Government – Page 773 – Public Intelligence Blog

Occupy Wall Street shifts from protest to policy phase

Protesters face the difficult and interesting task of leveraging their influence to achieve concrete policy changes addressing their concerns.

By Michael HiltzikLos Angeles Times, October 12, 2011

How do you know when a protest movement is starting to scare the pants off the establishment?

One clue is when the protesters are casually dismissed as hippies or rabble, or their principles redefined as class envy or as (that all-purpose insult) “un-American.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: This is the first mainstream media article we've seen with real intelligence. What is actually happening is that the various groups that have structure to begin with (MoveOn, labor, issue NGOs) are trying desperately to force fit the kind of “demands” or “strategy” that media expects to be spoon-fed; push-back is coming from the original actors, who are reluctant to join anything that reeks of the old structure–and to be perfectly candid, MoveOn, labor, and the NGOs are all accustomed to feeding at the two-party trough and they are frightened out of their wits by a populist uprising they can neither understand nor control. Our best guess is that the groups will generally refuse to engage in policy demands, and go for broke: electoral reform and a constitutional convention, which we rate right now as 55% and 15% probabilities.

2011/10/112011/10/11

Event: Oct 12-13, NYC, Food Conference: How Money & Media Influence the Way America Eats

01 Agriculture, 07 Health, Academia, Civil Society, Commerce, Government, Media, Non-Governmental, Waste (materials, food, etc)

(Invitation only)
AGENDA

Supposedly it will be livestreamed from the conference website.

2011/10/112011/10/17

Katrina Heuvel: Reshaping US Politics with Moral Clarity

09 Justice, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Will Occupy Wall Street's Spark Reshape Our Politics?

Katrina vanden Heuvel on October 11, 2011 – 2:21pm ET

Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

When the organizers of Occupy Wall Street first gathered to discuss their plan of action, the strategy that resonated most came from those who had occupied squares in Madrid and Athens, Tunis and Cairo. According to David Graeber, one of Occupy Wall Street’s organizers, “they explained that the model that seemed to work was to take something that seemed to be public space, reclaim it, and build up an organization and headquarters around [it].”

Six weeks later, on September 17, the occupation in downtown New York began, with scant attention, minimal and often derisive media coverage, and little expectation that it would light a spark where others had not. Now, in its fourth week, Occupy Wall Street has the quality of an exploding star: It is gathering energy in enormous and potent quantities, and propelling it outward to all corners of the country.

The protesters in the nascent movement have been criticized for being too decentralized and lacking a clear list of demands. But they are bearing witness to the corruption of our politics; if they made demands to those in power, it would suggest those in power could do something about it. This contradicts what is, perhaps, their most compelling point: that our institutions and politicians serve the top 1 percent, not the other 99.

The movement doesn’t need a policy or legislative agenda to send its message. The thrust of what it seeks–fueled both by anger and deep principles–has moral clarity. It wants corporate money out of politics. It wants the widening gap of income inequality to be narrowed substantially. And it wants meaningful solutions to the jobless crisis. In short, it wants a system that works for the 99 percent. Already Occupy Wall Street has sparked a conversation about reforms far more substantial than the stunted debate in Washington. Its energy will supercharge the arduous work other organizations have been doing for years, amplifying their actions as well as their agendas.

Occupy Wall Street is now in more than 800 cities and counting. Each encampment has its own character, from thousands marching in San Francisco to a handful gathering in Boise. These are authentic grassroots operations, so each one will reflect the local culture of protest while reproducing what seems right from the original.

Republicans have reacted bitterly.

Editor’s Note: Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

#ElectoralReform #OWS Two-Sided Demand Hand-Out

#OccupyWallStreet Rolling Update + US Revolution RECAP

2011/10/112011/10/22

Mini-Me: Katrina vanden Heuvel on Electoral Reform

09 Justice, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Legislation

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, writer for the Nation was interviewed on Democracy Now and mentioned electoral reform (after Danny Schecter segment) in hopes that it would sprout from/around Occupy Wall Street.

Independent Media Stalwarts Katrina vanden Heuvel & Danny Schechter Speak Out at Occupy Wall Street

Democracy Now!, 11 October 2011

“The moral clarity of this movement is what I think has moved people to get up and walk and be in motion,” says Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation magazine. “And what’s so interesting to me is—I was here last Wednesday for the march to Foley Square—that so many groups, which have been trying to get some energy, are finding the spark in here and coming together.” [includes rush transcript]

QUOTE: “The moral clarity of this movement is what I think has moved people to get up and walk and be in motion,” says Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation magazine. “And what’s so interesting to me is—I was here last Wednesday for the march to Foley Square—that so many groups, which have been trying to get some energy, are finding the spark in here and coming together.” [includes rush transcript]

Phi Beta Iota: Katrina's interview begins at 41:20. A pox on the two-party tyranny–one bird, two wings, same shit. OccupyWallStreet is not just independent, but independent of those who pretend to organize “independents.”

#OccupyWallStreet Rolling Update + US Revolution RECAP

2011/10/11

David Isenberg: Our State of Exception–Immoral, Insane

02 Diplomacy, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call

After September 11: Our State of Exception

Mark Danner

New York Review of Books, October 13, 2011

EXTRACT

Call it, then, the state of exception: these years during which, in the name of security, some of our accustomed rights and freedoms are circumscribed or set aside, the years during which we live in a different time. This different time of ours has now extended ten years—the longest by far in American history—with little sense of an ending. Indeed, the very endlessness of this state of exception—a quality emphasized even as it was imposed—and the broad acceptance of that endlessness, the state of exception’s increasing normalization, are among its distinguishing marks.

. . . . .

Before the War on Terror, official torture was illegal and anathema; today it is a policy choice.

. . . . . .

Ten years later, what was the exceptional has become the normal. The improvisations of panic are the reality of our daily lives.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a very thoughtful article that cuts to the heart of the matter, i.e. the U.S. Government's divorce from both reality and principle–the immorality and insanity of all that the U.S. Government does “in our name” and at our expense.

2011/10/112011/10/11

John Steiner: US Government to Rename Corn as Sugar?

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency

For Immediate Release

October 3, 2011
Contact: Glenn Turner, 917-817-3396
glenn@ripplestrategies.com

Corn vs. Sugar Industries Legal Battle Heats Up Over “High Fructose Corn Syrup” Name Change

New Website FoodIdentityTheft.com Provides Background for Reporters and Consumers

Expert Legal Spokesperson Available For Interviews

WASHINGTON, October 3, 2011 High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a man-made sweetener used in thousands of grocery store products and it has a serious image problem. Consumers are avoiding it. Food companies are taking it out of the products they make. Some supermarkets have banned it. Demand for this highly-processed ingredient is falling fast.

The Corn Refiners Association comprised of corporations that make HFCS -decided that changing the name was a way to fix this problem. They are petitioning the FDA so that HFCS can legally be called “corn sugar” and ultimately just “sugar². An official decision hasn¹t yet been made, but in 2008 the Corn Refiners Association began a $50 million dollar marketing campaign labeling HFCS as ³corn sugar². They are now being sued by a group of sugar farmers and refiners who believe the name change will confuse consumers and harm the sugar industry.

Continue reading “John Steiner: US Government to Rename Corn as Sugar?”

2011/10/11

Chuck Spinney: Zionism as a Fatal Cancer in America

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

The Real Story of How Israel Was Created

CounterPunch, October 11, 2011

To better understand the Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 U.N. action on Israel-Palestine.

The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the U.N. created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the U.S. governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect.

In reality, while the U.N. General Assembly recommended the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, that recommendation was non-binding and never implemented by the Security Council.

Second, the General Assembly passed that recommendation only after Israel proponents threatened and bribed numerous countries in order to gain a required two-thirds of votes.

Third, the U.S. administration supported the recommendation out of domestic electoral considerations and took this position over the strenuous objections of the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

The passage of the General Assembly recommendation sparked increased violence in the region. Over the following months the armed wing of the pro-Israel movement, which had long been preparing for war, perpetrated a series of massacres and expulsions throughout Palestine, implementing a plan to clear the way for a majority-Jewish state.

It was this armed aggression, and the ethnic cleansing of at least three-quarters of a million indigenous Palestinians, that created the Jewish state on land that had been 95 percent non-Jewish prior to Zionist immigration and that even after years of immigration remained 70 percent non-Jewish. And despite the shallow patina of legality its partisans extracted from the General Assembly, Israel was born over the opposition of American experts and of governments around the world, who opposed it on both pragmatic and moral grounds.

Let us look at the specifics.

Read full article with specifics.

Phi Beta Iota: The specifics demonstrate with great clarity that at the time the U.S. Government had intelligence but lacked integrity. Today the U.S. Government lacks both intelligence and integrity. Electoral Reform is the sole possible demand that can resolve the crisis of US democracy and US capitalism run amok–inverted into velvet theatrical facism.

Category: Government

Mini-Me: OccupyWallStreet Entering Policy Phase?