By Zaid Jilani

One of the tactics the 99 Percenters are using to take back the country from the 1 percent is to move their money from big banks to credit unions, community banks, and other smaller financial unions that aren't gambling with our nation's future.

Now, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) reports that a whopping 650,000 Americans have joined credit unions since Sept. 29 -- the date that Bank of America announced it would start charging a $5 monthly debit fee, a move it backed down on this week.

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.

This Saturday, 99 Percenters are calling on Americans to move their money from big banks to credit unions and community banks on what is being called "Bank Transfer Day." If you want to stand with the 99 Percent and take part in this action, use the Move Your Money project's community bank and credit union finder tool to find out how. (HT: @blogdiva)

The iron lady of Manipur, Ms Irom Sharmila Chanu of Manipur is one of the civil rights activists in India better known for her relentless campaign for the the repealing of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Irom Sharmila has been on hunger strike since November 2, 2000 demanding that the Indian government repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958 (AFSPA). She has refused food and water for more than 500 weeks, making her the longest hunger striker in the world.

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.

The programmes organized under the banner 'Irom Sharmila Solidarity Campaign. have already begun from Oct 2, ( Birthday of Mahatma Gandhi) across states of India and would culminate on Dec 10, 2011. As a part of this campaign a Srinagar to Imphal journey and national signature campaign is also being planned.

Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) continues to be the most potent repressive tool of the Indian state that empowers even a non commissioned officer of the armed forces to kill on mere suspicion and provide legal immunity from prosecution, thereby causing untold misery and agony among the peoples of the affected regions.

The imposition of AFSPA is synonymous to heavy militarization in the states where it is promulgated leading to gross civil and political rights violations including enforced disappearances, extra-judicial execution, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence against women, arbitrary arrest and detention.

Armed Forces Special Powers Act, a colonial legacy used against Mahatma Gandhi, was promulgated initially in the Naga areas of Assam (later divided between 4 states) and later in Mizoram, initially in parts of Manipur and later in all of Manipur.

The Ordinance after a brief discussion in the Parliament was endorsed and got the status of Act on August 18, 1958, despite stiff resistance from various quarters who challenged it as a martial and draconian law.

Since then it has been in force in one part or the other of the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir (since 1991).

Even though continuation of the 'disturbed area' status under the AFSPA in many part of the country is illegal in view of the violation of the mandatory six monthly periodic review directed by Supreme Court in its 1997 Judgement, there is no respite from this draconian law.

This law is more draconian than its predecessor ordinance used by the British to suppress the Quit India Movement. In the pretext of controlling insurgency, this Act has only intensified the insurgency in the region and legitimised thousands of gross human rights violations like rape, torture, murder and "disappearances" of innocent people in the North East and J&K.

The democratic movements in the Northeast states of India and the Jammu and Kashmir have consistently demanded the repeal of the Act and demilitarisation for decades but their repeated plea has fallen on the deaf ears and and nothing has so far been done to check the state sponsored injustices being perpetrated.

It is in this context Irom Sharmila struggle against Armed Forces Special Powers Act, has become synonymous with the cause. It amazing to see her conviction and courage to take on the might of the Indian state.

Although Sharmila is leading the Manipur people's movement but her popularity over the years has catapulted her to the national stage. It's her sheer grit and determination that has made her a national icon. She occupies the same space as that Anna Hazare has on corruption, Medha Patkar on Narmada Bacho and similar civil rights activists.

It therefore important for all the freedom loving people who care for human rights and human values in this country to render support to 'Irom Sharmila Solidarity Campaign and make it a success.

It wont be improper to mention that Irom Sharmila is one of the faces better known to us, but she is not the only one, there are many more like her who have taken up this cause and deserve salutation.

Here one has to acknowledge the names like; Mukta Srivastava , GG Parikh, Sukla Sen, Daniel Mazgoankar, Asad, Shimanshu, Suhas Kolhekar, Simpreet Singh, Jatin Desai, Guddi S.L who have put up a brave front and has taken up this cause.

One can only wish good luck and best wishes those who are campaigning for the repealing of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in India.

Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba@yahoo.com

"...once in a lifetime/ the longed for tidal wave/ of justice can rise up...
So hope for a great sea-change...
Believe in miracles..."

Irish Nobel Prize laureate Seamus Heaney, from the poem "The Cure."

The miraculous and magical rise of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) tidal wave has suspended us in a threshold between a no-longer and a not-yet. The call for justice initiated by American youth echoes around the globe. Ours is a time of transition; exploring similar transitional moments in history could be instructive.

I recently watched the acclaimed fictionalized film "Battle of Seattle" with a 22-year-old who has been at Occupy Santa Rosa numerous times, here in Sonoma County, Northern California. The film evoked memories from the l968 Chicago National Democratic Convention, where I was in the streets and then briefly in jail. I was not in Seattle for the 1999 actions against the international gathering of the World Trade Organization, though I followed them in the media. By studying those two historical events, we can apply lessons from them to today's rapidly unfolding national and global OWS movement.

What might their differences and similarities be and how can we avoid the problems of those previous events and harvest wisdom from them? All three have been mass mobilizations that dramatically changed history. They are each a battle for better futures that are possible.

I began visiting Occupy Santa Rosa on Oct. 15, when some 3000 energized people gathered outside City Hall and went on a march through downtown. Though Santa Rosa is a medium-sized city of some 165,000, our gathering was the sixth largest in the United States at that time.

The differences in the Chicago, Seattle, and Occupy events are numerous, including geographical, chronological, and duration. Chicago and Seattle failed to remain non-violent, for a variety of reasons, thus limiting their successes. Though some Occupy sites have experienced police violence--such as Oakland, New York, and San Francisco--here in Sonoma County and in other sites at least the protestors have tended to remain non-violent. If that peacefulness continues, the movement will grow and include more of the 99 percent.

One similarity in these three eruptions is that they have been mass uprisings of direct democracy challenging the domination of the many by the few. Then the state used its police power to subdue the constitutional First Amendment freedoms of speech and assembly exercised by those seeking justice.

In l968 I participated in activities in Grant Park and elsewhere in Chicago. This was after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., during the history-changing l960s. Our peace movement eventually helped force the U.S. military out of the Vietnam War.

At the time I was a 24-year-old graduate student at the University of Chicago.

SEATTLE

Not having been in Seattle, I do not know how historically accurate "Battle in Seattle" is. I welcome feedback from those who were there or have studied this four-day event. The film has a ring of truth to it and reminds us how easily something conceived to follow the principles of non-violence as practiced by Gandhi, King, Quakers, and others can be re-directed by a few police agents and violence-promoting activists. If that were to happen in the Occupation movement, it would loose much of the support that it currently has. Its potential to gain more support among the 99 percent would be limited.

"I was thrilled and grateful to see the next generation picking up the mantle of activism," said Angela Ford, a Seattle resident in 1999. "I knew that nothing would be the same in the country. At last, the issues of global corporate greed and plunder had surfaced here in the United States. It could no longer be ignored. It became part of public conversation."

While watching "Battle in Seattle," I thought about how unintended consequences can be numerous and far-reaching. Some people will get hurt. A pregnant wife of a police officer played by Woody Harrelson was accidentally caught up in a police attack on demonstrators and hit in the stomach by a policeman. She lost her beloved child.

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.

The final scene in the film is inspiring--the activists are released from prison without charges. This happened to me when I was released from Cook County Jail in Chicago after my participation in the 1968 activities. A judge in Nashville, Tennessee, recently released occupiers illegally incarcerated by the police there.

People whose memories include Chicago'68 and Seattle'99 have been active in Occupy 2011, raising questions and concerns. A big difference between the current Occupy movement and the other two historical movements is that OWS occurs not only in one city but is national and increasingly global. It is also ongoing, rather than limited to a short time. All three have been youth-led.

At first the U.S. corporate press ignored OWS, even as the world press was covering it. Then they tried to ridicule it and reduce it with demeaning descriptions, such as "dirty hippies." They are finally being forced to give it more balanced coverage, though they continue to fail in the responsibility of the media to offer context and analysis.

SANTA ROSA

"Once the tents went up," said Santa Rosa occupier Heather Williamson, 22, "it became more of a community and at times even a party feeling." Encampments have also been described as evolving into villages that occupy public space. Others describe them as "learning communities of direct democracy." People can learn how to disagree without being disagreeable and how to deal with their anger appropriately, as well as how to manage conflict and let things go. An historical example of such encampments might be during the Great Depression, when so many people were homeless, as they are today.

Among the many things that OWS does is to function as a school. One can learn the following: peer leadership, communication, setting boundaries, dealing with opponents not as enemies, building trust and relationships, living together with diverse people, developing self-confidence and one's own voice, letting things go, dealing with difficult people, self-policing, speaking publicly, remaining calm, developing a sense of group identity and unity. OWS provides a public space within which people can have various kinds of encounters with each other.

"My voice is coming out easier," explained Williamson, who is visiting Sonoma County from San Diego. "I'm learning to speak loud enough." She and others attend classes and workshops on things such as non-violence, yoga, and how to interact with the police.

A sleeping giant, the so-called "Me Generation" or "Millennial Generation," which I reach in college, seems to be awakening. Many are passive in class and some feel hopeless about their futures with substantial college debts, few jobs, and often having to move back home.

"This ain't over yet," wrote one 71-year-old friend on Oct. 30, as the Occupy Santa Rosa General Assembly decided to continue staying overnight, in spite of the threat of police eviction.

"Santa Rosa has the potential to be an early role model for other communities across the country," he adds, "where the climate is right for the local governments and the Occupiers to find common ground and to energize many people in these communities to get involved. If this movement is going to be successful, it needs many people marching, making democratic decisions in General Assemblies, and taking action." He later notes, "Democracy is never perfect, but we need to get as close to it as we can."

He then concludes with some insights from depth psychology: "There is the wisdom of the elders who may advise against rash actions, but there is the wisdom of the youth that can carry the ball forward to new ground. Hopefully, the elder energy can check the reckless Puer Aeternus (eternal youth) energy and the youthful energy can check the stuck elder Senex ( cynical) energy. We need a full-throated debate about these important issues so that all of these energies can find a proper balance. Step by step we must discover how to refine the Occupy democratic process."

Seattle apparently had conflicts among elected officials, like between its mayor and the governor of Washington, and between electeds and the police chief. Such conflicts have happened in the San Francisco Bay Area. Occupations here have received significant support from San Francisco supervisors, some of whom have attended, as well as support from other elected officials and politically powerful people. If the Occupation movement can develop further allies from members of labor unions, faith and community groups, and others, this will serve it well.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan was once an activist herself, but she authorized what became the most vicious police riot against occupiers to date, seriously wounding an Iraq Marine veteran, Scott Olsen. Her former allies are calling on her to resign and her authority has eroded.

"Creating confrontations with supporters is a tactical and strategic mistake," said former Sebastopol mayor Larry Robinson at a recent meeting. "Most everyone here in local government gets it. What the occupiers do is bear witness to the injustices and moral issues. The concentration of wealth and income distribution is morally wrong. It is leading to the downfall of what could be a great civilization. We should not alienate natural allies, which includes local businesses." Robinson added that it is important not to demonize Santa Rosa and local government, but to keep the focus on Wall Street.

"From Arab Spring and the Occupy movement we need to learn that we cannot predict when things will open," Robinson said. "There is a tipping point, and we need to be prepared for that opening." He has been studying chaos theory and speaking to groups about it and the importance of accepting uncertainty.

Police weapons since Seattle'99 have evolved and gotten more violent, as revealed by the some 400 policemen from 17 precincts that were mobilized and used helicopters, armored vehicles, and shotguns firing projectiles against a much smaller, unarmed citizenry. Tactics used by the police in the film "Battle in Seattle" are currently being used or may soon be used against the occupations, including martial law, police infiltrators, declaring States of Emergency and curfews, and sending in the National Guard, some of whom will have been in combat in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.

America has become more violent since Chicago'68 and Seattle'99. As its morality has declined, its firepower has increased. Let's not be naïve and innocent, especially given the enthusiasm of the youth, which has already been dashed by President Barak Obama becoming a manager of the wealthy 1 per cent.

As someone who lived in Chile during the democratically-elected government of President Salvador Allende in the early l970s, I experienced how quickly a country can go from having hundreds of thousands of people mobilized in the streets to a brutal dictatorship. In Chile I first heard the chant "The people united will never be defeated. (El pueble unido jamas sera vencido.) It was good to hear it again in the Seattle film and now at OWS occupations around the world, thus linking them to Chile.

Since Chicago'68 and Seattle'99 the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. has risen. Though the U.S. military has expanded its reach--with a budget about the same size as all the rest of the militaries in the world combined--U.S. power and prestige have declined with the rise of the rest, especially China, India, Russia, and Brazil. American power is possible only because of its world-wide fortress.

The Occupy movement could either stimulate a growth of more oppressive control of the 99 per cent by the 1 percent or a weakening or even overthrow of the Wall Street stranglehold. The rich and their protectors are certainly carefully calculating how to turn back the Occupy tide and continue exploiting the labor of the rest of us and the Earth's bounty.

Chicago'68 was a turning point. Seattle'99 was a turning point. Now Occupy'11 continues that legacy of a mass uprising of democracy. If Occupy continues to grow, it has the potential to recall the U.S. back to some of its original democratic values of freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

"There are those who are trying to set fire to the world.
We are in danger.
There is time only to work slowly.
There is no time now to love." Deena Metzger

(Shepherd Bliss currently teaches at Sonoma State University and Dominican University in Northern California, where he teaches a course on U.S. History. He has run an organic farm for the last 20 years, contributed to a couple of dozen books, and can be reached at 3sb@comcast.net.)

A Message to Occupiers

The following letter was received by the Oakland Occupy and read at the General Assembly in the days after the dispersal of the City-Hall encampment (which has now been restored) and just before the "General Strike" of November 2nd 2011. It was read in full at the demand of members of the assembly, and received with cheers.

Note the implied contempt for pacifism. They say that "It is not our desire to participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose." Also note that these comrades did not attempt to tell US occupiers what to do. But the conclusion that the financial ruling class that we face here in the US is a violent overlord, acting through puppet regimes such as Mubarak's throughout the world, and that it needs to be met with an actively revolutionary violent-when-necessary defense, could hardly be missed.

This is not a defense of provocative "Black Bloc" actions such as occurred in Oakland during the afternoon (not talking about the evening actions) of the "General Strike." These afternoon window breakings were either police inspired or just plain stupid. But, this is a an assertion that a mature revolutionary movement must be prepared to fight back with no holds barred, if we are to achieve power.

My chief regret here is that the Egyptian Revolution, now entering its second phase, may not yet have learned of the need to move beyond the illusion of "democracy," and to fight for workers' power.

From the Letter --

"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."

Here is the complete text of the letter:

Solidarity Statement From Cairo\

Posted Oct. 25, 2011, 2:39 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it's our turn to pass on some advice.

Indeed, we are now in many ways involved in the same struggle. What most pundits call "The Arab Spring" has its roots in the demonstrations, riots, strikes and occupations taking place all around the world, its foundations lie in years-long struggles by people and popular movements. The moment that we find ourselves in is nothing new, as we in Egypt and others have been fighting against systems of repression, disenfranchisement and the unchecked ravages of global capitalism (yes, we said it, capitalism): a System that has made a world that is dangerous and cruel to its inhabitants. As the interests of government increasingly cater to the interests and comforts of private, transnational capital, our cities and homes have become progressively more abstract and violent places, subject to the casual ravages of the next economic development or urban renewal scheme.

An entire generation across the globe has grown up realizing, rationally and emotionally, that we have no future in the current order of things. Living under structural adjustment policies and the supposed expertise of international organizations like the World Bank and IMF, we watched as our resources, industries and public services were sold off and dismantled as the "free market" pushed an addiction to foreign goods, to foreign food even. The profits and benefits of those freed markets went elsewhere, while Egypt and other countries in the South found their immiseration reinforced by a massive increase in police repression and torture.

The current crisis in America and Western Europe has begun to bring this reality home to you as well: that as things stand we will all work ourselves raw, our backs broken by personal debt and public austerity. Not content with carving out the remnants of the public sphere and the welfare state, capitalism and the austerity-state now even attack the private realm and people's right to decent dwelling as thousands of foreclosed-upon homeowners find themselves both homeless and indebted to the banks who have forced them on to the streets.

So we stand with you not just in your attempts to bring down the old but to experiment with the new. We are not protesting. Who is there to protest to? What could we ask them for that they could grant? We are occupying. We are reclaiming those same spaces of public practice that have been commodified, privatized and locked into the hands of faceless bureaucracy , real estate portfolios, and police 'protection'. Hold on to these spaces, nurture them, and let the boundaries of your occupations grow. After all, who built these parks, these plazas, these buildings? Whose labor made them real and livable? Why should it seem so natural that they should be withheld from us, policed and disciplined? Reclaiming these spaces and managing them justly and collectively is proof enough of our legitimacy.

In our own occupations of Tahrir, we encountered people entering the Square every day in tears because it was the first time they had walked through those streets and spaces without being harassed by police; it is not just the ideas that are important, these spaces are fundamental to the possibility of a new world. These are public spaces. Spaces forgathering, leisure, meeting, and interacting - these spaces should be the reason we live in cities. Where the state and the interests of owners have made them inaccessible, exclusive or dangerous, it is up to us to make sure that they are safe, inclusive and just. We have and must continue to open them to anyone that wants to build a better world, particularly for the marginalized, excluded and for those groups who have suffered the worst .

What you do in these spaces is neither as grandiose and abstract nor as quotidian as "real democracy"; the nascent forms of praxis and social engagement being made in the occupations avoid the empty ideals and stale parliamentarianism that the term democracy has come to represent. And so the occupations must continue, because there is no one left to ask for reform. They must continue because we are creating what we can no longer wait for.

But the ideologies of property and propriety will manifest themselves again. Whether through the overt opposition of property owners or municipalities to your encampments or the more subtle attempts to control space through traffic regulations, anti-camping laws or health and safety rules. There is a direct conflict between what we seek to make of our cities and our spaces and what the law and the systems of policing standing behind it would have us do.

We faced such direct and indirect violence , and continue to face it . 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.

It is not our desire to participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose. If we do not resist, actively, when they come to take what we have won back, then we will surely lose. Do not confuse the tactics that we used when we shouted "peaceful" with fetishizing nonviolence; if the state had given up immediately we would have been overjoyed, but as they sought to abuse us, beat us, kill us, we knew that there was no other option than to fight back. Had we laid down and allowed ourselves to be arrested, tortured, and martyred to "make a point", we would be no less bloodied, beaten and dead. Be prepared to defend these things you have occupied, that you are building, because, after everything else has been taken from us, these reclaimed spaces are so very precious.

By way of concluding then, our only real advice to you is to continue, keep going and do not stop. Occupy more, find each other, build larger and larger networks and keep discovering new ways to experiment with social life, consensus, and democracy. Discover new ways to use these spaces, discover new ways to hold on to them and never givethem up again. Resist fiercely when you are under attack, but otherwise take pleasure in what you are doing, let it be easy, fun even. We are all watching one another now, and from Cairo we want to say that we are in solidarity with you, and we love you all for what you are doing.

Comrades from Cairo.
24th of October, 2011.

November 05, 2011 -- TRIPOLI, Nov 5, 2011 (IPS) - "We've walked all the way here to tell everybody that we are being treated like dogs," said 23-year old Hamuda Bubakar, among a couple of hundred black refugees protesting at Martyrs Square in Tripoli. "I'd rather be killed here. I wouldn't be the first, or the last."

The refugees came to protest early this week from the barracks of Tarik Matar, a makeshift camp on the outskirts of Tripoli. "We've already spent more than two months in those horrible barracks," said Aisha who preferred not to give her full name.

A few days back, she said, "guerrilla fighters from Misrata (90 kilometres east of Tripoli) entered our place and took seven young guys with them. We still know nothing about them." Several women at the camp have been abducted and raped in recent weeks, she said.

"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.

The armed men at the square, and angry honking soon split up the group.

"Not only do they call us Gaddafists, they hate us for the colour of our skin," said Abdulkarim Rahman. "All blacks in Libya are going through very hard times lately."

Abdurrahman Abudheer, a volunteer worker at one of the barracks that used to house construction workers for new apartment blocks, and that are now home to refugees, estimates there are about 27,000 Tawarghis scattered between Tripoli and Benghazi.

"Just in this camp there are over 200 families, all from Tawargha," said Abudheer. A flashy billboard at the entrance to the camp in the ghostly district Fallah still advertises the "upcoming construction of 1187 houses" by a Turkish company. But now even the grey rows of corrugated iron shacks look more comfortable than those naked and incomplete concrete structures.

The number of refugees is growing by the day, but so is the number of Tripolitanians like Abudheer who show up to help.

Amnesty International expressed concern in September over "increasing cases of violence and indiscriminate arrests against the people from Tawargha." It said tens of thousands of former residents of Tawargha may be living in conditions similar to those in Fallah, or worse.

"Many families arrive after spending days living on the beach," said Abudheer. "Most of them are afraid to even walk down the street."

The scene is similar in Tarik Matar, five minutes drive from Fallah. The most recent census at this camp figures 325 families from Tawargha.

From the room she shares with eight members of her family, Azma, a refugee from Tawargha, showed a portrait of her brother. On Sep. 13 Abdullah was taken from the car he was travelling in with his three children and his sister at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Tripoli.

The last they know of what happened to him is in the autopsy report Azma keeps with her: "Died from several injuries caused by solid and flexible objects throughout the body, especially in the forehead and chest."

Inevitably, the families of the seven young men recently dragged away from this camp fear a similar fate for them.

"We are asking for more security and for those from Misrata to be able to return to our houses without fear of reprisal," said Mabrouk Mohammed, a former physical education teacher who coordinates entry of food and supplies to the complex, mostly from private initiatives. But return to Tawargha is a forgotten dream for most.

Abdullah Fakir, head of Tripoli's Military Council, had told IPS they would increase security at camps where the Tawarghis are staying. But with militias from Misrata showing up at the camps often, nobody feels secure. (END)

See also: Libya militias taking law into own hands: Many of the fighters that pushed Muammar Qaddafi from power have refused to stand down. Now, some of Libya militias are allegedly stealing and targeting Qaddafi supporters for revenge.

November 05, 2011 "Press TV" -- In recent days, there has been a vociferous interest in Israel, the US and the UK in fanning the flames of Iranophobia in what observers see as a political red herring to engage in a catastrophic war in the Middle East.

The trio, which constitute a vicious triangle in their roguishly Iranophobic endeavors, have manifestly held secret meetings among the top security officials and formed a united front against Iran.

A recent report by The Guardian has revealed that British Chief of Defense Staff Gen. David Richards visited Tel Aviv secretly during the week, held a number of meetings with top Israeli military and intelligence officials and reassured them of Britain's unwavering support in case of an attack on Iran's nuclear sites. Further to that, the British officials revealed that the US government was mulling accelerating plans for targeted attacks on the country's nuclear sites and that Britain was prepared to be part of the plan for a possible attack.

Interestingly enough, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak arrived in London on Wednesday to hold talks with his British counterpart, with Iran of course to top the agenda. The importance of these meetings is that Britain's senior military official had not visited Israel for a decade. So, the recent meetings indicate the cementing security and military ties between the two countries.

Only recently, a senior US military official addressing a forum in Washington said that Iran had become the biggest threat to the United States. "The biggest threat to the United States and to our interests and to our friends ... has come into focus and it's Iran."

Coincidentally (how so?), on the same day (Friday), Israel's president Shimon Peres also stated something virtually to the same effect, saying that the military option to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons was nearer.

When asked by Channel Two News if events were moving toward to a military option rather than a diplomatic one, Peres replied, "I believe so, I estimate that intelligence services of all these countries are looking at the ticking clock, warning leaders that there is not much time left."

In this regard, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a pea in the pod, graced a G-20 summit of world leaders in France with his pithy words, "Iran's behavior and this obsessional desire to acquire nuclear military (capability) is in violation of all international rules. ... If Israel's existence were threatened, France would not stand idly by."

The trio (excluding France) have stepped up their rhetoric against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Threat is not a new word to Iran and the country is prepared for the worst and as Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has said on the sidelines of a news conference in the Libyan city of Benghazi, "The US has unfortunately lost wisdom and prudence in dealing with international issues. It depends only on power. They have lost rationality; we are prepared for the worst but we hope they will think twice before they put themselves on a collision course with Iran."

Time and again, the USA has renewed its hollow rhetoric against the Islamic Republic of Iran, repeating the same allegations again and again and again: that Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program; that Iran is supporting terrorism in the region; that Iran is violating human rights; that if Iran acquires the technology to produce nuclear weapons, it will create World War III.

The recent allegation leveled against the Islamic republic ahead of the next week's report by the UN atomic watchdog is that Iran has "built a large steel container for carrying out tests with high explosives that could be used in nuclear weapons," and that Iran has made computer models of a nuclear warhead and other previously undisclosed details on alleged secret work by Tehran on nuclear arms." Allegation comes after allegation against the Islamic Republic and the vicious triangle is forming to set a stage for an all-out attack against the country with the intended purpose of plundering its natural resources.

However, Iran will not sit quietly and leave the invaders in peace.

In August 2011, a top IRGC commander Brigadier General Ali Shadmani envisaged three effective measures to counter any potential act of aggression.

1. As Israel is the USA's backyard, Iran will disturb peace there. (The absence of peace in Israel will certainly deny repose to the USA as well.)

2. It would take full control of the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway where over 40 percent of all traded oil passes (thereby spiraling up the oil prices to a confounding level and dealing a heavy blow to the already deteriorating economy.)

3. It would keep a close watch on all American military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. In case of an attack, Iran will cripple the troops stationed in those bases and incapacitate them of any possible move.

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.

In the unholy Israel-US-UK alliance, one cannot say with surety who is the most responsible party for these anti-Iran provocative acts but it seems that the Israeli tail is wagging the US-UK dog.

ismail Salami is an Iranian author and political analyst. A prolific writer, he has written numerous books and articles on the Middle East.

A one-day protest in Oakland, California on Wednesday that involved more than ten thousand people was followed by police action in the early morning hours of Thursday, including the use of tear gas and rubber bullets, followed by dozens of arrests.

The demonstrations on Wednesday involved the participation of many workers and youth outraged over earlier police actions that led to the near-fatal injury of one protester, Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen, who was struck in the head by a projectile. The protests were among the largest organized by the Occupy movement against inequality in the US.

The day became a semi-official event, however, endorsed by the Democratic Mayor Jean Quan, who had overseen the police violence in the first place. The protests were coordinated with the trade unions, and police presence was largely absent during the day.

Mayor Quan issued a statement on Wednesday saying: "We have spent the week collaborating with the Port, county, school district officials as well as clergy, business, community and activity groups to ensure that the day goes smoothly."

Around 11 pm, however, protesters started occupying the abandoned former offices of Travelers Aid Society, a non-profit organization for the homeless that shut down due to budget cuts. The aim of the "occupation" was to turn the building into a community center.

In response the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, and encircled the plaza. By morning dozens of protesters were arrested and at least three were hospitalized.

Since the beginning of the port occupation there had been signs that the police were hoping for a provocation later. After dark a police helicopter had started circling the port shining its spotlight on protesters in the street. Since the street was already well lit with lampposts, this served no purpose other than keeping tensions high.

The actions of a few individuals who broke windows and engaged in vandalism were used as a pretext for police action. As is always the case with such actions, the operations of police provocateurs is likely. According to one eyewitness who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site, some people on the protester side of the barricades responded to the initial police advance in "bizarre and erratic ways." Most notably one man "appeared sort of out of nowhere" and "broke the windows of some local businesses and tossed trash cans at the police."

That was far more excuse than the police felt they needed to redouble their use of tear gas and rubber bullets. According to a city press release that afternoon, over 80 people were arrested.

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.

Meanwhile, the occupation of the port in Oakland ended calmly Thursday morning when a local president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Richard Mead, invited the last protesters to breakfast and the morning shift started work.

The march on the port and its "shutdown" was agreed upon beforehand by the union bureaucracy and Democrats as a safe way for protesters to vent their anger without raising any of the deeper political questions surrounding the police violence.

Together with organizers who support the occupy movement's "no politics" approach, the unions sought to engender a carnival like atmosphere to the exclusion of any political discussion. Although many people brought amplifiers and speakers to the port, they were used for music. Notably absent from the rally was any central area to speak about the issues facing workers and discuss the political issues raised by the occupy movement.

None of the unions called an actual strike on Wednesday. However several, most notably the Service Employees International Union and the Oakland Education Association, encouraged their members to take personal days and join the rally with manager approval. Officials from these unions were involved in the organizational meetings to plan the event. Quan also invited city workers to take furlough days.

Absent from every unions' solidarity statement was any mention of the Democrats or the role they are playing in cutting social services and supporting the rich. Typical were the statements of George Gresham, president of SEIU 1199, the union's biggest local, and Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, who told the Washington Post that they expected the Occupy Movement to support Obama in the next elections.

A specter is haunting America, the specter of obesity. According to the U.S. Centers of Disease Control's 2007-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), nearly three-quarters (73.7%) of all Americans 20 years and older are either overweigh, obese or extremely obese. In 2008, the U.S. population was estimated at approximately 300 million people, of which 220 million were overweight.

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.

The First Lady, Michelle Obama, has taken up the issue of obesity, promoting a well-intentioned, but clearly doomed, campaign dubbed "Let's Move." As she acknowledged, "one in three kids are overweight or obese." Her program is boldly aimed to eliminate the "problem of childhood obesity in a generation." The campaign's key features are: getting parents more informed about nutrition and exercise; improving the quality of food in schools; making healthy foods more affordable and accessible for families; and promoting more physical education.

The First Lady, likely as political astute as her husband, must surely know what she cannot discuss in her assessment of childhood obesity, let alone the obesity ravaging American adults. While the finger of judgment is pointed at parents, schools and kids, no mention is made of the agriculture industry, the food and drink companies, the fast-food industry or media advertising that benefit handsomely promoting bad eating and living habits.

Obesity is the perfect example of the systematic restructuring of American society unfolding since the 1970s. Remarkably, as the real income of the majority of Americans remained flat, their bodies expanded. Based on NHANES reports, the percentage of overweight adults (between 20 and 74 years) increased from about 43 percent in 1960-1962 to 54 percent in 1988-1994 and to nearly 74 percent in 2007-2008; those identified as obese (i.e., with a body mass index [BMI] greater than 30) increased from about 14 percent in the mid-1970s to 29 percent in 2000 and to 39.5 percent in 2008.

Advertising parades svelte size 8 women and muscular size 40 regular men before the public imagination. They epitomize the sexual spectacle. In the U.S., however, the real average woman weighs 162.9 pounds and wears a size 14, the size at which "plus-sized" clothing begins; the average size for men is 44.

The Great Recession takes its toll on the American people in many ways. One of the most painful and least discussed is the psychological toll, both short- and long-term. Obesity expresses one of the most consequential social and personal tolls this economic crisis.

* * *

Americans know they suffer from obesity. A recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPI) found that 75 percent of surveyed adult state residents acknowledged obesity as a "very serious" problem. Remarkably, a significant majority of people from all political affiliations saw obesity as a "serious issue": 83 percent of Democrats, 71 percent "independents" and 65 percent of Republicans.

A similar assessment regarding childhood obesity was confirmed in a Field Poll survey: 67 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of "independents" and 48 percent of Republicans acknowledged childhood obesity as a serious issue.

However, a significant difference of opinion emerged over who is responsible for obesity, reflecting political party identification and social values. The PPI study found that 62 percent of Democrats said that both individuals and the government are responsible, while 63 percent of Republicans fault the individual. The questioner apparently never asked wither it was corporate America.

Like the First Lady's assessment of obesity, most food and beverage companies emphasize individual responsibility rather than public action when considering obesity. The belief is shared by the tobacco and alcohol industries. Food and beverage companies, along with others within the obesity-industrial complex, create, promote and sell high-calorie, low-cost processed foods and drinks; snacks, in particular, play a crucial role in childhood obesity. These products are designed to entice consumers, especially young people and children, to eat themselves into obesity.

Much of the medical establishment also points the finger of responsibility at the individual consumer. The website WebMD.com, a popular medical reference site, reiterates this charge. It notes: "But obesity is influenced by many other factors" and identifies among them: "Your emotions and habits," "Your lifestyle," "Your genes," "Alcohol," and "Low self-esteem." No mention is made of federal subsidizes, failed regulation or misleading advertising. (In February 2010, Senator Chuck Grassley [R-IO] investigated WebMD's financial relationship with Eli Lilly.)

Food-industry critics have raised a chorus of objection to this type of self-serving finger pointing, of blaming the victim. Individuals like Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan and Morgan Spurlock ("Super Size Me") have taken the food industry to task.

A recent report by the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), "Apples to Twinkies," sheds even more light on the nefarious interworking of government handouts, corporate gain and the obesity crisis. It shows that the obesity industry, like the energy industry, uses government subsidies and lax regulation to transfer the health-related costs of its products to consumers and taxpayers. [http://www.uspirg.org/home/reports/report-archives/tax--budget-policy/tax--budget-policy--reports/apples-to-twinkies]

The report found that between 1995 and 2010, American taxpayers spent over $260 billion on agricultural subsidies; since 1995, subsidies for apples (which is the only significant federal subsidy of fresh fruits or vegetables) was only $262 million. Given the way lobbying works in Washington, the lion's share of the subsidies went to the country's largest farming operations. As the report notes, "at $7.36 per taxpayer per year, that would buy each taxpayer 19 Twinkies"; a whopping 11-cents per taxpayer per year went to the support of a quarter of the cost of a Red Delicious apple.

These mega-operations tend to grow a few key commodity crops like corn and soybeans. The crops are rendered into additives like high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, soy oil and vegetable oils that provide the cheap sweeteners and fats that make-up much of the snacks and junk foods. As the report states: "Americans' tax dollars are directly subsidizing junk food ingredients."

(It should be noted that the nonprofit group, Food and Water Watch, has challenged the PIRG study. It insists "there is no evidence of a relationship between subsidies and the overproduction of commodity crops, or between subsidies and obesity.")[http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/do-farm-subsidies-cause-obesity]

* * *

When looking at the obesity problem gripping the U.S., it is useful to examine it in a similar light that Pres. Eisenhower used when assessing the military-industrial complex. The "obesity-industrial complex" consists of a series of integrated corporate sectors that, together, wield enormous power and influence not only in Washington, but in every supermarket and on every dinner table in America.

Today's obesity-industrial complex is like the tobacco industry before the 1994 Congressional hearings, in denial and lying all the way to the bank. Before the hearings, the great lie propagated by the tobacco industry was that cigarettes didn't cause cancer; any number of medical shills, commissioned research reports and media exposure through ads, TV shows and movies reinforced the message. After the hearings, the lie was no longer tenable.

We might be coming to a similar moment with regard to the obesity-industrial complex, that its products are unhealthy and uneconomical.

This industrial sector can be divided into a series relatively independent but cooperating (conspiring?) businesses that include: (i) the large factory farms, (ii) the food and beverage processors, (iii) the fast food chains, (iv) obesity medicine (in 2010, the Obesity Society and ten medical professional societies, including the American Diabetes Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, established an Obesity Medicine Physician Certification for doctors who pass an examination on nutrition, exercise, psychology and medicine); (iv) weight-loss programs (e.g., Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig) that charge 11-$15 a day per person, unaffordable to those most in need; and (v) the advertising apparatus of TV, newspaper, magazine and Internet that glorifies unhealthy and fattening foods and drinks.

An apparently overwhelming proportion of Americans know that obesity is a serious problem - likely many of the same people who suffer from it. They know firsthand the costs of obesity, whether measured in financial, medical, psychological or sexual terms.

Obesity is a symptom of the U.S.' failing health-care system. Americans send more money per capita and as a percentage of income than any other nation. And the U.S. has the lowest rate of key health indicators than any other "developed" country.

Obesity needs to be recognized as a form of "social cancer." The cancer inflicted by tobacco on the physical body is analogous to the psychic and social illnesses resulting from obesity. In this spirit, the CEOs of the leading obesity purveyors should be forced to testify before Congress and admit to their complicity in the unhealthy and costly fattening of the nation.

David Rosen can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net.

Last week, Barbara "wah-wah" Walters--thank you, Gilda Radner!--was trotted in front of ABC's Evening News cameras to assure those familes still chowing down that the brutal, disgusting, illegal, savage beating, sodomization and execution of Libyan "dictator" Gaddafi was... understandable... because, he was "crazy."

To confirm Gaddafi's craziness, Clinton-tell-all-renegade George Stephanapoulos, filling in for the most artfully cadenced voice in Television--Diane--Kissinger-protégé--Sawyer--switches to a tape of Wah-Wah interviewing Gaddafi about 10 years earlier. Muamar is preening in his robes, and Wah-Wah slurs point blank: "You know, a lot of Americans think you're crazy!" And Gaddafi laughs.

"Boy!--that laugh is chilling!" proclaims ever-boyish, perfect hairline, Georgie S.

And that's about the essence of the insight we're going to get from the MSM about the Transitional National Council's public butchering of Libya's former leader. That and porcine Hillary Clinton snorting through her snout: "We came, we saw, he died." And thus, in a weird nutshell paraphrase of Caesar's megalomaniacal description of his conquest of Gaul, we see the perverted logic of NATO's bombing campaign and resources-grab that results in the death of some 50,000 Libyans in order to save perhaps 1000 "rebels" at risk in Benghazi.

One week later, and there is Wah-Wah again in some advertisement for an upcoming series of interviews she will conduct with billionaires! This is Wah-Wah's and the MSM'S answer to Occupy Wall Street! Visit these nice, friendly billionaires at home and show how they're "just folks"! And how did they make their billions? Why, as John Houseman intoned in the old Smith Barney ad--"They made their money the old-fashioned way! They earned it!"

That's pretty much the way Herman Cain sees things, too. Asked a couple of weeks ago about his reaction to OWS, Cain blurts something inane like: "If you're poor in America, it's your fault! Blame yourself!" (Not exactly Martin Luther King... but, that was then and this is now!)

Well, what other sort of answer would one expect from the Godfather? And as for Wah-Wah, a woman who brags about her trysts with the likes of war-criminal Henry Kissinger--is that a judge of character anyone can trust?

As for the Godfather...consider this:

Let's say we have a party, and, feeling small-"d" democratic," we invite 100 people from all walks of life. We're going to "entertain" these people with Lady Gaga's gyrations and pay her a cool million dollars--the going rate--because "she earns it!" We're going to feed our guests with a nice-a, big-a pizza pie, which we'll cut into 100 equal slices--each slice sufficient to feed one guest. Problem is, the first person takes 40 slices! S/he doesn't "need" 40 slices, but s/he has "earned" it--meaning, they can do whatever they want with it--from creating jobs to throwing it on the pink-flamingo decorated lawn--with the little, black jockey boy statue, holding the lantern!) Now, the next 4 people get 7 slices each because they "earned it," too--mostly by doing number two whenever Number One tells them to! Now, the next 15 people get one slice each. So these 20 folks are doing okay to totally decadent--they each have at least one slice of delicious pizza to fill their bellies.

But the Godfather--who is transforming right before our eyes into a black, obese but jocular Tony Soprano--can't understand why the remaining 80 folks are grumbling because they only have 7 slices to divide among themselves! Mr. Cain, who can barely do the math for his own "9-9-9" scheme, can't figure out how to feed 80 folks with just 7 slices of pizza.

These, metaphorically, are the sick values of our Mainstream Media, our politicians and our corporate tycoons. They just don't get it! They don't understand why the young and the old all over America, all over this world, are in rebellion against their perverse ways.

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.

We have been a culture distracted by the baubles of consumption. We have been willing to kill and maim millions of people, unheroically and stupidly, while just "following orders" or "doing our jobs," so that an insignificant 1 percent--and even much less than that--could accumulate more and more baubles and dictate more and more orders.

There are four great reasons why the Occupy movement will not go away, why it will grow stronger as we advance into winter and next spring: 1. It is inter-generational. 2. It is international. 3. It is technologized. 4. It is life-saving and essential.

Greater connections will be formed. The young will screw each other (in the best sense!) and fall in love; and the white-haired women who run with wolves and the graybeards who danced with Janis J. for peace in the 60s will re-learn the language of the young and impart the rich ore of their own experiences. And when the snow comes, and the cold appears to drive them away... they will retreat in order to regroup--and fight again come spring.

Because we are connected now..., and talking--all around the world. And we see each other now, and we ask: "If not us, who? If not now, when?"

GARY CORSERI's work has appeared at Countercurrents, BraveNewWorld.in, Outlook India, Meer Aab, Dissident Voice, Common Dreams, CounterPunch, the New York Times, Village Voice and hundreds of other venues worldwide. His dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and he has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum. His books include novels and poetry collections. He can be contacted at gary_corseri@comcast.net or garyscorseri@gmail.com.

Boomers discover ways to apply their skills and life experience to purposeful second careers.

We're a nation that will soon have more older people than young ones, and much of the popular media portrays this as a disaster story that goes something like this: Tens of millions of people, the single biggest group in society and a mighty political force, are about to dominate the scene. Overnight at age 60, they will become the elderly, pass out of the "working-age population," become incompetent and incontinent, bankrupt the health care system, and vote for hefty increases in public spending on their retirement at the expense of everyone else.

We've stretched the average life span from 47 years in 1900 to nearly 80 today. But our imagination about the shape of those longer lives has lagged behind. Until not long ago, the 50s and 60s meant retirement, grandparenthood, senior discounts, and early-bird specials. Today there is a growing group of what I call "neither-nors." Neither young nor old, neither ready to be retired nor able to afford it.

With big thinking, there is a chance to tap the talents and experience of the "baby boom" generation to solve longstanding social problems, from health care to homelessness, education to the environment. There is a chance to turn an older population into a new workforce for social change.

Some people, like Gary Maxworthy, are leading the way. As an idealistic young man, Maxworthy wanted to heed JFK's call to service, but he already had a family to support. Instead of joining the Peace Corps, he launched a career in the food-distribution business, where he worked for more than 30 years.

As Maxworthy approached 60, his wife's passing sent him into a period of soul-searching. He thought a lot about his old Peace Corps dream and the prospect of returning to it. In the end, he chose a more manageable domestic option, VISTA, part of the AmeriCorps national service program.

VISTA placed Maxworthy at the San Francisco Food Bank, where he discovered that--like food banks throughout the state of California--it was primarily giving out canned and processed food. It was all they could reliably deliver without food spoiling.

Maxworthy knew that California farmers were discarding tons of blemished but wholesome fruits and vegetables that were not up to supermarket standards. He launched Farm to Family, a program that in 2010 distributed more than 100 million pounds of fresh food to needy families in California.

Without question Maxworthy would have done a lot of good as a 22-year-old Peace Corps volunteer. But would he have been able to do something comparable to developing a system to distribute 100 million pounds of food to hungry people every year?

Never before have so many people, like Maxworthy, had so much life experience and the time and the capacity to do something significant with it. That's the gift of longevity, the great potential payoff from all the progress we've made in extending lives.

But we won't collect this experience dividend if we don't move to recognize a new stage of life and create the kind of support people need to transition from the end of midlife to the beginning of their encore years. We need innovation.

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?

By capitalizing on the unique assets of this vast population, we can make something extraordinary out of what so many think of as the leftover years. The right public policies could even provide new chances for social mobility. Today's boomers are the first wave passing into this new period, which will soon be occupied by their longer-living children and grandchildren. In crafting our society to respond, we'll open up options for younger people, who could then make life decisions with the expectation of more than one bite of the apple.

We all have a stake in this project. It's our chance to turn the purported paradox of longevity--good for individuals, terrible for society --into a vast payoff for all generations, today and tomorrow.

Why was Tillikum spared? Big whale, big money. There's a lot riding on the slave orcas toiling away, giving as many as eight performance per a day, 365 days a year, as the star attractions in each of the Shamu stadiums. Tillikum's asset value is enhanced by his duties as a sperm donor. He's a breeding "stud" often kept in solitary, away from the other orcas, and has fathered 13 orcas.

The Occupy Wall Street movement should raise placards in support of Tillikum and his fellow orca slaves: SeaWorld got its start in the mid-1960s, and after various ups and downs, in the late 1980s the three SeaWorlds, in San Diego and Orlando, passed into the hands of the vast brewing conglomerate Annheuser-Busch which pumped millions into upgrades, finally selling the theme parks for $2.7 billion in 2009 to the Blackstone Group, a merger and acquisitions group cofounded by the odious Pete Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman, formerly of Lehman and Kuhn-Loeb. Blackstone, one of the world's largest private equity investment firms is at the cross roads of crony capitalism, where the political and financial elites engorge and devour. It has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyout transactions over the last decade , with huge operations in commercial real estate.

Last week People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a lawsuit against SeaWorld for 'enslaving' five orcas. Tillikum is one of the plaintiffs. PETA 's suit invokes the 13th Amendment, abolishing and prohibiting slavery, and demands the orcas' release under the Amendment's terms. "All five of these orcas were violently seized from the ocean and taken from their families as babies," says Peta's president Ingrid Newkirk, echoed by PETA's lawyer, Jeff Kerr who told AP, "By any definition, these orcas are slaves - kidnapped from their homes, kept confined, denied everything that's natural to them and forced to perform tricks for SeaWorld's profit." Kerr added that the 13th amendment does not refer to a specific species.? ?SeaWorld, denies the charges.

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."

Will the orcas get legal standing?

Animals currently have no rights recognized in U.S. law, but many groups of lawyers are working to strengthen laws that protect animals and many individuals have successfully brought suit to protect the welfare of animals. Three years ago the DC Law Journal ran a very useful survey by Kathryn Alfisi. Alfisi points out that it was the Vick case "that allowed for just the right atmosphere to push for state and federal legislation that would strengthen dogfighting and animal cruelty laws." The Atlanta Falcons quarterback pulled a 23-month sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy for running a dogfighting ring on his property in Surry County, Virginia.

Some animal lawyers flee the term "animal rights," as too extreme, while others question the whole concept of legal boundaries between animals and humans. Several states bars and the District of Columbia Bar have animal law sections or committees. In 2005 the American Bar Association's (ABA) Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section created its Animal Law Committee. Over 100 animal law courses are being taught at law schools across the country,

The legal system, Alfisi reckons, is beginning "to reflect the increasingly complex relationship between people and their pets in our society."

The phrase "Increasingly complex" does the Middle Ages a grave injustice. Just read my CounterPunch co-editor Jeffrey St Clair's marvelous introduction to Jason Hribal'sFear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden Story of Animal Resistance, published last year by CounterPunch Books.

As St Clair writes, "In medieval Europe (and even colonial America) thousands of animals were summoned to court and put on trial for a variety of offenses, ranging from trespassing, thievery and vandalism to rape, assault and murder. The defendants included cats, dogs, cows, sheep, goats, slugs, swallows, oxen, horses, mules, donkeys, pigs, wolves, bears, bees, weevils, and termites. These tribunals were not show trials or strange festivals like Fools Day. The tribunals were taken seriously by both the courts and the community."

Humans and animals often ended up in the same courtroom as co-conspirators, especially in cases of bestiality. The animal were given their own lawyers at public expense. "Sometimes, particularly in cases involving pigs," St Clair writes, " the animal defendants were dressed in human clothes during court proceedings and at executions."

"In the province of Savoy, France in 1575, the weevils of Saint Julien, a tiny hamlet in the Rhone Alps, were indicted for the crime of destroying the famous vineyards on the flanks of Mount Cenis. A lawyer, Pierre Rembaud, was appointed as defense counsel for the accused. Rembaud wasted no time in filing a motion for summary judgment, arguing that the weevils had every right to consume the grape leaves. Indeed, Rembaud asserted, the weevils enjoyed a prior claim to the vegetation on Mount Cenis, since, as detailed in the Book of Genesis, the Supreme Deity had created animals before he fashioned humans and God had promised animals all of the grasses, leaves and green herbs for their sustenance. Rembaud's argument stumped the court.

"As the judges deliberated, the villagers of Saint Julien seemed swayed by the lawyer's legal reasoning. Perhaps the bugs had legitimate grievances. The townsfolk scrambled to set aside a patch of open land away from the vineyards as a foraging ground for the weevils. The land was surveyed. Deeds were drawn up and the property was shown to counselor Rembaud for his inspection and approval. They called the weevil reserve La Grand Feisse. Rembaud walked the site, investigating the plant communities with the eyes of a seasoned botanist. Finally, he shook his head. No deal. The land was rocky and had obviously been overgrazed for decades. La Grand Feisse was wholly unsuitable for the discriminating palates of his clients.

"The Perry Mason of animal defense lawyers was an acclaimed French jurist named Bartholomew Chassene, who later became a chief justice in the French provincial courts and a preeminent legal theorist. He argued that local animals, both wild and domesticated, should be considered lay members of the parish community. In other words, the rights of animals were similar in kind to the rights of the people at large.

"In 1642 a teenage boy named Thomas Graunger stood accused of committing, in the unforgettable phrase of Cotton Mather, "infandous Buggeries" with farm animals in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Young master Graunger was hauled before an austere tribunal of Puritans headed by Gov. William Bradford. There he stood trial beside his co-defendants, a mare, a cow, two goats, four sheep, two calves and a turkey. All were found guilty. They were publicly tortured and executed. Their bodies were burned on a pyre, their ashes buried in a mass grave. Graunger was the first juvenile to be executed in colonial America...

"In 1750, a French farmer named Jacques Ferron was espied sodomizing a female donkey in a field. Ferron was convicted and sentenced to be burned at the stake. But the donkey's lawyers argued that their client was innocent. The donkey, the defense pleaded, was a victim of rape and not a willing participant in carnal congress with Ferron. Character witnesses were called to testify on the donkey's behalf. The donkey was acquitted and duly released back to its pasture."

The people of the Middle Ages, dismissed as primitives in many modernist quarters, were actually open to a truly radical idea: animal consciousness.
The animal trials peaked in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, then faded away, done in by the Enlightenment and by Rene Descartes who argued that animals were mere physical automatons. They were biological machines whose actions were driven solely by bio-physical instincts. Animals lacked the power of cognition, the ability to think and reason. At Port-Royal the Cartesians cut up living creatures with fervor, and in the words of one of Descartes' biographers, "kicked about their dogs and dissected their cats without mercy, laughing at any compassion for them and calling their screams the noise of breaking machinery." Across the Channel Francis Bacon declared in the "Novum Organum" that the proper aim of science was to restore the divinely ordained dominance of man over nature, "to extend more widely the limits of the power and greatness of man and so to endow him with "infinite commodities." Bacon's doctor, William Harvey, was a diligent vivisector of living animals.

Thus in the dawn of capitalism, the materialistic view of history, and the fearsome economic and technological pistons driving it, left no room for either the souls or consciousness of animals. They were no longer our fellow beings. They had been rendered philosophically and literally in resources for guiltless exploitation, turned into objects of commerce, labor, entertainment and food.

"As usual, we swim in a pile of dishonorable politicians. An Arab poem describes how the rotten rubbish floats to the top of the water while all the gems - corals and precious fish - stay at the bottom." (An Arab friend.)

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.

Libya also has its very own Falluja, in the fled, dead and now destroyed city of Sirte, flooded, ruined and heart rending. It also has its own Basra Roads. See the melted, bombed vehicles leaving Sirte and across Libya. Those inside them also melted or vaporized, a mirror image of that 1991 US massacre of the fleeing in Iraq..
Soon Libya will also have its own living memorials to their release from free healthcare, gasoline too cheap to meter and the highest living standard in Africa: deformed babies from the radioactive and chemically toxic depleted uranium weapons which rained down on them. Another mirror image of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans where these weapons were also used.

The events though, of the last days, have shone a light on the grim reality of the future for the population. The shocking spectacle of Colonel Quaddafi and his son's bodies, displayed to the public, in a meat cooler in a mall, until decomposition forced a furtive, body snatch and night time burial in an undisclosed location, hardly bodes well for the "human rights" to come.

Neither does the breaking of the commitment to return the bodies to the remaining, so far, un-murdered family (iii.)
Their: "corpses should be dumped in the desert to be eaten by foxes", stated one "liberator", claiming that at the deaths: "we all took turns to stamp on" the former Leader's face, some hitting it "with shoes."
When Aisha Quaddafi called her father, minutes after his death, reports state that one of the thugs answered the call telling her: "Fuzzy head is dead."

Aisha lost her husband and baby in a NATO bombing in July. She is an internationally respected lawyer, whose cases have included being part of Saddam Hussein's defence team and who also defended Muntader Al Saidi, the journalist who threw his shoes at George W. Bush in Baghdad, for: "the widows, the orphans .." the former President had created in Iraq, on his declared "Crusade."

She is also a former Good Will Ambassador for the United Nations. One can only speculate how much good will she feels towards a UN which has endorsed the murder and plunder of family, people and land, now. She had lost her father, four brothers, her baby daughter, with her two little cousins, within little over three months.
One (of many) questions which should be answered over the shoddy, surreptitious disposal of the bodies of Libya's rightful leader, his son and his Defence Minister, Abu Bakr Younis, is, if the stated reason is because the insurgents did not want his last resting place to "become a shrine", was he really the monster Washington and Whitehall have trumpeted? Or did the "coalition" just have an eye on the resources he stubbornly kept, largely for the benefit of his people?

America's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate "first black" President, has declared the death of Muammar Quaddafi: "A momentous day in the history of Libya."

This, as rebel forces going by the name of "The Brigade for Purging Slaves (of) Black Skin" have reportedly detained and displaced hundreds, while the people of Tawergha, a town of 20,000, have disappeared without a trace.
\
Numerous reports record that there are those avowed to ethnically cleanse Libya of dark and black skins. There are two million black Libyans, nearly one third of the population of little over six million.
Moreover, for all the horrific rhetoric over the deaths on 20th October, there are serious questions as to who really carried them out. "Our armed forces have been in action", said Prime Minister Cameron. (Yes, the same Cameron who said there will never be "British boots on the ground ...")

Further: "British Special Forces are engaged in a frantic desert manhunt for Colonel Quaddafi's son Saif .." (iv)

Heaven forbid that this sophisticated man should survive to tell the stories of socializing with Tony Blair, Lord Peter Mendelson and Prince Andrew. Or of Blair's alleged six visits to his father, twice courtesy the hospitality of Colonel Quaddafi's private 'plane.

Quaddafi, in the flowery language which is Arabic, had called the insurgents "rats", as Saddam Hussein had referred to them as "carion" and "crows." So the Colonel is "found" in a sewer pipe. Get the connection? Few with a functioning brain would not wonder if this sewer rat image was not thought up by "intelligence" in Washington or Whitehall.

As the great "democracies" plunder and assassinate, do cast a passing thought to the (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (v) which celebrated its sixtieth anniversary on 10th December 2008, with great fan-fare.

"Article 10: Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
"Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

"Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
Sabah Al Mukhtar, President of the London based Arab Lawyers Association, is incandescent. "The US, UN, France and the UK should be seriously concerned regarding what has befallen Quaddafi. The serious legal implications of a killing with no trial, after an eight month bombardment. We have treated the law with contempt - and trampled on it for two decades."

That the murderers are to investigate the murders renders Orwell redundant.

So far, of course, it seems we only have the perpetrators word that there was even a burial, somewhere near the port city of Misrata, disgraceful as it was. Perhaps, as with bin Laden, a precedent was set and the victims were simply fed to the fishes. Erase the evidence?

The burials - or disposals - were on two less than auspicious anniversaries. The British military disaster which was the Charge of the Light Brigade, in 1854, and the more recent, cravenly cowardly invasion of the tiny island of Grenada in 1983.

As ever, ignorance rules. After the disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq, with tope military brass now admitting that they had no idea of the complexity of the societies, (US) Colonel Cedric Leighton writes that in spite of the "celebrations" in Libya: " ... it is easy to think our job in the Middle East is over." Buy a map, Colonel. Wrong continent. (vi.)

Felicity Arbuthnot is Global Research's Correspondent focussing on Human Rights, London, UK. Email: felicityarbuthnot@yahoo.co.uk

The Occupy Wall Street action in lower Manhattan has unleashed the energies
of hundreds of thousands of people across the country and changed the
national conversation. The heart of its appeal lies in the formulation: "We
are the 99%." For the first time in years, the finger of responsibility for
our country's troubles is pointing up at the 1%, rather than down at the
ordinary people who do the work of business and government.

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.

This challenge is reminiscent of the moral foundations of the mid-20th
century civil rights, women's liberation, and peace movements, as well as
the great labor battles of the 1930s and 1940s that brought unions and
shared prosperity broadly to the working class. Despite the complex
difficulties these movements faced, they carried the day on the basis of
their clear moral vision.

In fact, the OWS protest parallels earlier movements in several ways. I was
a minor figure in the founding of Students for a Democratic Society in 1962
but knew many of the leaders and participated actively in its development,
plunging first into civil rights, then into opposition to the Vietnam War
and support for women's liberation. As with OWS, in SDS and the overall
civil rights, gay and lesbian rights, women's and labor movements, leaders
were articulate and politically astute as well as morally grounded. Then, as
now, the movement aspired to "participatory democracy" through broad
engagement in decision-making and subsequent action. Then, as now, the
movement thrived on imaginative tactics that engaged a wide audience. Then,
as now, the crusade often grew spontaneously and without coordination as
people around the country took up the issues and built the movement in their
own ways.

OWS carries forward another feature of early SDS -- close connections with
labor. The Port Huron Statement, the founding document of the student
movement of the 1960s, was hammered out in June 1962 at a camp outside Port
Huron, Michigan, used as a retreat by the United Auto Workers. The
connection with labor remained strong in the early civil rights movement but
became strained at the 1964 Democratic national convention when the UAW and
other unions, in deference to President Lyndon Johnson's political agenda,
blocked the seating of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation.
SDS went from mild support of Johnson in the 1964 election -- "Part of the
Way with LBJ" -- to outright hostility, and nearly total estrangement from
labor, as the Vietnam War escalated.

Today, national labor leaders have spoken in defense of OWS, and many New
York City locals are providing material support. We do not know how long
this friendly alliance will last as the movement seeks to grow in the
turmoil of the presidential campaigns.

We can, however, draw lessons from the earlier mass undertakings that are
relevant today. By holding to its principle of non-violence, OWS will secure
its moral high ground. The current movement, still in its infancy, has not
developed a key feature of earlier ones, central to their success:
disruption of the institutions they challenge with words, as with strikes or
sit-ins. If Occupy grows into a movement that seriously challenges the 1%
for power, it will inevitably face ferocious opposition, as did all its
predecessors.

We look back on the successes of the civil rights, anti-war, labor, and
women's struggles with pride. But to prevail, many participants suffered
arrests, blacklisting, and other forms of intimidation, including killings,
as they continued on the path to victory. Still, as the appearance of over a
thousand New York City allies at Zuccotti Park at 6 a.m. on October 14
showed, police repression can be forestalled when the 99% make clear they
will not accept or tolerate it, but will instead join in and support a
movement that is in their own interests.

--------------------------
*Michael Zweig is a professor of economics and director of the Center for
Study of Working Class Life at Stony Brook University. The second edition of
his book* The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret *will be
published in December.*