Author: Papa Giorgio

Occupy Oakland ~ After Smashing Wells Fargo Bank Windows ~ Deposits $20,000 With Them

Published by Papa Giorgio

 

Why this is important (transfer money day):

 

San Jose Mercury News:

Occupy Oakland has voted to deposit $20,000 with Wells Fargo Bank — just days after Occupy protesters shattered windows of one of the bank’s downtown Oakland branches during the group’s attempt to stage a general strike in the embattled East Bay city.

[….]

Some members of the assembly, during the meeting, raised concerns about using Wells Fargo for the group’s bank.

“I understand that people aren’t comfortable with that, but this is a time sensitive issue,” one of the leaders of the general assembly stated, according to the minutes.

Occupy Oakland has pilloried Chase Bank, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank and other major American financial companies for triggering some of the nation’s economic ailments.

“It takes time to transfer funds to a credit union,” one of the general assembly members stated, according to the minutes posted on the website. “We need to help people in jail now.”

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Here’s the actual vote:

First `Video` of Asteroid 2005 YU55 [6-frames]

Published by Papa Giorgio

From Whats Up With That:

Scientists working with the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., have generated a short movie clip of asteroid 2005 YU55. The images were generated from data collected at Goldstone on Nov. 7, 2011, between 11:24 a.m. and 1:35 p.m. PST (2:24 p.m. and 4:35 p.m. EST). They are the highest-resolution images ever generated by radar of a near-Earth object.

Each of the six frames required 20 minutes of data collection by the Goldstone radar. At the time, 2005 YU55 was approximately 860,000 miles (1.38 million kilometers) away from Earth. Resolution is 4 meters per pixel.

“The movie shows the small subset of images obtained at Goldstone on November 7 that have finished processing. By animating a sequence of radar images, we can see more surface detail than is visible otherwise,” said radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the 2005 YU55 observations, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “The animation reveals a number of puzzling structures on the surface that we don’t yet understand. To date, we’ve seen less than one half of the surface, so we expect more surprises.”

The trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 is well understood. At the point of closest approach today at 3:28 p.m. PST (6:28 p.m. EST/2328 UTC), it was no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers), as measured from the center of Earth. The gravitational influence of the asteroid will have no detectable effect on anything here on Earth, including our planet’s tides or tectonic plates. Although 2005 YU55 is in an orbit that regularly brings it to the vicinity of Earth (and Venus and Mars), the 2011 encounter with Earth is the closest this space rock has come for at least the last 200 years.

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O.W.S. Appropriating of Funds Turn `Piggish`

Published by Papa Giorgio

From HotAir:

It’s impossible to do this justice through excerpts, so be sure to read it all.  However, a couple of points stand out (via Instapundit):

On Sunday, October 23, a meeting was held at 60 Wall Street. Six leaders discussed what to do with the half-million dollars that had been donated to their organization, since, in their estimation, the organization was incapable of making sound financial decisions. The proposed solution was not to spend the money educating their co-workers or stimulating more active participation by improving the organization’s structures and tactics. Instead, those present discussed how they could commandeer the $500,000 for their new, more exclusive organization. No, this was not the meeting of any traditional influence on Wall Street. These were six of the leaders of Occupy Wall Street (OWS).

To understand what follows, one has to have some familiarity with the organization of OWS.  The General Assembly (NYC-GA) nominally makes all the decisions through overwhelming consensus; it requires 90% agreement to approve any decision, including expenditures.  Sound groovy?  Well, not really; a minority of 11% can essentially block all action, and apparently often do. And you thought the US Senate was bad …

This produced the need for subcommittees, called Working Groups (WG), which try to vet all issues and make recommendations back to the NYC-GA.  It also eventually led to the creation of the Spokes Council, thanks to frustration in the Structure WG with the “Finance WG’s monopoly over OWS’ funds[].”  To use the UN analogy of the “General Assembly,” the Spokes Council would be the Security Council of OWS.  The account by Fritz Tucker shows that the better analogy for the Spokes Council is that of the pigs in Animal Farm.  Think I’m kidding?

Daniel, a tall, red-bearded, white twenty-something—one of the six leaders of the teach-in—said that the NYC-GA needed to be completely defunded because those with “no stake” in the Occupy Wall Street movement shouldn’t have a say in how the money was spent. When I asked him whether everybody in the 99% had a stake in the movement, he said that only those occupying or working in Zuccotti Park did. I pointed out that since the General Assembly took place in Zuccotti Park, everybody who participated was an occupier. He responded with a long rant about how Zuccotti Park is filled with “tourists,” “free-loaders” and “crackheads” and suggested a solution that the even NYPD has not yet attempted: Daniel said that he’d like to take a fire-hose and clear out the entire encampment, adding hopefully that only the “real” activists would come back.

Yeah, well, some animals are more equal than others, too.

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