A controversy in the banking community has arisen around the Occupy Wall Street movement. Greg Palast investigates the story behind Goldman Sachs' recent decision to pull out of a fundraiser for the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union in New York City after it learned the event was honoring the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. The investment bank withdrew its name from the fundraiser and also canceled a $5,000 pledge. Was the $5,000 a Goldman Sachs donation or actually American taxpayer bailout money Goldman set aside for community banks?
_________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Wall Street’s audacity to corrupt knows no bounds and the cooptation of government by the 1 per cent knows no limits. How else to explain $150 million of taxpayer money going to equip a government facility in lower Manhattan where Wall Street firms, serially charged with corruption, get to sit alongside the New York Police Department and spy on law abiding citizens.
According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech facility on lower Broadway dates back six years. In correspondence from 2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a Goldman Sachs’ Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD “is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan…One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.”
At the time, Goldman Sachs was in the process of extracting concessions from New York City just short of the Mayor’s first born in exchange for constructing its new headquarters building at 200 West Street, adjacent to the World Financial Center and in the general area of where the new World Trade Center complex would be built. According to the 2005 documents, Goldman’s deal included $1.65 billion in Liberty Bonds, up to $160 million in sales tax abatements for construction materials and tenant furnishings, and the deal-breaker requirement that a security plan that gave it a seat at the NYPD’s Coordination Center would be in place by no later than December 31, 2009.
The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock. Under the imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States, 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the streets in lower Manhattan to the center. Once at the center, they can be integrated for analysis. At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD, MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside high-wage personnel from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.
In addition to video analytics which can, for example, track a person based on the color of their hat or jacket, insiders say the NYPD either has or is working on face recognition software which could track individuals based on facial features. The center is also equipped with live feeds from license plate readers.
A revolution against the controlling elite that thrusts off the tyranny of their central banking, the indoctrination in their schools, the lies of their media, and the brainwashing of their entertainment, would be a welcome development.
But a revolution that appears to free the oppressed masses from the ultra-rich, while it is manipulated behind the scenes by the globalist elite will only lead to more enslavement.
Liberty’s Last Stand?
The “occupying” protests here in America have been characterized as spontaneous and leaderless. Protesters, politicians, and the mass media have compared it to the so-called spontaneous uprisings of the Arab Spring. In reality, neither has been spontaneous nor leaderless. The Arab Spring was planned years ago and then executed by the forces of oppression that the people thought they were attempting to overthrow.
In an AFP article last April, Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State, admitted that the US trained 5000 activists last February from Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Lebanon. The goal was to provide the technology to circumvent government obstruction and help activists create a ripple effect by training their colleagues in the arts of government destabilization. Posner said our Federal government budgeted $50 million to develop new technologies to protect activists from arrest by authoritarian governments.
This assistance did not create the Arab Spring, but it helped perpetuate it. The campaign to destabilize the Middle East began much earlier, as geopolitical analyst Tony Cartalucci has repeatedly demonstrated.
Last May, Cartalucci wrote an article, America’s Arab Deception. He stated, “The Arab Spring was entirely engineered, prepared for, activists trained, funded, and equipped by the United States, years in advance, based on successes and experience garnered from decades of extraterritorial meddling. In particular, a coalition between the US State Department, NGO’s, corporations, and organizations entirely contrived for the sole purpose of fomenting unrest in foreign nations, began as early as 2008 preparing for what is now unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Much of this can be collaborated in Ron Nixon’s April 14th New York Times article, “US Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings.” Nixon spinned past Cartalucci’s logical assessment when he wrote, “No one doubts that the Arab uprisings are home grown, rather than resulting from ‘foreign influence,’ as alleged by some Middle Eastern leaders.”
Good writers always avoid categorical statements, but Nixon’s statement is also illogical. He claimed there were no doubters, which he refuted when he mentioned the allegations of Middle Eastern leaders. And no one doubts the New York Times is intolerant of logic.
To reinforce his position, Nixon quoted Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), “We didn’t fund them to start protests, but we did help support their development of skills and networking. That training did play a role in what ultimately happened, but it was their revolution. We didn’t start it.”
US State Department, Google, MTV, the Edelman public relations firm, Facebook, CBS News, MSNBC…
On April 15th, Cartalucci wrote in the jounal, LandDestroyer:
Also conceding involvement is the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), chaired by various Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings Institute alumni. POMED claims that they helped protestors develop skills and to network. Such training has taken place annually under Movements.org starting in 2008 where Egypt’s April 6 movement among many others, learned techniques to subvert their government. Movements.org of course is sponsored by a conglomerate of corporations and government agencies including the US State Department, Google, MTV, the Edelman public relations firm, Facebook, CBS News, MSNBC, and others. Despite the claim that such meddling is ‘promoting democracy,’ looking at the sponsors and war mongering interests involved in this operation, it appears to be more about promoting global military and economic hegemony.
Despite his extreme message, Cartalucci’s analysis is supported by facts.
Big Brother’s Clenched Fist Leads the Clueless
In America, our protests appear leaderless, ill-defined, and uncoordinated. To mask the central planning, the protests began small in a few cities before the national rollout proceeded, a common tactic of most marketing schemes. These protests are not leaderless. And their well-defined agenda can be derived from those manipulating the leaderless mobs behind the scenes.
Last July, Adbusters Media Foundation announced they were organizing a street protest to occupy Wall St. Founded 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz, this Canadian firm describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators, and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.” They are anti- Capitalism, anti-consumerism, pro-environment, and pro-violence.
Adbusters is financed through its magazine subscriptions, but it also received grants the last ten years totaling $185,000 from the Tides Foundation, which is partly financed by the mastermind of financial destabilization, George Soros. Soros announced his sympathy for the protestors and has committed his organizational and financial resources.
Soros’ MoveOn.org has organized liberal protest movements in the past and urged its members to join the “occupying” protests. MoveOn.org has also promoted an Internet-based demonstration in conjunction with Rebuild the Dream, another radical group financed by Soros and led by Van Jones. Van Jones was President Obama’s former Green Jobs Czar, who resigned when his past extremism was exposed.
In an e-mail to its supporters, MoveOn predicted, “Together, we’ll add hundreds of thousands of voices of solidarity from the American Dream Movement for the protests across the country and show just how widespread outrage at the Wall Street banks really is.”
Van Jones is a central planner using his front group Rebuild the Dream among others. In a speech to the Soros funded Center for American Progress, he compared our protests to the Arab Spring. “They had the Arab spring, which was a people-powered, non-violent opportunity to change the conversation in those countries. We should have an American Autumn, people-powered, non-violent.”
David DeGraw of AmpedStatus.com is another central player who spent the last three years trying to organize protests in America against the international bankers. As his website was attacked and knocked offline, the loosely led hacker group, Anonymous, approached him covertly and helped salvage his work and website. DeGraw organized a protest to begin against Wall Street on Flag Day, June 14th. Anonymous also announced “Operation Empire State Rebellion” to begin June 14th. When that fizzled, DeGraw teamed with Adbusters to coordinate the September attack.
DeGraw has a comprehensive world view. His claim that the global rebellions are decentralized and leaderless is a liberal lie. He expects these revolts to eventually destroy the power of the global elite, but this utopian posture is a common ploy.
In August, Anonymous announced they were joining the September protests. Anonymous destabilizes government agencies, corporations, and affiliated associations by hacking into their computer networks. They revile the central bankers and have demanded Bernanke’s resignation. They’ve also encouraged the Wall Street protesters and declared victory in a video message with a “checkmate.”
Anonymous was also involved in the Arab Spring. During the height of the protests, they waged cyber-attacks on Egyptian government websites. In August, they did the same to Syria’s Ministry of Defense.
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has been discredited by astute observers as a pawn of the globalists he seemingly exposes. On October 15th, Assange addressed an adoring crowd of protesters in London. As he champions greater transparency through leaked documents, regimes have crumbled. Last May, Amnesty International praised WikiLeaks and the newspapers that published their released confidential files as a catalyst behind the Arab Spring.
Tony Cartalluci has described the central planning of Movements.org behind the Arab Spring. These consultants of revolution have recently developed a series of educational resources for the protesters. On October 7th, Rachel Silver posted on their website, “In response to the widespread protests and demonstrations happening across the USA we’ve compiled a series of guides that will help organizers to sustain their movement nationally and locally and make the most of online and digital tools.” These how-to guides for activists and organizers were allegedly developed “in response” to the protests, not prior, but sometimes the truth is inconvenient.
For years, both ACORN and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have organized campaigns against Capitalism. On a video last March, Steve Lerner of SEIU spoke of a scheme to destroy the stock market, destabilize our nation, and redistribute its wealth. About the same time, ACORN’s founder Wade Rathke also called for massive “Day of Rage” protests that would target bankers. Both men are allied and close to President Obama.
ACORN filed for bankruptcy after it was exposed for a variety of criminal activities, but over the years, it has spawned front groups across our nation, most notably the Working Families Party, which helped organize “Occupy Wall Street.” WFP’s Nelini Stamp has been a regular at the site since day one.
Anthropologist David Graeber leads the global justice movement and promotes direct democracy to replace representative democracy. He’s provided the intellectual groundwork that justifies these protests, their embrace of direct democracy, and consensus building through group manipulation.
Garret LoPorto adds a valuable skill to the central planning. LoPorto learned his craft as a media consultant for Skull and Bones member, John Kerry, when Kerry ran for President. He helped organize “Occupy Boston.”
The radical street organizer Lisa Fithian has been involved since the beginning of the protests. For decades she has fought alongside anti-war advocates, anti-globalists, labor unions, and anarchists. She’s been a regular at “Occupy Chicago” Her specialty is the creation of a crisis, because as she explained, “Crisis is that edge where change is possible.”
Legendary Socialist professor, Frances Fox Piven, is another central planner who has fought Capitalism all her life. Last January in an interview with Amy Goodman, she said, “I think it’s also crazy to call me a commie, a socialist, a revolutionary or whatever.” As an academic, she’s been taught that the truth is relative. In 2003, Piven was elected Honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Countless labor unions and leftwing community groups have swelled the ranks. Other leftwing organizations supporting the protests include the Socialist Party USA, Planned Parenthood, Democracy For America, Campaign for America’s Future, People for the American Way, Public Campaign, Code Pink, Common Cause, Action United, Organize Now, and on and on.
In a development similar to the 1950’s, when Congressional investigations exposed the interlocking network of hundreds of Communist front groups with the nonprofit foundations, which was quickly covered up, many of these organizations are interlocked, working together, and financed by the powerful nonprofit foundations.
The protests appear to be the culmination of much prior work nationally and globally, perhaps decades of work. The leaders comprise a Who’s Who of anti-American radicals. There is nothing spontaneous or leaderless about these protests.
Days of Rage
The protests are parroted as nonviolent, but every now and then, undercurrents arise that gush with revolution and its necessary violence. This is more consistent with its initial theme as “Days of Rage,” which is reminiscent of the violent Days of Rage riots orchestrated by the Weather Underground in Chicago in 1969.
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Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 10:33 pm Post subject:
only suspended until we forget and only because it was broadcast all over the world on TV
US police suspended over pepper spray incident
(AFP) – 3 hours ago
SAN FRANCISCO — Two college police officers have been put on administrative leave after a California university launched a probe into the "chilling" use of pepper spray on protesters, a spokeswoman said Sunday.
In a video that has gone viral online, a University of California, Davis police officer in riot gear sprayed a yellow-orange mist on protesters seated on the ground in a sweeping motion as he walked back and forth.
Several protesters, who were demonstrating against tuition hikes and were part of a group that had erected more than a dozen tents on campus, were sprayed directly in the face. A crowd surrounded them and chanted "Shame on You" as they were dragged and pushed away.
University officials said two were sent to hospital and later released. Nine of the students were treated on site.
Amid a growing outcry, UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi said Saturday she was forming a task force to investigate the police's "sad and very inappropriate" use of pepper spray, but dismissed calls for her to step down.
"The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this," she wrote in a letter to students.
"I do not think that I have violated the policies of the institution. I have worked personally very hard to make this campus a safe campus for all," she said.
But the Davis Faculty Association Board called for the "immediate resignation" of Katehi, saying she had demonstrated a "gross failure of leadership" by allegedly authorizing the use of force on campus.
The Council of UC Faculty Associations condemned what it called "excessive force" used against non-violent protesters at UC Davis and other University of California and California State University schools.
"The violence was unprovoked, disproportional and excessive," it said.
A new college statement Sunday said two of the policemen involved had been put on administrative leave, and that Katehi had ordered that the investigation be completed within 30 days, rather than 90 days as initially ordered.
"I spoke with students this weekend, and I feel their outrage," said Katehi. "I am deeply saddened that this happened on our campus, and as chancellor, I take full responsibility for the incident.
"However, I pledge to take the actions needed to ensure that this does not happen again. I feel very sorry for the harm our students were subjected to and I vow to work tirelessly to make the campus a more welcoming and safe place."
Police action on campuses have triggered more support for the Occupy Wall Street movement protesting corporate greed and income inequality.
Several skirmishes between police and protesters have taken place in recent weeks across the country, and clashes last month left an Iraq War veteran with serious injuries in Oakland, California. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 3:19 pm Post subject:
US Police 'Israelicised', and Pentagon issues $1/2 billion military grade weaponry in 2011 alone.
Robert Mueller, FBI Director, called Avi Dichter (ex-Shin Bet head) 'his mentor', and Dichter spoke to the Convention of 11,000 high-level police officers, telling them they should think of their opponents who they wished to arrest as 'crimerterrorists'.
9,000 US police have been trained by Israeli Intelligence and Security personnel, and 100's have been to Israel for training:
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 5:41 pm Post subject:
This is a really silly protest IMO
Not a single Goldman criminal is going to be even slightly bothered by this protest.
Aue contraire they will be having agood laugh.
Ridiculously third hand indirect - in no way getting up Goldman Sachs' nose.
Maybe suggested by an occupy infiltrator agent - from Goldman?
Goldman Sachs Target of Occupy Protests at West Coast Ports
By Alison Vekshin and James Nash
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Occupy Wall Street protests spread to U.S. West Coast ports as demonstrators tried to halt shipping operations and cut into profits at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which owns a stake in the largest cargo-terminal operator.
Protesters rallied in Oakland and Long Beach, California, and Portland, Oregon, early today as workers attempting to move goods vented frustration. The Oakland port was operating with “sporadic disruptions” caused by protesters blocking truckers, said Isaac Kos-Read, a terminal spokesman.
“I have bills to pay at home,” said Mark Hebert, a long- haul truck driver for C.R. England Inc. in Salt Lake City who was stranded at the Oakland port with 36,000 pounds of Kansas beef bound for Asia. “These people say they represent the 99 percent. They don’t represent me.”
The Occupy protesters say they want to highlight the plight of average Americans who have suffered from home foreclosures and soaring unemployment rates as the largest U.S. banks have recovered after the 2008 financial crisis. Their slogan, “We are the 99 percent,” is a reference to economist Joseph Stiglitz’s research that found the richest 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the wealth.
Union representatives say today’s protests will hurt the port workers through lost wages.
Not Welcome
Demonstrators today plan to disrupt the largest U.S. and Canadian container ports -- Los Angeles; Long Beach, and Vancouver -- as well as Anchorage, Alaska; Seattle and Tacoma, Washington; Portland; San Diego and Oakland. The economic value of containerized cargo at West Coast ports is about $705 million a day, according to Martin Associates in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a consulting firm.
Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based International Longshore and Warehouse Union, criticized organizers for not consulting the union.
“For longshore workers, it could mean a day without pay or a dispute with the company over whether or not workers will be paid,” Merrilees said in a Dec. 7 telephone interview.
“You can’t have a small group of people issuing declarations about what other people ought to do with regard to giving up a day’s pay or closing their workplace,” Merrilees said. “They could alienate workers and turn them against the very movement that is the best chance we have to make our country more equitable and just.”...
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-12/goldman-sachs-target-of-oc cupy-protests-at-west-coast-ports.html
2) Secondly, 90% of the major bankers could be sent to jail for SIMPLE fraud of their expenses - changing expense claims to supposed "IT spend" from actual expenses of call girls, prostitutes and illegal drugs. (This would at least be something worth pursuing - the bankers destroyed Elliot Spitzer's career for exposing his use of call girls).
And not only the US and Britain, but the Germans and Japanese as well! _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:42 pm Post subject:
Not only is the Israeli press far more critical of Government in a meaningfull way than in our 'Security Service' regulated and infiltrated, 'Establishment' press (worse by far than 'Izvestia' and 'Pravda' were in Soviet times , because Russians new they were being fed bullsh*t, whereas our 'Britain's Got Talent' and 'East Enders' generation think our press and TV and radio are giving us the 'truth', 'reality'.), their protesters are far more genuine, and can state their beefs and goals without selected 'spokespeople' interpreting for them.
Check out the first link, re an Israeli protest v a 'Western' protest; second link re women's position in society in Israel.
As for 'Universal Military or Civil Consription' in Israel, I suspect we all agree it's an abomination, given the Zionist State's activities since it's inception.
Uploaded by CultComedyPicturshow on 1 Nov 2011
As Occupy Wall Street grows, it's time for the Bankstas to show their pimp-hands. Herman Cain guest stars.
The Numbers Are In: Find Out Just How Many Americans Have Ditched Their Banks
Mandi Woodruff | 5 hours ago | 4,821 | 8
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-numbers-are-in-find-out-just-how-ma ny-americans-have-switched-their-banks-2012-1
Finally, we've got some cold, hard stats on how badly banks are hurting from November's Bank Transfer Day movement.
A new report by Javelin Strategy & Research estimates a staggering 5.6 million big bank customers have switched banks in the last 90 days.
Of those, the research firm says a cool 610,000 cited Bank Transfer Day as their reason.
It seems we've come full circle.
If you remember, there was a lot of hoopla surrounding early figures released by the Credit Union National Association just after BTD, which inititially reported more than 650,000 customers made the switch to credit unions.
A month later they backpedaled, putting the figure at a little more than 214,000.
It was a bit of a setback for CUNA, especially at a time when credit unions were being heralded as the white knights of consumer banking.
Javelin's study will give them a bit more clout and at the very least shows that the growing chasm between consumers and financial institutions is nothing for big banks to sniff at.
"With a Google search of “bank transfer day” returning fully 22,000,000 responses we’re not surprised that these angry bank-switchers represent nearly a three-time increase over the amount of people who took their funds out of large banks for highly-similar reasons during the previous 90-day period in 2011," Javelin says.
While Bank Transfer Day was the catalyst for 11% of customer defections, more than a quarter of consumers cited bank fees as their reason for leaving.
No surprise there, especially as banks plummeted in the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index report. People have been grumbling about big bank practices ever since Bank of America and Chase tried to slap customers with a $5 debit card fee back in the fall.
Overall, banks' satisfaction rates dropped 1.3 percent to 75 in areas of checking, savings, and personal loans.
At the time, ACSI founder Claes Fornell cited Bank Transfer Day as a contributing factor:
“Banks are facing difficult times on multiple fronts: Profits are being squeezed, regulators are more demanding, foreclosures remain problematic, and consumers are fighting back on fees. On top of all this, many banks are losing customers, including defections prompted by grassroots efforts like the recent Bank Transfer Day," he said.
If you're thinking about switching your bank, here are a few tips to get you started.
Research your new bank: If you're looking for a new bank, there are tons of resources on the web. Try Findacreditunion.com or CULookup.com for branches in your area.
Make a list, check it twice. Don't get too excited once you've found a new bank and start throwing all your eggs in its basket. Make a list of all the bills and utilities that you have linked to your current account. Then be sure to leave enough in the old account to meet those needs.
Move your money. Transferring cash can be simple if your new bank offers the service online. You can also ask if they have a "Switch kit" — a tool that helps new customers transfer cash from other accounts—and start moving funds over that way.
_________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 1:16 am Post subject:
When the occupy camp has been evicted the occupy protesters go in groups of ten or so to stay in the homes of those about to be evicted by the mortgage companies - this has the sniff of utter genius about it!!
When the occupy camp has been evicted the occupy protesters go in groups of ten or so to stay in the homes of those about to be evicted by the mortgage companies - this has the sniff of utter genius about it!!
What with 'Common Purpose' commandeering the UK 'Occupy' movement (anyone who has the website of the couple of speakers who exposed this recently at a 'Keep Talking' meeting, please reply on this thread, with the info): (I have reservations against the 'Occupy' movement anyhow; I suspect it was organised by the 'We shall lead every revolution against us' crew) and now this; plus the apparent inability of 'Occupy' demonstrators to be able to use a bit of brain-power to at least 'question' official narratives (9/11; 7/7 etc.) if their 'Leaders' deem these questions irrevelant shows, IMO, we need to adress this issue with the protesters much more. And if the leaders and 'dragons' don't like it, tough.
Time is running out, and unfortunately, 'Time, time, time, is on my side' by the Rolling Stones does not reflect the situation we are faced with. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Occupy Wall St.
Hundreds of thousands in the streets in Quebec yesterday, Day 100 of the strike. The Red Square in our profile picture is an expression of solidarity with their movement. 23 hours ago
_________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Yes, Virginia, There are Poorhouses, and Scrooge Would be Proud of Them
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Societies have a funny way of walling off undesirables. Lepers were secluded in lepers’ colonies. Japan is particularly uncomfortable with people who don’t fit cultural norms, such as the mentally ill and the destitute. It was really shocking the first time I saw someone begging in the subways in Tokyo in 1991 because it was so…unJapanese….at least then.
In America, which still is deeply invested in the myth that anyone who isn’t rich and successful just didn’t work hard enough, being unemployed is particularly stigmatized. This protracted recession has produced a new underclass that isn’t discussed much: the long term unemployed. Oh, sure, it’s acknowledged as a statistical phenomenon, and maybe you’ll see a sad story in the New York Times now and again, but for the most part, the desperation of people who once had work, and really might never again have paid work, or at least not for more than $10 an hour, is not as widely discussed as it should be. Even before the bust, if you were over 40 and lost a decent paying job, your odds of finding any work, let alone work that made reasonable use of your skills, were slim to zero.
It’s revealing that Gawker is now up to volume 15 of its weekly series of “Unemployment Stories” and we see nary a peep from the MSM along these line. When I was a kid, I recall how a documentary about poverty in Appalachia galvanized opinion that Something Needed to be Done. And my childhood reaction appears to have had some foundation; that show influenced President Johnson’s War on Poverty. So keeping unemployment an official but depersonalized problem takes the urgency out of addressing it.
And if you have a long enough run of unemployment and can’t afford to pay for shelter any more, and don’t have family or friends who will take you in, your choices are terrible. There are reasons most homeless in New York City live on the streets rather than go to shelters at night. One of Lambert’s readers recounts her experiences when she felt she had no choice other than go to a homeless shelter. And this wasn’t in New York; Lambert doesn’t know her story, but his impression is that she is from the South, say North Carolina, and worked in publishing or academia.
Hoisted from comments at Corrente, “There are poorhouses today. They’re called homeless shelters.”
They’re as punitive and pitiless as the old style ones.
In my late fifties, with no prospect of reemployment, I recently had my first experiences with two of these.
I’ve worked all my life and been my only support all my life. It was my preference to do this, rather than derive any part of my upkeep from the wages of the person I slept with. My “crime” was doing this while female. Since sex discrimination has become legal again, I was forced out of a profession that’s been redefined as historically male, and have not been hired for female entry level positions due to my age and “overqualified” background.
I did everything I could, including backpacking into legal sites in the state parks in the mountains here, to keep from going into a shelter, but in the end could not even afford the gas to drive the fifteen or so miles round trip to the park from where any prospect of work existed. (“Obamaville” tent villages are not possible the way Hoovervilles were – the times are so much more pitiless that almost every city has ordinances against such places, and where they’re allowed, they’re controlled to the point of being worse than the shelters. The infamous “tent in the woods” near any urban area is out of the question for a woman unless she attaches herself to a homeless male for protection).
The shelter itself was physically considered to be one of the best in the state. It administers most of the charitable and many of the government resources for five counties. It is new, the fixtures are more than adequate and the meals are very good. A major problem was precisely the punitive “poor house” attitude: the Calvinistic view the women who administered the shelter had towards those who needed its services (and those women’s freedom to spend their time this way depended on the high wages of the men -they- slept with). Residents must line up to take a breathalyser test in the common area when coming in in the late afternoon, everyone must be inside the shelter by 6:00 p.m., no one is allowed out after that time without written permission, and everyone is locked out of their rooms at 8:00 a.m. on weekdays and 9:00 a.m. on weekends. Women’s rooms had four permanent beds and lockers, but usually had two more folding beds crammed into the walkway at the foot of the beds. The men’s rooms were larger but had eight residents.
All the shelter’s maintenance, from cleaning to cooking (when that was not done by church or other charity groups) to grounds-keeping, was done by the residents through required “chores”. Every resident was required to “volunteer” for one or more such chores every day or be made to leave. I did not mind at all doing part of the upkeep, but did mind the indentured labor aspect of being made to do it. In addition, administering such requirements became part of the petty abuse the more vindictive of the regular staff considered one of the major perks of their job.
Residents were required to work on a “plan” towards permanent housing with one of the administrators. Such “plans” necessarily required a job. These women reproduced the sexism of the larger society: in addition to there being more beds for men than for women, living conditions were kept as much as possible from interfering with any man’s job who has one. Their “plans” for men were much more realistic as well, in that the men had more of a chance of finding work, even when they had, as the majority there did, a prison record. Their “plans” for women pretty much amounted to: you screwed up by not selecting a good enough (or any) husband, any job is better than no job at all, no matter how ill paid, discriminatory or demeaning, and your stay limit without a job is 30 days. Their ranking for women was below men in services, respect and resources and within that ranking, women with children came first and women without children were at the very bottom.
Uncontrolled aggression from other residents and uncontained illness were the primary factors that made living there not possible. There were decent, generous, responsible residents, but not unlike middle and high school, the lowest common denominator ruled. Due, again, to the sexist ranking of the administrators, I lost the job I had found after a great deal of effort on my part and no help at all on theirs. It was a suitably gender stereotyped job cleaning bathrooms from 5 pm until 2 to 4 am at the local university’s stadium after athletic events. Any man there who had a second or third shift job was allowed complete privacy to sleep during the day; the rule was emphasized in the obligatory “house meeting” held every evening. The administrators kept letting a woman with a baby into my dorm room for trivial reasons and allowed her to keep me awake to the point where I had less than five hours sleep in forty eight and could not work. Their justification was that women with children had priority for any reason, even though that was supposed to be only an adult women’s room. They had put a woman who had just had a miscarriage into the family room, where this woman should have gone, as “therapy” and because the other woman with children did not want to share the room with another child. They dismissed my need to sleep for my job as “just shared living” (always said with a smug little smirk by the administrator) and said I could leave if I had a problem with it. I was also attacked on other occasions by two women who were later expelled for being on illegal drugs; their initial unprovoked aggression towards me was dismissed, again with a smile, as “shared living”.
Women with dangerous mental problems were also put into the regular woman’s dorm. One had kept the other women in the room terrorized before I stayed there. She also kept them up all night because she alone was allowed to sleep there during the day (due to her mental illness!), while they had to be up and out on the streets or at their jobs, as one resident was, by eight. She had been committed before for cutting up residents’ clothes with a knife; she was recommitted again just after I got there.
The official policy towards aggression and threats among residents was zero tolerance. The actual policy was to let the rats eat the other rats and to shoot the ones that came running to the administrators. The administrators had their favorites, usually those that made the class divide most evident, and the less well off and less educated paid staff did as well, usually those most expert at currying favor and those with whom they identified. The atmosphere resembled a combination between what I imagine prison must be and the type of unskilled job where the boss just above entry level uses his or her position more for petty gratification than anything else.
The justification certainly resembled those types of jobs: “You can always leave if you don’ t like it”.
During the month I was there, I had maybe four days where I got a solid eight hours sleep. I was sleep deprived and hurting the days I could not make it up in my car. I was also, as the cold season hit in September, sick most days, as one or the other of the women in my room always had some virus and residents were almost never allowed, even when sick, to stay in bed during the day.
After a month, I went to a women’s only shelter in a larger city where I thought living conditions and job prospects would be better. I think I set the record for their shortest stay – less than twelve hours. The administrators, again educated professional level women, were great, but the regular and after hours staff were worse than the former shelter’s. Residents were required not only to be out of their rooms during the day, but to tell the desk attendant where they were going during every part of the day. They were required to sign in when they got back, and -this was the worst part- to take a urine drug test every day, or whenever the desk attendant, whose day job really was as a prison guard, felt like it. When she decided I needed to be tested at the end of my first day and insisted on remaining in the room where I was to do this, I refused and was told to leave. She and the other uneducated after-hours attendant took great pleasure in making me pack my clothes into the prototypical homeless black plastic bags, leaning against the wall watching me the whole time, telling me to get a move on and making the other residents jump, obey them and get a move on too with they tried to talk to me.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 1:46 pm Post subject:
HSBC whistleblower at 2nd anniversary of Occupy Wall Street
Luke Rudkowski interviews Everett Stern, a former employee of HSBC that uncovered and blew the whistle on the company knowingly financing criminals, terrorists and drug cartels.
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"Unite the Right" Organizer's Left-wing Roots Exposed by Leftist Publication
According to a report by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Jason Kessler, the organizer behind the “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent was a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement and an Obama supporter.
SPLC writes, “Rumors abound on white nationalist forums that Kessler’s ideological pedigree before 2016 was less than pure and seem to point to involvement in the Occupy movement and past support for President Obama.”
Right Wing News also notes Kessler’s left-wing background, reporting that he accepted a $1,300 consulting fee from a Democratic candidate running for the Senate in 2012. According to Right Wing News, Kessler is also pro-abortion and an environmentalist. WND observes that he was also pro-gun control and supported President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and other leftist causes, as evidenced by 2012 and 2013 tweets from Kessler. One of his tweets even compared Republicans to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
A January 26, 2012 tweet by Kessler posted by Nation One News stated: “Republicans in #cnndebate are grotesquely mesmerizing as an interview w/ a serial killer. @ least Dahmer couldnt wage war or starve poor ppl.”
This is no small revelation by any means. The Occupy Wall Street movement was a radical Marxist movement that has paved the way for a self-avowed socialist such as Bernie Sanders to be taken seriously as a presidential contender. It normalized Marxism so that Marxist terminology has made its way into mainstream political conversation and is arguably the roots of the rabid "social justice" movement we see today.
Some are now pointing to this revelation as evidence that Kessler is perhaps a “plant” and that his efforts have been part of a greater plan to “pit Americans against each other.”
If that is true, then Kessler has been highly successful as his Unite the Right event protest turned violent when members of the protest clashed with Antifa counter-protesters, ultimately resulting in the death of a 32-year-old woman.
In addition to creating further animosity amongst Americans, the events in Charlottesville have prompted members of the Left to call for a further erosion of individual liberties. Black Live Matter founder Patrisse Cullors is now using the events to underscore her belief that the U.S. Constitution does not protect the free speech of white supremacists. Of course, this is untrue, as there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. In fact, if the First Amendment protected only speech that was deemed acceptable, what would be the point of the amendment?
MSNBC's Katy Tur attempted to compare the speech and actions of the white supremacists to those of members of the BLM movement and claimed that while white nationalists are “fighting to take away people’s rights,” the BLM movement is “fighting for equality.”
This is the problem with the notion of a “hate speech” exception. It rests heavily on perception and subjectivism. There are many people who would disagree with Tur that BLM is simply a movement that is fighting for equality. Like Occupy Wall Street, BLM is a Marxist movement that advocates for radical social justice initiatives that mark a complete break from the U.S. Constitution. Much of the speech that has come out of the Black Lives Matter movement has been perceived as hate speech by the organization’s critics. People in the BLM movement have openly advocated for killing police officers, as well as white people in general. The fact that the mainstream media has chosen to focus on just the racism within the white supremacist groups and not that of BLM or Antifa further underscores its bias.
In addition to critics now advocating for white supremacists to lose their First Amendment rights, a Twitter account is now outing Charlottesville protesters. Twitter users are then advocating for the individuals exposed to either lose their jobs or to be expelled from their universities simply because they were one of the protesters, even if they were not the ones engaged in violent behavior. This behavior — applauded by Hollywood actress Jennifer Lawrence — sets a dangerous precedent.
So indeed, if Kessler is a plant, he has been effective. But if he is genuine in his alt-right agenda, however, it certainly disproves what the mainstream media has been contending about the alt-right movement: that it is some sort of offshoot of conservatism and that the alt-right and the Right are interchangeable.
Conservatives have made every effort to differentiate themselves from the alt-right movement. Dan Schneider, executive director of the American Conservative Union, observed at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, “There is a sinister organization that is trying to worm its way into our ranks. We must not be duped. We must not be deceived…. They are nothing but garden-variety left-wing fascists.” Kessler is proof of this.
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