Occupy Wall Street: Two Perspectives

The Fed is supporting Bank of America and its $75 trillion in derivatives bets. What this means is that one quarter of the world's wealth (not income but wealth) is now gambling on the financial market.


The Dark Night Rises will use the Occupy Wall Street protesters as Extras

And in the other perspective of the day comes from Hollywood. While Occupy Wall Street Protesters find themselves attempted to be shutdown by the civil authorities, movies like the third installment of the Batman trilogy, The Dark Night Rises, continue to be filmed.

Masked Protector of Gotham Has His Eye on Wall Street Protesters

BP Oil Spill Update

It appears that pipeline with the robots that we all watched was the sideshow.


Reality:


Fib:



Fiction:

Afghanistan: Hearts and Mines

"Villagers from a violent part of southern Afghanistan say that Afghan troops, along with several American mentors, forced civilians to march ahead of soldiers on roads where the Taliban were believed to have planted bombs and landmines." [More from NPR]

Occupy Wall Street: Voices

"Using the “people’s mic” that is his own booming voice, U.S. Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas, a veteran with two tours in Iraq to his name, delivers a powerful excoriation of the New York Police Department, chastising officers for hurting unarmed civilians.''



More Confrontations with Police: barricades and horses to stop people from marching.






And Some Silly Ones:

The United States' Secrets: War Post 9/11

Frontline's "Top Secret America"

     The Over Seas Contingency Operations, formally the Global War on Terror (G.W.O.T. got a make over back in 2009), has lead to a reshaping of American foreign policy.

Watch Top Secret America on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Transcript of Top Secret America

9/11 Commission Report (pdf)

2004 American Budget

The Surge is Working- by David Petraeus

"These buildings that─ they might only be
 four stories high, but they go down ten stories.
  And there’s a whole world down there, like
 shops and places to eat, that you don’t know
 about that’s just for them."
MICHAEL WILLIAMSON WITH THE WASHINGTON POST

"In a post-9/11 world,
 we weren’t going to be so prissy."
-HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISER FRAN TOWNSEND

The N.S.A. properties in Maryland total 8.6 million square feet of office space, 1.3 times as big as the Pentagon.(Photo by Sandra McConnell, N.S.A.)

more Pictures of "In Our Back Yards" by the Washington Post

Occupy Walls Street October 16: World Edition 950 protests in 80 countries

Occupy Wall Street protesters outside the Chase bank in New York's financial district. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

A protestor hurls a canister clashes in Rome during a demonstration against corporate greed and austerity measures. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP

Tens of thousands of people take a part in a demostration in Puerta del Sol square in Madrid on Saturday, part of the global movement against corporate greeed. Photograph: Arturo Rodriguez/AP

The New York City Occupy Wall Street movement continues to spread, reaching the UK, Spain, and Italy. Live feed from Spanish Television or read more from the Guardian

“I stood my ground and said that we were within our rights,” Mr. Wilder said .

London: BBC Take 

“Occupy Yoido” may have an unfamiliar ring, but Yoido is the neighborhood in Seoul where South Korea’s biggest financial institutions are based.

In Private, Wall St. Bankers Dismiss Protesters as Unsophisticated Video

More Airstrikes in Yemen

Strikes believed to be carried out by American drones killed at least nine people in southern Yemen, and in the capital, Sana, security forces killed at least 12 protesters.


Read the Full Article

Voting: Suspicions of Computer voting machines become Grounded

In this clip computer programmer, Clinton Eugene Curtis, testifies under oath about being approached by elected representatives commit voter fraud through the use of electronic voting machines. As a former programmer for NASA and Exxon Mobil, Clinton explains how easy it would be to rig an election in Ohio and how difficult it would be to discover "bad code."

• The code may be inserted remotely
• can tamper tens of thousands of votes discretely
• The code can be programmed to "eat it itself"

The Simpsons are spot on with this one: Homer Simpson Tries to Vote for Obama

Occupy Wall Street Movement: Community

A new angle on Occupy Wall Street reveals the strong micro community that has formed in downtown New York City.





Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.


Directed by Alex Mallis + Lily Henderson
Cinematography by Ed David
Edited by Lily Henderson + Alex Mallis
Assistant Camera: Andrew McMullen + Diana Eliavoz
Assistant Producers: Dana Salvatore + Jillian Mason
Titles by Jason Drakeford.


The movement continues as it shifts from:
-why are you protesting?
                            -are you f*ing kidding me?
to:
the establishment of categories like environmental, health, internet, can get together and discuss what they believe in and how government can improve.

Occupy Wall Street: October 5

Finally some decent reporting on the Occupy Wall Street Movements.
Finally and answer to why the movement has no pithy message: "because the movement is genuine"

More on Occupy Wall Street

Manifesto:

"Declaration of the Occupation of New York City THIS DOCUMENT WAS ACCEPTED BY THE NYC GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2011 As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known. They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses. They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization. They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility. They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance. They have sold our privacy as a commodity. They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit. They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit. They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt. They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. * To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power. Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone. To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal. Join us and make your voices heard! *These grievances are not all-inclusive."

University Costs: American Edition

UK thinks it has it Rough

Department of Education: College Affordability and Transparency Center

• cool little website helps sort universities by type and tuition

top 25 most expensive tuitions among American four-year colleges:

1. Bates College ME $51,300*
2. Connecticut College CT $51,115*
3. Middlebury College VT $50,780*
4. Union College NY $50,439*
5. Colby College ME $50,320*
6. Sanford-Brown College (for-profit) VA $45,628
7. Sarah Lawrence College NY $41,968
8. Vassar College NY $41,930
9. George Washington University DC $41,655
10. Columbia University in the City of New York NY $41,316
11. Kenyon College OH $40,980
12. Colgate University NY $40,970
13. Carnegie Mellon University PA $40,920
14. Trinity College CT $40,840
15. Bucknell University PA $40,816
16. Tulane University of Louisiana LA $40,584
17. Skidmore College NY $40,420
18. St John's College NM $40,396
19. St John's College MD $40,392
20. Tufts University MA $40,342
21. Hobart William Smith Colleges NY $40,235
22. Bard College at Simon's Rock MA $40,165
23. Dickinson College PA $40,114
24. Wesleyan University CT $40,092
25. Bowdoin College ME $40,020

*"Comprehensive fee"-style tuituion includes room and board.

96% of the most expensive schools are private, not-for-profit institutions. 4% are private, for-profit. The public college

 with the most expensive tuition is Penn State, at $14,416.

36% of the top 25 most expensive schools are in New England, including four of the five most expensive. 28% are in New York.

24% of the schools on this list also appear on America's Top 20 Hippie Colleges.

0% of these schools have good football teams.

Occupy Wall Street Continues

New York Times:

Anti-Wall Street Protests Spreading to Cities Large and Small

Occupy Wall Street Live:
http://occupywallst.org/

Tony Blair: behind closed doors

Tony Blair's somewhat candid discussion on the inner workings of British government. Things he wish he had known, things he regrets, and how future government should look given what he calls a more convergent ideology between the prominent political parties.

The Killing of al-Awlaki: Part 2

ACLU's Take:

Read more from the ACLU on this "case" here: http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/aclu-lens-american-citizen-anwar-al-aulaqi-killed-without-judicial-process
More from Brooks and Shields

Mark Shields and David Brooks join Hari Sreenivasan to debate the moral and legal questions behind the killing of American Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Perspective

we got scared

We were born through ingenuity and violence,

in a world where brute struggle was encoded in every living being,

but we were different,

our sole imagination gave us confidence so we stood up right and we triumphed over our enemies,

but we were confused when we opened our eyes,

nature made us masters of survival didn’t give us the tools to understand the world,

all we knew about life was the death we inflicted upon others,

and it reminded us of our own fate

so we got scared,

and we told tales about another life, the corner stone of our civilization

we wandered out into the earth as proud nomads,

the smell of “concture” followed our footsteps,

we held our chests high and we feared no enemies,

but our brute species stumbled into a world full of mysteries ungraspable to our young minds

we started to ask questions but there were no answers to be found

winds, rains, volcanoes, earthquakes, the rulers of life and death, they seemed to be alive

they seemed to have a will of their own,

so we got scared and we surrendered the nature to a higher power, a thing to be worshiped

we settled down into every corner of the world,

and we declared dominion over the sea, and the air and over every living thing that moved upon the earth

we grew in numbers and our natural enemies feared our presence,

we demoted them to fairy tales,

we ruled the blessed land we walked upon but our common heritage was a lost memory,

we had turned into neighbors separated by distance and language,

we approached each other through suspicion and we saw the reflection of strangers,

so we got scared and we made new enemies

we raised cities and we drew boarders and we united proudly under our colors and superstition,

wealth and prosperity became the foundation of our great nations,

and those less fortunate diminished beyond oblivion,

our survival blood nourished our grabbing hands but the grass was always greener on the other side,

we were trapped under the fulfillment of our banner

and the sense of fulfillment was nowhere to be found,

our needs never gave us silence and there were no more lands to claim,

so we got scared and brother turned against brother

we mastered the power of thunder,

and the spark of enlightenment spread throughout the civilized world,

we became masters and servants under the force of technology,

and those that controlled its power claimed to be gods and ruled upon others,

every breath we took smelled the spring of success

but we drained the lands and materialized our societies,

and we imprisoned ourselves in the boxes of ancestral wisdom,

we fell down on our knees and pray and we only saw shadows of ghosts,

so we got scared and found new ways of destroying each other

look at us now!

We are so scared,

We surrender our hearts and minds to dogmatic ideologies,

 and we celebrate death and destruction as our greatest masterpiece,

we express our greatest achievements through fears and ignorance,

and we catalyze our power through our primitive nature,

we seek knowledge through ancient wisdom and we live our lives through dooms day prophecies,

we are driven by an ever growing hunger and we are always scared of not having enough,

and the fact that we are not going to live forever scares us so much that we seek salvation from this world and a paradise in another life

but haven’t always been scared,

alongside our brute and ignorant nature,

another force pushed alongside us through the ruthless pain of existence,

we have always been an inquiring species,

and the mysteries of nature captured our imagination from the moment we opened our eyes,

we gazed at the world and

through the night sky our inquisitive minds pushed beyond the boundaries of ignorance,

we began to use our tools to reveal the forces of nature,

and we struck down the fear that pounded us throughout the ages

we caressed the world with our consciousness and we evolved intellectually and morally,

and we reached incites far beyond our ancestors could ever have imagined

we homosapiens,

we are all connected through our common heritage,

 and we share the tree of life with every living thing,

we have changed through time by the loss of nature,

and we acquired virtues that have insured our survival throughout the generations,

we have fought for our existence against our natural enemies,

and we have endured the greatest ordeals,

our understanding of the world surpassed all other living beings,

and nature rewarded our inquisitiveness with the insight of self consciousness

we are the only species in the world that became aware of its existence,

we are the first to contemplate the nature of reality,

we stand alone in the concept of understand a better world,

and we have the only minds that can make dreams possible,

we have proven time and again that whenever we put our efforts together we have the power to achieve greatness

our unprecedented sense of love and compassion has moved us to found societies on freedom and justice,

and we have manifested our wisdom and ingenuity in wonders throughout the world,

we have learned the power of skeptical inquiry,

and we have found new ways to recognize the poetry of reality,

by climbing on the shoulders of giants we got courage to leap up from our world,

and we have touched the surface of our celestial neighbor with our footsteps,

we have explored distant worlds with our ingenious tools,

and we have discovered that the stuff we are made of flies throughout the cosmos,

we have even glanced at the origin of space and time,

and we are finally beginning to understand our place in the universe

we have made great progress and we have acquired great knowledge,

but our civilization is still far from its peak where we can live together in peace and harmony with nature,

we still have many rivers to cross and we still have much to learn before we reach our full potential,

if we want our civilization to survive and flourish then we must stop being scared all the time,

and we need to embrace the nature of reality,

and we need to stop pretending that we are part of a divine purpose,

and that we are going to be rewarded with eternal bliss

only when we accept that we are not going to live forever will we truly be able to appreciate the short spark of our existence and live our lives fulfilled,

only when we come to terms with our true nature will be able to diverge from our brute heritage and create the society where can share the world together,

only when we base our knowledge on facts and evidence

 will we be able to connect to the true wonder of the universe and celebrate the miracle of life,

and only when we realize that we are the authors of our own future,

will we be able to leap out from our planetary neighborhood and reach distant worlds and new civilizations