UNEDITED – COP KNEE ON THROAT 9/24/2011 #OCCUPYWALLSTREET

Keith Olbermann Covers Occupy Wall Street Protests Media
Blackout

Thursday 29 September 2011

On the
News With Thom Hartmann: Montana Follows Vermont’s Lead on Path to State-Level
Single-Payer Health Care, and More
In today’s On the News
segment: Montana follows Vermont’s lead on path to state-level single-payer
health care, Republican attacks on reproductive rights continue in a new request
for 12 years of Planned Parenthood’s financial disclosures, new evidence
surfaces that the conflict in Afghanistan is worsening, and more.
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

A Nation of
“Suspects”
Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford, Truthout and ACLU
Massachusetts: “The recent dramatic expansion of intelligence collection at the
federal, state and local level raises profound civil liberties concerns
regarding freedoms and protections we have long taken for granted. If people
generally appear unaware of ‘change in the air,’ a large part of the reason is
the unparalleled resort to secrecy used by the government to keep its actions
from public scrutiny. According to the new American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
report, ‘Drastic Measures Required,’ under President Obama (who had vowed to
create ‘an unprecedented level of openness in Government’ when he first took
office), there were no fewer than 76,795,945 decisions made to classify
information in 2010 – eight times the number made in 2001.”
Read the Article

On
October 6, Let’s Make a National Clamor for Peace
Robert
Naiman, Truthout: “On October 7, 2011, the United States will have been at war
for ten years. Let’s mark the occasion by making a national clamor for peace so
loud that Congress, the president and big media will have to pay attention….
[T]he press has to cover the anniversary of the war, but these stories are going
to be largely written and produced before Friday. The default media narrative
will be: America has lost interest in the wars, because of the economy and
unemployment, because ‘the wars are already winding down,’ or some other story
that journalists or editors will make up. We have to beat this default media
narrative. To beat it, we need to get in front of it.”
Read the Article

Critic
Claims Victory After Religion Memo Goes to Air Force Academy
Cadets
Tom Roeder, The Kansas City Star: “Air Force Academy
critic Mikey Weinstein claimed victory Wednesday after learning that a memo on
religious tolerance was distributed to the school’s 4,000 cadets a day after he
unveiled a billboard featuring the 200-word treatise from the service’s top
general…. The academy has been under scrutiny since 2004 over allegations of
religious intolerance.”
Read the Article

“Occupy
Wall Street” Protest Links Up With Locked-Out
Teamsters
Michael London, Labor Notes: “Expanding their reach
beyond the confines of Wall Street, a dozen activists from the ongoing Occupy
Wall Street action disrupted an art auction at Sotheby’s last week. The protest
supported 43 union art handlers, members of Teamsters Local 814, who were locked
out August 1 by the tony art seller…. Disguised as potential bidders, the
activists entered the building and interrupted the auctioneer one at a time as
bidding on an item reached $130,000. The protesters staggered their
interruptions through a period of 75 minutes with shouts to ‘end the lockout’
and ‘make Wall Street pay.’”
Read the Article

Obama
Asks Supreme Court to Settle Constitutionality of Health Care
Law
Michael Doyle, McClatchy Newspapers: “The Obama
administration on Wednesday formally asked the Supreme Court to review its
controversial health care law, a move that’s likely to set up a blockbuster
election-year decision.”
Read the Article

E.J. Dionne | Why They Hate Warren
Buffett
E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post Writers Group: “No
wonder partisans of low taxes on wealthy investors hate Warren Buffett. He has
forced a national conversation on, 1. the bias of the tax system against labor;
2. the fact that in comparison with middle- or upper-middle class people, the
really wealthy pay a remarkably low percentage of their income in taxes; and 3.
the deeply regressive nature of the payroll tax.”
Read the Article

Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a
Profit
Nina Bernstein, The New York Times News Service:
“Naomi Leong, a shy 9-year-old, was born in the detention camp. For more than
three years, at a cost of about $380,000, she and her mother were held behind
its barbed wire. Psychiatrists said Naomi was growing up mute, banging her head
against the walls while her mother, Virginia Leong, a Malaysian citizen accused
of trying to use a false passport, sank into depression.”
Read the Article

State
Department Tar Sands Pipeline Hearings Run by TransCanada
Contractor
Brad Johnson, ThinkProgress: “In a stunning
conflict of interest, public hearings on federal approval for a proposed tar
sands pipeline are being run by a contractor for the pipeline company itself.
The U.S. Department of State’s public hearings along the proposed route of the
TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands pipeline this week are under the purview of
Cardno Entrix, a ‘professional environmental consulting company’ that
specializes in ‘permitting and compliance.’”
Read the Article

Border
Patrol Abuses on the Rise
Valeria Fernandez, New America
Media: “The number of apprehensions of undocumented immigrants on the
U.S.-Mexico border has dropped, but reports of abuses against immigrants are on
the rise. Those are the findings of a new report released by the Arizona
humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths. The report, ‘A Culture of
Cruelty,’ documents 30,000 incidents of human rights abuses against undocumented
immigrants in short-term detention between fall 2008 and spring 2011. Nearly
13,000 people were interviewed in the Mexican border towns of Naco, Nogales and
Agua Prieta.”
Read the Article

Small
Nebraska Town Prepares for Contentious Keystone Pipeline
Hearing
Lisa Song, InsideClimate News: “Public comments will
be accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis…. But people in Atkinson say
they need a different system. They’ve heard that busloads of pipeline supporters

will arrive long before the meeting’s 4:30 p.m. start time, to stake out the
coveted spots. That puts them at a disadvantage, because many of them are
farmers and ranchers who can’t take the day off work to line up early. A
spokesman from the American Petroleum Institute confirmed that a coalition of
business and labor groups, including API, plans to bus 150 representatives to
the meeting.”
Read the Article

Eyewitness to Texas Wildfires Watches Austerity Burn Rural
Community
Dallas Darling, Truthout: “When I arrived in
Bastrop, I encountered a second set of wildfires: angry, bitter citizens. At one
meeting, residents – who had spent nearly a week wondering if their homes had
been destroyed by the fire or remained standing – shouted questions at county
officials…. Most Bastrop residents did not make the connection between Gov.
Rick Perry’s deep budget cuts to local police and fire departments and the chaos
they were facing, or criticize the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS)
stripping of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of funding and staff
to address national disasters (nor did they mention the ongoing wars around the
globe sucking money from domestic programs).”
Read the Article

Sex and
the Single Drone: The Latest in Guarding the Empire
Tom
Engelhardt, TomDispatch: “In the world of weaponry, they are the sexiest things
around. Others countries are desperate to have them. Almost anyone who writes
about them becomes a groupie. Reporters exploring their onrushing future swoon
at their potentially wondrous techno-talents. They are, of course, the pilotless
drones, our grimly named Predators and Reapers.”
Read the Article

Paul
Krugman | Austerity Caucus Pushes Europe to the Brink
Paul
Krugman, Krugman & Co.: “One of the good ideas in a now-essential recent
paper by Paul De Grauwe, a professor of economics at the University of Leuven in
Belgium and a research fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies, was to
do a head-to-head comparison of Spain and Britain to illustrate the problems the
euro faces. Here’s an update.”
Read the Article

Remembering the Censored Death of Gazan Boy Killed in Drone
Attack
Ramzy Baroud, RamzyBaroud.net: “‘Both of Ibrahim’s
arms were cut off. He had a hole in his lung. Parts of his legs were missing.
His kidney was in a bad condition…we need people to stand with us.’ These were
the words of an exhausted man as he described the condition of his dying son….
Ibrahim Zaza was merely a 12-year-old boy. He and his cousin Mohammed, 14, were
hit by an Israeli missile in Gaza, fired from an unmanned drone as they played
in front of their house.”
Read the Article

In Saudi
Arabia, a New Era for Women
Frank Viviano, New American
Media: “Dr. Aisha is an expert oncologist, with research papers published in the
globe’s leading medical journals. In a country where men and women were
forbidden to shop or dine together, she was tacitly allowed to probe the most
intimate secrets of both. Put simply, her sheer expertise, acquired in
California and New England, trumped the kingdom’s restraints on female roles and
possibilities.”
Read the Article

TheLastWord: A few people caused a lot of trouble on Wall Street this weekend. And they weren’t the protesters.

“If no prior verbal command was given and disobeyed, then the use of spray in that instance is completely inappropriate,” Mr. Vallone said. On Monday, several Web sites identified the supervising officer who used the pepper spray as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, a longtime commander in Manhattan. Like a number of other officers, Inspector Bologna is a defendant in lawsuits claiming wrongful arrests at protests staged during the Republican National Convention in 2004..

A police official who had spoken to Inspector Bologna following the incident confirmed that the inspector had used the spray. “He did his job and now he’s concerned for the safety of his family,” said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to confirm the inspector’s name.

From NYT

“I reward my staff at my own discretion based on performance,” she said. “Every member is given a yearly operating budget and the record will reflect that every year my office comes in under budget.”