AL GORE COMMENT ON EVIL AUSTRALIAN CARBON TAX

Start of a new era - GetUp! ” This is a historic moment. Australia's Parliament has put the nation's first carbon price into law. With this vote, the world has turned a pivotal corner in the collective effort to solve the climate crisis. This success is the result of the tireless work of an unprecedented coalition that came together to support the legislation, the leadership of Prime Minister Gillard, and the courage of legislators to take a vote that helps to safeguard the future of all Australians. I have spent enough time in Australia to know that their spirit of independence as a people cannot be underestimated. As the world’s leading coal exporter, there’s no doubt that opposition to this legislation was fierce. But through determination and commitment, the voice of the people of Australia has rung out loud and clear. Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we do everything we can to ensure that this legislation is successful." - Al Gore, November 2011

PSYCHOLOGISTS HELP 9/11 TRUTH DENIERS

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF OAKLAND FROM THE OAKLAND POLICE OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION

1 November 2011 – Oakland, Ca.

We represent the 645 police officers who work hard every day to protect the citizens of Oakland. We, too, are the 99% fighting for better working conditions, fair treatment and the ability to provide a living for our children and families. We are severely understaffed with many City beats remaining unprotected by police during the day and evening hours.

As your police officers, we are confused.

On Tuesday, October 25th, we were ordered by Mayor Quan to clear out the encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and to keep protesters out of the Plaza. We performed the job that the Mayor’s Administration asked us to do, being fully aware that past protests in Oakland have resulted in rioting, violence and destruction of property.

Then, on Wednesday, October 26th, the Mayor allowed protesters back in – to camp out at the very place they were evacuated from the day before.

To add to the confusion, the Administration issued a memo on Friday, October 28th to all City workers in support of the “Stop Work” strike scheduled for Wednesday, giving all employees, except for police officers, permission to take the day off.

That’s hundreds of City workers encouraged to take off work to participate in the protest against “the establishment.” But aren’t the Mayor and her Administration part of the establishment they are paying City employees to protest? Is it the City’s intention to have City employees on both sides of a skirmish line?

It is all very confusing to us.

Meanwhile, a message has been sent to all police officers: Everyone, including those who have the day off, must show up for work on Wednesday. This is also being paid for by Oakland taxpayers. Last week’s events alone cost Oakland taxpayers over $1 million.

The Mayor and her Administration are beefing up police presence for Wednesday’s work strike they are encouraging and even “staffing,” spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for additional police presence – at a time when the Mayor is also asking Oakland residents to vote on an $80 parcel tax to bail out the City’s failing finances.

All of these mixed messages are confusing.

We love Oakland and just want to do our jobs to protect Oakland residents. We respectfully ask the citizens of Oakland to join us in demanding that our City officials, including Mayor Quan, make sound decisions and take responsibility for these decisions. Oakland is struggling – we need real leaders NOW who will step up and lead – not send mixed messages. Thank you for listening.

http://www.opoa.org/uncategorized/an-open-letter-to-the-citizens-of-oakland-from-the-oakland-police-officers’-association/

TAKING A BREATH OVER OCCUPY PORTLAND’S FINANCE BROUHAHA

POSTED BY DENIS C. THERIAULT ON WED, OCT 26, 2011 AT 2:36 PM

This morning I broke the news that a member of Occupy Portland's finance committee had started a likely unauthorized nonprofit bearing the local movement's name. This afternoon the Oregonian got hold of the story—also reporting that not only was the nonprofit started, but that some $20,000 in donations might be missing and that someone also locked the group out of its website.

Okay. Let's all take a big breath. It's not quite what it seems—although what did actually happen really did piss off occupiers and is seen nonetheless as a serious breach of trust. So, what happened? Let's take it step by step.

First off, "missing" is not the right word when mentioning the money. Neither, maybe, is $20,000. (I'm told $10,000 is a far more accepted number—but it's not great that nobody exactly knows.)

A finance committee member, according to two different occupiers, has control over the money—moved from a personal PayPal account into the newly formed nonprofit, started by someone identified as Reid Jackson. The person holding the Paypal account was worried about his personal tax liability. Restructuring the movement's finances was on the table, but the account holder refused to wait for the group's consensus-driven general assembly to approve another option and started the nonprofit. That's a big sin among this group—you'll remember that devotion to the general assembly's agreed-upon message was the only reason some occupiers got themselves arrested on SW Main Street this month.

Communication between Jackson and occupiers is a bit strained right now, based on what's been a somewhat bellicose response to the nonprofit move by some of the organizers. Spokesman Jordan LeDoux says Jackson has control of the money but that there's been limited access.

"It's a matter of timing and communication and transparency and respect for others," says Reid Parham, a media liaison speaking for himself, not for the group. "That's the real story. it's interpersonal conflict as opposed to criminal conduct."

Jackson allegedly talked to the O, although they called him (the pronoun Parham and LeDoux used) a "she." Jackson's quotes are troublesome, and invoked the notion of protection from infiltration: "I've tried explaining it to them, but they won't listen to me. There is someone who has infiltrated the group and is trying to capitalize on the money."

As for the Web fiasco, that was a different person acting independently, and without any justification, I'm told. One thing the O got wrong initially: Occupy Portland isn't locked out of the domain name occupypdx.org. That's, in fact, the site they've begun ghosting over content from occupyportland.org.

Spokesman LeDoux explains:

Another individual from the finance committee “bought” the OccupyPortland.org domain name from the person that originally registered it and changed the DNS so that for a while, all traffic to OccupyPortland.org was disrupted. After posting several pages, the traffic is now redirecting to our alternate URL, OccupyPDX.org but all of the email to the domain addresses are being lost or going to the individual directly. Also, the traffic can be redirected/blocked/messed with again at a moment’s notice. All of this again was a unilateral action by a single person without consulting or consent from the GA.

But, hey, holy shit... this still all shows that no matter what the organization or the politics at play, finances are a messy sum'bitch to contend with. Last night, the general assembly spent two hours agreeing, ironically, on a way to restructure the finance committee. Parham says he thinks the changes were partially related to the disputes that simmered over in battle over the nonprofit.

Some occupiers don't want money at all. While others say, no, you need it to procure things for the camp, like gas to plug in computers and lights and cooking devices and guitar amplifiers. And, reasonably, a nonprofit is probably the safest place for all this money to go.

Still, the bigger message: DON'T PISS OFF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. Say it again: DON'T PISS OFF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. That's one reason why LeDoux, when talking to the O, was probably as growly as he was this afternoon. No matter the intentions, the group won't tolerate that.

Here's his release:

Over the past 48 hours two unfortunate events have taken place that we at Occupy Portland are still working through.

1. A non-profit corporation (Occupy Portland, Inc.) [http://egov.sos.state.or.us/br/pkg_web_name_srch_inq.show_detl?p_be_rsn=1546777&p_srce=BR_INQ&p_print=FALSE] was registered by a member of the finance committee after promising that no so action would take place before proposing to the OP General Assembly. In fact, the OP GA has been working diligently on proposal that have passed [http://occupypdx.org/2011/10/26/general-assembly-notes-full-10-25-2011/#more-1407] to provide a fully open and transparent view into the movement’s finances.

2. Another individual from the finance committee “bought” the OccupyPortland.org domain name from the person that originally registered it and changed the DNS so that for a while, all traffic to OccupyPortland.org was disrupted. After posting several pages, the traffic is now redirecting to our alternate URL, OccupyPDX.org but all of the email to the domain addresses are being lost or going to the individual directly. Also, the traffic can be redirected/blocked/messed with again at a moment’s notice. All of this again was a unilateral action by a single person without consulting or conesnt from the GA.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PORTLAND, ORE. — Individuals on the Finance Committee at Occupy Portland were able to take control the protest’s domain name and and associate email addresses late Tuesday evening. Additionally, in a somewhat ironic twist, these individuals formed a (non-profit) corporation to which they transferred all of the money which had been collected for the movement through kind donations from our community.

The emails that were being used maintain contact the with the press, organize our online group discussions, and control the technical means of organization were all taken over by a handful of individuals that were able to get the passwords to these systems then lock everyone else out.

Unless restored immediately, OccupyPortland.org is no longer affiliated with our protest or our movement. The Finance Committee members that have acted on their own will need to account for their own actions. We cannot state with certainty the amount of the donations that were taken in through the internet. We will use all means at our disposable to account for every dollar and make this transparent as soon as possible.

We have restored the website at the backup address, OccupyPDX.org, and have full control over this domain and all of its email addresses. Nothing originating from OccupyPortland.org should be trusted to represent the Occupy Portland protest or the people of the Portland General Assembly. No emails originating from this address are affiliated any longer with any part of Occupy Portland.

If anything, this incident illustrates the very reason we are protesting. Our protest against corporate power and control is now colored by people who have used this very structure we are protesting against to deprive us of donations and resources that the community as a whole helped establish for our protest.

The ways in which these things happened is a perfect illustration of the corruption and secrecy that are problematic at every level of our society.

We have attempted to reach out to these individuals, but they have assured us that they have no intention of changing their course of action. In light of this, the public should understand that they are willfully and falsely representing themselves as speaking for the Occupy Portland General Assembly.

None of these actions were approved by the General Assembly. None of these actions were even explained to the General Assembly. These two things are facts which are impossible to dispute.

Occupy Portland will continue our protest in deference to the General Assembly, and will not let this distract us or slow us down. It is a shame a few people act in interests against the will of the movement, but in the greater scheme of things it will not matter. It is a minor bump in a road that is laden with mines on the path to achieve Accountability, Transparency and Justice.

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2011/10/26/taking-a-breath-over-occupy-portlands-finance-brouhaha

COMMUNITY NOTICE .... VIOLENT MEMBER OF VICTORIA POLICE

REALITY CHECK: THE #OCCUPY PROTESTORS ... KIND OF HAVE A POINT

October 20, 2011

SOCIAL ISSUES

Everybody's talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the many related demonstrations around the world. According to Journalism.org, the movement "occupied" 10% of news coverage in the U.S. last week, with commenters' opinions ranging from fervent support to outright disgust. The Wall Street Journal has compiled a few of the most interesting reactions here.

One thing that can't be denied: the protesters are making a lot of noise. Andnew research from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2011 might just raise the volume. There are some pretty sobering facts in the report, including the statistic that 0.5% of the world's population own 38.5% of the wealth, while the bottom two-thirds account for just 3.3% of wealth.

Those are pretty crazy numbers. Here are some more: another new studyanalyzing the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has found that only 147 are "superconnected". What does that mean? Basically that a lot of money and power is concentrated in very few hands - and a lot of the 147 companies are banks. Here's an image the researchers released. The yellow dots are 1318 "very connected" companies, and the red are the 147 "superconnected" companies:

The study was conducted by three complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and is the first of its kind. It's already met with some criticism - Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute, for instance, points out that the study assumes ownership equates to control, which isn't necessarily true - but its findings are still fascinating.

There are some interesting similarities in the numbers. Credit Suisse found that 0.5% of the world's population control 38.5% of the wealth. The Zurich study found that about 40% of the corporate network is controlled by about 1% of companies. So all signs seem to be pointing to the fact that wealth is distributed very unevenly on the world stage.

Speaking of signs, here's one from the protests:

http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/social-issues/reality-check-the-occupy-protestors-kind-of-have-a-point.html

A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF BEING ARRESTED FOR PROTESTING

by nicocoinicon on October 24, 2011

I was one of the people arrested on Friday for protesting against forcibly shutting down Occupy Melbourne. I have never been arrested before, and had never even considered it a possibility. I realise that I am a white middle class male, and that there are others in our society who are confronted by these realities on a regular basis. Despite this, I feel that my experience is worth sharing as it has had a huge impact on me.

Many police seemed to enjoy the opportunity to cause some violence. At one stage a girl I was next to was choked as a policeman pushed her against the people behind with his arm across her throat. As her face went bright red I grabbed his arm and said “let her go” at which point he pushed my head back instead, to which my sore neck is a testament. Afterwards, she asked him, in tears, “why did you choke me?” and he smiled. On the other hand, I did not see a single protester act violently, an aspect of the day which even Robert Doyle doesn’t seem to deny, only confuse.

I can be seen with my face to the camera and my hands in the air earlier in the day. From the Herald Sun online.

When the protesters in City Square had been arrested and the horses were brought up to Collins Street a man came up to me and started yelling in my face “those horses are going to crush your skull” and “when I see you in the back of the van I’m going to fuck you up”. My first response was to ask him why he was saying this, but then as I looked him up and down I realised he was a cop in plain clothes (the black and yellow police boots were the giveaway). I took out my phone to take a photo of him, but he quickly turned away and ran across the intersection and across the police line. It was the first, but certainly not the last time that I had failed to realise what was happening. Before Friday I considered myself to be quite cynical, but I was never ready to believe that the police would act like this.

After the horses pushed the main group of people out of the Swanston and Collins intersection (trampling a few people along the way) there was a lot of discussion among the protesters. It was clear that if we stayed put the police were going to push us again soon, so after a show of hands it was agreed that everyone would march up Swanston Street towards Burke. So at around 3pm, everyone turned to face North, with our backs to the police, and began to move forward. At this point, once the protesters were moving away from them, and perhaps because the cameras now faced away from them, the police began to push forward.

They shouted “MOVE, MOVE, MOVE” and pushed those of us at the back against the people in front of us. Ahead, protesters were blocked by the traffic stuck in the Bourke Street intersection, so the crowd had slowed to a crawl. I remember yelling “I’m moving as fast as I can”. When someone grabbed the backpack of the person to my right, I reached out towards him. Instantly, another officer grabbed my arm, twisting it behind my back. Another protester shouted “let him go you’ll break his arm” and a voice behind me shouted “I fucking hope so”.

Within half a minute, the guy on the right with the backpack, the guy to my left and a few others nearby had all been pulled behind the police line. I couldn’t see what was happening to them because I was facing the opposite direction and being constantly shoved forwards. Someone then grabbed me, lifted me up in the air and threw me on the ground behind the line. As I scrambled to get back up I was shoved back down to my hands and knees again.There were at least a dozen other people around me having the exact same thing done to them. It sounds daft now but I remember saying out loud “I haven’t done anything wrong” still completely shocked. I felt like I was ready to cry. I put my hands in the air to show that I wasn’t going to struggle, and a policewoman pulled them down behind my back. They then pushed me forwards, one on either side, to the back of a truck where they grabbed my phone from my pocket and started reaching around my clothes. I asked what I had done wrong but was met with no reply. The woman who took my phone asked “do you have any ID” and perhaps naively I told them which pocket had my wallet. She then searched all my other pockets and took my keys, some coins, a handkerchief and a mandarin peel and my shoes for good measure. I’m not sure if me raising my arms  and telling them what I had on me amounted to consenting to a search, but at the time I was scared and just wanted it to be over. I asked “where will you take me” and she told me the Custody Center, which later turned out to be false. Because I was getting answers now I again asked I had done and this time the reply was “you failed to comply with a police order” a cause which on it’s own is ludicrous. As someone has put it to me since; the police could order me to shoot my own mother.

The truck was entirely metallic with no windows. One guy sitting across from me was asking “can I please go to the toilet, you can bring me right back” every time they brought another person in. Eventually there were eleven of us in our section, one was a kid of seventeen who had come to the protests from school. The majority of the time spent in the back was spent with the engine off, occasionally we would move for few minutes at a time before stopping again. We tried to guess what was happening, the two main theories being that they were either driving around and letting people out one and a time (starting with the other section) or that they weren’t sure which station to take us to. At one point we realised we were all sitting on an angle and the van must be parked on a slope. After what seemed like an eternity we drove for a bit longer, the sounds letting us know we were on a freeway and then entering a car park with roller doors, signalling that we had indeed been taken to a police station.

After another stretch of time someone opened the door and said “first one”. We chose the guy who had been denied a chance to use a bathroom by the cops in the city. Around ten minutes later police took another person (again we let a guy who needed to piss go first), and then finally told us all to get out. As we were escorted through the underground car park the police pointed out our torn and filthy clothes, ripped by their colleagues and dirtied by the horseshit covered streets we had been thrown down and laughed. We were taken to a small bathroom, and I stood out the front of the door because I didn’t need to go. It was only after a double take that I realised this was the holding cell. The room was disgusting, it stank like shit and one of the metal benches was covered in blood. Every five minutes or so they would come in and take another one of us. When it was my turn I was taken down a corridor to a desk where a policeman asked for my name, date of birth and address. Lining the corridor was a row of shoes. I peered over the desk, I could see a bank of TVs, most showed empty rooms, but one showed some of the people I was with and some others who I hadn’t seen before who must have been from the other section. I could also see our property bags behind the counter and recognised mine. This was the first time I had seen a clock since they took my phone and it was 5:30, which meant I had been in the truck for over two hours. After checking that I didn’t have a belt (I guess they thought I might hang myself). I was brought into a room with FCELL painted on the walls, which one of the others had overheard being called the “female cell”. The “male cell” was already full.

In the cell they used temperature to tire us out and break us. First they heated the cell until we were all lying on the floor in silence, exhausted. They then swapped and cooled us right down, and we suddenly all got up, pacing around the room to keep warm. Just as suddenly, they would then make it unbearably hot again, leaving us even more weaker than before. I’m sure this procedure must be common knowledge for many, but for me this was completely shocking. It left me with an unbearable mixture of fear, lethargy and boredom. At one point I tried to balance a coin on its side to keep myself from thinking about what was happening and realised that my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

After a few more hours they opened the door and asked for me specifically. I went back to the desk, where they told me I was banned from City Square and environs until Sunday evening, an area which ranged from Queen Street to Spring, from Flinders to Latrobe. At first I thought I was being told to sign an agreement, so I asked what would happen if I didn’t agree. They told me that I would have to see what the Governor said, which meant waiting in the cell until Monday. It took me a little while to realise that I was just being formally told this information, and didn’t have to agree with anything. So I took the ban notice, signed for the return of my belongings and was released without charge. I later found out they asked for me first because I had someone waiting outside. It was 8pm, five hours after I had been grabbed out of a group of peaceful protesters.

There is clearly more I could say about my own beliefs in regards to the Occupy movement, but my intention in writing this is to document what happened to me, not to further a particular agenda. However I don’t want my story dismissed through the type of stereotyping that has seen people labeled professional protesters, a term which I don’t even begin to understand. I would like to stress that I did not attend the protest in order to be arrested, and I spent most of the day refilling plastic bottles of water and passing them throughout the crowd. So briefly, for those of you who don’t know me, no I am not unemployed, drawing government benefits, a member of a union, political party or activist group – not that I think that should matter in the slightest. I was there because I believe the right to protest is one of the most important rights we have, it plays a crucial role in any democracy. A few flimsy excuses about hanging heavy items and having some tents shouldn’t be enough to clear a protest entirely with two hours notice. Most importantly, to first threaten a group with violence and to then blame them for the violence after they don’t give in to your threats is an incredibly dangerous brand of flawed logic.

https://nicocoinicon.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/a-firsthand-account-of-being-arrested-for-protesting/

OCCUPY SYDNEY EVICTION 5AM 23RD OCTOBER 2011

OCCUPY MELBOURNE PROTESTORS VS RIOT POLICE, FRIDAY AM, 21/10/11

AUSTRALIAN MURDOCH TABLOID TO CHARGE FOR INTERNET CONTENT.

By Michael, Member of the House of Byers.
Melbourne corporate newspaper, The Age, has reported that Murdoch tabloid, The Australian, is set to announce a charging schedule.
The $2.95 fee shall apply to website, tablet & mobile phone access, and applications, but, is a sliding fee that increases depending on what you are purchasing.
There is no word as to whether the scheme will be rolled out to other News Ltd tabloids such as the Herald-Sun & the Courier Mail, although it is claimed that the news ltd website will not be charging for access to its website.
Other newspaper around the world that charge for content such as The Financial Review, The Times of England, and The New York Times, do not appear to be faring well.
At any rate, it is a much better idea to consume and support independent news agencies such as The Mikiverse.

MEET THE GUY WHO SNITCHED ON OCCUPY WALL ST TO THE FBI AND NYPD

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 BY ADRIAN CHEN OCT 15, 2011The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for a month. And it seems the FBI and NYPD have had help tracking protesters' moves thanks to a conservative computer security expert who gained access to one of the group's internal mailing lists, and then handed over information on the group's plans to authorities and corporations targeted by protesters.ADRIAN CHEN

Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, New York security consultant Thomas Ryan has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement. Ryan says he's done contract work for the U.S. Army and he brags on his blog that he leads "a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world." But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers' social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.

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As part of their intelligence-gathering operation, the group gained access to a listserv used by Occupy Wall Street organizers called September17discuss. On September17discuss, organizers hash out tactics and plan events, conduct post-mortems of media appearances, and trade the latest protest gossip. On Friday, Ryan leaked thousands of September17discuss emails to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is now using them to try to smear Occupy Wall Street as an anarchist conspiracy to disrupt global markets.

What may much more alarming to Occupy Wall Street organizers is that while Ryan was monitoring September17discuss, he was forwarding interesting email threads to contacts at the NYPD and FBI, including special agent Jordan T. Loyd, a member of the FBI's New York-based cyber security team.

On September 18th, the day after the protest's start, Ryan forwarded an email exchange between Occupy Wall Street organizers to Loyd. The email exchange is harmless: Organizers discuss how they need to increase union participation in the protest. "We need more outreach to workers. The best way to do that is by showing solidarity with them," writes organizer Jackie DiSalvo in the thread. She then lists a group of potential unions to work with.

Another organizer named Conor responds: "+1,000,000 to Jackie's proposal on working people/union struggles outreach and solidarity. Also, why not invite people to protest Troy Davis's execution date at Liberty Plaza this Monday?"

Five minutes after Conor sent his email, Ryan forwarded the thread—with no additional comment—to Loyd's FBI email address. "Thanks!" Loyd responded. He cc'd his colleague named Ilhwan Yum, a fellow cybersecurity expert at the agency, on the reply.

On September 26th, Ryan forwarded another email thread to Agent Loyd. But this time he clued in the NYPD as well, sending the email to Dennis Dragos, a detective with the NYPD Computer Crimes Squad.

The NYPD might have been very grateful he did so, since it involved a proposed demonstration outside NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. In the thread, organizers debated whether to crash an upcoming press conference planned by marijuana advocates to celebrate NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly ordering officers to halt arrests over possession of small amounts of marijuana.

"Should we bring some folks from Liberty Plaza to chant "SHAME" for the NYPD's recent brutalities on Thursday night for the Troy Davis and Saturday for the Occupy Wall Street march?" asked one person in the email thread. (That past Saturday, the video of NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper-spraying a protester had gone viral.) Ryan promptly forwarded the email thread to Loyd at the FBI and Dragos at the NYPD.

Interestingly, it was Ryan who revealed himself as a snitch. We learned of these emails from the archive Ryan leaked yesterday in the hopes of undermining the Occupy Wall Street movement. In assembling the archive of September17discuss emails, it appears he accidentally included some of his own forwarded emails indicating he was ratting out organizers.

"I don't know, I just put everything I had into one big package," Ryan said when asked how the emails ended up in the file posted to Andrew Breitbart's blog. Some security expert.

But Ryan didn't just tip off the authorities. He was also giving information to companies as well. When protesters discussed demonstrating in front of morning shows likeToday and Good Morning America, Ryan quickly forwarded the thread to Mark Farrell, the chief security officer at Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal.

Ryan wrote:

Since you are the CSO, I am not sure of your role in NBC since COMCAST owns them.
There is a huge protest in New York call "Occupy Wall Street". Here is an email of stunts that they will try to pull on the TODAY show.

We have been heavily monitoring Occupy Wall Street, and Anonymous.

"Thanks Tom," Farrell responded. "I'll pass this to my counterpart at NBCU."

Did the FBI and/or NYPD ask him to monitor Occupy Wall Street? Was he just forwarding the emails on out of the goodness of his heart? In a phone interview with us, Ryan denied being an informant. "I do not work with the FBI," he said.

Ryan said he knows Loyd through their mutual involvement in the Open Web Application Security Project, a non-profit computer security group of which Ryan is a board member. Ryan said he sent the emails to Loyd unsolicited simply because "everyone's curious" about Occupy Wall Street, and he had a ground-eye view. "Jordan never asked me for anything."

Was he sending every email he got to the authorities? Ryan said he couldn't remember how many he'd passed on to the FBI or NYPD, or other third parties. Later he said that he only forwarded the two emails we noticed, detailed above.

But even if he'd been sending them on regularly, they were probably of limited use to the authorities. Most of the real organizing at Occupy Wall Street happens face-to-face, according to David Graeber, who was one of the earliest organizers. "We did some practical work on [the email list] at first—I think that's where I first proposed the "we are the 99%" motto—but mainly it's just an expressive forum," he wrote in an email. "No one would seriously discuss a plan to do something covert or dangerous on such a list."

But regardless of how many emails Ryan sent—or whether Loyd ever asked Ryan to spy on Occupy Wall Street—Loyd was almost certainly interested in the emails he received. Loyd has helped hunt down members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous, and he and his colleagues in the FBI's cyber security squad have been monitoring their involvement in Occupy Wall Street.

At a New York cyber security conference one day before the protest began, Loyd cited Occupy Wall Street as an example of a "newly emerging threat to U.S. information systems." (In the lead-up to Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous had issued threats against the New York Stock Exchange.) He told the assembled crowd the FBI has been "monitoring the event on cyberspace and are preparing to meet it with physical security,"according to a New York Institute of Technology press release.

We contacted Loyd to ask about his relationship with Ryan and if any of the information Ryan passed along was of any use to the agency. He declined to answer questions and referred us to the FBI's press office. We'll post an update if we hear back from them.

We asked Ryan again this morning about how closely he was working with the authorities. Again, he claimed it was only these two emails, which is unlikely given he forwarded them to the FBI and NYPD without providing any context or explaining where he'd gotten them.

And he detailed his rationale for assisting the NYPD:

My respect for FDNY & NYPD stems from them risking their lives to save mine when my house was on fire in sunset park when I was 8 yrs old. Also, for them risking their lives and saving many family and friends during 9/11.

Don't you find it Ironic that out of all the NYPD involved with the protest, [protesters] have only targeted the ones with Black Ribbons, given to them for their bravery during 9/11?

I am sorry if we see things differently, I try to look at everything as a whole and in patterns. Everything we do in life and happens in life, there is a pattern behind it.

[Photo, top, via dcannflan/Flickr. Photos of Zuccotti Square and arrests of protesters via AP]

http://gawker.com/5850054/meet-the-guy-who-snitched-on-occupy-wall-street-to-the-fbi-and-nypd

TOO MANY 9-11 COMMISSION QUESTIONS STILL UNANSWERED

September 8th, 2009

Allen L Roland

When Pandora's Box is finally fully opened on the deceptions and abuses of power by the Cheney/Bush administration ~ the 9/11 conspiracy and cover-up will stand alone as the most treasonous act in American history. Here are 40 experts, including Commission members, who share their misgivings about the 9/11 Commission and the questions left unanswered:

The resignation Sunday of longtime Bay Area activist Van Jones as a White House environmental adviser left many progressives, including myself, rightfully angry at the Obama administration for crumbling to conservative criticism of Jones' controversial past comments and actions ~ particularly regarding 9/11. Jones resigned amid a furor over his signature on a 2004 petition rightfully questioning the government's actions around the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A petition that I and many other Progressive leaders proudly signed and still support.

As Gandhi once said ~ An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because very few choose to see or acknowledge it.

So let's set the record straight, Van Jones was not alone in his misgivings about the government's actions around the 9/11 attacks and most certainly it's response ~ as alluded to in the obviously deeply flawed 9/11 Commission report.

Here are 40 experts, including the Chairman, 9/11 Commission, Thomas H. Kean, Former Governor of New Jersey and Vice Chairman, 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Homeland Security Advisory Council ~ sounding off in short quotes about their misgivings with the 9/11 commission and the far too many questions that are still UNANSWERED.

9/11 REVISITED AND QUESTIONED

Summarized from www.patriotsquestion911.com.

Senator Max Cleland – Former member of the 9/11 Commission, resigned in December 2003 "I, as a member of the [9/11] Commission, cannot look any American in the eye... It is a national scandal... this White House wants to cover [9/11] up."

Senator Mark Dayton ~ Member, Senate Committee on Armed Services and Homeland Security "[NORAD] lied to the American people, they lied to Congress and they lied to your 9/11 Commission...the most gross incompetence and dereliction of responsibility and negligence"

Congressman Ron Paul - Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee "the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation"

Congressman Curt Weldon - "[9/11 Commission] there's something very sinister going on here... something desperately wrong... This involved what is right now the covering up of information that led to the deaths of 3,000 people"

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney - Member of the House Armed Services Committee "the [9/11] Commission ran up against obstruction by the administration and non-cooperation from government agencies... the errors and omissions immediately jumped out at us"

Director of the FBI, Louis Freeh – "[9/11 Commission] findings--raises serious challenges to the commission's credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself"

Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts, PhD - "Distinguished national and international scientists and scholars present massive evidence that the 9/11 Commission Report is a hoax and that the 9/11 "terrorist attack" has been manipulated to serve a hegemonic agenda in the Middle East... We know that it is strictly impossible for any building, much less steel columned buildings, to "pancake" at free fall speed. Therefore, it is a non-controversial fact that the official explanation of the collapse of the WTC buildings is false"

Assistant Secretary of Housing, Catherine Austin Fitts - "Regarding 9/11 "The official story could not possibly have happened... It’s not possible. It’s not operationally feasible... The Commission was a whitewash. "

U.S. Army Intelligence officer, Federal Prosecutor, Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice, John Loftus ~ "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence"

Foreign Service Officer, George Kenney - " I cannot believe, much as I might like to, the standard account of 9/11"

Foreign Service Officer, J. Michael Springman - "Fifteen of the nineteen people who allegedly flew airplanes into buildings in the United States got their visas from the same CIA Consulate at Jeddah"

Deputy Attorney General, State of Pennsylvania, Philip J. Berg, Esquire - "The official story of what actually took place on 9/11 is a lie. "

Major General U.S. Army, Commanding General of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, Albert Stubblebine ~ "I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, ‘The plane does not fit in that hole’. So what did hit the Pentagon?"

Col. Ronald D. Ray, U.S. Marine Corps – Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Deputy Director of Field Operations for the U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center - "I'm astounded that the conspiracy theory advanced by the administration could in fact be true and the evidence does not seem to suggest that's accurate"

Col. Robert Bowman, U.S. Air Force, Director of Advanced Space Programs, PhD Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering -" the official 9/11 story is impossible .. There is a cover up .. high levels of our government don't want us to know what happened .. highly placed individuals in the administration .. Dick Cheney .. the very kindest thing we can say about George W Bush .. is high treason and conspiracy to commit murder "

Col. George Nelson, U.S. Air Force, aircraft accident investigator ~ "I never witnessed nor even heard of an aircraft loss, where the wreckage was accessible, that prevented investigators from finding enough hard evidence to positively identify the make, model, and specific registration number of the aircraft -- and in most cases the precise cause of the accident... The government alleges that four wide-body airliners crashed on the morning of September 11, 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 human beings, yet not one piece of hard aircraft evidence has been produced in an attempt to positively identify any of the four aircraft. On the contrary, it seems only that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden from view .. with all the evidence readily available at the pentagon crash site, any unbiased rational investigator could only conclude that a Boeing 757 did not fly into the Pentagon as alleged. Similarly, with all the evidence available at the Pennsylvania crash site, it was most doubtful that a passenger airliner caused the obvious hole in the ground and certainly not the Boeing 757 as alleged .. the most heinous conspiracy in our country's history "

Major Douglas Rokke, PhD, U.S. Army ~ "Regarding the impact at the Pentagon on 9/11/2001 "when you look at the damage, it was obviously a missile."

Capt. Russ Wittenberg, U.S. Air Force, fighter pilot, commercial pilot flying 707, 720, 727, 737, 747, 757, 767, and 777 ’s. Had previously flown Flight 93, which impacted in Pennsylvania, and Flight 175, the second plane to hit the WTC ~"The government story they handed us about 9/11 is total B.S. plain and simple...[Regarding Flight 77]"The airplane could not have flown at those speeds which they said it did without going into what they call a high speed stall. The airplane won’t go that fast if you start pulling those high G maneuvers at those bank angles... The vehicle that hit the Pentagon was not Flight 77"

Lt. Col. Karen U. Kwiatkowski, PhD, U.S. Air Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense, staff of the Director of the National Security Agency ~ "It is as a scientist that I have the most trouble with the official government conspiracy theory, mainly because it does not satisfy the rules of probability or physics. The collapses of the World Trade Center buildings clearly violate the laws of probability and physics...There was a dearth of visible debris on the relatively unmarked Pentagon, where I stood only minutes after the impact. Beyond this strange absence of airliner debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage one would expect from the impact of a large airliner... this visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the Sec of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a ' missile ' ... I saw nothing of significance at the point of contact ~ no airplane metal or cargo debris was blowing on the lawn in front of the damaged building as smoke billowed from within the Pentagon .. all of us staring at the Pentagon that morning were indeed looking for such debris, but what we expected was not evident .. the same is true with regard to the damage we expected .. but I did not see this kind of damage. Rather, the facade had a rather small hole, no larger than 20 feet in diameter. Although this facade later collapsed, it remained standing for 30 0r 40 minutes, with the roof remaining relatively straight .. The scene, in short, was not what I would have expected from a strike by a large jetliner. It was, however, exactly what one would have expected if a missile had struck the Pentagon "

Senior Military Affairs Journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School, Barbara Honegger, MS ~ "The US military, not al Qaeda, had the sustained access weeks before 9/11 to also plant controlled demolition charges throughout the superstructures of WTC 1 and WTC 2, and in WTC 7, which brought down all three buildings on 9/11...A US military plane, not one piloted by al Qaeda, performed the highly skilled, high−speed 270−degree dive towards the Pentagon that Air Traffic Controllers on 9/11 were sure was a military plane as they watched it on their screens. Only a military aircraft, not a civilian plane flown by al Qaeda, would have given off the "Friendly" signal needed to disable the Pentagon’s anti−aircraft missile batteries as it approached the building...Only the US military, not al Qaeda, had the ability to break all of its Standard Operating Procedures to paralyze its own emergency response system"

Capt. Gregory M. Zeigler, PhD, U.S. Army, U.S. Army Intelligence Officer ~ "I knew from September 18, 2001, that the official story about 9/11 was false. ... [A]nomalies poured in rapidly: the hijackers' names appearing in none of the published flight passenger lists, BBC reports of stolen identities of the alleged hijackers or the alleged hijackers being found alive, the obvious demolitions of WTC 1 and 2...and WTC7...not hit by an airplane...the lack of identifiable Boeing 757 wreckage at the Pentagon"

Capt. Eric H. May, U.S. Army, Intelligence officer ~ "I view the 911 event ...as a matter that implies either...A) passive participation by the Bush White House through a deliberate stand-down or B) active execution of a plot by rogue elements of government, starting with the White House itself, in creating a spectacle of destruction that would lead the United States into an invasion of the Middle East"

Former Chairman, National Intelligence Estimates, CIA, responsible for preparing the President’ Daily Brief, U.S. Army Intelligence Officer, Raymond L. McGovern ~ " I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 report is a joke...just as Hitler in 1933 cynically exploited the burning of the parliament building, the Reichstag, this is exactly what our President did in exploiting 9/11...making a war of aggression on a country that he knew had nothing to do with 9/11...that’s certainly an impeachable offense...But compelling evidence for an even more disturbing conclusion: that the 9/11 attacks were themselves orchestrated by this administration precisely so they could be thus exploited."

National Intelligence Officer and Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, William Christison ~ "there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. … An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. … The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them...this all was totally an inside job… I have since decided that....at least some elements in this US government had contributed in some way or other to causing 9/11 to happen or at least allowing it to happen... The reason that the two towers in New York actually collapsed and fell all the way to the ground was controlled explosions rather than just being hit by two airplanes. … All of the characteristics of these demolitions show that they almost had to have been controlled explosions... I think you almost have to look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a joke and not a serious piece of analysis at all... It's a monstrous crime"

U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer, case officer CIA. Robert David Steele ~ "I am forced to conclude that there is sufficient evidence to indict (not necessarily convict) Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and others...This is, without question, the most important modern reference on state-sponsored terrorism, and also the reference that most pointedly suggests that select rogue elements within the US Government, most likely led by Dick Cheney with the assistance of George Tenet, Buzzy Kronguard, and others close to the Wall Street gangs, are the most guilty of state-sponsored terrorism...I'm absolutely certain that WTC 7 was brought down by controlled demolition and that as far as I'm concerned means that this case has not been properly investigated. There's no way that building could have come down without controlled demolition"

CIA Case Officer, Specialist in the Middle East, Directorate of Operations, Awarded Career Intelligence Medal, Robert Baer ~ " Regarding the opinion there was an aspect of 'inside job' to 9/11 within the U.S. government, "There is that possibility, the evidence points at it."
Counter-terrorism expert in the Security Division of the federal Aviation Administration. Team leader of the FAA's Red ( Terrorism ) Team in the Federal Air Marshall program, Coast Guard officer, Bogdan Dzakovic ~ "At worst, I think the 9/11 Commission Report is treasonous."

Minister of Justice, West Germany, Horst Ehmke, PhD - "Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service."

State Secretary, Federal Ministry of Defense, West Germany, Andreas von Buelow, PhD - "The official story is so inadequate and far-fetched that there must be another one...This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry." President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga ~ "[9/11] could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and flight security personnel."

General Leonid Ivashov, Chief of Staff, Russian armed forces, Ministry of Defense ~ "Only secret services and their current chiefs – or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations – have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation [9/11] of such magnitude...Osama bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders."

Foreign Minister of Egypt, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal ~ "Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation [9/11] of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaida as if it was Nazi Germany or the communist party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaida has been penetrated by American intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organization and sophistication."

Chief of Staff, Pakistani Army, General Mirza Aslam Beg ~ "The information which is now coming up, goes to prove that involvement by the ‘rogue elements’ of the U.S. military and intelligence organization is getting more obvious. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda definitely do not have the know-how and the capability to launch such operations involving such high precision coordination, based on information and expertise."

European Parliament, Committee on Security and Defense, Giulietto Chiesa ~ regarding 9-11 "Billions of people were given only one explanation....which is entirely false....everyone who dares to question it is treated as if he was a fool."

French Army Intelligence and artillery officer, Col. Pierre-Henri Bunel, Expert in the effects of artillery weapons and explosives ~ Regarding Department of Defense photos of the Pentagon on 9/11 "Image of the impact on the Pentagon is very instructive as to the nature of the explosion. ... It corresponds to a detonation of an explosive with high energetic power. The explosion does not correspond to a deflagration of kerosene...suggests a single engine flying vehicle much smaller in size than an airliner...resembles the effects of anti-concrete hollow charges that I have been able to observe on a number of battlefields...lead me therefore to think that the detonation that struck the building was that of a high-powered hollow charge used to destroy hardened buildings and carried by an aerial vehicle, a missile."

Safety Engineer and accident Analyst, National Safety Technology Authority, Finland, Heikki Kurttila, PhD ~ "Conclusion: The observed collapse time of WTC 7 was 6.5 seconds. That is only half a second longer than it would have taken for the top of the building to fall to the ground in a vacuum, and half a second shorter than the falling time of an apple when air resistance is taken into account. ... The great speed of the collapse and the low value of the resistance factor strongly suggest controlled demolition."

Counter-Terrorism Officer, MI5 (Britain), David Shayler – regarding 9-11 "The available evidence indicates that people in key positions in the FBI, the State Department, the CIA and so on were not loyal to the Constitution; that they saw an opportunity in plans laid down by genuine Islamic terrorists to carry out an operation that would shock the world and would therefore justify U.S. adventurism in the middle East, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Chairman, 9/11 Commission, Thomas H. Kean, Former Governor of New Jersey - "FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue...We, to this day, don't know why NORAD told us what they told us...It was just so far from the truth."

Vice Chairman, 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Homeland Security Advisory Council ~ "we got started late; we had a very short time frame...we did not have enough money...We had a lot of people strongly opposed to what we did. We had a lot of trouble getting access to documents and to people. ... So there were all kinds of reasons we thought we were set up to fail"

9/11 Commissioner, Timothy J. Roemer, PhD, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence - "that panel members so distrusted testimony from Pentagon officials that they referred their concerns to the Pentagon's inspector general...We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting"

Senior Counsel, 9/11 Commission, John J. Farmer, Jr., Former Attorney General, NJ, Former Commissioner of the State Commission of Investigations ~ Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described...The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years"

The truth always goes through three stages as will the eventual unmasking of the 9/11 cover up ~

First ~ it is ridiculed.

Second ~ it is violently opposed.

Third ~ It is accepted as being self evident and we are daily drawing closer to stage three .

Allen L Roland
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/09/08.html

Freelance columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments , interviews and speaking engagements ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

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Allen Roland’s weblog: http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/
Website: www.allenroland.com
ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY