TIME'S PERSON OF THE YEAR: IMAGE OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN PROTESTING OPPRESSION BY THE CORPORATE MASTERS OF OUR GOVERNMENT ...DOCTORED TO LOOK LIKE A TERRORIST. OF COURSE, OUR CORPORATE MASTERS OWN TIME MAGAZINE (AND THE REST OF THE "MAINSTREAM" MEDIA) AND THEIR OBJECTIVE IS TO TERRORIZE US!

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Original Here

The Eyes Have It

December 21, 2011 By Steve Fine

Time Magazine paying homage to the global protester of 2011 as the person of the year is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is an unexpected honor for occupiers in this country to be singled out for attention this Holiday Season — without the use of pepper spray to highlight their importance, not to mention discourage what they do best: protest. On the other hand, perhaps the iconic image crafted by Shephard Fairey​ has embedded within it a less flattering slant.

Look in the eyes of the Fairey protester.

Set aside any debates about artistic merit; just take in what is gazing back at you, as if you picked up the magazine in a dental office and now have it lying on your lap. Don’t think about it: Look and flip it over, then say any words that come to mind. Chances are Jihadi will be the first one, or terrorist, or guerilla or intifada. It isn’t the combination of knit cap and bandana alone that produces this sort of association in most people; it is the addition to the mix of the eyes rendered in placard black and white with fiery red, all the detailing Photoshopped-out with extreme contrast.

Shephard Fairey's rendition

Now look at the reality, the photograph of Sarah M, taken by LA Weekly freelance photographer Ted Soqui either at the City Hall encampment of Occupy LA or at a protest held on November 17th at Bank of America Plaza.  Since the subject wishes to remain anonymous, I’m not printing Sarah’s last name, nor do I need to provide the full image to make this point: These are the eyes of a human being.

Sara M's human eyes

Not even a fear obsessed, War On Terror, Fox News addict could see any menace in these eyes. Even if the same context is provided – the knit cap and 99% bandana — the eyes still win you over. In the Soqui photo you have an image that says far more about the true heart and soul of the Occupy movement than the cover of Time Magazine.

Had the editors decided to use his photograph instead, then they would have had a problem on their hands: a far too attractive image for the Occupy movement.

Fairey provided Time with the perfect solution: a cover that could be interpreted as heroic while stoking the viewer’s unease at the same time. And so, the hip outlaw graphic street artist with cred (for generating the iconic image of the Obama ’08 campaign) has delivered to his client, arguably a key member of the one percent, precisely the image required to undermine with praise: a stylized portrait with the subject’s all important eyes peering over the top edge of a rebel bandana with something of the fanatic about them.

She may be the person of the year and the image may be strong, too, iconographic and guaranteed to stimulate a new clothing line, but I doubt the rest of the 99% are interested in meeting her in person now. At best, they may admire her conviction and her courage from afar, but let the Global Protester take the pepper spray. Is there not something about her eyes that justifies it?

And how many of the 99% will be turning off the tube to risk going down to Zuccotti Park to hang out with her?

Which is a shame, because all they will find is someone just like Sarah all over the country, wherever there is an OWS gathering. Time Magazine has played its image manipulation card well: Lurking under the bandana of the Person of the Year is Public Enemy Number One: The Occupy Wall Street Protester. Fear Her. Let us kettle her and arrest her. She is “The Other.”

So, look one more time at the truth: It’s just Sarah.

Steve Fine

OBAMA AND GEITHNER COVER UP THE GREATEST BANKING FRAUD IN HISTORY, ANALYSIS 2: MATT TAIBBI

Obama and Geithner: Government, Enron-Style

POSTED: DECEMBER 20, 10:06 AM ET

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Strongly recommend this piece at the Huffington Post by Jeff Connaughton, a former aide to Senator Ted Kaufman. Jeff is one of the smartest guys on the Hill and is particularly strong on issues surrounding Wall Street and the regulatory system. In this piece, he takes apart the oft-stated mantra that what Wall Street firms did during and after the crisis was maybe unethical, but not illegal.

He takes particular aim at Barack Obama, who recently tossed that line out on 60 Minutes in what I thought was one of the real low moments of his presidency. Here’s Jeff’s take:

Speaking in Kansas on December 6, [Obama] said, "Too often, we've seen Wall Street firms violating major anti-fraud laws because the penalties are too weak and there's no price for being a repeat offender." Just five days later on 60 Minutes, he said, "Some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street wasn't illegal." Which is it? Have there been no prosecutions because Wall Street acted legally (albeit unethically)? Or did Wall Street repeatedly violate major anti-fraud laws (and should thus find itself in the dock)?
The President is confusing "legal" with "difficult to prosecute successfully."

The notion that what Wall Street firms did was merely unethical and not illegal is not just mistaken but preposterous: most everyone who works in the financial services industry understands that fraud right now is not just pervasive but epidemic, with many of the biggest banks committing entire departments to the routine commission of fraud and perjury – every single one of the major banks, for instance, devotes significant manpower to robosigning affidavits for foreclosures and credit card judgments, acts which are openly and inarguably criminal.

Banks and hedge funds routinely withhold derogatory information about the instruments they sell, they routinely trade on insider information or ahead of their own clients’ orders, and corrupt accounting is so rampant now that industry analysts have begun to figure in estimated levels of fraud in their examinations of the public disclosures of major financial companies.

Beyond that, as Jeff points out, Obama is simply not telling the truth about the supposedly insufficient penalties available to regulators. Employing the famous "mistakes were made" use of the passive tense, Obama copped out in his December 6 speech by saying that “penalties are too weak." As Jeff points out, what Obama should have said is that "the penalties my own regulators chose to dish out were too weak":

Moreover, the President is misleading us when he says that Wall Street firms violate anti-fraud law because the penalties are too weak. Repeat financial fraudsters don't pay relatively paltry -- and therefore painless -- penalties because of statutory caps on such penalties. Rather, regulatory officials, appointed by Obama, negotiated these comparatively trifling fines. This week, the F.D.I.C. settled a suit against Washington Mutual officials for just $64 million, an amount that will be covered mostly by insurance policies WaMu took out on behalf of executives, who themselves will pay just $400,000. And recently a federal judge rejected the S.E.C.'s latest settlement with Citigroup, an action even the Wall Street Journal called "a rebuke of the cozy relationship between regulators and the regulated that too often leaves justice as an orphan."

What makes Obama’s statements so dangerous is that they suggest an ongoing strategy of covering up the Wall Street crimewave. There is ample evidence out there that the Obama administration has eased up on prosecutions of Wall Street as part of a conscious strategy to prevent a collapse of confidence in our financial system, with the expected 50-state foreclosure settlement being the landmark effort in the cover-up, intended mainly to bury a generation of fraud. Here’s how Jeff puts it:

In Ron Suskind's book, Confidence Men, he quotes Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as saying, "The confidence in the system is so fragile still... a disclosure of a fraud... could result in a run, just like Lehman." The Obama Administration is pushing hard for a 50-state settlement with the major banks for their fraudulent foreclosure practices, even though several state attorneys general have rejected this approach because, in their view, it would shield too much wrongdoing. Regrettably, Obama's top officials and lawyers seem more eager to restore the financial sector to health than establish criminal accountability among the executives who were in charge.

In other words, Geithner and Obama are behaving like Lehman executives before the crash of Lehman, not disclosing the full extent of the internal problem in order to keep investors from fleeing and creditors from calling in their chits. It’s worth noting that this kind of behavior – knowingly hiding the derogatory truth from the outside world in order to prevent a run on the bank – is, itself, fraud!

This is exactly the mindset that led Lehman to the abuses of the "Repo 105" accounting trick, in which loans were disguised as revenues in order to prevent the outside world from knowing the dire state of the bank’s balance sheet.

Now Obama and Geithner are engaged in the same sort of activity, only they’re trying to prevent a run not on an individual bank, but the entire American financial services sector. Geithner seems really to believe that if fraud were aggressively policed, and the world made aware of the incredible extent of the illegality in our markets, that international confidence in the American financial sector would plummet and our economy would suffer – and suffer, incidentally, on Barack Obama’s watch.

Better, apparently, the Band-Aid the problem now, and let the real mess happen later on, on someone else’s watch, or at least in a second term, when there’s no need to worry about re-election.

Of course, this is exactly the wrong way to go about things. If Geithner and Obama really wanted to convince the world that America’s markets weren’t broken, they would effectively police fraud, and by extension prove to everybody that at the very least, our regulatory system is not broken.

But by taking a dive on fraud, and orchestrating mass cover-ups like the coming foreclosure settlement fiasco, what they’re doing instead is signaling to the world that not only are our financial markets corrupt, but our government is broken as well.

The problem with companies like Lehman and Enron is that their executives always think they can paper over illegalities by committing more crimes, when in fact all they’re usually doing is snowballing the problem so completely out of control that there’s no longer any chance of fixing things, thereby killing the only chance for survival they ever had.

This is exactly what Obama and Geithner are doing now. By continually lying about the extent of the country’s corruption problems, they’re adding fraud to fraud and raising such a great bonfire of lies that they probably won’t ever be able to fix the underlying mess.

If they looked at the world like public servants, and not like corporate executives, they’d understand that the only way out is to come clean. That they don’t look at things that way should tell people quite a lot.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/obama-and-geithner-government-enron-style-20111220#ixzz1hHMsketc

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 About Matt Taibbi 

Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone. He’s the author of five books, most recently The Great Derangement and Griftopia, and a winner of the National Magazine Award for commentary.

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OBAMA AND GEITHNER COVER UP THE GREATEST BANKING FRAUD IN HISTORY, ANALYSIS 1: BILL BLACK

Benzinga / By William K. Black

Bill Black's Handy Guide to Bankster Fraud, From 'Small Fraudulent Fry' to 'Septic Tank Scum'

The white collar criminologist calls out Bush and Obama for not prosecuting financial fraud and demands an end to the free pass for campaign contributors.

December 20, 2011 | Sixty Minutes' December 11, 2011  interview of President Obama included a claim by Obama that, unfortunately, did not lead the interviewer to ask the obvious, essential follow-up questions

“I can tell you, just from 40,000 feet, that some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, in some cases, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn't illegal.”

Obama did not explain what Wall Street behavior he found least ethical or what unethical Wall Street actions he believed was not illegal. It would have done the world (and Obama) a great service had he been asked these questions. He would not have given a coherent answer because his thinking on these issues has never been coherent. If he had to explain his position he, and the public, would recognize it was indefensible. I offer the following scale of unethical banker behavior related to fraudulent mortgages and mortgage paper (principally collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)) that is illegal and deserved punishment. I write to prompt the rigorous analytical discussion that is essential to expose and end Obama and Bush’s “Presidential Amnesty for Contributors” (PAC) doctrine. The financial industry is the leading campaign contributor to both parties and those contributions come overwhelmingly from the wealthiest officers – the one-tenth of one percent that thrives by being parasites on the 99 percent.

I have explained at length in my blogs and articles why:

• Only fraudulent home lenders made liar’s loans 
• Liar’s loans were endemically fraudulent 
• Lenders and their agents put the lies in liar’s loans 
• Appraisal fraud was endemic and led by lenders and their agents 
• Liar’s loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties 
• CDOs “backed” by liar’s loans were inherently fraudulent 
• CDOs backed by liar’s loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties 
• Liar’s loans hyper-inflated the bubble 
• Liar’s loans became roughly one-third of mortgage originations by 2006

Each of these frauds is a conventional fraud that could be prosecuted under existing laws. Hundreds of lenders and over a hundred thousand loan brokers were “accounting control frauds” specializing largely in making fraudulent liar’s loans. My prior work explains control fraud, why accounting is the “weapon on choice” for fraudulent financial firms, and why liar’s loans were superior “ammunition” for committing massive accounting fraud. These accounting control frauds caused greater direct financial losses than any other crime epidemic in history. They also drove the financial crisis that produced the Great Recession and cost millions of Americans their jobs.

In considering my scale of unethical conduct it is important to keep in mind that it is highly likely that anyone that causes very large numbers of people to lose their homes will cause multiple suicides and indirect deaths that arise from the greater vulnerability of the homeless and the blue collar crime effects of destroying neighborhoods inherent to widespread foreclosures. I ignore for this purpose the fact that the fraudulent loans caused the bubble to hyper-inflate and drove the financial crisis that caused millions of people to lose their jobs. The financial accounting control frauds are the weapons of mass destruction of wealth, employment, and happiness. I also ignore the fact that the frauds described here made the perpetrators wealthy. My scale, therefore, systematically and dramatically understates the perpetrators’ moral turpitude. I have also excluded the massive foreclosure frauds from my scale because they did not cause the underlying crisis. When Obama reveals the bankers actions he claims to be legal but highly unethical readers should keep my conscious understatement of the moral depravity of the illegal acts by bankers that drove this crisis in mind when they compare the relative ethical failings.

As a criminologist, I do not favor sentencing criminals to the fates they richly deserve. I would never torture prisoners or place them at risk of assault, rape, or psychological trauma. I do not believe that extremely longer terms of imprisonment are desirable except in rare circumstances. As a lawyer and a criminologist I emphasize that any sentence should come only after a conviction in a trial providing due process protections or a guilty plea. My scale provides a label for the comparative moral depravity of the perpetrator, the deserved punishment (which when vicious is not the far more humane one I would actually impose), and a brief description of the specific frauds that are characteristic of this level of immorality and the number of perpetrators falling in each category. My inspiration was Dante’s circles of hell as described in his Divine Comedy.

The Scale of Ethical Depravity by the Frauds that Drove the Ongoing Crisis

Level 10: Septic tank scum

Eternal Hell: these banksters deserve a physical hell of infinite torment and duration.

Officers that directed control frauds that involved making predatory loans to more than 10,000 homeowners who lost their homes as the result of the frauds. Predatory loans in this context mean deliberately seeking out the elderly or minorities for such loans because they were easier to con into taking loans they could not repay – at a premium yield (interest rate). Dozens of CEOs fall in this category.

Level 9: Pond scum

Time in Hell: These banksters deserve a term in hell.

Officers that directed control frauds that led to more than 10,000 homeowners losing their homes.  Hundreds of CEOs fall in this category.

Level 8: Generic scum

Gitmo:  Hell’s starkest suburb.

Officers that directed control frauds that led to more than 1,000 homeowners losing their homes.  Thousands of CEOs fall in this category.

Level 7:  Dante’s deserved denizens

Supermax:   No view, and no way out.

The professionals that aided and abetted the overall control frauds by inflating appraisals, giving “clean” audit opinions to fraudulent financial statements, “AAA” ratings to toxic waste, and accommodating legal opinions to the frauds.  Thousands of professionals fall in this category.

Level 6: Aspiring to great wealth through fraud

Alcatraz: Great view, but no way out.

The senior lieutenants of the control frauds who committed the frauds that caused more than 10,000 homeowners to lose their homes. Thousands of senior officers fall in this category.

Level 5: A large cog in a smaller fraud

Generic Hardcore Prison: A life of boredom and the almost total loss of freedom.

The senior lieutenants of the control frauds who committed the frauds that caused more than 1,000 homeowners to lose their homes. Thousands of senior officers fall in this category.

Level 4: The banksters who cost us our money instead of our homes – Goldman Sachs & friends

Generic Prison: A life of boredom and a severe loss of freedom.

The officers that led the control frauds who targeted their customers for the purchase of more than $10 million in fraudulent product. Dozens of officers fall in this category.

Level 3: The banksters’ senior lieutenants who cost us our money instead of our homes

Prisons designed for serious, but less physically dangerous felons.

The senior officers of the control frauds who targeted their customers for the purchase of more than $10 million in fraudulent product. Scores of senior officers fall in this category.

Level 2: Banksters who defrauded other bankers (who were willing to be defrauded)

Privatized prisons: Let them enjoy the consequences of their odes to privatization.

The largest control frauds sold tens of billions of dollars of fraudulent loans to each other through fraudulent “reps and warranties.” The kicker here, as Charles Calomiris has emphasized, is that the control frauds on both sides of the transactions knew that they were engaged in a mutual fraud. Hundreds of senior officers fall in this category.

Level 1: Small fraudulent fry

Catch and release: Convict them and put them on probation if they cooperate with the investigations.

The small fry are the loan officers, loan broker employees, and borrowers who knowingly participated in making fraudulent mortgage loans. Over 100,000 individuals fall in this category.

We Need to End the "PAC Doctrine"

To date, Bush and Obama have prosecuted none of the mortgage frauds in the top nine levels. I urge reporters to ask him to explain three things about his statements to 60 Minutes.

• Why are there no prosecutions of the felons that drove the crisis and occupy the nine worst rungs of unethical and destructive acts?
• Explain the five unethical acts by elite financial institutions that you consider the most destructive and least ethical – but which you believe to be legal. How do you rank the degree of unethical conduct and destruction in those acts?
• What specific statutory provisions did you propose to make those five unethical acts illegal? As enacted, which provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act made those five unethical acts illegal? Who has been prosecuted for those formerly legal but seriously unethical and destructive acts that were made illegal by the Dodd-Frank Act?

Reporters will have to be persistent in coordinating their follow-up questions to get Obama to provide direct answers to these questions.

I request that private citizens write President Obama to ask him to provide specific, written answers to these three questions. I will be proposing a series of questions that I will urge citizens to demand answers to because it is clear that the regular media will rarely ask demanding questions of elite politicians or bankers. It is up to us to hold them accountable and end the doctrine of Presidential Amnesty for Contributors.

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Bill Black is the author of 'The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One' and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He spent years working on regulatory policy and fraud prevention as Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention, Litigation Director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and Deputy Director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement, among other positions.

VACLAV HAVEL (1936-2001) -- HIS VIEW OF LIVING WITHIN A LIE

N.B.  This image and the quote below were found at Reader Supported News.

Here's what Vaclav Havel had to say about living within a lie:

"Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals."

My question to my readers is: Are you capable of living within a lie that robs you of your freedom?  Do you support the system that promulgates this lie as being your own "involuntary master plan" because you'd rather disbelieve the laws of physics than admit to yourself that the system you've trusted since childhood has now morphed into PURE EVIL?

Before you answer, please refresh your understanding of the laws of physics by watching the videos below:

9/11 Experiments: The Arbitrator of Competing Hypotheses
http://youtu.be/9YRUso7Nf3s

Uploaded by physicsandreason on May 12, 2010

Any theory that does not match experiment is wrong. It doesn't matter what the computer models predict, how much funding is behind it, what the experts say, or what everyone "thinks". Nothing can fool the laws of physics.

MIT Engineer Disputes 911 Theory of the WTC Collapse-Parts 1 & 2
http://youtu.be/z8W-t57xnZg

http://youtu.be/qW81Cd7nNH8

Uploaded by muzicmaker2001 on Jan 4, 2007

MIT Engineer Jeff King's logical look at the official story of the WTC collapse

9/11 Experiments: The Great Thermate Debate
http://youtu.be/5d5iIoCiI8g

Uploaded by physicsandreason on Nov 10, 2010

What's wrong with mainstream experts?

CONTRARY TO PRONOUNCEMENTS OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA PROPAGANDA, THE U.S. IS LEAVING IRAQ IN RUINS AND IRAQI WOMEN THE BIGGEST LOOSERS IN A DESTROYED SOCIETY

December 16, 2011

Iraqi Women's Activist Rebuffs US Claims of a Freer Iraq: "This Is Not a Democratic Country"

Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, joins us to discuss the impact of the nearly nine-year U.S. occupation, particularly on Iraqi women. "The Iraqi cities are now much more destroyed than they were, I would say, like five years ago," Mohammed says. "In the same time, we have turned to a society of 99 percent poor and 1 percent rich, due to the policies that were imposed in Iraq." Mohammed decries the repression of Iraqi protesters that joined the Arab Spring in a February 25th action. "The women are the biggest loser in all of this. We went to the Iraqi squares. We demonstrated. The Arab Spring was there very strongly but got oppressed in ways that were new to Iraqi people. Anti-riot police of the American style was something that we witnessed there... This is not a democratic country." [ORIGINAL includes rush transcript]

ABSOLUTE MUST WATCH!: AS SOON AS TOMORROW PRESIDENT OBAMA MAY SIGN INTO LAW THE REPEAL OF THE 4TH AND 5TH AMENDMENTS ...UNLESS WE CAN TALK HIM OUT OF IT.

Original Here

Federal Government Takes Final Step to Suspend Constitution

http://youtu.be/Lwedx6kZhHg

*Countdown with Keith ...: Rep. Jerrold Nadler decries Obama for not vetoing National Defense Bill

http://youtu.be/GnsDenUhU6A


Published on Dec 15, 2011 by Current

Keith and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) question President Obama's decision not to honor his threat to veto disputed provisions about the treatment of terrorism prisoners, which passed the House today as SEC. 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R.1540). The bill allows American citizens to be indefinitely detained, without trial, on American soil if there is even a suspicion they have ties to terrorists. "That's quite a terrible blow to American liberty," says Nadler.

IS BRADLEY MANNING A TRAITOR OR A HERO? WATCH THIS, THEN DECIDE FOR YOURSELF.

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  theREALnews                                                                               Permalink

Bradley Manning Heads for Trial; No One Charged for Murdered Civilians

Ray McGovern introduces a short documentary deconstructing events revealed by Wikileaks

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How Congress is Signing It's own Arrest Warrants in the NDAA Citizen Arrest bill

Published: December 12th, 2011      Author: naomi

I never thought I would have to write this: but—incredibly—Congress has now passed the National Defense Appropriations Act, with Amendment 1031, which allows for the military detention of American citizens. The amendment is so loosely worded that any American citizen could be held without due process. The language of this bill can be read to assure Americans that they can challenge their detention — but most people do not realize what this means: at Guantanamo and in other military prisons, one’s lawyer’s calls are monitored, witnesses for one’s defense are not allowed to testify, and one can be forced into nudity and isolation. Incredibly, ninety-three Senators voted to support this bill and now most of Congress: a roster of names that will live in infamy in the history of our nation, and never be expunged from the dark column of the history books.

They may have supported this bill because—although it’s hard to believe—they think the military will only arrest active members of Al Qaida; or maybe, less naively, they believe that ‘at most’, low-level dissenting figures, activists, or troublesome protesters might be subjected to military arrest. But they are forgetting something critical: history shows that those who signed this bill will soon be subject to arrest themselves.

Our leaders appear to be supporting this bill thinking that they will always be what they are now, in the fading light of a once-great democracy — those civilian leaders who safely and securely sit in freedom and DIRECT the military. In inhabiting this bubble, which their own actions are about to destroy, they are cocooned by an arrogance of power, placing their own security in jeopardy by their own hands, and ignoring history and its inevitable laws. The moment this bill becomes law, though Congress is accustomed, in a weak democracy, to being the ones who direct and control the military, the power roles will reverse: Congress will no longer be directing and in charge of the military: rather, the military will be directing and in charge of individual Congressional leaders, as well as in charge of everyone else — as any Parliamentarian in any society who handed this power over to the military can attest.

Perhaps Congress assumes that it will always only be ‘they’ who are targeted for arrest and military detention: but sadly, Parliamentary leaders are the first to face pressure, threats, arrest and even violence when the military obtains to power to make civilian arrests and hold civilians in military facilities without due process. There is no exception to this rule. Just as I traveled the country four years ago warning against the introduction of torture and secret prisons – and confidently offering a hundred thousand dollar reward to anyone who could name a nation that allowed torture of the ‘other’ that did not eventually turn this abuse on its own citizens — (confident because I knew there was no such place) — so today I warn that one cannot name a nation that gave the military the power to make civilian arrests and hold citizens in military detention, that did not almost at once turn that power almost against members of that nation’s own political ruling class. This makes sense — the obverse sense of a democracy, in which power protects you; political power endangers you in a militarized police state: the more powerful a political leader is, the more can be gained in a militarized police state by pressuring, threatening or even arresting him or her.

Mussolini, who created the modern template for fascism, was a duly elected official when he started to direct paramilitary forces against Italian citizens: yes, he sent the Blackshirts to beat up journalists, editors, and union leaders; but where did these militarized groups appear most dramatically and terrifyingly, snapping at last the fragile hold of Italian democracy? In the halls of the Italian Parliament. Whom did they physically attack and intimidate? Mussolini’s former colleagues in Parliament — as they sat, just as our Congress is doing, peacefully deliberating and debating the laws. Whom did Hitler’s Brownshirts arrest in the first wave of mass arrests in 1933? Yes, journalists, union leaders and editors; but they also targeted local and regional political leaders and dragged them off to secret prisons and to torture that the rest of society had turned a blind eye to when it had been directed at the ‘other.’ Who was most at risk from assassination or arrest and torture, after show trials, in Stalin’s Russia? Yes, journalists, editors and dissidents: but also physically endangered, and often arrested by militarized police and tortured or worse, were senior members of the Politburo who had fallen out of favor.

Is this intimidation and arrest by the military a vestige of the past? Hardly. We forget in America that all over the world there are militarized societies in which shells of democracy are propped up — in which Parliament meets regularly and elections are held, but the generals are really in charge, just as the Egyptian military is proposing with upcoming elections and the Constitution itself. That is exactly what will take place if Congress gives the power of arrest and detention to the military: and in those societies if a given political leader does not please the generals, he or she is in physical danger or subjected to military arrest. Whom did John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, say he was directed to intimidate and threaten when he worked as a ‘jackal’, putting pressure on the leadership in authoritarian countries? Latin American parliamentarians who were in the position to decide the laws that affected the well-being of his corporate clients. Who is under house arrest by the military in Myanmar? The political leader of the opposition to the military junta. Malalai Joya is an Afghani parliamentarian who has run afoul of the military and has to sleep in a different venue every night — for her own safety. An on, and on, in police states — that is, countries with military detention of civilians — that America is about to join.

US Congresspeople and Senators may think that their power protects them from the treacherous wording of Amendments 1031 and 1032: but their arrogance is leading them to a blindness that is suicidal. The moment they sign this NDAA into law, history shows that they themselves and their staff are the most physically endangered by it. They will immediately become, not the masters of the great might of the United States military, but its subjects and even, if history is any guide — and every single outcome of ramping up police state powers, unfortunately, that I have warned for years that history points to, has come to pass — sadly but inevitably, its very first targets.

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Biography                                                                                                                            

Author, social critic, and political activist Naomi Wolf raises awareness of the pervasive inequities that exist in society and politics. She encourages people to take charge of their lives, voice their concerns and enact change.

Wolf’s landmark international bestseller, The Beauty Myth, challenged the cosmetics industry and the marketing of unrealistic standards of beauty, launching a new wave of feminism in the early 1990s. The New York Times called it one of the most important books of the 20th century. Her next book, Vagina: A Cultural History, will be released in 2012.

Wolf’s New York Times bestseller, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, is an impassioned call to return to the aspirations and beliefs of the Founders’ ideals of liberty. The New York Times called the documentary version “pointedly inflammatory.” Her latest book, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries, includes effective tools for citizens to promote civic engagement and create sustainable democracy.

Her international journalism includes the investigative report “Guantánamo Bay: The Inside Story” for The Times of London, and as a columnist for Project Syndicate her articles have been published in India, Philippines, Egypt, and Lebanon. She’s a frequent blogger on The Huffington Post and writes cultural commentary for The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Harper’s Bazaar. Her TV appearances include Larry King Live, Meet the Press, The Joyce Behar Show, and The Colbert Report.

A graduate of Yale and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Wolf was a consultant to Al Gore during his presidential campaign on women’s issues and social policy. She is co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization that teaches leadership to young women, and The American Freedom Campaign, a grass roots democracy movement in the United States whose mission is the defense of the Constitution and the rule of law.

Occupy the Game

Occupy Wall Street, It's time to fix this broken machine.

Senator Levin reveals: It was Obama who required the Indefinite Detainment Bill (NDAA) to INCLUDE ‘U.S. Citizens being held without rights’ as part of the wording!

Posted on December 12, 2011 by paul

We now know, for those that have been holding out in “hope” that Obama will veto the 1031 Indefinite Detainment Bill (NDAA) against holding U.S. Citizens indefinitely without rights to a trial or lawyer or charges… it was Obama who required the bill have the language ‘U.S. Citizens being held without rights’ included in the bill! This bill will pass if it goes in front of Obama for his signature.



Contact your State Representative:
http://writerep.house.gov/writerep/ In your correspondence with your Representative, please mention the following facts. Too many journalists are still confused on these points — please let them know too:

- The bill passed by Congress absolutely DOES NOT exempt citizens. Section 1031 reads, “A covered person under this section” includes “any person who has committed a belligerent act”.

- The Feinstein Amendment 1031(e) is dangerously misleading. Don’t be fooled: In the text of 1031(e), “Nothing in this section shall be construed…”, the only word that matters is “construed” — the Supreme Court are the only ones with the power to construe the law. The Feinstein Amendment 1031(e) permits citizens to be imprisoned without evidence or a trial forever, if the Supreme Court does not EXPLICITLY repeal 1031.

- Confusingly, Obama previously threatened a veto for 1032, but NOT 1031. 1032 does NOT concern imprisoning citizens without a trial. He has never suggested using a veto to stop Section 1031 citizen imprisonment. In fact, Section 1031 citizen imprisonment without trial was requested by the Obama administration. See the video proof here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLiKvSz_wX8

What is the National Defense Authorization act or NDAA?
Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act