The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City more than three weeks ago have now spread across the country. The choice of Wall Street as the focal point for the protests - as even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said - makes sense due to the big bank malfeasance that led to the Great Recession.

While the Dodd-Frank financial reform law did a lot to ensure that a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis won't occur - through regulation of derivatives, a new consumer protection agency, and new powers for the government to dismantle failing banks - the biggest banks still have a firm grip on the financial system, even more so than before the 2008 financial crisis. Here are eleven facts that you need to know about the nation's biggest banks:

Since the 1990s, there have been several legal entities created in France that are supported by the government whose sole purpose is to mandate what people can think and believe. These organizations have the capability (expressly designed into them) of bypassing and/or superseding any rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. These French organizations, for instance MIVILUDES, are essentially full-spectrum Fascism created and run by psychopaths and their Authoritarian Followers. Anybody who is discovered to have the slightest tendency to adopt alternative views is seemingly a danger because they are undoubtedly going to turn into an "apocalyptic cult" at any moment! The examples of the mass suicides of the People's Temple, the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate are trotted out at the beginning of the 2010 MIVILUDES report, thereby making the label "cult" as scary as "Muslim Terrorist". (Never mind that those events were CIA PsyOps designed as a sort of '9-11' against non-mainstream thinking, the way 9-11 was designed to initiate the War on Terror. For more information check our recent SoTT focus articles.)

Particularly targeted by these organizations are any and all individuals or groups which advocate practices such as alternative medicine (including nutritional approaches to getting and staying healthy), non-mainstream cancer therapies, yoga, meditation and other stress-relieving techniques, especially if such discussions include scientific support. Additionally targeted are any individuals who discuss 'conspiracy theories' (especially about 9-11, but also including economic collapse and NWO topics), UFOs/aliens, psychology other than Freudianism (especially if such discussions include cutting edge scientific support; Jungian psychology is especially targeted), Earth Changes and cometary bombardments (especially if it includes scientific support), increasing earthquake and volcanic activity (especially if it includes scientific support) and more. All of these activities, or even thoughts about these activities, will get you labeled as a cult or a follower of a cult and subject to some pretty frightening procedures designed to "help" you reorganize your thinking more in line with what is accepted by the mainstream authorities such as the American Medical Association (AMA), Big Pharma, Big-Agri, NASA and certainly the CIA. Anything that is not handed down from those authorities is labeled "pseudo-science", no matter how credible the scientist or how accurate the research. In short, it is as much a war against real science - as opposed to the corrupt science that has dominated the world for the past 100 years and is used to support wars more than anything else - as it is against religious beliefs. Moreover, if you are researching religions (Bible scholars beware!), mysticism, ancient wisdom and alternative history, you are also a cult. And if you have no apparent cultic beliefs, it's just a ruse; you are just trying to appear like a researcher to lure people in, waiting to turn into an apocalyptic cult at any moment. The whole approach is reminiscent of the Bush gang's claims about WMDs vis-a-vis Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and I think you all realize what that kind of rhetoric led to.

The 2010 MIVILUDES report tells us:

The fact of offering people the possibility to search for mysticism, wisdom and a forgotten ideal world, all the while assuring them of happiness, can be an extremely efficient bait.

There exists as well the risk that current social topics may be used (such as ecological aspirations) in order to play on people's anguish and anxiety such as: frustration concerning the meaning of life, solitude, the pervasive anonymity and isolation, the lack of interpersonal communication and social acceptance, the need for the religious and the sacred in one's life, refusal of a crushing social way of life.

By feeding into this environment of social anxiety via the use of references to pseudo-scientific elements, even those which have not been verified, in reality these beliefs are a tool that promotes collective fear, with the purpose of exerting more power over people and, in extreme cases, this can possibly lead to a vital risk [risk of mass suicide!] for the members of the group, or to questioning mainstream society through more or less violent actions.

I think that the perceptive reader can see what this organization is set up for and what it is they are really afraid of: they are afraid of people waking up and recognizing that the lunatics have taken over the asylum! It is clear to any normal person with empathy that the authors of this report are inquisitors set up to defend the status quo of the rule of a pathological elite who are not fit to rule as evidenced by their psychopathic behavior and intolerance towards anything truly human and who are able (and have been able) to get away with the most outrageous human rights violations in modern day France.

Did you know that alternative medicine and homeopathy are labeled as cults in France? People have gone to jail and have had their children taken away from them for giving alternative treatments to their children even when they were told in advance by their doctors that the child's case was terminal and they would die even with the mainstream treatments (chemotherapy and radiation?!). The parents were destroyed for seeking something, anything, that might save the life of their child or, at least, not subject them to the horrors of modern cancer treatments. (See Maître Jean-Marc Florand, avocat de monsieur et madame de M, in French.)

Laws enacting restrictions on supplements and herbs is not all there is to it. At this rate of things going really south so quickly, you - the reader - will probably be experiencing first hand, in the near future, what we here at QFG/SOTT have been going through! This is not just about us; it is about what we have discovered as a result of our inquiry into the conditions that can support a jilted lunatic in denouncing as a cult a group of researchers who engage in lawful scientific research and publish it for the public to assess on its own merits, for free.

Billionaire investor George Soros lost a challenge to his 2002 insider trading conviction, with the European Court of Human Rights saying French market regulations were clear enough to hold him responsible.

France didn't violate Soros's rights in punishing him criminally for trading on inside information about Societe Generale SA in spite of the market regulator's conclusion that its rules were unclear, the Strasbourg, France-based court said.

"Soros was a famous institutional investor, well-known to the business community and a participant in major financial projects," the court said in a statement about its ruling. "As a result of his status and experience, he could not have been unaware that his decision to invest" risked violating insider- trading laws, and given "there had been no comparable precedent, he should have been particularly prudent."

Soros, 81, was convicted in 2002 of insider trading and ordered to repay 2.2 million euros ($2.9 million) he'd made from the share purchase and subsequent sale after a Paris court found he'd acted with the knowledge that the bank might be a takeover target. While prosecutors filed criminal charges, French stock market regulators didn't pursue Soros, saying insider-trading laws were too vague to determine whether he'd broken them.

Wall Street and London hedge fund tycoon George Soros sent a signal to his minions and infiltrators when he stated that he sympathized with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Soros's statement dovetailed with David Plouffe, President Obama's Senior Adviser, making contact with certain newly-minted "leaders" of the "Occupy" movement across the United States to ensure that they are as politically-manipulated by the White House as a vast majority of "Tea Party" members have been manipulated by senior Republican Party officials and the billionaire Koch Brothers.

Essentially, Soros and the Koch Brothers have ensured that the anti-corporate state movement in the United States, represented by the Democratic and Republican parties, remains split between artificially-created "left" and "right" camps and fractures into even
smaller competing blocs within the two major camps.

The "divide and conquer" strategy is frustrating real attempts to mobilize the American people against Wall Street and lobbyist-occupied Washington.

The globalist are in the stage of desperation being between a rock and a hard place. They can back off and allow the economy to recover. They will not get their New World Order in the time they want. The other risk they run backing off is these oligarchs might be arrested and tried. The whole fiat money scam will be exposed forever shutting down the Federal Reserve Bank. Their Front man President Obama is running out of choices. He has tried to send out the Government Union Thugs SEIU to beat up Tea Party protesters at Town hall meetings to intimidate the opposition. There has been mass protesters and agent provocateurs have been neutralized. The sale of firearms and ammunition have shot through the roof. Obama's attempts on gun control are failing. Operation Fast and Furious with the Sylindra scandal can bring down the Obama regime before election day. Some people are seeing the urgency to remove President Obama from office by the impeachment process before the 2012 election before he destroys the country.

The findings are a reminder of why now -- more than ever -- we must refuse to succumb to political apathy and laissez-faire demagoguery.

Like most people living through this jarring age of economic turbulence and political dysfunction, you can probably recall a moment in the last few months when you thought to yourself that our lawmakers and corporate leaders are all crazy. And not just run-of-the-mill crazy, a la George Costanza's parents, but the kind of crazy that makes films like "Silence of the Lambs" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" so frightening.

The good news for you is that you aren't insane for thinking this. The bad news for all of us, though, is that according to two new scientific analyses, you are more correct in your assessment than you may know.

The first revelation came from Dr. Nassir Ghaemi of Tufts University. In his recent book, "A First-Rate Madness," he went beyond merely restating the old adage that anyone crazy enough to run for public office probably shouldn't occupy that office. Instead, the book sheds light on what Ghaemi calls an "inverse law of sanity," whereby tumultuous times like these actually reward and promote political figures who are "mentally abnormal (or) even ill."

In a secret meeting with German MPs, top NATO officials reportedly confirmed that over 10,000 missiles inside Libya are still completely unaccounted for,with Admiral Giampaolo di Paola saying that the missiles pose a "serious threat to civil aviation."

That's because among those missiles they still haven't found are over 5,000 SAM-7 shoulder-fired suface to air missiles, which could be easily used by any terrorist to shoot down aircraft.

Admiral Di Paola was said to have warned that the missiles could show up anywhere from Kenya to Kunduz (Afghanistan) while a Libyan general expressed concern that the arms had "fallen into the wrong hands."

Like most people living through this jarring age of economic turbulence and political dysfunction, you can probably recall a moment in the last few months when you thought to yourself that our lawmakers and corporate leaders are all crazy. And not just run-of-the-mill crazy, a la George Costanza's parents, but the kind of crazy that makes films like Silence of the Lambs and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest so frightening.

The good news for you is that you aren't insane for thinking this. The bad news for all of us, though, is that according to two new scientific analyses, you are more correct in your assessment than you may know.

I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a k a "the human microphone"), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.

I love you.

And I didn't just say that so that hundreds of you would shout "I love you" back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: "We found each other." That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can't be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

Islamabad - A Pakistani doctor accused of running a vaccination program for the CIA to help track down Osama bin Laden should be put on trial for high treason, a government commission said Thursday, a move likely to anger U.S. officials pushing for his release.

Dr. Shakil Afridi has been in the custody of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency since soon after the May 2 American raid that killed bin Laden.

The agency was humiliated and outraged by the covert American operation and is aggressively investigating the circumstances surrounding it.

Afridi's fate is a complicating issue in relations between the CIA and the ISI that were strained to the breaking point by the bin Laden raid.