Ralph Nader - Occupy Wall Street on the Move

Published on Thursday, October 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/27-7

by Ralph Nader

The question confronting the Occupy Wall Street encampments and their offshoots in scores of cities and towns around the country is quo vadis? Where is it going?

This decentralized, leaderless civic initiative has attracted the persistent attention of the mass media in the past five weeks. Television cameras from all over the world are parked down at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street.

But the mass media is a hungry beast. It needs to be fed regularly. Apart from the daily pressures of making sure the encampments are clean, that food and shelter are available, that relations with the police are quiet, that provocateurs are identified; the campers must anticipate possible police crackdowns, such as that which has just occurred in Oakland, and find ways to rebound.

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Pharmalot.com - Rats On Antidepressants Showed Signs Of Autism

PHARMALOT.COM  // October 27th, 2011 

http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/10/rats-on-antidepressants-showed-signs-of-autism/

Yet another study suggests the possibility of a link between antidepressant use and autism. This time, rats given Celexa just before and after birth showed what researchers describe as substantial brain abnormalities and behaviors. Celexa is an SSRI, or serotonin selective reuptake inhibitor, a popular class of antidepressants that includes Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and Lexapro.

The rodents became “excessively fearful when faced with new situations and failed to play normally with other rats, which is the sort of behavior that is reminiscent of what is known as novelty avoidance and social impairments often seen in autism,” according to the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study. The abnormalities, however, were more pronounced in male than female rats, and the researchers note autism affects boys up to four times more often than girls.

This is the second time in recent months that a study has suggested a link between antidepressants and autism. Last July, a study reviewed medical records of more than 1,800 children, including 298 who have autism, and found the risk of having a child with autism spectrum disorder was about twice as high among women who took SSRIs in the year before giving birth. And there was a three-fold risk associated with SSRI treatment during the first trimester. (see here).

In the most recent study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, male and female rat pups were given the drug before and after birth, and their brains and behavior were examined as they grew (you can read it here).

“The male rat pups abnormally froze when they heard unfamiliar tones and resisted exploring their environment” when encountering unfamiliar objects or scents, according to an NIH statement. What’s more, the behaviors continued into adulthood and the little male rats also shunned normal “juvenile play behavior,” which the researchers noted resembled behavior seen in autistic children.

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Linh Dinh - Common Dreaming

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Common-Dreaming-by-Linh-Dinh-111026-306.html

October 26, 2011

By Linh Dinh

A protest sign in NYC, "FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I FEEL AT HOME." Home is Liberty Park, a 33,000-square-foot plot where hundreds have camped nightly for over a month. During the day, they march together, their bodies merged into a common thrust, while at night, theylie together. Some are barely covered, while others are entirely wrapped, like collateral damage of yet another stupid war. Be careful or you'll step on an arm, leg or even head.

In a country of walls and locked doors, where even infants have private domains, there are no barriers here. With everyone exposed, and no TV to distract, conversation comes more readily. Here, no canned music slops over each dialogue or interior monologue. Here, all crazy,percussive rhythms and melodies must be generated by living muscles and breaths. Here, all faces are real all the time, with none beamed from uptown or across the land mass.

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You Tube Video - New Song -- No Banker Left Behind by Ry Cooder

Listen to the song right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxaY_mxYflg

The opening track to Ry Cooder's 2011 album, "Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down," available at http://www.nonesuch.com/albums/pull-up-some-dust-and-sit-down

Inspired by a news headline about the Wall Street bailout, Ry Cooder began work on his album "Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down" with this song, "No Banker Left Behind," an ode to the corrupt few spared from the financial crisis while most were left to fend for themselves. Uncut calls the album "one of his best albums ever ... an impassioned portrait of 21st century America and its injustices" in which Cooder is "remade as a modern-day Woody Guthrie, fearless and funny, for like Guthrie he nails his targets with droll humour while empathising with society's underdogs." The BBC calls it "essential listening."

CATHERINE RAMPELL - New York Metro Area Has Highest Inequality in Country

By CATHERINE RAMPELL | New York Times 

http://beta.finance.yahoo.com/news/york-metro-area-highest-inequality-162501626.html

It's probably no wonder that the "Occupy" movement began with Wall Street: the New York metropolitan area has the highest inequality in the country, according to a new report from the Census Bureau.

The report, by Daniel H. Weinberg, analyzed income data at various geographical levels and found that the region encompassing New York, northern New Jersey, Long Island and parts of Pennsylvania had the highest income inequality of any large metro area.

New York State also has the highest income inequality of all 50 states (although Washington, D.C., was worse).

Below is a map showing three measures of income inequality for each state: the Gini index (which ranges from 0.0, when all households have equal shares of income, to 1.0, when one household has all the income and the rest has none); a ratio of household income at the 90th percentile to that at the 10th percentile; and a ratio of household income at the 95th percentile to that at the 20th.

In all cases, a higher value means greater inequality.

After New York, Connecticut, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas have among the most unequal income distributions. At the low end are New Hampshire, Alaska and Utah, which is the most economically homogenous state in the nation.

Utah's capital, Salt Lake City, also has the lowest income inequality of any major American metro area. The most unequal, as mentioned above, is New York, followed by Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Fla.

Mr. Weinberg's report also has inequality measures down to the neighborhood level, which I recommend checking out. Remember, though, that fewer people are surveyed in such small places, so the margin of error is much greater.

Ravi Batra - The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Coming Demise of Crony Capitalism

Tuesday 11 October 2011

by: Ravi Batra, Truthout | News Analysis

http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-wall-street-movement-and-coming-demise-crony-capitalism/1318341474

In 1978, to the laughter of many and the derision of a few, I wrote a book called, "The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism," which predicted that Soviet communism would vanish around the end of the century, whereas crony or monopoly capitalism would create the worst-ever concentration of wealth in its history, so much so that a social revolution would start its demise around 2010. My forecasts derived from the law of social cycles, which was pioneered by my late teacher and mentor, P. R. Sarkar. Lo and behold, Soviet communism disappeared right before your eyes during the 1990s, and now, just a year after 2010, middle-class America, spearheaded by a movement increasingly known as "Occupy Wall Street (OWS)," is beginning to revolt against Wall Street greed and crony capitalism. Will the revolt succeed? It surely will, because the pre-conditions for its success are all there.

The first question is this: Why does rising wealth disparity create poverty? My answer is that it causes overproduction and hence unemployment and destitution. It is all a matter of supply and demand. Inequality goes up when official economic policy does not allow wages to catch up with the ever-growing labor productivity, so that profits soar and rising productivity increasingly raises the incomes and bonuses of business executives. I have detailed this process in an earlier article [3]. Then money sits idly in the vaults of bankers and big-business CEOs and restrains consumer demand, leading to overproduction and hence layoffs. The toxic combination of mounting layoffs and absent job creation raises poverty, which, according to official figures, is now the highest in 50 years.

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Jim Lobe - New Inequality Data Likely to Boost "Occupy" Movement

Published on Thursday, October 27, 2011 by Inter Press Service

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/27-6

by Jim Lobe

A major study on income equality by a non-partisan government agency is likely to boost the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, whose standing with the general public appears on the rise, according to a new poll.

The study, released here Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), found that the average after-tax real income of the top one percent of the nation's households grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007 - about seven times greater than the increase in income by the remaining 99 percent over the same period.

And the income of the poorest 20 percent of the nation's earners grew by a mere 18 percent during that period, according to the report, which had been requested by the senior Democratic and Republican members on the Senator Finance Committee several years ago. That was less than one percent per year.

The report – the latest in a series of private or non-profit studies that confirm a sharp rise in income and wealth inequality over the past generation – came as a new New York Times/CBS News poll showed stronger-than-expected popular support for the "Occupy" movement, which has spread to dozens of cities across the country.

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Gary Null PhD and Nancy Ashley VMD, MS - Gardasil: Does it Heal or Does it Kill?

The Gardasil vaccine against human papillomavirus has been much profiled in the news recently and the news isn’t good.  Despite continued incidents of serious, life-altering adverse reactions, including paralysis and death, and despite questionable efficacy and safety studies that allowed this vaccine to come to market in the first place, the push to force the Gardasil vaccine on our children has been relentless and seems to be picking up speed.   The following is a review of the more significant and far reaching stories that surfaced, mostly under the radar of the general public, during the past four weeks.

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Nick Turse - Cops Blame Occupy Wall Street for Surge in Shootings, City Wastes Money Policing Non-Violent Protesters

By Nick Turse, AlterNet

Posted on October 27, 2011, Printed on October 27, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152890/cops_blame_occupy_wall_street_for_surge_in_shootings%2C_city_wastes_money_policing_non-violent_protesters

The Occupy Wall Street protests and the new mini-society that has formed in Liberty Square in Lower Manhattan, continues to tax the city’s budget.  Recently, it has also sparked howls of protest from top police commanders who blame OWS activists for an increase in gun violence across New York City.

High-ranking police commanders told the New York Post that they attributed a surge in gun violence – the number of people shot in the city spiked 28 percent in the last month – to the fact that special NYPD task forces have been diverted to the protests.  “They are always used when there are spikes in crime as a quick fix. But instead of being sent to Jamaica, Brownsville and the South Bronx, they are in Wall Street,” an unnamed top cop told the Post.

As reported by AlterNet last week, the New York City Police Department has already spent more than $3.4 million on overtime hours as a result of the Occupy Wall Street protests.  Over the same span of time, the NYPD has arrested around 1,000 people associated with the movement.   

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Zoltan Grossman - Rise of the Planet of the People

Published on Thursday, October 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/27-3

by Zoltan Grossman

I first heard about Occupy Wall Street in August, when I visited my former home of Madison, Wisconsin. Shortly after protesting in the Wisconsin State Capitol rotunda against 13% pay cuts for state workers, and being impressed with the energy and creativity of the protesters, I attended the Democracy Convention nearby. Some of the speakers at the Convention were inspiring, but others were repeating the same vague rhetoric and tactics I’ve heard for many decades.

As I was doodling, a young speaker mentioned that Wall Street would be occupied starting September 17 (Constitution Day), and I sat bolt upright. It took only about two seconds to understand the rationale of Occupy Wall Street, so most Americans would be able to grasp its message without complex explanations. Americans have historically put on great marches and uprisings, but have rarely stayed in one place to make their demands. OWS seemed to draw from the examples of past occupations in Manila, Beijing, Belgrade, Kiev and Cairo.

Above all, spreading occupations around the country and world would mobilize our home communities, rather than expecting us to spend time and money to travel to (and be repressed in) a central place. We could educate our own local towns and cities, and they could show support by joining and bringing food and supplies. So far, I have been just as impressed by the Occupy movement back in my current home of Olympia, Washington, as I have been of the mass protests back home in Wisconsin.

The 10-Year Delay

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