Via OccupyWallStreet.net:

Date:
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 (All day)
Address:
Various Locations
New York New York 10016
United States

May Day 2013 is Almost Here!

Groups from around New York City are coming together this May Day to stand up for worker rights and immigrant rights, and fight back against the 1%. Join labor unions, the May 1st Coalition, immigrant rights groups, Occupy Wall Street and student groups as we come together and say Another World Is Possible!

See complete info at: http://maydaynyc.org/

Schedule of the Day: Tentative

9:00am – Action at Goldman Sachs & other banks.
10am-3pm – Free University – Cooper Union
11am-2pm – Immigrant worker justice march in midtown.
12-3pm – Rally and march to Save the Public Post Office. Route TBA.
2pm – Everybody Now! teach-in. Cooper Union.
1-4pm – Rally at Union Sq. sponsored by May 1st Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Worker Rights and the Alliance for Worker Rights, Immigrant Rights and Jobs For All.
4:30pm – March from Union Sq. to City Hall, with stops at ICE and other targets.
~7pm (after the march) – Issue based assemblies at Foley Square.
7:30pm – Kimani Gray Memorial Assembly, organized by Occu-Evolve. Focused on labor struggles, ending police brutality, stop and frisk, justice for victims of Hurricane Sandy, and outreach to the 99%.

All Day Events

Singing occupation with Everybody Now!
Free University at parks around the city
Occupy the Subway outreach to the 99% with Occu-Evolve
99 Picket Lines for May Day!
Protests/speak-outs against Law Day starting in SI at 8:30am

Facebook Event

Chiquita Brands International sued the Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking to block the release of documents related to payments the company made to terrorist groups in Colombia to protect its banana-growing interests according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

The company paid the Justice Department a $25 million fine in 2007, after admitting that it had given Colombian paramilitary groups that the U.S. classifies as terrorist organizations more than $1.7 million. Chiquita has maintained that it was extorted by the groups and made the payments in an attempt to protect its workers.

Chiquita’s newest legal action, filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C., attempts to block the SEC from releasing documents tied to the case to the National Security Archive.

In 2007, the National Security Archive published thousands of documents from Chiquita that it said showed how the company and paramilitary groups had a mutually beneficial relationship.

NSA:

The "reverse" FOIA filing is the latest development in a four-and-a-half-year Archive legal effort to document Chiquita's financial relationships with illegal armed groups responsible for some of the worst human rights atrocities of Colombia's decades-old civil war.

The new case is the direct outgrowth of a 2010 lawsuit in which the Archive sought to compel the SEC to process a pair of FOIA requests relating to the Chiquita investigation. More than three years later the agency made its final decision with respect to legal, financial and other documents Chiquita turned over to the SEC during the course of its inquiries, granting confidential treatment to only 45 pages among some 23 boxes of responsive material. Chiquita's "reverse" FOIA action follows multiple attempts on its part to convince the SEC to reverse that decision.

In making its case against disclosure of the "Chiquita Payment Documents," the company cites FOIA Exemption (7)(B), which exempts from disclosure "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes" to the extent that production "would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication." 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(B). Chiquita claims that it is subject to two pending "adjudications," a consolidated civil suit filed in Florida on behalf on behalf of victims of the terrorist groups that Chiquita funded, and a preliminary criminal investigation now underway in Colombia.

A lawsuit filed by thousands of Colombians who claim their relatives were killed by the paramilitary groups is still working its way through federal court in Florida. The plaintiffs allege the paramilitary groups helped keep labor unions out of the banana fields and brutalized workers.

Whole Foods announced Friday that it plans to start labeling all genetically modified food it sells, requiring all of its stores to do so by 2018. But it's not paranoia, co-CEO Walter Robb says, the chain is just reacting to the "steady drumbeat" of customer demand. In November, California shot down a ballot measure in favor of such labeling, and now some see the company as doing what the government won't.

Via:

Whole Foods Co-Chief Executive Walter Robb described customer demand for the labeling as "a steady drumbeat."

"This is an issue whose time has come," he said. "With cases like horse meat discovered in the U.K., plastic in milk in China, the recalls of almond and peanut butter in the U.S., customers have a fundamental right to know what's in their food."

Activists have long pushed for more transparency on supermarket shelves. Some see Whole Foods' pledge as evidence of retailers' growing power to force policy changes when voters and regulators can't.

Voters in California struck down Proposition 37 last November, a controversial ballot meaure that called for labeling of certain genetically modified products. But agriculture, food and beverage companies opposed to the measure poured millions of dollars into advertising and lobbying to defeat the measure.

Monsanto alone poured $8.1 million into the attack campaign and Pepsi contributed $2.5 million, according to a MapLight analysis of data from the California secretary of state. By voting day, opponents had raised $46 million against Proposition 37 -- five times the $9.2 million pieced together by supporters.

Whole Foods, with more than 300 locations, including seven British stores that already require such labeling, had endorsed the measure. "We are growing, we need more supply and that's compelling for manufacturers who want to be part of that," Robb said of the chain's new labeling initiative. "If a supplier chooses not to do that, they won't be in Whole Foods."

Now if Whole Foods CEO John Mackey would just stop referring to Obamacare as "fascist," climate change as something we "can successfully adapt to," and "perfectly natural," his attitude towards labor unions...

Dissatisfied with the country’s worsening economic troubles and displeased with proposed austerity measures, thousands of demonstrators clashed with police in Madrid Tuesday. The protesters formed a human chain around the parliament building while police fired bullets at and beat the most violent in the crowd with truncheons. At least 22 people were arrested while 32 were injured, including four policeman. The protest was timed to the new 2013 budget, which will be announced by the government Thursday and includes cuts in inflation-linked pensions, taxes on stock transactions, the implantation of green taxes, and the elimination of several tax breaks. The region of Catalonia, which is responsible for 20 percent of the national output, called for an early election on Nov. 25 that could lead to a referendum on secession.

Yves at Naked Capitalism has a good run down on the situation in Spain. And this Daily Kos diary does a pretty good job of showing the consequences of the banker control going on in Europe.

Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest adds this:

The job of bankers is to assess risk. They are supposed to look at all the factors, and price a loan accordingly. If you have a credit card with very high risk, you might pay in the 20% range! This way the banks can lend out the money, and even if a large percentage of the borrowers default, they still do OK. They are expecting a certain default rate, they price accordingly, they do OK on the loan portfolio.

Same for when they lend to countries. They price loans according to the default risk, and over the lifetime of the loans they are supposed to get their money back plus some return, even with the expected defaults. If the banks screwed up and didn't price their loans correctly, this doesn't make the people of Greece lazy, etc. it makes the bankers incompetent.

OR the bankers did price correctly, and over the lifetimes of all of their loans they are getting their money back and a return, AND they are also taking advantage of the situation to get more, make a killing, force privatization, force wages down, get rid of that pesky democracy that has been in the way, etc.

So here we are again, with the elites in the position of being either stupid (incompetent) or evil. And with the people in misery as a result, while the elites do just fine for themselves. With the added bonus for the elites that the experiment of wresting control from the elites and to the people -- democracy -- ending.

On Sunday, September 2, 2012, hundreds of demonstrators marched through Charlotte, NC to protest before the opening of the 2012 Democratic National Convention.