Regime

View documents released by Anonymous here: http://pastebin.com/67P3vMJB

Internet group Anonymous has leaked information from October and November 2011 suggesting that private intelligence firm STRATFOR has been working with Texas law enforcement to infiltrate the Occupy movement and spy on the Deep Green Resistance movement.

In December 2011, Anonymous attacked the STRATFOR website, allegedly stealing 200 gigabytes of data and shutting the site down for weeks. This isn’t the first time Anonymous has gone after such corporations. In early 2011, Anonymous went after internet security firm HBGary, releasing private documents that included secret plans by HBGary and others to attack and discredit Wikileaks on behalf of big banks.

Makes one wonder about the supposedly "smart" people who intentionally pander to idiots like this.

By Stephanie Pappas

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

Controversy ahead

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

by George Lakey

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”

Tactical Briefing #25: Showdown in Chicago

Hey you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there.

And so will we.

On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month. With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen.

For some reason. Daniels did not bring up his promotion of "right to work" legislation in his lame effort to convince American workers that the Republicans are doing anything except grinding them under the heels of their jackboots...

by Andrew Fieldhouse

In issuing the Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union address, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels had the audacity to present himself as a fiscal conservative and lecture President Obama on economic policy. Daniels presenting himself as a fiscal conservative is farcical: The tax cuts he pushed through for President George W. Bush as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are responsible for roughly half of today’s structural budget deficit and half the public debt accumulated last decade. And as expensive as they were, those tax cuts failed to spur even mediocre job growth; Daniels and Bush presided over the weakest economic expansion since World War II, leaving Daniels with a dismal legacy as an economic policymaker.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 24, 2012
12:22 PM

CONTACT: National Whistleblowers Center

Lindsey M. Williams (202) 342-1903
lmw@whistleblowers.org
Wall Street 'License to Steal' Bill Gains Momentum
NWC Launches National Campaign to Stop Grimm Act

WASHINGTON - January 24 - Today, the National Whistleblowers Center launched a national campaign against the Grimm Act (H.R. 2483). The bill, sponsored by Rep. Michael Grimm [R-NY13], systematically rolls back every whistleblower provision included in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. It has passed the initial mark-up and is poised for full approval.

The NWC has called upon its grassroots network to oppose the bill, calling it an act of war on whistleblowers. The NWC objects to the following measures of the bill, which systematically dismantle the current, effective whistleblower process from beginning to end:

by David Macaray

We’re being tested. Republican politicians and pundits are busy testing the American public, trying to assess how ignorant and distracted we are. While they already have a pretty good idea, they’re determined to get a precise reading. Testing is vitally important to these people because, if the United States is to be turned into a plutocracy, our collective ignorance is an absolute necessity.

Republicans are aware that most of us don’t pay attention to stuff like history, government, and public policy. They’re aware that basic facts and principles tend to elude us. Some of that stuff is trivial, some isn’t. Many don’t know that the population of the U.S. is almost 312 million, or that we have 535 congressmen and senators, or that women weren’t allowed to vote until 1920, or that state legislatures, rather than citizens, chose our U.S. senators until 1913 (with passage of the 17th amendment). Some of this stuff is trivial, some isn’t.

by David Morris

The destruction of the Post Office has moved into a higher gear. Last year 3600 communities were put on notice that they will likely lose their local post office. “We will start to see post offices closing at the rate of a hundred a week,” predicts Steve Hutkins whose Save the Post Office is by far the single best source of information on all things post office. “They've been closing at a rate of one hundred a year for the past 40 years.”

The Postmaster General promises to close half the country's 32,000 post offices over the next four years. He will be closing more than half the nation’s 487 mail processing centers even more rapidly.

The high handedness with which the post office is undermining our communities infuriates growing numbers. Speaking for many, one lady in Lodi, Texas writes, “It appears that the USPS has set these closing procedures on autopilot and there is really nothing anyone can do to stop them…They don’t actually ‘study’ a post office for closure; they target it for closure and then proceed to process it. There is NO careful consideration made.”

by John Nichols & Robert McChesney

We have seen the future of electoral politics flashing across the screens of local TV stations from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina. Despite all the excitement about Facebook and Twitter, the critical election battles of 2012 and for some time to come will be fought in the commercial breaks on local network affiliates. This year, according to a fresh report to investors from Needham and Company’s industry analysts, television stations will reap as much as $5 billion—up from $2.8 billion in 2008—from a money-and-media election complex that plays a definitional role in our political discourse. As Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod says, the cacophony of broadcast commercials remains “the nuclear weapon” of American politics.

We’ve known for some time that the pattern, extent and impact of political advertising would be transformed and supercharged by the Supreme Court’s January 2010 Citizens United ruling. But the changes, even at this early stage of the 2012 campaign, have proven to be more dramatic and unsettling than all but the most fretful analysts had imagined.

by Mark Weisbrot

The U.S. recession officially ended in June of 2009, but most Americans don’t feel like we are in a recovery. That’s because it’s been a weak recovery, with the size of the economy barely bigger today than it was four years ago, when the recession started.

Since America is a rich country, it is not growth itself that matters most but employment and, of course, the distribution of income. And the employment numbers are just terrible.

The simplest measure is the percentage of the working-age population that is employed. That peaked at 63.4 percent in December 2006. It plummeted to a low of 58.2 percent last July and is hardly different now – 58.5 percent in the latest figures.

What this means is that we need about 10 million jobs to get back to full employment. There was a lot of happy talk earlier this month when the December job numbers were released. They showed 200,000 payroll jobs added in December, and the unemployment rate falling to 8.5 percent. Adding even 200,000 jobs a month is not very good for an economy that needs at least 90,000-100,000 jobs a month just to keep up with the growth of the working-age population.