with China can be meaningful. However, domestic food security must be placed first," the wrote.

Ottawa Citizen - BPA Spikes 1,200 Per Cent After Eating Canned Soup: Study

Published on Wednesday, November 23, 2011 by Ottawa Citizen News

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/spikes+cent+after+eating+canned+soup+Study/5751216/story.html

WASHINGTON - People who ate canned soup for five days straight saw their urinary levels of the chemical bisphenol A spike 1,200 per cent compared to those who ate fresh soup, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

The randomized study, described as "one of the first to quantify BPA levels in humans after ingestion of canned foods," was done by Harvard University researchers and appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association's November 23 issue.

"We've known for a while that drinking beverages that have been stored in certain hard plastics can increase the amount of BPA in your body," said lead author Jenny Carwile, a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.

"This study suggests that canned foods may be an even greater concern, especially given their wide use."

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Los Alamos National Laboratory - Is sustainability science really a science?

Los Alamos National Laboratory, 

http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/is_sustainability_science_really_a_science.html

Los Alamos and Indiana University researchers say yes

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, November 22, 2011—The idea that one can create a field of science out of thin air, just because of societal and policy need, is a bold concept.  But for the emerging field of sustainability science, sorting among theoretical and applied scientific disciplines, making sense of potentially divergent theory, practice and policy, the gamble has paid off.

In the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Santa Fe Institute, and Indiana University analyzed the field’s temporal evolution, geographic distribution, disciplinary composition, and collaboration structure.

"We don’t know if sustainability science will solve the essential problems it seeks to address, but there is a legitimate scientific practice in place now," said Luís Bettencourt of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Santa Fe Institute, first author on the paper, "Evolution and structure of sustainability science.

The team’s work shows that although sustainability science has been growing explosively since the late 1980s, only in the last decade has the field matured into a cohesive area of science. Thanks to the emergence of a giant component of scientific collaboration spanning the globe and an array of diverse traditional disciplines, there is now an integrated scientific field of sustainability science as an unusual, inclusive, and ubiquitous scientific practice.

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Alliance for Natural Health - Shocker: Antipsychotic Drugs Are Being Given to Kids in Foster Care

Alliance for Natural Health   November 22, 2011

http://www.anh-usa.org/antipsychotic-drugs-given-to-kids-in-foster-care/

Want foster kids to behave? Give them harsh tranquilizers developed for schizophrenic patients!

According to a shocking new study published in the journal Pediatrics [1], foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychotic drugs, even if they’re not mentally ill and they don’t have any psychiatric symptoms. In fact, they’re given the drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid.

Kids in foster care with behavior problems are being given two antipsychotic drugs at once, according to the study. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel, and Zyprexa (and if you want to see something terrifying, just look at the list of Zyprexa’s side effects [2]!). The drugs were developed for schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. But schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are extremely rare in young children, and the foster children in question did not have any psychiatric symptoms. They just came from bad homes.

Note that these drugs were never tested on young people during the FDA trials—and certainly not on people with developing brains. The latest research says the brain is still developing into one’s 20s. Foster care ends at age 18.

The New York Times reports [3] that doctors and policy-makers have, in recent years, grown concerned about high rates of overall psychiatric drug use in the foster care system, the government-financed program that provides temporary living arrangements for 400,000 to 500,000 children and adolescents. Previous studies have found that children in foster care receive psychiatric medications about twice as often as kids outside the system.

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Tyler Durden - Credit Suisse Goes For Broke: Predicts End Of Euro, Escalating Bank Runs On "Strongest European Banks"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/21/2011 

http://www.zerohedge.com/print/440712

Just because Credit Suisse bankers are people too (even if 1% people, but still people), and just because they know too damn well that "no ECB intervention" means "no bonus", and very likely "no job", they go for broke and join Deutsche Bank, JPM, RBS, and everyone else (but, again, not Goldman), in predicting the end of Europe unless Draghi does his rightful duty and remembers that without banker support he will also be lining up at the jobless claims office very soon. Of course, being a Goldman boy, Draghi will only do what Lloyd tells him to. Either way, here is Credit Suisse's rejoinder to the global Mutual Assured Destruction tragicomedy, which now makes Honk (as Lagarde calls him) Paulson's overtures to congress seem like amateur hour. "We seem to have entered the last days of the euro as we currently know it. That doesn’t make a break-up very likely, but it does mean some extraordinary things will almost certainly need to happen – probably by mid-January – to prevent the progressive closure of all the euro zone sovereign bond markets, potentially accompanied by escalating runs on even the strongest banks. That may sound overdramatic, but it reflects the inexorable logic of investors realizing that – as things currently stand – they simply cannot be sure what exactly they are holding or buying in the euro zone sovereign bond markets...One paradox is that pressure on Italian and Spanish bond yields may get quite a lot worse even as their new governments start to deliver reforms – 10-year yields spiking above 9% for a short period is not something one could rule out. For that matter, it’s quite possible that we will see French yields above 5%, and even Bund yields rise during this critical fiscal union debate." Of course, the explicit message is: help us ECB-Wan Kenobi, you are our only hope. The implicit one is: do it, or we pull the trigger and blow it all up to hell.

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Robert Reich - The First Amendment Upside Down

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-First-Amendment-Upside-by-Robert-Reich-111122-196.html

November 22, 2011 By Robert Reich When the freedom of speech goes to the highest bidder, moneyed interests have a disproportionate say. Now more than ever, the First Amendment needs to be put right side up. Nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake. You've been seeing this across the country " Americans assaulted, clubbed, dragged, pepper-sprayed " Why? For exercising their right to free speech and assembly -- protesting the increasing concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the top. And what's Washington's response? Nothing. In fact, Congress' so-called "supercommittee" just disbanded because Republicans refuse to raise a penny of taxes on the rich. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace. And a revolving door has developed between official Washington and Wall Street -- with bank executives becoming public officials who make rules that benefit the banks before heading back to the Street to make money off the rules they created.

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Global Research - CHIEF PROSECUTOR OF THE KUALA LUMPUR WAR CRIMES COMMISSION v. GEORGE W BUSH & ANTHONY L. BLAIR

Transcript of Judgement 

By Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal

Global Research, November 23, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27821 

Global Research has been involved in the Kuala Lumpur initiative to criminalise war launched by former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad in December 2005. 

The following judgement of the KL War Crimes Tribunal is the result of several years of work involving the collection of evidence and the hearing of witnessses. 

This is historical decision sends a clear message to acting heads of State and heads of government of the member States of the Atlantic Alliance. 

A war of aggression under a humanitarian pretext is a Crime against the Peace under international law.  

Michel Chossudovsky, Member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission,  Director of Global Research 

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Dave Lindorff - Time for Obama to Act to End Police-State Violence Against the Occupiers

Monday 21 November 2011

by: Dave Lindorff , This Can't Be Happening [3] | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/time-obama-act-end-police-state-violence-against-occupiers/1321974759 

The growing number of video clips and photos showing police in Darth Vader-like riot gear assaulting peaceful demonstrators with everything from tear gas and mace to truncheons, point-blank shots with beanbags and rubber bullets, and of course the ubiquitous fist and club, have made a bad joke out of claims that America is either the land of the free or the home of the brave.

Scott Olson, a veteran of America's Iraq War, suffered a severe brain injury that nearly killed him, and left him with difficulty speaking, thanks to a shot to his head by an attacking police officer in Oakland who was firing teargas canisters from a gun-like weapon. Olsen is lucky to be alive and will hopefully recover over time. A comrade, veteran Kayvan Sabehgi, who was retreating from advancing police that same night with his hands tucked in his pockets, can be seen being chased and so brutally beaten [4] by another attacking thug cop that he had to be hospitalized for treatment of a lacerated spleen (although the cops left him writing in agony in a cell for hours before sending him to the hospital).

Old women, pregnant mothers-to-be, and even children have been hit with pepper spray, teargassed and terrorized by police goons in New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Dallas, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere in what is almost certainly a coordinated attack on the Occupy Movement being run out of Washington.

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David Holthouse - How White Supremacists Are Trying to Make an American Town a Model for Right-Wing Extremism

By David Holthouse, Media Matters for America

Posted on November 22, 2011, Printed on November 23, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153162/how_white_supremacists_are_trying_to_make_an_american_town_a_model_for_right-wing_extremism

At first glance the Pioneer Little Europe website seems like it could be the work of the Montana Office of Tourism. Photographs depict the rugged beauty of the Flathead Valley region near Glacier National Park in northwest Montana.

One image shows a young blond-haired girl playing in a meadow overlooking Kalispell, the largest town in the area, with a population around 20,000.

The site also features short news items about the Northwest Montana State Fair and a wildflower beautification program along with Kalispell job postings.

But then there's this: A scan of a full-page advertisement in a recent edition of the Flathead Beacon, the local paper, with photographs of 47 babies newly delivered in the Kalispell Regional Medical Center. All but one are fair-skinned with light-colored hair. "Wonderful white babies being born in Kalispell," the website reads. "What do the babies look like being born in your town?" Another item on the Pioneer Little Europe site depicts white families relaxing on the shore of a lake. A caption reads,"This is how white our beaches are, and I'm not talking about sand."

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