NYPD Attacks Peaceful Wall Street Protesters (Video)

The Peaceful Protesters on Wall Street in NYC have one simple demand:

*LET THE FAILING BANKS FAIL, and BAIL OUT SUFFERING PEOPLE INSTEAD.

When it began to rain the Peaceful Protesters attempted to cover sensitive electronics (computers, cameras, etc.) with a low-profile, unsuspended tarp.

That was the "offense" which prompted this VIOLENT response from NYPD.

NYPD has had Wall Street itself blocked off since before the protests began.  Officers have been hounding and intimidating these Peaceful Protesters since day one.



Video from AmpedStatus.org

The opening scenes of the video where police violently grab and throw a Peaceful Protester appears to have taken place in this area of Liberty Park.  The man appears to be sitting between these tables amidst a pile of gear covered with tarps.  Innocent people's computers were certainly destroyed when NYPD took things way beyond where they needed to go.

Do these look like criminals to you?

 
In related news, mainstream music superstar Lupe Fiasco attended this peaceful protest yesterday and had this to say...


Here is another view of what happened.  This gives a better idea of what went down.  It just posted this morning, 9/21/11 (the day after this post was written after the first videos appeared):

Max's Oil Free News Roundup

In my current line of work, I am exposed to an absurd amount of news.  In an effort to keep those I care about informed, I post A LOT of interesting links on my Facebook wall.  It's more efficient than blogging, so I direct a lot of my efforts there.

If you'd like to know what's really going on in the world, you're not going to find it in the mainstream media.  Select mainstream stories give glimpses of the Big Picture but they're awash in misinformation, disinformation, and distracting nonsense.  I share 10-50 stories daily, selected from several reliable news services. By scanning my Wall regularly you may find information that could help you prepare for and cope with the big changes taking place at an unprecedented rate globally.  Inform yourself and ditch the sheeple herd.

Whether you know me in *real life* or not, feel free to add me as a Facebook friend.  Or just check out my profile here...

Nine to Fives Ruin Lives.

A public service announcement from the folks at Skiing the Backcountry.

If you're part of the backcountry skiing community, join this  Backcountry Skiing Community.

I like Skiing the Backcountry because it's not filled with "cooler than you" bullshitters.

I contribute as WarPigSinFin.

My goal is to log 3 zillion vertical feet this winter.  Once the snow flies nothing else matters.

Foreclosure This!

I personally know several people who've gotten fucked by the big banks' real estate scheme.  These acquaintances are friendly, reliable, hard-working Americans.  All of them are currently employed full-time or more, but -- for one reason or another -- all have suffered pay cuts in the last few years.  None of them went out on a limb and bought outside their means: like so many other people, they're just suffering the ill effects of our ongoing economic DEPRESSION.

Some have been forced out of their homes.  Some are falling behind on their mortgages.  Some are sick of scrambling to pay down the overinflated price tag of a home that they know will continue losing value.  Remember: the bubble popped by DESIGN.

Meanwhile, Wall Street is paying it's minions all-time-record wages to the tune of $140 billion in 2010.  Mind you, this is just the money on the books: I'm sure additional perks and bonuses numbering in the big billions are also being "rewarded" for their hard work in bankrupting the rest of Our Nation.

Frankly, I'm disgusted by people who overextended themselves on a massive mortgage, refinanced to buy a bunch of crap, and, generally, embodied the CONSUMERISM that puts us at odds with the natural world.  BUT I'm even more disgusted by the people who put that system in place, promoted it, perpetuated it, manipulated it, and are now profiting from its collapse.

Bottom line: poor people need homes more than bailed-out banks need additional assets.

Our economic system is inherently flawed and utterly screwed, so we're being forced into the massive change currently taking place.  Instead of fighting over what's whose it makes a hell of a lot more sense to acknowledge our flaws and fix them.  What flaws?

1.  INFINITE GROWTH is a stupid and impossible goal.  Planet Earth can't handle such a fundamental idiocy at the root of several billion peoples' dysfunctional lifestyles.

2.  "CREATING JOBS" for it's own sake is counterproductive because most jobs are frivolous, wasteful, and -- on a planetary scale -- destructive.  90+% of real work is done by computers, machines, and dirt poor people half the world away: it's amazing US unemployment is ONLY around ~15%.

People shouldn't have to work 40+ hours a week doing something they know is pointless just to maintain the fiction of earning one's keep.  Let's use our technology and creativity to LIBERATE people instead of chaining them to jobs.  Personally, I think we should have a work for one year, then take four years off based economy.

Let's acknowledge that labor-saving technology eliminates jobs.  Pay people to NOT have children.  Pay people to NOT drive cars.  Make sustainable living FREE so people's natural tendency is to embrace it.  Otherwise, we'll keep banging our heads against Mother Nature's wall... until it cracks all of our skulls.

3.  Ancient prophecy has no control over what we do right now.  This needn't be the end of the world.  We can use this situation to foster a new awareness.  What awareness is that:

GREED isn't GOOD.  SUSTAINABLE LAZINESS is.  Do less. Buy less.  Waste less.  Be more. 

4.  GOVERNMENT and BIG BUSINESS can't be in bed together.  They need to be equally powerful and at odds to assure that the little guy (and the Planet) don't get screwed.

In case you're still in denial, you're being screwed right now.  Me too.  And future generations?  We're all screwing them together.

Accept the fact that the whole system is SCREWY.  Support the people who have the courage to stand up against it.

Grand Teton: First Female Snowboard Descent

On March 11th, 2010 I got to help make a little sliver of history here in Jackson Hole when my partner Dani and I summited the Grand Teton and dropped in off the summit.  Dani was the first woman to snowboard the peak, a very impressive accomplishment since only a handful of distinguished female ski mountaineers have ridden it previously.

Only a few hundred people have skied or snowboarded the Grand Teton since 1971 when pioneer Bill Briggs made the first ski descent.  His life story is a truly impressive one, and you can read all about it at WildSnow.com.  

There you'll find the following quote from Briggs:

"I found I couldn't kill myself -- I didn't have the courage.  Since I had to live, I decided to make the most of life; to simply go with what I found most pleasurable: climbing, skiing, and music."

Wow.

I first got the bug to ski the Grand when I saw a news clipping of Briggs' tracks on the wall in the Stage Coach Bar while boozing after a day skiing Teton Pass.  The picture offered a certain terrifying allure:

Since we did it mid-winter, Dani and I got to ride from the tippy top.

Dani got her stoke after working as assistant to Stephen Koch, renowned snowboarder of the Seven Summits and Teton Legend.  Among many other first descents in the area, he made the first snowboard descent of the Grand in 1989.

Both sufficiently stoked, we spent the winter training with backcountry tours of lesser peaks, analyzing the snowpack, and watching the weather in hopes of finding the right opportunity to give the Grand a go.

 Avalanche and weather forecasting in the Teton Range only holds to an altitude of 10,500' but the Grand Teton tops out at 13,770'.  As such, and since the summit is rarely visited in winter, a lot of guesswork goes into predicting conditions up there.  Sometimes it's a sheet of ice.  Sometimes it's nipple deep sugary pow.  Occassionally, huge avalanches pour off the summit snowfields.  Hopefully this article can shed a little light on what's going on up there these days.

I'd been up there mid-winter a few years ago and knew that even with perfect conditions, we were in for quite the adventure.  Guesswork considered, we were expecting variable to shitty conditions but a reasonably safe snowpack.  You never really know until you go, so we went to have a look...

At 2 a.m. on Tueday the 9th we made an attempt but got turned around at 12,000 feet by a rapidly warming snowpack and exhaustion.  After four hours of skinning, we'd spent three hours postholing steep boot to knee deep sugar under suncrust.  We were faced with six technical pitches and two hours of steep and deep sugar before reaching the summit.  No way. We couldn't make it up and back down again before the danger of rockfall and avalanches became unreasonable.  We couldn't make it up, period.

We stashed 25 pounds of climbing gear near 12,000' and vowed to return the next favorable day.  Perfect spring skiing brought us back the the Valley floor where we destroyed a Hawaiian Pizza from Cafe Ponza.

FYI, Ponza is the perfect place to stop en route during midnight forays to the Tetons.  They're open until three a.m., and, unless there's a line of drunks out the door, Bear will get you fed in under five minutes.   Order by phone and you'll be in and out in literal seconds.  You can even pick up a few pre-game or celebratory beers.  Cash only... but I digress.

We spent the 10th watching webcams and weather gauges and though still a little beat from the day before, decided to wake well before the dawn on the 11th.  We left the trailhead at 2 a.m. under a starry, windless sky. It felt colder than expected, which relieved our fears of falling objects but worried us the crust wouldn't soften that day.

Crazy Frazee joined us and his positive vibes made the predawn slog a treat.  It also didn't hurt that we'd already set the bootpack and deposited a bunch of heavy gear 5500' above the valley floor.  With packs only slightly heavier than needed for a typical ski tour we cruised casually back to our previous high point.  A dusting of fresh made the crusty skin track doable. We booted the steeper sections down low to save time and effort. Our two-day-old booter made the slopes from the Meadows to Stettner Couloir much easier.

Starry skies turned bluebird and a low layer of cloud blanketed the valley floor already a vertical mile below us.

As we ascended we bore witness to one of the most impressive Teton sunrises I've had the priviledge to experience.

The otherworldly lighting made an otherwise grueling slog surreal.

Unfortunately, Frazee ate something that gave him the shits and had to turn around at 12,000'.

Dani and I continued onward together.

The technical climbing in the Stettner and Chevy Couloirs offered mostly firm snow.  Only two vertical ice bulges presented real hazards.  The first went easily.  The second was a little tricky but offered bomber protection. We dug out and improved many of the existing rappel anchors during our ascent.  Some of them were in terrible shape.  Some of them still are.

Technical climbing completed, the Ford Couloir and Summit Snowfield offered boot to knee deep sugar under a thin crust with a few inches of fresh on top.  Fortunately we were feeling strong and suffered through the painful last 1000'.  We saw no evidence of slides in the area although we did notice sketchily windloaded pockets on some WSW aspects.

At the summit we found gusty West winds, patchy clouds far below, and nothing but wispy blue above.

Skiing a peak like the Grand reminds me of jumping off bridges into the Mississippi River as a kid.  The longer you stand up top looking down, the more nervous you get.  As such, we switched over quickly and got down to business.

Dani dropped in from the summit and even made some turns on the sketchy rock knob above the SSE Face.

Ski conditions? Summit to Chevy: 2" fresh on occasionally-breakable crust. Chevy to TeePee: five rappels and good windbuff. TeePee to 8000': Powder in perma-shade, dust on crust elsewhere. 8000' to Floor: death cookies and shit crust.


Here are the requisite rapping shots...

The bottom 1500' offered the worst skiing I've done in years.  Rock-solid, knee-jarring garbage.  It had melted slightly that day but by the time we got down it was back in the shade and ridiculously hard.  Combine that with exhaustion and it was, arguably, the most dangerous part of the day.  After that, the two rolling miles back to civilization were a painful stupor.

Too exhausted to stop for the customary celebratory beer at Dornan's in Moose, we drove home in silence.  I've sat on every stool at the bar there, and each faces a huge window offering a panoramic view of the Teton Range.  Front and center is the gorgeous Queen of the range, the Grand Teton.

After making turns from the top, neither of us will ever look at it the same again.

VIVIMOS! Sailing Oregon's Columbia River to the Pacific and Turning Left

Note: This is just one of many posts documenting a sailing voyage from Hood River, Oregon to Colombia, South America aboard a $5000 1973 Catalina 27' sailboat named "Sin Fin".

El Viaje Sin Fin (Spanish for "The Trip Without End") was a 19 month adventure with plenty of twists and turns.

Check out an overview of the trip, or start with the first post of this blog.  Peace.

***

It's been a week since the last post. We've wanted to check in daily, but between Max freaking out over little things and/or puking constantly and Mac slaying fish, there just wasn't time.

Plus, it turns out that there's no cell service and hence no poor-yachtsman's-interweb 15-20 miles offshore in the North Pacific.

We didn't die over the course of three nights at sea and now we're at port in BEAUTIFUL Bandon, Oregon... 217.36 fabulous miles south of the notorious, ship-eating Columbia River Bar.

Here's a week of good living crammed into a little slideshow. No justice.

Could this be the best picture I've ever taken? FYI, that's freshly harvested "caviar" in Mac's carvinorous piehole.

We made it to Portland and got the boat hauled out. We're in a hurry to get South but we had to paint the bottom and retrofit some additional keel bolts. As you can see, the hull was DIRTY. Notice that the bottom little bit of the keel is spotless. Mac was kind enough to clean it by running aground on a sandbar just North of Portland. Well done!

If you ever wondered how they haul out superyachts like La Sin Fin, this is how. The boatyard made us wait 36 hours before they'd pull us out and that really chapped my ass.

They also wanted to make us wait to get it back in the water until Monday. Clearly they were trying to charge us for as many days as possible and didn't appreciate our hurry to escape the NW before the fall storms really hit. Otherwise, everyone was really nice and informative at the boatyard.

We were stuck in Portland for three nights watching perfect coastal weather slip away.  This drove Max to the brink of sanity. Fortunately, Justine Jerrel and Randy Bachelor (great name, eh?) put us up and gave us wheels to get shit done.

The friendly "yardmonkeys" in blue jumpsuits put us back in the water without notifying the ass-dragging bosses. As such, the boatyard never got a credit card number from us.

Go ahead and bill me... but what's my address?

Bottom paint is some horribly toxic shit so the uptmost protective measures must be undertaken. Sadly, Max's favorite pair of jeans and his old Jackson Hole employee polo shirt had to be thrown away after the painting project. All the yardmonkeys were quite jealous of the ridiculously steezy ski goggles.

While Max was painting, Mac installed 5 new beefy bolts in the keel. Again, thanks to Winona's own Fastenal for $240 worth of marine grade stainless steel.

We left the boatyard in such a hurry that we left much to be done "en route". FYI, boating and caulking don't mix. All the windows and deckfittings on La Sin Fin look like they came from Santa's Workshop thanks to hearty doses of liberally applied caulk. Importantly, as we discovered at sea, the water stays out.

Cruising down the Columbia River at dusk we came across a sailboat that had run aground. This got us nervous enough to stay attentive as we motored through the night towards the coast. Thanks, fate.

We were happy to pass industrial wastelands like this under cover of darkness. Motoring through the night and hitting Astoria, OR at dawn worked out perfectly. The river isn't exceptionally scenic for the 90 miles from Portland to the Coast... no wind either.

We stopped in Astoria for fuel (oilfreefun... not quite) and then got back at it, hoping to hit the Columbia River Bar when the tide was right. Visibility was somewhere between "horrible" and "supershitty". A hunch said the fog would lift and it did...

Meeting monsters like this in the fog isn't too much fun. Moms and Dads, note our incredible foresight in navigating just outside of the shipping channel. Equally deep water, but less likelihood of getting plastered against a supertanker. We're trying to be safe.

We followed this guy out the Columbia River Bar because he knew where to go. Everyone in Hood River we talked to was freaking out about the terrifying Columbia River Bar. It turned out to be anticlimacticly mellow on account of our intensely-safety-oriented mindsets and parentally-instilled-propensity for planning.

Again, rest easy parents.  We're trying to be safe.

Excitingly, as we crossed the Bar, Max looked below deck to see 6 inches of water had burbled up from the bilge. Too much weight in the stern had put our output hose underwater. The bilgepump proved that it kicks ass in this instance... and we safely negotiated our first technical incident of the trip. Disaster averted.

This may be the biggest boat either of us has ever seen. Its a Chevron Tanker. Without boats like this millions of suburbanites wouldn't be able to commute between pointless jobs and vacant, faceless communities. Yee-haw. Burn it up, suckers.

This was the best picture Max ever took until the one of Mac's massacre. We must have seen three dozen seals out thus far. Great critters, except for when they steal fish off your line.

After we reeled in Mac's first fish, one came right up to the stern of La Sin Fin and gave us the meanest look.

These overgrown aquatic gerbils were pretty cool too. It's amazing what qualifies as a mammal.

On a sailboat with the motor off, you hear the whales before you ever see them. In the middle of the night, their finslapping and spouting can freak you out. The greatest critters on Earth?

Perhaps.

Mac reeled it in and then Golem netted the fish. Golem loves fishies. Golem couldn't wait until Baja to bust out his classic retro Mexico soccer jersey and got it filthy with caulk, fishguts, gasoline, and assorted boatsludge.

C'est la vie.

Our first fish.

The sushichef brutalizing the unborn as he butchers their mother. Gruesome stuff here. I wouldn't have partaken in the sushifeast that followed had we not already eaten through all 20 pounds of candy aboard La Sin Fin. We didn't bother with rice... just soysauce and wasabi. We could have used some spicy aioli mayo stuff but regardless it was the best sushi of my life.

As we dined, the view proved incredible too.


Shortly after this picture was taken, our weather window closed.

"Red sky at night, sailors delight," my ass.

The beautiful N wind we'd been sailing on for 36 hours switched to straight out of the south. We battled upwind for 24 hours and made it about 40 additional nauseating, wet, dreary miles.

Exhausted after four nervewracking nights and with weather forecasted to get worse as the week continues, we pulled in to quaint, sleepy Bandon, OR. And here we are...


It looks like we'll be stuck here until at least the weekend. Fortunately, some of the nicest people on Earth live here... and the kiting looks to be epic.

Ohh yeah, my knee is getting better every day. Good times? Great times.

Sell yer house and buy a boat. Trust me.

Hasta luego, amigos.

Max Mogren

***

Note: This is just one of many posts documenting a sailing voyage from Hood River, Oregon to Colombia, South America aboard a $5000 1973 Catalina 27' sailboat named "Sin Fin".

El Viaje Sin Fin (Spanish for "The Trip Without End") was a 19 month adventure with plenty of twists and turns.

Check out an overview of the trip, or start with the first post of this blog.  Peace.