"Jim Hightower" - Something Big Is Happening -- Occupy Together

By Jim Hightower

http://www.nationofchange.org/something-big-happening-occupy-together-1317788275

To paraphrase one of Bob Dylan's songs of youthful protest, "Something's happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Ms. Bellafante?"

A New York Times writer, Ginia Bellafante, is but one of many establishment reporters and pundits who've been covering the fledgling "Occupy Wall Street " movement — but completely missing the story. Instead of really digging into what's "happening here," they've resorted to fuddy-duddy mockery of an important populist protest that has sprouted right in Wall Street's own neighborhood.

In a September article, Bellafante dismissed the young people's effort as "fractured and airy," calling it a "carnival" in an "intellectual vacuum." Their cause is so "diffuse and leaderless," she wrote, that its purpose is "virtually impossible to decipher." No wonder, she concluded, that participation in the movement is "dwindling."

Whew — so snide! Yet, so wrong.

While the establishment is befuddled by the plethora of issues and slogans within the protest, confused by the absence of hierarchical order and put off by its festive spirit, that's their problem. The 20- and 30-somethings who are driving this movement know what they're doing and are far more organized (but much differently organized) than their snarky critics seem able to comprehend.

It's silly to say that the protestors' purpose is indecipherable. Hello — they're encamped next door to Wall Street. Isn't that a clue? Their cause is the same as the one boiling in the guts of America's workaday majority: Stop the gross greed of financial and corporate elites, and expel a political class that's so corrupted by the money of those wealthy elites that it has turned its back on the middle class and the poor.

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"Jim Hightower" - It's time to name the tea party politicians (and their sponsors)--and call them out

By Jim Hightower

In just one year, the tea party went from hating billionaires to fronting for them.

As he keeps demonstrating, President Obama is not exactly Mount Rushmore material. But -- good God! -- the petulant pettiness and corporate servility of Congress' tea party Republicans makes Obama's timidity seem like a chapter from Profiles In Courage.

America has BIG needs right now -- a jobs crisis, housing crisis, infrastructure crisis, energy crisis, climate crisis, middle-class crisis, democracy crisis. But they can't even be addressed because tea party ravers in the House, joined there by a gaggle of old school right-wingers, keep throwing hissy fits over far-out ideological gimcrackery.

Our problem in Washington really comes down to this: We have too many 5-watt bulbs in 100-watt sockets. Take, for example, the astonishing clamoring by tea party congress critters to pass a light bulb bill. Yes, light bulbs! In July, these addle-brained lawmakers actually spent time, energy, and their credibility on stopping the horrible scourge of energy efficient bulbs from spreading across the country.

This non-issue was literally drummed up by the billionaire Koch brothers (who, by the way, are in the dirty energy business and profit if you have to use more of it to light your home). During the past couple of years, various Koch front groups have been shrieking that nanny-state Democrats have banned Thomas Edison's old, glowing 100-watt incandescent globes. As of next January 1, they wailed, sales of Edison's marvel will be outlawed, replaced by the cold glare emitted by spiral, fluorescent bulbs.

Only, none of that is true. There is no ban, just a new standard for all bulbs to consume less energy. And it was not set by Democrats, but by a Republican-sponsored law signed in 2007 by George W. Bush. Furthermore, the light bulb industry backed the new efficiency standard. "Everyone supported it," says a top executive of bulb-maker Philips. So did Edison's descendants, who issued a simple statement that old Tom himself could've written: "Technology changes. Embrace it."

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"Reuters" - Afghans Hold Anti-U.S. Rally on Eve of War Anniversary

Published on Thursday, October 6, 2011 by Reuters

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/06

Hundreds of Afghans marched through Kabul on Thursday, the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, to condemn the United States as occupiers and demand the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops.

About 300 men and women gathered early in the morning with placards and banners accusing the United States of "massacring" civilians while denouncing President Hamid Karzai as a puppet subservient to Washington.

"Occupation - atrocities - brutality," read one sign, held aloft by two women with scarves covering their head and face.

"No to occupation" said another placard, as a U.S. flag was set on fire. Another banner featured a caricature of Karzai as a glove puppet holding a pen and signing a document entitled "promises to the USA."

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"Staff Writers" - Tutu slams S.Africa over Dalai Lama visa row

by Staff Writers
Cape Town (AFP) Oct 4, 2011

http://www.sinodaily.com/reports/Tutu_slams_SAfrica_over_Dalai_Lama_visa_row_999.html

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Tuesday the South African government was worse than its apartheid predecessor and warned he would pray for its downfall after it dithered over a visa for the Dalai Lama.

Anti-apartheid crusader Tutu invited his longtime friend and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner to give an inaugural peace lecture as part of Tutu's 80th birthday celebrations in Cape Town this week.

But the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader cancelled his trip because he had not yet received a visa.

In response, Tutu, widely seen as South Africa's conscience keeper, called a nationally televised news conference and lambasted President Jacob Zuma.

"When we used to apply for passports from the apartheid government, we never knew until the last moment what the decision was," Tutu said.

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"Robert Scheer" - What Do They Want? Justice

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_do_they_want_justice_20111006/

Posted on Oct 6, 2011

By Robert Scheer

How can anyone possessed of the faintest sense of social justice not thrill to the Occupy Wall Street movement now spreading throughout the country? One need not be religiously doctrinaire to recognize this as a “come to Jesus moment” when the money-changers stand exposed and the victims of their avarice are at long last offered succor.

Not that any of the protesters have gone so far as to overturn the tables of stockbrokers or whip them with cords in imitation of the cleansing of the temple, but the rhetoric of accountability is compelling. “I think a good deal of the bankers should be in jail,” one protester told New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin. That prospect has evidently aroused concern in an industry that has largely managed to escape judicial opprobrium. 

“Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?” the CEO of a major bank asked Sorkin. “We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all this. Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?”

It should pose a threat, not because peaceful demonstrators will suddenly morph into vigilantes fatally damaging their cause with violent action, but rather because government prosecutors should fulfill their obligation to pursue justice and incarcerate some of the obvious perps. As Sorkin conceded, in one of the rare instances of the business press attempting to understand the protesters: “the message was clear: the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.”

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"Edward Miller" - Speculation in Agricultural Commodities, Driving up the Price of Food Worldwide and plunging Millions into Hunger

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26941

By Edward Miller

Global Research, October 5, 2011

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has again delayed the introduction of position limits required under the Dodd-Frank Act. These limits are intended to prevent speculation in (among other things) agricultural commodities, speculation which, many critics argue, have driven up the price of food worldwide and plunged millions into hunger.

In late 2006, the price of food and other commodities began rising precipitately, continuing throughout 2007 and peaking in 2008. Millions were cast below the poverty line and food riots erupted across the developing world, from Haiti to Mozambique. While analysts initially framed the crisis in terms of market fundamentals (such as rising population, increased demand for resource-intensive food, declining stockpiles, biofuel and agricultural subsidies, and crop shortfalls from natural disasters), a growing number of experts have tied the massive spikes to financial intermediation. As economist Jayati Ghosh explains:

“It is now quite widely acknowledged that financial speculation was the major factor behind the sharp price rise of many primary commodities , including agricultural items over the past year ... Even recent research from the World Bank (Bafis and Haniotis 2010) recognizes the role played by the “financialisation of commodities” in the price surges and declines, and notes that price variability has overwhelmed price trends for important commodities.”

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"Christophe NOISETTE" - GMO cultivation drops in EU, except in Spain and Portugal

Christophe NOISETTE
Inf'OGM, September 2011
http://www.infogm.org/spip.php?article4911

In the European Union, only eight countries (out of 27) commercially grow GMOs. Cultivations, however, decreased steadily since 2009, except in Spain and Portugal this year, where there is a slight increase. A brief overview of the different official data is collected below [1]        

In Spain and Portugal, plantings of genetically modified Bt maize has increased slightly between 2010 and 2011. These two countries grow over 90% of transgenic crops in the European Union.

In other countries, the trend is consistent with what was found in February 2011 — that of a significant reduction of land devoted to transgenic crops, either Monsanto’s Bt Mon810 corn, or BASF’s Amflora potato.

In 2011, and assuming that the surfaces in Bt corn in Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic have not changed since 2010, GMO cultivation reached a total of 114,229 hectares in the EU, an increase compared to 2010 (82,250 hectares or 91,099 according to the figures chosen for Spain), clearly related to the increase in Spain and Portugal, as other countries have had their surfaces decrease.

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"ScienceDaily" - Arctic Sea Ice Continues Decline, Hits Second-Lowest Level

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111004150400.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2011) — Last month the extent of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean declined to the second-lowest extent on record. Satellite data from NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado in Boulder showed that the summertime sea ice cover narrowly avoided a new record low.

The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and shrinks each summer as the sun rises higher in the northern sky. Each year the Arctic sea ice reaches its annual minimum extent in September. It hit a record low in 2007.

The near-record ice-melt followed higher-than-average summer temperatures, but without the unusual weather conditions that contributed to the extreme melt of 2007. "Atmospheric and oceanic conditions were not as conducive to ice loss this year, but the melt still neared 2007 levels," said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier. "This probably reflects loss of multiyear ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas as well as other factors that are making the ice more vulnerable."

Joey Comiso, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said the continued low minimum sea ice levels fits into the large-scale decline pattern that scientists have watched unfold over the past three decades.

"The sea ice is not only declining, the pace of the decline is becoming more drastic," Comiso said. "The older, thicker ice is declining faster than the rest, making for a more vulnerable perennial ice cover."

While the sea ice extent did not dip below the 2007 record, the sea ice area as measured by the microwave radiometer on NASA's Aqua satellite did drop slightly lower than 2007 levels for about 10 days in early September, Comiso said. Sea ice "area" differs from extent in that it equals the actual surface area covered by ice, while extent includes any area where ice covers at least 15 percent of the ocean.

Arctic sea ice extent on Sept. 9, the lowest point this year, was 4.33 million square kilometers (1.67 million square miles). Averaged over the month of September, ice extent was 4.61 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles). This places 2011 as the second lowest ice extent both for the daily minimum extent and the monthly average. Ice extent was 2.43 million square kilometers (938,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average.

This summer's low ice extent continued the downward trend seen over the last 30 years, which scientists attribute largely to warming temperatures caused by climate change. Data show that Arctic sea ice has been declining both in extent and thickness. Since 1979, September Arctic sea ice extent has declined by 12 percent per decade.

"The oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic continues to decline, especially in the Beaufort Sea and the Canada Basin," NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve said. "This appears to be an important driver for the low sea ice conditions over the past few summers."

Climate models have suggested that the Arctic could lose almost all of its summer ice cover by 2100, but in recent years, ice extent has declined faster than the models predicted.

NASA monitors and studies changing sea ice conditions in both the Arctic and Antarctic with a variety of spaceborne and airborne research capabilities. This month NASA resumes Operation IceBridge, a multi-year series of flights over sea ice and ice sheets at both poles. This fall's campaign will be based out of Punta Arenas, Chile, and make flights over Antarctica. NASA also continues work toward launching ICESat-2 in 2016, which will continue its predecessor's crucial laser altimetry observations of ice cover from space.



'Ethan A. Huff' - Raw organic foods have stronger 'energy field' than cooked or pasteurized conventional foods

(NaturalNews) Food is food, some might claim, and it does not really matter whether or not it is cooked or raw, conventional or organic. The nutritive value remains the same regardless. Or does it? A recent report from Activist Post explains that, based on analysis using a technique known as Kirlian photography, researchers have discovered that the energy fields surrounding raw, organic produce are stronger and more uniform than the energy fields surrounding cooked, conventional produce.

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"Anthony Gucciardi" - 27 Years: No Deaths from Vitamins, 3 Million from Prescription Drugs

Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/10/27-years-no-deaths-from-vitamins-3.html

Over the past 27 years — the complete timeframe that the data has been available —  there have been 0 deaths as a result of vitamins and over 3 million deaths related to prescription drug use. In fact, going back 54 years there have only been 11 claims of vitamin-related death, all of which provided no substantial evidence to link vitamins to the cause of death. The news comes after a recent statistically analysis found that pharmaceutical drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the US.

In 2009, drugs exceeded the amount of traffic-related deaths, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide.

The findings go against the claims of mainstream medical ‘experts’  and mainstream media outlets who often push the idea that multivitamins are detrimental to your health, and that prescription drugs are the only science-backed option to improving your health. While essential nutrients like vitamin D are continually being shown to slash your risk of disease such as diabetes and cancer, prescription pharmaceuticals are continually being linked to such conditions. In fact, the top-selling therapeutic class pharmaceutical drug has been tied to the development of diabetes and even suicide, and whistleblowers are just now starting to speak out despite studies as far back as the 80s highlighting the risks.

Mainstream medical health officials were recently forced to speak out over the danger of antipsychotic drugs, which millions of children have been prescribed since 2009. U.S. pediatric health advisers blew the whistle over the fact that these pharmaceuticals can lead to diabetes and even suicide, the very thing they aim to prevent. What is even more troubling is that half of all Americans will be diagnosed with a mental condition during their lifetime thanks to lack of diagnosis guidelines currently set by the medical establishment, of which many cases will lead to the prescription of antipsychotics and other similar medications. 

Covering up the side effects

In order to protect sales, the link between suicide and antipsychotic drugs was completely covered up by Eli Lilly & Co, the makers of Prozac. Despite research stretching as far back as the 1980s finding that Prozac actually leads to suicide, the company managed to hide the evidence until a Harvard psychiatrist leaked the information into the press. The psychiatrist, Martin Teicher, stated that the American people were being treated like guinea pigs in a massive pharmaceutical experiment.

Greedy and oftentimes prescription-happy doctors are handing out antipsychotic medication like candy to adults and young children alike. In 2008, antipsychotics became the top-selling therapeutic class prescription drug in the United States and grossing over $14 billion in sales.

Antipsychotic drugs are not the only dangerous pharmaceuticals. The average drug label contains 70 side effects, though many popular pharmaceuticals have been found to contain 100 to 125. Some drugs, prescribed by doctors to supposedly improve your health, come with over 525 negative reactions.

Ritalin, for example, has been linked to conditions including:

• Increased blood pressure
• Increased heart rate
• Increased body temperature
• Increased alertness
• Suppressed appetite

Perhaps the hundreds of negative side effects is part of the reason why the FDA announced last year that it is pulling more than 500 cold and allergy off the market due to health concerns. Prescription drugs kill more people than traffic accidents, and come with up to 525 negative side effects. Avoiding these drugs and utilizing high quality organic alternatives like whole food-based multivitamins and green superfoods will lead to a total health transformation without harsh side effects and an exponentially increased death risk.

Sources:
Most recent year: Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2009 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 27th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology (2010). 48, 979-1178.



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