May is Move Our Money Month.
Bank Local! http://fthebanks.org

Will we continue down the path to less freedom, less free time, and more stress. More bills, more greed, environmental destruction. Will we allow the 1% to get away with destroying communities and controlling the government? Or will we say no more. We are the 99% and we will no longer tolerate the greed and rule of the 1%. Our actions determine the direction we go. Lets organize.

Let's move our money out of their criminal too big to fail banks.

Shot by Andrew Stern and Jeremy Baron of Starr Street Studios.

There have been at least 40 alleged members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous arrested during the past year. In an interview with the National Post, one of the group's last remaining leaders tips us off to the group's next planned action.

Christopher Doyon, aka "Commander X," whose name is public because he's been indicted for hacking a California county government website after government officials forcibly removed a homeless encampment from courthouse steps. Doyon faces 15 years in prison for that action. For the interview, he met with a reporter and photographer from the Post in Canada where he is a now a fugitive from the FBI.

At the end of the interview, Doyon makes a whopper of a claim, make of it what you will:

Q. What’s next for Anonymous?
A: Right now we have access to every classified database in the U.S. government. It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems.

Every classified database is a bit of a stretch for me to wrap my brain around. I can't even begin to imagine how many such databases our nation uses. But remember that Bradley Manning released a few hundred thousand emails from just one such database.

The five-star general (and) the Secretary of Defence who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don’t run anything anymore. It’s the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game, and Bradley Manning proved that. The fact he had the 250,000 cables that were released effectively cut the power of the U.S. State Department in half. The Afghan war diaries and the Iran war diaries effectively cut the political clout of the U.S. Department of Defence in half. All because of one guy who had enough balls to slip a CD in an envelope and mail it to somebody.

Now people are leaking to Anonymous and they’re not coming to us with this document or that document or a CD, they’re coming to us with keys to the kingdom, they’re giving us the passwords and usernames to whole secure databases that we now have free reign over. … The world needs to be concerned.

Now this claim, that the Anons next action could be the result of an inside job is quite plausible, and again, recall Bradley Manning. As we saw with Manning's Cablegate, just that one database created quite the stir for the U.S. government. Even with the "keys" to but a few of these databases would make Anonymous quite the force to be reckoned with, despite their diminished membership.

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, May 15th, 2012. Jamie Dimon faces his shareholders today. Oh, to be a fly on that boardroom wall!

Throughout human history, seeds have been treated as a common human inheritance. This sacred and vital means of survival and biodiversity, however, is today being systematically eradicated and privatized. Massive agro-chemical companies like Monsanto (Agent Orange) and Dow (Napalm) are feeding us genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that have never been fully tested and aren't labeled in the United States, where they grow on over 70% of our farmland. This small handful of corporations is tightening their grip on the world's food supply—buying, modifying, and patenting seeds to ensure total control over everything we eat. Today in the United States, by the simple act of feeding ourselves, we are unwittingly participating in the largest experiment ever conducted on human beings. We are the oblivious guinea pigs for the large-scale experimentation of modern biotechnology.

“Control the food, and you control the people.” - Henry Kissinger

This film by Jeremy Seifert demonstrates how little Americans truly know about the food they eat and the companies that alter it.

Today in the United States, by the simple act of feeding ourselves, we unwittingly participate in the largest experiment ever conducted on human beings. Massive agro-chemical companies like Monsanto (Agent Orange) and Dow (Napalm) are feeding us genetically-modified food, GMO’s, that have never been fully tested and aren't labeled. This small handful of corporations are tightening their grip on the world’s food supply—buying, modifying, and patenting seeds to ensure total control over everything we eat.

The GMO Film Project (Untitled) tells the story of a father’s discovery of GMO’s through the symbolic act of poor Haitian farmers burning seeds in defiance of Monsanto’s gift of 475 tons of hybrid corn and vegetable seeds to Haiti shortly after the devastating earthquake. After a journey to Haiti to learn why hungry farmers would burn seeds, the real awakening of what has happened to our food, what we are feeding our families, and what is at stake for the global food supply unfolds in a trip across the United States in search of answers.

Are we at a tipping point? Is it time to take back our food? The encroaching darkness of unknown health and environmental risks, seed take over, chemical toxins, and food monopoly meets with the light of a growing resistance of organic farmers, concerned citizens, and a burgeoning movement to take back what we have lost.

We still have time to heal the planet, feed the world, and live sustainably. But we have to start now.

A film by Compeller Pictures
gmofilm.com

Directed by Jeremy Seifert
Produced by Joshua Kunau
Co-Producer, Elizabeth Kucinich
Associate Producer, Timothy Vatterott
Cinematographer, Rod Hassler

Filmmaker Bianca Smith captures Occupy Los Angeles as they come from the north, south, east and west to converge into a Workers' Day celebration. "We are babysitters, nannies, we're gardeners, janitors, security guards," a woman shouts at a union rally. "We're all kinds of workers, and we demand respect!"

Marchers also share their visions of a more just world. "My version of a perfect society would be someplace where everyone has an equal opportunity to live up to their potential," a young man says. "I think that's the ideal place to live in."

Smith explains, "We had been anticipating for the May 1 General Strike (M1GS) for several weeks. Once the date got closer we held a couple meetings to talk about how we could cover all bases throughout the day. We knew that M1GS planned to flood the city in four "winds" (north, south, east, west) until the marches and caravans converged in Downtown LA. We created a camera team for each wind, composed solely of film students from The Los Angeles Film School, and we interviewed the likes of every culture and walk of life we could. Los Angeles is a city full of diversity and we wanted to capture that. There are a multitude of different types of people with a multitude of issues at hand to be dealt with. We wanted to convey the spirit of people, and I think we're all very happy with the results. This is a beautiful movement with real momentum, and I believe the medium of film and internet can play a very important role in that.

From Jasiri X:

I was in Madison, Wisconsin when the citizens took over the statehouse and it was one of the most amazing events I've witnessed. I saw firsthand the power of regular people coming together in unity to fight back against corrupt politicians and corporate influence. I'm honored to add my voice to this historic campaign to recall Scott Walker and rebuild Wisconsin.

"You're Fired" was directed by Paradise Gray and stars Silas Russell as "Scott Walker"

LYRICS
Yeah, it's time for a Recall
Untied we stand divided we fall
We tired of being treated like we small
You forgot you work for us and we the boss

So let's tell Scott Walker you're fired
Go clean out ya desk cause you're fired
Cash that last check cause you're fired
You don't wanna show us respect now you're fired

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (725)

PLAYS: (11226)

Embed

Peter joins the Tea Party to get rid of the annoying government, only to find the "grassroots" organization run by his billionaire father-in-law Carter Pewterschmidt for his own evil ends. (SPOILER ALERT: After dispensing with their local government --and the ensuing chaos which results from that-- the residents of Quahog invent a new system which looks strangely familiar to their old one.)

DOWNLOADS: (314)

PLAYS: (1002)

Embed

As Steve Benen noted, on the heels of the $2 billion loss by JPMorgan Chase, here was the RNC Chairman Reince Priebus' reaction on Meet the Press this Sunday -- RNC Chief: Leave Wall Street alone:

JPMorgan's reckless, $2 billion fiasco appears to have a silver lining of sorts: the bank's bad bets help demonstrate the need for safeguards in the system. In his new column, Paul Krugman thanks JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon for offering "an object demonstration of why Wall Street does, in fact, need to be regulated."

And yet, somehow, some still don't see it that way. On NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus, common sense be damned, argued that the JPMorgan mess changes nothing.

Host David Gregory asked a straightforward question: "In light of the losses on Wall Street this week, you think we need less financial regulation rather than more?" In Preibus' mind, it's not even a close call: "I think we need less." The RNC chief added that Democrats have "made things worse" by approving new safeguards and adding new layers of accountability to the financial system.

It reminded me of an Upton Sinclair line: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

This really isn't that complicated. In 2008, Wall Street, left to its own devises, nearly collapsed the global financial system. Four years later, institutions like JPMorgan are still taking enormous risks in reckless schemes. It's hard to even conceive of a straight-face argument against sensible regulations in light of recent developments, but the chairman of the Republican National Committee was on national television anyway, arguing that policymakers should be doing less. Read on...

As Steve pointed out, this is Mitt Romney's position as well and they're counting on the public hating regulation as much or more than they hate Wall Street. That's the talking point they've been hammering home regardless of how reckless Wall Street and the bankers have been in the aftermath of the crash and ever since President Obama took office, so I don't expect them to change now. Forget about the fact that Wall Street took our economy down, regulations are terrible. I suspect our media doing a terrible job of explaining why their views are wrong and why we ought to keep the gambling separate from the banking industry has a lot to do with why Republicans have not suffered more greatly when it comes to public opinion on the matter. Interviews like this one with David Gregory sure aren't helping any.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

Concerned citizens and members of FtheBanks.org deliver a letter to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on May 4th, demanding that he hold a public hearing regarding the federal bank fraud investigation he co-chairs. The NYPD arrive and naturally all are arrested.

[H/T to MountainMan23]

Moyers talks to RoseAnn DeMoro, who heads the largest registered nurses union in the country, and will lead a Chicago march protesting economic inequality on May 18th. DeMoro is championing the Robin Hood Tax, a small government levy the financial sector would pay on commercial transactions like stocks and bonds. The money generated, which some estimate could be as much as $350 billion annually, could be used for social programs and job creation, ultimately to people who, without a doubt, need it more than the banks do.

DeMoro and her organization, National Nurses United, have an inspiring history of defeating some of the toughest opponents in government and politics.

[Via BillMoyers.com]