How the 99% Really Lost Out – In Far Greater Ways Than The Occupy Protesters Imagine

Oldspeak:“Property is theft,” –Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,  French anarchist. When it comes to how the top 1 percent really got so rich, and why the 99 percent lost out. The biggest “theft” by the 1 percent has been of the primary source of wealth – knowledge – for its own benefit. When what is created by all of society for many centuries gets turned into wealth, and, somehow, directly or indirectly, shunted away from the 99 percent by the 1 percent, much of that process, in fact, is reasonably described as “theft.” –Gar Alperovitz. One of the fundamental tenets of “civilization” -property. Gives rise directly and indirectly to many of “civilizations'” ills. Poverty, exploitation, inequality, disenfranchisement, greed, corruption. Enclosure of the commons by a monied few more often than not leads to bad outcomes for most.  Yet we lionize billionaires and the obscenely wealthy, hold them up as models to aspire to. While billions of poor and disenfranchised “externalities” suffer in lives of hopelessness and  despair due in large part to decisions of a few hundred white men the words of Ernesto “Che” Guevara come to mind: “The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.” “Ignorance Is Strength”

By Gar Alperovitz @ Truthout:

“Property is theft,” French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously declared in 1840 – a judgment clearly shared by many of those involved in the occupations in the name of the 99 percent around the country, and especially when applied to Wall Street bankers and traders. Elizabeth Warren also angrily points out that there “is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.” Meaning: if the rich don’t pay their fair share of the taxes which educate their workers and provide roads, security and many other things, they are essentially stealing from everyone else.

But this is the least of it: Proudhon may have exaggerated when, for instance, we think of a small farmer working his own land with his own hands. But we now know that he was far closer to the truth than even he might have imagined when it comes to how the top 1 percent really got so rich, and why the 99 percent lost out. The biggest “theft” by the 1 percent has been of the primary source of wealth – knowledge – for its own benefit.

Knowledge? Yes, of course, and increasingly so. The fact is, most of what we call wealth is now known to be overwhelmingly the product of technical, scientific and other knowledge – and most of this innovation derives from socially inherited knowledge, at that. Which means that, except for trivial amounts, it was simply not created by the 1 percent who enjoy the lion’s share of its benefits. Most of it was created, historically, by society – which is to say, minimally, the other 99 percent.

Take a simple example: In our own time, over many decades, the development of the steel plow and the tractor increased one man’s capacity to farm, from a small plot (with a mule and wooden plow) to many hundred acres. What changed over the years to make this possible was a great deal of engineering, steelmaking, chemistry and other knowledge developed by society as a whole.

Another obvious example: Many of the advances that have propelled our high-tech economy in recent decades grew directly out of research programs financed and, often, collaboratively developed, by the federal government and paid for by the taxpayer. The Internet, to take the most well-known example, began as a government defense project, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), in the 1960s. Today’s vast software industry rests on a foundation of computer language and operating hardware developed, in large part, with public support. The Bill Gateses of the world might still be working with vacuum tubes and punch cards were it not for critical research and technology programs created or financed by the federal government after World War II.

The iPhone is another example: Its microchips, cellular communication abilities and global positioning system (GPS) all flowed from developments traceable to significant direct and indirect public support from the military and space programs. The “revolutionary” multi-touch screen was developed by University of Delaware researchers financially supported by the National Science Foundation and the CIA. It is not only electronics: of the 15 modern US-developed “blockbuster” drugs with over $1 billion in sales, 13 received significant public research and development support.

But taxpayer-financed government programs (including, of course, all of public education!) are only the tip of the iceberg. And here we are not talking rhetoric, we are talking the stuff of Nobel prizes. Over the last several decades, economic research has begun to pinpoint much more precisely how much of what we call “wealth” society in general derives from long, steady, century-by-century advances in knowledge – and how much any one individual at any point in time can be said to have earned and “deserved.”

Recent estimates indicate, for instance, that national output per capita has increased more than twentyfold over the 200-plus years since 1800. Output per hour worked has increased an estimated fifteenfold since 1870 alone. Yet the modern person is likely to work each hour with no greater commitment, risk or intelligence than his counterpart from the past. The primary reason for such huge gains is that, on the whole, scientific, technical and cultural knowledge has grown at a scale and pace that far outstrips any other factor in the nation’s economic achievement.

A half-century ago, in 1957, economist Robert Solow showed that nearly 90 percent of productivity growth in the first half of the 20th century alone, from 1909 to 1949, could only be attributed to technical change in the broadest sense. The supply of labor and capital – what workers and employers contribute – appeared almost incidental to this massive technological “residual.” (Solow received the Nobel Prize for this and related work in 1987.) Another leading economist, William Baumol, calculated that “nearly 90 percent … of current GDP [gross domestic product] was contributed by innovation carried out since 1870.”

The truly central and demanding question is obviously this: If most of what we have today is attributable to knowledge advances that we all inherit in common, why, specifically, should this gift of our collective history not more generously benefit all members of society? The top 1 percent of US households now receives far more income than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. The richest 1 percent of households owns nearly half of all investment assets (stocks and mutual funds, financial securities, business equity, trusts, nonhome real estate). A mere 400 individuals at the top have a combined net worth greater than the bottom 60 percent of the nation taken together. If America’s vast wealth is mainly a gift of our common past, how, specifically, can such disparities be justified?

Early in the American republic, Thomas Paine urged that everything “beyond what a man’s own hands produce” was a gift that came to him simply by living in society, and, hence, “he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.” Another American reformer, Henry George, challenged what he called “the unearned increment” that is created when population growth and other societal factors increase land values.

To be sure, someone who genuinely makes a real contribution deserves to be rewarded. But Proudhon is right on target for many, many others: when what is created by all of society for many centuries gets turned into wealth, and, somehow, directly or indirectly, shunted away from the 99 percent by the 1 percent, much of that process, in fact, is reasonably described as “theft.” The demand of the occupations that this theft stop, that it be reversed, is also right on target – both in what we know about how wealth is created, and, above all, in what we know about how a just society ought to organize its affairs.

Corporate Crimes In the Cereal Aisle: How Companies Are Fooling You Into Thinking Their Products Are Good For You

Oldspeak:“Generally “natural” is thought to imply the absence of pesticides and genetically engineered organisms, but a closer look at the crunchy goodness inside the boxes reveals the content of both. Tests showed as high as 100 percent genetically engineered (GE) contaminated ingredients in popular products like Kashi GoLean, Mother’s Bumpers, Nutritious Living Hi-Lo, and General Mills Kix. Even the brands explicitly claiming to be “non-GMO” failed the test, some of them containing more that 50 percent GE corn. Organic products, such as Nature’s Path certified organic corn flakes, were GMO and GE free when tested. Why does it matter? Because these companies exploit consumers’ desire for conscious consumption and make us feed the system we think we are taking a stance against: Industrial agriculture.” –Ida Hartmann The Transnational Corporate Network is hard at work trying to make you pay more for “food” you think is better for you, but in fact makes you sick. Still more evidence that the “profit-motive” is by far the most destructive force created by humans. It supersedes ethical behaviour, morality, concern for others and the environment. “Profit Is Paramount”.

Related Story:

Kashi, Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine, Naked Juice: Your Favorite Good, Natural, Socially Conscious Brands? Owned By The Corporatocracy

Landmark Study Finds 93 Percent Of Unborn Babies Contaminated With Monsanto’s Genetically Modified ‘Food’ BT Toxin

Why You Can Now Kiss Organic Beef, Dairy And Many Vegetables Goodbye Courtesy Of Monsanto

USDA Approved Monsanto Alfalfa Despite Warnings Of New Infertility Causing Pathogen Discovered In Genetically Engineered Crops

By Ida Hartmann @ Alter Net:

A trip to the supermarket is an adventure into a tempting and treacherous jungle. The insatiable hunger for a ready-made breakfast that nourishes our bodies and our social conscience has made our morning bowls of cereal a hiding place for corporate charlatans. A new report, Cereal Crimes, by the Cornucopia Institute discloses the toxic truth about “natural” products and unmasks corporate faces like Kellogg’s hiding behind supposedly “family-run” businesses such as Kashi.

When these breakfast barons forage for profit, we eaters are the prey. But what are the laws of this jungle? And how do we avoid being ripped off by products that are hazardous for our health and our environment? Let’s have a look at some of these corporations’ sneaky strategies.

First, there is intentional confusion. With so many different kinds of cereal lining the shelves, figuring out which is the best requires detective work. Many make claims about health, boasting “no trans fats,” “gluten-free,” and “a boost of omega three.” Others play to environmental concerns declaring “earthy harmony,” “nature in balance,” and “sustainable soils.” With the legion of labels, separating wheat from chaff seems impossible, but the report offers one rule of thumb: Don’t confuse organic with “natural.”

Organics, certified and recognizable by the green USDA label, are required by federal law to be produced without toxic inputs and genetically engineered ingredients. “Natural,” on the other hand, is defined by the producers themselves to mislead shoppers and protect shareholders. Cornucopia’s report found that, “When determining their ‘natural’ standards, companies will consider their profitability. Environmental concerns are unlikely to weigh heavily, if at all, in this profitability equation.”

Too bad we’ve been falling for it. The report cites a 2009 poll showing 33 percent of the public trusts the “natural” label while 45 percent trust the organic label.

Generally “natural” is thought to imply the absence of pesticides and genetically engineered organisms, but a closer look at the crunchy goodness inside the boxes reveals the content of both. Tests run by the institute showed as high as 100 percent genetically engineered (GE) contaminated ingredients in popular products like Kashi GoLean, Mother’s Bumpers, Nutritious Living Hi-Lo, and General Mills Kix. Even the brands explicitly claiming to be “non-GMO” failed the test, some of them containing more that 50 percent GE corn. Organic products, such as Nature’s Path certified organic corn flakes, were GMO and GE free when tested.

Moreover, conventional ingredients, which “natural” products contain, have been found to hold traces of pesticides. The USDA found detectable neurotoxins in popular breakfast ingredients like oats, wheat, soybeans, corn, almonds, raisins, blueberries, honey and cranberries. New studies are constantly finding new health risks associated with exposure to pesticides. One such found that exposure during pregnancy increased the risk of a pervasive developmental disorder and delays of mental development at 2 to 3 years of age, while another found postnatal exposure to be associated with behavioral problems, poorer short-term memory and motor skills, and longer reaction times among children. Adding to the picture, a recent study by University of Montreal and Harvard University found association between organophosphate in children and ADHD.

It is time for us to reconsider what we associate with the term “natural.” In his book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan sends out a warning against health claims on food: “As a general rule it’s a whole lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or a carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over in the Cereal the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming their new found ‘whole-grain goodness’ to the rafters.”

The same applies to “natural.” Labeling broccoli “natural” would offend common sense. This is the irony of marketing: On a spectrum between whole foods and processed products, the loudest “natural” claims sound from the latter end.

So why do we eaters swallow these cereal scams? The report exposes how breakfast barons intentionally blur the line between organic and natural.

The “natural” products are predominantly camouflaged in brown and green boxes, mimicking the colors of nature, creating an association between “natural” and sustainable agriculture. Packaging images such as rolling fields, grazing cows or smiling farmers give us the impression that by throwing these products in our basket we take a stance against industrial agriculture.

And the producers market themselves as family-run, small-scale business. The Kashi Web site reads: “We are a small (after 25 years, still fewer than 70 of us) band of passionate people who believe right down to our bones that everyone has the power to make positive changes in their lives.” Conveniently absent from packages and Web site is the fact that Kellogg, the largest cereal manufacturer in the country, acquired Kashi back in 2000. Kellogg also owns Bear Naked. General Mills, the second largest breakfast company in the country owns Cascadian Farm, and Back to Nature is run by Kraft Foods, a company with almost $50 million revenue in 2010.

Why does it matter? Because these companies exploit consumers’ desire for conscious consumption and make us feed the system we think we are taking a stance against: Industrial agriculture.

But this is only the beginning of the scam.

The report reveals another strategy: Bait-and-switch. Peace Cereal eloquently performed the maneuver. The brand started out organic, but in 2008 switched to cheaper conventional ingredients and adopted the “natural” label, without changing packaging, pricing or barcode. Many shoppers and retailers did not notice that the USDA label quietly disappeared from the bottom right-hand corner.

Similarly a number of brands market their names as organic by loudly promoting the few certified products on the shelf, ignoring the fact that most of their products are mere conventional ones labeled as “natural.” Annie’s Homegrown, for example, was featured in a 12-page advertisement section in the Washington Post, paid for by the Organic Trade Organization and aimed at educating consumers on the benefits of organics. Nowhere did it mention that only one of five cereal products made by Annie’s Homegrown is organic. That takes an investigation of the fine print on the box many of us don’t perform as we race through the aisle in the short minutes we often have to shop.

But if these natural cereals are nothing but cheap conventional ones in fancy dresses, one would at least expect them to be cheaper than organic products. The report, however, shows just the opposite, and suggests that, “some companies are taking advantage of consumer confusion regarding the difference between the meaningless natural label and certified organic claims.”

So next time you find yourself with a box of organic cereal in your right hand, and a box of natural cereal in your left, remember to read the fine print. Don’t be fooled by labels that are meant to sell products, not look after your health or the environment.

 

Goldman Sachs Threatens Legal Action, Withdraws Pledged TARP Funds To Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union; Occupy Wall Street’s Bank

Oldspeak:”Some of the biggest members of the Transnational Corporate Network’s International Banking Cartel are using their vast resources as a political weapon to attack small low-income community banks that support and do business with Occupy Wall Street. And the resources they’re withholding are taxpayer bailout funds they’re mandated to use for community reinvestment.  So they’re retaliating against the people protesting their practices by withholding money, PUBLIC MONEY (the peoples money they took to remain ‘solvent’), that is owed.  “You’ve had basically Goldman has started a kind of run on low-income banks that will associate with Occupy Wall Street. This is a dangerous use of public money. I’ve got to emphasize this: it’s TARP money, that is bailout money that we gave these banks in 2008. They were required, as part of the deal—in Goldman Sachs’ case, explicit—that they give back some of the money to low-income communities and reinvest there. It’s our money. It’s not a donation. And this is just little bits. And they’re withholding these payments. I haven’t seen Goldman put out—they’ve put out less than half a cent on the dollar we gave them, the lowest of any bank. But they are setting a—they’re basically setting a course that all of the other banks are now following, saying, “Hey, you want our money? You have to clear your political positions with us at the big banks.” This is a very dangerous new business.” –Greg Pallast Corporatocracy in action. Only an organization with no fear of reprisal could conceive of so blatantly disregarding actions its been lawfully ordered to carry out. Predictably, very coverage of this in corporate media, and the little there is distorted and inaccurate. If you’ll notice there is no mention of the fact the Goldman is witholding taxpayer money they’ve been ordered to pay. It’s referred to as their money in the wall st. journal article below.” “Ignorance Is Strength”

Related Video:

Greg Palast: ‘Goldman Sachs vs. Occupy Wall Street’

Related Story:

Goldman Sachs Sends Its Regrets to This Awkward Dinner Invitation

By Greg Palast @ Democracy Now:

Guest:

Greg Palast, investigative reporter with the BBC and author of the books Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His next book, out in November, is calledVultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a controversy in the banking community around the Occupy Wall Street movement. Recently, the financial giant Goldman Sachs pulled out of a fundraiser for a small Lower East Side bank that caters to poor people 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.

But did Goldman Sachs actually use U.S. taxpayer bailout money to attack Occupy Wall Street’s not-for-profit community bank? Investigative reporter Greg Palast filed this report from Wall Street.

GREG PALAST: Downtown New York, near Wall Street, these are the towers of Goldman Sachs, the mega-bank. With over $933 billion in assets, nearly a trillion dollars, Goldman has declared war on one of the smallest banks in New York City.

The story begins here at Occupy Wall Street. It all started here, with these buckets. Unexpectedly, the donation buckets were filling up with thousands of dollars in cash, and the anti-bank protesters suddenly needed a bank.

BOBBY “BAILOUT”: We basically started out here just thinking we were going to a protest, and maybe some people would come out. Then, very soon, we were collecting large amounts of donations, and we were in way over our head.

GREG PALAST: Occupy Wall Street chose to bring their bucket of bills to the nearby Latino neighborhood. This is New York’s Lower East Side, and this is the not-for-profit community bank, Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union.

Inside, the bank was serving lines of residents from housing projects, bodega owners, other locals, most of whom had been refused service by the big commercial banks. In their cramped back office, the only space to speak with the bank’s leader was inside their vault.

DEYANIRA DEL RIO: So this is our old-fashioned safety deposit boxes that many of our members still use.

GREG PALAST: People’s Credit Union chairwoman, Deyanira Del Rio.

DEYANIRA DEL RIO: So, our membership is 80 percent low income, approximately, and we also have about, I would say, 65 percent or so of our members are Latino.

GREG PALAST: What makes you different—

DEYANIRA DEL RIO: Right.

GREG PALAST: —from Capital One or Goldman Sachs—

DEYANIRA DEL RIO: Yeah.

GREG PALAST: —or any of the other big, giant banks?

DEYANIRA DEL RIO: We started off when the last bank branch in a hundred-block radius of the neighborhood was closing its doors. And community residents came together to initially protest the closure of that bank, and ultimately did something very different, which was start their own institution, an alternative to the mainstream bank.

GREG PALAST: They’re holding a dinner next week, and they’ve announced they’re honoring their new big member owner, Occupy Wall Street, to celebrate Occupy’s call for its supporters to move their money out of big banks to people’s and other community banks.

UNDERCOVER POLICE OFFICER: You were inside with everybody else.

CUSTOMER: I’m a customer. I’m a customer.

WITNESS 1: She is a customer.

CUSTOMER: I’m a customer.

UNDERCOVER POLICE OFFICER: You were inside. Yes, but you were inside with the whole—no, no, no.

WITNESS 2: What are you doing?

WITNESS 1: Hey, what the—hey!

WITNESS 3: What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?

GREG PALAST: Twenty-three protesters protesters were arrested at a branch of Citibank following the call to move their money.

WITNESS 3: Oh, my god! This is wrong! This is wrong! This is wrong! What you’re doing is wrong! This is wrong!

GREG PALAST: And Goldman Sachs, which had donated $5,000 to the credit union, threatened legal action over the little bank’s honoring Occupy Wall Street. When the credit union refused to back down, Goldman took back its $5,000. The credit union members we spoke with backed their little bank.

LYLE WALFORD: I mean, it was a courageous thing to do. It’s their saying, that “We have members who are part of us. We are part of the community. We are people-oriented. We are the people’s institution, not the money’s institution.” So, yes, I think it was a great thing for them to do.

GREG PALAST: We waited all day and night for an answer to our calls to Goldman.

Were you trying to threaten the credit union for its support for Occupy Wall Street? We’re waiting outside your building.

Back at the Wall Street occupation, a street performer showed Goldman’s system of the old give-and-grab-back.

STREET PERFORMER: There you go, buddy!

GREG PALAST: Thank you.

STREET PERFORMER: For your boys. All right, all right, take care. Make sure you spend it the right way. Adios. Excuse me, I want my money back, please. Give me back my money!

GREG PALAST: Oh, no!

STREET PERFORMER: Give me back my money!

GREG PALAST: From the Occupied territory, Wall Street, New York, this is Greg Palast for Democracy Now!, news for the 99 percent.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Palast, investigative reporter with the BBC, author a number of books, including Armed Madhouse, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His new book, out in November, is called Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores. We are joined by Greg Palast right now.

Continue to explain what exactly happened.

GREG PALAST: It’s not about $5,000 donation. First of all, it’s not a donation. The issue is about a multi-billion-dollar battle over TARP money and the finance community. Back in 2008, Goldman Sachs, which is an investment bank—that meant that all their losses were there—was turned into a commercial bank, within 24 hours, so they could qualify for $10 billion in bailout funds. But as part of the deal—as part of the deal, Amy—

AMY GOODMAN: And explain commercial bank.

GREG PALAST: OK, commercial bank is the types where you put in your savings, and we, the taxpayers, and the government guarantees the profits, or guarantees the solvency of that bank. So, for Goldman to get into the $10 billion—to get their $10 billion check for bailout, they had to become—go from a gambling house, an investment bank, into a nice commercial bank. But they had to agree that they would then be subject to what’s called the Community Reinvestment Act and return some of that money, a chunk of it—most banks put in a billion dollars—return a chunk of it back into low-income communities. Well, Goldman doesn’t have any branches, so they gave money to the designated low-income bank of New York, Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, and—but they’ve been giving out the money in eyedroppers, like this $5,000. Now remember, it’s not a donation. It’s a required payment under the law that they got in return for our $10 billion, OK? So it’s not a donation. This is mischaracterized. It’s a payment required by law, with an eyedropper.

But what they are doing is starting off something very dangerous and new, which is to say—there are literally tens of billions of dollars in these funds for community reinvestment, boosted by the bailout funds. They see this as a political weapon, as a hammer to control the political discussion. These community development credit unions have been joining the Occupy Wall Street movement nationwide. It’s about moving your money from the big banks to the small banks. And they’re not worried about losing little deposits. What they are worried about is losing political control of the discussion. Right now, people like Paul Volcker are calling for removing the rights of banks like Goldman, now a commercial bank, to stay in the gambling trading business. Well, Goldman is very much afraid of that. So the Occupy Wall Street movement has put back on the table these issues of bank deregulation, these issues of community reinvestment.

And Goldman, I think they’re actually quite smart. They figured out, “Well, we’ve got—there’s like a hundred billion dollars on the table here. Why don’t we start saying, ’You’re not going to get any of it unless you dance to our tune?’” And I have to tell you, from inside, it wasn’t minor. It wasn’t just, “Oh, take—give us back our donation money.” It was legal threats saying, if you—you cannot—if you’re going to get our money, you may not back Occupy Wall Street and the “move your money” movement, without getting approval from us at Goldman Sachs. That’s a whole new business. So, it’s very dangerous, because it involves billions of dollars in public money. It’s not Goldman’s money. It’s our money. And that’s what they’re doing with it.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain the significance of this credit union.

GREG PALAST: Well, the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, and I—listen, my ex is the CEO, and so I hope she’s not mad at me doing this report. But I’ve got to tell you, Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union has been designated by federal charter to be the bank for all New Yorkers of low income, if you own—if you earn less than $38,000 or work or live on the Lower East Side. What’s happened is, is that the big banks give Lower East Side a few dollars and then send all the poor people to that bank. You walk in poor, you say, “I’m in a housing project and on public assistance,” “Oh, go down to Lower East Side.” So they dump the poor there. They can’t even open bank accounts, let alone get loans at these big banks. So it’s a dumping ground so that the—it’s a brilliant bank. It does very well, and it serves all the entire poor community of New York. It’s got branches in Harlem.

But what the banks now want to do is say, as this bank is growing not only as an economic force, but a political force, in the low-income communities in New York, and they are being used as the model nationwide, they are taking a political stance, saying, “We honor Occupy Wall Street, because we are against people putting their money in these commercial banks. It’s time that banking become for the people, not for the money.” And that message is a no-go with the banking community.

So it’s not, by the way, just Goldman Sachs. Capital One said, “Take our name off.” You’ve had basically Goldman has started a kind of run on low-income banks that will associate with Occupy Wall Street. This is a dangerous use of public money. I’ve got to emphasize this: it’s TARP money, that is bailout money that we gave these banks in 2008. They were required, as part of the deal—in Goldman Sachs’ case, explicit—that they give back some of the money to low-income communities and reinvest there. It’s our money. It’s not a donation. And this is just little bits. And they’re withholding these payments. I haven’t seen Goldman put out—they’ve put out less than half a cent on the dollar we gave them, the lowest of any bank. But they are setting a—they’re basically setting a course that all of the other banks are now following, saying, “Hey, you want our money? You have to clear your political positions with us at the big banks.” This is a very dangerous new business. And I hope that with this report here on Democracy Now!, that the regulators are going to step in and say, “No, no. This is not your money. This is our money. This is not a political weapon.” It’s a very dangerous new thing that the banks are doing.

AMY GOODMAN: You tried to speak to Goldman Sachs.

GREG PALAST: Boy, we tried to speak to Goldman. We actually staked them out, if you saw me at night in front of their big office buildings just outside Wall Street on the West Side Highway. So we’ve tried. They won’t speak to us, at all. They certainly won’t speak to Democracy Now! They gave a good spin of a little story that went on the front page of the Wall Street Journal about, “Oh, this little credit union, they were slapping us around by taking our money and then backing Occupy Wall Street.” It’s not about that. It’s about the billions of dollars at stake with community reinvestment funds, out of the bailout money, and who has political control.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re not just a journalist, Greg. You started off in finance. You got your degree in finance.

GREG PALAST: Yeah, believe it or not. I was a protégé of a little guy named Milton Friedman. Pretty strange stuff. Yeah, and I was—

AMY GOODMAN: University of Chicago.

GREG PALAST: And before I was a journalist, as an investigative journalist, I was actually an investigator. And then I said, no one is putting out the news of the real stories, so maybe I’ll do something for U.S. news, and ended up having to leave the country, work for BBC.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you think has to happen right now?

GREG PALAST: What has to happen right now is that the regulators in the Obama administration, the Federal Reserve Board, has to step in and tell Goldman, “No, it’s not your money. You may not use the community reinvestment funds as a political hammer to beat up the small community groups, credit unions, community banks, to which you’re giving this money.” It’s a very dangerous thing to be saying, “We’re going to be giving out money based on your political positions and based on whether you are telling people that the banking system has to change,” because community banks like Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union are taking the position that the commercial banking system is rotten and should be replaced by a people’s banking system. So it’s not just—they don’t want to be the little safety valve, “Just send us your poor people.” They want to replace the banking system. And believe me, Goldman, and the other banks following them, don’t want to hear that message.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Palast, I want to thank you for being with us. We will continue to talk to you. His new book coming out just in a few weeks is called Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores. Thank you very much.

5 a.m. Police Raid Tears Down Occupy Oakland Encampment, Protestors Arrested

Oakland Police surround the occupy encampment in the early morning preparing to go in and disband the tent community at Frank Ogden Plazan on Tuesday Oct. 25th 2011. A couple of tear gas bombs were exploded right before the police entered.

Oldspeak:”On the heels of news of a chemical bomb attack on Occupy Maine, the backlash is growing. “Police in riot gear, armed with billy clubs and some with shotguns, overturned tents, and the campers’ wooden stalls quickly, leaving what looked like a hurricane-struck refugee camp in their wake. They ripped up dozens of cardboard signs, overturned a couch and when it was over there were scraps of carpet, personal belongings and trash all over the plaza.”

By Kristen J. Bender @ San Hose Mercury News:

Before dawn Tuesday, at least 200 police, many in riot gear, tore down the Occupy Oakland encampment in front of City Hall and arrested dozens of people. A smaller camp near Lake Merritt was also dismantled.

Early reports from police say the raids went smoothly, with all protesters cleared out of the downtown Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in less than 30 minutes.

After police surrounded the plaza about 4:45 a.m., they began moving in and taking down tents and barricades erected by the group, which had been camped there since Oct. 10 in support of the Occupy Wall Street effort.

Many protesters were handcuffed and led away by police from the camp at 14th Street and Broadway. Many others left on their own.

Police in riot gear, armed with billy clubs and some with shotguns, overturned tents, and the campers’ wooden stalls quickly, leaving what looked like a hurricane-struck refugee camp in their wake. They ripped up dozens of cardboard signs, overturned a couch and when it was over there were scraps of carpet, personal belongings and trash all over the plaza.

One police officer said several objects were thrown at police, including bottles, skillets, other kitchen utensils and rocks. They also “threw plates at us like Frisbees,” the officer said.

Protesters also chanted “Police go home, cops go home” and banged sticks on anything they could find. Some chanted “Police were the biggest gang in America.”

At the Snow Park camp, Mindy Stone said as she was led away by police that she was just there to protest and exercise her rights. “We are not camping, we are just demonstrating.”

No injuries were immediately reported. Police did not have an exact count of how many people were arrested.

The Occupy Oakland encampment, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, sprung up on Oct. 10 and over the last two weeks had grown into a “tent city” with an estimated 300 campers, hay bales and stalls for medical aid, food, art, and community meetings. Along with the makeshift city came a host of problems. City officials reported rats in the camp, fights, drug use and violence against the media.

Shortly before 3 a.m. Tuesday, Occupy Oakland organizers sent out a text message alert, saying a police raid was imminent, but police didn’t surround camp until almost two hours later. Police used a bullhorn to repeat instructions to leave the plaza immediately or risk arrest. Police threatened to use “chemical agents” to oust the protesters.

Protesters attempted to keep police out by putting at least two metal Dumpsters at the side of the camp near 14th Street and Broadway, but police pushed them aside during the raid.

One man walked around carrying a giant shield he fashioned out of duct tape. After the plaza was cleared of protesters, about 20 to 30 people gathered on a small side street off Broadway between 14th and 15th streets beating drums and chanting “rise up, rise up, rise up, come on people rise up” as police mulled around the plaza and in small groups on the streets. Three helicopters circled above the scene as the night began to turn to day. The city has advised employers to keep employees away from downtown while cleanup crews move in to remove the massive amount of debris.

When the loose-knit group first occupied the plaza, it was to protest widespread unemployment and corporate greed, but the encampment grew to encompass many other causes: support for state prison inmates who are on hunger strikes, housing rights, fair wages and against social oppression.

City officials began stepping up pressure on the protesters last week and on Friday upped the stakes by issuing a letter stating that the encampment on the plaza was “a violation of the law” and threatening violators with immediate arrest.

The “notice of violations and demand to cease violations” came a day after a preliminary letter that urged the residents to vacate the camp because of what the city said were a host of problems, including fighting, vandalism, public urination and other sanitation and public health issues. Officials said an existing rat problem in the area was being made worse by the encampment, which had about 100 tents at one point.

A spokeswoman for the mayor, Karen Boyd, said Friday that the protesters had shown themselves incapable of self-governance. “As a collective, they cannot maintain the plaza in a safe condition,” she said.

Reporters Scott Johnson and Sean Mahercontributed to this story.

Who Are You? How Google & Facebook Dictate Identity

Oldspeak:“Facebook and Google have tried to drive this one size fits all, fast-food approach to identity. They’re consolidating identity, to make us more simple than we truly are. Over time, our options and ability to be creative and expressive are being eroded. Identity is prismatic, there are many lenses through which people view you, and we’re all multifaceted people. Google and Facebook would have you believe that you are a mirror, that there is one reflection that you have, one idea of self, that the reflection that you see in that mirror is what everyone else sees. But in fact we’re more like diamonds, you can look at people from any angle and see something totally different and yet they’re still the same.” –Chris Poole, founder of about.me and Canvas Social control, 21st century style. Indispensable and ubiquitous. Much of what you think, feel, see, hear, read, wear, create and express is being manipulated and controlled by a small group of highly interconnected education, social, media and entertainment corporations. All the while making you less human, less empathetic, atomized. It is (coupled with hyper-militarization/perpetual and global “War On Terror”) the expression of the “Ultimate In Malevolent Revolution” described by Aldous Huxley in 1962 when he said -“If you are going to control any population for any length of time you must have some measure of consent. It’s exceedingly difficult to see how pure terrorism can function indefinitely. It can function for a fairly long time, but sooner or later you have to bring in an element of persuasion. An element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them. The nature of the Ultimate Revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: that we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably always will exist, to get people actually to love their servitude! This is the, it seems to me the ultimate in malevolent revolution shall we say” “Ignorance is Strength.

By Chris Poole @ Web 2.o Summit:

Revealed: The Transnational Corporate Network That Runs The World.

The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue (Image: PLoS One)

Oldspeak:”1318 Multinational Corporations control 80% of global operating revenue. Of those 1318 an even smaller network of 147 super-connected corporations; less than 1% of all 43,060 transnational corporations control 40% of global operating revenue. The top 50 are banking and finance corporations. In short: A small International Banking Cartel controls a large majority of the global economic system. They are highly invested in maintaining the current economic network. They’ve bought and paid for political systems worldwide to achieve that end. What does that mean for the billions of people, animals and ecosystems that aren’t linkedin to this highly concentrated network? If recent history is any teacher one understands that this cabal doesn’t represent the interests of the vast majority of people on this planet. Their interest in only enriching themselves, usually at the expense of others. They fashioned as system that makes this anti-social, anti-human behavior acceptable, and emulated as model of ‘success’. This system is clearly unsustainable. It is essentially global fiefdom. The people of the world are beginning to see this.  This cabal will do everything in its power to maintain the current system. It has to change. It’s become clear we can’t rely on the political class to enact change. Real change will only come from the people. If recent event are any indication, change is coming.”

By Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie @ New Scientist:

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters’ worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.”

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world’s economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy – whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core’s tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. “If one [company] suffers distress,” says Glattfelder, “this propagates.”

“It’s disconcerting to see how connected things really are,” agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system’s behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Bar-Yam says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

One thing won’t chime with some of the protesters’ claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. “Such structures are common in nature,” says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, “is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups”. Or as Braha puts it: “The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy.”

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

 

America’s Secret Empire Of Drone Bases: Its Full Extent Revealed For The First Time

Oldspeak:“Behold! The future of war in America! Remote-controlled, automated, outsourced and cheaply produced for your viewing pleasure! Hey! The Libyan intervention/regime change only cost 2 Billion Dollars! Sooo much cheaper than the Iraq War! Drones are awesome, they’re cheaper and save American lives! It’s come to this. Cheering the fact that Humanity is slowly and surely being phased out of the war making business. A terribly slippery slope to tread. When wars begin to be defined in terms of dollars and cents instead of the untold millions of lives negatively affected and outright lost because of them; it becomes crystal clear what war is all about. Money. Arms Sales. Business. Repeat Business. Industry. Cost-Effectiveness. The Bottom Line. “The U.S. Government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” Dr Martin Luther King. Business is BOOMING. Soon robots will fight our wars for us.  When humans are phased out of war-making, the costs of war seem smaller, even if in reality they’re growing larger with each remote-controlled vehicle and robot built, each unnamed woman or child or bride or husband killed  largely out of public view. Perpetual War becomes routine. War becomes entertainment. War Is glamorized. War is commercialized. Was is a drug. “Even if the Pentagon budget were to begin to shrink in the coming years, expansion of America’s empire of drone bases is a sure thing in the years to come.  Drones are now the bedrock of Washington’s future military planning and — with counterinsurgency out of favor — the preferred way of carrying out wars abroad.” -Nick Turse. No significant discussion of  the conditions created to facilitate waging war, or policies which could be employed to minimize the outbreak and sustenance of war. “War Is Peace”.

By Nick Turse @ Alter Net:

 

They increasingly dot the planet.  There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth that almost no one talks about at an air base in the United Arab Emirates.

And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide.  Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America’s ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous — until now.

Run by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and their proxies, these bases — some little more than desolate airstrips, others sophisticated command and control centers filled with computer screens and high-tech electronic equipment — are the backbone of a new American robotic way of war.  They are also the latest development in a long-evolving saga of American power projection abroad — in this case, remote-controlled strikes anywhere on the planet with a minimal foreign “footprint” and little accountability.

Using military documents, press accounts and other open source information, an in-depth analysis by AlterNet has identified at least 60 bases integral to U.S. military and CIA drone operations.  There may, however, be more, since a cloak of secrecy about drone warfare leaves the full size and scope of these bases distinctly in the shadows.

A Galaxy of Bases

Over the last decade, the American use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has expanded exponentially as has media coverage of their use.  On September 21st, the Wall Street Journal reported that the military has deployed missile-armed MQ-9 Reaper drones on the “island nation of Seychelles to intensify attacks on al Qaeda affiliates, particularly in Somalia.” A day earlier, a Washington Post piece also mentioned the same base on the tiny Indian Ocean archipelago, as well as one in the African nation of Djibouti, another under construction in Ethiopia, and a secret CIA airstrip being built for drones in an unnamed Middle Eastern country (suspected of being Saudi Arabia).

Post journalists Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock reported that the “Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen.”  Within days, the Post also reported that a drone from the new CIA base in that unidentified Middle Eastern country had carried out the assassination of radical al-Qaeda preacher and American citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi in Yemen.

With the killing of al-Aulaqi, the Obama Administration has expanded its armed drone campaign to no fewer than six countries, though the CIA, which killed al-Aulaqi, refuses to officially acknowledge its drone assassination program.  The Air Force is less coy about its drone operations, yet there are many aspects of those, too, that remain in the shadows.  Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Haynes recently told AlterNet that, “for operational security reasons, we do not discuss worldwide operating locations of Remotely Piloted Aircraft, to include numbers of locations around the world.”

Still, those 60 military and CIA bases around the world, directly connected to the drone program, tell us a lot about America’s war-making future.  From command and control and piloting to maintenance and arming, these facilities perform key functions that allow drone campaigns to continued expanding as they have for more than a decade.  Other bases are already under construction or in the planning stages.  When presented with our list of Air Force sites within America’s galaxy of drone bases, Lieutenant Colonel Haynes responded, “I have nothing further to add to what I’ve already said.”

Even in the face of government secrecy, however, much can be discovered .  Here, then, for the record is a AlterNet accounting of America’s drone bases in the United States and around the world.

The Near Abroad

News reports have frequently focused on Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas as ground zero in America’s military drone campaign. Sitting in darkened, air conditioned rooms, 7,500 miles from Afghanistan, drone pilots dressed in flight suits remotely control MQ-9 Reapers and their progenitors, the less heavily-armed MQ-1 Predators. Beside them, sensor operators manipulate the TV camera, infrared camera, and other high-tech sensors on board.  Their faces lit up by digital displays showing video feeds from the battle zone, by squeezing a trigger on a joystick one of these Air Force “pilots” can loose a Hellfire missile on a person half a world away.

While Creech gets the lion’s share of attention — it even has its own drones on site — numerous other bases on U.S. soil have played critical roles in America’s drone wars.  The same video-game-style warfare is carried out by U.S and British pilots not far away at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base, the home of the Air Force’s 2nd Special Operations Squadron (SOS).  According to a factsheet provided to AlterNet by the Air Force, the 2nd SOS and its drone operators are scheduled to be relocated to the Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field in Florida in the coming months.

Reapers or Predators are also being flown from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, March Air Reserve Base in California, Springfield Air National Guard Base in Ohio, Cannon Air Force Base and Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas, the Air National Guard base in Fargo, North Dakota, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, and Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York.  Recently, it was announced that Reapers, flown by Hancock’s pilots, would begin taking off on training missions from the Army’s Fort Drum, also in New York State.  While at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, according to a report by the New York Times earlier this year, teams of camouflage-clad Air Force analysts sit in a secret intelligence and surveillance installation monitoring cell phone intercepts, high altitude photographs, and most notably, multiple screens of streaming live video from drones in Afghanistan — what they call “Death TV” — while instant-messaging and talking to commanders on the ground in order to supply them with real-time intelligence on enemy troop movements.

CIA drone operators also reportedly pilot their aircraft from the Agency’s nearby Langley, Virginia headquarters.  It was from here that analysts apparently watched footage of Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, for example, thanks to video sent back by the RQ-170 Sentinel, an advanced drone nicknamed the “Beast of Kandahar.”  According to Air Force documents, the Sentinel is flown from both Creech Air Force Base and Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.

Predators, Reapers, and Sentinels are just part of the story.  At Beale Air Force Base in California, Air Force personnel pilot the RQ-4 Global Hawk, an unmanned drone used for long-range, high-altitude surveillance missions, some of them originating from Anderson Air Force Base in Guam (a staging ground for drone flights over Asia).  Other Global Hawks are stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, while the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio manages the Global Hawk as well as the Predator and Reaper programs for the Air Force.

Other bases have been intimately involved in training drone operators, including Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and New Mexico’s Kirtland Air Force Base, as is the Army’s Fort Huachuca in Arizona which is home to, according to a report by National Defense magazine, “the world’s largest UAV training center.”  There, hundreds of employees of defense giant General Dynamics train military personnel to fly smaller tactical drones like the Hunter and Shadow.  The physical testing of drones goes on at adjoining Libby Army Airfield and “two UAV runways located approximately four miles west of Libby,” according to Global Security, an on-line clearinghouse for military information.

Additionally, small drone training for the Army is carried out at Fort Benning in Georgia while at Fort Rucker, Alabama — “the home of Army aviation” — the Unmanned Aircraft Systems program coordinates doctrine, strategy, and concepts pertaining to UAVs.  Recently, Fort Benning also saw the early testing of true robotic drones – which fly without human guidance or a hand on any joystick.  This is considered, wrote the Washington Post, the next step toward a future in which drones will “hunt, identify, and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans.”

The Army has also carried out UAV training exercises at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and, earlier this year, the Navy launched its X-47B, a next-generation semi-autonomous stealth drone, on its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California.  That flying robot — designed to operate from the decks of aircraft carriers — has since been sent on to Maryland’s Naval Air Station Patuxent River for further testing.  At nearby Webster Field, the Navy worked out kinks in its Fire Scout pilotless helicopter, which has also been tested at Fort Rucker, Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, and Florida’s Mayport Naval Station and Jacksonville Naval Air Station.  The latter base was also where the Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial system was developed and is now, along with Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington State, based.

Foreign Jewels in the Crown

The Navy is actively looking for a suitable site in the Western Pacific for a BAMS base, and is currently in talks with several Persian Gulf states for one in that region, as well.  It already has Global Hawks perched at its base in Sigonella, Italy.

The Air Force is now negotiating with Turkey to relocate some of the Predator drones still operating in Iraq to the giant air base at Incirlik next year.  Many different UAVs have been based in Iraq since the American invasion of that country, including small tactical models likeRaven-B’s  that troops launched by hand from Kirkuk Regional Air Base, Shadow UAVs that flew from Forward Operating Base Normandy in Baqubah Province, Predators operating out of Balad Airbase, miniature Desert Hawk drones launched from Tallil Air Base, and Scan Eagles based at Al Asad Air Base.

Elsewhere in the Greater Middle East, according to Aviation Week, the military is launching Global Hawks from Al Dhafra Air Base in theUnited Arab Emirates, piloted by personnel stationed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, to track “shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Arabian Sea.”  There are unconfirmed reports that the CIA may be operating drones from that country as well.  In the past, at least, other UAVs have apparently been flown from Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem Air Base and Al Jaber Air Base, as well as Seeb Air Base in Oman.

At Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the Air Force runs an air operations command and control facility, critical to the drone wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The new secret CIA base on the Arabian peninsula, used to assassinate Anwar al-Aulaqi, may or may not be an airstrip inSaudi Arabia whose existence a senior U.S. military official recently confirmed to FOX News.  In the past, the CIA has also operated UAVs out of Tuzel, Uzbekistan.

In neighboring Afghanistan, drones fly from many bases including Jalalabad Air Base, Kandahar Air Field, the air base at Bagram, Camp Leatherneck, Camp Dwyer, Combat Outpost Payne, Forward Operating Base (FOB) Edinburgh and FOB Delaram II, to name a few. Afghan bases are, however, more than just locations where drones take off and land.

It is a common misperception that U.S.-based operators are the only ones who “fly” America’s armed drones.  In fact, in and around America’s war zones, UAVs begin and end their flights under the control of local “pilots.”  Take Afghanistan’s massive Bagram Air Base. After performing preflight checks alongside a technician who focuses on the drone’s sensors, a local airman sits in front of a Dell computer tower and multiple monitors, two keyboards, a joystick, a throttle, a rollerball, a mouse, and various switches and oversees the plane’s takeoff before handing it over to a stateside counterpart with a similar electronics set-up.  After the mission is complete, the controls are transferred back to the local operators for the landing.  Additionally, crews in Afghanistan perform general maintenance and repairs on the drones.

In the wake of a devastating suicide attack by an al-Qaeda double agent that killed CIA officers and contractors at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Khost in 2009, it came to light that the facility was heavily involved in target selection for drone strikes across the border in Pakistan.  The drones themselves, as the Washington Post noted at the time, were “flown from separate bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Both the Air Force and CIA have conducted operations in Pakistani air space, with some missions originating in Afghanistan and others from inside Pakistan.  In 2006, images of what appear to be Predator drones stationed at Shamsi Air Base in Pakistan’s Balochistan province were found on Google Earth and later published.  In 2009, the New York Times reported that operatives from Xe Services, the company formerly known as Blackwater, had taken over the task of arming Predator drones at the CIA’s “hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Following the May Navy SEAL raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, that country’s leaders reportedly ordered the United States to leave Shamsi.  The Obama administration evidently refused and word leaked out, according to the Washington Post, that the base was actually owned and sublet to the U.S. by the United Arab Emirates, which had built the airfield “as an arrival point for falconry and other hunting expeditions in Pakistan.”

The U.S. and Pakistani governments have since claimed that Shamsi is no longer being used for drone strikes.  True or not, the U.S. evidently also uses other drone bases in Pakistan, including possibly PAF Base Shahbaz, located near the city of Jacocobad, and another base located near Ghazi.

The New Scramble for Africa

Recently, the headline story, when it comes to the expansion of the empire of drone bases, has been Africa.  For the last decade, the U.S. military has been operating out of Camp Lemonier, a former French Foreign Legion base in the tiny African nation of Djibouti.  Not long after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it became a base for Predator drones and has since been used to conduct missions over neighboring Somalia.

For some time, rumors have also been circulating about a secret American base in Ethiopia.  Recently, a U.S. official revealed to theWashington Post that discussions about a drone base there had been underway for up to four years, “but that plan was delayed because ‘the Ethiopians were not all that jazzed.’” Now construction is evidently underway, if not complete.

Then, of course, there is that drone base on the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.  A small fleet of Navy and Air Force drones began operating openly there in 2009 to track pirates in the region’s waters.  Classified diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks, however, reveal that those drones have also secretly been used to carry out missions in Somalia.  “Based in a hangar located about a quarter-mile from the main passenger terminal at the airport,” the Post reports, the base consists of three or four “Reapers and about 100 U.S. military personnel and contractors, according to the cables.”

The U.S. has also recently sent four smaller tactical drones to the African nations of Uganda and Burundi for use by those countries’ own militaries.

New and Old Empires

Even if the Pentagon budget were to begin to shrink in the coming years, expansion of America’s empire of drone bases is a sure thing in the years to come.  Drones are now the bedrock of Washington’s future military planning and — with counterinsurgency out of favor — the preferred way of carrying out wars abroad.

During the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, as the U.S. was building up its drone fleets, the country launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and carried out limited strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, using drones in at least four of those countries.  In less than three years under President Obama, the U.S. has launched drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.  It maintains that it has carte blanche to kill suspected enemies in any nation (or at least any nation in the global south).

According to a report by the Congressional Budget office published earlier this year, “the Department of Defense (DoD) plans to purchase about 730 new medium-sized and large unmanned aircraft systems” over the next decade.  In practical terms, this means more drones like the Reaper.

Military officials told the Wall Street Journal that the Reaper “can fly 1,150 miles from base, conduct missions and return home… the time a drone can stay aloft depends on how heavily armed it is.”  According to a drone operator training document obtained by AlterNet, at maximum payload, meaning with 3,750 pounds worth of Hellfire missiles and GBU-12 or GBU-30 bombs on board, the Reaper can remain aloft for 16 to 20 hours.  Even a glance at a world map tells you that, if the U.S. is to carry out ever more drone strikes across the developing world, it will need more bases for its future UAVs.  As an unnamed senior military official pointed out to a Washington Postreporter, speaking of all those new drone bases clustered around the Somali and Yemeni war zones, “If you look at it geographically, it makes sense — you get out a ruler and draw the distances [drones] can fly and where they take off from.”

Earlier this year, an analysis by TomDispatch.com determined that there are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases scattered across the globe — a shadowy base-world that provides plenty of existing sites that can, and no doubt will, host drones.  But facilities selected for a pre-drone world may not always prove optimal locations for America’s current and future undeclared wars and assassination campaigns. So further expansion in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is likely.

What are the Air Force’s plans in this regard?  Lieutenant Colonel John Haynes was typically circumspect.  “We are constantly evaluating potential operating locations based on evolving mission needs,” he said.  If the last decade is any indication, those “needs” will only continue to grow.

 

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a senior editor at AlterNet. His latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso). You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook. 

This article marks another of Turse’s joint Alternet/TomDispatch investigative reports on U.S. national security policy and American empire.

 

© 2011 AlterNet and TomDispatch All rights reserved.

Government Accountability Office Federal Reserve Audit Reveals Numerous Intimate Ties To Financial Industry; Disturbing Conflicts Of Interest

Oldspeak:“More evidence that corporatocray has replaced democracy in the U.S. Your government and economy is owned and operated a couple hundred mostly white men; private international bankers and corporate CEOs. While corporate media tries to divert attention to meaningless political melodrama and co-opt the message of  anti-corporate movements like occupy wall street, we are seeing the root causes of our societal, political and financial collapse. Greed, illegality, immorality, cronyism, among a small group of men, shrouded in a veil of secrecy. We see that the Federal Reserve is about as federal as Federal Express. It is in reality a giant private bank, whose purpose is to finance and backstop a select few casino capitalists. Corporate officers and bankers sit on its board, while employed by the companies to which they direct billions, at the same time profiting from the flagrantly irresponsible and dangerous business decisions which benefit the select few and devastate the vast majority. This is why people feel compelled to occupy wall street. People are beginning to see that the small secretive cabal of globalists have grown more and more brazen in their flouting of the law. Their amorality and fundamental disrespect for human dignity is too severe to ignore any longer with billions debt-ladden, starving, homeless, sick, marginalized and leading lives of misery and despair.  Their systems of governance, politics, business and finance are on the verge of crashing the world. Take heart though. The tide of resistance to their ecocidally insane tyranny is rising. When it crests, it will be a beautiful thing.”

By Senator Bernie Sanders @ Bernie Sanders:

As a result of an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Government Accountability Office completed its second audit of the Federal Reserve. This report focuses on the enormous conflicts of interest that existed at the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.
Here is what the GAO found:

•  The affiliations of the Federal Reserve’s board of directors with financial firms continue to pose “reputational risks” to the Federal Reserve System.

• The policy of the Federal Reserve to give members of the banking industry the power to both elect and serve on the Federal Reserve’s board of directors creates “an appearance of a conflict of interest.”

•  The GAO identified 18 former and current members of the Federal Reserve’s board affiliated with banks and companies that received emergency loans from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis including General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers.
•  There are no restrictions on directors of the Federal Reserve Board from communicating concerns about their respective banks to the staff of the Federal Reserve.

•  Many of the Federal Reserve’s board of directors own stock or work directly for banks that are supervised and regulated by the Federal Reserve. These board members oversee the Federal Reserve’s operations including salary and personnel decisions.

•  Under current regulations, Fed directors who are employed by the banking industry or own stock in financial institutions can participate in decisions involving how much interest to charge to financial institutions receiving Fed loans; and the approval or disapproval of Federal Reserve credit to healthy banks and banks in “hazardous” condition.

•  The Federal Reserve does not publicly disclose its conflict of interest regulations or when it grants waivers to its conflict of interest regulations.

•  21 members of the Federal Reserve’s board of directors were involved in making personnel decisions in the division of supervision and regulation at the Fed.

The GAO included several instances of specific individuals whose membership on the Fed’s board of directors created the appearance of a conflict of interest including:
Stephen Friedman, the former chairman of the New York Fed’s board of directors

During the end of 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap loans from the Federal Reserve. During this time period, Stephen Friedman, the Chairman of the New York Fed, sat on the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs, and owned shares in Goldman’s stock, something that was prohibited by the Federal Reserve’s conflict of interest regulations. Mr. Friedman received a waiver from the Fed’s conflict of interest rules in late 2008. This waiver was not publically disclosed. After Mr. Friedman received this waiver, he continued to purchase stock in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009. According to the GAO, the Federal Reserve did not know that Mr. Friedman continued to purchases Goldman’s stock after his waiver was granted.
Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, and board director at the New York Fed

The GAO found that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York consulted with General Electric on the creation of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility established during the financial crisis. The Fed later provided $16 billion in financing to General Electric under this emergency lending program. This occurred while Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, served as a director on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase and board director at the New York Federal Reserve

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the same time that his bank received emergency loans from the Fed and while his bank was used by the Fed as a clearinghouse for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.

In March of 2008, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns. During this time period, Jamie Dimon was successful in getting the Fed to provide JP Morgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. Dimon also convinced the Fed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank.

Other central banks do a much better job than the Fed in mitigating conflicts of interest.

The GAO found that compared with central banks in other countries, the Federal Reserve does not do a good job in disclosing potential conflicts of interest and other important transparency issues. The GAO found that such transparency is “essential to the effective and credible functioning of a healthy democracy” and fulfilling the government’s responsibility to citizens and taxpayers.
For example, the central bank in Australia prohibits its directors from working for or having a material financial interest in private financial companies located in its country. If such regulations were in place at the Fed, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase and many other bank executives would be prohibited from serving on the Fed’s board of directors.

The central bank in Canada requires its directors to disclose any potential conflicts of interest as soon as they are discovered; avoid or withdraw from participation in any real, potential, or apparent conflicts of interest; and cannot vote on any matters in which there is a conflict of interest. If these regulations existed at the Fed, Stephen Friedman would have been required to immediately resign from Goldman’s board, sell his Goldman stock, or resign from the Fed’s board of directors. Instead, Mr. Friedman was allowed to financially benefit from the increase in Goldman’s stock while it received approval from the Fed to become a bank holding company and received billions in emergency Fed loans.

The central bank in Canada also prohibits its directors from having affiliations with entities that perform clearing and settlement responsibilities in the financial services industry or serve as dealers in government securities. The Fed does not. These regulations would have prevented both Friedman and Dimon from serving on the Fed’s board of directors.

The directors of central banks in Australia, Canada, England and the European Union all have to disclose potential conflicts of interest and must disclose its conflict of interest policies on the internet. The Federal Reserve does not.

The European Central Bank and the central bank in Australia both require its directors to annually disclose their financial interests. The Fed does not because it does not want to make it “burdensome” for people to serve on its board.

Federal Reserve Banks do not publish public information about vacant director positions. Instead of allowing the public to actively seek to apply to its board, the banking industry recruits most of the candidates to serve on the Federal Reserve’s board of directors in private.

In contrast, the central bank in England publicly advertises when it is seeking applications for board directors. The central bank in Canada allows the public to apply for vacant board member positions on the internet.
The GAO also found the following:

•  In 2010, the 108 members of the Federal Reserve’s board of directors are predominately white men who are senior executives of financial institutions.

•  While Congress has mandated that the Federal Reserve’s board of directors consist of experts in labor, consumer protection, agriculture, commerce, and industry, only 11 of the 202 members of the Federal Reserve’s board of directors represented labor and consumer interests from 2006-2010.

•  When choosing who will serve on its board of directors, the Federal Reserve generally focuses its search on senior executives, usually CEOs or presidents in the financial industry. Of the 108 Federal Reserve board directors, 82 were the President or CEO of their company.

•  The Federal Reserve claims that it is hard to recruit labor and consumer representatives to its board because many are “politically active,” and the Federal Reserve has restrictions on a director’s “political activity.” Sanders called this “laughable,” compared to the political action of CEOs of large financial institutions serving on the Fed’s board. For example, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase currently serves on the board of directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Dimon has made over $620,000 in campaign contributions since 1990

Informant Posing As Drug Cartel Member “Foiled” Iranian Assassination Plot

Manssor Arbabsiar

Oldspeak:”One day after posting a expose about the FBI’s vast and shady network of informants helping to create and “foil” terrorist plots, I see this. Hmm. At first glance it looks like you score one for the good guys, but deeper examination of the facts of the case makes you ask yourself how does this make sense? Tim Padgett @ Time said it best -“If Iranian government operatives really did try to contract a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., as the Obama Administration alleges today, then they weren’t just being diabolical. They were being fairly stupid. Had Arbabsiar actually been dealing with the Zetas – and not a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant who posed as a Zeta operative – they probably would have conveyed that reality to him fairly quickly. And they would have likely dismissed the $1.5 million that Arbabsiar allegedly offered the D.E.A. informant. Ditto for the opium the Iranians allegedly threw into the deal. The Zetas, after all, are part of a Mexican drug-trafficking, kidnapping and extortion industry that rakes in as much as $40 billion a year. To risk that kind of cash flow by carrying out a five-alarm international hit for a million and a half bucks seems a non-starter. It also seems an organization like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, for whom the Justice Department says Arbabsiar may have been working, should know better. Arbabsiar, who lives near Mexico in Corpus Christi, Texas, certainly should have been wiser. All of those considerations may make it harder for many to believe that the alleged Iranian terror plot that the Obama Administration foiled was all that adept or serious.” Could this be another false flag operation used as pretext for attacking Iran?” “War Is Peace”

Related Stories:

Hiring Narcos to Murder the Saudi Ambassador? If It’s True, Tehran Is Pretty Dumb

 

U.S.-Iran Tensions Grow as Indictment Accuses Iranian Agents of Assassination Plot

 

Iran Is Accused by U.S. of Sponsoring Plot to Assassinate Saudi Ambassador

 

By Liz Goodwin @ Yahoo News:

A government informant posing as a member of the feared Zetas drug cartel in Mexico helped foil an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States on American soil, the Justice Department says.

The informant “posed as an associate of a sophisticated and violent international drug trafficking cartel” who was willing to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador, according to the complaint. Government sources told ABC News that the cartel in question was the Zetas. The Zetas have been behind some of the worst violence in Mexico’s grisly drug war, including mass beheadings, arson in a Monterrey casino that trapped and killed 52 people and the murder of a U.S. immigration agent.

The complaint says the informant was busted on a narcotrafficking charge in the past and then was flipped by the Drug Enforcement Agency as a source who has helped them make arrests in other drug cases.

Manssor Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old naturalized American citizen who also had an Iranian passport, is accused of approaching the source thinking he was a member of the drug cartel on the direction of the Iranian military.

He wired the source $100,000 to a U.S. bank account as a down payment for assassinating the Saudi Arabian ambassador, and said he would pay the rest of the $1.5 million fee later. The government says Arbabsiar said he didn’t care if as many as 100 civilians were killed along with the ambassador in the explosion. He traveled to Mexico several times to meet with the informant.

Tim Padgett at Time Magazine argues that Arbabsiar, who used to live in Corpus Christi, Texas, would have had to be pretty stupid to think the Zetas would bomb an American target for only $1.5 million. “The Zetas, after all, are part of a Mexican drug-trafficking, kidnapping and extortion industry that rakes in as much as $40 billion a year,” he writes. “To risk that kind of cash flow by carrying out a five-alarm international hit for a million and a half bucks seems a non-starter. It also seems an organization like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, for whom the Justice Department says Arbabsiar may have been working, should know better. Arbabsiar, who lives near Mexico in Corpus Christi, Texas, certainly should have been wiser.”

Middle East expert Juan Cole speculates on his blog that Arbabsiar’s patron, allegedly a member of the Revolutionary Guards, may have had a side business in drug trafficking. Cole thinks the plot seemed so amateurish that it makes it more sense that it was the work of an Iranian drug cartel angry over the Saudi war on drugs than Iranian government operatives. The Iranian cartel may have been hoping to find new markets for Iran’s opium and heroin supply that typically go through Afghanistan.

Report: Wall Street To Slash 10,000 Jobs By End Of 2012 As Thousands Continue To Protest Against Corporate Greed

Oldspeak: “Wall Street is the 99%. In a case of chickens coming home to roost, a pothole was reported on Wall Street today with the prediction that 10,000 people working in the city’s securities industry will lose their jobs. In a report released Tuesday, Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli also said bonuses are likely to shrink this year, reflecting lower profits on Wall Street. But it is not all bad news. The report revealed the average salary in the industry jumped by 16.1 per cent last year to $361,330. This is in comparison to an average salary of $66,120 in the private sector.”

Related Story:

Wall Street Job Losses Are Seen Hitting 10,000

By Lee Moran @ The U.K. Daily Mail:

New York’s financial sector has been hit by a further setback – with the prediction that 10,000 people working in the city’s securities industry will lose their jobs.

The announcement, forecast for 2012, will mean a staggering 32,000 people in the city’s industry would have lost their jobs since January 2008.

But it may come as good news for the Occupy Wall Street movement – which has taken over the city’s Zuccotti Park to protest against corporate greed.

Set back: Another 10,000 jobs are set to be lost in New York’s securities industry (file picture)

The news will pile even further pressure on New York’s battered economy, which is struggling to cope with the fall out from the European debt debacle and turbulence in the financial markets.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in his 2011 statement: ‘The securities industry had a strong start to 2011.

‘But its prospects have cooled considerably for the second half of this year. It now seems likely that profits will fall sharply, job losses will continue, and bonuses will be smaller than last year.

‘These developments will have a rippling effect through the economy and adversely impact State and City tax collections.’

He said the securities industry had lost 4,100 jobs in August, wiping out many of the 9,900 job gains between January 2010 and April 2011.

According to the report, by the Office of the State Comptroller, securities-related activities accounted for one in eight jobs in the city.

Solidarity: Singer Kanye West joined with demonstrators at the Occupy Wall Street movement – which is drawing attention to corporate greed and corruption 

It also represented 14 per cent of New York State’s tax revenues and nearly 7 per cent of New York City’s.

The report also said that each job gained or lost in the industry leads to the creation or loss of almost two additional jobs in other industries in New York City.

Mr DiNapoli added: ‘As we know, when Wall Street slows, New York City and New York State’s budgets feel the impact and that is a concern.’

A slew of financial services companies have disclosed plans to cut jobs in recent months, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, HSBC and Barclays.

Investment banks are forecasted to report big declines in third-quarter earnings in the coming weeks due to big trading losses in the financial markets.

Profits for member firms of the New York Stock Exchange are seen tumbling to $18 billion in 2011, marking a one-third decline from the year before.

 

Timing: The Occupy Wall Street movement may take comfort in news of the job losses

The OSC said the expected new job cuts are due to the current debt crisis in Europe, the ‘sluggish’ domestic economy, turbulence in the stock markets and regulatory changes aimed at forcing banks to be less risky.

Like many analysts, the OSC said cash bonuses are expected to shrink this year, marking the second-straight year of declines.

But it is not all bad news. The report revealed the average salary in the industry jumped by 16.1 per cent last year to $361,330.

This is in comparison to an average salary of $66,120 in the private sector.

The protests against the state of the U.S. political and economic systems, which started with a handful of people, have now spread to more than 25 cities – from Sacramento to Seattle, Anchorage to Atlanta and Mobile to Minneapolis.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he will allow Occupy Wall Street protesters to stay indefinitely at their Manhattan village – but suggested some have only camped out there because of the warm weather.

He also said demonstrators will only be allowed to stay in Zuccotti Park as long as they obey the laws.