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Occupy Oakland protesters return downtown to claim Frank Ogawa Plaza OAKLAND -- About 1,000 people gathered peacefully Wednesday in the amphitheater in front of City Hall to discuss the mechanics for a general strike next week. After Tuesday night's violence, hundreds of Oakland residents appeared to have come out to help transform Occupy Oakland from a relatively disorganized, loose-knit movement to a broad- based community drive to implement a general strike. What the protesters are hoping for is the support of unions, teachers, students and workers to shut down the city next Wednesday" I think the police brutality drew a lot of people out of the hills and into the streets," said Josh Chavanne, 29, a freelance Web designer. "There is nothing like a little inhumanity to turn on people's humanity."

Let's see how the police action in Oakland Calif. Is working out for the politicians... Occupy Oakland: Mayor Jean Quan in Big Trouble After Riot Occupy Oakland is now forever marked by a decision that could cost Oakland Mayor Jean Quan her job. Calling for the use of 500 police officers in a pre-dawn raid Tuesday morning, followed by more tear gas bombs Tuesday night, has thousands of Oaklanders upset with Quan. ... Handa reports that the Mayor and Councilmembers received “thousands of calls in protest of the police action.” ... And in the end, the police wracked more violence in a couple hours, destroyed more property and hurt more people that Occupy Oakland did in two weeks. Keep in mind there was no riot, no emergency, no move made by the protestors other than to refuse to leave. It was the city of Oakland and the police that initiated the violence and chose its time. Many things could have been done instead especially since there was no urgent problem. ... All I can says is unless a better way is developed, and soon, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Wal Street, and Occupy Atlanta, and all the Occupies in America could result in the destruction of (or perhaps the transformation of) the libera base in this country It’s hard to vote for politicians that gas and shoot your friends.

Well I guess that clarifies the dangers of knee-jerk reactions, and why the protesters are taking their sweet time to lock in a position. But really, 99%...1% ... what more needs to be said? The 1% sucking sound ... our money ... their pockets.

From video link in Derek's link October 25, 201 Changing his tune, the mayor says the city is negotiating with protesters to peacefully end the ongoing rally outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. Obviously public pressure is kicking in ... I can see reason for relocating, with a vault of art under the lawn. But there's no stopping this. And violence by police ordered by profiteers ?? WINNING !!!! :) But this all raises another issue: WHO GIVES ORDERS TO THE POLICE? Robertson has said he wants to avoid a confrontation or the possibility of violence by. issuing ultimatums or sending in the police, saying he would like to negotiate with the protesters. Do you think perhaps the VPD has reminded the Mayor that police make their own decisions and are not subject to politicians' whims?

Every time politicians order police to get violent, protesters gain more public support and donation$. Even the annoyed neighbours in NY support the protesters aims. Occupiers have exposed the violence ordered by the state against non-violent people who rebel. Violent corporate 'victory' is short and hollow, because the movement is stronger than any and all politicians. Who demands it? The profitmakers ... "venues" ... order police violence against protesters now? That'll go over well with the public. State violence is a huge mistake.

I respect your experiences, Army Guy. What you're saying is that you don't agree with the international law that identifies a child soldier as one under 18, correct? IE, regardless of how they became combatants, they're accountable for crimes like murder as if there were no war, though for adults it's war not murder. I'm having a hard time understanding why you hold children MORE accountable than adults. You should know ... Omar was under threat of death by his father, and he knew it: His brother rebelled and his father threatened and then tried to train him as a suicide bomber. Brother ran away at 16. Omar knew what would happen if he rebelled: He'd be 'a martyr' ... a dead one. Eta... I understand he and others like him killed and injured Canadian soldiers and some seemed to revel in it. It's horrible and I'm respectful of the trauma Canadian soldiers like yourself have endured. Omar is a symbol of all that's wrong in Afghanistan and it seems an insult that he's Canadian. You said he could have left it behind years before. Is that realistic? Where does a 10-11-12 year old go? I found the cbc report from his hearing in 2009, the testimony that he couldn't have thrown the grenade. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2008/12/12/khadr-trial.html Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler told the hearing that the photograph shows Khadr buried under the rubble of a collapsed building at the time the grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer was thrown, proving he could not have thrown it. The Globe and Mail reported that the Col. Patrick Parrish, the military judge in Khadr's case, barred Kuebler from showing the photograph to the media. Kuebler said he wants the soldier who gave a similar account — identified in court documents only as "Soldier No. 2" — to testify at Khadr's Jan. 26 trial. (Didn't happen. All Guantanamo military trials were ordered ended by Obama.) That account differs widely from another report from a soldier that says Khadr was sitting up and moving when the soldier, believing Khadr threw the grenade, shot him twice in the back. Omar's pleaded guilty, as an adult. So his age and whether he did THAT crime are no longer at issue. He is being held accountable. He was shot twice, spent 8 years in Guantanamo and 4 more now. We can't hold him accountable for all of the crimes of Afghanistan.

Army Guy, I'm trying to make sense of your position. - Children can't officially be soldiers, so they are "insurgents" ... ? - "Insurgents" can't make war, under our conventions of same, so what they do is crime, murder. -Child "insurgents" are tried as adults and vilified as adults by adults. Where does being a legal child and being forced into insurgency become a consideration?

I hear people denigrating the middle class for living above their means, on credit. I hear people denigrating the middle class for wage/benefit demands, the reason corporations are moving to other countries. And I hear some promoting consumption as the solution. Which is it to be? Gross consumerism on credit that banks and corporations love? Or living within our (reduced) means with minimal credit? Which will resolve our current economic crisis? I don't think 'consumer confidence' is coming back this time. We're burned out on credit that provides mega profits for banks. And as someone said, the babyboomers were the consumers who fuelled economic growth for decades, but they've done their big buying and are now saving for retirement. It will never be as it was. The babyboom population bulge was an anomaly, not 'normal'. The economy won't 'come back'. Big banks and big businesses waiting/hoping for a return to a 'normal' that never was the norm will collapse. Some aspects of life as we knew it will change. The housing market will tank because we'll havea glut of big suburban family homes as babyboomers downsize, so at least the next generations will be housed. Some will be split into multi-unit housing and some will have to be turned into neighbourhood stores because next generations won't be car-bound. And the corporate and banking sectors, the glitz and glamour hangover from the '80's, will be vilified as the obscenity it was and is, and the banks and megacorps along with it. It's not coming 'back'. Can't have it both ways.

Canada has championed the cause of child soldiers in other countries, but there's never been a word about Afghanistan, not even from returning soldiers, to my knowledge. One has to wonder why ... ? Is it somehow different when orphans are kidnapped and forced into service, than when a parent forces a child into service? Omar Khadr was a child soldier, just not a very good onee. I've never seen any reports that he professes to believe in 'the cause', any cause except 'Omar'. His dreams are of being an ordinary Canadian kid. Both the Taliban and Northern Alliance indoctrinated child soldiers. The Child Soldiers The Northern Alliance swears it inducts no soldiers younger than 18 years old. But a visit to the trenches proves that rule unenforced. Zulmai leans against a rusty Russian tank on a hill overlooking the Taliban-controlled city of Taloqan. He is 18 but joined the mujahedin at 15, just as his four brothers did. One brother has already been killed, and Zulmai falters when asked if children should be fighting an adult's war. A Northern Alliance Foreign Ministry official named Musadiqallah steps in:"Our cause is so great that even our children want to join us in fighting the enemy." ... On the opposite side of the front lines, the Taliban also profits from young guns.Taken from their homes before their teens, these kids are steeped in battle tactics and religious fanaticism. War orphans are especially prized by the Taliban because they have no home to which they can escape. By the time they reach adulthood, the mullahs and commanders of the Taliban have become their family. The Taliban insists the extreme measures of jihad require extreme schooling. "Children are innocent, so they are the best tools against dark forces," says a Pakistani Taliban fighter, who was captured by the Northern Alliance last month near Dast-e-Qale. So ... when it's 'foreign' war orphans forced to make war, Canadians sympathize and donate to causes and are appalled. When a Canadian child is forced into conflict by his own father, we villify the child? How shallow is that?

He called police ... then left before they came. Nice waste of their time and our money!

Asian schools/families/communities are very achievement oriented. Girls usually outperform boys. The study is international, so the bias of any particular state is minimized. Assessments are based on elements common to all curricula in the countries participating.

"Lazy" unemployed "bums" don't care about protesting. They're busy with video games.Some may be unemployed, but the protesters are definitely not "lazy". And if they were bums they wouldn't have received over $400k in donations.

(Ottawa) Effective September 19th, Goldcorp has been removed from the Dow Jones North America Sustainability Index. The announcement comes in the context of ongoing allegations of human rights violations and evidence of environmental contamination in communities affected by Goldcorp’s mining activities "Goldcorp’s removal from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index will not make a difference in the daily lives of communities in Guatemala, Honduras and elsewhere who are living with long-term impacts from this company’s operations,” says Jennifer Moore, Latin America Program Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada, “but this is another indication that the company can’t just paper over the damage that it’s doing.” Last year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordered the Guatemalan government to suspend Goldcorp’s Marlin mine due to serious concerns for the security and health of eighteen local indigenous communities. Despite Guatemala’s failure to suspend the mine, the order remains in place. International scientific studies indicate that surface water depletion in the area of the mine may be drawing arsenic-rich groundwater to the surface, and preliminary research shows that people living closest to the mine have elevated levels of lead in their blood and arsenic in their urine. “Goldcorp’s deletion from this index less than nine months after it was added should tel Wall Street something the communities have known for years – Goldcorp’s operations in Guatemala and Honduras are not sustainable for communities, the environment, nor ultimately for responsible investors,” says Amanda Kistler, mining campaigner for the Center for International Environmental Law. A recent study of reclamation issues for Goldcorp’s Marlin mine in Guatemala found that the existing surety bond of $1 million USD would not even cover the cost to remove Goldcorp’s equipment and infrastructure at the mine. It further warned that Goldcorp’s non- public reclamation plan casts serious doubt on the intentions of the company to undertake this work. The study calculated that an estimated $49 million USD would be a more appropriate surety bond to ensure the mine site is properly cleaned up and maintained once the company leaves “Goldcorp ‘invests’ millions in advertising, painting itself as a marvelous, responsible, and ethica company,” says Magalí Rey Rosa director of ‘Savia’, the School of Ecologist Thought in Guatemala“But the Guatemalans who live in the area near the mine have learned the hard way that company propaganda doesn’t equate with reality, and now, thanks to the Marlin mine, they live in fear, with less water and more health problems."

Ivanhoe Philippines, Inc. has asked the Philippine Mines and Geosciences Bureau for a "withdrawal of the company's exploration permit applications (...) in Tablas Island." In a letter dated September 30, 2011, Ivanhoe cited"strong opposition of the local politicians" to its copper- gold prospects. According to Pearl Harder, member of a broad coalition that formed to oppose Ivanhoe's operations, "the politicians are only doing what we the people have asked them to do. We are opposed to metallic mining in the Province of Romblon because we know it will harm our environment and our livelihood from agriculture and tourism." Ivanhoe acknowledges strong local opposition saying the company will relocate its efforts to "communities responsive to exploration and mining." Arriving in Tablas the day after Ivanhoe's decision was made public on October 13, Catherine Coumans of MiningWatch Canada says, "I found a celebratory mood ..."

Canada's Valuable Water Is Not for Dumping Toxic Wastes It is illegal under the Fisheries Act to dump toxic material into fish- bearing waters. However, in 2002 the government amended the Act’s Metal Mining Effluent Regulation(MMER) to allow lakes and other freshwater bodies to be re-classified as “tailings impoundment areas,” thereby allowing mining companies to get around the genera prohibition

Source: Environmental Advocacy Centre - Panama (CIAM) This week, in a letter to the editor of Corporate Knights magazine, the Executive Director of the Panama's Environmental Advocacy Centre say that Toronto-based Inmet is using its inclusion on Corporate Knight's 2011 list of "Canada's Best 50 Corporate Citizens" as part of "a misleading public relations campaign." Although the award was purportedly designed to encourage Corporate Social Responsibility, he says that in this case, "[listing Inmet] has served to hinder best practices. It is my understanding that Corporate Knights' objective is to promote clean capitalism and to humanize the marketplace. As such, you may be interested to know that Toronto-based Inmet Mining, listed in your magazine as one of Canada's Best 50 Corporate Citizens, is behind a misleading public relations campaign in Panama. Using the slogan important to do it well)," the company is touting Corporate Knights' listing to galvanize public support for the development of a massive open-pit copper mine in a region of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor that includes primary rainforest. The company continues to gloss over the potentially devastating impacts of such a project. To carry out its plans, the company is seeking a Supreme Court injunction against the area's protected status. The area has been protected from further development since a study financed by the World Bank justified the need. In other words, rather than abide by strict environmental laws, Inmet Mining is seeking to overturn protections in order to advance its financial interests. If the proposed mine comes to fruition, an area roughly the size of 5,700 soccer fields would be cleared and an estimated 15.6 million cubic metres of waste would be generated. The mine would pollute the water quality of thousands of species of plants and animals, many of which are endemic to Panama and/or currently threatened with extinction. The mine site accumulates an average rainfall of five metres per year, and that amount is expected to increase over time due to climate change. A smaller open-pit mining project, near the proposed location for the Inmet Mining site, was unable to operate without contaminating the loca environment to an illegal degree. Thus, it is difficult to imagine how Inmet Mining's much larger project will be able to successfully avoid causing devastating environmental damage.

Goldman Sachs and Occupy Wall Street Square Off over a Credit Union Fundraiser October 24, 2011 The official invitation to the 25th anniversary dinner of the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union offered the oddest coupling since Felix Unger moved into Oscar Madison’s apartment at 1049 Park Avenue. Sponsoring the event was Goldman Sachs. Among the honorees was Occupy Wall Street. It came as a surprise to Goldman Sachs for sure, and Goldman quickly pulled its name as a sponsor and reneged on its commitment to put $5,000 toward the dinner. The contradiction is not unknown. Plenty of groups that advocate for tighter controls on the banks or stronger positions against bankers and mortgage brokers also solicit and accept grants from commercial lenders and investment banks. At what point does it become a problem? Clearly the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has targeted the enormous economic power of Wal Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, is a clear dividing line. Half of the sponsors, including Capital One, withdrew when they discovered the Occupy role at the dinner. Although the Goldman withdrawal, costing $5,000, was of concern to some, it apparently wasn’t disturbing enough to make the Credit Union ditch OWS. An Occupy participant named Pete Dutro thought Goldman’s withdrawal was understandable, commenting, “Do you blame them?” Goldman has been a longtime supporter of the financial education program of the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union, which oddly enough was the depository originally chosen by the Occupy Wall Street group for holding the money received from donations and fundraising, in part because they were searching for a bank not owned and controlled by Wall Street. Clearly OWS is making Wall Street nervous! And they just made it news by pulling their sponsorship.

where are all these $500k subprime houses? The ones I saw being sold off en masse (in Florida) were definitely low end.

Agreed. And Bob should also be grateful that being a Canadian isn't a popularity contest.

Some win big, some lose ... it's a huge ponzi scheme, a house of cards. And we've allowed it, rewarded. And we all have to work together to fix it. Pension funds will be supporting a huge bunch of us for the forseeable future. So what laws do we need ?

I see I erred and put one capital C where I was talking about the small c conservative mindset, above and below the border, which exists among neo-libs everywhere, and their 'charity' model of their own entitlement to bestow largesse on the deserving among the 'starving unwashed masses'.Lib v. Con aren't the only political choices, and clearly the 99%'rs are accomplishing much more by not limiting themselves to a party platform. As a political slut, I can work with anyone who will get something done. That's how it should work and how it does at best, And that's why we all have a health card.

They have lots of supporters and have collected over $400k in donations. They are looking for safe investments.

Some small banks went down, but Goldman Sachs made a bundle for shareholders on the hedge fund that counted on the mortgages failing, someeone got the houses and banks got balouts too. They made money three times on by letting the mortgages fail.And they got an industry award for it. No sympathy for banks ...

If we're going to have programs, make them universal. 'Means-testing' requires hugely expensive bureaucracies.Guaranteed annual income for everyone, you're done and no expensive bureaucracies.

Did I ever say I trusted any politicians? No. Specifically the opposite: Anyone who aspires to the system as it is, has a stake in the status quo. Neo-libs are everywhere. They're all on th G20 ordered 'austerity' bus.