World Prout Assembly

650,000 Americans Joined Credit Unions Last Month - More Than In All Of 2010 Combined

To put that in perspective, there were only 600,000 new members for credit unions in all of 2010. "These results indicate that consumers are clearly making a smarter choice by moving to credit unions where, on average, they will save about $70 a year in fewer or no fees, lower rates on loans and higher return on savings," said CUNA President Bill Cheney.

Irom Sharmila Solidarity Campaign Growing In India

She caught the imagination of the nation on October 2, 2006, when she held hunger strike at the historic Jantar Mantar, New Delhi and was joined by the students, human rights activists and other concerned citizens. She was arrested by the Delhi police for attempting suicide. Since then support to her is growing steadfastly. On June 25, 2011, a candle light solidarity prayer was held at the Rajghat New Delhi where approximately 200 people participated from all walks of life. It is part of this growing support that Irom Sharmila Solidarity Campaign is being launched in India and under it various programmes and action are being organized through out the country.

Chicago 1968, Seattle l999, And Now Occupy 2011

Two of the strongest scenes in the film involve that policeman and one of the activist leaders. The policeman chases the young man and beats him without mercy, as revenge for his child's death, until another policeman pulls him off,. He later goes to the jail to apologize. "I don't blame you," the activist says, facing a third strike and life in prison. He stays on the high ground. His target is the WTO, not the police. "If you don't stand up and fight, everything that is beautiful will be taken away," one of the women jailed in the Seattle film says to her partner, both of them bleeding from the police brutality.

Solidarity Statement from Cairo

"Those who said that the Egyptian revolution was peaceful did not see the horrors that police visited upon us, nor did they see the resistance and even force that revolutionaries used against the police to defend their tentative occupations and spaces: by the government's own admission; 99 police stations were put to the torch, thousands of police cars were destroyed, and all of the ruling party's offices around Egypt were burned down. Barricades were erected, officers were beaten back and pelted with rocks even as they fired tear gas and live ammunition on us. But at the end of the day on the 28 th of January they retreated, and we had won our cities."

Cornered in Free Libya

"Raise your head, you're a free Libyan", the group chanted before a stage set up for the recent celebrations. That's the very slogan that became almost an anthem for the rebels who rose against Gaddafi. Tempers flared amid the group of armed soldiers guarding the central square. "I should kill you all for what you did to us in Misrata," shouted a young man in camouflage fatigues. The protesters are from Tawargha, 60 km south of Misrata, that was known as a Gaddafist base.

Vicious Triangle Forming Against Iran

In the final analysis, the US hidden agenda in creating Iranophobia is to raise a specter of a nuclear apocalypse in the world, invade the country in alliance with Israel and the UK and other nefarious powers and eventually get their hands on Iran's myriad resources which they have coveted for so long. - Ismail Salami

Arrests follow Occupy Oakland demonstrations

There have now been more than three thousand arrests since the Occupy movement began in September. Elsewhere in the US on Wednesday, protesters in Rochester and Seattle were arrested by police under the Democratic mayors of those cities. Police in Rochester, New York arrested 16 protesters on Wednesday and over 50 since last Friday. In Seattle under Democratic Mayor Michael McGinn, at least three people protesting the CEO of JPMorgan Chase at a Sheraton Hotel where he was a keynote speaker were arrested, and six people were arrested earlier that day outside a Chase Bank. In both cases, the police made heavy use of pepper spray on large groups of protesters. -David Brown

The Fattening of the Nation: The Politics of Obesity

This overweight population breaks down as follows: 34.2 percent are overweight, 33.8 percent are obese and 5.7 percent are extremely obese. Scarier still, approximately 17 percent (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 years are obese. One can only assume, as the economic crisis deepens, this situation is getting worse. Obesity has social consequences. The Archives of Internal Medicine reported in 2010 that the U.S. spends an estimated $147 billion annually treating obesity-related illnesses. A half-century ago, President Eisenhower identified the military-industrial complex as a threat to the nation; it now dominates politics and the economy. As the 21st century unfolds, an obesity-industrial complex can be identified. Like its military compatriots, its influence on America's body politic is no less consequential. - David Rosen

Dick Cheney's Song of America

The Plan was published in unclassified form most recently under the title of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, (pdf) as Cheney ended his term as secretary of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993, but it is, like "Leaves of Grass," a perpetually evolving work. It was the controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft of 1992 - from which Cheney, unconvincingly, tried to distance himself - and it was the somewhat less aggressive revised draft of that same year. This June it was a presidential lecture in the form of a commencement address at West Point, and in July it was leaked to the press as yet another Defense Planning Guidance (this time under the pen name of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). It will take its ultimate form, though, as America's new national security strategy - and Cheney et al. will experience what few writers have even dared dream: their words will become our reality. - David Armstrong

Occupy The World.. And The Values Revolution

The "Occupy" crowd is beautifully named. They want to "occupy" their space, their time, their lives. They--we--do not measure our lives' worth in terms of the billions of dollars we have never amassed. We ask: How is money made? ("Right Livelihood," we recall, is one of the essential aspects of Buddha's Noble Eight-fold Path!) What good has come of the wealth? ("Lay not up worldly treasures," the Essene Jesus advised.) What lives were improved? How? Was the planet made more liveable, more beautiful? We ask: What is the measure of a life worth living; and, yes--what is the meaning of life? It's a question as old as Plato and Aristotle, as old as the Hebrew prophets and the Sumerian cuneiform tablets. It is a much greater question than the question of happiness... because enduring happiness depends on it. - Gary Corseri

How the 99 Percent Really Lost Out - in Far Greater Ways Than the Occupy Protesters Imagine

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? - Gar Alperwitz

Elders a (Labor) Force for Social Change

How about inventing a gap year for grown-ups, a time when they could take a break, volunteer at home or abroad, or try a new career direction? A gap year--perhaps financed by a new tax-exempt savings vehicle we could call the Individual Purpose Account-- could be a source of renewal for those embarking on a new career chapter. What about midlife fellowships for those seeking roles that combine purpose with a paycheck? And why stop there: Let's rethink our entire education system. Why cram so much learning into our teens and early 20s when we may want to move in a whole new direction in our 50s, 60s, and 70s?

For those who think the references to slavery and use of the 13th Amendment are excessive, remember the words of Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist and former slave. Douglass often made direct comparisons between the treatment and use of other animals and that of himself. "When purchased, my old master probably thought as little of my advent, as he would have thought of the addition of a single pig to his stock! Like a wild young working animal, I am to be broken to the yoke of a bitter and life-long bondage. Indeed, I now saw, in my situation, several points of similarity with that of the oxen. They were property, so was I; they were to be broken, so was I; Covey was to break me, I was to break them; break and be broken - such is life." - A. Cockburn

The New Libya: Assassination, Ruination, Broken Promises and Body Snatching...

If events of the past few days are anything to go by, the UN-NATO insurgent allies are set to bring a grim, lawless, murderous and fundamentalist future to the "New Libya." Polygamy is set to return as the disenfranchisement of women, the West's new friend and interim leader, Mr Jalil has declared. (He didn't put it quite like that, but the particular interpretation of Sharia Law he espouses, does.) A country which had health, education and welfare services of which most could only dream(i) is also set to instantly revert fifty years. Flying King Idris' flag, Libya is being plunged seamlessly back to his era of illiteracy and neglect. It will not get better. Britain is already demanding that bombarded, bereaved, largely broken Libya, pay compensation for its "liberation." No, not satire, see:ii. - Felicity Arbuthnot

OWS Has Lessons to Learn From Past Movements

In challenging the 1%, OWS has taken the moral high ground at a time when our country seems to have lost its moral compass. The growing movement holds corporate elites and their political representatives responsible for the moral failings exposed by the great and growing inequalities between the 1% and the 99%, and the widespread suffering of mass unemployment and home foreclosures in the midst of highly concentrated personal wealth and political power. OWS challenges the deep immorality and total unacceptability of the economic and political arrangements that generate and secure this inequality. - Michael Zweig

Occupy Wall Street is On the Move

We know that the Occupy people want to keep their opposition on a general level of informed outrage and not get to the specific policy level. Fine. The 535 people in Congress, who put their shoes on every day like we do, are quite susceptible to a fast rising rumble from the people. They don't need specifics. They know all about the savagely avaricious corporate paymasters and their swarming lobbyists on Capitol Hill wanting ever more varieties of goodies and less corporate law enforcement. What they need to know is that you've got their number and that people are fed up and on the move. - Ralph Nader

"We Are One Hand" - Oakland Commune Enters World Stage: 3,000-Strong Assembly Calls for: General Strike In Oakland!

Following the brutal police dispersal of the Oakland Occupy encampment early in the morning of October 25th, and the police attacks on protestors on the streets later that night, the world has taken note of what is going on with the Wall Street protest movement in Oakland. Aside from the successful vote for the general strike itself, the biggest cheers tonight went up for the report that the New York City Wall Street Occupiers, having been unable to take the streets so far, did so tonight to solidarize with Oakland protestors. They chanted, "We Are Oakland," and "Oakland, Oakland, Fight Police Brutality." The latter chant was taken up in the amphitheater in Oakland tonight. And from Cairo Egypt, another message of solidarity came in, and protestors chanted, "We Are Tahrir Square." From Cairo came the message, "Cairo, Oakland, We Are One Hand."

THE AWAKENING IN AMERICA

"A radical situation is a collective awakening. . . . In such situations people become much more open to new perspectives, readier to question previous assumptions, quicker to see through the usual cons. . . . People
learn more about society in a week than in years of academic 'social studies' or leftist 'consciousness raising.' . . . Everything seems possible -- and much more IS possible. People can hardly believe what they
used to put up with in 'the old days.' . . . Passive consumption is replaced by active communication. Strangers strike up lively discussions on street corners. Debates continue round the clock, new arrivals constantly replacing
those who depart for other activities or to try to catch a few hours of sleep, though they are usually too excited to sleep very long. While some people succumb to demagogues, others start making their own proposals and
taking their own initiatives. Bystanders get drawn into the vortex, and go through astonishingly rapid changes. . . . Radical situations are the rare moments when qualitative change really becomes possible. Far from being abnormal, they reveal how abnormally repressed we usually are; they make our 'normal' life seem like sleepwalking." - Ken Knabb, THE JOY OF REVOLUTION

Oakland Occupy Dispersed, but then... Oakland Erupts! Police Attack Protestors In the Streets

For now though, the great value of this movement is that its aim is quite good. The one percent of Wall Street barons, the financiers who are the very peak of the imperialist ruling class, is exactly the clique that needs to be overthrown in a working class revolution which would expropriate, not just control, the banks. The aim is good, but the revolutionary consciousness is not quite there yet. Still, the consciousness is a bit better than what is suggested by one sign that I saw being held up at the library rally earlier today. It read, "Mayor Quan, and Oakland Police - Which Side Are You On?" I smiled and said to the sign holder, "I think they've already answered that question." He smiled back broadly, but still held the sign. - Chris Kinder

Violent crackdown on occupy protesters in Oakland, California

As the police gathered near the Oakland Coliseum to prepare the military-style operation in the early morning, a local news station had reportedly alerted some protesters that the attack was soon to occur. This may have allowed some people at the camp to slip away before the police from Oakland, Hayward, Union City, Emeryville, Vacaville and several other cities moved in. Those arrested were taken to several jails, including as far away as Dublin, 22 miles away. Some were being detained on $10,000 bail and are being held until Thursday. At a rally in the afternoon before the Oakland Main Library, the National Lawyers Guild announced that they had the names of 105 arrested; two people had their hands broken, and one had a head injury requiring hospitalization. The ludicrous charges leveled at the protesters were "remaining at the scene of a riot" (in fact, a police riot), resisting arrest and battery of a police officer. Occupy Oakland, a part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, began on October 10. Within days, a sophisticated infrastructure had arisen which included round-the-clock cooking, sanitation, and communications. - Fred Williams and Joseph Kishore

The Suicide Of Liberty

The Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes have shredded the constitutional protections that gave American citizens their liberty. By dictate alone, the executive branch has acquired the power, prohibited by the Constitution, to incarcerate citizens indefinitely without presenting evidence and obtaining conviction. According to the US government, a secret executive branch panel now exists that has acquired from somewhere the unaccountable power to put citizens on a list to be assassinated without due process of law merely on the basis of an unproven government assertion. How does this differ from Stalinist Russia and Gestapo Germany? The transformation of the US into a police state has been achieved quickly and with scant protest. Congress and the courts are silent. The media is silent, as are the law schools and bar associations. Out of 535 US Senators and Representatives, only Ron Paul has protested the destruction of liberty. - Paul Craig Roberts

The Job Creators

Ironically, the one thing Wall Street protesters haven't yet considered is -- creating new jobs -- new kinds of jobs -- to build sustainable communities. After all, the most significant and lasting form of 'protest' is to permanently boycott the existing system. The best way to boycott a global system of inadequate job creation is for communities to begin creating new jobs -- new kinds of jobs -- jobs that are locally anchored, democratically controlled and ecologically sustainable. According to Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, "You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few -- or democracy -- but you cannot have both". So, what if money and power were controlled democratically at the level of communities and enterprises? What if American communities became 'The Job Creators'? Job creation is where a mere 'protest' becomes a formidable 'movement'. The movement creates new jobs, and new jobs facilitate expansion of the movement. - David Kendall

Which adivasi? What India?

How can an international organisation decide to hand over the award to non-Adivasis when there are number of leaders from the community like Munni Hansada, Soma Guria, Dayamani Barla, Kumar Chand Mardi, CK Janu and many others who have won fights against corporate sharks trying to uproot these tribal communities, and devoted their lives for the promotion and protection of their identity, tradition, culture, autonomy, dignity and livelihood resources? How can few people receive award on behalf of another community? Why Adivasi leaders who have done commendable work for the community go unrecognised? - Gladson Dungdung

Why the Occupy Movement is Critical for America

Our current president, who initially held such great promise, has become no better than his predecessor in fact as well as deed. Brilliance and eloquence can not replace an innate connection to the plight of the people who are (and have been) at the mercy of the plutocratic forces that have usurped our representative democracy to use for their sole benefit. So what is the occupy movement really all about? It is restoring the voice of the people, removing the chains of powerlessness, inertia and passivity to ultimately challenge and peacefully demand our current dysfunctional non representative leaders accede to its legitimate demands. There are times in history that movements emerge when conditions are such that nothing less than a complete overhaul of the existing system is justified and necessary. - Dave Lefcourt

Losing Their Immunity

Money talks in American politics, and what the financial industry's money has been saying lately is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize that industry's behavior, no matter how gently -- as evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. And this explains the industry's shock over recent events. You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again. And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans. No wonder Wall Street is whining. - Paul Krugman

A Jubilee for Student Debt?

The threat of massive student loan defaults requiring another taxpayer bailout has been called a systemic risk as serious as the bank failures that brought the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse in 2008.
The Federal Reserve could do it in the same way it defused the 2008 crisis: by aiming its fire hose of very-low-interest credit at the struggling student population. Since September 2008, the Fed has made trillions of dollars available to financial institutions at a fraction of 1 percent interest; and in audits since then, we've seen that the Fed is capable of coming up with any amount of money required--accounting entries, available with the stroke of a computer key. - Ellen Brown

Anna is the icon of banal Hindutva

He is not demonic but just spectacularly mediocre. And he attracts a sizable number of those who are either his kind, or, if they are not necessarily mediocre, are just plainly opportunists, who find a state of political and moral anarchy convenient for their own ends. He is attractive because he does not challenge anyone intellectually or morally. All he asks anyone is to bask in his moral superiority. Like Krishna asking Arjuna to suspend everything and come unto him, Hazare too wants us to suspend judgement and follow him. - Jyotirmaya Sharma

From Tahrir to Wall Street: Egyptian Revolutionary Asmaa Mahfouz Speaks at Occupy Wall Street

If you think yourself a man, come with me on January 25th. Whoever says women shouldn't go to protests because they will get beaten, let him have some honor and manhood and come with me on January 25th. Whoever says it is not worth it because there will only be a handful of people, I want to tell him, "You are the reason behind this, and you are a traitor, just like the president or any security cop who beats us in the streets." Your presence with us will make a difference, a big difference. Talk to your neighbors, your colleagues, friends and family, and tell them to come. They don't have to come to Tahrir Square. Just go down anywhere and say it, that we are free human beings. Sitting at home and just following us on news or Facebook leads to our humiliation, leads to my own humiliation. If you have honor and dignity as a man, come. Come and protect me and other girls in the protest. If you stay at home, then you deserve all that is being done, and you will be guilty before your nation and your people. And you'll be responsible for what happens to us on the streets while you sit at home - Asmaa Mahfouz.

Occupy Wall Street and the Criminalization of Non-violent Dissent

Every day I continue to read of a number of further instances of Occupy's heroes being pepper sprayed and abused, and every day their courage makes it difficult to recall a time that I've been prouder to be an American. On many occasions, some years ago, I too was pepper sprayed, and I too was perceived by some as having committed 'a crime'...the 'crime' of Non-violent Dissent. In 2005, a German film emerged that garnered critical acclaim for its examination of such 'criminality', the setting being 1940s Nazi Germany, the name of the film is 'Sophie Scholl - The Final Days'. It examines how non-violent dissent has indeed sometimes been quite criminalized, sometimes even demanding the ultimate sacrifice. Sophie, her brother, and a friend were tortured, then tried and executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943. It might be well for those brutalizing Occupy to see this film, to be reminded of what kind of State uses brutal force against those brave souls with the vision and courage to attempt the righting of grievous wrongs. It might indeed be well. - Ritt Goldstein

Mass killings, arbitrary detention under new Libyan regime

Jalil and other TNC officials are yet to respond to reports detailing the arbitrary detention and torture of thousands of political prisoners, alleged Gaddafi supporters and fighters. The Washington Post noted Sunday that under international law, combatants in civil war must be released after the fighting ends unless they have committed crimes such as attacking civilians. Under the TNC, however, the Post reported: "Nearly 7,000 prisoners of war are packed into dingy, makeshift jails around Libya, where they have languished for weeks without charges and have faced abuse and even torture, according to human rights groups and interviews with the detainees." - Patrick O'Connor

US government panel recommends an end to prostate cancer screening

Murray Feldstein, MD, from Phoenix, Arizona commented to The Annals of Internal Medicine following the USPSTF recommendations, "As an elderly urologist who spent nearly half of his career in the pre-PSA era, I can personally attest to another and perhaps even more important factor that is being overlooked--suffering from advanced prostate cancer. No longer do I see patients with bulky cancer who bleed and obstruct their urinary tracts." He pointed out that painful prostate cancer that had spread to bones was now rare, a situation undoubtedly attributable to the widespread use of PSA screenings. - Gary Joad

Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent

"The black community and the community of color have been dealing with these issues for decades," the Rev. Raymond Blanchette, an African-American preacher from Queens, said in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan one day last week as we closed our jackets against a chilly wind whipping down the canyons of the financial district. "Now the white community around the country is beginning to see it and experience it firsthand. It's pretty shocking to them. The African-American community and other communities of color are saying, 'Welcome to the world I live in.' That's why you don't see that many of those [nonwhite] faces here. It's like, OK, now you decided you are going to speak up because now you're the one that's affected by it. One of the reasons I'm here is because I see the viability of this movement. I want to bring those communities together." - Chris Hedges