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    • The OB Media Rundown for 5/14/12

    May 13th, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 5/14/12

    Occupy Clinics appeal in advance of the Chicago NATO summit: Healthcare not warfare!

    To all our family from the global 99%, To all those who believe that healthcare is a human right, To all those coming to protest NATO and its wars for profit around the globe, To all those who have struggled with mental illness personally or with loved ones, To all those who have been denied healthcare, To all those who have waited all day in emergency rooms, To all those public servants facing layoffs or cuts to salary and pension, To all those who are sick and tired of being sick and tired, To all those who believe that another world is possible beyond this madness.

    The Mental Health Movement calls on all protesters coming to Chicago to join us in the fight for healthcare not warfare. As NATO war-makers come to this city to plan wars that leave people traumatized and cost trillions of dollars, clinics that help people heal from trauma and deal with mental illness are being shuttered for lack of $2.3 million dollars. As our battle to save our clinics has intensified, Occupy Chicago and other Occupy groups around the city have become powerful allies. Now we ask members of Occupy Wall Street, other Occupy groups and all other sectors of the social movements coming to Chicago to protest NATO to join us in occupying clinics by setting up a 24/7 presence outside of recently closed mental health clinics. We will dramatize the contradictions of a system that finds billions to wage NATO’s endless wars for profit but leaves its most vulnerable without basic healthcare.

    http://tinyurl.com/6oqauuo

    How to Raise $350 Billion from Financial Transaction Tax

    Bill talks to RoseAnn DeMoro, who heads the largest registered nurses union in the country, and will lead a Chicago march protesting economic inequality on May 18. DeMoro is championing the Robin Hood Tax, a small government levy the financial sector would pay on commercial transactions like stocks and bonds. The money generated, which some estimate could be as much as $350 billion annually, could be used for social programs and job creation – ultimately to people who, without a doubt, need it more than the banks do.

    http://tinyurl.com/7yqxon5

    Dimon On Whether JP Morgan’s $2 Billion Loss Proves Banks Are Still Too Risky: ‘I Don’t Think So’

    JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon appeared today on NBC’s Meet the Press, where he was asked by host David Gregory if JP Morgan’s massive loss shows that the banking system – just a few years after a financial crisis that nearly brought the global economy to its knees – is still too risky. Dimon replied, “I don’t think so.”
    . . .

    Of course, the point isn’t whether JP Morgan, the biggest bank in the U.S., can survive a trade like this. It’s whether the financial system can sustain this sort of trading by all of the big banks, many of which are not in the same financial shape as JP Morgan.

    http://tinyurl.com/87lw954

    Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/14/12” »

    Health is a human right! Come to an open house to meet the Occupy Boston organizers who are working to secure it

    May 13th, 2012 · · Events Comments Off on Health is a human right! Come to an open house to meet the Occupy Boston organizers who are working to secure it

    Join these and other members of the Health/Justice Working Group Monday, May 14 at St. Paul’s Cathedral, 138 Tremont Street at 6 pm for an introduction to the group’s educational efforts, organizing and direct action projects.

    Health is a human right and systemic injustices, the pursuit of profits over people, and the accumulation of wealth by the few all harm the health of our communities. We seek to mobilize, educate, inspire and act in solidarity in ways that lead to greater health justice.

    Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5-13-12

    May 13th, 2012 · · Daily Digest Comments Off on Occupy Boston Daily Digest for 5-13-12

    Good Morning from Occupy Boston!

    Stories of the Day: Two Fullerton, Calif., police officers will be tried in the death of a mentally ill homeless man, who had not even broken any laws, and whose apparent beating by six police officers was captured on a security camera video, a judge ruled May 9. The victim suffered from schizophrenia and was not fluent in English. The apparent beating lasted nine minutes and 40 seconds and ended with Thomas’ limp body in handcuffs. The officers had responded to the Fullerton Transportation Center after receiving a call that a homeless man was seen looking into car windows and pulling on door handles. For more, see Cops to Be Tried in Alleged Fatal Beating of Homeless Man Caught on Video. And thanks to police officer Enoch Clark, Beaumont, California resident Monique Hernandez will never see her ten-year-old daughter again. On February 21, Clark conducted a traffic stop involving Hernandez, who was suspected of drunk driving. When Clark attempted to handcuff her, Hernandez resisted. The officer responded by using a JPX device at point-blank range — a weapon that uses a gunpowder charge to fire a stream of pepper spray at roughly 400 miles an hour. The payload of weaponized OC spray is propelled over the prescribed distance at less than three one-hundredths of a second, making it “too fast to avoid…. The effect is immediate; there is no chance to resist.” For the story, see Beaumont, California Woman Blinded for “Contempt of Cop.” And if you’re going to the NATO protests, please be careful. Police in Chicago have spent $1 million on riot-control equipment in the last few months ahead of next month’s Nato summit, which is expected to attract thousands of anti-war protesters.  Officers are also preparing to use the controversial long-range acoustic device, or LRAD, a sonic weapon which can cause permanent hearing loss, during the operation. For more, see Chicago police bulk up with $1m in riot gear for peaceful NATO summit protests. Let’s take a look at some of the new weapons of the police state: The American military have presented the world with a new weapon, informally named the heat ray or microwave cannon. The “Active Denial System” is a non-lethal weapon primarily designed for crowd control. The Active Denial System (ADS) beams a high-frequency, man-sized electromagnetic wave 1,000 meters. ADS fires a high-powered beam of high-frequency millimeter waves at 95 GHz (a wavelength of 3.2 mm). Similar to the same way that a microwave oven heats food at 2.45GHz, the millimeter waves excite the water and fat molecules in the body, instantly heating them via dielectric heating and causing intense pain. While microwaves will penetrate into human tissue about 17mm (0.67″), the millimeter waves used in ADS only penetrate the top layers of skin, with most of the energy being absorbed within 0.4 mm (1/64″). For more, see Microwave Goodbye Weapon: Heat-Ray Crowd Dispersal Cannon Unveiled. And according to British paper The Telegraph, police are currently testing a shoulder-mounted laser cannon that can project a virtual wall of blinding light from nearly 500 meters away.  Originally developed to help cargo ships repel pirate attacks, the device temporarily blinds incoming attackers with a band of light that’s 10 meters wide. While the United Nations has banned laser weapons that cause permanent blindness, lasers that only cause temporary vision impairment, or blindness by accident, are still acceptable. Police would not be deploying the weapon on the British public unless it could be confirmed that it does not cause permanent blindness, the paper said. Police were also testing a long-range electronic device, similar to a Taser, that can incapacitate targets from a distance. Another less-lethal weapon category, “long-range chemical irritant projectiles,” was also being examined, The Telegraph noted. For more, see Shoulder-Mounted Lasers, Long-Range Tasers Among New U.K. Riot Gear. And here’s a weapon that can literally silence protesters: a silence gun.  A strange and unsettling new gun being developed by Japanese researchers shoots sound waves in an effort to disrupt and silence anyone who dares speak out of turn. The gun operates based on the concept of delayed auditory feedback. An attached microphone picks up the sound being made by the target and plays it back 0.2 seconds later. The effect is incredibly confusing to the human brain, making it all but impossible to talk or hold a conversation. The device doesn’t cause the person it’s being used on any physical harm — it simply messes with their head. For more, see Silence Gun: Strange Weapon of the Future Immediately Quiets You, Whether You Like it or Not. And for some dark comedy: you may have heard people in Occupy Boston singing “I Really Like the Cops.” This song was written by the activist Brad Will, who was killed by police in Mexico during a protest. Click here for a video of him singing the song.

    Other Occupies/Protests: Information on Occupy the G8 May 18-19: October2011/OccupyWashingtonDC.org has organized an Occupy G8 People’s Summit that will examine how to build a sustainable, democratized economy from the bottom up; the impact of the wealth divide on people’s well-being and on policy creation; and alternative economic structures that create a more democratic, sustainable economy. The event, which will be held in the Frederick Public Library from 10 to 2 on Friday, May 18th will feature the voices of the 99% along with experts on the Robin Hood Tax, food, water and energy issues, trade agreements, the wealth divide and a democratized economy. You can see the full schedule and details on the website of our partner organization, Its Our Economy. Occupy Frederick is organizing events in Frederick, Maryland, fifteen minutes from Camp David. After the Summit people will march through downtown Frederick and will hold a “Counter-G8 Community Bloc Party” on Saturday, May 19th from 11 AM to 9 PM in Baker Park (band shell side) near 2nd and N. Bentz. The event is inclusive of all ages for radicals and residents alike and will include live music, workshops, speakers, face painting and a truly free market. You can see the details here. Occupy Baltimore is organizing legal, non-violent protests on the public sidewalks in Thurmont, MD, on Friday and Saturday (May 18th and 19th) from 8 AM until sundown on both days. People are urged to bring signs, banners, folding chairs, food and drink. Overnight camping is available nearby. Thurmont is located just a few minutes from Camp David off of Route 15. You can get details here. For more information, see Occupy the G8.
    “A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State dictatorship it’s going to get.” Ian Williams Goddard

    The OB Media Rundown for 5/13/12

    May 12th, 2012 · · Daily Media Rundown Comments Off on The OB Media Rundown for 5/13/12

     ‘Seize and pay tribute:’ Lessons for America from recent finance capital conquests in Europe

    Finance today is the means of conquering a country and getting what in the past took an army. Financial conquest is how you shift the taxes onto the population to pay the financial sector, how you load a population down with debt and make a population pay interest and amortization and penalties on debt service, you make a population pay for schooling instead of getting it free or a low price as used to be the case, you make a population take on a lifetime of debt in order to get a home that used to be affordable, you make the governments go into debt for the banks, so that in Europe governments can’t-don’t have a central bank to monetize their own deficits but actually have to borrow money from banks. You achieve-you essentially empty out an economy, and you take its economic surplus financially without an army, just by trying to promote what really is junk economics and junk politics, if the economics of Rubinomics in America under Clinton and Rubenomics in America under George Bush, and now with a vengeance under Obama-.

    http://tinyurl.com/br96swl

    100,000 march in Spain over austerity

    At least 100,000 Spaniards angered by grim economic prospects and the political handling of the international financial crisis have turned out for street demonstrations in the country’s cities, marking the one-year anniversary of a movement that inspired similar pressure groups in other countries.

    http://tinyurl.com/6t7cuqo

    Deconstructing strident pro-austerity bias in American journalists’ economic coverage

    The reporters’ adoption of the German perspective leads them to emulate Berlin’s refusal to consider the Greek perspective.  Instead, the reporters’ adopt the German framing of the issue.  That framing is that the Greeks are inexplicably “refusing to abide by the terms of the country’s international loan agreement.”  The idea that the Greek people should continue to take the Berlin elevator that has plunged their nation into a great depression because their disgraced leaders were coerced into agreeing to a deal that is destroying their nation is insane.

    Democracy is all about throwing out leaders who have disgraced themselves, crushed the nation’s economy, and cravenly taken orders from a hostile foreign power.  The Greeks have done just that.  Why would anyone expect the Greeks to continue to follow a suicidal economic policy imposed by Germany?  Berlin and the NYT reporters share the bizarre belief that if your coerced leaders sign a suicide pact you have a duty to commit suicide because – a deal is a deal.

    http://tinyurl.com/bpy2y2s

    230,000 jobless Americans lost their unemployment insurance this weekend

    More than 230,000 jobless Americans will lose their unemployment insurance by this weekend as reductions in the federal program that provides extended benefits to the long-term unemployed take broader effect.

    The new round of reductions is hitting eight states this month, meaning that about 400,000 long-term unemployed Americans in 27 states will have been cut off of the federal government’s extended unemployment benefits program this year, according to an analysis by the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for the unemployed.

    The cuts stem from a congressional agreement this year that will reduce the maximum duration of unemployment benefits from 99 weeks to 79 weeks as the nation’s jobless rate declines.

    http://tinyurl.com/73wzduv
    Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 5/13/12” »

    GA speakers advocate for public banks, re-regulation and even nationalization in the banking and finance sectors

    May 12th, 2012 · · Events Comments Off on GA speakers advocate for public banks, re-regulation and even nationalization in the banking and finance sectors

    Above, Jim Campen, professor emeritus of economics at  UMass-Boston and a former executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending, discussed the flow of money, credit, goods and services through the economy at tonight’s general assembly.Campen spoke first and the photographer came in late, and so can’t provide much detail about his talk.

    Fred Mosely, economics professor at Mt Holyoke College, reviewed the history of US banking, focusing on the insight that capitalism is inherently unstable without vigorous, active regulation. He appealed for a return to policies that would propel the government to nationalize failing banks and sack their dysfunctional boards of directors – rather than throw bailout money at them. Mosely also advocated for public state-owned banks, and listed their advantages as including:

    • Acting as a ‘public option’ in banking whose presence helps to stabilize the whole banking system.

    • Provide counter-cyclical lending to minimize recessions.

    • Provide low interest rates on home mortgages and student loans.

    • Can allocate credit to achieve social-eoconomic objectives such as affordable housing, green energy, health care, etc.

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