When Everything You Know Is Not True - Miko Peled Debunking Jewish Myths

© (From video)

When Everything You Know Is Not True - Miko Peled Debunking Jewish Myths
Oct 13 2012 | Information Clearing House

"If Anybody here, came hoping to hear a balanced presentation, then they are going to be sorely disappointed. I say this, because a lot of the things that you are about to hear to night are difficult to hear."

“Miko Peled is a peace activist who dares to say in public what others still choose to deny. He has credibility, so when he debunks myths that Jews around the world hold with blind loyalty, people listen. Miko was born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family. His grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer on the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His father, Matti Peled was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and the Sinai. http://mikopeled.com/

Miko Peled, author of The General’s Son, whose father was the renowned Israeli general Matti Peled, speaking in Seattle, October 1, 2012.

Video Posted October 13, 2012

'Special'

© sott.net
Really?

'Special'
Sept 3, 2012 | Lisa Guliani

What makes us 'special'?

Is it our selfishness, our self-absorbed, mentally lazy non-critical sleepwalking zombie approach to life? Is it our capacity for sculpted selective empathy-on-demand - as long as the subject we empathize with falls within specific parameters and is...one of US?

What makes US so 'special'?

We watch as our tax dollars pay for illegal wars, assassinations, drug running, money laundering, illegal invasion and occupation, theft of land and resources in other nations, the Israeli government's ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, we watch as our tax dollars are used to further racial segregation, torture, arrest and detainment, brutality, home demolitions, apartheid, and genocide.

We watch as our tax dollars are used to wipe out innocent men, women, and children in foreign lands that have raised no hand against us.

What is so 'special' about us?

The majority of Americans remain silent, which is construed as consent to these crimes against humanity, which in turn borders on complicity with the oppressors and executioners. We sit and watch ridiculous TV fiction and rah rah rah! like the good little drooling Pavlovian dogs we are, every time the mainstream media whores push our buttons. We've got celebrities posing on posters, rebuking us with the numbers of starving American children we should DO something about, yet where are these same people with regard to the starving children we have created throughout the world via our collective silence, our tax dollars, and our apathy? Aren't those children special enough to concern us? Is it really okay if they die?

We sit and watch as our own people are beat up and imprisoned for telling the truth, for protesting, for having a conscience, for objecting, for blowing the whistle and showing us the truth.

We just sit there, and never ask ourselves, 'where did my original thoughts go?' 'Where is my humanity?' 'What can I do for one person?' 'What can I do for the world?' No, what you're more apt to hear is, 'what can I do for ME?'

We sit here with so much blood on our hands and feed a pathological system that is built upon nothing but illusion, deception and bullshit, and we tell ourselves it's real, when it is not. We wouldn't even recognize reality if it was stamped in sesame seeds on the bun of a Big Mac.

What are the majority of Americans doing for the world, as opposed to doing for themselves?

What has happened to the collective conscience?

What has happened to empathy and human rights for all people?

When we say 'human rights for all people', do we really mean that? Or, do we really mean human rights apply ONLY to people like US?

© sott.net

What is so 'special' about US? We sit here as our soldiers commit suicide in increasing numbers, as private mercenaries slaughter people in Syria, as drones decimate lives and communities in Pakistan, as terrorists and war criminals are awarded Medals of Freedom by the current political puppet hood ornament chief psychopath who calls himself 'President' in the White House, and most miss the irony in seeing a warmonger present 'Medals of Freedom' to Israeli Zionist terrorists and war protesters like Bob Dylan.

Most Americans must be color blind too, failing to see the river of red as it fills our heads and we slowly become nothing but mindless, walking, talking blood balloons, incapable of a critical thought, or even a simple thought. We watch TV and never seem to pause in our collective cud-chewing, channel-surfing, psychiatric-drug-induced malaise, to ever notice the dried creases of blood staining our own hands, or the role we've played - and continue to play - in all this psychopath-driven global bloodshed.

We sit here, pat ourselves on the back, 'tsk tsk tsk' at the 'Nightly News' and remind ourselves of how lucky and 'special' we are that it is not OUR country bombarded with missile strikes, and how this is the best place in the world to live, the land of the 'special', just as long as our government doesn't decide to turn that military hardware on us.

Who cares, right? Those aren't OUR communities being destroyed by OUR government, they aren't OUR children being terrorized en masse, passing through checkpoints on their walk to school, those aren't OUR homes being bulldozed or taken by settlers, OUR movement or ability to earn a living isn't being restricted by occupation with checkpoints and road barriers and apartheid walls.

We pretend we don't see, and we look away, satisfied that none of this is happening in our own backyards, smug in the lie that none of it has anything to do with 'US', arrogant and self-satisfied in our collective ignorance - satisfied because Americans seem to pride themselves on their ignorance. We are the ultimate chest-thumpers. We need to get over ourselves already.

The mass majority of people are not only disconnected from the rest of humanity, they're disconnected from their own selves, only shocked into momentary sparks of awareness whenever the media so desires, or with the right pill, if need be. Our collective attention spans have been so reduced, that if we see an entire paragraph, we bitch about having to 'read all that'. We're too lazy to hold a verbal conversation anymore, and even get pissed off if someone texts us too slow. We can't seem to go anywhere or do anything without a cellphone pasted to our heads. We don't read and learn, we just remember what to parrot, and that is what drips from our mouths, when were not stuffing our faces with toxic processed foods and washing them down with 32 ounces of diet soda in one poisonous 'big gulp'.

Americans, by and large, do not want to be informed. If they did, they would make real efforts in this direction. They would seek out independent sources of information and show a desire to expand both the individual and collective knowledge base. Instead, most settle for the myth and mediocrity of mainstream media, and sit back while the white noise lulls them gently to sleep, and wait for their arteries to harden.

We're 'special' because we are NOT 'THEM'. We're special' because more and more, we are exhibiting those 'special' characteristics found in the pathologicals that have influenced our society: we are becoming more and more apathetic, coldblooded, merciless and unfeeling.

THAT is what is so 'special' about us.

"Is absolute zero cold enough?" ( Roger Waters)

A Single Piece of Radioactive Food Is Comparable to ‘Hundreds of X-Rays’

© naturalsociety.com

A Single Piece of Radioactive Food Is Comparable to ‘Hundreds of X-Rays’
July 16, 2012 | Anthony Gucciardi

As you likely are aware, x-ray imaging scans have increasingly been linked in peer-reviewed scientific literature to an increased risk of cancer — particularly in children. Dental x-rays, for example, have actually been linked to a twofold increase in brain cancer. It is therefore quite shocking to consider a new report which states that radioactive food (food contaminated with radiation from Fukushima or others sources) consumption is comparable to receiving hundreds of x-rays.

Radioactive Food Could be ‘Hundreds of X-Rays’

Furthermore, research conducted by a prominent doctor also draws a relationship between radioactive food and the occurrence of birth defects. Prestigious physician, geneticist, and professor Dr. Wladimir Wertelecki conducted research back in 2010 regarding the relationship between contaminated food and birth defects. Now, years later, the professor is now speaking out over the serious impact of the Chernobyl and the Fukushima-Daiichi disasters.

In fact, a single mushroom eaten in an area affected with radiation contamination could be similar to receiving ‘hundreds’ of tumor-linked x-ray scans. To illustrate this radioactive food issue, Wertelecki’s report states:

“ One mushroom eaten in affected areas may deliver as much radiation as hundreds of chest x-rays.”

What’s more, Wertelecki is highlighting concerns over how officials are essentially treating citizens like ‘idiots’ and withholding the true extent to which the disasters could be affecting the health of the globe. During a scientific gathering at the University of South Alabama, Wertelecki stated:

“It is not the scale of a nuclear accident itself that makes a human disaster it is the response by officials afterward and the public panic produced. The public should not be treated as idiots and told only the ‘good half’ of the story, as is often done by official agencies. People have the right to know, the need to believe those who are in charge.”

Fukushima radiation levels have already been confirmed to exceed 2 1/2 times the amount officials had originally admitted to, and a surprisingly large amount of the radioactive cesium is now known to have deposited into the Pacific. Seafood, milk, meat products, and many other items are now subject to the extreme contamination risk posed by Fukushima, and the risk is very real to adults and children alike.

Japanese Parliamentary Inquiry: Fukushima Disaster Caused by “Collusion” Among Government, Regulators and Tepco

Source

Japanese Parliamentary Inquiry: Fukushima Disaster Caused by “Collusion” Among Government, Regulators and Tepco
July 6, 2012 | Washington Blog

Official Investigation Found Earthquake Caused Damage, Reactor Design Dangerous, “Collusion” Caused Accident

Experts have noted for well over a year that the Fukushima reactors were damaged by the earthquake before the tsunami hit, showing that the entire GE Mark 1 reactor was fatally defective.
Reuters reports today:

Damage from the huge March 11, 2011, earthquake, and not just the ensuing tsunami, could not be ruled out as a cause of the accident, the panel added, a finding with serious potential implications as Japan seeks to bring idled reactors on line.
***

The panel’s finding that seismic damage may well have played a role could affect the restart of reactors that were taken offline, mostly for maintenance and safety checks, in the months since Fukushima. Japan is one of the world’s most quake-prone countries.

“We have proved that it cannot be said that there would have been no crisis without the tsunami,” Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist and panel member, said in the report.
***

Experts have said that an active fault may lie under Kansai Electric Power Co’s Ohi plant in western Japan, whose No. 3 unit began supplying electricity to the grid early on Thursday. Ohi’s No. 4 unit will come on line later this month after the government approved the restarts to avoid a power shortage.

“This means that all of Japan’s reactors are vulnerable and require retro-fitting, calling into question the hasty decision of the (Prime Minister Yoshihiko) Noda cabinet to restart reactors before getting the lessons of Fukushima,” said Jeffrey Kingston, Asia studies director at Temple University in Tokyo.

This is especially relevant given that the March 2011 earthquake has likely “awakened”  Japanese faults, making another big earthquake more likely.

In addition, independent writers have noted since day one that cost-cutting, cover ups and collusion between the Japanese government and the plant operator were the main causes of the accident.  See this, this, this and this.

The official Japanese investigation agreed, saying that concluded that collusion was the cause of the disaster. As Reuters notes:

Japan’s Fukushima nuclear crisis was a preventable disaster resulting from “collusion” among the government, regulators and the plant operator, an expert panel said on Thursday, wrapping up an inquiry into the worst nuclear accident in 25 years.
***

“The … Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and Tepco, and the lack of governance by said parties,” the panel said in an English summary of a 641-page Japanese document.

The report … put an official imprimatur on criticism of the cozy ties that have bound a powerful nexus of interests known as the “nuclear village”.

Regulators, it said, had been reluctant to adopt global safety standards that could have helped prevent the disaster ….

“Across the board, the Commission found ignorance and arrogance unforgivable for anyone or any organization that deals with nuclear power. We found a disregard for global trends and a disregard for public safety,” the panel said.
***

The report by the experts – one of three panels looking into the Fukushima disaster – follows a six-month investigation involving more than 900 hours of hearings and interviews with more than 1,100 people, the first such inquiry of its kind.
***

In an effort to repair tattered public trust in the regulatory regime, the government will in a few months set up a more independent nuclear watchdog that will then draft new safety rules.
The report pointed to numerous missed opportunities to take steps to prevent the disaster, citing lobbying by the nuclear power companies as well as a “safety myth” mindset that permeated the industry and the regulatory regime as among the reasons for the failure to be prepared.
***

“As a result of inadequate oversight, the SA (Severe Accident) countermeasures implemented in Japan were practically ineffective compared to the countermeasures in place abroad, and actions were significantly delayed as a result,” it said.

Tepco came under heavy criticism in the report, partly for putting cost-cutting steps ahead of safety as nuclear power became less profitable over the years. “While giving lip service to a policy of ‘safety first’, in actuality, safety suffered at the expense of other management priorities,” the team said.

In a report on its internal investigation issued last month, Tepco denied responsibility, saying the big “unforeseen” tsunami was to blame – though it admitted that in hindsight it was insufficiently prepared.

Postscript: I congratulate the Japanese government for starting the process of coming clean … the first step in restoring trust.

Monsanto's Seedy Legacy

Monsanto's Seedy Legacy - Abby Martin - GRTV

Agricultural giant Monsanto is best known for their production of pesticides and genetically modified foods, but they have a controversial history as a chemical company with a slew of toxic cover-ups.

In addition to their battle against small farmers, the newest buzz about the corporation is the speculation that their GM seeds are linked to the die-off of bees.

Abby Martin of RT brings us more on their seedy practices and what they are up to now.

For more on this story, see also:
http://youtu.be/oVz5Z9QfOK8

The People’s Bishop

AP/Stephanie Keith
New York City police arrest retired Episcopal
Bishop George Packard during an Occupy Wall
Street demonstration in December. Packard was
among those trying to access a vacant lot owned
by the Trinity Episcopal church.

The People’s Bishop by Chris Hedges

Retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard was arrested in Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza in New York City on Tuesday night as he participated in the May 1 Occupy demonstrations. He and 15 other military veterans were taken into custody after they linked arms to hold the plaza against a police attempt to clear it. There were protesters behind them who, perhaps because of confusion, perhaps because of miscommunication or perhaps they were unwilling to risk arrest, melted into the urban landscape. But those in the thin line from Veterans for Peace, of which the bishop is a member, stood their ground. They were handcuffed, herded into a paddy wagon and taken to jail.

It was Packard’s second arrest as part of the Occupy protests. Last Dec. 17 he was arrested when he leapt over a fence in his flowing bishop’s robe to spearhead an attempt to occupy a vacant lot owned by Trinity Church in lower Manhattan. The December action by the Occupy movement was a response to the New York City Police Department’s storming and eradication of the encampment in Zuccotti Park. Packard will appear in court in June to face the trespassing charge that resulted. Now, because of this second arrest, he faces the possibility of three months in jail.

Packard’s moral and intellectual courage stands in stark contrast with the timidity of nearly all clergy and congregants in all of our major religious institutions. Religious leaders, in churches, synagogues and mosques, at best voice pious and empty platitudes about justice or carry out nominal acts of charity aimed at those bearing the weight of resistance in the streets. And Packard’s arrests serve as a reminder of the price that we—especially those who claim to be informed by the message of the Christian Gospel—must be willing to pay to defy the destruction visited on us all by the corporate state. He is one of the few clergy members who dare to bear a genuine Christian witness in an age that cries out in anguish for moral guidance.

‘‘Arrests are not arrests anymore,” Packard said as we talked Friday in a restaurant overlooking Zuccotti Park in New York. ‘‘They are badges of honor. They are, as you are taken away with your comrades, exhilarating. The spirit is calling us now into the streets, calling us to reject the old institutional orders. There is no going back. You can’t sit anymore in churches listening to stogy liturgies. They put you to sleep. Most of these churches are museums with floorshows. They are a caricature of what Jesus intended. Jesus would be turning over the money-changing tables in their vestibules. Those in the church may be good-hearted and even well-meaning, but they are ignoring the urgent, beckoning call to engage with the world. It is only outside the church that you will find the spirit of God and Christ. And with the rise of the Occupy movement it has become clear that the institutional church has failed. It mouths hollow statements. It publishes pale Lenten study tracts. It observes from a distance without getting its hands dirty. It makes itself feel good by doing marginal charitable works, like making cocoa for Occupy protesters or providing bathrooms from 9 to 5 at Trinity Church’s Charlotte’s Place. We don’t need these little acts of charity. We need the church to have a real presence on the Jericho Road. We need people in the church to leave their comfort zones, to turn away from the hierarchy, and this is still terrifying to a lot of people in the church and especially the church leadership.”

‘‘Occupy,” he went on, ‘‘is a political movement. Let’s not be naive. But it also has a moral core. We are in the midst of a reawakening of a spiritual anthropology. All of the groups that have risen up, across the globe, have this reawakening. Those who took to the streets in the Middle East were not simply unsettled. They were called together because they had a connection with each other. Many, many people have reached a point where the only option left is to place their bodies, their beings, in a location where they can finally have some say and some control over their own lives. As Carne Ross points out in his book ‘The Leaderless Revolution,’ people have lost their agency; they have lost control of their lives. The only control many have left is the control of their physical being. They place themselves in locations where they can demonstrate that they no longer support current systems of power. If you don’t have any money in our political system you not only have no say, you don’t have any dignity. And the only way left to reclaim our dignity is to occupy, to reinhabit the environments that have been taken away from us.”

Read more..

How Violence Changes a Child's Developing Brain

How Violence Changes a Child's Developing Brain - CWAVUSA1

Produced for the Attorney General's Office, we learn about the effects of domestic violence on young children. A MUST WATCH! Repeated Exposure to Violence Impacts Brain Development.

Comment: I've added Chimera to the analecta for things that hibernate in the mind and marked it with the word "Vim," in relation to violence.

40,000 Norwegians Sing Out in Defiance and Love

Some 40,000 people stand in pouring rain
in Oslo's Youngstorget square to participate
in the singing of "Barn av Regnbuen"
(Children of the Rainbow), April 26, 2012.
(AP)

40,000 Norwegians Sing Out in Defiance and Love - CommonDreams.org

Tens of thousands of Norwegians marched beneath pouring rain in Oslo today, converging at Central Square to sing together a Norwegian version of American folk music singer Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Race" in a moving protest against mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 Norwegians last year in the name of eliminating "multiculturalism" and leftist ideologies.

The song -- the Norwegian version translates as "Children of the Rainbow" -- extols the type of multicultural society Breivik has said he despised and one that he specifically mentioned during his trial last week as "Marxist propaganda", triggering a Facebook initiative for today's protest.

Norwegian folk singer Lillebjoern Nilsen guided the song with his ukulele as the rose-carrying and umbrella-laden crowd of an estimated 40,000 sang along.

"Shocked by Breivik's lack of remorse for his massacre," writes the Associated Press, "Norwegians by and large have decided the best way to confront him is by demonstrating their commitment to everything he loathes. Instead of raging against the gunman, they have manifested their support for tolerance and democracy."

One blue sky above us
One ocean lapping all our shore
One earth so green and round
Who could ask for more
And because I love you
I'll give it one more try
To show my rainbow race
It's too soon to die.

Some folks want to be like an ostrich,
Bury their heads in the sand.
Some hope that plastic dreams
Can unclench all those greedy hands.
Some hope to take the easy way:
Poisons, bombs. They think we need 'em.
Don't you know you can't kill all the unbelievers?
There's no shortcut to freedom.

Go tell, go tell all the little children.
Tell all the mothers and fathers too.
Now's our last chance to learn to share
What's been given to me and you.

*  *  *

Read more..

WAR: Cancer Of The Spirit

© n/a

Cancer Of The Spirit by Robert Koehler 

Can we squeeze the glory out of the word "war"? Can we talk about savage irrationality and lifelong inner hell instead? Can we talk about the wreckage of two countries?

Can we talk about spiritual cancer?

In the extraordinary documentary "On the Bridge" -- an unstinting look at the reality of war and the terror of PTSD, directed by Olivier Morel -- each of the six Iraq vets who opens his or her heart in the course of the film has a moment of deep, almost unbearable silence at the end, staring into the camera and through the camera at the viewer . . . and at the nation they are committed to waking up. In that silence, those are the questions that begin to emerge.

"On the Bridge" bares the deep psychic wounds of America's returning vets -- "I liken (PTSD) to the comedic scene of opening a closet and stuff keeps falling out," Jason Moon said at one point -- but it does much more than that as well. It puts these wounds into context: We are the aggressor nation, not simply at the geopolitical level, invading and occupying a nation and commandeering its resources, but at the human level, with American GIs routinely dehumanizing and brutalizing Iraqis on the streets and in their homes.

"When I was over there, a lot of saddening stuff happened," Moon explained. "I couldn't process it -- I couldn't cry. I'd have been considered a p---y. You have to stay in the group. If you lose your position, it's dangerous. So you just kind of stuff it all down. Then you get home . . . 'we'd like to talk to you.' You open that door to converse with an emotion -- it's gigantic. Never (before) in my life did I have emotions I couldn't control."

But the reason for the enormity of these emotions -- provoking endless thoughts of suicide -- is because the vets are haunted by guilt over what they witnessed and what they did.

"I laughed as I heard a story," said Ryan Endicott. "One of the platoons had strapped dead bodies from a gunfight on the hoods of their Humvees and then drove around the city for hours. . . . One (day) they brought in a car that had just been shot up. The driver's fully intact brain was sitting in the back seat of the car. I walked over to the body bag with the passenger in it. The bag began twitching and we could hear his body still attempting to breathe. We laughed as we stomped the bag."

And Moon: "We had some soldiers who would do some really nasty things. They played this game -- if the kids come under the yellow tape, you're allowed to butt stroke them in the head. This is the standing rule. The kids know it. So the soldiers would take a $20 bill and they'd bury it in the sand with just a little bit of the leaf hanging out. Then they'd go hide behind the trucks and pretend like they weren't watching.

"That's a month's pay, twenty bucks, for an Iraqi. So eventually some Iraqi kid comes and starts eying it up, and then as soon as he got under the tape they'd come out with the butts of their rifles. It was like a game. They were trying to lure the kid in so they could hit him."

Moon, who was a convoy driver, also talked about the orders all drivers were given at one point: "If kids get in the road, we're ordered to run them over. Don't stop -- it could be an ambush. I said I can't do that. I have a 3-year-old at home. I'd rather die fighting insurgents than run over a kid. I told the chain of command 'I can't.' They heard 'I won't.' They stuck me in the rear of the convoy -- the most dangerous spot."

Grappling with his incredulity at such orders -- at how few of his fellow soldiers acknowledged that running over children, that mistreating Iraqi civilians, might provoke hatred and fuel the insurgency -- he said: "I literally felt like I was in an alternate universe. I was almost convinced for a while this was by design, that there has to be some mad genius (who decided) we need a perpetual war. How can we make this happen? . . . I started going numb."

Such truth-telling begins to get at the flavor of "On the Bridge." The film opens up the private consciences of deeply troubled, painfully articulate, young men and women. Also appearing in the film are the parents and sister of Jeffrey Lucey, a former Marine and Iraq vet who hanged himself in 2004. The family talked with remarkable candor about Jeff's ordeal, about the private hell that no one could penetrate.

As his father, Kevin, put it: "PTSD is a cancer of the spirit."

Among the horrors Jeff wrestled with was the fact he had killed two Iraqi soldiers at close range. He was ordered to shoot. They said, "Pull the trigger." He closed his eyes and shot. For the rest of his life, he wore the dog tags of the two soldiers around his neck. "He felt personally responsible for their deaths," his sister said. "He wore the tags around his neck to honor them. It reminded him every day of what he did."

Vet suicides have been skyrocketing. According to a figure cited at the end of the film, they may be as high as 8,000 a year now. The VA is an inept bureaucracy, utterly unable to cope with a problem they can't fix in any case, because the problem plunges to the bottom of the American soul. The vets who take their lives are trying to atone for what they were told to do, what they were forced to turn into, in the name of their country.

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is a nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

Bertrand Russell's Last Message

© Unknown
Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell's Last Message

This statement on the Middle East was dated 31st January, 1970, and was read on 3rd February, the day after Bertrand Russell's death, to an International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo.

The latest phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profound miscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian territory will not persuade the civilian population to surrender, but will stiffen their resolve to resist. This is the lesson of all aerial bombardment.

The Vietnamese who have endured years of American heavy bombing have responded not by capitulation but by shooting down more enemy aircraft. In 1940 my own fellow countrymen resisted Hitler's bombing raids with unprecedented unity and determination. For this reason, the present Israeli attacks will fail in their essential purpose, but at the same time they must be condemned vigorously throughout the world.

The development of the crisis in the Middle East is both dangerous and instructive. For over 20 years Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to "reason" and has suggested "negotiations". This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression. The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.

The refugees who surround Palestine in their hundreds of thousands were described recently by the Washington journalist I.F. Stone as "the moral millstone around the neck of world Jewry." Many of the refugees are now well into the third decade of their precarious existence in temporary settlements. The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was "given" by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their number have increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.

We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number. of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.

All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict. Justice requires that the first step towards a settlement must be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June, 1967. A new world campaign is needed to help bring justice to the long-suffering people of the Middle East.

Kennedy Was Right! in '61

Kennedy Was Right! in '61 - Heretic Productions

"The House I Live In": New Film Exposes Economic, Moral Failure of U.S. War on Drugs.

"The House I Live In": New Film Exposes Economic, Moral Failure of U.S. War on Drugs. 1 of 2 - Democracy Now



democracynow.org - This weekend the top documentary prize at the Sundance Film Festival went to "The House I Live In," which questions why the United States has spent more than $1 trillion on drug arrests in the past 40 years, and yet drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever. The film examines the economic, as well as the moral and practical, failures of the so-called "war on drugs," and calls on the United States to approach drug abuse not as a "war," but as a matter of public health. We need "a very changed dialogue in this country that understands drugs as a public health concern and not a criminal justice concern," says the film's Director Eugene Jarecki. "That means the system has to say, 'We were wrong.'" We also speak with Nannie Jeter, who helped raise Jarecki as her own son succumbed to drug addiction and is highlighted in the film. We air clips from the film, featuring Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow;" Canadian physician and bestselling author, Gabor Maté; and David Simon, creator of "The Wire."

Watch Part 2 of 2: http://youtu.be/ioYkho-iyN8

14,000 U.S. Deaths Tied to Fukushima Reactor Disaster Fallout

© clickpopmedia

14,000 U.S. Deaths Tied to Fukushima Reactor Disaster Fallout

 Impact Seen As Roughly Comparable to Radiation-Related Deaths After Chernobyl; Infants Are Hardest Hit, With Continuing Research Showing Even Higher Possible Death Count.

An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.

Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.The IJHS article will be published Tuesday and will be available online as of 11 a.m. EST here.

Just six days after the disastrous meltdowns struck four reactors at Fukushima on March 11, scientists detected the plume of toxic fallout had arrived over American shores. Subsequent measurements by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found levels of radiation in air, water, and milk hundreds of times above normal across the U.S. The highest detected levels of Iodine-131 in precipitation in the U.S. were as follows (normal is about 2 picocuries I-131 per liter of water): Boise, ID (390); Kansas City (200); Salt Lake City (190); Jacksonville, FL (150); Olympia, WA (125); and Boston, MA (92).

Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, MPH MBA, said:

"This study of Fukushima health hazards is the first to be published in a scientific journal. It raises concerns, and strongly suggests that health studies continue, to understand the true impact of Fukushima in Japan and around the world. Findings are important to the current debate of whether to build new reactors, and how long to keep aging ones in operation."

Mangano is executive director, Radiation and Public Health Project, and the author of 27 peer-reviewed medical journal articles and letters. Internist and toxicologist Janette Sherman, MD, said:

"Based on our continuing research, the actual death count here may be as high as 18,000, with influenza and pneumonia, which were up five-fold in the period in question as a cause of death. Deaths are seen across all ages, but we continue to find that infants are hardest hit because their tissues are rapidly multiplying, they have undeveloped immune systems, and the doses of radioisotopes are proportionally greater than for adults."

Dr. Sherman is an adjunct professor, Western Michigan University, and contributing editor of "Chernobyl - Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" published by the NY Academy of Sciences in 2009, and author of "Chemical Exposure and Disease and Life's Delicate Balance - Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issues weekly reports on numbers of deaths for 122 U.S. cities with a population over 100,000, or about 25-30 percent of the U.S.

In the 14 weeks after Fukushima fallout arrived in the U.S. (March 20 to June 25), deaths reported to the CDC rose 4.46 percent from the same period in 2010, compared to just 2.34 percent in the 14 weeks prior. Estimated excess deaths during this period for the entire U.S. are about 14,000.

Source: PRNewswire via COMTEX

Comment: This article serves the dark forces well by introducing statistics that you will be able to accept as the cost of doing business with the devil. You will now forget about this and focus on global warming, a defining mechanism to put you to sleep about the corporate ecocide in progress. The truth is much bolder in that you are being exterminated by biotechnology and psychopathy. We won't be buying any shares.

Related:

Dec. 20, 2011: An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the US Follows Arrival of Radioactive Plume from Fukushima, Is there a Correlation?

The Origin of Palestine

The Origin of Palestine - Heretic Productions



Heretic Productions present... The Origins of Palestine; For Your Records.

"We Don't Have a Democracy" - Senator Mike Gravel

"We Don't Have a Democracy" - Senator Mike Gravel

Study suggests feelings of guilt may be a top factor in PTSD

© EEGInfo

Study suggests feelings of guilt may be a top factor in PTSD by Gregg Zoroya

 A leading cause of post-traumatic stress disorder is guilt that troops experience because of moral dilemmas faced in combat, according to preliminary findings of a study of active-duty Marines.

The conflicts that servicemembers feel may include "survivor's guilt," from living through an attack in which other servicemembers died, and witnessing or participating in the unintentional killing of women or children, researchers involved in the study say.

"How do they come to terms with that? They have to forgive themselves for pulling the trigger," says retired Navy captain Bill Nash, a psychiatrist and study co-author.

The idea of "moral injury" as a cause of PTSD is new to psychiatry. The American Psychiatric Association is only now considering new diagnostic criteria for the disorder that would include feelings of shame and guilt, says David Spiegel, a member of the working group rewriting the PTSD section.

Traditionally, PTSD symptoms such as nightmares or numbness to the world have been linked to combat violence, fear of being killed or loss of friends.

Half of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs have been diagnosed with mental health issues and the most common is PTSD, which is experienced by nearly 200,000 of these veterans, according to the VA.

PTSD caused by moral injury can lead to more severe reactions such as family violence or even suicide, says Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who has worked on military mental health policies.

The Marine Corps study helps expand the knowledge of the relationship between moral injury and PTSD, says Shira Maguen, a psychologist and VA researcher who has studied links between killing and the disorder among Vietnam War, Gulf War and Iraq War veterans.

"This (Marine Corps) study is important because so little work has been done to understand moral injury in a scientific context," Maguen says.

The ongoing research involves about 2,600 Marines and sailors examined before and after combat tours.

The preliminary findings on moral injury were gleaned from 208 Marines involved in severe combat in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010. It showed that three months after coming home, 7% of the Marines likely had PTSD. Their condition was more closely linked to an inner conflict rather than threats to their lives, the sight of bodies or blood or family problems, the study said.

Occupy Wall Street: A Leader-full Movement in a Leaderless Time

Photo Credit: David Shankbone

Occupy Wall Street: A Leader-full Movement in a Leaderless Time by Micah L. Sifry

 The OWS movement is personal democracy in action, where everyone plays a role in shaping the decisions that affect our lives.

 Thirty-one year-old Iraq War veteran Thomas L. Day wrote a powerful oped for the Washington Post Friday, expressing his "final loss of faith" in the wake of the Penn State child molestation scandal. In it, he lambastes his parents generation for what he sees as its many failures of leadership. Right now it's flying around the web, driven by links from the likes of Michael Moore, who tweeted, "If you read only one thing online this week, please read this." Day writes:

With the demise of my own community’s two most revered leaders, [Jerry] Sandusky and Joe Paterno, I have decided to continue to respect my elders, but to politely tell them, “Out of my way." They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations....

We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us -- at the orders of our leader -- to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping.

The times following September 11th called for leadership, not reckless, gluttonous tax cuts. But our leaders then, as now, seemed more concerned with flattery. Then- House Majority Leader and now-convicted felon Tom Delay told us, “nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.” Not exactly Churchillian stuff.

Those of us who did enlist were ordered into Iraq on the promise of being “greeted as liberators,” in the words of our then-vice president. Several thousand of us are dead from that false promise.

We looked for leadership from our churches, and were told to fight not poverty or injustice, but gay marriage. In the Catholic Church, we were told to blame the media, not the abusive priests, not the bishops, not the Vatican, for making us feel that our church has failed us in its sex abuse scandal and cover-up.

Our parents’ generation has balked at the tough decisions required to preserve our country’s sacred entitlements, leaving us to clean up the mess. They let the infrastructure built with their fathers’ hands crumble like a stale cookie. They downgraded our nation’s credit rating. They seem content to hand us a debt exceeding the size of our entire economy, rather than brave a fight against the fortunate and entrenched interests on K Street and Wall Street.

Now we are asking for jobs and are being told we aren’t good enough, to the tune of 3.3 million unemployed workers between the ages of 25 and 34.

This failure of a generation is as true in the halls of Congress as it is at Penn State.

Perhaps the most vivid illustration this week of our leaderless culture came with the riots in State College that followed Paterno’s dismissal. The display resembled Lord of the Flies. Without revered figures from the older generation to lead them, thousands of students at one of the country’s best state universities acted like children home alone.

Day's conclusion: "One thing I know for certain: A leader must emerge from Happy Valley to tie our community together again, and it won’t come from our parents’ generation."

While he may be right about the failures of the current generation in power, he's wrong in calling for "a leader" who will fix things. But it's understandable why he might see the world this way--having grown up in institutions that are all run as hierarchies--the Catholic church, the Army, the Penn State system--why expect anything different?

That same question could be asked of The New York Times' Public Editor Arthur Brisbane, whose column Sunday also was imbued with a plaintive and desperate search for leadership, specifically that of Occupy Wall Street, the political movement of the moment, and the one that might actually address the concerns being raised by Day in his Washington Post essay.

Admirably, Brisbane asks how the Times should report on the Occupy Wall Street movement, going forward, but like many of his peers, he can't let go of his notion of how political movements must work. "Who is Occupy Wall Street?" he asks. Though he quotes a reader who told him that the movement's lack of traditional leaders is part of its message, he can't let go of the idea that it must have some. "An investigation into [its] origins would lead to the identities of early leaders, at least, and the search for the broader leadership of the movement should continue from there," he writes.

A sampling of leading journalism educators that Brisbane polled, many of them former top newspaper editors, agreed. "Most said it was important to understand who the leaders were and what demographics they represented," Brisbane reports. "Leadership tells you a lot about a movement," Jerry Ceppos, the former executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, told Brisbane. "But I can't I can’t cite the name of a single Occupy Wall Street leader. I know some members say the groups are “leaderless.” But I have trouble believing that this is an entirely organic movement that grew without a leader. I’d push hard to see if there are leaders and to profile them."

Why this insistence on finding the supposed leaders of Occupy Wall Street? The reason goes beyond a desire to understand the movement's goals, I think, into something more existential. For many traditional political observers like Brisbane and his colleagues, the notion that a political movement might arise without charismatic leaders is inconceivable. Every previous movement, after all, has had its figureheads. Think of Gandhi, King, Mandela. Or, at the less exalted level of recent times, think of Ralph Nader, Al Sharpton, or Michael Moore on the progressive left, or Sarah Palin, Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin on the Tea Party right. The same question was raised, if you recall, around the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, which were often described as "leaderless." A movement can't be leaderless, right? Who would we feature on the front-page? Who would we put on the Sunday talk shows? Who would we negotiate with? Who is the saviour that will rise from these streets?

No, political movements can't be leaderless. The Occupy Wall Street movement is, in fact, leader-full. That is, the insistent avoidance of traditional top-down leadership and the reliance on face-to-face and peer-to-peer networks and working groups creates space for lots of leaders to emerge, but only ones that work as network weavers rather than charismatic bosses. Ilyse Hogue, a progressive activist who was on the staff of MoveOn for many years, recently put it this way, in one of the first uses of the term "leaderfull" that I have seen:

"We should all strive not for leaderless movements, but for leaderFULL movements. The former trends towards autocratic loudest voices dominating. In their best manifestation, the latter creates equitable space to raise up all voices, create mechanisms for group decision making and accountability, and to catalyze self-responsibility and empowerment."

Most of us come from a world and a generation that only knows one kind of leadership, the one whose organizational structure looks like this.

The decider is on top; the worker bees are below. Everything about our industrial age institutions, from schools and churches to corporations and government, trains us to think of leadership as top-down, command-and-control. Give the right answer, get into the right school, get a good job, work your way up the chain of command, win the good life. But today, more and more of us live in a sea of lateral social connections, enabled by personal technology that is allowing everyone to connect and share, in real-time, what matters most to them.

And at a moment when so many traditional political institutions appear bankrupt, incapable of reforming themselves and paralyzed in the face of huge challenges, the result is an explosion of outsider movements for social change whose structure looks more like this:

Or this..

Or this..

Indeed, I think there's a reason we keep seeing this recurring image of a filled circle rather than a hierarchy in today's protest movements: all the points on a circle are equidistant from the center. Everyone faces each other, rather than many facing just one. Spots in the middle are hubs, but no one hub dominates. Resilience is built through the multitude of lateral connections between all the points in the network, so if any hub fails others can pick up the slack. And thus today's networked movements are not only highly participatory, with many leaders instead of just one, they are also much stronger than movements of the past that could be stopped or stalled by the discrediting, arrest or killing of their singular spokesmen.

Last June, movement organizer Adrienne Maree Brown made a similar point in the context of the work she does training activists in Detroit who are trying to rebuild that city. Asked on Tavis Smiley and Cornell West's radio show if what she was seeing develop there was a "leaderless" phenomenon, she answered,

"I love the term of  a leaderless revolution but I don't think it's a realistic thing. I believe it's a leader-full revolution. Every single person I interact with, I approach them as if they are the next person who is going to transform their community, and that they're going to transform me. One of the most powerful things about most of the organizers in Detroit is that every single person gets approached as a point of leadership and as a point of community responsibility and strength...that's only possible when everyone is being respected and heard and uplifted."

Adjusting to a leaderfull world full of self-starting network weavers, transparent and accountable about their actions--from a world of top-down leaders who use hierarchy, secrecy and spin to conduct their business, will take some getting used to. But the Occupy Wall Street movement, like the Tea Party before it was captured and turned into a marketing vehicle for the Republican right, represents the flowering of something very deep about our networked age. It is personal democracy in action, where everyone plays a role in shaping the decisions that affect our lives. We may face huge challenges, but while some of our material resources are in scarce supply, we have an abundance of leaders coming.

Maybe Thomas L. Day will be one of them.

[Photo credits: Tahrir Square on February 1, Jonathan Rashad - CC 2.0; Madison protest, Lacrossewi CC-BY-SA-3.0; Occupy Wall St Washington Square Park 2011, David Shankbone CC-BY-3.0]

Occupy Peace

© Magickriver

Occupy Peace by David Krieger

 The Occupy movement is demonstrating its durability and perseverance. Like a Daruma doll, each time it is knocked off balance it serenely pops back up. The movement has been seeking justice for the 99 percent, and justice is an essential element of peace.

For decades, our country has been in permanent preparation for war, spending over half of the total annual discretionary funds that Congress allocates on "defense," our euphemism for war.

World military expenditures exceed $1.5 trillion annually, and the United States spends more than half of this amount, more than the rest of the world combined.

The United States has been engaged in wars around the globe, from Korea to Vietnam, from El Salvador to Nicaragua, from Serbia to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Libya. In all of these wars, many in the 1 percent reap financial gains. Many large corporations, such as Halliburton, formerly led by Dick Cheney, are the beneficiaries of lucrative government contracts that support war, while it is mainly the poor who are enlisted to fight, kill and die in our wars. War is surefire way of transferring wealth up the social ladder.

It is time to wake up to being used as tools in warfare while others profit. War is not an effective or reasonable way to settle disputes. It uses up resources and destroys human lives. In war, people are expendable. Civilians all too easily become "collateral damage." In the nuclear age, civilization itself could become collateral damage.

As President Eisenhower pointed out in 1953, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." How little our politicians have responded to the deep concern of this former military leader.

War is costly not only in dollars, but on our national psyche. We slaughtered innocent men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then celebrated our prowess. We went to war in Vietnam based on lies, killing millions of Vietnamese and dropping napalm and Agent Orange on them while they struggled for their freedom and independence. Ultimately, after the death of more than 58,000 Americans, we withdrew in defeat, declaring victory. We seem to have learned little that is meaningful from the experience, since we continue to send our soldiers to fight and die in far-off lands, and, still, their sacrifice is based on lies. Enough is enough.

How do we occupy peace? First, we change our modes of thinking and stop basing our self-worth as a nation on our military prowess. Second, we bring our troops home from exploitative foreign wars. Third, we seek peaceful solutions to conflicts. Fourth, we make our priority justice, and peace will follow. Fifth, we work to end deaths due to starvation and preventable diseases rather than to inflict deaths by high-altitude bombing and drone attacks. Sixth, we take the lead in abolishing nuclear weapons so that no other cities or countries will suffer the fate of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seventh, we reallocate our resources to health, education and ending poverty rather than continuing to gorge the military beast until it is too fat to move.

© Magickriver

War is a place of fear, and fear is a place of borders. Fear requires us to dehumanize our enemies and, in the process, to dehumanize ourselves. Borders should not provide a justification for dehumanization. That is a trick of militarists who are in need of enemies, real or imagined, to make the war system work for them. But there is another way to deal with enemies, and that is to turn them, by our actions, into friends.

We need to stop fearing each other and treat each other with kindness. Consideration for the 99 percent does not stop at a country's border. We are all humans together, and we need each other to be fully human. We need to embrace our common humanity. In the nuclear age, war is far too dangerous; it has the potential to end civilization and most life on the planet. Peace is an imperative. We need to find a way to occupy peace, which begins in our hearts and must expand to encompass the world.

Egypt Protests Defy Mounting Crackdown As Military Refuses to Step Down

Egypt Protests Defy Mounting Crackdown As Military Refuses to Step Down - Democracy Now



www.democracynow.org - Egyptian protesters continue to fill Cairo's central Tahrir Square over the ruling military council's refusal to immediately transfer power to a civilian government. In a televised address on Tuesday, the head of Egypt's military council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, said he has accepted the prime minister's resignation and that the military is ready to relinquish power if Egyptians call for that in a referendum. But protests only intensified after Tantawi's speech and security forces unleashed a barrage of tear gas. Over the past five days at least 38 people have been killed, thousands injured, and at least 15 journalists attacked as Egypt has witnessed the largest protests since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. "[Tantawi] essentially offered some minor concessions that were not demanded by any of the protesters in Tahrir," says Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous reporting from Cairo. "Many compared the speech to Mubarak's second speech on February 1st where he made some kinds of concessions and used this kind of the tone in the hope of ending the revolution. But the response then and the response now were very similar. ... But the response then and the response now were very similar. Tahrir yesterday was packed with people, really a massive, massive protest. And after the speech ended, you heard this huge reverberation from the crowd, this huge echo of _Irhal_, which means 'leave.'" Kouddous has been on the ground reporting from in Egypt since the revolution began in January.

For the complete interview, to read the transcript, download the podcast, and for additional Democracy Now! reports about the Egyptian revolution, visit http://www.democracynow.org/tags/egypt

The Right To Dream: We Are Fighting For Justice

November 18, 2011: The Right To Dream: We Are Fighting For Justice by Arundhati Roy 

“Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds… Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.” - Arundhati Roy



Tuesday morning, the police cleared Zuccotti Park, but today the people are back. The police should know that this protest is not a battle for territory. We're not fighting for the right to occupy a park here or there. We are fighting for justice. Justice, not just for the people of the United States, but for everybody.

What you have achieved since September 17th, when the Occupy movement began in the United States, is to introduce a new imagination, a new political language into the heart of empire. You have reintroduced the right to dream into a system that tried to turn everybody into zombies mesmerized into equating mindless consumerism with happiness and fulfillment.

As a writer, let me tell you, this is an immense achievement. And I cannot thank you enough.

We were talking about justice. Today, as we speak, the army of the United States is waging a war of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. US drones are killing civilians in Pakistan and beyond. Tens of thousands of US troops and death squads are moving into Africa. If spending trillions of dollars of your money to administer occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan is not enough, a war against Iran is being talked up.

Ever since the Great Depression, the manufacture of weapons and the export of war have been key ways in which the United States has stimulated its economy. Just recently, under President Obama, the United States made a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia - moderate Muslims, right? It hopes to sell thousands of bunker busters to the UAE. It has sold $5 billion-worth of military aircraft to my country, India, which has more poor people than all the poorest countries of Africa put together. All these wars, from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Vietnam, Korea, Latin America, have claimed millions of lives – all of them fought to secure the "American way of life".

Today, we know that the "American way of life" – the model that the rest of the world is meant to aspire towards – has resulted in 400 people owning the wealth of half of the population of the United States. It has meant thousands of people being turned out of their homes and their jobs while the US government bailed out banks and corporations – American International Group (AIG) alone was given $182 billion.

The Indian government worships US economic policy. As a result of 20 years of the free market economy, today, 100 of India's richest people own assets worth one-quarter of the country's GDP while more than 80% of the people live on less than 50 cents a day; 250,000 farmers, driven into a spiral of death, have committed suicide. We call this progress, and now think of ourselves as a superpower. Like you, we are well-qualified: we have nuclear bombs and obscene inequality.

The good news is that people have had enough and are not going to take it any more. The Occupy movement has joined thousands of other resistance movements all over the world in which the poorest of people are standing up and stopping the richest corporations in their tracks. Few of us dreamed that we would see you, the people of the United States on our side, trying to do this in the heart of Empire. I don't know how to communicate the enormity of what this means.

They (the 1%) say that we don't have demands… perhaps they don't know, that our anger alone would be enough to destroy them. But here are some things – a few "pre-revolutionary" thoughts I had – for us to think about together:

We want to put a lid on this system that manufactures inequality. We want to put a cap on the unfettered accumulation of wealth and property by individuals as well as corporations. As "cap-ists" and "lid-ites", we demand:

• An end to cross-ownership in businesses. For example, weapons manufacturers cannot own TV stations; mining corporations cannot run newspapers; business houses cannot fund universities; drug companies cannot control public health funds.
• Two, natural resources and essential infrastructure – water supply, electricity, health, and education – cannot be privatized.
• Three, everybody must have the right to shelter, education and healthcare.
• Four, the children of the rich cannot inherit their parents' wealth.

This struggle has re-awakened our imagination. Somewhere along the way, capitalism reduced the idea of justice to mean just "human rights", and the idea of dreaming of equality became blasphemous. We are not fighting to just tinker with reforming a system that needs to be replaced.

As a cap-ist and a lid-ite, I salute your struggle.

Salaam and Zindabad.

Arundhati Roy won the Booker prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things. Her non-fiction work includes An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, and Broken Republic. An impassioned critic of neo-imperialism, military occupations, and violent models of economic ‘development’, Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2004.  Her consistent exposure of the Indian state’s repressive policies has led to her being variously labelled a seditionist, secessionist, Maoist and unpatriotic troublemaker.