Join Or DIE
14-Year-Old Tasered By Police in Allentown, Pennsylvania (Video)
Via the Guardian:
CCTV footage shows a police officer pushing a 14-year-old girl against a parked car and firing a taser at her groin. Shortly before the taser was fired the teenager is seen raising her hands in surrender. She received hospital treatment after the incident in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Congressman Jim McDermott: “Those Things In The Bill Of Rights Are Being Taken Away From All Of Us!”
OccupyWallStreet Shuts Down 3 West Coast Ports
Via CBS News:
More than 1,000 Occupy Wall Street protesters blocked cargo trucks at some of the West Coast’s busiest ports Monday, forcing terminals in Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore., and Longview, Wash., to halt operations.
While the protests attracted far fewer people than the 10,000 who turned out Nov. 2 to shut down Oakland’s port, organizers declared victory and promised more demonstrations to come.
“The truckers are still here, but there’s nobody here to unload their stuff,” protest organizer Boots Riley said. “We shut down the Port of Oakland for the daytime shift and we’re coming back in the evening. Mission accomplished.”
Organizers called for the “Shutdown Wall Street on the Waterfront” protests, hoping the day of demonstrations would cut into the profits of the corporations that run the docks and send a message that their movement was not over.
U.S. Senate Backs Indefinite Detention of American Citizens
Via the World Socialist Web Site:
The US Senate voted Thursday night to approve a military funding bill that codifies into law the criminal state practices begun under Bush — and continued under Obama — in the name of the “global war on terror.”
It explicitly authorizes the military’s indefinite detention without trial of American citizens and mandates that all non-citizens charged as terrorists—including those arrested on US soil—be detained indefinitely by the military rather than brought to trial in a civilian court.
The legislation was part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which provides $662 billion to finance the US military machine and its multiple wars abroad. The act passed the Democratic-controlled body by an overwhelming margin of 93 to 7, underscoring once again that there exists no serious constituency for the defense of democratic rights within any section of the American ruling elite or its two big business parties.
Thrown out by…
OccupyWallStreet: Are You Concerned About ‘Zuccotti Lung’?
Matt Flegenheimer reports in the NY Times:
The chorus began quietly at a recent strategy session inside Zuccotti Park, with a single cough from a security team member, a muffled hack between puffs on his cigarette. Then a colleague followed. Then another.
Soon the discussion had devolved into a fit of wheezing, with one protester blowing his nose into the mulch between clusters of tents. “It’s called Zuccotti lung,” said Willie Carey, 28, a demonstrator from Chapel Hill, N.C. “It’s a real thing.”
As the weather turns, the protesters in Zuccotti Park, the nexus of the Occupy Wall Street protests in Lower Manhattan, have been forced to confront a simple truth: packing themselves like sardines inside a public plaza, where cigarettes are shared and a good night’s sleep remains elusive, may not be conducive to good health.
“Pretty much everything here is a good way to get sick,” said Salvatore Cipolla, 23, from Long…
The Neuroscience of Rick Perry’s ‘Brain Freeze’
I think the Washington Post is being too kind. As Joel Achenbach reports:
It was the Hoover Dam of mental blocks. Pundits referred to it as a “brain freeze” or a “gaffe.” In Internet parlance, it was an “epic FAIL.” But to neuroscientists, what happened to Texas Gov. Rick Perry Wednesday night looked like something very ordinary, exacerbated by stress: a “retrieval failure.”
It happens more often as we age. But the brain scientists say it shouldn’t be seen as evidence of an intellectual deficit or some medical problem. Instead, they say, retrieval failures offer a glimpse into how the brain does and doesn’t work, not just in the skulls of presidential candidates but for everyone else, too.
It’s impossible to know what exactly was happening inside Perry’s head at the Republican presidential debate, and the pundit class will continue to debate whether it was a neurological hiccup or a telling sign of a candidate who…
OccupyWallStreet Protesters Start March To Washington, D.C.
Reports the AP via NPR:
Flanked by police scooters, about two dozen Occupy Wall Street protesters started a two-week walk from New York to Washington on Wednesday.
The activists left Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, marched past the World Trade Center site and boarded a ferry to New Jersey. They plan to walk through Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland and arrive in Washington by Nov. 23 — the deadline for a congressional committee to decide whether to keep President Obama’s extension of Bush-era tax cuts. Protesters say the cuts benefit only rich Americans.
Michael Glazer, 26, an actor from Chicago, smiled as he boarded the ferry across the Hudson River, cheered by supporters shouting, “Thank you!” Walking in well-worn boots, he said: “I’ve had these for years and years, and they’ve served me well for many miles of marches.”
They hope to pick up other participants along their 240-mile march and have likened the effort to long-distance…
Smile! Get Ready for Tiny Police Uniform Cameras
Via NPR:
The next time you talk to a police officer, you might find yourself staring into a lens. Companies such as Taser and Vievu are making small, durable cameras designed to be worn on police officer’s uniforms. The idea is to capture video from the officer’s point of view, for use as evidence against suspects, as well as to help monitor officers’ behavior toward the public.
The concept is catching on. The cameras have been adopted by big city police departments, such as Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., as well as dozens of smaller cities, such as Bainbridge Island, Wash., where the Vievu camera was initially tested by Officer Ben Sias.
“The only thing that really was different about doing business is that I’d tell the person that we’re being recorded,” Sias says. He sees the camera as a kind of insurance policy.
“In this job, we’re frequently accused of things we haven’t done,…
U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners
Michael Grabell reports on ProPublica:
On Sept. 23, 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered at a Hilton hotel in Maryland to evaluate a new device that could detect hidden weapons and contraband. The machine, known as the Secure 1000, beamed X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing.
One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.
“I think this is really a slippery slope,” said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey’s radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked — courthouses, schools, airports? “I am concerned … with expanding this type of product for the traveling public,” said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a…
TSA Finds Four To Five Guns In Carry-On Bags Every Day At Airports
Reports Mike M. Ahlers on CNN:
Federal airport screeners still find four to five guns at checkpoints on a typical day, the Transportation Security Administration’s chief told a Senate hearing Wednesday.
“Yesterday we found six, including one at … Bradley (airport in Connecticut) — a loaded gun with seven rounds in it, in a checked bag that (a passenger) was trying to get through,” Administrator John Pistole said.
Passengers typically say they forgot the weapon was in their bag, TSA officials said. But in one recent case, a passenger at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport tried to board a plane with two pistols, three ammunition magazines, eight knives and a hand saw in a carry-on bag, the TSA said. That passenger was arrested by local law enforcement.
Congress Got 25% Richer During Height of Recession
Seems like time to Occupy Congress … Paul Singer and Jennifer Yachnin report on Roll Call:
Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total, according to a Roll Call analysis of Members’ financial disclosure forms.
Nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest Members of Congress.
Two years ago, Roll Call found that the minimum net worth of House Members was slightly more than $1 billion; Senators had a combined minimum worth of $651 million for a Congressional total of $1.65 billion. Roll Call calculates minimum net worth by adding the minimum values of all reported assets and subtracting the minimum values of all reported liabilities.
According to financial disclosure forms filed by Members of Congress this year, the minimum net worth in the House has jumped to $1.26 billion, and Senate net worth…
Meet the Anti-Leader of Occupy Wall Street
Drake Bennett writes in Bloomberg Business:
David Graeber likes to say that he had three goals for the year: promote his book, learn to drive, and launch a worldwide revolution. The first is going well, the second has proven challenging, and the third is looking up.
Graeber is a 50-year-old anthropologist — among the brightest, some argue, of his generation — who made his name with innovative theories on exchange and value, exploring phenomena such as Iroquois wampum and the Kwakiutl potlatch. An American, he teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. He’s also an anarchist and radical organizer, a veteran of many of the major left-wing demonstrations of the past decade: Quebec City and Genoa, the Republican National Convention protests in Philadelphia and New York, the World Economic Forum in New York in 2002, the London tuition protests earlier this year. This summer, Graeber was a key member of a small band…
President Obama Issues Executive Order To Ease Shortages in Vital Medicines
Whatever Obama does, the Republicans will say it’s the wrong thing to do … but wouldn’t it be something if he dealt with the root of the problem (Big Pharma)? Lara Salahi reports for ABC News:
While many advocates say President Obama’s executive order to reduce a dire shortage of life-saving hospital medications is an essential step, others say the order is not enough to stop price gouging by some pharmaceutical companies.
Essential cancer drugs have arguably taken the hardest hit. Hospitals have reported the worst shortage in nearly a decade of chemotherapy agents like doxorubicin.
The new order instructs the Food and Drug Administration to broaden reporting of potential drug shortages, expedite regulatory reviews that can help prevent shortages, and examine whether potential shortages have led to price gouging. The drug shortage has compromised or delayed care for some patients and may have led to otherwise preventable deaths.
Christopher W. Hansen, president of…
U.S. Government Could Hide Existence of Records Under Proposed Freedom of Information Act Rule
Open government? Jennifer LaFleur writes on ProPublica:
A proposed rule to the Freedom of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist — even when they do.
Under current FOIA practice, the government may withhold information and issue what’s known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.
The new proposal — part of a lengthy rule revision by the Department of Justice — would direct government agencies to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist.”
Open-government groups object. “We don’t believe the statute allows the government to lie to FOIA requesters,” said Mike German, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the provision.
What’s The Real Reason Why The Occupy Wall Street Protesters Weren’t Kicked Out Of Zuccotti Park?
Zuccotti Park, pre-Occupation. Photo: Tony (CC)
Is this it? Robert Johnson writes in Business Insider:
Coming on the heels of the Solyndra debacle, the Obama administration has just approved a $168.9 million loan guarantee for the Granite Reliable wind farm project owned by Brookfield Management BAM).
Among its many holdings BAM owns Brookfield Renewable Power, which owns the Granite Reliable and it also owns Brookfield Office Properties, whose holdings include the now famous Zuccotti Park.
The Department of Energy finalized the loan guarantee less than a week after Occupy Wall Street protesters took to Zuccotti Park, and with the Obama administration’s Tuesday endorsement of the protests, rumors are starting to circulate that this could be the reason Brookfield is allowing protesters to remain on its property.
