October 27, 2011 archive

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The Stars Hollow Gazette

Occupy Wall Street Thursday 10.27.11

For more Info, other editions in this series can be found HERE

and up-to-date OWS Basic Info is HERE



Find Your Occupation

***OccupyTogether: Tonight: Vigils Across America for Scott Olsen (10.27.11)***

Wall St. Fraud: Justice For The 99%

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The lack of integrity in the banking industry and Wall St. is as much of a problem for the left as it is for the right. The Obama administration is as much of the problem as were both Bush presidents, Clinton And Reagan.

Political Powers Aiming to Co-opt the “Occupy Movement

Author David Degraw and Prof. William Black talk about politicians supporting the OWS movement for their own political gain as opposed to those who truly believe in the protests.

If you aren’t familiar with Professor Black, he is currently an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the Department of Economics and the School of Law. He was a central figure in exposing Congressional corruption during the Savings and Loan Crisis. He is brought the Keating Five to national attention when he published the congressional notes he took during those hearings. Black authored the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry which explains concept of “control fraud”, in which a business or national executive uses the entity he or she controls as a “weapon” to commit fraud.

David Degraw is an independent investigative journalist and author who writes for the web site Ampedstatus. He has been participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests in Liberty Park since day one and is part of the working group that helps coordinate the activity.

Besides prosecuting the banks for fraud, Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect makes a good argument for bringing back the Glass-Stiegel Act which was repealed under Clinton. Kuttner says that it would simplify banking regulation and counter the argument that there is too much regulation:

[]. It would have been far better policy to return to the simple bright line of the Glass-Steagall Act.

If you want to be a commercial bank, with federal deposit insurance, access to Federal Reserve advances, and a Good Housekeeping seal from regulators, great. You will have to follow closely policed rules. Alternatively, if you want to trade and speculate with your own money, go to it. But don’t grow so big that you can bring down the whole system, stay out of the commercial lending business, and don’t expect the government to bail out your bad bets.

That system worked very nicely. It was almost impossible to evade, and it didn’t require 298-page regulations, with legions of regulators to police the creative evasions and gray areas.

The discussion of prosecuting fraud, making the banks responsible for it, not the victims and finding easier solutions to regulating the industry is what the Occupy Wall Street movement should be sparking for the politicians, all of them.

Occupy Wall St. Livestream: Day 41

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

OccupyWallStreet

The resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza 😉

“I don’t know how to fix this but I know it’s wrong.” ~ Unknown Author

Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly  with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.

NYC General Assembly #OccupyWallStreet

Press Release from Iraq Veterans Against the War

Late last night, Scott Olsen, a former Marine, two-time Iraq war veteran, and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, sustained a skull fracture after being shot in the head with a police projectile while peacefully participating in an Occupy Oakland march.  The march began at a downtown library and headed towards City Hall in an effort to reclaim a site-recently cleared by police-that had previously served as an encampment for members of the 99% movement.

Scott joined the Marines in 2006, served two-tours in Iraq, and was discharged in 2010.  Scott moved to California from Wisconsin and currently works as a systems network administrator in Daly, California.  

Scott is one of an increasing number of war veterans who are participating in America’s growing Occupy movement. Said Keith Shannon, who deployed with Scott to Iraq, “Scott was marching with the 99% because he felt corporations and banks had too much control over our government, and that they weren’t being held accountable for their role in the economic downturn, which caused so many people to lose their jobs and their homes.”

Scott is currently sedated at a local hospital awaiting examination by a neurosurgeon.  Iraq Veterans Against the Wars sends their deepest condolences to Scott, his family, and his friends.  IVAW also sends their thanks to the brave folks who risked bodily harm to provide care to Scott immediately following the incident.

Occupy Oakland: Keith Shannon on injured Iraq veteran Scott Olsen

Keith Shannon, the roommate of injured Occupy Oakland protester Scott Olsen and a fellow Iraq War veteran, shares what happened Tuesday night when the Oakland Police Department fired upon the crowd with rubber bullets, bean bags and tear-gas canisters, one of which gave Olsen a skull fracture and trip to the emergency room. Shannon, himself a vocal protester, provides an update on Olsen’s condition – saying Olsen is “stable, but critical” – and says the incident has only bolstered his resolve to continue working for the movement.

Keith’s Special Comment: Oakland Mayor Jean Quan must repent or resign

In tonight’s Special Comment, Keith calls out Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland, for her use of 500 police officers in a pre-dawn raid Tuesday morning, followed by more tear-gas bombs, rubber bullets and bean-bag rounds on Tuesday night. Quan, herself once a victim of the Oakland police’s bullying, now “is the bully,” Keith says. He calls on Quan to dismiss acting Police Chief Howard Jordan and allow protesters to return to their location, “or, having betrayed everything she’d supported and all those who have supported her, she must resign.”

An Occupy Wall Street March to Support Those in Oakland

Hundreds of protesters in New York City marched on Wednesday night to show solidarity with protesters in Oakland, Calif., where the police used tear gas to disperse crowds a night earlier. About a dozen demonstrators were arrested in New York, the police said.

Just after 9 p.m., about 500 people left the Occupy Wall Street base in Zuccotti Park and went on a winding march around the financial district and City Hall, accompanied by drummers and a man playing the bagpipes as a helicopter followed overhead.

Less than an hour later, a smaller group of protesters poured into the streets, ignoring orders from police officers to stay on the sidewalk, and began a frantic cat-and-mouse game. More than 250 protesters walked quickly and sometimes ran through the streets of SoHo and the West Village, at one point storming through a movie set on Macdougal Street as groups of police vehicles with lights and sirens pursued them closely. People emerged from bars along the way asking what was going on and offering encouragement.

Yesterday afternoon Occupy Wall Street group Healthcare for the 99% marched to the headquarters of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, WellCare and St Vincent’s Community Hospital, a casualty of profit-driven insurers and a healthcare system that leaves 50 million Americans uninsured. Last night Keith’s guest, Dr. Steve Auerbach of Physicians for a National Healthcare Program, spoke about the need for affordable, accessible national healthcare.

The Cost Of Victory

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

WikiLeaks cables and the Iraq War

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Sunday, Oct 23, 2011 7:44 AM

That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, “provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.” The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike. Although this incident had been previously documented (.pdf) by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking. Indeed, it was widely reported at the time the cable was released that it made it much more difficult for Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain beyond the deadline under any conditions.

In other words, whoever leaked that cable cast light on a heinous American war crime and, by doing so, likely played some significant role in thwarting an agreement between the Obama and Maliki governments to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and thus helped end this stage of the Iraq war (h/t Trevor Timm). Moreover, whoever leaked these cables – as even virulent WikiLeaks critic Bill Keller repeatedly acknowledged – likely played some significant in helping spark the Arab Spring protests by documenting just how deeply corrupt those U.S.-supported kleptocrats were. And in general, whoever leaked those cables has done more to publicize the corrupt, illegal and deceitful acts of the world’s most powerful factions – and to educate the world about how they behave – than all “watchdog” media outlets combined (indeed, the amount of news reports on a wide array of topics featuring WikiLeaks cables as the primary source is staggering). In sum, whoever leaked those cables is responsible for one of the most consequential, beneficial and noble acts of this generation.

WikiLeaks suspends publishing to fight financial blockade

Julian Assange says banking bans have destroyed 95% of whistleblowing site’s revenues

Esther Addley and Jason Deans, The Guardian

Monday 24 October 2011 08.42 EDT

Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, has announced that the whistleblowing website is suspending publishing operations in order to focus on fighting a financial blockade and raise new funds.



The website, behind the publication of hundreds of thousands of controversial US embassy cables in late 2010 in partnership with newspapers including the Guardian and New York Times, revealed that it was running on cash reserves after “an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade” by the Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union.

WikiLeaks said in a statement: “The blockade is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency.

“The US government itself found that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a US financial blockade. But the blockade of WikiLeaks by politicised US finance companies continues regardless.”

Assange said donations to WikiLeaks were running at €100,000 a month in 2010, but had dropped to a monthly figure of €6,000 to €7,000 this year.

Cartnoon

Bewitched Bunny

On This Day In History October 27

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 27 is the 300th day of the year (301st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 65 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1904, the New York Subway opens.

While London boasts the world’s oldest underground train network (opened in 1863) and Boston built the first subway in the United States in 1897, the New York City subway soon became the largest American system. The first line, operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), traveled 9.1 miles through 28 stations. Running from City Hall in lower Manhattan to Grand Central Terminal in midtown, and then heading west along 42nd Street to Times Square, the line finished by zipping north, all the way to 145th Street and Broadway in Harlem. On opening day, Mayor McClellan so enjoyed his stint as engineer that he stayed at the controls all the way from City Hall to 103rd Street.

History

A demonstration for an underground transit system in New York City was first built by Alfred Ely Beach in 1869. His Beach Pneumatic Transit only extended 312 feet (95 m) under Broadway in Lower Manhattan and exhibited his idea for a subway propelled by pneumatic tube technology. The tunnel was never extended for political and financial reasons, although extensions had been planned to take the tunnel southward to The Battery and northwards towards the Harlem River. The Beach subway was demolished when the BMT Broadway Line was built in the 1910s; thus, it was not integrated into the New York City Subway system.

The first underground line of the subway opened on October 27, 1904, almost 35 years after the opening of the first elevated line in New York City, which became the Ninth Avenue Line. The heavy 1888 snowstorm helped to demonstrate the benefits of an underground transportation system. The oldest structure still in use opened in 1885 as part of the BMT Lexington Avenue Line, and is now part of the BMT Jamaica Line in Brooklyn. The oldest right-of-way, that of the BMT West End Line, was in use in 1863 as a steam railroad called the Brooklyn, Bath and Coney Island Rail Road. The Staten Island Railway, which opened in 1860, currently uses R44 subway cars, but it has no links to the rest of the system and is not usually considered part of the subway proper.

By the time the first subway opened, the lines had been consolidated into two privately owned systems, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT, later Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation, BMT) and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT). The city was closely involved: all lines built for the IRT and most other lines built or improved for the BRT after 1913 were built by the city and leased to the companies. The first line of the city-owned and operated Independent Subway System (IND) opened in 1932; this system was intended to compete with the private systems and allow some of the elevated railways to be torn down, but was kept within the core of the City due to the low amount of startup capital provided to the municipal Board Of Transportation, the later MTA, by the state.[3] This required it to be run ‘at cost’, necessitating fares up to double the five cent fare popular at the time.

In 1940, the two private systems were bought by the city; some elevated lines closed immediately, and others closed soon after. Integration was slow, but several connections were built between the IND and BMT, and now operate as one division called the B Division. Since the IRT tunnel segments are too small and stations too narrow to accommodate  B Division cars, and contain curves too sharp for B Division cars, the IRT remains its own division, A Division.

The New York City Transit Authority, a public authority presided by New York City, was created in 1953 to take over subway, bus, and streetcar operations from the city, and was placed under control of the state-level Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 1968.

In 1934, transit workers of the BRT, IRT, and IND founded the Transport Workers Union of America, organized as Local 100. Local 100 remains the largest and most influential local of the labor union. Since the union’s founding, there have been three union strikes. In 1966, transit workers went on strike for 12 days, and again in 1980 for 11 days. On December 20, 2005, transit workers again went on strike over disputes with MTA regarding salary, pensions, retirement age, and health insurance costs. That strike lasted just under three days.

Happy Birthday Michael.

See? I do remember your birthday. Heh. You always teased me when I said, “Is your birthday Wednesday or Thursday?” One of our jokes. Its only because I rarely know what the date is today, not the date of your birth. I still have to look at the phone to write a check. Some things never change.

We really miss you. We do. I asked Jake how he thought we were doing last night, and he said “Almost too good.” He felt a little guilty about it. I promised you, I would not let this be the thing that turned his perfect little world to shit. I think I’m keeping it pretty well. We cried and laughed about stories about you, then. We don’t know exactly what to do with days like this. The Holidays looming over us is really scary. They are going to hurt too.  But I won’t let this break him. Break me. Having you in his life was a good thing. I won’t let it become the bad-thing that ruins his beautiful spirit. You would never want to be that to him.

The revolution has begun, babe. You would be thrilled about that. People ARE waking the fuck up. You would LOVE IT!

I had to let the property side-lot go. Man, you should have never got involved with that guy. You used to say he was a weasel, but he was your weasel. Not so much, dear, not so much. Cut throat is what he is.

I keep wondering when I will ever get all the piles of shit all over from your Mom’s house, and your pack rat shit cleaned up. I know, you would hate it, but I am going to have to get brutal and just start tossing stuff out. I have to downsize. I have to make order out of this chaos. I have to make it my own now.

I remember when we were younger, you worrying about if I would still love you when you got old, and I wasn’t. The almost 15 years between us scared you.  You never got old. Not to me. Not to anyone, really. You got sick, thats different.

I used to sing “When I’m 64..” to you, kiss you and laugh away your fears. I loved you every day until the end, and love you still. I’m so sorry you didn’t make 64. That would have been so cute to bring it full circle.

I don’t know where atheists go, hell I’m not sure where the Catholics go either, anymore. Recovering Catholics like us are a weird lot. I still feel you around sometimes. See you, hear you. Its okay to move on, sweetheart. I’ve got this. We’ve got this. Be at peace.

Somehow, we will live through today, live through the dreaded Thanksgiving. I always hated that Holiday anyway. Yeah, you’re right. I won’t make a Turkey. I only did that for you.

Christmas morning will be brutal though. I will light up the neighborhood still, with my silly lights on my not-so-tiny anymore line of pines. We will do what we always have done.

I wish you were here. I wish I was calling you in your big truck, singing to you on your 63rd. I wish I was planning your favorite dinner.

I wish you could be with me when I cut Jake loose with his cousins to go trick or treating sans parent. He is getting soooo huge.

Where ever you are? You are loved, and remembered with love.



Photobucket

10/27/48 – 3/11/11

March of the Bonus Army

The more things change…the more the country still beats, shoots, gasses and kills its own citizens (veterans EVUHN!) after the bankers crash the economy.  Good times.  Under 30 min total.

But first, a message from Oakland via Bluegal:

“My part of Oakland is full of poor people. There’s at least one murder a week. Old creeps pimp out teenaged girls in broad daylight. You can buy crack or heroin 30 feet from my door, and two of my neighbors have been held up at gun point this summer. And the City of Oakland says they don’t have the police to stop any of that. But a bunch of people protesting the fact that rich people got a bail out and everyone else got nothing? The city shuts them down tight. Bang. Done. Riot act. Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? I do. Every day.”

Enjoy the show below.

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

–George Orwell



Yellow Road 3

An Occupy Wall Street Starving Artist Protest Artwork Sale

Hello Docudharma. You may recognize me from the GOS and if you do you will know that I can do battle(like buhdy used to and I miss his writing as well but all hail TheMomCat anyway whom is awesome) and I can write diaries which I will try to cross post more but for now I have only been inspired by OWS for good reason. Electoral politics is useless and worthless in the age of Obama and sellout Democrats who all voted to keep the filibuster for the most part, for Dolecare, and D- financial reform keeping TBTF with in inadequate stimulus to boot.

I am writing this diary for you because even though you may not be able to afford any of these as we are all broke these days, I figured I would appeal to you anyway just in case as I am now selling OWS protest T-shirts at CafePress showing my original illustrations that other have persuaded me to share in this way. It’s certainly not because I’m going to get rich or really profit much because off of this(though I have donated some of these pieces to Occupy Houston for free) as most of the money goes into making the shirt with my artwork on it, but I am somewhat proud of these pieces I have done while being inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement. here is my latest and best. I don’t know if I will be able to top this iconic image which kind of sucks, but I think that’s a good accomplishment.

http://www.cafepress.com/price…

Late Night Karaoke

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