ACORN Officials Scramble, Firing Workers and Shredding Documents, After Exposed as Players Behind Occupy Wall Street Protests

Fox News

November 3, 2011

Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York -- operating as New York Communities for Change -- have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group’s involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources.

NYCC also is installing surveillance cameras and recording devices at its Brooklyn offices, removing or packing away supplies bearing the name ACORN and handing out photos of Fox News staff with a stern warning not to talk to the media, the sources said.

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“They’re doing serious damage control right now,” said an NYCC source.

NYCC Executive Director Jon Kest has been calling a series of emergency meetings to discuss last week’s report—and taking extreme measures to identify the sources in their office and to prevent further damage, a source within NYCC told FoxNews.com.

Two staffers were fired after NYCC officials suspected them as the source of the leaks, a source told FoxNews.com. “One was fired the day the story came out, the other was fired on Friday. (NYCC senior staff) told everyone that they were fired because they talked to you,” a source said.

NYCC spokesman Scott Levenson denied that anyone was fired for talking to the press.

FoxNews.com’s report identified NYCC as a key organizing force behind the Occupy Wall Street protests. Sources within the group also told FoxNews.com NYCC was hiring people to carry signs and join the protests. NYCC -- a nonprofit organization run almost entirely by former ACORN officials and employees --did not reply for comment prior to the publication of the initial article, but later posted a statement on its website dismissing the article and denying that it pays protesters.

A source said that immediately following publication of the FoxNews.com report staff were called into the Brooklyn office for meetings headed by NYCC’s organizing director, Jonathan Westin. Westin handed out copies of the article and went through it line-by-line, the source said.

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Video: Ventura Expresses Fury At TSA Court Ruling

You Tube

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Jesse Ventura tells reporters he has no more patriotism left after “cowards” tossed out his case against the TSA.

RELATED: Ventura Decries “Fascist” America After Judge Tosses TSA Case

Extreme Poverty Is Now At Record Levels

19 Statistics About The Poor That Will Absolutely Astound You

The Economic Collapse
Saturday, November 5, 2011

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than they have ever measured before.  In 2010, we were told that the economy was recovering, but the truth is that the number of the “very poor” soared to heights never seen previously.

Back in 1993 and back in 2009, the rate of extreme poverty was just over 6 percent, and that represented the worst numbers on record.  But in 2010, the rate of extreme poverty hit a whopping 6.7 percent.  That means that one out of every 15 Americans is now considered to be “very poor”.  For many people, this is all very confusing because their guts are telling them that things are getting worse and yet the mainstream media keeps telling them that everything is just fine.  Hopefully this article will help people realize that the plight of the poorest of the poor continues to deteriorate all across the United States.  In addition, hopefully this article will inspire many of you to lend a hand to those that are truly in need.

Tonight, there are more than 20 million Americans that are living in extreme poverty.  This number increases a little bit more every single day.  The following statistics that were mentioned in an article in The Daily Mail should be very sobering for all of us….

About 20.5 million Americans, or 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, make up the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 per cent or less of the official poverty level.

Those living in deep poverty represent nearly half of the 46.2 million people scraping by below the poverty line. In 2010, the poorest poor meant an income of $5,570 or less for an individual and $11,157 for a family of four.

That 6.7 percent share is the highest in the 35 years that the Census Bureau has maintained such records, surpassing previous highs in 2009 and 1993 of just over 6 percent.

Sadly, the wealthy and the poor are being increasingly segregated all over the nation.  In some areas of the U.S. you would never even know that the economy was having trouble, and other areas resemble third world hellholes.  In most U.S. cities today, there are the “good neighborhoods” and there are the “bad neighborhoods”.

According to a recent Bloomberg article, the “very poor” are increasingly being pushed into these “bad neighborhoods”….

At least 2.2 million more Americans, a 33 percent jump since 2000, live in neighborhoods where the poverty rate is 40 percent or higher, according to a study released today by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Of course they don’t have much of a choice.  They can’t afford to live where most of the rest of us do.

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Feds Set First Test Of Nationwide Emergency Alert System

FEMA, FCC, and NOAA seek better way to share natural disaster information with public.

By Elizabeth Montalbano InformationWeek
November 04, 2011 03:47 PM

The Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agencies, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are preparing for the first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System.

Top officials from FEMA and the FCC this week sent a joint letter to governors, federal legislators, broadcasters, news networks, and other stakeholders informing them of the importance of the test and asking them to raise awareness of it among their constituencies.

"The various disasters our country has faced this year underscore the need for effective and well-tested emergency alert and warning systems that could be used in a time of real emergency, at a moment's notice," FEMA Administrator Fugate and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wrote in their letter. "The purpose of the test is to allow FEMA and the FCC to assess how well the Emergency Alert System would perform its primary function: alerting the public about a national emergency."

Officials also want to garner feedback from the public about what technological changes can be made to the system to improve its effectiveness, they said.

The test of the system--which will be similar to local tests that have occurred over the last several decades--will occur simultaneously on all broadcast radio and TV stations, cable TV systems, and satellite TV and radio systems across the United States and all U.S. territories on Wed, Nov. 9 at 2:00 p.m. EST.

The test will last 30 seconds, after which regular programming will resume. Territories affected include Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.

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AP Exclusive: CIA following Twitter, Facebook

Yahoo News

November 4, 2011

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.

At the agency's Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the "vengeful librarians" also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.

From Arabic to Mandarin Chinese, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in native tongue. They cross-reference it with the local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House, giving a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.

Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn't know exactly when revolution might hit, said the center's director, Doug Naquin.

The center already had "predicted that social media in places like Egypt could be a game-changer and a threat to the regime," he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press at the center. CIA officials said it was the first such visit by a reporter the agency has ever granted.

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Greek government on brink of collapse over debt crisis

David Gow and Helena Smith 
The Guardian
November 3, 2011

The Greek government stands on the point of collapse, with the country set for a general election over membership of the euro rather than the referendum planned for early December.

Calls for a national unity government embracing the opposition also intensified as EU political leaders and financial markets demanded an end to the regional uncertainty unleashed by a small country on the periphery of the eurozone and called for measures to prevent a slide into Europe-wide slump.

George Papandreou called an emergency meeting of his cabinet for noon local time (10am GMT) on Thursday after his finance minister broke ranks over the referendum and several socialist deputies quit or threatened to quit his Pasok bloc in parliament.

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Obama Tells Allies U.S. Will Attack Iran By Fall 2012

President prepared to use war as re-election campaign tool

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, November 4, 2011

Barack Obama has told America’s allies that the United States will attack Iran before fall 2012 unless Tehran halts its nuclear program, a time frame that suggests Obama is willing to use war as a re-election campaign tool to rally the population around his leadership.

A subscriber-only report by DebkaFile, the Israeli intelligence outfit which has been proven accurate in the past, reveals that shortly after the end of NATO operations in Libya at the start of this week, “President Barack Obama went on line to America’s senior allies, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Saudi Arabia, with notice of his plan to attack Iran no later than September-October 2012 – unless Tehran halted its nuclear weaponization programs.”

According to the report, the window of opportunity for an attack before Iran moves the bulk of its nuclear processing underground is quickly evaporating.

Obama’s directive contributed to the flurry of reports this week about NATO powers putting their Iran war contingency plans on standby.

“Obama’s announcement was not perceived as a general directive to US allies, but a guideline to blow the dust off the contingency plans for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities which stayed locked in bottom drawers for three years,” states the report, adding that “Obama’s announcement spurred Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Israel into girding their navies, air forces, ballistic units and anti-missile defense systems for the challenges ahead.”

The imminent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is part of a program to re-arrange the United States’ presence in the Gulf. This dovetails with numerous reports over the past few weeks that large numbers of U.S. troops are being stationed in Kuwait.

“Military sources in the Gulf report that NATO and Persian Gulf leaders are treating the prospect of a US strike against Iran with the utmost seriousness,” states the article, adding that America plans to rebuild its Gulf presence as part “of a new US focus on cutting Iran down to size.”

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