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Noam Chomsky on the Wall Street protests


Dangerous Minds
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:17 UTC
noam chomsky

Noam Chomsky sends a "strong message of support" to the organizers of the Occupy Wall Street protests:
"Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street - financial institutions generally - has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world). And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power. That has set in motion a vicious cycle that has concentrated immense wealth, and with it political power, in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1%, while the rest increasingly become what is sometimes called "a precariat" - seeking to survive in a precarious existence. They also carry out these ugly activities with almost complete impunity - not only too big to fail, but also "too big to jail."

The courageous and honorable protests underway in Wall Street should serve to bring this calamity to public attention, and to lead to dedicated efforts to overcome it and set the society on a more healthy course."
Professor Chomsky, along with John Pilger, Michael Albert, Johann Hari and Robert McChesney. will be appearing at the Rebellious Media conference in London on October 8th and 9th. Tickets can be purchased at www.radicalmediaconference.org
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Vader

He was 14 years, 6 months and 5 days old - and the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th Century

dcgirl0067
Flickr.com
Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:08 UTC
George Junius Stinney, Jr.
© South Carolina Department of Archives and HistoryGeorge Junius Stinney, Jr.

George Junius Stinney, Jr.,

[b. 1929 - d. 1944]

In a South Carolina prison sixty-six years ago, guards walked a 14-year-old boy, bible tucked under his arm, to the electric chair. At 5' 1" and 95 pounds, the straps didn't fit, and an electrode was too big for his leg.

The switch was pulled and the adult sized death mask fell from George Stinney's face. Tears streamed from his eyes. Witnesses recoiled in horror as they watched the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century die.

Now, a community activist is fighting to clear Stinney's name, saying the young boy couldn't have killed two girls. George Frierson, a school board member and textile inspector, believes Stinney's confession was coerced, and that his execution was just another injustice blacks suffered in Southern courtrooms in the first half of the 1900s.
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Vader

US: Brutal Bank Crackdown But Crooks Go Free

David Weidner,
Market Watch
Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:27 UTC
occupy wall strett
© ReutersProtesters march up Wall Street past the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

Protesters had been swarming Wall Street and Lower Manhattan for a week.There were at least six arrests the first day Occupy Wall Street camped out and chanted near the New York Stock Exchange. There were dozens more by the weekend.

By Saturday, the hundreds of protesters appeared to have lit a fuse with New York City police. There were rough arrests that bordered on brutality. Pepper spray brought tears and pain. Watch YouTube video of female protesters penned and pepper sprayed .

And to a nation's shock, not one of the police targets was a banker.
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Che Guevara

US: Virginia - "Not On Our Faultline" group protests nuke plant outside Dominion Headquarters


Forbes.com / Associated Press
Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:16 UTC
Image
© The Free Lance-StarDominion's North Anna Power Station in Louisa County, Va.
Richmond - A group of residents from Louisa County is demanding that Dominion Resources Inc. ensure its North Anna nuclear power plant is safe from past and future earthquakes.

About 20 people from the group Not On Our Fault Line protested Tuesday outside Dominion's Richmond headquarters. They chanted and held signs reading "Shut Down or Meltdown," as Dominion employees went out for their lunch breaks.

The group says the Aug. 23 earthquake that shut down the plant brought attention to the danger of another event in the area. They are asking Dominion to retrofit the two reactors at the plant to higher earthquake safety standards. It also is asking for the company to inspect underground pipes at the nuclear facility to make sure they aren't leaking into the ground or drinking water.

"What we're afraid of is that Dominion is putting profits over the safety of the area," said Paxus Calta, a resident of Louisa County for 13 years. "This earthquake is a big wakeup call to us."
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Nuke

US: Virginia - Dominion's nuclear plants have shut down more often than average in the last two years


Richmond Times-Dispatch
Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:21 UTC
In the past two years, Dominion Virginia Power's four nuclear power reactors experienced 12 unplanned shutdowns.

Then, the Aug. 23 earthquake in Louisa County forced two more shutdowns at the North Anna Power Station.

"That's too many trips for us," said David A. Heacock, president and chief nuclear officer of Dominion Nuclear. "And we're going to ensure it's not going to continue."

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Light Sabers

French Socialists (puppets on the left) seize Senate in blow to Sarkozy (puppet on the right)


The Guardian
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:22 UTC
Image
President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative party loses its majority in upper house for the first time in more than 50 years

France's left wrested the Senate from the right in indirect elections on Sunday, taking the majority of seats in the upper house of parliament for the first time in more than 50 years - a blow to conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Seven months before presidential elections, Sarkozy's party downplayed what it said was a narrow win - up to three seats, according to officials from the president's party.

The minister for parliamentary relations, Patrick Ollier, said the results had "no national political significance". Final results of the voting to fill half the seats in the 348-seat house were not in, but the Socialist party leader in the Senate announced the victory.

"This is a day that will mark history," Jean-Pierre Bel, head of the Senate's Socialist party, said.
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Vader

Anonymous Leaks Personal Details of Cop Who Pepper-Sprayed Wall Street Protesters


Gawker
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:28 UTC

Anonymous is on the hunt for the cop featured in a video pepper-spraying Occupy Wall Street protesters for no apparent reason. They say they've found him, and are circulating a document with his and his family's personal information. This could get ugly.

According to a document posted on Pastebin.com, the cop who blasted young women in the face with pepper spray in the now-iconic video above is NYPD Captain Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. Bologna was identified as the pepper-sprayer by a photographer who witnessed the incident and posted a blown-up image of his badge to his blog.

The Pastebin document, which has about 7,000 views at this writing contains Bologna's name and possible phone numbers and addresses, along with a list of potential family member names. It reads:
You know who the innocent women were, now they will have the chance to know who you are. Before you commit atrocities against innocent people, think twice. We Are Watching!!! Expect Us!

Comment: Named and shamed! The above-linked PasteBin file says that a case was brought against him for a Civil Rights infringement on August 27, 2007. Here is a photo of this brute:

Image
Deputy Inspector Anthony V. Bologna is the commanding officer of the First Precinct, which covers Lower Manhattan, Soho, Hudson Sq. and the South Village. If you see this man, please report him to the poli... oh wait. No, don't do that! just stay well away from him and spread this info far and wide!


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X

Flashback L'Oréal: 'because we're racist'

irishherault
The Evening Herault
Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:50 UTC
l'oreal racist
Sometimes you can pick up a new bit of French language, slang and so on from the unlikeliest of places.

The latest bit we've come across is "BBR". It's short for "bleu, blanc, rouge", the colours of the French flag.

Apparently BBR is also widely used in the French recruitment world, as another kind of shorthand: it stands for white French people, born to white French parents. BBR, through and through.

Last week L'Oréal failed to reverse a 2007 court decision that it was guilty of racial discrimination when recruiting women to sell its shampoos in supermarkets outside Paris.
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Black Cat

Flashback France: L'Oréal profited from victims of Nazis, court told

Amelia Gentleman
The Guardian
Wed, 13 Oct 2004 12:41 UTC
nazi l'oreal
The French cosmetics company L'Oréal profited from a house which had been confiscated from its Jewish owners when they were sent to their death in concentration camps during the second world war, it was claimed in the appeal court in Paris yesterday.

Edith Rosenfelder, the sole survivor, now 76, has embarked on a long legal battle for compensation from the company, which had its German headquarters on the site of her childhood home for more than 30 years.

The case is complicated by years of confusion, worsened by the frequent sale and resale of the property, but the family claims that L'Oréal is guilty of receiving stolen goods.

"L'Oréal know that the property was confiscated, and they know that the owners are still alive, Mrs Rosenfelder's daughter Monica Waitzfelder said.
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Book

Book Review: Ugly Beauty - Glamour Goes to War

Caroline Weber
The New York Times
Fri, 04 Feb 2011 12:26 UTC
Helena Rubinstein
© Helena Rubinstein FoundationHelena Rubinstein promoted herself as a "beauty scientist."
In 1835, the French novelist Honoré de Balzac observed that "the secret of great fortunes . . . is a forgotten crime." Recast in the English-speaking world as "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime," this truism aptly describes the central conceit of Ruth Brandon's Ugly Beauty. Reconstructing the lives of two self-made beauty tycoons - Helena Rubinstein, the creator of the cosmetics brand, who died in 1965; and Eugène Schueller, the founder of the corporate behemoth L'Oréal, who died in 1957 - Brandon zeroes in on a crime that, in her view, places them in a "potentially lethal opposition" to each other.

The crime in question is Schueller's collaborationist activity during the Nazi occupation of his native France during World War II, activity that books like Monica Waitz­felder's L'Oréal Took My Home: The Secrets of a Theft and Michael Bar-Zohar's Bitter Scent: The Case of L'Oréal, Nazis, and the Arab Boycott have already treated in some detail. But for Brandon, whose previous works include Singer and the Sewing Machine: A Capitalist Romance and Automobile: How the Car Changed Life, the fascist dealings of L'Oréal's chief merit additional exploration because the Polish-born Rubinstein "was a Jew," and because, "in 1988, Schueller's business swallowed Rubinstein's." From this confluence of factors, Brandon tries to produce evidence of a drawn-out, high-drama "standoff between Helena Rubinstein and Eugène Schueller."
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