Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: Rodney Brossart, American Arrested Using Predator Drone, Had Rights Violated, Lawyer Says. Bruce Quick, attorney for the first American arrested using an unmanned drone says his client was subject to “guerrilla-like police tactics.” Quick tells U.S. News that Lakota, N.D., resident should not have been arrested and that authorities had no legal right to use the drone to aid in his capture. Brossart was in a dispute with authorities over the ownership of six cows that had meandered onto his land. The Grand Forks SWAT team borrowed a Predator drone from the Department of Homeland Security. And during the Arab Spring, when tear gas and other chemical weapons were deployed against non-violent protesters, in some cases protesters died from exposure to the gas – especially when it was used in enclosed spaces.  Teargas has been used against Occupy Oakland protesters as well. Toxic chemicals are often banned in warzones, but permitted in order to control a state’s own citizens. And an Occupy Wall Street protester talks about why A Few Good Democrats Are Not Enough to change things. “Despite the hard work of our progressive allies, the unfortunate reality is that our political system, as presently constructed, is simply incapable of responding to people’s needs. The election of the most progressive Democratic nominee of the last 30 years and a Democratic supermajority in Congress resulted in relatively little change, even during a massive economic crisis. The Democrats’ inaction proved that our political system was designed to serve the whims of the market, and no politician has the power to do much about it.” And a family is fighting the federal government after it seized their bank account and took $70,000 of their hard-earned money. It seems the Sower family, who owns the South Mountain Creamery in Middletown, Maryland, is being prosecuted by the Department of Justice under the post-9/11 “Bank Secrecy Act”. The act makes it illegal to deposit less than $10,000 if you have deposits totaling more than that. Never mind the fact that it’s your money, the feds can literally freeze and seize your account if you don’t deposit your money in accordance with the federal governments new rules. See Government seeking more than $62,000 from South Mountain Creamery owners. In more farm news, a family farm in rural Michigan may be shut down by a Government entity who has passed a law stating that the breed of hogs they are raising are a threat to neighboring croplands and the farmer is accused of being a felon for raising these pigs. The Michigan Pork Grower’s Association is reportedly behind the law. See the video Bakers Green Acres vs. Michigan DNR – Family Farm Under Attack. For more information on how the government is attacking small farms, see the trailer for the movie Farmageddon. And on a lighter note, check out this great pro-Occupy interview on The Colbert Report, which averages 1.2 million viewers per episode!

Other Occupies/Protests: Occupy This Album, which is being heralded as “a compilation of music by, for and inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and the 99%” is set for a May 15 release by Music for Occupy with Razor and Tie. The majority of the four-disc physical and 99-track digital collection includes songs that have never before been released; Artists like Joan Baez, Patti Smith, Anti Flag and Jackson Browne share the tracklisting with musician and organizer Matt Pless, New Party Systems (featuring members of TV on the Radio) and many more. “Proceeds from the 4-CD Occupy This Album, will benefit the Occupy Wall Street movement,” according to the press release. More information available at www.musicforoccupy.org. Music For Occupy states: “Our Mission is to inspire and celebrate through music the Occupy Wall Street movement and the 99% who’ve been adversely affected by the economic corruption that has permeated our Democracy, created a near insurmountable disparity in wealth, and hindered life, liberty, justice and the pursuit of an honest living for all. Music For Occupy is in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, and all proceeds above board attained through the production and distribution of Occupy This Album: a compilation of music by, for and inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and the 99% will go directly towards the needs of sustaining this growing movement.” The album can be purchased for $9.99 at http://new.merchnow.com/products/141477 (don’t buy it from Amazon, which is charging $16.99 and has abusive labor practices!)

“The most violent element in society is ignorance.” Emma Goldman

Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: Federal agents announced on Tuesday that they successfully thwarted plans to blow up a bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. What was left out of most reports, however, was that the FBI was instrumental in plotting the potential attack. Police and court records reveal that three of the five suspects entrapped and arrested by the FBI in a supposed plot to blow up a bridge in Ohio suffer from mental health problems, according to a report posted today (click link for story) by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The organisation, money, weapons and motivation for this plot did not come from real Islamic terrorists. It came from the FBI, and an informant paid to pose as a terrorist mastermind paying big bucks for help in carrying out an attack. For  Alicia McWilliams, her own government had actually cajoled and paid her beloved nephew into being a terrorist, created a fake plot and then jailed him for it. “I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone,” she told the Guardian. See Fake Terror Plots, Paid Informants: FBI ‘Entrapment’ Tactics Questioned. For more, see Operation: Entrapment – Cleveland bomb “plot” masterminded by FBI agents. And scary news from Greece: A neo-Nazi party that wants work camps for immigrants is on course to win its first seats in parliament on Sunday. “When the doors opened, they came on to the bus and started to assault the non-Greek passengers. The attackers were wearing T-shirts from the right-wing extremist group Golden Dawn. While panicked people were trying to escape from the bus the men were hitting them with flagpoles. ‘They were beating people with the Greek flag,’ said Mr Roumeliotis. When the police arrived they stood off until the thugs had finished. When he asked the police why no one had been arrested one of the officers replied to him: ‘Why, did they do something to you?'” See Fascism rises from the depths of Greece’s despair. And: The GOP-led House’s version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) would not only strip away Senate-passed protections for undocumented, LGBT, and Native American victims, it also contains a dangerous provision that violates an undocumented victim’s confidentiality by allowing immigration officials to speak with, and ask for evidence from, his or her abuser. For more, see House GOP Would Let Domestic Abusers Know Their Victims Called For Help. And: on May 3, NYC Mayor Bloomberg released a budget that guts a wide array of services to the disadvantaged youths of New York City. But most stunning is his proposal to eliminate 160 of the city’s 250 youth shelter beds. How can he possibly think that an appropriate way to deal with budget challenges is to throw poor children out of their shelter beds and into the streets? For more, see Bloomberg Plans to Throw Homeless Youths Out of Their Shelter Beds.

Other Occupies/Protests: Psychiatric survivors prepare to occupy Canada’s largest psychiatric facility. On Sunday May 6 at 1pm, the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA) and Occupy Toronto are organizing Occupy Psychiatry, a non-violent action during which survivors and activists will occupy the front grounds of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) College Street Site at 250 College St near Spadina. And an Occupy Phoenix protester describes being Inside The Matrix: My Night In Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Jail: Arpaio’s jail is a very dangerous place. The list of deaths from beatings and Tasings by guards and medical neglect of inmates is long, depressing and has cost Maricopa County tens of millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements. The most recent wasMarty Atencio, a Latino Gulf War veteran who suffered from bipolar disorder and who was repeatedly Tased and choked by MCSO guards last December and then left alone in a cell to die. … Arpaio’s cruelty showed in every policy, from the freezing tanks with no place to lie down except on rock hard concrete without something as basic and decent as a blanket, to the crappy food and sick mind games played by the guards. It’s a system designed to beat down, dehumanize and punish those who have not yet even been convicted of a crime, all the while operating under the misguided belief that if they manage to inflict enough suffering, people will somehow never return.

“Law is often the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” Thomas Jefferson

Continue reading “Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5-6-12” »

Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: Feminist social critic Naomi Wolf, author of such books as The Beauty Myth and  The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, posted this link on her Facebook page: In a recent interview, private investigator Doug Hagmann said high-level, reliable sources told him the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing for “massive civil war” in America. “Folks, we’re getting ready for one massive economic collapse.” The story has been repeated on a lot of blogs – judge for yourself. For more, click here. For a related story from December 7, 2011, see Detention Camp Order Follows Preparations For Civil Unrest. According to a blog post from July 24, 2011, with similar information that links to another RT report: the Pentagon has announced plans to deploy a 20,000 strong internal troop force within the united states over the next two years civil unrest in the even of a catastrophic even such as a massive large scale terror attacks or economic collapse — thus, dovetailing into the current troop and equipment movements reported around the country reported by truckers and many more sightings by others. For the info, click here. For a related report from RT on the massive amounts of ammunition purchased by the US Department of Homeland Security and the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Office, click here. And: a number of remarkable things happened on May 1. So why is the media so bored with social protest? See The Four  May Day Stories the Corporate Media Missed While Fixating On Obama’s College Girlfriend. And Occupy protesters in Minneapolis claim officers are offering them drugs in exchange for telling them what’s going on with Occupy. The officers are all part of a training program run by the Minnesota State Patrol. For the story and video, click here. And a Republican political operative who spent three months in an American prison for making illegal political calls says that fraudulent calls in the last Canadian election are likely an American import. In his 2008 book How to Rig an Election, Allen Raymond tells the story of his 10-year political career, which ended abruptly when he was convicted of jamming the New Hampshire Democrats’ phone bank during a Senate election. Raymond, who now works in Washington as a lobbyist for a labor organization, suspects whoever made illegal voter-suppression calls in Canada in the last election likely learned their dirty tricks south of the border. For more, click here.  And on a lighter note: The 1998 Robert Smigel animated short film “Conspiracy Theory Rock,” part of a March 1998 “TV Funhouse” segment, has been removed from all subsequent airings of the Saturday Night Live episode where it originally appeared. Lorne Michaels claimed the edit was done because it “wasn’t funny.” The film is a scathing critique of corporate media ownership, including NBC’s ownership by General Electric/Westinghouse. See the video here.

Other Occupies/Protests: From the anti-austerity firebrands of Greece‘s imminent elections to the corruption crusaders in Prague, from the Pirates of Berlin to the populists who scored well in France’s presidential election, a new wave of anti-establishment parties are on the rise across Europe, posing a threat to the political elite. For more, click here. And on May 1, Oakland Police Fired Tear-Gas On Crowds That Included Children. For more, click here. And a federal judge ordered Oakland’s police department to submit a plan to address numerous unresolved complaints regarding their handling of the Occupy Oakland protests, warning that failure to comply within a week could lead to sanctions. District Judge Thelton Henderson’s mandate comes just a day after the release of a report by an outside monitor that concluded Oakland police used “an overwhelming military-type response” to Occupy’s demonstrations — the first official report to confirm Occupy Oakland’s struggles against police brutality. For more, click here.

“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” Charles de Montesquieu

Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: An American military document just uncovered appears to detail an U.S. Army plan that calls for detaining “political activists” at re-education camps staffed by military-hired “PSYOP officers” in both America and abroad. The document, entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations can be read here:
http://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-InternmentResettlement.pdf.  For more on the story, click here. While we’re on the topic: whatever you may think of former Governor Jesse Ventura, and I was never impressed with him myself, here is dramatic (some might say melodramatic) video footage of the FEMA camps – from his show appropriately entitled “Conspiracy Theory.” I certainly hope that’s all it is – you decide. And: this winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town. Read more here. And more scary food news: Unless the rice you buy is certified organic, or comes specifically from a farm that tests its rice crops for genetically modified (GM) traits, you could be eating rice tainted with actual human genes. The only known GMO with inbred human traits in cultivation today, a GM rice product made by biotechnology companyVentria Bioscienceis currently being grown on 3,200 acres in Junction City, Kansas — and possibly elsewhere — and most people have no idea about it. For more, click here. And in a study, scientists with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine tested chicken products sold by 15 grocery store chains in 10 U.S. cities for the presence of feces. A certified, independent analytical testing laboratory in Chicago, Ill., tested for the presence of E. coli as evidence of fecal contamination. Chicken products from every city and every grocery store chain tested positive for fecal contamination. Overall, 48 percent of chicken samples tested positive. For more, click here. And a new survey by the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) has found that police departments across the country are encountering more instances of domestic violence related to the poor economy, USA Today reports. Nearly three in every four domestic violence victims reported staying in an abusive relationship because they could not afford to leave, according the survey. For the story, click here. And apparently eugenics is still happening: Meet the Group That Gives Addicts Drug Money to Get Sterilized — and the Right-Wingers That Fund Them. For years, Project Prevention has been paying poor, addicted women not to procreate — now, with money from the far right, it’s going global. For more, click here.

Other Occupies/Protests: Massive May Day Turnout Highlights Media’s Disconnect from Reality. Tens of thousands of individuals taking to the street is a show of a “weak immigration movement,” according to Businessweek, or a “slow and soggy start,” if one were to consult the National Post on the matter. Most subtly, the New York Post published an article titled, “Goodbye, Occupy” that offered as much of an optimistic interpretation of the day’s actions as you’d expect. For more, click here. On May Day, Occupy London distributed thousands of roses and carnations. Attached tags read: “This flower is a May Day gift from Occupy London.  Please put it in water and enjoy it. There is something better out there.” Jane Bradley, who was giving out flowers at Liverpool Street, said: “People were matching the flowers to their outfits.  Others were coming up to us and asking for them.  Even the policemen ended up putting them in their lapels.  It’s crazy how something so simple can have such an enormous impact.  It was really moving.” For more, click here. And check out this fantastic photo essay of May Day signs from Occupy Love: click here.

“It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured under an incessant propaganda of fear.” General Douglas MacArthur

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Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

Stories of the Day: And I worry about germs on the T on a good day: Despite the fact that the U.S. government has a history of dangerous biological testing against the American people, the Department of Homeland Security claims that a bacteria it plans to release in the Boston subway later this year to test biological sensors are harmless to healthy people. “Federal officials say they test the subway sensors by releasing dead bacteria called B-subtilis. They say it is used in food supplements, has been rigorously tested and has no adverse health effects for low exposure in healthy people,” reports CBS News. What effect the tests will have on unhealthy people or those exposed to higher doses is unknown.The tests will be held in Cambridge and Somerville during off peak hours this summer, but not before a hearing on May 16, from 5:30-7:30pm at the Cambridge YMCA in Central Square, during which the public will be able to voice concerns and ask questions about the experiment. The bacteria will be released as a means of testing biological sensors that guard against the threat of a bio-terror attack. The DHS has released a 28-page summary entitled ‘Environmental Assessment for Bacillus subtilis Particles to Challenge Bio-Detection Sensors in Subway Stations’ (PDF). For the story, see the CBS News link above and for more information, click here. And lawyers on behalf of five elected officials and half a dozen members of the press filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging the City of New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the New York Police Department, Brookfield Properties and JPMorgan Chase are in violation of numerous civil rights, including the First Amendment right to free speech and assembly. The suit seeks redress for police misconduct during arrests made during the Occupy Wall Street protests and asks that a federal independent monitor be appointed to oversee the NYPD in order to safeguard the public. For more, click here. And why are fully-armed Minnesota National Guard troops patrolling the streets of a peaceful suburb? This is not only  another indicator of the uncertain times ahead, but also a revealing indicator of how worried the Feds are of a possible outbreak of civil insurrections across the nation. For a first-hand report, click here. And a former newspaper reporter with a college degree describes her Year on Food Stamps after her husband of 12 years left her (and their 2-year-old daughter) for another woman. Conditions for women have improved slightly over the last 20 years, but many areas still suffer from incredible inequality, violence and educational disparity. For more, see What the Rest of the World is Like for Women. And a series of Venn diagrams shows in painstaking detail just how corrupt our political system has become and the huge influence that Goldman Sachs continues to have. And a website called http://whatthefuckhasoccupydone.com/ lists the answers to the question of what Occupy has already accomplished one by one.

Other Occupies/Protests: Around 50 activists have occupied parts of the London Stock Exchange and Paternoster square as part of May Day protests in London. Members of the Occupy movement and Anonymous – better known for its online hacking activities – have also erected a number of tents inside the square which is privately owned and the subject of a previous court injunction banning occupation protests. For more, click here. And a coalition of unions from across Los Angeles made for L.A. International Airport on May 1 to engage in a nationwide general strike, calling for greater organizing rights and safer working conditions for the airport’s 4,000 non-unionized employees. About 1,200 members of United Service Workers West participated in the demonstration. And on April 28, rallies to Unite Against the War on Women by UniteWomen.org took place all over the country, including Boston. Here is an overview and an account of Seattle’s protest.

“The class which has the power to rob upon a large scale also has the power to control the government and legalize their robbery.” Eugene Debs

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