RT News: OWS Movement just the Beginning?

For many the "national day of action" was a success. Demonstraters all over the country marched in retaliation against Occupy movement crackdowns and to show the power of the massive protest. The movement which is two months old has many wondering how long can the protesters keep it up. Is this just the beginning of the movement? Jesse LaGreca, Occupy Wall Street activist, gives his thoughts and helps us answer the question.

Corporate America Is Using the Police Departments As Hired Thugs - Ret Police Captain Ray Lewis

All of which is reminiscent of:

Document Trove Exposes Surveillance Methods

Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents, spanning 36 companies, include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people's computers and cellphones, and "massive intercept" gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country. The papers were obtained from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near Washington, D.C., last month.

Intelligence agencies in the U.S. and abroad have long conducted their own surveillance. But in recent years, a retail market for surveillance tools has sprung up from "nearly zero" in 2001 to about $5 billion a year, said Jerry Lucas, president of TeleStrategies Inc., the show's operator.

Critics say the market represents a new sort of arms trade supplying Western governments and repressive nations alike. "The Arab Spring countries all had more sophisticated surveillance capabilities than I would have guessed," said Andrew McLaughlin, who recently left his post as deputy chief technology officer in the White House, referring to the Middle Eastern and African nations racked by violent crackdowns on dissent.

The Journal this year uncovered an Internet surveillance center installed by a French firm in Libya and reported that software made by Britain's Gamma International UK Ltd., had been used in Egypt to intercept dissidents' Skype conversations. In October, a U.S. company that makes Internet-filtering gear acknowledged to the Journal that its devices were being used in Syria.

Companies making and selling this gear say it is intended to catch criminals and is available only to governments and law enforcement. They say they obey export laws and aren't responsible for how the tools are used.

Trade-show organizer Mr. Lucas added that his event isn't political. "We don't really get into asking, 'Is this in the public interest?'" he said.

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The US Security Complex: Too Big To Fail

Think of Iraq as the AIG of wars - the only difference being that the bailout there didn't involve just three payouts. More than eight years after the Bush administration invaded that country, the bailout is, unbelievably enough, still going. Even as the US military withdraws, the State Department is planning to spend billions more in taxpayer dollars to field an army of hired-gun contractors to replace it. Afghanistan? It could have been the Lehman Brothers of conflicts, but when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office he chose the Citigroup model instead, and surged troops in twice in 2009. In other words, he double-TARPed that war, and ever since, the bailout money has been flooding in.

Until now - as the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations make clear - "too big to fail" has meant only one set of institutions: the plundering financial outfits that played such a role in driving the US economy off a cliff in 2008, looked like they might themselves collapse in a heap of bad deals and indebtedness, and were bailed out by Washington. Isn't it finally time to expand the too-big-to-fail category to include the Pentagon, the US Intelligence Community, and more generally the National Security Complex?

There is, of course, one major difference between those bailed-out financial institutions and the Complex: however powerful the banks may be, however much money financial outfits and Wall Street sink into K-Street lobbyists and the election campaigns of politicians, however much influence the US Chamber of Commerce may wield, when too-big-to-fail financial institutions totter, they have to come to the federal government hat (and future bonuses) in hand.

For the Pentagon and the National Security Complex, it's quite another matter. These days it's only a slight exaggeration to claim that they are Washington and that their very size, influence, and power protects them from the consequences of failure.
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Occupiers begin ‘to build a new democracy’

What the movement largely rejects is any proposal that would have us turn our backs on what we have already accomplished, and “return to the fold” of the old, shallow democracy of corporate-controlled politicians. We have seen what we can build together, without the need of politicians and bureaucrats, or their corporate masters behind the scenes: a democracy in the original sense — the self-governance of the people. We see, now, that we can begin finally to take charge directly over our own communities.

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