"John Feffer" - Why 2012 Will Shake Up Asia and the World

The United States has long styled itself a Pacific power. It established the model of counterinsurgency in the Philippines in 1899 and defeated the Japanese in World War II. It faced down the Chinese and the North Koreans to keep the Korean peninsula divided in 1950, and it armed the Taiwanese to the teeth. Today, America maintains the most powerful military in the Pacific region, supported by a constellation of military bases, bilateral alliances, and about 100,000 service personnel. It has, however, reached the high-water mark of its Pacific presence and influence. The geopolitical map is about to be redrawn. Northeast Asia, the area of the world with the greatest concentration of economic and military power, is on the verge of a regional transformation. And the United States, still preoccupied with the Middle East and hobbled by a stalled and stagnating economy, will be the odd man out.

Click to read more ...

"Paul Joseph Watson" - Occupy Wall Street Protesters suckered into a trap

Despite their honest intentions, many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being suckered into a trap and calling for the very “solutions” that are part of the financial elite’s agenda to torpedo the American middle class – higher taxes and more big government.

Click to read more ...

"Sarah Jaffe": This Is Only Getting Bigger -- 20,000 Rally in New York to Support Occupy Wall Street

It's 10 PM in Liberty Plaza and the jubilant 20,000-plus crowd from the day's solidarity march has dwindled, now, to the faithful, the regulars, having debated and decided by consensus against another attempt at marching. The police have dropped barricades around the entire plaza, but rumors that they are coming in are so far unfounded. The medical team has calmed down and are eating pizza from the boxes being carried throughout the plaza. A giant projection on the wall of a building across Trinity Street reminds the protesters "The Whole World is Watching #OccupyWallStreet."

Click to read more ...

"Ralph Nader" - Masters of the Big Lie --The War on Regulations

October 04, 2011

by RALPH NADER

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/04/masters-of-the-big-lie/

Masters of the repeated lying sound byte, the craven Congressional Republicans are feasting on the health and safety of the American people with gleeful greed while making the corporate and trade association media swoon. “Job-killing regulations,” exudes daily from the mouths of Speak John Boehner, his Wall Street-licking side-kick Eric Candor and Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.

Then all the way down the line, the Republicans are on cue bellowing “job-killing regulations” must be revoked or stopped aborning over at OSHA (protecting workers), EPA (protecting clean air and water), FDA (safer drugs and food), and NHTSA (making your vehicle safer).  Imagine how much more civil servants could do to accomplish the statutory missions of their respective agencies if they could get the Republicans and their corporate pay masters off their backs.

These same Republicans get in their cars with their children and put on their seat belts. Out of sight are the air bags ready to deprive them of their freedom to go through the windshield in a crash. Who makes those seat belts and air bags? Workers in the USA.

Click to read more ...

"NY Daily News" - Organized Labor Expected to join Wall Street Protest

Published on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 by The New York Daily News

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/10/05/2011-10-05_once_enemies_now_they_march.html

New York Daily News

Organized labor will serve notice today on the bankers and the politicians that the young protesters of Occupy Wall Street speak for millions.

Tens of thousands of transit and city workers, teachers, and maintenance and hospital workers are expected to march to Zuccotti Park late today in a show of solidarity.

The labor rally will signal just how far unions have come since that infamous day 41 years ago, when bands of construction workers rampaged through the Financial District and City Hall. Back then, the hardhats brutally beat scores of youths protesting the Vietnam War.

Now the young people and the unions are on the same side.

"The whole order of things today is absolutely upside down," said John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100. "Tax breaks for millionaires, working people suffer, and no jobs for these kids."

Establishment critics of the Zuccotti Park events have no clue what is happening. By setting up camp near the scene of Wall Street's still-unpunished crimes, and by persevering round the clock for nearly three weeks, these kids have created a boot camp for social change.

Click to read more ...

"David Korten" - Why I'm in Solidarity with #OccupyWallStreet

Published on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 by YES! Magazine

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/in-solidarity-with-occupywallstreet

By the calendar it’s autumn, but for many it is the beginning of the American Spring.

by David Korten

At this moment the brave and dedicated #OccupyWallStreet protesters are in the streets of New York and cities around the world. They call the world’s attention to Wall Street greed and corruption as a common source of the many crises that threaten the human future—economic, political, social, and environmental. This is a defining moment for America. It is our country’s version of the uprisings occurring around the world. It is a ray of hope for democracy and real prosperity in America and beyond.

Contrary to the Wall Street propaganda, Wall Street is a job killer, not a job creator. Wall Street banks and corporations have no interest in creating jobs, educating American children, or assuring that Americans have health care and retirement security. They appeal for ever more tax breaks and regulatory relief only to have yet more money to use as they used their taxpayer provided bailout: to increase executive bonuses, pay dividends, buy other companies, buy back their own stock to increase the value of their stock options, buy political favor, create new financial bubbles, and outsource yet more jobs.

Click to read more ...

"Adam Lee" - Conservatives Want America to be a "Christian Nation" -- Here's What Would That Would Actually Look Like

By Adam Lee, AlterNet
Posted on October 4, 2011, Printed on October 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152564/conservatives_want_america_to_be_a_%22christian_nation%22_--_here%27s_what_would_that_would_actually_look_like

In a campaign speech in September, Rick Perry hit upon some familiar Republican themes. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek article:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, in an appeal to evangelical voters, said "Christian values" and not "a bunch of Washington politicians" should be the touchstone guiding how Americans conduct their lives. ...

"America is going to be guided by some set of values," Perry told a crowd of 13,000 students and faculty members yesterday at a sports arena on the school's campus. "The question is going to be, 'Whose values?'" He said it should be "those Christian values that this country was based upon."

It's worth calling attention to Perry's obnoxious rhetorical ploy of using "Christian values" to refer only to his own very specific, right-wing set of beliefs -- preemptive war, gay-bashing, tax cuts for the rich, creationism in schools, deregulating corporations, dismantling the social safety net, the standard Republican package -- as if he owned or had the right to define all of Christianity. In reality, there's such a huge diversity of opinion among self-professed Christians past and present that the term "Christian values" could mean almost anything.

Click to read more ...

"Zaid Jilani" - 5 Facts You Should Know About the Wealthiest One Percent of Americans

By Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress
Posted on October 4, 2011, Printed on October 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152601/5_facts_you_should_know_about_the_wealthiest_one_percent_of_americans

As the ongoing occupation of Wall Street by hundreds of protesters enters its third week — and as protests spread to other cities such as Boston and Los Angeles — demonstrators have endorsed a new slogan: “We are the 99 percent.” This slogan refers to an economic struggle between 99 percent of Americans and the richest 1 percent of Americans, who are increasingly accumulating a greater share of the national wealth to the detriment of the middle class.

It may shock you to learn exactly how wealthy this top 1 percent of Americans is. ThinkProgress has assembled five facts about this class of super-rich Americans:

1. The Top 1 Percent of Americans Owns 40 Percent of the Nation’s Wealth

 As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, the richest 1 percent of Americans now own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Sociologist William Domhoff illustrates this wealth disparity using 2007 figures where the top 1 percent owned 42 percent of the country’s financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home). How much does the bottom 80 percent own? Only 7 percent.

Click to read more ...

"Allen Roland" - List of Politicians, Military and Intelligence Experts who Question the "Official" 9/11 Narrative

By Allen Roland

Global Research, October 4, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26897

Global Research Editor's Note. This list is selective. For a complete list consult www.patriotsquestion911.com

Here are 40 experts, including the Chairman, 9/11 Commission, Thomas H. Kean, Former Governor of New Jersey and Vice Chairman, 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Homeland Security Advisory Council ~ sounding off in short quotes about their misgivings with the 9/11 commission and the questions that are still smoldering.

Click to read more ...

"Robert Burns" - Poll: 1 in 3 vets sees Iraq, Afghan wars as wastes

By ROBERT BURNS - AP National Security Writer | AP – 32 mins ago

http://news.yahoo.com/poll-1-3-vets-sees-iraq-afghan-wars-040253311.html

One in three U.S. veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and a majority think that after 10 years of combat America should be focusing less on foreign affairs and more on its own problems, according to an opinion survey released Wednesday.

The findings highlight a dilemma for the Obama administration and Congress as they struggle to shrink the government's huge budget deficits and reconsider defense priorities while trying to keep public support for remaining involved in Iraq and Afghanistan for the longer term.

Nearly 4,500 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and about 1,700 in Afghanistan. Combined war costs since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have topped $1 trillion.

The poll results presented by the Pew Research Center portray post-9/11 veterans as proud of their work, scarred by warfare and convinced that the American public has little understanding of the problems that wartime service has created for military members and their families.

Click to read more ...