"Pam Martens" - Wall Street Firms Spy on Protestors In Tax-Funded Center

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/18/wall-street-firms-spy-on-protestors-in-tax-funded-center/

by PAM MARTENS

Wall Street’s audacity to corrupt knows no bounds and the cooptation of government by the 1 per cent knows no limits.  How else to explain $150 million of taxpayer money going to equip a government facility in lower Manhattan where Wall Street firms, serially charged with corruption, get to sit alongside the New York Police Department and spy on law abiding citizens.

According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech facility on lower Broadway dates back six years.   In correspondence from   2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a  Goldman Sachs’ Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD “is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan…One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.”

At the time, Goldman Sachs was in the process of extracting concessions from New York City just short of the Mayor’s first born in exchange for constructing its new headquarters building at 200 West Street, adjacent to the World Financial Center and in the general area of where the new World Trade Center complex would be built. According to the 2005 documents,  Goldman’s deal included $1.65 billion in Liberty Bonds, up to $160 million in sales tax abatements for construction materials and tenant furnishings, and the deal-breaker requirement that a security plan that gave it a seat at the NYPD’s Coordination Center would be in place by no later than December 31, 2009.

The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock.  Under the imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States,  2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the streets in lower Manhattan to the center.  Once at the center, they can be integrated for analysis.  At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD, MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside  high-wage personnel from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.

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"John Feffer" - The Ungreening of Obama

Tuesday 18 October 2011

by: John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/ungreening-obama/1318963565

Barack Obama was green when he entered the Oval Office. He was a relative newcomer to politics. He was also the most successful fundraiser in presidential history, hauling in more green [3] than the two Democratic and Republican candidates in 2004 combined. And he was, more or less, an environmentalist.

Back in 2004, Amanda Little dug around in Obama's past and declared in Grist magazine [4] that he was a "bona fide, card-carrying, bleeding-heart greenie" going back to his days as an undergrad "trying to convince minority students at City College in Harlem to recycle," and then as a community organizer in Chicago fighting for lead abatement in the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood. As the junior senator from Illinois, Obama got high marks from the League of Conservation Voters for his introduction or co-sponsorship of 100 environment-friendly bills [5] from mercury reduction to raising fuel economy standards on cars.

Running for president, Obama promised to paint the town green. He proclaimed [6] his "intergenerational" perspective, his recognition that "we are borrowing this planet from our children and our grandchildren." After years of supporting the coal industry back in Illinois, he turned around [7] to identify climate change as "one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation" and supported cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050. He put [8] sustainable energy policy at the center of his economic renewal, pledging to derive one-quarter of all U.S. energy from renewables by 2025 and to improve the efficiency of federal buildings and all new construction. There would also be tighter regulations on emissions and a much greater commitment to conservation. These promises also had a price tag: $150 billion alone for renewable energy investments.

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"RJ Eskow" - Occupy Wall Street Speaks for America: A "Centrist" Hit Job's Polling Data Helps Prove It

Tuesday 18 October 2011

by: Richard (RJ) Eskow, Campaign for America's Future [3] | News Analysis

http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-wall-street-speaks-america-centrist-hit-jobs-polling-data-helps-prove-it/1318953230

Thanks to a hit piece by one of those Beltway pseudo-"bipartisans" we can now state conclusively what many of us have long suspected: Occupy Wall Street speaks for the American majority. We've got the polling numbers to prove it. We now know where the real center lies.

It's easy to understand why people like Douglas Schoen are lining up to attack OWS. It shines a spotlight on their cardboard centrism - that think-tank designed, artificially-inseminated, vat-grown corporate ideology so widely rejected by the public at large. OWS represents the real American consensus, and that has them running scared.

But Schoen's Wall Street Journal editorial [4] falls so far short of the mark that it elicits only a soft sense of pity. It illustrates nothing except the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of those out-of-step Democrats who sell themselves to conservatism under the 'centrist' or 'Third Way' banner.

Oh, wait. It also provides enough data to undermine his entire argument - and possibly his entire ideology. Before we look at the numbers we should take a closer look at these "centrists" and why they're trying to kill Occupy Wall Street.

How to Succeed in Centrism Conservatism Without Really Trying

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"Ethan A. Huff" - FDA Trilateral Cooperation Charter - the end of health freedom as we know it

by Ethan A. Huff, NaturalNews.com  October 17, 2011

http://www.naturalnews.com/033892_Trilateral_Cooperation_Charter_health_freedom.html

(NaturalNews) As horrific as the recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) guidelines are for health freedom (http://www.naturalnews.com/033482_F...), they are not necessarily the worst threat currently on the regulatory horizon. Far off the radar of most in the natural health community is the quietly-developing North American Trilateral Cooperation Charter (TCC), which threatens to merge the dietary supplement regulation guidelines of the US, Mexico, and Canada into a single, highly-restrictive regulatory paradigm.

The "Food & Nutrition" section of Health Canada's "International Activities" website explains that TCC, which was officially signed by representatives from seven food, drug, health, and trade agencies of the three North American countries, is designed to "improve product safety" and "promote public health." This is done by "facilitat[ing] the communication, collaboration, leveraging of resources, and the exchange of information on issues of mutual interest among the three countries" (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/intact...).

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"Rebecca Solnit" - Letter to a Dead Man About the Occupation of Hope

Published on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 by TomDispatch.com

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175455/tomgram%3A_rebecca_solnit%2C_this_land_is_your_%28occupied%29_land/

by Rebecca Solnit

Dear young man who died on the fourth day of this turbulent 2011, dear Mohammed Bouazizi,

I want to write you about an astonishing year -- with three months yet to run. I want to tell you about the power of despair and the margins of hope and the bonds of civil society.

I wish you could see the way that your small life and large death became a catalyst for the fall of so many dictators in what is known as the Arab Spring.

We are now in some sort of an American Fall. Civil society here has suddenly hit the ground running, and we are all headed toward a future no one imagined when you, a young Tunisian vegetable seller capable of giving so much, who instead had so much taken from you, burned yourself to death to protest your impoverished and humiliated state.

You lit yourself on fire on December 17, 2010, exactly nine months before Occupy Wall Street began.  Your death two weeks later would be the beginning of so much. You lit yourself on fire because you were voiceless, powerless, and evidently without hope. And yet you must have had one small hope left: that your death would have an impact; that you, who had so few powers, even the power to make a decent living or protect your modest possessions or be treated fairly and decently by the police, had the power to protest. As it turned out, you had that power beyond your wildest dreams, and you had it because your hope, however diminished, was the dream of the many, the dream of what we now have started calling the 99%. 

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"S.A.N.E. Vax, Inc." - Press Release: How Far Will Taxpayer-Sponsored Health Agencies Go ToProtect HPV Vaccines?

October 17, 2011
by Norma Erickson, President

Rather than address legitimate medical consumers’ concerns about HPV vaccines, government health agencies decide to change the definitions and hope the problems will go away.

28 Feb 2011, SaneVax Inc. published an article titled, Health Care Fraud: HPV ‘vaccines’ are not vaccines at all. This article quoted the definition of ‘vaccine’ from a website sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). On that date, the definition of ‘vaccine’ was, “a product of a weakened or killed microorganism (bacteria or virus) given for the prevention or treatment of an infectious disease.”

Everyone knows infection is not synonymous with an infectious disease. You cannot ‘catch’ cancer from someone else. Therefore, it is not an infectious disease. By the HHS definition, any injection administered to protect against cancer of any type is not a vaccine.

The SaneVax article went on to quote from a publication entitled, FDA 101: Health Fraud Awareness. This document clearly states, “Health fraud is the deceptive sale or advertising of products that claim to be effective against medical conditions or otherwise beneficial to health, but which have not been proven safe and effective for those purposes.”

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"The Borowitz Report" - A Letter From Goldman Sachs

October 18, 2011

A Letter From Golden Sachs Concerning Occupy Wall Street

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)– The following is a letter released today by Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of banking giant Goldman Sachs:

Dear Investor:

Up until now, Goldman Sachs has been silent on the subject of the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street. That does not mean, however, that it has not been very much on our minds. As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests. And we have asked ourselves this question:

How can we make money off them?

The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund, whose investment objective is to monetize the Occupy Wall Street protests as they spread around the world. At Goldman, we recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain – but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.

The Rage Fund will seek out opportunities to invest in products that are poised to benefit from the spreading protests, from police batons and barricades to stun guns and forehead bandages. Furthermore, as clashes between police and protesters turn ever more violent, we are making significant bets on companies that manufacture replacements for broken windows and overturned cars, as well as the raw materials necessary for the construction and incineration of effigies.

It would be tempting, at a time like this, to say “Let them eat cake.” But at Goldman, we are actively seeking to corner the market in cake futures. We project that through our aggressive market manipulation, the price of a piece of cake will quadruple by the end of 2011.

Please contact your Goldman representative for a full prospectus. As the world descends into a Darwinian free-for-all, the Goldman Sachs Rage Fund is a great way to tell the protesters, “Occupy this.” We haven’t felt so good about something we’ve sold since our souls.

Sincerely,

Lloyd Blankfein

Chairman, Goldman Sachs

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"Occupy Wall Street" - End the Federal Reserve

Watch this video here to learn more of what the people are saying @ Occupy Wall Street

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhXo2z7539hk1ZwzPb

"Food & Water Watch" - Stop Monsanto's Sweet Corn

We wanted to make sure everyone saw this important alert about Monsanto's new
genetically engineered sweet corn, the first GE crop designed to be
eaten directly by people. This sweet corn will not be labeled, has not
been tested for food safety, and has been genetically engineered to
produce a pesticide and withstand herbicide applications.

We're going to deliver thousands of petitions from people who care
about what they're eating and feeding their families to the top ten
U.S. food retailers, asking them to reject Monsanto's GE Sweet Corn.

Will you add your name to our petition?

Thanks for taking action,

Wenonah Hauter
Executive Director
Food & Water Watch

Keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered Sweet Corn Off Your Plate
Stop Monsanto's First Crop Designed to be Consumed by People!

Sign the Petition to Keep Genetically Engineered Sweet Corn Off Your
Plate

Why should you be concerned about Monsanto's Genetically Engineered
(GE) Sweet Corn?

1) This is the first GE Crop Monsanto that is marketing for direct
human consumption.

2) It will not be labeled.

3) It hasn't been tested for human safety.

Monsanto's sweet corn variety flew through the approval process,
because it combines two genetically engineered traits that were
approved in 2005 and 2008. The USDA does no independent testing of GE
crops, and the "stacked" combination of these traits for herbicide
resistance, and pesticide production has never been through a safety
evaluation of any kind.

These traits have never been engineered into a food that will be
consumed directly by people. Most of the GE corn that is currently
grown is eaten by animals or processed into corn syrup, corn oil and
other corn ingredients that show up in processed food. Monsanto's
aiming to have their new GE Sweet Corn grown on 250,000 acres next year
(roughly 40% of the sweet corn market). Take action now to make sure
this corn isn't sold at your local grocery store.

As you already know, genetically engineered crops are not required to
be labeled. We have no way of knowing if a food has been genetically
engineered or contains GE ingredients. We believe labeling should be
required so that people can choose whether or not they want to eat GE
foods. Unfortunately GE sweet corn, will not be labeled, and doesn't
look any different from regular sweet corn.

Help make sure GE Sweet Corn is not sold by signing our petition to
grocery stores. We'll be delivering this petition to the top ten
grocery store chains in the country in an attempt to stop GE Sweet Corn
from reaching your plate.

Sign the petition to grocery stores today:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=TSCbiNhVvXb87Yt6eH8efPUfCM%2FD7ecz

Thanks for taking action,

Sarah Alexander
Education & Outreach Director
Food & Water Watch
salexander(at)fwwatch(dot)org

Contact

Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to
ensure clean water and safe food. We challenge the corporate control
and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take
action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat
and drink.

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Progressive Radio Network Host Glen Ford from Black Agenda Radio, Mondays @ 4pm(EDT") - OPERATION COOPTATION: THE DEMS TRY TO SEDUCE THE OCCUPATION MOVEMENT

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

It’s cooptation time in the Occupation Movement, with the Democrats attempting to convert the anti-Wall Street protests into political assets for Obama – even as he tries to raise a billion dollars from the filthy rich. Al Sharpton is the president’s key cooptation operative. “The goal, of course, is to keep the attentions of African Americans and unionists focused on the Republicans and their Tea Party annex, as opposed to Wall Street, with which the administration has been intimately entwined from day-one.”

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“The cooptation offensive is in full swing, commissioned from the very top of the Democratic Party, which is determined to claim the Occupation movement as its own.”

If the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon were to collapse tomorrow, it will have already greatly advanced the struggle against the rule of finance capital, simply by virtue of having pointed out that Wall Street does, indeed, rule. For the general, white American public, from which the initiators of the movement spring, the idea that finance capital utterly dominates every mechanism of societal power, is felt as a kind of revelation. The relatively sudden intrusion, historically speaking, of this elemental fact of life under the current order, which was thrust so painfully into the collective consciousness by the meltdown of 2008 and the great “betrayals” that followed in such swift and stunning succession, threatens to detonate like a social bomb. The explosive human device has implanted itself in the very “belly of the beast” – politically, figuratively and, in the case of the New York City encampment, literally.

Like a political Andromeda Strain, the anti-Wall Street phenomenon has replicated itself in a thousand locations, a pattern of leftish activism resembling a new and successful cell-phone service map; everyone seems, potentially, connected.

Click to read more ...