remember this as you listen to those seeking elective office...,

Video - Complete Thanksgiving Faith and Family Forum in Iowa

Guardian | In most pre-modern cultures, there were two recognised ways of attaining truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were crucial and each had its particular sphere of competence. Logos ("reason; science") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to control our environment and function in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external realities. But logos could not assuage human grief or give people intimations that their lives had meaning. For that they turned to mythos, an early form of psychology, which dealt with the more elusive aspects of human experience.

Stories of heroes descending to the underworld were not regarded as primarily factual but taught people how to negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche. In the same way, the purpose of a creation myth was therapeutic; before the modern period no sensible person ever thought it gave an accurate account of the origins of life. A cosmology was recited at times of crisis or sickness, when people needed a symbolic influx of the creative energy that had brought something out of nothing. Thus the Genesis myth, a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion, was balm to the bruised spirits of the Israelites who had been defeated and deported by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar during the sixth century BCE. Nobody was required to "believe" it; like most peoples, the Israelites had a number of other mutually-exclusive creation stories and as late as the 16th century, Jews thought nothing of making up a new creation myth that bore no relation to Genesis but spoke more directly to their tragic circumstances at that time.

Above all, myth was a programme of action. When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something "true" about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally. If you did not act upon it, it would remain as incomprehensible and abstract – like the rules of a board game, which seem impossibly convoluted, dull and meaningless until you start to play.

Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.

But during the modern period, scientific logos became so successful that myth was discredited, the logos of scientific rationalism became the only valid path to truth, and Newton and Descartes claimed it was possible to prove God's existence, something earlier Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians had vigorously denied. Christians bought into the scientific theology, and some embarked on the doomed venture of turning their faith's mythos into logos.

It was during the late 17th century, as the western conception of truth became more notional, that the word "belief" changed its meaning. Previously, bileve meant "love, loyalty, commitment". It was related to the Latin libido and used in the King James Bible to translate the Greek pistis ("trust; faithfulness; involvement"). In demanding pistis, therefore, Jesus was asking for commitment not credulity: people must give everything to the poor, follow him to the end, and commit totally to the coming Kingdom.

By the late 17th century, however, philosophers and scientists had started to use "belief" to mean an intellectual assent to a somewhat dubious proposition. We often assume "modern" means "superior", and while this is true of science and technology, our religious thinking is often undeveloped. In the past, people understood it was unwise to confuse mythos with logos, but today we read the mythoi of scripture with an unparalleled literalism, and in "creation science" we have bad science and inept religion. The question is: how can we extricate ourselves from the religious cul-de-sac we entered about 300 years ago?

DHS can't afford to operate the drones "gifted" to them by congress...,

Wired | It was a really thoughtful gesture, but officials with the Department of Homeland Security kinda wish Congress had held onto the gift receipt for those spy drones.

In a gift-giving mix-up that outdoes any of your worst Christmas sweater stories, Congress this past August approved a very generous $32 million appropriation to the DHS for the acquisition of three new Predator drones, meant to bolster the Department’s border-monitoring efforts.

Department officials were surprised, to say the least. See, new Predators weren’t exactly on their surveillance gear wish list.

“We didn’t ask for them,” an unnamed official told the Los Angeles Times.

DHS is already struggling to operate their seven existing drones. Officials acknowledge that they are short on pilots and maintenance — right now, they can only pay to fly the drones five days a week. So now DHS is in a mad scramble trying to figure out how they can successfully incorporate three more vehicles into the roster.

That means more than just pilots: Each drone also requires a maintenance crew, intelligence analysts and pricey satellite bandwidth.

“That is year-by-year, hand-to-mouth living,” another unnamed official said of hard-knock times at the department, which has been forced to move money from other projects just to keep their surveillance initiative, which will eventually boast 18 to 24 drones monitoring U.S. borders and waterways for everything from illegal immigrants to drug runners, operational.

One of the drones is scheduled to be delivered to Corpus Christi, TX today. The other two will be dropped off in Arizona and Florida later this year.

The DHS might not be happy, but the drone endowment will no doubt have some parties squealing with delight: The appropriation was the result of ongoing lobbying from the so-called “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Caucus,” a group of several dozen congressmen, many of whom hail from Southern California — a hot-bed of drone development and home to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the company that makes the Predator drone in question.

Already, General Atomics has scored $240 million from DHS’ Customs and Border Protection since 2005 for the manufacture of the unmanned aerial vehicles — and generously enough, they’ve handed $1.6 million of it over to the campaign funds of several Congressional members on the drone caucus.

“This is a symptom of how surveillance technology is spreading around the U.S.,” Jay Stanley, a senior privacy and technology analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “A lot of times it is not being pulled by people on the ground. It is being pushed from above by people who want to sell it.”

"it's like a hidden world"...,

WaPo | Hundreds of financially strained military families in the Washington area are lining up for turkeys and free groceries this holiday season, depending on the USO to help put food on the table.

The USO of Metropolitan Washington, the organization’s largest national chapter, has launched food pantries at Fort Meade and Fort Belvoir this year and is planning mobile pantries at other installations. This Thanksgiving, the USO had to cap its annual “turkeys for troops” giveaway at 1,400 families, up from 150 before the economic downturn, a USO spokesman said.

Although military pay is at an all-time high, the stress of the recession and high unemployment among troops’ spouses have sparked a need among active-duty and reservist families, say the USO and other nonprofit groups that help the military. Bread lines have become an unlikely sight on and around military bases.

“It’s like a hidden world,” said Army wife Amy King, 36, who lives at Fort Belvoir. “People automatically assume because we are in the military we have it good, with everything given to us. They don’t understand we have to struggle just like everybody else does.”

Lynn Brantley, president and chief executive of the Capital Area Food Bank, said that her organization decided to reach out to local military families last year after getting desperate calls from soldiers on its emergency hunger hotline. Overall, calls for help to the hotline are up 27 percent this year from last year, Brantley said.

In teaming with the USO, the food bank, the Washington region’s central resource for food for 700 agencies, distributes 6,000 to 8,000 pounds of fresh produce and other items to about 300 families at Fort Belvoir once a month. Some people stand in line for hours beforehand, camping out on lawn chairs and blankets.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, military pay has risen faster than pay in the private sector — by 42 percent, compared with 32 percent, according to the Defense Department. In some ways, soldiers, who get good medical benefits and housing allowances, have been more insulated from the poor economy than the general public.

But spouses of relocating troops have had trouble finding jobs; the 26 percent unemployment rate for military spouses is more than twice the national average. Others have quit jobs to stay at home with children when their spouses are deployed. Some National Guard members and reservists have returned to find their positions eliminated, or they lost chances at promotions after multiple deployments.

The strain is beginning to show. Service members and their families, including veterans, retirees and reservists, have used $88 million in food stamps at U.S. commissaries this year, according to the Defense Commissary Agency. That is triple the amount used before the recession.

How Egypt Justifies Its Brutal Crackdown: Occupy Wall Street

Gawker | Two people were killed in Cairo and Alexandria this weekend as Egyptian activists took the streets to protest the military's attempts to maintain its grip on power. And guess how the state is justifying its deadly crackdown.

"We saw the firm stance the US took against OWS people & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state," an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday (as translated by the indispensable Sultan Sooud al Qassemi; bold ours).

Yeah—it gets harder and harder to maintain a moral high ground when videos like this and pictures like this are unavoidable. But American police haven't killed anyone! Indeed! That's definitely something worth bragging about: so far, cops here have only sent a single person to the hospital with brain damage. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Meanwhile, in Egypt, the protesters—mostly young liberal activists and Islamists—are engaging in "running street battles" with police after shutting down Cairo's busiest square. In particular, they're protesting the proposed principles for a new constitution—under which "the military [and its budget] would be exempted from civilian oversight."

Update: Just as we hit "publish" on this post, authorities launched a major assault on Tahrir Square in an attempt to evict it of protesters. Al-Jazeera has a live feed here.

u.c. davis one-time a HUGE gift to the chinese government..,

The Atlantic | Just now from an American living in China:

I've been following the coverage of the UC Davis Pepper Spray incident and I just wanted to bring up another angle.

I first learned about the incident while sitting on the Hong Kong MTR [mass transit system, which of course is superb] en route to Shenzhen (I was flying back to Chengdu where I currently live.) The Hong Kong metro has tv screens, which happened to be showing the news, and my first thought when I saw the video of the policeman pepper-spraying the students was that I must be mis-reading the Chinese subtitles at the bottom of the screen, because there is no way this could be taking place in America.

But my second and longer-lasting impression, was an amazement of how quickly this video had spread had spread throughout the world and how detrimental it was for the US's image. The UC Davis' policeman's actions are a huge gift to the Chinese government, because this gives the Chinese government added ammunition to build a moral equivalency argument between itself and the US (not to the world but to it's own people.) I only speak from experience in China, but I'm sure in many countries, the reaction will be the same. Just another aspect in which this horrible event is a tragedy.

Of course I recognize the hypocrisy of Chinese officials harping on police brutality, when they spend half their time trying to suppress online videos of their police, Chengguan, and riot squads doing the same thing, and much worse, around the country. But as the reader says, that's the point: since when do we benchmark our standards of civil liberties, tolerance for protest, and police-public interactions on those of a one-party Communist state?

More on this in a few hours. For the moment, a reminder that the connectedness of the world and the instantaneous global spread of images have consequences that are unfolding more quickly than anyone can anticipate or make sense of.

the HIDDEN logic of the Occupy Movement

globalguerillas | This is what happens when authority is unaccountable and has lost any sense of human connection to a subject population James Fallows, the celebrated American author and columnist.

It appears that Occupy's extreme non-violence/passivity has finally generated a social system disruption. Videos and pictures showing policemen using violence against passive protesters have gone viral (UC Berkeley students, Grandma, and open mouth were the leading examples). Stories about this violence are now sweeping the media (7,910 news stories over the last 24 hours). Is this going to have a strategic effect?

Let's look at this from the late, great American strategist John Boyd's perspective. The dynamic of Boyd's strategy is to isolate your enemy across three essential vectors (physical, mental, and moral), while at the same time improving your connectivity across those same vectors. It's very network centric for a pre-Internet theoretician. Here's more detail what disconnection looks like:

• Physical isolation is accomplished by severing communications both to the outside world (ie. allies) and internal audiences (ie. between branches of command and between the command organization and its supporters).


• Mental isolation is done through the introduction of ambiguous information, novel situations, and by operating at a tempo an enemy cannot keep up with. A lack of solid information impedes decision making.


• Moral isolation is achieved when an enemy improves its well being at the expense of others (allies) or violates rules of behavior they profess to uphold (standards of conduct). Moral rules are a very important reference point in times of uncertainty. When these are violated, it is very hard to recover.

Was it effective?

Using John Boyd's framework as a guide, this media disruption did have an effect across all three vectors:

• Physical. No isolation was achieved. The physical connections of police forces remained intact. However, these incidents provided confirmation to protesters that physical filming/imaging of the protests is valuable. Given how compelling this media is, it will radically increase the professional media's coverage of events AND increase the number of protesters recording incidents.


• Mental. These incidents will cause confusion within police forces. If leaders (Mayors and college administrators) back down or vacillate over these tactics due to media pressure, it will confuse policemen in the field. In short, it will create uncertainty and doubt over what the rules of engagement actually are. IN contrast, these media events have clarified how to turn police violence into useful tools for Occupy protesters.


• Moral. This is the area of connection that was damaged the most. Most people watching these videos feel that this violence is both a) illegitimate and b) excessive. Watch this video UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walking from her building after the incident. The silence is eerie.

This can be counted as a win for Occupy and a loss for totalitarianism. However, we've been sliding towards totalitarianism for decades (from caged protest zones, storm trooper attire, urban tanks, bans on pictures in public spaces, a plethora of laws/regulations against assembly, Presidential assassination lists, closed courts, no warrant searches, CCTV coverage, attempts to ban private ownership of weapons, SWAT for even tiny cities, indefinite detention, rendition, etc.). So, in relative terms, this is a very small win.

a uniter, not a divider...,

Townhall | Diversity never held anyone together because people usually bond over their commonalities, not their differences. At one little state-run university, diversity is starting to cause a great campus divide. It all started when the university decided to merge the Physics and Physical Oceanography Department with the Geography and Geology Department. The move will undoubtedly hurt the prestige of the university. But that isn’t the only thing that has people angry. They are also mad because the merger occurred on the heels of an expansion of diversity initiatives and right during the middle of an expansion of the campus recreation center.


This is a touchy topic for me to write about in the midst of a budget crisis. But everyone knows I’m a uniter, not a divider. So, I’ll try to offer some positive solutions free of sarcasm and ridicule. I hate sarcasm and ridicule. I really mean that.

Currently, UNC-Wally World (pseudonym, hereafter: UNCW), has the following offices, which are overseen by the Associate Provost of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion:

1. The Upperman African American Cultural Center;

2. El Centro Hispano;

3. The Women’s Studies and Resource Center;

4. The Multicultural Affairs Office; and

5. The LGBTQIA Office.

My simple plan to save the tax payers money, without ruining the academic reputation of the university, begins with four simple steps:

1. I would merge the Upperman Center with El Centro Hispano and call it El Centro for Racial Unity. There is no need for blacks and Hispanics to be segregated.

2. I would rename the LGBTQIA Office the LGBTQIAX Office. The “X” would stand for ex-gays – a group currently excluded from the list of gender and sexuality minorities.

3. I would merge the LGBTQIAX Office with the Women’s Studies and Resource Center. It would then be called the Gender and Sexuality Studies and Resource Center.

4. I would then merge the three existing centers a) El Centro for Racial Unity b) the Gender and Sexuality Studies and Resource Center and c) the Multicultural Affairs Office. The new office would simply be called The Diversity Office, or El Diversity Office, whichever sounds more welcoming.

Since one office is more manageable than five, we could fire Jose Hernandez, our current Diversity czar, and save his salary. We could replace him with the most competent leader among the departments just eliminated. There would be no need for a high-level administrator to oversee my leaner, but not meaner, El Diversity Office. We could get rid of the six-digit salary Hernandez pulls in – not to mention those of the other four directors we would let go. That would amount to several hundred thousand dollars in savings to the taxpayer. That is more than the paltry $80,000 UNCW plans to save with the controversial Physics, Oceanography, Geography, Geology merger.

Having eliminated four departments, we may now cancel the planned academic merger and expand by making the two existing departments (Physics and Physical Oceanography Department, Geography and Geology Department) into these four departments:

1. Physics Department;

2. Physical Oceanography Department;

3. Geography Department; and

4. Geology Department.

Creating two departments and eliminating four is a net savings for taxpayers. Best of all, it would actually enhance our academic prestige by creating new academic departments where people study real problems instead of “celebrating” imaginary differences.

During the current budget crisis, we have shut the library down for four hours per night in order to save money on lighting and to cut employee payroll. I would end that practice and make the savings up by shutting down El Diversity Office for four hours a day. Some may not like it but that is El Tough Lucko. Our state is in a budget crisis and we need money so we can feed and educate our illegal aliens.

Of course, the remaining issue is where to put the two academic departments formed under my new proposal. I say we make the student recreation center the new home for both. After all, this is a university, not an amusement park. Fist tap Big Don.

diversity a code word for narcissism?

City Journal | California’s budget crisis has reduced the University of California to near-penury, claim its spokesmen. “Our campuses and the UC Office of the President already have cut to the bone,” the university system’s vice president for budget and capital resources warned earlier this month, in advance of this week’s meeting of the university’s regents. Well, not exactly to the bone. Even as UC campuses jettison entire degree programs and lose faculty to competing universities, one fiefdom has remained virtually sacrosanct: the diversity machine.

Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing. The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.

It’s not surprising that the new vice chancellor’s mission is rather opaque, given its superfluity. According to outgoing UCSD chancellor Marye Anne Fox, the new VC for EDI “will be responsible for building on existing diversity plans to develop and implement a campus-wide strategy on equity, diversity and inclusion.” UCSD has been churning out such diversity strategies for years. The “campus-wide strategy on equity, diversity and inclusion” that the new hire will supposedly produce differs from its predecessors only in being self-referential: it will define the very scope of the VC’s duties and the number of underlings he will command. “The strategic plan,” says Fox, “will inform the final organizational structure for the office of the VC EDI, will propose metrics to gauge progress, and will identify potential additional areas of responsibility.”

What a boon for a taxpayer-funded bureaucrat, to be able to define his own portfolio and determine how many staff lines he will control! UC Berkeley’s own vice chancellor for equity and inclusion shows how voracious a diversity apparatchik’s appetite for power can be. Gibor Basri has 17 people working for him in his immediate office, including a “chief of staff,” two “project/policy analysts,” and a “director of special projects.” The funding propping up Basri’s vast office could support many an English or history professor. According to state databases, Basri’s base pay in 2009 was $194,000, which does not include a variety of possible add-ons, including summer salary and administrative stipends. By comparison, the official salary for assistant professors at UC starts at around $53,000. Add to Basri’s salary those of his minions, and you’re looking at more than $1 million a year.

UC San Diego is adding diversity fat even as it snuffs out substantive academic programs. In March, the Academic Senate decided that the school would no longer offer a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering; it also eliminated a master’s program in comparative literature and courses in French, German, Spanish, and English literature. At the same time, the body mandated a new campus-wide diversity requirement for graduation. The cultivation of “a student’s understanding of her or his identity,” as the diversity requirement proposal put it, would focus on “African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Native Americans, or other groups” through the “framework” of “race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, language, ability/disability, class or age.” Training computer scientists to compete with the growing technical prowess of China and India, apparently, can wait. More pressing is guaranteeing that students graduate from UCSD having fully explored their “identity.” Why study Cervantes, Voltaire, or Goethe when you can contemplate yourself? “Diversity,” it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism. Fist tap Big Don.

intelligence is more important that working hard...,

Business Insider | For 99.9% of you, clicking on this link will be very depressing.

It's a NYT op-ed by professors David Z. Hambrick and Elizabeth J. Meinz which points out what what matters in life isn't effort or hard work: What matters in life is raw intelligence, and either you got it or you don't. Here's the nut of it:

Research has shown that intellectual ability matters for success in many fields — and not just up to a point.

Exhibit A is a landmark study of intellectually precocious youths directed by the Vanderbilt University researchers David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow. They and their colleagues tracked the educational and occupational accomplishments of more than 2,000 people who as part of a youth talent search scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by the age of 13. (Scores on the SAT correlate so highly with I.Q. that the psychologist Howard Gardner described it as a “thinly disguised” intelligence test.) The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were “only” in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage.

The authors go on to cite their own research conducted on pianists, which showed that when it comes to sight-reading ability, practice doesn't matter as much as "working memory" capacity does.

What's interesting here is how un-popular this idea is. Malcolm Gladwell had a huge hit with his book on outliers, which basically argued that the real key to extreme success was just putting a bunch of hours into the work.

The kind of research also makes people uncomfortable, since it means that not everyone who wants to be great can be, and that there are probably some limits to how far we should go to cultivate talent, etc. Fist tap Big Don.

the role of genetic selection in rising black IQ since 1900

Video - Family Guy Tyra Banks you don't know my life.

robertlindsay | Since 1900, Blacks have been selecting for something that is increasing head size and also creating a more progressive phenotype that looks more like White people. The increased head size alone maybe have been due to diet, but maybe not totally. At the same time, there was a dramatic rise in IQ in US Blacks. It’s logical to marry the increased head size and progressive phenotype with increased Black IQ.

There may have been many things going on. This started in the late 1800′s, after the First Black Liberation. Blacks were living in segregation. Black males may have selected Black females with a progressive phenotype who they thought were more attractive. These females were probably also more intelligent for a reason I will relate below.

Black females may have selected Black males with progressive phenotypes for similar reasons. In addition, Black males with more progressive phenotypes were probably more intelligent, since progressive phenotypes are associated with increased IQ.

In addition, in segregation, lighter skilled Black males who looked more White would be more likely to “pass.” In segregated society, the Whiter looking Blacks in color or phenotype were more intelligent and were more likely to rise to the top of segregated Black society, which had plenty of doctors, lawyers and other professionals. Black females may have selected more successful Black males as mates.

All we can see is a selection on the part of either or both sexes of Blacks, for more progressive phenotype, which also no doubt had a higher IQ since the two things relate. Fist tap Big Don.

occupy origins: this young brotha co-authored the occupy movement

Guardian | On Saturday 17 September, many of us watched in awe as 5,000 Americans descended on to the financial district of lower Manhattan, waved signs, unfurled banners, beat drums, chanted slogans and proceeded to walk towards the "financial Gomorrah" of the nation. They vowed to "occupy Wall Street" and to "bring justice to the bankers", but the New York police thwarted their efforts temporarily, locking down the symbolic street with barricades and checkpoints.

Undeterred, protesters walked laps around the area before holding a people's assembly and setting up a semi-permanent protest encampment in a park on Liberty Street, a stone's throw from Wall Street and a block from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Three hundred spent the night, several hundred reinforcements arrived the next day and as we write this article, the encampment is rolling out sleeping bags once again. When they tweeted to the world that they were hungry, a nearby pizzeria received $2,800 in orders for delivery in a single hour. Emboldened by an outpouring of international solidarity, these American indignados said they'd be there to greet the bankers when the stock market opened on Monday. It looks like, for now, the police don't think they can stop them. ABC News reports that "even though the demonstrators don't have a permit for the protest, [the New York police department says that] they have no plans to remove those protesters who seem determined to stay on the streets." Organisers on the ground say, "we're digging in for a long-term occupation".

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET was inspired by the people's assemblies of Spain and floated as a concept by a double-page poster in the 97th issue of Adbusters magazine, but it was spearheaded, orchestrated and accomplished by independent activists. It all started when Adbusters asked its network of culture jammers to flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens and peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. The idea caught on immediately on social networks and unaffiliated activists seized the meme and built an open-source organising site. A few days later, a general assembly was held in New York City and 150 people showed up. These activists became the core organisers of the occupation. The mystique of Anonymous pushed the meme into the mainstream media. Their video communique endorsing the action garnered 100,000 views and a warning from the Department of Homeland Security addressed to the nation's bankers. When, in August, the indignados of Spain sent word that they would be holding a solidarity event in Madrid's financial district, activists in Milan, Valencia, London, Lisbon, Athens, San Francisco, Madison, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Israel and beyond vowed to do the same.

There is a shared feeling on the streets around the world that the global economy is a Ponzi scheme run by and for Big Finance. People everywhere are waking up to the realisation that there is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which speculative financial transactions add up, each day, to $1.3tn (50 times more than the sum of all the commercial transactions). Meanwhile, according to a United Nations report, "in the 35 countries for which data exist, nearly 40% of jobseekers have been without work for more than one year".

"CEOs, the biggest corporations, and the wealthy are taking too much from our country and I think it's time for us to take back," said one activist who joined the protests last Saturday. Jason Ahmadi, who travelled in from Oakland, California explained that "a lot of us feel there is a large crisis in our economy and a lot of it is caused by the folks who do business here". Bill Steyerd, a Vietnam veteran from Queens, said "it's a worthy cause because people on Wall Street are blood-sucking warmongers".

There is not just anger. There is also a sense that the standard solutions to the economic crisis proposed by our politicians and mainstream economists – stimulus, cuts, debt, low interest rates, encouraging consumption – are false options that will not work. Deeper changes are needed, such as a "Robin Hood" tax on financial transactions; reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act in the US; implementing a ban on high-frequency "flash" trading. The "too big to fail" banks must be broken up, downsized and made to serve the people, the economy and society again. The financial fraudsters responsible for the 2008 meltdown must be brought to justice. Then there is the long-term mother of all solutions: a total rethinking of western consumerism that throws into question how we measure progress.

If the current economic woes in Europe and the US spiral into a prolonged global recession, people's encampments will become a permanent fixtures at financial districts and outside stock markets around the world. Until our demands are met and the global economic regime is fundamentally reformed, our tent cities will keep popping up.

Bravo to those courageous souls in the encampment on New York's Liberty Street. Every night that #OCCUPYWALLSTREET continues will escalate the possibility of a full-fledged global uprising against business as usual.

the origins and future of occupy wall street

New Yorker | White reached Lasn by telephone shortly before nine. Lasn was in the bathtub, and White told him details that he had learned online about the eviction. The police had established a strict media cordon, blocking access from nearby streets. “It was a military-style operation,” he said. These words made Lasn think of the bloody uprising in Syria. He quickly decided that the apparent end of Zuccotti was not a tragedy but the latest in a series of crisis-driven opportunities, what he calls “revolutionary moments,” akin to the slapping of a Tunisian fruit vender. “I just can’t believe how stupid Bloomberg can be!” he said to me later that day. “This means escalation. A raising of the stakes. It’s one step closer to, you know, a revolution.”

Lasn and White quickly hammered out a post-Zuccotti plan. White would draft a new memorandum, suggesting that Phase I—signs, meetings, camps, marches—was now over. Phase II would involve a swarming strategy of “surprise attacks against business as usual,” with the potential to be “more intense and visceral, depending on how the Bloombergs of the world react.” White could hear the excitement in Lasn’s voice. Even as Lasn vented about the morning’s counterrevolution, he was doing what he could not to splash.

This is how Occupy Wall Street began: as one of many half-formed plans circulating through conversations between Lasn and White, who lives in Berkeley and has not seen Lasn in person for more than four years. Neither can recall who first had the idea of trying to take over lower Manhattan. In early June, Adbusters sent an e-mail to subscribers stating that “America needs its own Tahrir.” The next day, White wrote to Lasn that he was “very excited about the Occupy Wall Street meme. . . . I think we should make this happen.” He proposed three possible Web sites: OccupyWallStreet.org, AcampadaWallStreet.org, and TakeWallStreet.org.

“No. 1 is best,” Lasn replied, on June 9th. That evening, he registered OccupyWallStreet.org.

White, who is twenty-nine years old, was born to a Caucasian mother and an African-American father. “I don’t really fit in with either group,” he told me. He attended suburban public schools, where he began a series of one-man campaigns against authority. In middle school, with his parents’ blessing, he refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. In high school, he founded an atheists’ club, over the objections of the principal. This led to an appearance on “Politically Incorrect,” and atheist organizations flew White to their conferences to give talks. “It all went to my head,” he said. “I became a little ego child. Ego destroys. I was too young to understand that.”

Though he describes himself as a “mystical anarchist,” White has three strict rules that govern his day: No naps. No snacks. Get dressed. “By dressed,” he told me, “I mean pants and a shirt. Enough so that if someone came to the door and knocked on it you wouldn’t be totally embarrassed.” After earning a B.A. at Swarthmore, he wrote a letter to Lasn, whom he had never met, saying that he would be arriving in Vancouver in a matter of weeks and wanted to be put to work.

Lasn was born in Estonia, but his earliest memories are of German refugee camps, where his family ended up after fleeing the Russian Army during the Second World War. He remembers falling asleep on a cot as his uncles talked about politics with his father, a tennis champion who buried his trophies in the back yard before rushing the family onto one of the last boats to Germany. “World wars, revolutions—from time to time, big things actually happen,” he told me. “When the moment is right, all it takes is a spark.”

Lasn’s family left the refugee camp for Australia, where he grew up. He has a degree in applied mathematics, and he began his career designing computer war games for the Australian military. Using this expertise, he started a market-research company in Tokyo during Japan’s postwar boom, where, by feeding punch cards into an I.B.M. mainframe, he created reports for consumer brands, many of them alcohol and tobacco products. “It’s easy to generate cool if you have the bucks, the celebrities, the right ideas, the right slogans,” he says. “You can throw ideas into the culture that then have a life of their own.” He made a lot of money, travelled around the world, moved to Canada, and devoted himself to experimental filmmaking and environmental protection. In 1989, when the CBC refused to sell him airtime for a thirty-second “mind bomb” aimed at the forestry industry, Lasn realized that his politics would never have a place within the mass media. With Bill Schmalz, an outdoorsman who had worked with him as a cameraman, Lasn founded Adbusters.

the occupiers choice: violence or failure

Rall | You need only look back at the political history of the United States between 1971 and 2011 to see what 100% nonviolence has accomplished. Even under Democratic presidents and Congressional majorities, the Left has lost one battle after another.

The Left’s only major victory during that period followed the 1999 Battle of Seattle. Riots and broken windows disrupted the World Trade Organization for years. Countless American jobs were saved as a result. Yet liberals were ashamed.

Violence! How terrible!

Not as terrible as the wars and the massive unemployment, apparently.

At the core of the cowardice of protests carried out by establishment liberals has been slavish adherence to nonviolence at all cost. At most protests over the past few decades self-appointed “peace police” patrol the edges of crowds penned into “free speech zones” (which are inevitably placed out of the way, far from cameras). The peace police don’t lift a finger to protect demonstrators against police brutality. Instead, they act to prevent protesters from doing anything to “provoke” the cops, even when they are trying to protect themselves from brutality.

What makes the Occupy movement different and so compelling is that it moves beyond going-through-the-motions toward real resistance against tyranny for the first time since the 1960s. Seizing territory without a permit and refusing to relinquish it, as has happened at Occupy Wall Street and hundreds of other cities, presents an inherent threat to the system. The authorities can’t win no matter what they do.

They can’t do nothing. Tolerance signals legitimacy, even tacit approval of OWS and their message that rich individuals and big corporations have too much wealth and control over us. Can’t have that. Rupert Murdoch’s house organ, the New York Post, ran a front-page editorial on November 3rd screaming: “Enough!”

But crackdowns make the movement grow even bigger. A video of a NYPD official pepper-spraying four women at OWS without provocation inflamed public opinion and drew more people to Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. An announced plan to evict OWS was scrapped after hundreds of people traveled there to gird for battle.

Speaking for New York’s business community as well as Murdoch, the Post editorialized: “Time’s up. The Zuccotti Park vagabonds have had their say—and trashed lower Manhattan—for long enough. They need to go. Be it voluntarily—by packing their tents and heading off in an orderly fashion. Or by having the NYPD step in—and evict them.” They blame OWSers for urinating outside. Which merely reminds New Yorkers how unresponsive their government is: there are no public restrooms in Manhattan.

You can smell the fear along with the pee.

Meanwhile, as politicians feel more pressure to crack heads, Occupations will have to move indoors. Freezing temperatures have arrived in New York and much of the country. Tensions will rise. As clashes with the authorities intensify, the ridiculous fetish of nonviolence—a faith-based tactic with no more basis in historical fact or reality than creationism—will be forgotten and, one day soon, laughed at.

paramilitary policing from WTO to Occupy Wall Street

Video - Democracy Now interview of Norm Stamper and Chuck Wexler

Democracy Now | We host a discussion on policing and the Occupy Wall Street movement with Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which helped organize calls among police chiefs on how to respond to the Occupy protests, and with Norm Stamper, the former police chief of Seattle, who recently wrote an article for The Nation magazine titled "Paramilitary Policing from Seattle to Occupy Wall Street." "Trust me, the police do not want to be put in this position. And cities really need to ask themselves, is there another way to handle this kind of conflict?" Wexler says. Stamper notes, "There are many compassionate, decent, competent police officers who do a terrific job day in and day out. There are others who are, quote, 'bad apples.' What both of them have in common is that they 'occupy,' as it were, a system, a structure that itself is rotten. And I am talking about the paramilitary bureaucracy." We are also joined by Stephen Graham, author of "Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism," and by retired New York Supreme Court Judge Karen Smith, who worked as a legal observer Tuesday morning in New York after the police raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment. "I was there to take down the names of people who were arrested... As I’m standing there, some African-American woman goes up to a police officer and says, 'I need to get in. My daughter's there. I want to know if she’s OK.’ And he said, 'Move on, lady.' And they kept pushing with their sticks, pushing back. And she was crying. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he throws her to the ground and starts hitting her in the head," says Smith. "I walk over, and I say, 'Look, cuff her if she's done something, but you don’t need to do that.’ And he said, 'Lady, do you want to get arrested?' And I said, 'Do you see my hat? I'm here as a legal observer.’ He said, 'You want to get arrested?' And he pushed me up against the wall."

the paradox of "non-lethal" weaponry and elevated use of force

Video - Rachel Maddow does a very thorough review (for MSM) of the problem of new weapons and the increased opportunity for use of force.

fight to control these Interwebs approaching endgame...,

Businessweek | Draconian new anti-piracy laws being pushed through both the Senate and the House of Representatives are about more than just an academic debate over different legislative methods for fighting copyright infringement. They make it clear that media and content companies are fundamentally opposed to the way the Internet works. These bills are promoted by media and entertainment conglomerates as a way to fight what they see as massive content theft, but to combat that evil, the companies are effectively trying to get Congress to take over the Internet—and trample on important principles such as freedom of speech.

As the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act—and its cousin, the E-Parasite Act—have worked their way through the Senate and the House, a loose coalition of technology companies and open-Internet advocates have come together to oppose the legislation—including such companies as Google (GOOG) (GOOG), Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo! (YHOO) (YHOO), some of whom appeared before a committee hearing on Wednesday to discuss the proposed laws, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and even a group of civil rights agencies. Mozilla, the open-source browser project, changed its home page to lobby against the bills, and a number of civil liberty and open-Internet advocates made Wednesday what they called “American Censorship Day” and promoted a video about the evils of the proposed legislation (embedded below).

Google’s copyright counsel, Katherine Oyama, testified before the committee about the dangers of the new laws, which she said would fundamentally conflict with the principle of “safe harbor” enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and allow—in fact, require—private companies such as Internet providers to “disappear” sites from the Internet after even an allegation of infringement. In her prepared testimony, Oyama said that while Google opposes piracy, it could not support the bill because:

“[I]t would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that could require monitoring of web sites and social media. Moreover, we are concerned that the bill sets a precedent in favor of Internet censorship.”

old money: buy assets on the cheap when there's blood in the streets...,

Video - Theophilus Beckford Back Biter

BusinessInsider | We are entering a period of profound political disunity as the interests of various Elites that were recently convergent are now diverging.

I have no "proof" of this conjecture, but there is increasingly abundant evidence that the interests of various global Elites are diverging. Like many other observers, I have tended to lump Power Elites into one class of convergent if not identical interests. But reality is looking more complicated now as the global financial system that has enabled and enriched all the various global Power Elites has fractured. As a result, convergence has reversed into divergence.

There are few neat delineations in this divergence, but we can draw some preliminary, speculative conclusions from the fracturing that is underway. Up through 2009 or so, the global Power Elites shared the common goal of reinflating the financial system with low interest rates, massive Central State stimulus, the purchase of depreciating private assets by Central Banks and abundant liquidity provided by the loyal apparatchiks in the Central Banks.

This was the shared goal of the People's Bank of China (PBoC), the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed), the European Central Bank (ECB) and various ancillary central states and banks controlled or influenced by the Power Elites.

The destruction of the U.S. dollar by the Fed was perhaps the first wedge that caused the interests of the U.S. Elites and China's Elites to diverge. Since the renminbi is pegged to the dollar, then its decline versus the yen and euro actually enhanced China's global competitiveness. So far so good: convergent interests.

But the Power Elite in China was split by the weakening dollar, as one group saw the decline in the value of China's vast stash of U.S. Treasuries as a loss of face internationally: the decline made China look like a chump, never mind the positive impact on China's competitiveness of the sagging dollar.

All of that was on the back burner, so to speak, until the eurozone's overindebtedness exploded into the global awareness in May 2010. Suddenly the liquidity/low interest rate/reinflate convergence of Elites split into camps with radically divergent interests.

The Fed/Politico camp that was counting on a depreciating dollar to revive exports and goose the "risk trade" flight to equities that powered the "stock market is rising, so everything's great" perception-management so beloved by politicos and Fed lackeys is now in full panic mode as the dollar rises and equities tank: bad news, indeed, for those bent on inflating equities by destroying the dollar.

The "Old Money" Anglo-American camp is not so-secretly delighted by the euro's implosion, as that leaves the yen, the dollar and even the pound as alternatives. And despite what the Fed/Politico camp believes, the Old Money knows that a strong currency is the backbone of global dominance, as that strength enables the owner of the currency to buy assets on the cheap when blood is running in the streets.

top 1% collect half of all capital gains...,

Video - Theophilus Beckford Bringing in the Sheaves

Forbes | Capital gains are the key ingredient of income disparity in the US-- and the force behind the winner takes all mantra of our economic system. If you want even out earning power in the U.S, you have to raise the 15% capital gains tax.

Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-- rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%-- about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million-- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

It's crystal clear that the Bush tax reduction on capital gains and dividend income in 2003 was the cutting edge policy that has created the immense increase in net worth of corporate executives, Wall St. professionals and other entrepreneurs.

The reduction in the tax from 20% to 15% continued the step-by-step tradition of cutting this tax to create more wealth. It had first been reduced from 35% in 1978 at a time of stock market and economic stagnation to 28% . Again 1981, at the start of the Reagan era, it was reduced again to 20%-- raised back to 28% in 1987, on the eve of the October 19 232% crash in the market. In 1997 Clinton agreed to reduce it back to 20%, which move was an inducement for the explosion of hedge funds and private equity firms-- the most "rapidly rising cohort within the top 1 per cent."

Make no mistake; the battle that is to be fought over the coming attempt to reverse this reduction in capital gains will be bloody and intense. The facts are clear according to the Congressional Budget Office more than 80% of the increase in income inequality was the result of an increase in the share of household income from capital gains. In fact, you can go so far as to claim that "Capital Gains income is the most unevenly distributed-- and volatile-- source of household income," according to Laura D'Andrea Tyson, University of California business professor and former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton.

No wonder the super wealthy plutocrats obtained the largest share of national income-- 25% of the nation's wealth- greater than any other industrial nation in the the period of 1979 to 2005. Make no mistake; after unemployment-- this disparity between the 1%-- 3 million-- or the 0.1%-- the 300,000-- and the other 312 million citizens of the U.S. has become the major theme of the Occupy Wall Street movement-- and an important national debate.

I commend you to the late Justice Louis Brandeis warning to the nation that " We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." We have to make up our minds to restore a higher, fairer capital gains tax to the wealthiest investor class-- or ultimately face increased social unrest.

DHS denies significant role in occupy crackdowns..,

Video - DHS fetching around for something to make themselves appear useful

Examiner | Since I published my initial story about how several federal law enforcement agencies had been providing logistical advice to local authorities on how to handle the 'Occupy' protests, I have been attempting to get an official response from the Dept. Of Homeland Security (DHS).

I've spoken to several high-ranking DHS officials on background in the last 24 hours, and they stressed several things to me.

First, despite some press reports to the contrary, the only official DHS role in any 'Occupy' arrests took place in Portland. In that case, officers from Federal Protective Services (which is tasked with protecting federal buildings) assisted the Portland Police Bureau in clearing the federally-owned Terry Shrunk Plaza. Officers from FPS did make several arrests, although it's not clear how many.

I was also assured that FPS officers only had jurisdiction on federal property and would only make arrests after the situation has been deemed unsafe or unsanitary by the General Services Administration (GSA). That agency is that is the permitting authority for protests on federal property.

When I tried to get a sense of how much involvement the department may have had in assisting local tactical plans, I was told DHS is not actively coordinating with local governments or police agencies on the 'Occupy' evictions.

What isn't clear to me is what is meant by "actively" coordinating. That definition leaves a lot of room for advice, both tactical and otherwise.

I sent Homeland Security officials several questions, hoping to get a clearer picture of the scope of the department's involvement in any coordination efforts between federal and local law enforcement officials.

top ten anti-american corporate military psy-ops

Business Insider | Environmental activist Sharon Wilson showed up to an oil industry event in Houston last week and caught a startling glimpse into how the fracking industry approaches residents in towns where they drill.

Wilson recorded industry insiders confirming they hire military psychological operation veterans, and use procedures pulled straight from the Army’s counterinsurgency manual.

The first half of the following slide titles are pulled exactly from the manuals section on ASPECTS OF COUNTERINSURGENCY. The second half is our interpretation of how that directive would be employed in American towns.

The text in the slides is pulled directly from the manual as well, though references to government etc. are put in brackets and changed to [corporation] for context. The corporations are referred to as the counterinsurgency or COIN.

Legitimacy is the Main Objective: Insert the government of choice

“The primary objective of any counterinsurgent is to foster the development of effective governance.

… All [corporations] rule through a combination of consent and coercion. [Corporations] described as “legitimate” rule primarily with the consent of the governed, while those described as “illegitimate” tend to rely mainly or entirely on coercion.

[Both] Their citizens obey the state for fear of the consequences of doing otherwise, rather than because they voluntarily accept its rule. A [corporation] that derives its powers from the governed tends to be accepted by its citizens as legitimate.

It still uses coercion for example, against criminals—but the bulk of the population voluntarily accepts its governance.”

Source: Army FM-34

Unity of Effort is Essential: Obtain full control of all government agencies

“Unity of effort must pervade every echelon.

… Ideally a counterinsurgent should have authority over all government agencies involved in operations. However, the best situation that military commanders can generally hope for is to be able to achieve unity of effort through communication and liaison with those responsible for the nonmilitary agencies.

There are many … organizations needing coordination. The [local government] must be key players in higher-level planning, while similar connections are needed throughout the chain of command.”

Source: Army FM-34

ows preliminary "use of force" results: maybe it's time to occupy the police state?

Forbes | When the first major evacuation of Occupy Oakland was ordered, and police responded in full riot gear, I wrote at the time:

A little friendly advice for the police: if you want a protest or a rally to dissipate, ignore it. Until it turns into a violent riot, ignore it. Even if it goes on for weeks and months, eventually people go home.

If you want to make the protests more poignant, more profound, if you want to swell the ranks of the protesters and give them even more legitimacy, attack them with tear gas and flashbombs. Arrest them en masse.

Even better, pepper-spray unarmed, nonviolent protesters while they sit in a line. According to James Fallows, police are claiming that the officer who pepper-sprayed a number of Occupy protesters at UC Davis Friday responded in self-defense during a tense moment. Here’s the picture he uses to illustrate the absurdity of this claim:

It’s almost as if the police here don’t want the protests to end. Instead of waiting for boredom or cold weather to siphon off protesters, or hell instead of just using zip-ties and arresting the ones who wouldn’t move, these guys nonchalantly pepper-spray a bunch of peaceful protesters in the face. Because they could.

a "use of force review", really?!?!?!

Video - UC Davis to "investigate the appropriateness" of what is obviously and conspicuously inappropriate.

BostonGlobe | The chancellor of the University of California at Davis said yesterday that the school was launching an investigation after “chilling’’ video images surfaced online showing an officer using pepper spray on several protesters as they sit passively with their arms interlocked.

“The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this,’’ Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a message posted on the school’s website.

Katehi said she is forming a task force of faculty, students, and staff to review the events surrounding the Friday protest in support of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and the police response.

“While the university is trying to ensure the safety and health of all members of our community, we must ensure our strategies to gain compliance are fair and reasonable and do not lead to mistreatment,’’ she said.

In the video, posted on YouTube and widely circulated online, the officer displays a bottle before spraying its contents on the seated protesters in a sweeping motion while walking back and forth. Most of the protesters have their heads down, but at least one is sprayed in the face.

Some members of a crowd gathered at the scene scream and cry out. The crowd then chants, “Shame on you’’ as the protesters on the ground are led away. The officers retreat minutes later with helmets on and batons drawn.

It’s not clear from the video what agency the officer who used the pepper spray represents. Officers from UC Davis and other UC campuses as well as the city of Davis responded to the protest, according to Annette Spicuzza, UC Davis police chief. Davis is about 80 miles north of San Francisco.

Spicuzza told the Sacramento Bee that police used the pepper spray after they were surrounded. Protesters were warned repeatedly beforehand that force would be used if they didn’t move, she said.

“There was no way out of that circle,’’ Spicuzza said. “They were cutting the officers off from their support. It’s a very volatile situation.’’

The tents went up on Thursday, and protesters were apparently warned Friday that they violated university policies.

Katehi said she is also asking for a review of the university’s policies on encampments to see if they allow students enough flexibility to express themselves.

"one-time" shows out at UC Davis...,

Video - Raw footage of UC Davis police being extra.

LATimes | U.C. Davis police pepper-sprayed numerous sitting protesters and arrested 10 of them as they cleared an Occupy Davis encampment Friday, an incident captured on video and visible on YouTube and other social media sites.

Police then left after ordering the remaining protesters to take down tents that had been put up Thursday, reported the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

The city of Davis has had an Occupy encampment for more than a month, but the movement this week moved to the UC campus, with a rally on Tuesday, students sleeping in a university building Wednesday, then tents erected on Thursday, the Bee reported.

University officials told the newspaper that protesters were told Friday morning to remove the tents, but not all did.

Friday afternoon, some 35 UC officers from Davis and other campuses arrived with protective gear, the newspaper quoted UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza as saying

Remaining protesters initially numbered about 50, but then swelled to some 200 during a confrontation with police, the newspaper quoted Spicuzza as saying.

Spicuzza told the newspaper that officers were forced to use pepper spray when students surrounded them. The students were informed repeatedly ahead of time that if they didn't move, force would be used, she said.

"There was no way out of that circle," Spicuzza told the Bee. "They were cutting the officers off from their support. It's a very volatile situation."

99.99% v .01%: the data behind the Occupy movement

Video - Is it the 99% v the 1%

Guardian | Is it really 99% v 1%? It has become the rallying cry of the Occupy Wall Street movement - and the Occupy protests around the world. But is it true?

This is the data behind this animation, produced by Guardian interactive designer Mariana Santos. And that data does show some people have done better out of America's economic booms of the last 20 years than others - as this report from the Congressional Budget Office shows too.

When Americans are asked how US wealth is distributed, they think the very richest fifth should own up to 40% of the national wealth - and that includes 90% of Republicans surveyed. In fact, that richest group owns 85% of the nation's wealth. Those surveyed also thought the bottom 120 million people should own around 10% of the national wealth. The reality: 0.3%

In fact, the super rich - the top 0.01% of the population - own more of the national wealth now than at any time since 1928, just before the Great Depression. And the richest 1% of the US population? They own a third of US net worth.

In Bill Clinton's boom of 1993-2000, average incomes went up - just as they did during George W Bush's boom at the beginning of his presidency. But if you were rich, you gained even more: nearly half of all the growth in the Clinton boom years. Under George W Bush it was 65%.

There are now over 3.1m millionaires and the US has over 400 billionaires, more than any other country in the world. Who's at the top of that pile? Bill Gates with a net worth of $59bn, Warren Buffett ($39bn), Lawrence Ellison ($33bn). That's just over the combined budget shortfall of every state in the US for 2011

In 2010, the average American earned $26,487 - down over $2,000 in real terms on 2006. That's a drop of 5.27%, including inflation. If you were poor it's been an even bigger drop - the 24 million least wealthy households in America saw their average income go down by 10% From $12,276 in 2006 to $11,034 in 2010.

If you were super rich it went down too. The 400 wealthiest American households lost around 4%, including inflation Between 2006 and 2008 - the latest year we have the data - the richest 400's household income went down by 4% - if you include inflation. That's to an average of $270.5m per household Nearly 5,400 times the average household income in the United States.

Part of the reason average Americans have been hit so hard is where their wealth comes from. Before the crash, middle-class Americans had 65% of their wealth tied up in their house.. But the richest 1% of the population kept most of their wealth in stocks and shares and business. So, when house prices went south, many Americans found their wealth disappearing too.

“All engagements are transparent and attributable.”

NYTimes | The morning sun had barely cast its fresh light over Tampa Bay when Ardashir Safavi — born in Iran, a refugee to Turkey, educated in the mid-Atlantic states — was up and patrolling two dozen Persian-language Web sites, hunting militant adversaries in cyberspace.

His mission was to scan news reports, blogs, social media and online essays to identify those he viewed as “containing lies, misinformation or just misperceptions” about American military operations and Pentagon policy across the Middle East.

In recent months, Mr. Safavi and his teammates spotted posts that included doctored photographs of Osama bin Laden purporting to prove that Al Qaeda’s leader had not died in an American commando raid. They turned up blogs stating that the Pentagon was accelerating war plans for invading many Muslim nations, and others amplifying Taliban accusations that American troops rape with impunity across Afghanistan.

Mr. Safavi works as part of the Digital Engagement Team, established in 2008 by the military’s Central Command to “counter extremist ideology, promote cultural awareness and explain U.S. interests,” said Maj. David E. Nevers, the team’s chief officer, who must approve all responses before they are posted on foreign-language Web sites.

The team includes 20 native speakers of Arabic, Dari, Persian, Pashto, Urdu and Russian, the latter a shared language across the Muslim countries of the former Soviet states of Central Asia. Given that Central Command is responsible for military actions in an arc of instability stretching from the Indian Ocean across the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, people here call their headquarters “Tampa-stan.”

The government’s expanding efforts in computer-network warfare, offense and defense are among the most secret enterprises carried out by the military and intelligence community. To counter the adversary’s use of the Internet, American cyberwarriors have hacked into extremist chat rooms to sow confusion, or to inject poisonous code to take down militant Web sites. Sometimes, they choose not to act, but silently track the online movements of jihadists to learn their plans.

In contrast, the Digital Engagement Team operates in total sunshine: all of the online postings carry an official stamp acknowledging sponsorship by Central Command.

The team’s operators “respectfully deflect baseless and often irrational insults, confront adversaries with factual evidence and expose extremist propaganda that might otherwise go unrefuted,” Major Nevers said. “All engagements are transparent and attributable.”

The only obfuscation is the use of online pseudonyms to protect the civilian contract employees from potential retaliation.

the whisper that turned into a roar

Video - RT two month review of OWS

OWS preliminary ideological results...,

Guardian | The Occupy London movement is marking its first month this week. It is routinely described as anti-capitalist, but this label is highly misleading. As I found out when I gave a lecture at its Tent City University last weekend, many of its participants are not against capitalism. They just want it better regulated so that it benefits the greatest possible majority.

But even accepting that the label accurately describes some participants in the movement, what does being anti-capitalist actually mean?

Many Americans, for example, consider countries like France and Sweden to be socialist or anti-capitalist – yet, were their 19th-century ancestors able to time-travel to today, they would almost certainly have called today's US socialist. They would have been shocked to find that their beloved country had decided to punish industry and enterprise with a progressive income tax. To their horror, they would also see that children had been deprived of the freedom to work and adults "the liberty of working as long as [they] wished", as the US supreme court put it in 1905 when ruling unconstitutional a New York state act limiting the working hours of bakers to 10 hours a day. What is capitalist, and thus anti-capitalist, it seems, depends on who you are.

Many institutions that most of us regard as the foundation stones of capitalism were not introduced until the mid-19th century, because they had been seen as undermining capitalism. Adam Smith opposed limited liability companies and Herbert Spencer objected to the central bank, both on the grounds that these institutions dulled market incentives by putting upper limits to investment risk. The same argument was made against the bankruptcy law.

Since the mid-19th century, many measures that were widely regarded as anti-capitalist when first introduced – such as the progressive income tax, the welfare state, child labour regulation and the eight-hour day – have become integral parts of capitalism today.

Capitalism has also evolved in very different ways across countries. They may all be capitalist in that they are predominantly run on the basis of private property and profit motives, but beyond that they are organised very differently.

OWS preliminary judicial results...,

NYTimes | The Bank of America lawyer laid down a patented rhetorical move heard in courts across America. Your Honor, this Orange County, N.Y., homeowner — a New York City police officer — didn’t make enough money to qualify for a mortgage modification. He didn’t send us the right documents.

He didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t, and so we should be allowed to foreclose.

Justice Catherine M. Bartlett of New York State Supreme Court cut off the lawyer. You, she said, are telling me lies.

“Bank of America got a bailout, and this is an outrage, how this man has been treated,” she said. “Hard-working, middle-class Americans are trying to make it, trying to refinance with your bank.”

Either bank officials show up in person, the justice said, or I’m going to order them “here in handcuffs.”

Rage has acquired a cleansing power. Patience as a virtue is a hard sell at the burnt end of a four-year economic collapse. Zuccotti Park shakes, rattles and rolls; television yakkers chat about inequality; and the federal judge Jed Rakoff all but heckled the Securities and Exchange Commission last week for going easy on Citigroup misbehavior.

Then there is Eric T. Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, caught in Month 5 of a face-off with the White House. President Obama dearly wants to seal a deal in which the nation’s largest banks toss over a few bales of cash — $20 billion to help with foreclosure relief — and the state attorneys general agree not to pursue sprawling and explosive legal cases against the banks.

The power of a 'people's library'

aljazeera | The "People's Library" was at the heart of the OWS encampment at Zuccotti Park, and has played a similar role in other large occupations, such as Los Angeles. It is the necessary complement to the actual physical occupation of urban space represented by the OWS movement. Many people might wonder why it's so important for protesters permanently to camp when the reality, especially as the weather turns bad, is that few people are actually doing anything at night besides sleeping.

But the point of the occupation is precisely to reconquer space that has been taken over, either by the state or by private interests - a kind of "eminent domain" of, by and for the people - and create a permanent presence that can engender and nourish the kind of community and solidarity that have so disappeared in the United States in the last forty years. By permanently occupying Zuccottii and other parks, the OWS movement created a space where people could gather, create libraries, share books and ideas, and even meals. Where they could plan for another world that isn't merely possible anymore, but the only hope for the survival of humanity as a civilisation.

The library, which took weeks to establish, reflected the uniqueness and power of the still young 99 per cent movement. "From the very beginning, the OWS encampments were not just gestures of protest thinly focused on making statements about the ills of society, but were efforts to build community where people were knowledgeable and participated in informed dialogue. The libraries, at least in Zuccotti and in Los Angeles, have been central. Here in LA a graduate student made her entire personal library available to occupiers. These libraries have contemporary theory, classical literature, incisive analyses, and all sorts of books that have been marginalised from the mainstream media and culture. But when the history of this period will be written, these are the books that will be remembered."

So much did the "people's library" idea resonate that the OWS library couldn't keep up with all the donations they've received and encouraging people to take books out. The website lists some of the newest arrivals in the days before the raid: Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia, by Savo Heleta, Nuclear Nebraska, by Susan Cragin, Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, From the Heat of the Day, by Roy A.K. Heath, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, and innumerable other books that were opening the minds of all who passed through OWS and the many peoples' libraries it has fostered across the country.

Minsky continued, "This open philosophy stands in stark opposition to the world of corporate culture. Trashing the library was symbolic of what the combined forces of Bloomberg and the NYPD feel about learning and the society in which we live." (Indeed, Mayor Bloomberg, who claimed full responsibility for the raid's execution, had to know about the library. Yet his "minutely planned raid" - as the New York Times described it - shovelled thousands of books into garbage trucks to be carted away to the nearest sanitation facility).

It also stands in stark contrast to the earlier iterations of the anti-corporate globalisation and anti-war movements, especially when it came to recognising the role of the Middle East in the larger processes of globalisation that were at the heart of the struggles of both movements.

New forms of culture jamming
In fact, I wrote the book I donated to the People's Library, Why They Don't Hate Us, specifically in response the abject failure of the emerging anti-corporate globalisation movement of the late 1990s, and then the anti-war movement that coalesced after September 11, to engage with the Middle East and larger Muslim world's role in the development of globalisation, or with the many scholars of the region who had the expertise and experience to help develop a more effective counter-discourse to both Clintonian neoliberalism and Bush's full metal jacket neoconservatism.

Ironically, Adbusters magazine and the culture jamming movement it helped spawn were at the centre of both the pre-9/11 alter-globalisation movement and the OWS movement today. The problem with the first iteration of culture jamming imagined by the movement was that it was mostly negative, focusing on critiquing or subverting political or advertising messages by "jamming" symbols into them that expose the usually ugly realities beneath the sexy, cool or comfortable veneers (painting a skull and cross bones over the face of a Marlboro Man billboard is a seminal example of this practice).

missing DA tied to sandusky case?

Video - Mystery of vanished Center County District Attorney Ray Gricar

FoxPhilly | The district attorney who didn't prosecute former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky for sex crimes in 1998 went missing in 2005, a fact that is now getting a lot of attention.

Slideshows: Students Destroy Van | Student Protest | Rally At JoePa's Home | Coach Mobbed By Reporters | Suspects Surrender

Ray Gricar was the long-time district attorney of Centre County, the home of Penn State's main campus. He was months from retirement when he simply vanished on his way home to Bellefonte, Pa.

The mystery surrounding Gricar's disappearance in 2005 was the subject of several national TV shows and an effort involving the FBI and state investigators.

The attorney's car was found in Lewisburg, Pa., about 60 miles east of Bellefonte, about 12 hours after he called home. Several months later, his laptop computer and a destroyed hard drive were found.

But no one found Gricar's body.

Bruce Castor knew Gricar well. Castor is currently a Montgomery County Pa. commissioner and a former county district attorney who worked with Gricar.

"I never saw any evidence from Ray that he was showing any favoritism towards Penn State or the hometown or anything like that. He was a by the book guy," Castor said.

Fox 29 has confirmed the FBI has an open file on Gricar but it’s unknown if the case is still active.

But a missing person's poster for Gricar is still on the FBI Web site, even though Gricar was legally declared dead in July 2011.

So what happened to Gricar?

"I am now leaning towards the conclusion that it was foul play by someone who would have a motive to specifically target him," Castor says.

"If somebody really wants to get a prosecutor , they can. Especially in the country like that," Castor added.

Gricar appears in the grand jury presentment in the Jerry Sandusky sex-crimes case as the DA who didn't prosecute Sandusky after a six-week investigation in 1998 in Center County.

Gricar got the case after a boy's mother complained to police after her son showered with Sandusky.

According to the grand jury presentment, Penn State University police were also involved in the 1998 Sandusky case.

Gricar's office was the only local or state agency contacted about an alleged victim of Sandusky, a long-time Paterno assistant who retired in 1999 but continued to run a charity to help at-risk children.

So why didn't Gricar file charges against Sandusky?

thinking outside the genome...,

The Scientist | Not so long ago, the mention of any word with the two syllables “-ō-mics” tacked on the end was usually followed immediately with some response akin to, “Huh?” Today, we’ve gotten to the point where almost no biological phenomenon can escape “omics-ization,” and within the next 25 years, omics will be the biggest, if not the only, game in town. Why? Because we are about to undergo what experts call a phase shift, where a technology drives a fundamental change not just in what is known, but, more importantly, in how we think of ourselves. Put another way: omics is destined to change our patterns of living in ways that only technological revolutions can deliver.

Other technologies have already proven to have similarly deep effects on human culture. Consider the impact of the Internet on commerce, or the influence of GPS systems on travel and navigation. The reach of these technologies extended well beyond the information they generated. They redefined society.

In the last half century, the technology in genomics has provided us with a set of approaches initially as underappreciated as computers were in the early 1970s. “Exotic,” “finicky,” and “geeky” were terms used for mainframe computers that couldn’t even talk with each other. The same transformative technological advances that have turned computers into must-have personal accessories are inevitable for the nascent field of omics. Here are four ways in which omics will reshape the human experience.