From Ferguson and Gaza to the Toronto G-20

Combined Tactical Systems, Inc. (CSI), according to its website, manufactures and markets tactical munitions and crowd control devices to armed forces, law enforcement, corrections and homeland security agencies around the world.

This photo of its Jamestown, Pennsylvania headquarters raised a few eyebrows this week because :

1) as you can see in the photo, CSI was flying an Israeli flag alongside the US one up until January 2012 and, according to a former CSI plant employee in the first comment here, it is flown whenever the Israeli owner/founder is in town, and 

2) CTS tear gas shell cartridges manufactured there were found a week apart in Gaza and Ferguson, Missouri - where protests and excessive police reaction fuelled by the half a billion dollars in military weapons given to local police forces erupted in response to the August 9 shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a local police officer. 

Comparisons of the highly militarized assault on their respective populations, supportive tweets from citizens in Gaza to citizens in Ferguson about dealing with the effects of teargas, and a look at the fact Ferguson and St. Louis County police forces were trained in Israel in recent years followed.

Along with 9,500 other law enforcement officials who have attended Israeli-led LEEP training sessions in the US and Israel. 

The Law Enforcement Exchange Program (LEEP) - created :

"in cooperation with the Israel National Police, the Israel Ministry of Internal Security, and the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) to support and strengthen American law enforcement counter terrorism practices"

 - was the brainchild of former FBI Assistant Director and Chief of Counter-Terrorism Steve Pomerantz, in his capacity as Director for Counter-Terrorism Programs for The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). 

JINSA was founded to "advocate on behalf of a strong U.S. military, a robust national security policy, and a strong U.S. security relationship with Israel" to "provide leadership and affect policy on crucial issues of national security and foreign policy." 

Yeah, they pretty much have that part nailed down.

Former JINSA advisory board members include perennial neocon warmongers Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, James Woolsey, and Michael Ledeen.

Meanwhile, according to the U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation : Joint Police & Law Enforcement Training page at the Jewish Virtual Library detailing their joint history :

"In early September 2012, the New Police Department (NYPD) opened an Israeli branch at the Sharon District Police Headquarters" in Israel because "the Israeli police is one of the major police forces with which it must maintain close work relations and daily contact."

Really? The NYPD requires daily contact with Israeli police from a location inside Israel?

Naturally, there have also been Canadian security junkets to Israel. In 2005, on his first day as Ontario emergency management commissioner, Julian Fantino, Toronto Police Staff Supt. Bill Blair, and 30 more Ontario police officials left for Israel to "study security and anti-terrorism measures", courtesy of the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, airline El Al and the Israeli government.

But back to Combined Tactical Systems (CSI). In addition to making the teargas cannisters used against populations in Gaza, Ferguson, Tahrir Square in Egypt, Bahrain, Occupy Wall Street, and Toronto's G-20 in 2010, they also run their own training sessions "combining product tools with knowledge and techniques."

In February 2010 - four months before the Toronto G20 - this highly respected and decorated officer was a Training Sergeant with the Toronto Police Public Order Unit working on :

• Development & delivery of crowd management training to Toronto Police Service and police agencies across Canada.
• ORT (Obstacle Removal Team) trained - Responsible for training Toronto Police members in extrication and removal of protestors from fixed objectives using various tools and equipment.

when he took the four-day CSI course on chemical munitions (hand-held and fired), distraction devices (flash bangs), and fired munitions, bean bags, wood batons, rubber batons, sting calls :

CHEMICAL MUNITIONS/ LESS LETHAL WEAPONS - INSTRUCTOR  

Combined Tactical Systems, San Bernadino, CA / February 2010

Then read this account of Why there wasn't accountability for the police in Ferguson and see if it doesn't remind you of the same police set up used to defy accountability at G-20, involving the aforementioned Fantino and Blair.

Final note from Jewish Virtual Library :

In January 2011, Canada and Israel signed an umbrella pact for defense and military cooperation and bolstered that agreement in November 2011 amid the turmoil that had been set upon the Middle East and around the Arab World during the Arab Spring. Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak settled a number of memoranda of understanding to facilitate information and intelligence sharing as well as cooperative arrangements for the development and sale of military technologies.

From Ferguson and the occupation of Gaza to the Toronto G-20, war is a racket that always comes home .

Edited for clarity and typos.
.

It's still class warfare

The European Monetary Union was born of countries pegging their exchange rate to Germany's so all countries would have the same inflation rate of 2 %. The EMU gave those countries a formal voice.

The plan was to have each European country’s wages rise in line with their own productivity plus 2%, ie living according to your means – not above it, not below it.

Just before the euro was implemented, Germany cut wages to bring down unemployment, deviating downward from the agreed-upon 2%, resulting in the beggaring of all its neighbours by making German products cheaper and wiping out its EMU partners' exports.

German economist Dr. Heiner Flassbeck: 

“The big battle that we have in this world is not between Germany and the other Europeans, is not between south and north, China and so on. The big battle is still, believe it or not, between labour and capital. This is still the big battle. I know it’s fashionable in the US to a priori dismiss such arguments by calling them class warfare arguments – Republicans like this very much to say “This is class warfare”. 

 I’ll tell you what happens in this world is class warfare. Look at the US. What happens in the US right now? For the first time in modern history since WW2, we are two years into a recovery and nominal wages are rising by absolutely zero - they’re not rising at all. For the first time we have not only a jobless recovery - that’s a normal thing – for the first time in the US we have a wageless recovery. Wageless recovery. And that is exactly what Germany did 15 years ago – wageless recovery – and I can tell you how this experiment is going to end because in the US there is no market that they can occupy, no partners that they can exploit, there is no currency union that they can use - the experiment will end in disaster. It will end in disaster because if you do not have a regime that allows the systematic participation of workers in the productivity increase – and this is what the people are talking about when they talk about the 99% but it is worse now than 10 years ago, worse than ever  -  then capitalism hits the wall because no economy can grow successfully if their people only have to rely on bubbles, that sooner or later burst, to consume, and if they cannot expect that they will participate in the success of all.”

Via The Real News Network


Iceland arrested the former CEO of one of its three failed banks, along with a broker and market director. Here in North America we arrest people for protesting the banks instead.

Bruce Campbell, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives : Rising Inequality, Declining Democracy
on how this works in Canada.

.

Trying to stop OWS with pepper spray : FAIL

As appalling as the first few seconds of this video are - UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike casually walking along a line of seated students and pepper-spraying them point blank in the face - it's worth watching to the end to see how brilliantly the students handle it.

Human microphone :

"Mike check ...  mike check .... We are willing ... to give you a brief moment ... of peace ... so that you may take your weapons ... and our friends ... and go. ... Please do not return ... We are giving you a moment of peace ... We are giving you a moment of peace ... You can go ... and we will not follow you ... You can go you can go you can go you can go you can go you can go ....."

And after a brief show of waving their paintguns about and shaking up their pepper spray cans ... the police retreat. Score one for #Occupy.

Later, UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza explained the pepper-spraying of the row of seated students was necessary because the police were afraid for their own personal safety :

"There was no way out of that circle," Spicuzza said. "They were cutting officers off from their support. It's a very volatile situation."

Sure it was :

Another angle showing the open expanse of lawn behind Lt. John Pike that so alarmed the "encircled" police    officers.

Up here in BC, that's known locally as the 'stapler defence'. 


Monday Update : Police Chief Spicuzza, Lt. Pike and one other pepperspraying police officer placed on administrative leave. 
Statements from the university chancellor and this from the president of the University of the California system : 

"The time has come to take strong action to recommit to the ideal of peaceful protest."

More : Dr. Dawg .  Let Freedom Rain


.

OccupyVancouver told to get the hell off our lawn

Gary Mason, Globe & Mail :

"The weekend death of a female protester at the Occupy Vancouver site has done incalculable damage to a global protest campaign that suddenly finds itself at a crossroads.

Increasing problems at the sites are now overshadowing Occupy’s root cause and tarnishing the image of the entire movement. Its future gets cloudier by the day."

See, Gary would really like to support the movement but because 22 year old Ashlie Gough selfishly died at Occupy Vancouver instead of a few blocks away in the Downtown Eastside where these things go unreported, sadly he now finds himself irrevocably drawn into the get-the-hell-off-my-public-lawn media camp.

Gary declares that with the Vancouver election just 12 days away, this is "a referendum on Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson's leadership", a quote happily repeated by CKNW's Bill Good on his mayoralty  debate radio show between Robertson and NPA hopeful Susan Anton this morning.

Yup, Robertson better get cracking on evicting the homeless for safety reasons, even if they're safer here than anywhere else.

Robertson is indeed going for a fast-track court injunction to evict them tomorrow, backed up by the VPD:

"The Occupy Vancouver protest can continue. The tent encampment, as it stands now, cannot."

Luckily Kev at Trapped in a Whirlpool has provided this excellent rebuttal :

"Those who feel threatened by the Occupy movement think that by forcibly clearing out the encampments that they will cut the movement off at the knees, nothing could be further from reality. The camps will eventually end organically on their own, signalling the onset of the next phase of the movement towards social justice. But no matter how they end the movement has become unstoppable.

The Occupiers and their supporters have already succeeded in changing the conversation from one of tax cuts , deficits and the necessity of austerity to one of social and economic injustice. This is no small feat. Thanks to the Occupy Movement, Labour appears ready to end it's internecine wars and start to unite again in order to battle for the common good once more, again no small feat.

In other words this first phase of the movement has already been a huge success, violently suppressing this outpouring of dissatisfaction with the current sate of affairs will only prove to many that they Occupiers are right and can only as it has already done result in it's growth.
The battle for a better world has been joined and while it will likely be a long one, those who hanker for a more just society will never surrender."

Thank you, Kev.


Linking arms for OccupyVancouver :


A wonderful "Open Love Letter to #OccupyVancover" from My Little Soapbox. 

Some sage advice from my friend Chris Corrigan on how the movement can continue : Revitalizing #OccupyVancouver

Boris : Testing Occupy .

Montreal Simon : The Occupy Movement and the Marginalized

Dope City Free Press: Letter To the Mayor of Vancouver and a Letter Written the Next Morning To Occupy Vancouver's Organizing Committee
       
        with an intro to Mr. Beer 'N Hockey above from RossK

Petition : I Support Occupy Vancouver
.

Tiananmen Square and Occupy Wall Street

From Garnotte at Le Devoir
h/t Lagatta at Bread and Roses
.

All day, all week, occupy your streets!

h/t Boris

But that's just the US, right? No reason for us to protest up here in Canada, origin of the Occupy movement.

NOW Mag : The Arsenal of Corporatocracy : Why We Should Occupy Bay Street

• A person making $45,000 a year and a person making $1 billion essentially pay the same tax rate.
• A person making $130,000 a year and a person making $1 billion a year pay the exact same tax rate.
• A person making $45,000 a year pays a higher tax rate than a multi-billion dollar corporation

Muldoon began this by lowering the corporate tax rate from 36% to 28%. By next year it will be down to 15%, for those that pay any at all.

Meanwhile, over at The Onion ...
Nation Waiting For Protesters to Clearly Articulate Demands Before Ignoring Them

 "If they don’t have a clear power structure organized around specific demands first, then I'll never be able to completely tune them out due to a political conflict of interest or an inability to comprehend complex, detailed economic concepts. These people really need to get their act together." 

Once Occupy Wall Street has a concrete set of objectives in place, the majority of Americans said they would go back to waiting for the sluggish economy to recover while blindly accepting things the way they are."

For everyone else  : How to Stream Live From a Mobile Phone

Occupy Vancouver vid and photos from: West End Bob @ The Beav and Jymn @ Let Freedom Rain

. 

Canadian owners of Zuccotti Park to evict Occupy Wall Street protesters tomorrow

                                                                      [updated below]
A New York subsidiary of the Toronto-based Canadian asset management company that owns Zuccotti Park has written to the NYPD asking them to evict the Wall Street protesters who have occupied the park since Sept. 17.

Commissioner Raymond W Kelly                                        October 11, 2011
New York City Police Department
One Police Plaza
Room 1400
New York, New York 10038
Facsimile: (646) 610-5865 

Re Zuccotti Park 

Dear Commissioner Kelly: 

As you know, for over three weeks, Zuccotti Park (the "Park") has been used by "Occupy Wall Street" and other protesters as their home base. The Park is owned by a Brookfield affiliate and was recently renovated at Brookfield's considerable expense as an amenity for the general public. It is intended to be a relaxing tree-filled oasis in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Lower Manhattan. We fully support the rights of free speech and assembly, but the manner in which the protesters are occupying the Park violates the law, violates the rules of the Park, deprives the community of its rights of quiet enjoyment of the Park, and creates health and public safety issues that need to be addressed immediately. 

Within the Park, the protesters have set up living spaces with tarpaulins, mattresses, sleeping bags, tables, bookshelves, gasoline-powered generators and other items that are inconsistent with the rules and normal use of the Park.  At all hours of the day and night, protesters are sleeping on benches and walkways, blocking normal normal pedestrian access to the general public and preventing cleaning and maintenance workers from performing necessary upkeep. When not blocked by protesters, the walkways throughout the Park are blocked by various items and equipment brought to the Park by protesters.

We are extremely concerned about dangers posed by damage that may have been incurred within the Park and by materials and equipment brought into the Park by the protesters.  Brookfield protocol and practice is to clean the Park on a daily basis, power-washing it each weeknight, and to perform necessary inspection, maintenance and repairs on a regular, as-needed basis.  Since the occupation began, we have not been able to perform basic cleaning and maintenance activity, let alone perform more invasive repairs. For example, if the lenses to the underground lighting have become cracked, water could infiltrate the electrical system, putting occupants of the Park at risk of an electrical hazard or causing short-circuiting which would result in repairs requiring the Park to be torn apart for re-wiring. Any such repairs would force the Park to be closed to the public for indeterminate periods of time, depriving the city of a vital green space. Moreover, we are concerned about the fire safety hazard that gasoline and the gas-fired generators pose to the Park's occupants. 

After weeks of occupation, conditions at the Park have deteriorated to unsanitary and unsafe levels. The Park has no toilets and while the existing trash receptacles have always been more than adequate to accommodate normal waste in the Park, those receptacles are no longer even close to sufficient and the resulting trash accumulation is attracting rodents. 

Additionally, we have received hundreds of phone calls and e-mails from concerned citizens and office workers in the neighbourhood.  Complaints range from outrage over numerous laws being broken including but not limited to lewdness, groping, drinking and drug use, to the lack of safe access and usage of the Park, to ongoing noise at all hours, to unsanitary conditions and to offensive odors.  We have received complaints of harassment, one woman stating that she was verbally abused in front of her 5-year-old child and complaining that she had a package stolen from her as she tried to cross the Park.

We are also concerned with the constant deliveries of materials to the Park. Delivery vehicles have now been appearing on a daily basis with packages of all shapes and sizes for the Park's occupants. None of these deliveries are being screened by our security team or the police for suspicious or harmful materials.  The Park's location in the financial district makes this activity particularly concerning. 

For all of these reasons, we cannot currently ensure that the Park is safe nor can we perform the necessary cleaning, inspection, damage assessment and repairs.  In light of this and the ongoing trespassing of the protesters, we are again requesting the assistance of the New York City Police Department to help clear the Park so that we can undertake this work at the earliest possible time.  We will defer to the Department's judgment on how best to accomplish this, but the Department's intervention is necessary both to ensure our ability to comply with our obligations a owners and to make the Park safe for the neighborhood and public.

Once we have completed our cleanup and maintenance, we would ask that the Department assist Brookfield on an ongoing basis to ensure the safety of all those using and enjoying the Park. 

As you know, we have discussed this situation with you and/or others under your command on a daily basis seeking assistance.  The situation continues to worsen and we need your assistance to ensure public safety. 

I appreciate your time and consideration in addressing this important and pressing matter. Please call me at (212) 417-7063 with any questions or if you wish to discuss our request further. 

Sincerely,
[signed : CEO Richard B. Clark]

Brookfield Office Properties
Brookfield Global Real Estate

Sheesh. If anything needs cleaning up here, it's Wall Street, not OWS.

Reality check from a comment left at the New York Observer  
(h/t greenvie at Bread & Roses) :

"the right to assemble and protest does, in fact, trump private property rights when the private property in question is commonly used as a public amenity as Brookfield itself has admitted.  Brookfield did not create the plaza out of altruism, but rather created the plaza in exchange for significant allowances in building height restrictions from the City of New York.  In other words, they were required to build a PUBLIC plaza in order to build their building.   

The real constitutional question we should be asking is why the protesters are not allowed to camp on Wall Street itself - a public street and a public right of way which is somehow off limits to our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech - as if it is located in another country and not subject to the constitution.  But then again, it kind of embodies what the protesters are complaining about anyway, doesn't it ?"

Chairman of the board of directors for Toronto parent company Brookfield Asset Management Inc. - assets $120-billion - is Frank McKenna. Other directors include Jack Mintz, Jimmy Patterson, the Vice Chair of Rogers Comm., the former Chair of HSBC, the CEO of Canada Oil Sands and Chair of Syncrude.
New York Mayor Bloomberg's girlfriend Diana L. Taylor is a director of the NY subsidiary office Brookfield Office Properties which sent the letter to the NYPD.

Dear Occupy Toronto :  : Brookfield Office Properties in Canada :
Brookfield Place, 181 Bay Street, Suite 330, Toronto, Ontario M5J 2T3
Tel: 416-369-2300 
Just sayin'.

Leadnow.ca has a petition to stop the eviction, due to begin at 7am Friday, and to make Canadians aware of a Canadian corp's role in the eviction.

OWS responds : "Tell Bloomberg: Don’t Foreclose the Occupation.
Join us at 6AM FRIDAY for non-violent eviction defense."

Friday AM Update : WSJ : 

"Bloomberg says the city was notified shortly before midnight that Brookfield wanted to postpone the cleanup of Zuccotti Park. He says the property owner hopes to work out an agreement with the protesters. Bloomberg also says Brookfield has received "lots of calls" from elected officials siding with protesters."

Wow
.
.

Chris Hedges smacks down Kevin O'Leary

Yesterday CBC continued its ongoing snide, dismissive, and condescending coverage of the third week of Occupy Wall Street with an interview with author/activist/Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges on its "inside the business world" show, the Lang and O'Leary Exchange.  After the by now obligatory opening protestations of puzzlement as to what OWS is all about - "low budget" and "pretty nothing burgers" as blowhard host Kevin O'Leary described it - he then responded to Hedges' patient explanation by calling him "a left wing nutbar".

Since Holly Stick kindly left me the link this morning, Let Freedom Rain has posted a link and commentary on O'Leary's FoxNews behavior but I'm putting the vid and a transcript up here because Hedges' argument bears repeating and also because, as appalling as O'Leary's behavior certainly was, even more appalling is that O'Leary affects to be completely unable to follow Hedges' logic as to what exactly went wrong that caused OWS to happen.
He and other CBC talking heads either don't get it or pretend not to get it but you got it right away, didn't you? A more damning example of how completely dissociated our state broadcaster is with the plight of the 99% I cannot imagine.

CBC link here. Transcript follows ...

The show opens with a clip of Obama talking about Occupy Wall Street :

"I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel that we have the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country, all across Main Street. And yet you're still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practises that got us into this problem in the first place."

Introduction to Hedges and Occupy Wall Street movement ...

O'Leary : So what exactly is everyone complaining about? And also give me a sense of how much momentum this movement has because it's pretty nothing burgers so far - just a few guys, guitars. Nobody knows what they want - they can't even name the names of the firms that they're protesting against - very weak, low budget.

Hedges : I wouldn't agree with that assessment at all. They pulled thousands of people into the street last night and here in Washington when everyone marched past the Bank of America, they were shouting Shame! Shame! Shame! They know the names of these firms and they know what these firms have done not only to the American economy but to the global economy, and the criminal class who runs them.

Fill-in for Lang : Well Kevin made this point that nobody knows what they want. What do you say to that? We know that this is a very diverse group, there are many different agendas at play ... what is the sense you have of what this movement would like to see happen?

Hedges : They know precisely what they want ; they want to reverse the corporate coup that's taken place in the US and rendered the citizenry impotent and they won't stop until that happens and frankly if we don't break the back of corporations, we're all finished anyway since we're rapidly trashing the ecosystem on which the human species depends for survival. This is literally a fight for life - it's that grave, it's that serious. Corporations, unfettered capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, is a revolutionary force  - it commodifies everything - human beings, the natural world which it exploits for profit until exhaustion and collapse. The bottom line is we don't have much time left - we are on the cusp of perhaps another major banking crisis in Europe, defaults in Greece, followed by Spain, Portugal. There's been no restrictions, no regulations on Wall Street - they've looted the US Treasury, they've played all the games that they were playing before and we're about to pay for it all over again.

O'Leary : Listen don't take this the wrong way but you sound like a left wing nutbar. If you want to shut down every corporation, every bank, where are you going to get a job? Where are you gonna work? Where's the economy gonna go?

Hedges : Corporations don't produce anything and

O'Leary : Oh really!?

Hedges : No. Financial corporations on Wall Street

O'Leary : Are you driving a car to the protest?

Hedges : They are speculators. I'm talking about the financial institutions like Goldman Sachs. They don't manufacture, they don't make anything - they gamble, they use money, and they believe falsely that money is real as we dismantle our manufacturing base and send jobs over the border to Mexico and finally into the embrace of China.

Fill-in for Lang : Well I see that you and Kevin could get into an actually huge argument here.

Hedges : Well you know I don't usually go on shows where people descend to character assassination. if you want to discuss issues, that's fine but this sounds like Fox News and I don't go on Fox News. Either you discuss the issues and ... look, you have had very eloquent writers - people like John Ralston Saul in Canada who have laid this out with incredible lucidity - and to somehow attack this critique by calling someone a nutcase engages in the kind of trash talk that's polluted the corporate airwaves.

O'Leary : Excuse me, let's debate the issues then. ...

Hedges : You were the one who started it - you were not debating the issues.

[crosstalk] ...I did not call you a nutcase, I called you a nutbar.

Hedges : You said [I] sounded like a leftwing nutcase .. bar

O'Leary : Yes, bar, nutbar.

Hedges : That's an insult.

O'Leary : Are you left wing in leaning at least would you say?

Hedges : No, I would say ..

O'Leary : You're a centrist?

Hedges : Can I finish?

O'Leary : Please.

Hedges : I would say that those who are protesting the rise of the corporate state are in fact on the political spectrum the true conservatives because they're calling for the restoration of the rule of law. The radicals have seized power and they have trashed all regulations and legal impediments to a corporate reconfiguration of American society into a form of neo-feudalism. And that's what we're really asking for - is the restoration of the rule of law.

O'Leary : Ok, but you don't see any value in the banking system providing a financial infrastructure ...

Hedges : That's not what I said.

O'Leary : I'm asking you.

Hedges : A banking system that functions as a banking system should. And in Canada you do not have a banking crisis because you did not tear down the walls between commercial and investment banks and turn all of your banks into hedge funds. If, instead of handing massive sums of money to CitiBank, Wells Fargo - which are basically zombie banks that still hold tremendous toxic assets - we had created ten regional banks with $10 billion each and leveraged them 10 to 1, people could have been saved. Six million people have been pushed out of their homes because of foreclosures and mortgages. We could have reinvested in communities, small businesses which cannot get credit would have gotten credit. Instead they're just sitting on the capital and not lending it.

O'Leary : So we're certainly giving you an opportunity to speak your mind. Just so we can come full circle, what do you suggest should be done with Goldman Sachs specifically?

Hedges : They should be prosecuted. When you shove sub-prime mortgages on families that you know can't repay it and then you dice up those mortgages as assets and sell them and bet against them through AIG, that's fraudulent activity.

Fill-in for Lang : Alright, well thank you so much for joining us - we like to hear your thoughts.

Hedges : Well it'll be the last time.

Update : Dianne Buckner was the other co-host. h/t to Christine in comments

Alternate source of pulled video:


.