"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 ...

"Margaret Kimberley" - Freedom Rider: Occupy Wall Street, Denounce the Democrats

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

If the Occupation Wall Street is to be truly independent of both banker-funded political parties, they will have to include the Democrats in their denunciations. There has been precious little direct criticism of the “other” pro-Wall Street party at Liberty/Zuccotti Park. “Words like breaking up the concentration of wealth and power will be meaningless without a more pointed critique of the political system, a critique which should be no respecter of persons or party.”

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“The only way to protest income inequality or bailouts of the financial services industry is to protest against the people in power, even when they happen to be Democrats.”

In 2009, the New York state legislature imposed a tax surcharge on residents earning

$1 million or more per year. This “millionaire’s tax” was passed with the proviso that it expire on December 31, 2011. When Democrats in the state capital proposed extending this tax on the rich, Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo said no, and the surcharge was history.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters held a march, dubbed the millionaire’s march, to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes. They marched past the New York City homes of billionaire David Koch, News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch, and Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase. For some strange reason, they did not march past the offices of the Democratic governor.

Click to read more ...

Progressive Radio Network Host Glen Ford from Black Agenda Radio, Mondays @ 4pm(EDT") - What a Whopper! U.S. Throws All the Demons in the Mix for the Mother Of All Anti-Iran Psy-Ops

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

To foment hysteria against Iran, “the administration is cooking up an almost comically infernal witches brew just in time for Halloween.” So fantastic is the American story of an Iranian assassination scheme, one is tempted to laugh – except that the farce shows how eager the Obama administration is to create war scenarios out of thin air. It is a psychological operation of the absurd, one that only “the typical American” will believe.

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The whole thing smells more like the FBI’s schemes to frame Black men in Miami and Newburgh, New York, for terroristic attacks that never did, or could, happen.”

Who said Barack Obama would bring sobriety and dignity to U.S. foreign policy? The president’s men, and Top Woman Hillary Clinton, have thrown every stereotypical demon of middle American nightmares into the psychological operations gumbo, to create a war hysteria against Iran. No reflexive terror button is left unpushed, no racial hysteria unexploited. Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble, the administration is cooking up an almost comically infernal witches brew just in time for Halloween.

What a confabulation! There’s the Mexican drug cartel hit men, the specter of a bomb exploding in a crowded, upscale Washington eatery, plus attacks on Israelis and, of course, in the background, the elite Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And if you believe the government story - well, that proves you are the typical America, and any idiot can keep you in a state of endless war.

Click to read more ...

"Maryn McKenna" - Antibiotics: Killing Off Beneficial Bacteria … for Good?

• 
   By Maryn McKenna 

• August 26, 2011  | Wire Magazine

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/killing-beneficial-bacteria/

It’s an accepted concept by now that taking antibiotics in order to quell an infection disrupts the personal microbiome, the population of microorganisms that we all carry around in our guts, and which vastly outnumbers the cells that make up our bodies. That recognition supports our understanding of Clostridium difficile disease — killing the beneficial bacteria allows C. diff room to surge and produce an overload of toxins — as well as the intense interest in establishing a research program that could demonstrate experimentally whether the vast industry producing probiotic products is doing what it purports to do.

But implicit in that concept is the expectation that, after a while — after a course of antibiotics ends — the gut flora repopulate and their natural balance returns.

What if that expectation were wrong?

In a provocative editorial published this week in Nature, Martin Blaser of New York University’s Langone Medical Center argues that antibiotics’ impact on gut bacteria is permanent — and so serious in its long-term consequences that medicine should consider whether to restrict antibiotic prescribing to pregnant women and young children.

Click to read more ...

"Tracy Sherlock" - Are Co-ops the Solution to Occupy Wall Street Woes?

Published on Monday, October 17, 2011 by Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/solution+Occupy+Wall+Street+woes/5560495/story.html

Alternative business model called mechanism for democratizing the economy

by Tracy Sherlock

It's a business model in British Columbia that controls more than $10 billion in assets, employs 13,000 people and returns all profits to members. The model governs enterprises in banking, housing, retail and health care. Fully one-third of British Columbians are members in at least one of the 700 operations operating in this model: the co-operative.

 For John Restakis, executive director of the B.C. Co-operative Association, co-ops are a mechanism for democratizing the economy, something the folks participating in Occupy Wall Street or Occupy Vancouver could turn to as a solution to their grievances.

"The whole point of Occupy Wall Street is reacting against corporate structure and the fact that people have no control over the economy is what's at the heart of it," Restakis said. "Co-ops are a concrete way to address that."

Co-op Week in B.C. runs from today until Sunday and the United Nations has declared 2012 the international year of the co-operative to raise public awareness of this alternative business model and its contributions to poverty reduction and job creation.

"Co-operatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility," UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon said on the UN website.

Click to read more ...

“Michael Spence” - The Global Jobs Challenge

By Michael Spence

Project Syndicate, Monday, October 17, 2011

http://www.nationofchange.org/global-jobs-challenge-1318867455.

Over the past three decades, hundreds of millions of new workers have entered the global economy. They arrived with various levels of education and skill, and over time have generally gained in terms of “human capital” – and in terms of value added and income. This has brought a tremendous, and ongoing, growth in income levels, opportunities, and the size of the global economy. But these new workers have also brought more employment competition and significant shifts in relative wages and prices, which is having profound distributional effects.

These massive structural changes in the global economy present three great employment challenges worldwide, with different countries facing their own variants.

Click to read more ...

"John Nichols" - Why Cornel West Was Arrested in Memory of MLK, in Support of the Occupy Movement

By John Nichols

http://www.nationofchange.org/why-cornel-west-was-arrested-memory-mlk-support-occupy-movement-1318868491

On the day that President Obama and others celebrated the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the dedication of Washington's King memorial, Dr. Cornel West was a few blocks away—celebrating King with activism on behalf of economic justice and the "Occupy" movement.

After attending the dedication of the King memorial, West joined a "Stop the Machine! Create a New World!" protest march.

On the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, with fellow activists, he called out the high court for making decisions that allow corporations to dominate the economic life and the politics of the nation.

"We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions," West declared. "We want to send a lesson to ourselves, to our loved ones, our families, our communities, our nation and the world, that out of deep love for working and poor people that we are willing to put whatever it takes (on the line)—even if we get arrested today—and say we will not allow this day of Martin Luther King Jr's memorial to go by without somebody going to jail. Because Martin King would be here right with us, willing to throw down out of deep love."

Then, the author of "Race Matters," "Democracy Matters" and other groundbreaking books written in the King tradition sat down on the steps of the court with at least 18 protesters.

"We are here to bear witness, in solidarity with the Occupy movement all around the world because we love poor people, we love working people, and we want Martin Luther King Jr. to smile from the grave that we haven't forgotten," said West.

Moments later, West was cuffed by the police and led into the court building as a crowd chanted: "We're with you, Dr. West!" and "We won't forget!"