Saturday MUST READS: Plutocratic Government Tries to Beat Down Occupy Wall Street and more! Nation of Change

» Do you have friends that would like this? Click here to share this edition with your contacts!













Saturday, 29 October 2011




Meeting Violence with Nonviolence: Why the Occupy Movement Will Succeed



Jake Olzen, Op-Ed: “Meet violence with nonviolence. Respond to police action and arrests with more civil disobedience and vigorous protest via the courts, petitions, sit-ins, and/or walk-outs. As the mainstream media tries to demonize the movement, do more outreach to labor, universities, churches and the ordinary citizens you now represent. As Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing without a struggle. It never has and it never will.’ And then finally – after that struggle – Occupy Wall Street will succeed.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Earth Prepares for 7 Billion Inhabitants



Vivian Po, News Report: “The world's population is expected to reach 7 billion on Monday, four years later than once predicted largely thanks to China's family planning policy, according to the country's top population experts. Population growth has rocketed. It took just 13 years for 1 billion more people to live on the planet, yet only at the dawn of the 19th century did a billion people first inhabit the Earth, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








People and Power - The Koch Brothers



Video Report: Al Jazeera English narrator: Money has always played a key role in American politics. But is it now distorting the democractic process? That is the charge made against Charles ...




READ | DISCUSS | SHARE









Online Interest in Occupy Wall Street Appears to Dwarf the Tea Party



Brian Walker, News Report: In a comparison of search traffic between queries related to Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements, Google’s “Politics & Elections Team” found that the former is searched for ~66% more often. Occupy Wall Street gained search traffic at a faster pace than the Tea Party did when it was started, including when searches for the Tea Party peaked. In order, the top three states who searched for terms related to Occupy Wall Street the: Vermont, Oregon, and New York, suggesting that the high number of searches were not just a local phenomenon.



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








America’s Other 87 Deficits



Stephen S.Roach, Op-Ed: “Washington has been seduced by the political economy of false prosperity. That seduction has encouraged America to squander its savings and live beyond its means for nearly two decades. Now the game is up. The ultimate test of any nation’s character is to look inside itself at moments of great challenge. Swept up in the blame game, the US is doing the opposite. And that could well be the greatest tragedy of all. After all, America’s 88 deficits did not arise of thin air.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Dispatches from the Field: Prisoners - America’s New Cash Crop



Cynthia Johnston, News Analysis: [L]obbyists for the corporate, for-profit prison industry have spent millions of dollars per year writing laws and implementing strategies to put people in prison for as long as possible. The harsher the policies and the longer the sentences, the more money flows into these corporations from the government. And nothing grows the prison population better than the War on Drugs -- a war funded by taxpayers, some of whom are later fed into the machine, including those you’ve met, and others you will meet, in these pages.



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Prime Time Conservative Players



Stephen Pitt, Illustration: Stephen Pitt is NationofChange's art director. Stephen is a southern California artist whose work focuses on matters political, social, and economic. In 2004 Stephen began drawing and painting political imagery to communicate his sincere displeasure with disturbing changes set in motion by ideologues acting in bad faith. With a background in figurative drawing and respect for color, Stephen traded the 6B pencil for a digital stylus and went to work. Published by the San Francisco Chronicle and Z Magazine, Stephen’s work has since been seen on Truthout and Firedoglake.



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








The Personal Ties That Bind



Christopher Hill, Op-Ed: “Several of America’s recent presidents have done well at establishing personal relationships with foreign leaders. It is difficult to imagine that George H.W. Bush could have assembled the Gulf War coalition without the personal relationships that he forged over many years prior to that crisis. And, when Iraq lurched through months of political uncertainty as a new government was formed in 2010, Vice President Joseph Biden was able to make an enormous contribution, owing to his six visits to the country during the preceding year.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Sallie Mae Locks Out Student Protesters



Lee Fang, News Report: “This afternoon, a group of about seventy-five students mobilized at the OccupyDC camp at McPherson Square to raise the issue of crushing student debt. The average student, facing grim job prospects in the current economy, is graduating with at least $24,000 of debt. The students and recent graduates then marched several blocks through DC to the lobbying headquarters of student loan giant Sallie Mae.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Rick Perry and His Rivals Serve up Scare Tactics and Drivel



Ruth Marcus, Op-Ed: “The matter of Obama’s birth certificate should be a closed case. It is astonishing that a sitting governor, no less a serious candidate for president, would stoop to playing this game. Then again, 2012 is shaping up to be an astonishing campaign. Witness Herman Cain’s bizarre, substance-less new ad in which the candidate is endorsed by, yes, the candidate’s campaign manager. Who is actually smoking (literally) during the ad.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Save Our Schools - A Video Diary of Oakland’s Other Movement



Siraj Fowler, Video Diary: “A few weeks before Occupy Oakland moved into Frank Ogawa Plaza, the community of Lakeview Elementary School organized it's first action -- a march of students, parents, teachers and concerned community members to an Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) meeting. Videographer Siraj Fowler documented the multi-ethnic, intergenerational fight waged against the school closures and OUSD's eventual decision to close 5 schools.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Day 24: Live Coverage of October 2011 Protests in Freedom Plaza



Special Coverage: This month of October 2011 marks the eleventh year of our country’s longest war in Afghanistan and the onset of the 2012 US federal budget, which provides unlimited funds for war and corporate greed, while withholding funds for basic human needs. On October 6th, a protest assembled at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. with the goal of “nonviolently resisting the corporate machine by occupying Freedom Plaza to demand that America's resources be invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Charges Against Edwards Will Go Forward



Anne Blythe, News Report: “Edwards, 58, could be the first former presidential candidate brought to trial on accusations that he violated campaign finance laws by secretly obtaining and using contributions from two wealthy supporters to hide his mistress and her pregnancy from the public during his unsuccessful bid for president in 2008. Not only could the case highlight the campaign tactics of a former presidential candidate at a time when the two primary parties are trying to hone their messages in an important election year.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Day 41: Live Coverage of The Wall Street Occupation



Special Coverage: As we enter Day 41 of the Wall Street Occupation the movement we see how the movement has spread not only across the country but all over the globe. Thousands of activists have descended on Wall Street these past weeks as part of the #OccupyWallStreet protest organized by several action groups. What follows is a live video stream and live Twitter feed of this event.



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Plutocratic Government Tries to Beat Down Occupy Wall Street



Dave Johnson, Op-Ed: “In Oakland peaceful #Occupy demonstrators were camping out in front of city hall. The city launched a police raid to clear out the camp, using tear gas, flash-bank grenades, rubber bullets and beating people with batons. An Iraq war vet was hit in the head by either a rubber bullet or tear gas canister and critically injured. These days this is the typical government response to non-Tea-Party "protesters." Let's look at how the Occupiers and protests would be treated if we were a functioning democracy.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








GOP to Subpoena White House over Solyndra



Corbin Hiar, News Report: “The audit will be conducted by former Treasury official Herb Allison, who stepped down in September 2010 after overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program. A former investment banker, Allison has served on the boards of financial and educational institutions and contributed to both Republicans and Democrats over the years, according to federal contribution records in the CQ MoneyLine database. He was national finance chairman for John McCain’s 2000 campaign.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Speaking Up for That ‘1 Percent’



Joe Conason, Op-Ed: “Under a Ryan budget, infrastructure and education would not only continue to languish but starve. He also nodded toward ‘our safety net system,’ calling it ‘necessary, I believe, to help people who can’t themselves, to help people who are down on their luck get back onto their feet,’ without acknowledging that his budget would decimate that system entirely, depriving seniors of the benefits that have raised millions from poverty over the past half-century.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE








Drawing a Line in the Tar Sands?



Robert Mellinger, News Analysis: “Tar sands imports to the EU could be banned altogether after the EU Commission on Climate Change backed new greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards as part of the Fuel Quality Directive first adopted in 2009. Pursuant to the directive’s original goal of a 6 percent reduction of CO2 emissions from transport fuel production by 2020, the new standards set values for each fuel based on estimated grams of CO2 released per megajoule of energy produced.”



READ | DISCUSS | SHARE

















FROM AROUND THE WEB







Foreign Lobbying
DOJ Shows Sudden Interest in Undisclosed Foreign Lobbying
Justice Departments sudden fervor for enforcing Foreign Agents Registration Act leaves many questions.





Wal-Mart Lawsuit
Wal-Mart Sued in Texas for Gender Discrimination
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. discriminated against female employees in Texas stores in pay and promotion decisions, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday in Federal Court in Dallas.





Afghanistan War
13 Americans Killed in Afghan Bombing
A Taliban suicide bomber rammed a van into an armored NATO bus Saturday in Kabul, killing 13 American troops and four Afghans.





War on Terror
US Launches Drones from Ethiopia
Defence department says unarmed drones are being used to conduct missions over Somalia from a remote civilian airfield.






























NationofChange is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback please let us know.









NationofChange and the NationofChange logo are registered trademarks of NationofChange
NationofChange | 6319 Dante Ln NW, Albuquerque, NM 87114