talknationradio.com

Talk Nation Radio for January 20, 2012
Military Industrial Complex at 50

David Swanson on his new book: Coauthored with Ann Wright, Karen Kwiatkowski, Gareth Porter, and 26 other well known authors. David Swanson is a peace activist and October 2011 organizer and author of, “When the World Outlawed War,” “War Is A Lie” and “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.”

We hear about the ever-growing limitations of U.S. Congress due to defense money being sent to members of the House and Senate, plus other ways that corporate power, and military industry affect our lives, and our representative government. Plus new energy in the OWS movement with dates for general strikes and/or protests. Can Americans take a lesson from Nigerians who went out on general strike to protest a large hike in fuel prices?

Produced by Dori Smith
TRT: 29:01
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here and at Archive.org
OR Archive.org

We discuss the recent passage by the Charlottesville, Va., City Council of a “Resolution Opposing War on Iran”. And David Swanson’s latest book which is co-authored with the authors below: The Military Industrial Complex at 50, or “MIC50” as its being called.

With a host of well known writers, David Swanson offers new context and relevance to America’s defense corporations. He discusses the overall impact of the arms industry on US and international human and civil rights, US foreign and military policy, military operations in the MidEast and other countries, the impact on the economy of defense spending, and new momentum for an Iran strike.

He and others who wrote MIC50, wanted to deliver the kind of warning that former President Eisenhower offered when he told his audience in 1961: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.–We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” (Audio clip of this quote within this week’s program at 15 sec., from Archive.org library, full speech here. And the photo of the jets is from a page about Sweden ordering more jet aircraft and military equipment, for Afghanistan operations, mentions Israel and USA. 1/17, Daily Defense News.)

Learn more at mic50.org as well as Warisacrime, and davidswanson.org David Swanson also blogs at RootsAction.

The Military Industrial Complex at 50 is co-authored by David Swanson, Ellen Brown • Paul Chappell • Helena Cobban • Ben Davis • Jeff Fogel • Bunny Greenhouse • Bruce Gagnon • Clare Hanrahan • John Heuer • Steve Horn • Robert Jensen • Karen Kwiatkowski • Judith Le Blanc • Bruce Levine • Ray McGovern • Wally Myers • Robert Naiman • Gareth Porter • Chris Rodda • Allen Ruff • Mia Austin Scoggins • Tony Russell • Lisa Savage • Mary Beth Sullivan • Coleman Smith • Dave Shreve • Pat Elder • Jonathan Williams • and Ann Wright.

Talk Nation Radio for January 7, 2011
Journalist Dahr Jamail Reports from Baghdad on Political Chaos

-’The Americans are gone and now we are in total political turmoil, and that’s the reality in Iraq today’.
-’Clearly killings and bombings that are targeting the Shiite population. Just like what we’ve seen in the past these are attacks carried out to incite sectarian warfare’.

‘Iraqis are very afraid today of a return to 2006, 2007, that horrific sectarian bloodshed period where we saw tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, literally just open sectarian war’. Dahr Jamail, in Baghdad, 1-6-12

Dahr Jamail provides a detailed analysis of the new violence that has left hundreds of civilian Iraqis dead and wounded. We hear about fall out from what Nouri al-Maliki has done in charging his Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashimi with terrorism. Plus sectarian divisions and Fallujah birth defects soaring at 14% according a physician keeping records. And ‘Iraq A Country in shambles’ according to Dahr Jamail’s report to Al Jazeera, January 9, 2011, see here.

Upgraded audio version now available at Audioport and Archive.org

TRT: 29:13
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
Music by Fritz Heede
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here and at Archive.org (Free air quality MP3 download).

Investigative journalist Dahr Jamail joins us from Baghdad where new violence that has left at 100’s of civilian Shiite’s dead and wounded. Dahr Jamail is Bagdad correspondent for Al Jazeera and author of ‘Beyond the Green Zone, Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq’, and ‘The Will to Resist, Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan’. He has been covering Iraq off and on since 2003 and has won many awards for his hard hitting reports that reveal the human cost of the U.S. war and occupation. You can find his work at Al Jazeera English and Inter Press Service, Truthout, (See first truthout.org and second truth-out.org) The Nation Magazine, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, Le Monde Diplomatique, and the Independent, as well as other publications or go to his web site, www.dahrjamail.net.

Transcript for Talk Nation Radio for January 7, 2012.
Journalist Dahr Jamail Reports from Baghdad on Political Chaos
Interviewed January 6, 2012 by Dori Smith

Investigative journalist Dahr Jamail joins us from Iraq to assess the political implications of new violence there that has left at 100’s of civilian Shiite’s dead and wounded. Dahr Jamail is Bagdad correspondent for Al Jazeera.

Intro: Award winning investigative journalist Dahr Jamail is author of ‘Beyond the Green Zone’, and ‘The Will to Resist’. He has been covering Iraq off and on 2003 and we reached him in Baghdad where he is Al Jazeera’s Correspondent there. You can find his work at Al Jazeera English and Inter Press Service, TruthOut, The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, Le Monde Diplomatique, and the Independent, as well as other publications or go to his web site, dahrjamail.net.

Dori Smith: Dahr Jamail welcome again to Talk Nation Radio.
Dahr Jamail: Thanks Dori its good to be with you.

DS: It seems you are clearly moving around in Baghdad and not staying inside the fortified Green Zone. Just talk about what you have been seeing and the implications of this sectarian violence and civil war that you’ve been talking about in your reports to Al Jazeera.

DJ: Well that really is the big story. I came I here on this trip on December 26th and we knew that things were going south in a very fast way because when the US ended their formal military presence, less than one day after they withdrew the last of the troops that aren’t going to be remaining at the embassy, less than 24 hours after that Vice President Nouri al-Maliki issued an arrest warrant for Vice President Tareq al-Hashimi, a Sunni under charges of terrorism. Maliki’s critics said this is basically a move to consolidate political power, you are trying to basically just collapse this very tenuous kind of fragile power sharing government that we’ve had said up, that the Americans have taken great pains to set up, and Maliki’s move against his vice president was also followed by his placing the Deputy Prime Minister, Saleh el-Mutlaq, also a Sunni, placing him on indefinite leave. So clearly this caused the Sunni block in the Parliament the Iraqiya block to boycott parliament, and that has basically frozen the government. So we have a situation where Maliki is head of a minority government that can’t do anything. There is no resolution happening to the political crisis. Meanwhile that leaves the door wide open for mayhem on the ground and that’s exactly what we’re seeing.

During the last week of December we had the first massive wave of suicide attacks and bombings across the country that killed over 70 people. And then yesterday we had an even bigger wave of IED’s, suicide attacks, and motorcycle bombs. All across the country, primarily Baghdad and south of Baghdad, targeting Shiite pilgrims, with 84 dead, and the total from yesterday I think it was 173 wounded. And then today we’ve had, not nearly as bloody, but we’ve have had a continuance of attacks. Two more IEDs, a barrage of mortars that fell across the city, one striking the Green Zone, a couple landing not far from our bureau here, two Shiite pilgrims killed and at least 17 wounded today. So the thing is these are clearly killings and bombings that are targeting the Shiite population just like what we have seen in the past, these are attacks that are carried out to try to incite sectarian warfare. One of Al Qaeda’s agenda’s in Iraq is to sew mayhem amongst the population and that is exactly what would happen. So Iraqis are very afraid today of a return to 2006, 2007, that horrific sectarian bloodshed period where we saw tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and literally just open sectarian war, and that’s what everyone is very concerned about now and does not want to happen. But they are of course extremely angry at the government because the government can’t and won’t get anything done to try to find resolution, find power sharing, create some kind of a unity government to prevent that from happening.

DS: And so the political leaders fighting, it seems as if the civilians there that you have been speaking to are clearly saying that we’re paying the price for this disagreement that is political. You could say I guess at this point we are looking at political civil war right?

DJ: Oh yeah. It’s open warfare in the political realm for sure. Maliki has pulled out all of the stops, he is going big, he is not pulling any punches, and he is openly moving to try to consolidate power. The Sunnis are basically in reactive mode trying to do damage control, figure out how they can try to turn this against Maliki. There is all kinds of political horse trading going on but at the end of the day Maliki is making a power move.

Today for example, he held the biggest military parade that Iraq has had since 2003 when Saddam had one just prior to the invasion to try to have a show of strength. Well Maliki had one today and interestingly enough it took place inside the Green Zone and the timing of the mortar attacks was timed to coincide with the parade. And so an AFP photographer who was in photographing the parade could hear the explosions echoing across the parade ground as Iraq’s military was being paraded in front of the Prime Minister. So the attack clearly meant to show, look you can have your little military parade but it still can’t keep you safe even inside the Green Zone, even with your entire military right there at your disposal we can still hit you. And that’s what this shows. So if the intent of having the parade was a show of force if anything it has backfired and showed people look, there is no security because you can’t even keep a military parade secure in front of the Prime Minister. So nevertheless Maliki is doing these things, he is kind of thumping his chest, showing who has control militarily to his political rivals, and really making no political concessions at least not at this point.

DJ: And now true is that Dahr that he has complete control over the military and any intelligence agencies there?

DJ: He definitely has control of the military. It’s a rag tag third rate military at best but he definitely has control over it and it is a big force. So at least as far as anything that goes on on the ground in Iraq, whether its putting down an insurgency here and there or a particular militia, he definitely has the power to do that, there is no question about that. He does have his own private security, he does have his own private intelligence services. He is forming his own private militia, you know he doesn’t call it a militia of course but that’s what it is. So there are things he is doing also on that front to consolidate power. But the government as a whole is in total gridlock. It’s not accomplishing anything right now. And as we have talked about before Dori so much hasn’t changed. I mean this is a government that can’t even get the garbage collected in the capital city and it goes downhill from there. Basic services are still basically crap.

The average home in Baghdad has maybe six hours of electricity per day. I don’t even know if that’s changed since the last time we talked so long ago. Shockingly enough, still about one out of every two Iraqis lacks access to safe, potable, clean drinking water. The medical system is so bad now that people don’t take their loved ones to the hospital unless its an absolute worst case emergency. They try to save up money and take them to a private hospital instead because the public ones have just gone completely downhill after all of the doctors fled and the infrastructure has just had no attendance. And of course all of this against the backdrop of unemployment where rates vary depending on who you get the statistics from and what month it is but unemployment rates vary from between 25% and 45%. So somewhere between great depression level in the U.S. and almost double that.

DS: And what about others that you mention in your reporting like the Sunni led Iraqiya or [hard line Shiite bloc cleric] Moqtada al-Sadr, who is still in this, as well as the rival political group Asab al-Haq? Do they have political strength or support within the Iraqi population?

DJ: Al-Sadr is in an interesting position because he is now put on his political hat again and is again positioning himself as like peace maker between all of the chaos keeping in mind that Sadr has always hated Maliki, because remember it was just a few years ago that Maliki declared open war on Sadr’s militia and with the help of the American’s put it down relatively easily. Sadr only came into the government basically because Iran told him to, to be friends with Maliki at least for now until they can get the Americans out and then take total control of the country which is basically what’s happening. So Sadr is a key player. I don’t think he has enough consensus backing overall in the government to be a big enough power player there but he does have enough of a power block and a big enough following on the street that he can throw his weight around and shift the situation to go in one direction or another. And that’s what we have to watch now. Once again he shows up at the key moment when things are super tenuous and starts throwing his weight around and he can definitely change the direction that things are going to go in politically here. You know Maliki of course and his Rule of Law party being the key power, primarily because they continue to be supported by the U.S. even after his arrest warrant against Tareq al-Hashimi, he’s had the green light from the U.S. on that interestingly enough. And he continues to be backed by Iran as well. Its very interesting.

One joke in Iraq is that you have the U.S. that Iran calls ‘the great Satan’ and then you have Iran that the U.S. calls the ‘axis of evil’. So the great Satan and the axis of evil get together and they guy they can decide on to agree for both of their best interests to lead Iraq is Nouri al-Maliki. So he is the child of ‘the great Satan’ and the ‘axis of evil’. And that’s pretty accurate if you look at the guy and you look at how he has been behaving and what he is doing even right now, the moniker fits.

So those are really some of the key players. Of course we have to keep in mind Iski, [the Islamic Council of Iraq] and [Ammar] Aziz al-Hakim, and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, are all key players of course, and then the splinter group, the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haaq (Asa’ib Ahl al-Haaq or AAH) that use to be part of the Mahdi army and then they split off and now they’ve shown up putting on their political hats and are trying to make themselves look legitimate even though they are of course despised by the Americans and of course now being welcomed by Maliki. A lot of people are now perceiving that as an attempt to split the Sadrists to weaken Sadr from throwing his weight around which of course Maliki sees as a threat so he has welcomed in Sadr’s enemy. Those are some of the key players and again, now you can talk about throwing the Kurds into the mix which are of course other key big players as well and again trying to find consensus among all of those groups especially in this backdrop as things stand on the ground today that’s what we are looking at.

DS: And Dahr let’s throw oil into the mix and those all-important contracts. Are there any corporate powers that could have influence as Nouri al-Maliki makes power-sharing decisions?

DJ: I actually have an article on this scheduled for Sunday January 8, 2011, which is basically an update on what is happening with Iraq’s oil. And it’s a bit of a mixed bag. (See 1-9-12 article here) It’s not as cut and dry as OK we had the invasion, all of these western oil companies came in and set up shop and now they are just going to make out like bandits even though the U.S. Military has left. I think that’s what they wanted but that is not how it is played out. Part of that is because of the security situation that there is just no way for these guys to do their work the way they want to do it with ongoing attacks, with the threat of kidnapping, with sabotage, coupled with popular resistance on the ground from the Basra oil union workers. Then there is the overall population of course that does not want to see the oil privatized, certainly not into western hands. So those factors have been big at play working against this oil grab of the west.

That said, Exxon Mobile, BP, and Shell, remain in Iraq, they all have big contracts, they all are operating as we speak. Those are just the main companies and there are others as well but certainly, Iraqi oil is being accessed by these oil companies and they are taking it and selling it abroad and Iraq remains I believe they are the sixth largest oil provider to the U.S. So that’s where some of it is going and the rest of it is still being sold around the world as it was, in the same locations it was, prior to the invasion. So the key is there has been a big push to get in, change Iraq’s laws so that western oil companies can access, legally by Iraq standards, Iraq’s oil. And they have been pushing for these different contracts, and we’ve talked about the production sharing agreements, and all of this has basically ripped off the host country. Well those haven’t come to pass because basically what happened is the oil companies went in flying their greed flag and the Iraqis just wouldn’t have any of it. So concessions have been made, renegotiated, more concessions made, and now we are at a situation where there have been some deals cut but they are definitely not the best deals that these companies are use to getting. But certainly we still have at least four to five of the major key oil companies that are operating in Iraq.

I also would caution anyone from thinking this is a permanent situation because you look for example right now at how volatile the situation is here politically and on the ground and do you think any company is going to come in and think they are going to be able to set up shop long term in a country like this? Who knows what its going to look like in a month from now. So I think anyone who thinks oh yeah those companies are just always going to be here, I mean they could be thrown out tomorrow for all we know, that’s how unstable this place is. We’ll just have to keep our eye on that.

DS: And what about security now that you have brought that up? Are you seeing a lot of contractors there now to protect oil company personnel and or embassy staff?

DJ: You know with private contractors from the west, you are not seeing them on the streets at all anymore. I’ve been out on the streets a whole lot. I’ve been out to Fallujah, I’ve been all around Baghdad, and I have not seen any westerners out at all, no contractors whatsoever, and they literally are just sitting inside that embassy and not coming out. They are there, basically just to be there to guard that. I haven’t gone down to check any of the oil infrastructure down to the south, possibly they might be used for something like that but I kind of doubt it. Right now from what I can see is they are sitting inside the fortified Green Zone inside the embassy specifically, which you have to go through still to this day, it’s the same as when I was in here three years ago, which was seven check points just to get through into the Green Zone and that’s assuming that you have proper ID and the passes you need and all of this. So they are sitting in there and they are not coming out and I think just collecting big fat paychecks and escorting people around there and escorting people to and from the airport. So them and the military, they are just trying to keep a very low profile at this point and stay off of the streets.

DS: And you also mention in this report to Al Jazeera recently that Hashami is now living in the Kurdish North? So how doe that affect this sectarian divide?

DJ: That is an interesting twist to the situation, right. So when Maliki issued this arrest warrant Hashami went to Kurdistan because he knew and I think rightly so that he would not get a fair trial under Maliki’s justice system because Maliki controls the courts and everyone here knows it. So Maliki made the order and the court issued the warrant, its out there, and so Hashami, either he is going to go through the kangaroo court and end up in one of Maliki’s dungeons or executed on charges of terrorism or assassination attempts and running death squads, are the charges, or he goes up to Kurdistan and now he is staying in Talibani’s house up in Kurdistan because the Kurdish region is basically a very semi autonomous region and that Baghdad doesn’t really have authority there, they can’t, and there is another big squabble brewing between Kirkuk and the oil fields there and do the Kurds get it or how much control Baghdad has over it, but that’s a whole, another story, probably a whole separate discussion. But Hashami staying up there in Talibani’s house is interesting because it puts the Kurds obviously in a position of playing mediator, the Kurds saying look we’re not going to hand this guy over, we want him to have a fair trial too, wherever that might be. So he is sitting up there. Of course the Maliki government has gone so far as to accuse Talibani at one point of being a terrorist or housing a terrorist and then of course all hell was raised politically about that by the Kurds and so Maliki’s group withdrew that statement to calm things down a bit. But that’s how the situation has been playing out. It’s really quite the mess.

There is supposed to be a meeting at some point at Talibani’s house here in Baghdad to bring all of the groups together to talk about the situation and try to find resolution. However, Maliki has already said, well yeah we agree to have this meeting but only on the condition that we don’t talk about Hashami. So what’s the point? So there is that obstacle coupled with numerous other obstacles like Sadr has already said, look, if the Ahl al-Haaq group shows up, our rival group shows up, we won’t show up. There is that issue. There is the issue of well Hashami can’t be there because he is up in Kurdistan, I mean there are numerous issues like this that if this meeting even takes place, when it takes place, its got many major obstacles to overcome before anything productive might come of it.

DS: And Dahr what about the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Could he play a role as he did during earlier years of the U.S. occupation when he tried to wage peace by bringing groups together to meet?

DJ: He has not, he has been a background figure. We haven’t been hearing his name at all in Baghdad and I think basically he hasn’t really had to do anything because for the most part if we still look at the overall situation the Shia have the majority in the government, a majority of the country now geographically and politically and population wise is now either directly or indirectly under the control of Iran and they have accomplished all of this without even having to fire a shot. I think its been done by making very smooth and politically savvy realpolitik moves behind the scenes often times. And they have been doing that from the very beginning and the thing that we have talked about in the past too Dori is that Iran was playing chess from the start and the U.S. at best was playing checkers.

So we have the U.S. come in, invade the country illegally, destroy its reputation, destroy the military, tank the economy, kill 4500 American troops, spend almost a trillion dollars just in overt hard costs, not even looking down the future at other costs. So many studies have been done are calling this a three trillion dollar war, etc. To go through all of that and then withdraw humiliated when you can’t get diplomatic immunity for your troops that remain in country, and leave without the oil companies having their total access to oil that they had wanted, and basically just taking what you can get because your empire is crumbling–meanwhile Iran has garnered so much control and hegemony over so much of Iraq at your expense–that’s basically what’s happened here and it’s been a pretty remarkable thing to witness. I mean if you go around Baghdad now it’s really amazing. The Shia flag, we’re coming up on Ashura, that’s Shiite holy time, and the Imam Hussein flags are flying everywhere. They’re at the airport, everywhere you go, every government building, on government vehicles, half of them driving around in the streets are flying flags. The statement is clear. The Shia are in control here.

DS: And the U.S. arriving in Baghdad with a de-baathification plan in hand, just talk about the consequences though to Iraq overall as you return after some time away from the country.

DJ: Well the most important statistic as we’ve talked about so many times Dori is how many Iraqis have paid for this disaster with their lives. I always stick with the baseline being the Lancet Report that came out in 2006 at 655,000 deaths. That’s now grossly out of date, even though it’s the only scientific study, it’s grossly out of date. So now we have the OMB study out of London, which pegs it at 1.1 million. And then we have Just Foreign Policy that tries to keep a running tab and they are up to I think 1.4 million deaths now, and that’s not even talking about wounded, that’s just people who have died directly or indirectly as a result of the occupation.

So those are the figures we need to talk about. Anything lower than the Lancet is not a viable figure and is statistically unsound, and we have to remember the only scientific study that’s been done, there have been two, and they have both been done by the Lancet. The 2004 study that came out that was 98,000, and then the 2006 study that pegs it at 655,000.

So that is what we are talking about as far as what it has cost the Iraqi people and that’s just mind boggling. I mean 1 million people out of a country of (illegible) one out of 27 people have been killed is what we are talking about. Secondary to that you know we’ve talked about people displaced from their homes, to this day we have at least a million people internally displaced from their homes, at least a million people remain externally displaced from their homes in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, and then go down the laundry list of countries from those top three. And then the infrastructure destruction that I’ve talked about, lack of water, lack of electricity, lack of jobs, lack of security; it’s a hard story to report because I feel like I’m saying the same things to you now that I said in our very first interview back in 2003 Dori except I just keep adjusting the figures upward. And that’s what the story is in Iraq. It really is still that bad here. People are not making a living. It’s an extremely difficult existence.

Just to give you an idea, I was over in Sadr City two days before the bombings happened yesterday and I know that, I went right by that place where the motorcycle bombs happened where those day laborers gather to have some tea and then they get on the bus when they find some work. Then they go do their day’s work and they earn a little bit of pay to hopefully feed their family for one more day. And that’s how about half the people in that entire area live. And that’s half the population of Baghdad, between 3 and 3.5 million people. So those people were out there waiting to get one day’s work, and then they’re blown up, so what about those families? Think about this. And I was just over there talking with these people at the market, you know I talked to a woman selling fruit, she is the only person in her family with a job. They didn’t eat dinner last night, that’s how most people living here are trying to eek out an existence. It really truly is that bad. The Americans have gone and now we are in total political turmoil and that’s the reality on the ground in Iraq today.

DS: Well and we were talking about Fallujah, which I know you were there several times during sieges and if you use that too as a barometer of how people are doing, what is the story out of Fallujah today?

DJ: I published a piece a couple days ago about the overall situation in Fallujah about how we are looking at a place the consensus there is that there is between 70% and 80% unemployment. The city, big parts of it still look like it was just bombed. There is still basically no infrastructure, maybe one to four hours of electricity per day in the average house. Clean drinking water, forget about it, working functional sewage, forget about it, security forget about it, there are attacks daily in the city. And people are angry, they are glad the Americans are gone, but they are bitter and there has of course been very little compensation in the wake of the sieges. Most people didn’t get compensation for destroyed houses or livelihoods or anything like that. Keeping in mind 6,000 businesses were destroyed during the second siege alone, so think about that.

On top of that, I think one of the more horrifying situations and I had a story just published on this today is the absolutely catastrophic levels of birth defects and abnormalities in Fallujah newborns. I spoke with Dr Samira Alani, she is a pediatric specialist at the main hospital there, at Fallujah General Hospital, and she has been there since 1997. The Ministry of Health out of Baghdad won’t take up responsibility of cataloging these defects and this is a political statement in itself. This tells you who is running government and who cares about Fallujah and who doesn’t right? So Maliki hates Fallujah, so there you have it.

Dr. Alani has taken it upon herself to start logging the number of birth defect cases that she has come across. And she started doing this in October of 2009 and just her alone since 2009 she has logged 699 cases of birth defects. When she tallies that out she is looking at just over a 14% rate of people having babies, are having babies with birth defects. By comparison she was in Japan a couple of months ago and she met with Japanese doctors who have done long term studies of radiation and cancers and birth defects, in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And over there at the peak they had 1% to 2% rates of birth defects. In Fallujah it’s over 14%, between 14% and 15%.

So that gives you an idea of how much radiation, and how much toxic chemical poisoning there is in Fallujah. This is definitely one of the harder stories I’ve had to write in a long time. I saw many of these kids, many of these babies with my own eyes, most of the really horrific defects, they die within, either they are dead when they are born or they die within 20 to 30 minutes. So Dr. Alani showed me pictures and gave me a flash drive with way more than I wanted to look at but we were able to put a couple up on the web site of not the worst cases but bad enough so that people get an idea. We’re talking about abnormalities that are something out of a horror movie. People are now afraid to have babies in Fallujah. It’s a crisis situation. What do people do?

It was hard to go to Fallujah also because I’ve seen that town, I was in there long before the first siege ever took place, I’ve seen it go from being a functional, vibrant city, one with a lot of pride, known as the ‘City of Mosques’ to one that’s been largely destroyed. You go in there now and there is no economy and people don’t know what they are going to do, and look if people are going to stop having kids, how long does it take for the city to go away? Maybe that’s what we are in the process of witnessing happen, where there is going to be a massive demographic shift, longer term.

Ironically a different thing that’s happening at the same time is that because of the sectarian fears rising in Baghdad, once again, people who live in mixed Shia and Sunni neighborhoods, a lot of the Sunnis are leaving and they are going to places where they know its safe for Sunnis and one of those places is Fallujah. So Fallujah right now actually is full of people because so many people from Baghdad have gone up there and running for their lives they go up there and just work as day laborers because they feel like its safer for them to live in Fallujah than it is to live in Baghdad.

DS: Dahr Jamail thanks so much for joining us.

DJ: Thanks again Dori its always a pleasure to be with you.

Award winning investigative journalist Dahr Jamail is author of Beyond the Green Zone, and The Will to Resist. He has been covering Iraq off and on 2003 and we reached him in Baghdad where he is Al Jazeera’s Correspondent there. You can find his work at Al Jazeera English and Inter Press Service, Truth out, The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, Le Monde Diplomatique, and the Independent, as well as other publications or go to his web site, www.dahrjamail.net.

For Talk Nation Radio I’m Dori Smith, the program is produced in Storrs CT and syndicated with Pacifica Network. www.talknationradio.org is our web site, our music is by Fritz Heede.

News Links:

Wave of bombings leaves scores dead in Iraq By Dahr Jamail | Al Jazeera English | Published: January 5, 2012
At least 70 killed and more than 100 wounded in the latest attacks in mainly Shia areas across the country.

Fallujah babies: Under a new kind of siege By Dahr Jamail | Al Jazeera English | Published: January 6, 2012
Doctors and residents blame US weapons for catastrophic levels of birth defects in Fallujah’s newborns.

Talk Nation Radio for January 5, 2011
Ben Adler on RNC Conservatives, Media, and Primaries:
The Nation Magazine Election Writer takes us through Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Beyond.

Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
TRT: 29:00
Music by Fritz Heede
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Archive.org and Radio4all.net (currently down for our use but will be back in use by TNR soon.)

What did the media ask Republican Presidential candidates, what was left out? The Nation Magazine’s Ben Adler looks at Iowa, New Hampshire and S. Carolina with an eye toward what could be asked of the candidates, what they are really saying. Is Romney for the 1%? We look at Ben Adler’s story in The Nation Magazine, “Ten Questions for Mitt Romney” plus examine the new role of Rick Santorum as a Christian Conservative candidate, and consider Ron Paul’s results. What did we learn from Iowa? Where do we go from here?

Ben Adler reports on Republican and conservative politics and media for The Nation as a Contributing Writer. He previously covered national politics and policy as a staffer at Newsweek, Politico and the Center for American Progress. He also writes regularly about urban and environmental policy, and he was a 2008-2009 urban leaders fellow at Next American City. His freelance writing has appeared in The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Progressive, Reuters, Salon and The Washington Monthly and has been reprinted in several books.

Talk Nation Radio for December 30, 2011
Breaking through media deceptions about the reality of the jobs and health care crisis
Health Care and Jobs, Dr. Margaret Flowers, Steven F. Hipple, Bureau of Labor Statistics

See below for audio and further information about this week’s show:

Update January 13, 2011: Talk Nation Radio sources clarified unemployment data for listeners, and the media is now correcting their reports. News sites covering global markets have retracted claims that jobs data has been steadily positive. News Corp’s “Market Watch” issued regular projections and sought to use the data to help build investor confidence. Despite grim reports of lower growth in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and of an ongoing banking crisis within the Eurozone that has sent markets reeling, their site has been providing regular upbeat reports that have at times presented the “improving U.S. jobs data” as if the numbers were a major catalyst for improving markets. That may or may not be true, but Market Watch has now corrected their data.

On January 13, 2012, they reported: “U.S. jobless claims rise 24,000 to 399,000.” The numbers were not as good as previously reported on their web site. However, they made no effort to take responsibility and presented the information as if the U.S. Dept. of Labor had made an error. Their story notes: “Jobless claims rose by 24,000 to a seasonally adjusted 399,000 in the week ended Jan 7, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday. Claims from two weeks ago were revised up to 375,000 from 372,000.” In fact, the numbers are always being revised. No agency could disclose full unemployment numbers on a weekly basis since the applications take time to process. Some of the statistical information is provided after government surveys.

We have been trying to point out since early December that the media was being overly enthusiastic about the unemployment numbers in a time of pending layoffs at major companies as well as the U.S. Postal Service. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been offering the full picture regularly, but that the data has been presented in an overly positive light. For example, on January 5, 2012, Market Watch posted the headline, “U.S. jobless claims fall 15,000 to 372,000,” and pointed to the data as suggesting “gradual improvement in weak labor market”.

A similar spin was provided to the jobs reports issued on Market Watch throughout December, 2012. Unfortunately for American workers, these and other reports in the business sector media failed to include the full picture. Layoffs that were initiated in early December, for example, were not yet included. They have now clearly been added in, and that should have been anticipated by editors and writers at Market Watch and other news outlets.

The government reporting agency is constantly correcting and updating the numbers. We appreciate the fact that Steven F. Hipple of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, spoke with us to clarify this fact and put things in perspective for our listeners.

Interestingly, on January 13, 2012, Market Watch reported an “August-data rewind” claiming that the American people had panicked unnecessarily over information that seemed to indicate a U.S. recession had begun. For Market Watch’s “First Take” page, Rex Nutting claimed that the “Philly Fed change[d] its tune” and had offered a better report. (Here we go again?) ———————————————–

December 30, 2011

There has been an inflating of the US success story on jobs at market news sites like Market Watch (Murdoch site, published in Israel) and CNN Money as well as Nightly Business Report, PBS. We go beyond the headlines about improvements to talk about the reality of what the numbers mean. Also, there has been little or no mention of the problem of corporations and Wall Street investing in health care as a core reason for inflated costs for both health care and health care insurance. Health Care For All activist Dr. Margaret Flowers talks about the crisis provoked by Wall Street speculation in health care stocks, and points out that by getting Wall Street out of health care it would be much easier to make it affordable.

TRT: 29:16 music fades
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
Music of Fritz Heede, plus clips: NPR, David Rovics
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here and at Radio4all.net and Archive.org

We hear from Dr. Margaret Flowers, a congressional fellow with Physicians for a National Health Program (here) and a pediatrician based in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Flowers has been provoking national debate on health care with her protests at Congressional meetings in Washington D.C. and at meetings where health care corporations were discussing ways to make more money on Wall Street. Dr. Flowers has pressed the issue through protests at these events, and has gotten her views across despite the lack of an invitation. She was arrested on several occasions. She also talks about the data in the October2011.org Occupied Super Committee report on health care.

First, we go over the past few months of news on the way new unemployment claims have been reported. In many cases news outlets used a slight decline in weekly claims to argue that unemployment rates were falling dramatically. The information appears to have helped volatile stock markets recover, but was it true? As we learn, much depends on who is counting, and what data gets included in the reports. It had been widely reported that the US unemployment rate fell to 8.6%, a drop from last year. But we were skeptical. So we turned to Steven F. Hipple of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for answers. We soon learned that the numbers were not inclusive enough. “When you add these marginally attached, again that was about 2.6 million people, when you add that into the unemployment figures we call it U5 the actual rate would be 10.2% and that is published each month.” Furthermore, large numbers of unemployed had not been included in the figures being used during November and December of 2011. (See U5 chart here. )

We also mention a report from CNN.com December 30, 2011 where a negative set of numbers on new unemployment claims is made to seem positive.. (See: “It’s impressive to finally see unemployment claims fall below 400,000,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist with PNC Financial Services, who said that if there were a magic number for unemployment claims, 400,000 would be it.”)

Related pages and articles:

Democracy Now, May 13, 2009, Margaret Flowers and “Baucus’s Raucous Caucus: Doctors, Nurses and Activists Arrested Again for Protesting Exclusion of Single-Payer Advocates at Senate Hearing on Healthcare” Democracy Now, “Advocates of single-payer universal healthcare — the system favored by most Americans — continue to protest their exclusion from discussions on healthcare reform. On Tuesday, five doctors, nurses and single-payer advocates were arrested at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, bringing the total number of arrests in less than a week to thirteen. We speak with two of those arrested: Single Payer Action founder Russell Mokhiber and Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program.”

Quote: Margaret Flowers: “Our country has gone completely off track…. We have tried the traditional tools… We must stand together… the veterans are showing us the way.”

Photo at Flikr, Physicians take charge.

Jobs, Unemployment crisis, global factors:

America: U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, here. See Press Releases for weekly and survey of new unemployment claims information. Also this page for data.

UK Independent, International job loss, epidemic. See, Public sector job losses to hit 600,000 by 2016

Talk Nation Radio for December 23, 2011
Gregor MacLennan of Amazon Watch, Activists join Indigenous People of Peru in Challenging Big Oil Development Plan for Rainforest

Amazon Watch has issued a call to action to protect the Peruvian Rainforest in solidarity with the people who live there. We hear about what Talisman oil company has been doing lately in seeking to divide indigenous people and buy cooperation from a minority in the hopes that they will put pressure on the majority who oppose further oil development. PETITION here.

TRT: 29:00
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Archive.org and radio4all.net

Gregor MacLennan spells out the significance of the ongoing fight to stop massive oil development in the Peruvian rainforest. He and Achuar leader, Peas Peas Ayui, President of the National Achuar Federation of Peru (FENAP), have just returned from Calgary, Canada where they met with Talisman CEO John Manzoni to demand that the company respect the Achuar people, withdraw from their territory and cease insistent attempts to convince communities to sign agreements. We hear about an ongoing petition campaign and call to action for all who are concerned about preserving the Amazon’s rainforests. The Achuar previously delivered the same message to Mr. Manzoni in 2008 and 2010, but despite the Achuar people’s steadfast opposition to oil drilling, Talisman Energy continues its relentless search for oil, resorting to dangerous industry practices: Divide and conquer. attends annual meeting of Talisman Oil in Canada. People of world uniting against deadly advance of big oil across globe.

Prior to the push by Talisman Oil, the Peruvian Amazon was under oil development pressure from Occidental Petroleum. See more on the crisis caused by Occidental here and here. “Until very recently, flagrant pollution has been the norm. Oxy’s legacy of harm continues to be felt: the company’s reckless operations illegally dumped approximately 9 billion barrels of “produced waters” – which contain highly toxic substances such as barium, lead and arsenic – throughout 30 years of operations (averaging 850,000 barrels dumped per day). ” — “Adults and local children have tested positive for dangerously high blood-lead levels, and local residents cite countless tales of unexplained diseases, tumors, skin ailments and miscarriages from oil exposure. Fish and local game are not fit for consumption and fraught with contamination, and the soil is also no longer fit to produce the agricultural crops on which the Achuar depend for subsistence.” more here.

See Related Video here: Father Diego Clavijo, a Salesian missionary priest with Father Luis Bola working in northern Peru near the Ecuador border, with the Achuar and Wampisa indigenous peoples. We work with the Wampisa of the River Morona in Datem del Marañon province.

Also, we mention some headline news from the week of December 10-24, 2011:
Shell Oil Messes Off Two Coasts, By Julia Whitty, Thu Dec. 22, 2011 11:20 AM PST here

Brazil police seek Chevron oil spill charges, Brazilian police are seeking charges against employees from US oil company Chevron and drilling firm Transocean for their alleged role in an oil spill off the coast of Rio last month.
Police said environmental crimes had been committed. December 22, 2011 here

New Leak found in Brazil, December 18, 2011 “A handout picture released in November by the Brazilian National Agency of Petroleum shows supply boats cleaning an oil spill around a Chevron platform operating in the Frade oil field in the Atlantic Ocean 120 km offshore Campos, northern state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Brazil slapped a $28 million fine on US energy giant Chevron Monday for an oil spill.” here See too, Chevron suit, freezing of assets, here from 12/15/11.

Shell oil spill off Nigeria likely worst in a decade, An oil spill from Royal Dutch Shell’s Bonga field near the coast of Nigeria is likely the worst to hit those waters in a decade, according to a government official. here

BP says Halliburton ‘destroyed evidence’, BP has accused Halliburton of destroying evidence that could be used to show that the US oil services company shares the blame for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. HERE

Brazil lawsuit against Chevron may scare investors, STAN LEHMAN, Associated Press, Updated 04:02 p.m., Friday, December 16, 2011, here

Photo from the Amazonwatch.org web site, drawing shows map of Achuar Region

Talk Nation Radio for December 14, 2011
UK Regulators Blind to Corruption in Banks: Journalist Ian Fraser on Financial Services Authority Failures

Bank corruption seems impossible to pin down on both sides of the pond, and there appears to be no improvements in sight as to any regulatory crack downs.

TRT: 29.00
Produced by Dori Smith in Storrs, Connecticut, USA
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Archive.org

Our guest is Ian Fraser, a UK based independent journalist who focuses on banks and the failure of the bank regulatory agency in the UK to tackle white-collar crime.

The Financial Services Authority, or FSA, has not been rooting out crime, he writes, but deals with corrupt bankers by banishing them from working in their chosen field. The punishment is often handed down in exchange for the FSA stopping their investigations.

In both the US and EU countries, there are discussions about austerity measures that will impact the 99% but neither Congress or EU leaders and bank regulators seem willing to take measures to stop corruption or put any of the burden for problems in markets on the world’s richest 1% who are constantly speculating in the markets as they rely more on money to make money, than industry. At the end of today’s interview we hear clips from NPR and CNBC as the top tier of 1 Percenters defend themselves against an onslaught of support for The Protester, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2011. (length 1.5946 sec.)

We discuss the failure of the FSA to address criminal activity at banks like the Royal Bank of Scotland and others. In both the US and UK there is continuing confusion as Congress and Parliament tries to absorb the details of what happened to the missing $1.2 billion dollars that took flight from the MF Global fund. Independent investors are sustaining serious losses as no one at these companies seems willing to cooperate in saying where the money went.

This week’s Special Insight: The Contrary View: A Talk Nation Montage of sounds of the 1% trying to Defend Themselves as the defenders of the 99% — “The Protester” — becomes the “Person of the Year” at Time Magazine. (see file 2 at Pacifica’s audioport for a 1:5946 min clip that may be used in your programming for a timely update on the global impacts of Occupy Wall Street et al.

Postscript: Will Royal Bank of Scotland’s Fred Goodwin face charges after all. More here by Ian Fraser.
Relevant Links: RBS: Inside the Bank that Ran out of Money, November 21st, 2011, A documentary Ian Fraser worked as senior researcher and lead consultant. Air Date for BBC2 nationally, December 5th. One-hour BBC film charting the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland, starting with its £21bn acquisition of NatWest in February 2000 and ending soon after its ignominious near-collapse and bailout by the British taxpayer in October 2008.
CLIPS: Income Gap Becomes Politicians’ Latest Battleground, NPR, November 4, 2011. CNBC Has Occupy Wall Street Had its Day? here.

Talk Nation Radio for December 8, 2011

Ellen Brown is author of the book Web of Debt, ‘Web of Debt, the Shocking Truth about our Money System and how we can Break Free’. She is chair and president of the educational non profit think tank, the publicbankinginstitute.org. Look for her online at webofdebt.com. We hear about options that states and counties have for starting their own US banks that could change the entire equation, reducing the power and influence of giant banks and helping solve the US debt crisis. We also talk about Occupy Wall Street groups taking on banks with organized efforts toward founding state and county banks, plus home foreclosure solutions involving use of eminent domain. (Ellen Brown’s book is available online here, you can read the intro. and or listen to it in audio.)

Produced by Dori Smith in Storrs, CT
Download at Pacifica here or free at Archive.org (and Radio4all.net when they are back up and running)
TRT: 29:00 Minutes, normalized to 90%, 128 MP3 air quality.

Ellen Brown joins us to talk about the world’s financial markets and the impact of problems with the world’s banks. 2011 has been an astonishing year for monitoring global markets. There have been 500 to 1000 point changes over less than a few weeks time and volatility has been consistent in Asia, North America, and Europe. During September through December we’ve seen news about the US and Eurozone debt crises push markets to some extremes. We look at the way banks and financial institutions have been the unexpected beneficiaries of the volatility in spite of weakness that prompted ratings agencies to downgrade them. When the Eurozone debt bail out fund was also downgraded, it would have seemed that markets could be expected to fall, however, they rose instead on the “hope” generated on news web sites about markets such as Market Watch, a primarily Murdoch owned, News Corp outlet published in Israel.

Ellen Brown’s story, ‘Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wall Street Money Machine’ was published in Huffington Post on Dec. 7, 2011, where she examines Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke’s response to reports of very low interest loans to banks that were undisclosed. Even as her report was coming out, the European Central Bank and Federal Reserve was allocating dollar loans to EU countries at extremely low interests of from a quarter of a percent to 1 percent or so. (See the ECB web site on the loans here.)

Relevant News and Information for November 2011

Governor Scott Walker was touting the benefits of public private endeavors also known as privatization when he was challenged by activists with a Mike Check.

Download at YouTube here

In the video protesters can be heard to chastise Walker for accepting funding from Koch.

Also Video Exposes Koch Brothers’ Role In Spate of GOP Voter Suppression Laws

– Guest blogged at Bradblog.com by Ernest A. Canning

Last September The BRAD BLOG, unlike the corporate-owned media, offered detailed coverage of a U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights hearing on the spate of GOP voter suppression laws (PART 1 and PART 2).

Now, Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films has produced a powerful video that exposes the Koch-funded assault on your democracy, along with a petition that you can sign demanding that the Eric Holder-led Department of Justice live up to its name…

VIDEO, FULL STORY here at Bradblog.com

Talk Nation Radio for November 24, 2011

The Politics of Pepper Spray and Tear Gas from Egypt to America
David Swanson, Kevin Zeese, Nathan Brown, UC Davis (ABC News Photo, story here, made in America tear gas canisters found in Egypt. See also, here Egypt protests and Arab Spring: Nov 24, 2011).

Download MP3 128 K here: http://ia600803.us.archive.org/0/items/ThePoliticsOfPepperSprayFromEgyptToAmericaDavidSwansonKevinZeese/2011-11-23-DavidSwanson-Kevi-Zeese-Nathan-Brown-UC-Davis.mp3 and for other formats go to Archive.org

Produced by Dori Smith in Storrs, CT
TRT: 29:15
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org
Clip: The Guardian’s Jack Shenker in Cairo 11-19-2011, from this story (Egypt: violent clashes in Cairo leave two dead and hundreds injured, Egyptian security forces open fire on thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square, leaving two dead and more than 600 injured.Monday 21 November 2011 13.44 EST)

Protests around the world have been met with increasing force from police and military from Tahrir Square in Egypt to the campuses of Berkley and UC Davis in California. One of the biggest concerns is the use of tear gas, and American students and their teachers and parents are speaking out against the heavy use of pepper spray by police who were called in to disperse peaceful student protesters. Their refusal to leave led police to get out their pepper spray and go back and forth across a row of seated young people, spraying the toxin directly into their faces again and again. In the video it is obvious that none of the students were offering any resistance, they were sitting there with eyes squinted shut stoically.

A petition by Professor Nathan Brown who teaches English at UC Davis has been gathering momentum. According to Brown, police not only went back and forth spraying pepper spray into the faces of students, they also sprayed pepper spray into their mouths after forcing them open. The scandal has rocked the campus and parents and students are deeply traumatized.

As we hear from Brown though, the main story of tuition hikes and privatization is being overlooked. (See detailed links below.)

Students and professors at UC Berkley and UC Davis campuses in California say they feel terrorized by police. Students and professors alike have become the target of what our guest Professor Nathan Brown calls police brutality. Brown also says the problem is in the way private money is pouring in. There are tuition hikes planned, and students are facing what appears to be an 80% rate hike. Ultimately the added revenue may not even be used for educational purposes, and all of this is happening at a time when students and their parents can ill afford to pay high tuition fees, and there is little or no certainty that a job is awaiting graduates.

As we hear in the interview, students were protesting both the treatment of other students at Berkley, and the fact that the new fees for tuition could be used to back construction bonds. (We will try to get the content transcribed this week. See below for an open letter that serves as a sample letter to the American manufacturer of tear gas Combined Systems, their product was shipped to Egypt. Also we’ll link to information about companies which manufacture pepper spray.)

Nathan Brown’s research and teaching focus is on 20th and 21st century poetry and poetics, continental philosophy, and science/technology studies. He is in the English Dept. at UC Davis. His petition calling on UC Davis Chancellor Katehi to resign had about 73000 signatures as of noon November 23rd.

Activists David Swanson and Kevin Zeese also join us. They are in Washington D.C. where the Occupy Washington DC movement has been joined by Occupy Wall Street protesters (Occupy the Highways) who walked from New York to the nation’s capital. Kevin Zeese joins us from a protest under way at the Hart Building calling attention to the reality that the Super Committee could have addressed the deficit through easy steps were it not for political gridlock in Congress. See video here.

Protesters are expected to turn out in large numbers on December 6th for a day of action for the Occupy Wall Street movement over Foreclosures. The group pointing out that nowhere is this disparity of wealth and power more evident than in the struggle to secure the human right to housing. See “Wall Street Goes Home” here.

See Petition below asking UC Davis Chancellor Katehi to resign, including the Davis Faculty Association and thousands more from the campus community

Press Release, Nathan Brown’s Petition Causing a Stir
November 22, 2011

David Buscho was sitting peacefully on a sidewalk, linking arms with other students in protest at the University of California at Davis. The disturbing video shows a campus police officer in riot gear calmly walk up to the students on the ground and attack them with pepper spray at point-blank range.

Occupy protests at other campuses have gone on peacefully, but UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi allowed her campus police to ruthlessly attack students who were sitting silently on the sidewalk.

UC Davis professor Nathan Brown gave a chilling account of what happened to David and other students: “When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats,” Brown said. “Several of these students were hospitalized.”

Now David is leading a campaign on Change.org demanding that Chancellor Katehi resign from the school for allowing her students to be attacked by campus police during a peaceful protest. Add your name to his petition now.

David has been active in his city’s protests as part of the national Occupy Wall Street movement. This month he and other students started an occupation of their campus, specifically protesting an 81% increase in tuition costs and rising student loan debts.
But just 10 days into their occupation, UC Davis police unleashed an attack on their own students. “Chancellor Katehi authorized excessive police force on students exercising their right to free speech on our own campus,” said David.

The UC Davis community won’t stand for it. In just 24 hours, more than 40,000 people have joined David’s campaign calling on UC Davis Chancellor Katehi to resign, including the Davis Faculty Association and thousands more from the campus community. Rather than consider resigning, Chancellor Katehi tried to downplay the event, merely asking a task force to prepare a report within 90 days. Now Chancellor Katehi is under huge pressure to step down for this attack, and your signature will help tip the scales.
Please sign David’s petition asking UC Davis Chancellor Katehi to step down for pepper-spraying her own students. Click here to add your name.

Background information on privatization of America’s universities, in particular state schools, corporations, why tuition keeps going up, and colleges becoming more in sync with the business world than academia: , research links recommended by Nathan Brown, 1.) Keeping California’s Promise, Samuels, They Pledged Your Tuition to Wall Street (summary), UC on Wall Street: Another Reason Your Tuition Goes Up, Bob Meister, President, Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) Professor of Political and Social Thought, here, UCSC Professor Charles Schwartz, UC Berkley here and here and Bob Samuels, Cal State Los Angeles, here and here.

Sample Letter to PA Tear Gas Company
To: JimMarth@combinedsystems.com
cc: mm@pointlookoutcapital.com

Nov. 22, 2011

We call on Combined Systems to cancel its sales to the military regime running Egypt and suspend any deliveries to those armed forces. It’s dictatorial rule violates all democratic norms. The regime killed thousands of people in January and over 30 in this last week. Huge amounts of your tear gas have been used in Tahrir Square against democratic forces. Photos of your shells are freely circulating on the internet. At least 3 people have been alleged to have asphyxiated from tear gas in the last week.

You should also consider legal consequences. You may be participating in crimes against humanity.

Stanley Heller
Chairperson
Middle East Crisis Committee
Woodbridge, CT

Live Stream of Freedom Riders, West Bank

As we start live feed they are paused for a battery check. There are soldiers on the bus with the group. Mazin Qumsiyeh formerly of New Haven’s Yale University is among the passengers. See www.thestruggle.org for further information.

Copy of Blog posts by Stan as of 9:15 AM EDT November 15, 2011

http://www.livestream.com/freedomriders

summary

9:03 heard “We are Palestinian Freedom Riders. We are not Getting down from this bus”

9:00 on the livestream 2800 viewers. Soldiers demanding ID”s

8:57 Amy20 livestream comment “Location: HIZMA CHECKPOINT. RIDERS REFURE TO LEAVE BUS. SETTLERS SAYING THEY ARE “ANNOYED” THEY CAN’T GET TO JERUSALEM – oh the irony.”

8:49 video feed stopped, this has happened before. Every once in a while a bit of video is shown from when they were waiting. It’s Mazin Qumsiyeh saing “Can you all move to the side please. Here comes the bus” Wierd.

8:45 Bus stopped 20 minutes ago, soldiers tried to force two from leaving the bus, but they refused. Israeli settlers on the bus frustrated with waiting are starting to leave the bus

8:30 a.m. EST Israeli police on bus checking ID’s, probably will arrest Palestinians and charge them with illegal entry to Jersualem

It’s live video of the Freedom Rider effort

The effort today is of Palestinians on the West Bank to ride the public buses. Buses in the West Bank part of Palestine/Israel are segregated. Palestinians are not allowed in the Jewish only settlements so they’re not allowed on the buses that travel to the settlements.

Furthermore only a tiny percentage are allowed into Jerusalem by any means.

Today’s Freedom Rider effort is simply people trying to get on a public bus in the West Bank and going to go to Jerusalem. It’s an echo of similar efforts in the segregated U.S. South and apartheid South Africa

Talk Nation Radio for November 9, 2011
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, Ct

Dr. Margaret Flowers on the Occupied Super Committee hearing for the 99% in Washington, D.C.
Kathleen Sharp on her book, Blood Feud, The Man Who Blew the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever. Please also see Naomi Klein on DemocracyNow! TV and Radio..about their victory in getting the White House to cancel immediate plans for the Keystone oil pipeline TransCanada wished to build. It would have split the heartland of America in two, and presented dangerous environmental consequences. See: “The announcement was made just days after more than 10,000 people encircled the White House calling on President Obama to reject the project, the second major action against the project organized by Bill McKibben’s 350.org and Tar Sands Action. In late August and early September, some 1,200 people were arrested in Washington, D.C., in a two-week campaign of civil disobedience. “We believe that this delay will kill the pipeline,” says the Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein. “If it doesn’t, if this pipeline re-emerges after the election, people have signed pledges saying they will put their bodies on the line to stop it.” Klein notes that, “I don’t think we would have won without Occupy Wall Street… This is what it means to change the conversation.” Klein.

Coming up soon on Talk Nation Radio, upload today. Also please see the live stream of Occupied Super Committee here:

OccupyWashingtonDC to hold Occupied Super Committee Hearing for the 99%
Wednesday, November 9th at 11:00 AM
Mult box will be available for the media
Washington, DC: OccupyWashingtonDC.org will hold a hearing on the economy for the 99% that will examine how to create a fair economy for all Americans.
he Occupied Hearing will contrast with hearings on Capitol Hill which are destined to enrich the 1% and protect major donors.
he Occupied Super Committee Hearing for the 99% will examine critical issues facing the economy and the federal budget. The hearing will include testimony from people with great understanding of the issues facing the country as well as comments from the 99% who are directly affected by the economy.
One week after the hearing, OccupyWashingtonDC.org will put forward proposals that should be enacted to fairly fix the economy — these proposals should not be considered our demands as our demands are much more transformative than a short-term fix of the economy and budget.
Participants include:
Kevin Zeese an organizer of Occupy Washington, DC and co-director of It’s Our Economy and co-chair of Come Home America will discuss what the Super Committee is, where their campaign funding comes from and the limited policy choices they are considering. He will also describe why OccupyWashingtonDC is holding its own Occupied Hearing.
Andrew Fieldhouse of the Economic Policy Institute will discuss how to raise revenue through changes to the tax structure to create a more fair and progressive tax system that will raise sufficient revenue and help close the growing wealth divide.
Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives will testify how to transition to a military and foreign policy that is more cooperative, uses more conflict resolution techniques and dramatically reduces military spending.
Kenneth Peres is an economist with the Communications Workers of America. Formerly, he served as economist for the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, the Montana House Committee on Economic Development and the Montana Alliance for Progressive Policy. Ken has held teaching positions at the University of Montana, St. John’s University, Chief Dull Knife College and the City University of New York.
Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research will examine the solvency of Social Security, how we can improve it and provide Americans with a secure retirement through lifting the tax cap and raising the payment levels to make it more fair and combat poverty.
Margaret Flowers an organizer of Occupy Washington DC and congressional fellow for Physicians for National Health Program will testify as to how national improved Medicare for all will benefit the economy, provide health care to all Americans and improve health care.
Gar Alperovitz a noted author and with the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives will describe steps that the 99% can take right now to transition to a more democratized economy that gives individuals greater influence over and benefit from the economy and weakens the corporate stranglehold on the political process.

The hearing will be open to the press and public and will be live-streamed on www.OccupyWashingtonDC.org.
—
For Immediate Release
October 12, 2011

For Further Information:
press@october2011.org
Kevin Zeese 301-996-6582
Margaret Flowers 443-759-4635

Talk Nation Radio for November 4, 2011
Leah Bolger of VFP Occupies Super Committee, Activist arrested for second time occupying DC Hearings

Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT, syndicated with Pacifica Network
TRT: 29:00

Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here as 90% normalized, loud for radio but may distort in LPFM or Netcast. Pacifica affiliates and stations see non normalized version at same URL.
Or here as standard Mp3 version or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org

Our guest is Leah Bolger, Vice President of Veterans for Peace and former U.S. Navy Commander.
On October 26, 2011 she stood up at the meeting of the so-called Super Committee, or Deficit Committee, to make the case for cuts to military spending. Leah Bolger is from Oregon and she testified before the state legislature there. For the federal hearing, she was not an invited witness, and she was arrested. She explained her action in an OPED published by OPED News, November 3, 2011. Leah Bolger is Vice President of Veterans for Peace and a former U.S. Navy Commander. She hails from Oregon, and more recently, the encampment at Freedom Plaza, Washington D.C. You can read her oped titled, What I Told The Supercommittee, At OPED News or go to OccupyWashingtonDC.org and October2011.0rg. New plans include an Occupied Super Committee event for the 99% on November 9th

Andrew Fieldhouse, Economic Policy Institute will discuss tax policy
Carl Conetta Project on Defense Alternatives on military spending
Margaret Flowers, Physicians for National Health Program on health care
Gar Alperovitz on ways the 99 percent can start democratizing the economy now.

From the October2011.org and OccupyWashingtonDC.org Press Release: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce — which the occupiers call the “lead corporate bully” — with a focus on the military-industrial complex and the need to dramatically cut spending on weapons and war. Earlier in the week the Chamber was shut down by the Occupy Movement for the second time for its advocacy of more foreclosures. “At a time when the economy is suffering the after effects of the housing bubble bursting, it is time for the government to stop foreclosures, require mortgages reflect the real value of homes — not the housing bubble values and make sure that the collapsing housing market stops dragging down the economy,” said activist Kevin Zeese. The Chamber was also shut down on the first day of the Freedom Plaza occupation, October 6, in a jobs protest.

Related News: Income Gap becomes Politicians Latest Battleground: November 4, 2011, NPR’s Mara Liasson reports that “GOP strategist Ed Rogers thinks Republicans need to offer their own solutions to the widening gap between the rich and everyone else, which he believes is a real problem. “The answer to income inequality isn’t to confiscate [from] the few and spread out among the many,” he says. “They tried that in Havana. They tried that in Moscow. It hasn’t worked. “The solution is to build a bigger pie where more people get a bigger slice.”
Observation: If the “pie” grows in 2012, U.S. and foreign investors seem fully capable and well placed to take whatever gains in size may be accomplished. That at least is what they have done year after year for the past few decades.

Talk Nation Radio for October 20, 2011
Occupy Wall Street and October2011 Protest Closes Citibank, D.C.
Kevin Zeese, on Citibank, BOA, and Withdraw your Money Day
We continue our coverage of the Occupy Wall Street and October2011 movements as the national effort to hold Wall Street, Government, and the Banks, accountable. The group in D.C. is protesting record profits made at the expense of human needs. Press spokesperson Kevin Zeese has been on site at Liberty Plaza and Citibank in Washington, D.C. and we reached him as he had just exited the bank to rejoin some 45 protesters outside. This after their action closed the Citibank branch at 14th and G Streets NW, Washington, D.C. Plus portions of a audio from a videotape of Dr. Margeret Flower’s taking on investors who push up health care costs. (More info. here)

TRT: 29:00
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
Music by Fritz Heede
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org

Kevin Zeese, J.D. is a lawyer from Baltimore, MD with more than 30 years experience of writing, speaking and advocacy across a broad range of issues around peace, justice and democracy. His recent organizing efforts include the Sounds of Resistance concert and protest against Bank of America and Stop These Wars/Expose the Lies/Free Bradley Manning last December and March. He is the co-director of ItsOurEconomy.us,the director of ComeHomeAmerica.us, and on the steering committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network. He also serves on the boards of Velvet Revolution and Common Sense for Drug Policy.

See also regular Press Releases like this one:

Press Release from Kevin Zeese, PM 10-20-2011 Update
See video here or here or http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/october2011-movement-closes-citibank-protest-record-profits-made-expense-human-nee
October2011 Movement Closes Citibank to Protest Record Profits Made at the Expense of Human Needs

By Kevin Zeese – Posted on 20 October 2011
For Immediate Release
October 20, 2011

Contact:Press@october2011.org
Freedom Plaza Occupation Shuts Down CitiBank
(Video will be available soon.)

Washington, DC – A group of 40 protesters marched to the Citibank, a subsidiary of Citigroup, at 14th and G Streets NW this morning to protest the announcement of the seventh consecutive quarter of massive profits while the economy continues to collapse. The protesters succeeded in shutting the bank down.

Six protesters, including a video team remained inside the building, protesting the tax avoidance by Citibank through off-shore tax havens, continued foreclosures, choking the economy by not making loans, usury credit card rates, low pay of bank tellers while exorbitant pay for executives. Police have been called to the scene.

Leah Bolger, an October2011.org organizer who is a vice president of Vets for Peace said: “Citibank needs to be held accountable for its role in collapsing the economy and profiting from that collapse. As the largest recipient of bail out dollars, Citibank owes the American people and needs to stop foreclosures now, re-make mortgages so they are consistent with true housing values and stop avoiding taxes.”

Citigroup, one of the nation’s largest banking and investment firms, reported yesterday that their quarterly earnings are up $3.8 billion, 74% higher than a year ago. Citigroup continues to foreclose on mortgages. They hold back loans to small businesses and consumers. They choke the economy while they are profiting massively.

“This is a slap in the face to the average American who earns miniscule interest rates on the money they have in Citigroup banks, are unable to obtain loans and mortgages, and are being forced to pay all sorts of fees and charges just to access their own money,: said Kevin Zeese of October2011.org. “The sweetheart settlement with the SEC announced today is an insult. Citigroup profits $1 billion from selling fraudulent derivatives and gets fined $285 million.”

Citigroup’s profits are typical of the banking industry in general who accepted billions in bailout loans from the American people, yet now seem to think that the money belongs to them personally.

Here is a list of complaints against Citibank:
1. Citigroup has paid ZERO corporate taxes for the last four years.
2. Citigroup has 427 subsidiaries in foreign tax havens to hide their profits.
3. Citigroup was the LARGEST recipient of federal bailout money– $476 billion.
4. CEO John Havens receives $9.5 million annually, while paying their tellers $12.65 an hour.
5. Citigroup just posted a 3rd quarter net profit of $3.8 billion, a 74% increase over last year.

October 26, 2011, Video of Leah Bolger of Oregon, Vice President of Veterans for Peace, occupying Freedom Plaza, as shown on Cspan.

Letter to the 99%, Inclusive
From, Dori Smith, Talk Nation Radio

What is going on within the big tent of OccupyWallStreet is transforming us as individuals and as a nation. The calls of the 99% mean a lot to me personally, and I feel compelled to say how much. I want to join this human chain of loving beneath the big tent of the majority. I am the 99% (London (NY Police, discussion about protests lasting 24 hours in Washington Sq. Park)..more below, OWS videos..

Storrs, CT — How ironic that U.S. police in major cities have decided to focus on Occupy Wall Street’s tents. In fact, the 99% could well have the biggest tent of any mass movement in U.S. history. And it’s growing in quantum leaps and bounds. Yet, police chiefs in cities like Trenton, N.J., and Hartford, Connecticut, have been fixated on the use of tents by protesters in Turning Point Park near the train station and beautiful Bushnell Park, Hartford.

“You must take down your tents and leave by dawn!” Hartford police insisted, adding; “you cannot use tents, just sleeping bags”. Do they want these courageous democracy squatters to catch colds? It’s autumn! Meanwhile, as police issued demands, local TV channels began their news coverage with the following phrase: “Hartford is still occupied”. Perfectly extraordinary, and in Manhattan people have been inspired to support the protesters at Wall Street in any way they can. They are sending in everything from soup to socks.

So let’s be realistic. You can’t ask America’s 99% who are camped out overnight through cold and rain to give up the tents that are keeping them warm at night. That would be a health risk. (See Hartford Allows Protesters to Raise Tents CTNEWSJUNKIE.COM. In fact, let’s start collecting all of the unused tents in our attics and basements and find a way to offer them to the occupiers. Any tents not taken on a given day can be passed along to the homeless who are camped out in other locations all over America. And let’s keep both populations strong because America needs them: The most poor, and tired, and the most articulate, and energetic, are now of profound importance. They are calling world attention to the crux of a problem that has crippled America for decades. They call attention to the needs of the majority, which must be a priority in any true democracy.

The crowds occupying liberated sites at Wall Street in New York City or in Washington D.C., Boston, Seattle, New Haven, and countless other places, are beneath a virtual tent in my mind. The Occupy Wall Street movement and the October 2011 organizers have set up the tent poles, supporters like me online have provided the ropes, and America is pulling this tent up ever higher as more and more people understand what is being created on their behalf, and start to support it. If you want to know what kind of people are huddling close within this virtual tent just look at the videos:

Occupy Michigan, Nurses here, Patch Adams at Freedom Plaza, Dr. Cornel West and 16 Others Arrested Protesting Corporate Power video, He carried a sign that said, “Poverty is the Greatest Violence of All.” He was arrested because holding political signs on the Supreme Court steps is illegal. Occupysesamestreet scolds Ruppert Murdoch International Day of Action against The Banks! Dr. Margaret Flowers Confronts The Real Death Panels, posted 10/13/2011, by Sam Husseini, Wall St. Comes to DC Healthcare Conference, Flowers takes on JPMorgan, Citigroup and Citi-InvestmentResearch, who have come to Washington, DC to discuss how investors can profit in the health care system at ‘Wall Street Comes to Washington DC conference’. See her on Bill Moyer’s Journal here, #ows #occupyDC (twitter world of #OccupyTogether) I AM NOT MOVING film, Originally Uploaded by CoreyOgilvie on Oct 10, 2011, (Flashmob Congress, October 2011..unfurling banner, ‘At least six demonstrators were arrested inside the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington DC on Tuesday. The protesters surged in and chanted slogans for about 15 minutes before officers intervened.” Photos: Defending OWS, provided to us via Facebook by Ann Wright. OWS, How to solve the economic crisis, cut the war machine “Wall Street and the military have been aligned for years”… Mother Jones: Exclusive video, arrests at Wall Street video here. People singing This Land is Your Land..”I am Troy Davis” activists at MLK Jr Memorial in DC, CITIBANK arrests, 20 people trying to withdraw money from accounts at ATM. Note for radio stations, one use of profanity end, about 2:10) TheStruggle at OccupyWallStreet, video, We Are the 99% Faceoff at 55 Wall St., and Reader Supported News video. There are many more such videos and we will update this list. Feel free to send us your links to videos at talknationradio@gmail.com. Thanks. UPDATE arrived: Video, via Kevin Zeese, violence continues, more here, Talk Nation Radio response: Beating drums, playing the horns, are not violence, where is the crime officer? RT video, Europe, occupy movement, From Dwayne Henry, 24, videographer, photographer. Pogo, Principle, Occupytogether.org, News, News live stream, Video of General Assembly, Bloomberg Backs Down, Brookfield Properties backs down roars.. Homeless Sleeping in Tents, via Occupy Colorado Springs

CORPORATE MEDIA CAN’T DEFINE THE 99%

Yes, there is a certain amount of anger. Still, an utterly new kind of peace and warmth is being created by the ever widening crowd as together they demonstrate increasing unity of message. There is unity in democratic process; its very existence is a unifying force; disagreement does not preclude the unity because it is a process. So long as there are always openings for discussions, this is a movement that holds promise in the larger effort to make America’s political system more just. The Tribune media’s or other conglomerations of corporations do not provide their message. Listen more carefully and you too will find a way to truly hear what is being said from beneath this big tent operation. As winter approaches though we have to huddle together more closely in our common cause of caring about one another, and taking care of our democracy as a united force. We can stay warm by singing or calling out at general assemblies. And within this unique model, we can work to keep on sharing actions and ideals as we issue regular calls to those of us who may not be able to sleep outside regularly.

Not everyone will have been with this amazing group of people from the beginning, but the beauty of recognizing the differences between the 99% and 1% in America today, is that it is impossible to mistake who we mean by that. In that sense the virtual tent has room for an infinite number of people including bloggers, factory workers, veterans, bus drivers, writers, singers and dancers, environmentalists, educators, nurses and doctors. The 99% are occupying the streets, and the Internet, as together they spark change in newsrooms and editorial boards and at schools and universities as well as in government offices and union halls. They are the topic of conversation at the U.S. Postal Service office, as well as in the mall, and at the PTA meeting. In short, what is going on within the big tent is transforming us.

The Joining in Process

The calls of the 99% mean a lot to me personally, and I feel compelled to say how much I want to join this human chain of loving beneath the big tent of the majority. My own sense of myself tells me that I can hope to offer the occasional idea. Health issues may limit my travels, but I can share my thoughts online and in my radio show airing weekly on Pacifica affiliate stations and LPFM and Netcasting as well as community and public radio. I loved this from Chris Hedges Oct. 17, 2011, A Movement Too Big to Fail Truthdig

DANCE, AND SPIN THE SPIN, EXPOSE THE ONE PERCENT

In the meantime, help people who are losing jobs and protesting the high cost of MidEast war just as you would help victims of a hurricane or flood. It is the right path for Americans to be on to strengthen their own economy.

Ideas Welcome — or so we heard from a newly elected Barack Obama. Have we not all had good ideas since he asked us for them? Has he been listening? As just a few ideas I’ve had, what if we all agreed to offer a 99 cent donation to build an anti foreclosure fund? In all U.S. states the money could be used to help people stave off foreclosure, or even buy back homes that will otherwise be sold to real estate speculators and investment groups on Wall Street. We can ask Governors like Malloy in Hartford, CT to fund students and those losing their homes directly, and not seek to get major corporations to “invest” in universities here. We know where that ends. Higher tuition! Just build the funds directly with the help of the people. So, what if we signed a petition to donate 99 cents to sponsor a people’s jobs program? Each state could set up their own that would make sense under the specific conditions they face. What if we all sent a letter via U.S. Mail service on the same day with a message to Postmaster General across the back of the envelope…we could say, ‘we are the 99% and we want to keep our post offices”! Countless hope filled what ifs come to mind. (Update, 10-17-11, Written prior to my knowing that donations were already arriving for OWS… now researching meaning anew..)

My husband Joseph noticed that worker run collectives could spring up even as businesses close their doors. Friendly’s Restaurants closing its doors? U.S. Gap stores closing? We can occupy them too! Set up a used clothing and home goods sales spot in your community, occupy a tag sale site of your own.

To say this is the most hope filled action I’ve witnessed in my lifetime would be a wild understatement. I’ve never wanted to ‘join anything’ before. The ad hoc spokespersons for the 99% have been a breath of fresh air for me, and a great example for all of us. They have been humble and unassuming about who they are and what it means to claim to be part of the 99%. Their moveable feast of ideas has come across as kind, loving, and deeply personal. They have expressed countless reasons for sacrificing their own comfort in an effort to refocus American debate and affix the target of concern on the real criminals. Who these criminals are is being systematically pointed out by protesters in the streets. Some of the more high profile protesters with recognizable names, like author/activist David Swanson, see October2011.org, Global Exchange/Code Pink organizer, Medea Benjamin, and VotersForPeace activist, Kevin Zeese, are reminding us about the connections between war, loss of rights at home, and runaway corporate power.

Dr. Margaret Flower’s, a pediatrician and Health Care for All activist, has zeroed in on another aspect of the core problem. Wall Street speculators are pushing up the cost of health care as they strip out profits from anyone who invests in it. If anyone in the media is still confused they can turn to these brilliant scholars as a resource for free.

Even as the corporate media has fixated on the so-called lack of “demands” the Occupy Wall Street movement has been systematically re-framing the American debate about what’s wrong with our economy. (See the Center for Media and Democracy, Free Press, Free Speech Radio News, and many more independent media sites here and here, to learn more.)

There are new kinds of conversations springing up in communities and even in the halls of Congress and the White House, where the voices of the original Wall Street occupiers still resonate. The new conversations include suggestions about ways to actually help the people who have been abused by Wall Street and U.S. corporations. Investigations have been opened into the banks that so cruelly foreclosed on Americans despite a lack of paperwork or accurate accounting. Charges are being brought where investment groups have illegally sold stocks using insider information. Challenges are being made to the health care for profit system, and Dr. Margaret Flowers occupied the microphone at a conference on health care investing with the staff of JPMorgan, Citigroup and Citi-Investment Research, in Washington, DC. A pediatrician who advocates for Health Care for All, Dr. Flowers interrupted their discussion on ways to profit from the health care system to tell them; ‘Wall Street has no place in health care. You are the criminals. You are the ones who are responsible for the deaths and suffering of tens of thousands by turning health care into a profit center rather than a system that provides for basic human needs.’ (see video below)

The protesters in tents or sleeping bags, the ones who have been hand cuffed and pepper sprayed, have been successful at turning global attention away from faux news, the ‘he said she said rhetoric factory’ that has been passing for a news media. They have shined a gigantic light on injustice and political corruption that is robbing the majority of Americans of their civil and human rights. We may have no future without the Occupy Wall Streeters and their growing support network! So let’s by all means allow them to have tents, and stay warm and healthy in whatever city they show up in.

Let there be Tents…in the parks, streets, at Wall Street and on Main Street, and Within Us

I would also like to lay claim to a virtual square in America. I’d like to envision a new place for me to stand on too. One refreshing spot for my own two feet to gather strength from the rest of the 99% who are here with me beneath the virtual big tent. To those of you who inspired me to say all of this, and who originally set up this moveable feast, I want to tell you how astonishing you are, how brave and how important in historical terms. Those of you who helped to spark this movement know who you are, and you knew all along that the problems America faces wouldn’t be summed up in sound bites or bumper stickers or tee shirts!

In the big tent of the 99% we can form a virtual human chain that is inclusive rather than exclusive. It is not a fence to keep others out, but a symbolic space where we claim ownership of the real estate and wealth and rights to have a say now about what to do with the national treasure that is within us, and within the U.S. The wealthy 1% thought may have believed that they robbed us of ourselves, that they stripped us down to nothing-hood. They didn’t! We never surrendered our country to them. They just thought we did. Thus, in order to essentially Occupy Myself and my square, even more effectively, I’ve decided to liberate my voice including my anger. At the same time, I’ll strive to be less judgmental of those who stand with me to say, “We Are the 99%” too. We do not have to share identical belief systems to embrace one another. Even to those who may have vehemently disagreed with me on the details of a foreign policy issue or human rights crisis, I say thank you for supporting this tremendous effort to take on this brutal system that oppresses us all.

We shouldn’t surrender our voices simply because the media and politicians have divided us at election time. Instead we can own up to less than perfect life stories, our failures and our successes, and recognize that the workers in malls, factories, schools, hospitals, and at loading docks, are with us! As are many in the media to include the photographers and news editors who have managed to strategically place photographs of Anonymous on page 1 of new sites online, even Rupport Murdoch’s News Corp publications. Ha!

This call you sparked at Wall Street’s Liberty Park, this virtual tent you helped set up, has already meant that media outlets have given more coverage to poverty in America and the world over the past month than they did over the past ten years. This call that is carried forth in the general assemblies you hold, and via the World Wide Web, and it has led to a bigger debate on whether or not to forgive student loan interest charges, or even sweep away student loan debt altogether to save a generation! Individuals with leadership skills have now been merging their voices with yours, and they are able to amplify yours nationally and internationally to the point that on this the 15th day of October, there are protests and occupations of stock markets, banks, and corporations in key cities around the globe. The chants are similar. “Banks got bailed out. We got sold out”. Though at some point we may have to acknowledge that others have different chants… it will be a cacophony of protest to the forces that are a threat to the majority’s rights to simply own property, have a secure bank account, enjoy home ownership, live without repression from government or police. Essentially, we share mutual outrage. In a technologically advanced age, far beyond the dark ages, we are living in feudal times again. A small fraction of society has been able to siphon off and pocket our money and our resources without restraint. A kind of lawlessness has set in as greedy corporations steal from all possible outlets.

Those of you who are in this greedy 1% and those of you who serve it by working on Wall Street or at the global banks, etc. may see yourselves very differently than the majority of people in America and the world see you. You are of course trying to buy the media, and dominate us, implying in your self-descriptions to the press that you are the ones keeping the world together. We see you as the ones who are cutting it up and digesting it, we see you as the ones who are using divisive tactics in an effort to try to dominate all conversations about the world’s wealth.

Writing for the New York Times, October 14, 2011, Nelson D. Schwartz and Eric Dash claimed that in “private conversations” those of you who define yourselves as “Wall Street bankers” have dismissed the protesters you see before you as “unsophisticated”. — “Who do you think pays the taxes?” a money manager asked the Times rhetorically. He dared to claim that, “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.” (Yikes!)

How pathetic that this individual believes financial services are being done well in America. I can’t speak for the Occupy Wall Streeters at large, however, I personally find that statement sad and utterly without merit. The 99% must pay the taxes while wealthy banks hire experts to find loopholes to get out of paying them. Banks and financial firms you see as successful may actually pay far less than those in the crowd at Wall Street’s door. Finally, you outsourced jobs in record numbers for decades before they showed up, and long before the OccupyWallStreet effort began. You are merely trying to blame your victims, the 99% who have been subsidizing your lifestyle. In so doing you reveal the extent of your vulnerability. (Poster shared on FB by Kirk Jackson, see also here for full scale.)

I can personally add however that in spite of any personal outrage I feel when such anti democratic and unfair comments are made, I can still be tolerant of you even if you are part of the intolerant 1%. You fear losing the vast wealth you stole from us. But you never stole us as people, and that’s what you instinctively see. You realize on an emotional level that we are in fact stronger and freer than you are. So if you choose to give up your isolation and take an interest in the humanity that is crying out against you in Freedom Park, Freedom Square, Freedom Plaza, and at liberated sites everywhere, I’ll listen and try to be welcoming. You too have a right to participate in a democracy, and share in the longer view of America and the world. You will be welcome if you chose to stand with those who agree that the majority, not the minority, should hold the wealth of a nation. In truth, fabulous wealth is not revealed on our faces. Neither is poverty, or even “sophistication”. Our differences are non-existent when we are on the street together. Historically those who try to defend corruption, the right to steal from society, tend to wind up alone. Society crushes such people eventually.

In many instances you may deserve prison. You may have represented death through the wars you have provoked in the interest of expanding your wealth and power. You have made the lives of millions of people excruciatingly painful by imposing an ever-growing poverty on them. Workers in major department stores, or service workers, are not being paid enough to live in America, but only enough to get by on a meager life. Those of you who hire, and fire, must know what you are doing to them.

On Wall Street you are able to use super computers to pillage from societies all over the globe in ever more expert ways. But even that does not make you more sophisticated than the Wall Street protesters. You may use algorithms to zero in on our IRA’s and savings accounts whenever we gain a dollar, you may be successful at stealing our money through stock manipulations, insider trades, and short selling tactics. Still, those tactics make you more like bank robbers than bank professionals. Nobody is trying to break in and steal your savings. Yet, you are working systematically day and night to steal ours.

$$$ You have robbed our retirement funds and pushed up the price of life saving drugs. You have isolated a whole nation from its elected representatives through the hiring of lobbyists who intentionally corrupt the democratic processes in congress and at the White House.

In media, you have sought to dominate the entire global press, elevating the pipsqueaks among us to the rank of pundit in chief. Now it is all coming undone, and the problem is the greed and hateful comments you seem to relish.
You are symbolically represented by Donald Trump, who joyfully fires people on TV in an effort to show how easy it is to dispense with anyone standing in the way of corporate success and “annual growth”. Finally, the standard corporate realm that has enriched you for generations was not enough. About forty years ago you began to force managed care systems on America, and began to reap big profits from our health care system. Your actions have pushed up our health care and food costs, as your Health care sector IPO offerings provide wealth for you, and devastating loss for those of us who must struggle to be able to afford even minimal healthcare.

Your constant hoarding of cash has artificially maintained the illusion that America can sustain an increasingly expensive lifestyle. (See WSJ, “A recent J.P. Morgan analysis of public companies that disclose their foreign cash holdings found that they held on to half of the cash they amassed overseas. Eleven companies, including Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., held foreign cash balances of $10 billion or more”.) In fact, a majority can no longer afford basic food, shelter and clothing costs. Still let me invite you to merge your interests with ours, with the 99%, just in the event you still have goals that have something to do with the reconstruction of American democracy. After all the courts you seek to buy influence over, and the prisons you have in many cases privatized, may wind up being just as unjust for you as they are for us under the right circumstances. When you give the “gift” of economic dictatorship, you reap the consequences of living in a corrupt system right along with us, as do your kids. (Homeless sleeping in tents, AP and video of police cutting up their tents here.)

(Click for message in photo from the 99%!) While you may be criminals in some ways, we are looking for justice for ourselves, and therefore for you. Should you not support us, your future is only meaningful to us in the sense that we get our justice now and that you eventually recognize that we deserve it. We live intertwined lives though. When you pollute, we suffer. When we protest, you are inconvenienced, or in some cases provoked into change. And while you are more comfortable most of the time, everyone opting in to the virtual big tent of Occupy Wall Street (Occupy Everywhere) can see that the best way forward is to pull together as a society to try to make a difference. This is the only sane response to an insane condition that has been imposed on us.

Overall those of us embracing the 99%, admitting we are in it, will find we have far more in common than not. Together, we must demand democracy before we lose the ability to obtain it altogether. In refusing to accept the notion that we are there already, we are taking a gigantic leap forward from where we were before. We want you to abandon the idea that your stealing property and resources from foreign societies, and your “claims” this is to enhance U.S. interests. We saw through that years ago, but government officials have thus far refused to restrain you at our insistence. Restrain yourselves before its too late for all of us.

None of us should be fooled now into thinking that different individual priorities mean insurmountable differences. We’ve moved far past that in a post Occupy Wall Street universe. We are not like Chevron Corporation. We don’t have to run a fraudulent “We Agree” campaign on Public Broadcasting Network to try to convince News Hour viewers of our good intentions. We know you poisoned people on various continents, including the Ecuadorean Rain Forest. Still, our good intentions are obvious. We don’t need to agree on all points. In fact, some of us will cry out against the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Palestine. Others will cry out on behalf of all of the world’s children from Somalia to Sudan, and from California, to Mississippi and Mexico. Some will claim to love coffee. Others tea. But as the 99% we have admitted that we are victims who are committed to no longer getting ripped off, falsely arrested, wrongfully imprisoned, fired without cause, misdiagnosed or made jobless hungry and homeless. We won’t live without complaint anymore, suffering on the other end of your greed tactics. Frankly, those of you in multinational world, the land of the 1%, have already stolen far too much of our precious time. You have unfairly occupied our lives by acting in ways designed to deny us access to the simple treasure that is our country, our forests, rivers and streams.

We have lost careers and educational opportunities. Some of us have lost the family farm. Others have lost much more in that we had to stand by and watch helplessly as family members, friends, and neighbors, suffered needlessly due to lack of proper health care. Some of our loved ones have died for lack of a good physician. (For Karin, and Dad). Therefore we cry out louder and louder each day that we will no longer stand by and watch with a feeling of pain and helplessness as those of you in multinational corporations, banks, even universities, who are part of or serving the 1%, spread chemical poison onto the fields we once so carefully tended. Those fields where our ancestors toiled in more honest forms of trade have been severely damaged by you, thus you have forfeited the right to even use them for now. We reclaim these lands and natural seeds as part of the national wealth, as the nation’s food crops. By overcoming your greed we can still have a positive impact on the environment you have been so careless about.

We have had our dreams interrupted. Now we are awake. We have had to watch as many of our leaders from the 1960s to 2012 were assassinated. We’ve suffered your rudeness and insults as ironically you spend billions on media and the Internet trying to get our attention. (Free Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Myspace, and Facebook!)

The ads that are purchased by those of you in the 1% are emotionally provocative, you can use babies, puppies or kittens, to grab our heart strings. Yet, we don’t need a new car every four years, just as we do not have to accept your artificially hiked up gas prices. Let the oil companies that have raked in huge profits pay a higher tax per gallon, NOT US. You have already snatched billions unfairly from us as you pushed up costs during summer vacations, and at times when demand fell or reserves rose. You have raised the price of gas even while cutting back our wages. Your corporate friends in the news spends more time selling products than reporting on the condition of America’s people. And through all of this we have only seemed to enjoy overwhelming access to media. The reality is that the 1% are working to dominate our access to the Internet. We may be online with millions but continue to live in forced isolation because your corporate run press ignores us.

Each year our elected representatives have pandered more to the wealthy and corporate 1%. Yet, today, because of Occupy Wall Street and all of the global occupation movements, we are learning to act together in standing up to you, the 1%. We will increasingly think in unison, and Occupy Ourselves, as we commit to our roles as members of the 99%, helping each other, demanding democracy. Get use to it. We will be reaching out to one another more and more each year, and we will reject your divisive tactics, until by 2024 we will have restored our voice at least, as we continue down the road toward restoring our democratic rights.

I want to include a message from a friend regarding Occupy Wall Street because while I do not agree necessarily that the left is victim to any readily identifiable “failures” as such, I do think its time for protesters to allow themselves to be publicly loved, and appreciated, by all, from Al Sharpton to Rep. John Lewis and others. That’s not to say anything about who to allow to speak, but more of a thought on allowing anyone who wants to promote, support, and defend, the rights of protesters to remain where they are safely, engage in peaceful protest and even civil disobedience where necessary, without fearing risk of physical or mental harm by police and other security personnel both public and private. Where people agree to that, and wish to say ‘I am the 99%” it seems to me anyway that it is beneficial to embrace all. Change is difficult, but if protesters remain true to their own voices without being deterred by anyone, their message will continue to get through. Sharpton, for instance, tends to be someone that the media has a short attention span for… there seems no way for him to dominate the OWS discussion from here. Lewis has worked out any process that may have left people feeling a sense of wanting to protect OWS from being politicized. His own statements made a lot of sense in that respect. But Lewis, a few others in Congress, may also pick up from where the group left off in making statements and demands about such matters as student loan debt, home foreclosures, homelessness, bank fraud and criminality on Wall Street in general.

No matter what happens tomorrow. Occupy Wall Street and its many affinity groups, has changed media. Network news editors saw that the arguments being made are immediately supported by the general public. And at NPR (not that I’m trying to go overboard in support for them but..) they’ve just reported on the problem of Wall Street speculators who bid up the price of commodities like corn. They are not seeking to purchase corn, but trade in it, thereby making it more expensive for anyone turning it into food. That is a good example of what is wrong on Wall Street and how it directly impacts societies all over the globe.

There are of course understandable concerns. But even where some may be trying to use the OccupyWallStreeters for their own agendas and purposes, the movement has to move beyond fear and worry about those who glom on or try to take over. It’s going to be OK, or not, (at different moments) depending on some of the very same forces who are opposed to this movement from within the fascistic power centers of Wall Street, the banking world, and certain realms of government. It is the People at large who need to care, and they will. They do care, and they see your presence as welcome, overdue, and necessary to their various challenges including job loss, cut backs in health care and retirement benefits, etc. AND they are all the 99%, we all are, all but the spiritually meager 1%…unless they convert, and join the 99% too.

Open Comment, October 2011, “How to prioritize our demands in the pursuit of “economic justice,” the agreed-on theme of the Occupy Hartford movement. “Here in an off-the-cuff format are some ideas for constructive engagement in the new OWS movement. Thanks to the social media – which I firmly boycott because of privacy concerns – the Occupy Wall Street movement is replicating rapidly under the heading Occupy Together. Santa Rosa is in. Lots of discussion about “demands” and “goals”. A recent NationofChange list fails to offer more than the most generic goal of empowerment. How? In what form? How deeply? I think lists of complaints – no matter how legitimate – are not useful unless accompanied by plausible alternatives. In fact, I think this is a huge failure of the Left; the endless litany of crimes and misdemeanors by those in power reinforces our sense of powerlessness. Today we should be demanding a public works program to put people back to work. That’s a goal that will appeal broadly to all those people desperate to regain some source of income, and to those who have seen family and friends suffering from unemployment. We should be demanding reparations from the banks and investment firms that got us into this mess with their exploitative financial manipulations. We should put our legislators on the spot with demands for specific local public works projects, federally funded because only the feds can create the funding. We should create a steady stream of media-oriented events to put forward these ideas. (In this regard I think the OWS folks are smart to act out in ways that the media can’t ignore, and they have to embed their messages within the theater.) We need people to run for local school boards and counter the erosion of critical thinking by supporting teachers who share this objective. We need to create and energetically support local institutions that exhibit the best of our principles: honesty, inclusiveness, sharing and caring”. (Anon)