Harvard is under occupation

Occupy Harvard has established an encampment in Harvard Yard--and activists plan to take up campus issues as well as broader ones, reports Khury Petersen-Smith.

November 14, 2011

Occupiers march on Harvard Yard (Paul Weiskel)
THE OCCUPY movement came to Harvard University this week, and it came in loud.
More than 500 people marched as part of Occupy Harvard, which was launched on November 9. The action began when a gathering of 70 or so students in Harvard Yard marched beyond the gates of the campus into Harvard Square, swelling to hundreds along the way. The march took over and shut down Massachusetts Avenue, one of Boston and Cambridge's major arteries.
Under the slogan "We want a university for the 99 percent, not a corporation for the 1 percent," Harvard students and employees, and other activists from Occupy Boston, marched back toward the heart of campus to set up an encampment in the Yard.
The Harvard Police Department and private university security guards used chains and padlocks to lock every gate to Harvard Yard, keeping protesters out and temporarily trapping resident students inside.
When Occupy Boston activists heard about the standoff with police, many came from around the city to join the action. Much of the night involved protesters marching to each gate, trying to get inside, retreating to the un-walled Law School campus, and marching back to the Yard. Eventually, dozens of students got into the yard with their student IDs and set up camp, which remains as this article was being written.
According to the Harvard Crimson:

At about 10:30 p.m., roughly 120 demonstrators--mostly Harvard students--linked arms and created a circle in front of the John Harvard Statue, within which they began to assemble the tents. As the protesters were constructing their tent city, [Dean of Student Life Suzy] Nelson emerged and attempted to convince the occupiers to move the tents to Tercentenary Theatre, where they would be less disruptive. Protesters rejected her suggestion, but said they would consider relocating the tents if they become too troublesome.

The Harvard administration issued a statement to the "Harvard Community" that attempted to stoke fears of the threat "outsiders" posed to campus:

The events of last night raised safety concerns: the number of demonstrators was large, many of the demonstrators were not from Harvard, and specific behaviors were troubling. For this reason, the university took what we consider to be appropriate security precautions as the situation evolved during the evening.

But locking down Harvard Yard is nearly unprecedented. According to Harvard senior Dylan Matthews writing at Salon.com:

It's worth noting that in the history of Harvard protests, such a lockdown of the yard is very rare. The only precedent is the 1969 Vietnam protests, in which a group of 30 students, later swelling to 500, took over University Hall, expelling administrators, and picking up and carrying out associate dean Archie Epps when he wouldn't leave voluntarily...Then, Harvard locked down the yard, and called in state and local police to force the occupiers out.

In the Crimson, Matthews suggested that the university strategy of locking down the Yard, which creates lines of students, faculty and staff who must present IDs to enter campus, is:

a very savvy means of turning students against protesters, but the occupiers aren't the ones blocking gates. The administration is doing that, and can stop at any time. The occupiers are doing nothing more than making our voices heard, one tent at a time.

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HARVARD'S REACH extends throughout Boston, with several campuses, hospitals and many other properties--and, of course, its ideological reach extends around the world through its journals that inform its powerful alumni and the 1 percent that many Harvard students come from and/or aspire to join.
According to Occupy Harvard's website, that's why an Occupy encampment is essential:

As students, many of whom pay tuition, we have a right to know where our money is being invested. Since Harvard represents us and is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the public good, we are sad to learn about investments in hotel chains that mistreat workers, extraction companies that devastate the American landscape with mountaintop removal, and hedge funds that displace farmers in developing countries.

Closing Harvard Yard off from the outside world only serves to further insulate Harvard from the realities faced by the 99 percent. Undeterred, Harvard students are camping and meeting to discuss how to get more students and staff at Harvard involved and how to integrate more with the broader Occupy Boston movement.
"Harvard is a school at the economic and political center of the 1 percent," said Neil Peterman, a graduate student in physics. "Occupy Harvard is students and others standing against that. We're bringing the Occupy movement to Harvard."

Occupy on the march

Lee Sustar, Danny Lucia and Alan Maass report on the Occupy day of action.

November 18, 2011

Students rallied at Union Square Park during the Occupy day of action before marching to Foley Square (Ianqui Doodle)
THE CHANT "We are the 99 percent" echoed through the streets of New York and dozens of other cities around the country during a national day of action November 17 that marked the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.
Some 35,000 people filled lower Manhattan's Foley Square in the early evening hours, and thousands more spilled onto the surrounding streets as the culmination of a day of action that began with civil disobedience aimed at disrupting the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.
The day showed the potential of the Occupy movement to gather new supporters, as hundreds gathered at transit hubs in New York City's outer boroughs, conducting a people's microphone on subway cars on their way to the convergence at Foley Square.
"I'm here because both my parents have to work at age 64," said Norma Gatica on the subway ride to Foley Square on the Occupy Queens contingent. "I'm deep in debt and can't find a job, because there are none."
Meanwhile, some 5,000 students gathered in Union Square for an unpermitted march to the main rally, evading police attempts to corral them.
Among the students at Foley Square was a doctoral student at New York University who had brought her 2-year-old to the demonstration because she couldn't afford child care. "Let me be clear: NYU is union-busting," she said of the university, which has taken a hard line against graduate employee attempts to unionize. "NYU is not for students. NYU is not for education. NYU is for profit."
As Foley Square filled for the 5 p.m. convergence, a light show projected the words "We are the 99 percent," and "Another world is possible, we are unstoppable" onto the Verizon headquarters building, as thousands took up the chants. A series of speakers gave moving accounts of their personal plight--of unemployment, debt and impoverishment--that resonated with the demonstrators.
The huge, multiracial and working-class crowd--including many thousands of union members--reaffirmed the broad popularity of the Occupy movement in the wake of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's police crackdown on the Occupy encampment. While politicians in Washington are negotiating a deal to slash Medicare and other social programs, Occupy's message of stopping the cuts and taxing the rich has captured the imagination of working people across the U.S.
The Foley Square protesters had a special message for the billionaire, who ordered the NYPD's early morning raid on Zuccotti Park November 15: "Bloomberg, beware, Zuccotti Park is everywhere!"
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BUT THE protest also highlighted new political challenges to the movement--in particular, how to deal with increasingly aggressive police. Less than three days after the cops' military-style sweep of Zuccotti Park, police took every opportunity to intimidate protesters. At a protest at the New York City Department of Education, police shoved barricades into a relatively small crowd, even after the parents and teachers chanted, "There are children here!"
Later, at Foley Square, police aggressively penned in the crowd with barricades in order to prevent thousands from joining the main demonstration. The cops were violent toward anyone who even hesitated to comply with their orders--beating one man with professional-grade photography equipment.
Given police attempts to limit and bully the protests, many Occupy Wall Street activists were angry at the way the protest marshals--most of them from the 1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU)--worked with the police.
When police severely restricted the numbers of people who could leave Foley Square at any one time in order to participate in a march over the Brooklyn Bridge, the marshals physically prevented protesters from walking in the road, funneling the crowd into a pedestrian walkway instead. The march took place after a protest on the bridge led to the arrest of about 100 protesters, including SEIU President Mary Kay Henry.
"With the numbers they had there, we could have gone back to Zuccotti Park or could have taken the streets," said one activist. "There was a good section of the crowd, if not the whole crowd, who wanted to go. In that sense, it was a missed opportunity."
Occupy activists who participated in planning for the Foley Square rally were also upset that the agreed-upon plan for several decentralized speakouts was scrapped. Instead, a single sound stage was set up, apparently controlled by the SEIU, thereby limiting the number of people who could speak.
The move raised questions among Occupy Wall Street activists who have helped develop what has been a powerful and productive alliance between the movement and organized labor.
One issue will be the movement's attitude to the 2012 elections. The day before the November 17 protests--which were mostly driven by the SEIU across the U.S.--the union announced its endorsement of President Barack Obama for re-election. Many of the core Occupy activists, by contrast, joined the movement because it targeted the corporate dominance of both political parties.
The issue will come to the fore soon, as SEIU calls for a tent city encampment on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to advocate for Obama's jobs legislation. This signals an effort by the SEIU to shift the focus of the movement away from Wall Street and corporate power--and toward the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, to the benefit of Democrats, who control the White House and the Senate.
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WHILE NEW York's November 17 protests were the biggest, there were demonstrations in dozens of cities from Coast to Coast.
In Los Angeles, Occupy activists marched to a Bank of America branch and then set up tents in the middle of Figueroa Street--the crowd swelled to more than 1,000 at its high point.
In other cities like Seattle, demonstrators followed New York's lead by targeting major bridges. This was a symbol suggested by unions to draw attention to the demand that the government launch a jobs program aimed at fixing infrastructure around the country. The focus of the Chicago protest was similar, with a handful of union activists getting arrested for blocking a bridge over the Chicago River during a three-hour protest that drew more than 2,000 Occupy activists and union members.
(NOTE: SocialistWorker.org will be rounding up reports from other day of action demonstrations around the country in an article next week.)
The sheer size and number of protests highlight how far the movement has come since it began only two months ago. Occupy Wall Street began with just 500 demonstrators rallying and marching in Manhattan's financial district. That demonstration ended with the movement settling down in little-known Zuccotti Park, a bland corporate-owned plaza a block away from the World Trade Center site.
Within weeks, Zuccotti Park--renamed Liberty Plaza by the movement--became the heart of a mass protest movement unlike any the U.S. has seen in generations.
Many thousands of people were drawn to Liberty Plaza by the excitement of coming together with so many others expressing the widespread bitterness at a society run by the 1 percent in the interests of profits and power. Many more people who never got to Zuccotti Park took inspiration from the Occupy struggle, and hope that we can stand up and demand change.
The scale of the political and police assault on the movement is an indication of how seriously it is taken by America's ruling elite.
Police crackdowns against Occupy encampments and protests have been escalating for weeks. That culminated in New York in the early-morning hours of November 15, when the NYPD attacked Zuccotti Park--with hundreds of cops in riot gear sealing off the area, arresting anyone who remained behind and trashing the camp's tents, equipment and library.
But if Bloomberg and New York City's 1 percent thought they had conquered the Occupy movement, the November 17 day of action proved that this struggle is here to stay, whether the encampment in Zuccotti Park is reestablished or not.
One indication of the determination to continue the fight was the morning protest that clogged the narrow streets around the New York Stock Exchange. Occupy supporters confronted the bankers and speculators as they scrambled into the building.
The familiar chant, "We are the 99 percent" was followed by another, with the same cadence: "We are the source of all your wealth."
At the corner of William and Exchange Streets, there was an inspiring speakout. Using the people's microphone, protesters shared the stories that had brought them to the movement--from a worker fired by the insurance giant AIG, to an adjunct professor at City University of New York making $12,000 a year, to a homeless trans youth, to a Chilean immigrant who led the crowd in a chant of "Allende vive!" in honor of the country's Socialist Party president killed in a U.S.-backed coup in 1973.
The NYPD used its typical brutality against those committing civil disobedience. The mainstream media captured images of a woman being dragged across a sidewalk by an officer and that of another man who was taken out of Zuccotti Park with blood streaming down his face after police arrested him, allegedly for knocking an officer's hat off his head.
But this latest round of police violence and intimidation hasn't silenced the movement. As activists debate how to cope with the outlawing of encampments, organizing will continue on a number of fronts--from solidarity efforts to support transit workers facing contract deadlines in Chicago and New York, to challenging school closings, to occupying foreclosed homes and more.
The November 17 protests emphasized the point made on the Occupy Wall Street website as the Zuccotti raid shut down the encampment: You can't evict an idea whose time has come.

Jen Roesch, Doug Singsen and Sherry Wolf contributed to this article.

And then they came for us

The question now is how people awakened by the Occupy movement will respond.

November 16, 2011

THEY CAME for Chicago, Oakland, Portland, Atlanta, Denver...and in the opening hours of November 15, New York City's billionaire mayor--the second wealthiest man in the city--deployed his troops to destroy the birthplace of Occupy in Zuccotti Park.

Columnist: Sherry Wolf

Sherry Wolf is the author of Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics and Theory of LGBT Liberation and an associate editor of the International Socialist Review. Her writing has also appeared in the Nation, CounterPunch and New Politics. She was on the executive committee of the 2009 National Equality March.

In the secrecy of the dark and with brutal force--symbolic of all that the 99 percent detests about the 1 percent--the forces of the state acted without consent or provocation because they could.
Like thousands of New Yorkers, at 1 a.m. on November 15, I received the text, "URGENT OWS eviction happening now. Hundreds of riot cops." So I bolted out the door, explained to my Egyptian cabbie why I was rushing to Occupy Wall Street, and he drove like a true Cairene, a Dale Earnhardt in a Lincoln Town Car, Brooklyn's de facto taxi fleet, to drop me into the maelstrom just north of where hundreds of riot cops were evicting peaceful protesters from the encampment.
Within minutes, I was sucking down pepper spray and holding the line with dozens of others before a phalanx of New York's storm troopers. There is a certain comaraderie that can develop among strangers under threat of violence, a warmth and trust that the 1 percent will never know. It allows unarmed, peaceful activists, most of whom have never had a police baton smack them before, to summon the bravery and solidarity needed to hold their ground.
Hedge fund managers and media tycoons, who've urged on this crackdown for weeks, will never understand how these attacks that appear to weaken us can act as a social glue that makes total strangers of every race physically and politically stronger and more united than ever.
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STRATEGY AND leadership can be crucial in moments like these. It wasn't the time to raise hostile chants against the cops. Instead, a few of us began chanting, "This is a peaceful protest," and sat down to calm and unify our side; politically defang the cops in front of the media who were everywhere; and show a level of discipline that our side is slandered for lacking. It largely worked, we suffered no arrests or beatings while doing it, and it allowed us to lower the temperature in a tense situation.
We held an impromptu people's mic on the sidewalk, the talk-and-echo human microphone brainchild of our movement, while surrounded by cops. There were too few of us to hold the line for long, and many of us with experience argued for a calm and organized retreat to escape certain police beatings and arrest.
Eventually, we all marched together up the middle of Broadway, fiercely angry but resolute that no tactical retreat would be the end of our movement. A few hundred of us marched toward City Hall and up to Foley Square, where thousands of workers marched last month, outside the classical columned courthouse made world famous by Law and Order.
In Foley Square, cops surrounded us again, and we debated what to do. Some argued to keep marching around the city in small groups; my comrades in the International Socialist Organization and I, about 30 of us present, argued to regroup in the morning with greater forces and not expose more of us to arrests in the middle of the night when we could use our energies to grow the resistance in coming days. Some ran off, but most seem to have regrouped a few hours later.
As I write this, hundreds are massing back at Zuccotti Park where National Lawyers Guild attorneys for the 99 percent have won a court order allowing us to take back the square, and I expect to be among thousands Tuesday night at a mass General Assembly to help decide next steps.
It seems that this phase of the Occupy movement has come to a close. It is a real blow to lose our commons, our collective space of debate, democratic expression and resistance. But there could never have been any serious doubt that the forces of the state could retake a square city block from unarmed activists.
The real test is how ordinary people who've been awakened by this movement will respond. New York has one of the greatest concentrations of union labor in the nation, and there was already a plan for mass direct action this Thursday, November 17, with the full support of transit workers, teachers, health care workers and so many others, including students.
Will the attack on Zuccotti Park be another momentary setback that propels Occupy forward? November 17 will certainly be huge and even more militant than originally planned, I suspect.
One thing is certain, the stakes have been raised now. We had just begun to win a few small battles, probably the impetus for cracking down on this phase of the movement. But people who have tasted victory, even small ones--winning heat at a Harlem apartment building, shutting down the Port of Oakland for a night, gathering mass solidarity for Sotheby's and Verizon workers--don't give up so easily.
The powers that be don't get it. This never was simply about holding a physical space. It was about drawing a line between us and them--the 99 percent versus the 1 percent. Whether we retake Zuccotti Square or not, there really is no going back. Isolation and sullen defeat is our past, solidarity and resistance is our future.
In the words of August Spies, one of the Haymarket martyrs who were executed for fighting and striking for the 8-hour day:

[I]f you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement--the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery, the wage slaves expect salvation--if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.

First published at SherryTalksBack.

Chicago shuts up 1 percenters

Matt Camp reports on how organizing by Occupy activists stopped a lecture by Condoleezza Rice and Goldman Sachs Henry Paulson before it started.

November 16, 2011

Occupy Chicago holds a General Assembly at the University of Chicago after scaring off Condoleezza Rice and Henry Paulson (Avi Schwab)
OCCUPY CHICAGO won a victory on November 14 when the University of Chicago was forced to cancel a scheduled lecture from former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ex-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
The event attracted the negative attention of activists across Chicago, including the city's burgeoning Occupy movement, which planned a "mic check" for the two Republicans.
"Mic check" refers to the activist method of disseminating information by listeners repeating and amplifying the words of a speaker. It recently gained popularity as a disruptive tactic, a fact to which victims Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Republican House Leader Eric Cantor can attest after they were "mic checked" during recent visits to Chicago.
The University of Chicago announced on its website that Rice and Paulson's presentations had been canceled "due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict"--but many wondered if the "conflict" actually lay in the university's plans to hold the event, and Occupy Chicago's plans to shut it down.
The truth is this: When threatened with a disruption organized by a movement that rejects the entirety of what they stand for, Paulson and Rice simply threw in the towel.
The two former Bush administration officials epitomize everything Occupy stands against. As elite guardians for the 1 percent, their politics are antithetical to the values of the Occupy movement and the 99 percentit represents.
During her tenure at secretary of state, Rice personified the Bush administration's war-mongering foreign policy. She was a primary culprit in poisoning American political dialogue with Islamophobic rhetoric. Rice demonized as naturally adverse to democracy those from whom Occupy has drawn its inspiration: the Arab people.
As treasury secretary, Paulson oversaw the first mass infusion of taxpayer dollars into the collapsing financial giants of 2008.
The effective derailing of the lecture represents a victory for Occupy Chicago, which has had to struggle for its right to exist. Over the past month, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has overseen two mass arrests conducted against Occupy activists involving more than 300 people. Emanuel's administration has also unambiguously denied the movement's right to a permanent space to occupy.
Shutting down the Rice/Paulson event shows that people power matters--that in the harmony of thousands of outraged voices calling for justice and democracy, the high-handed and parasitic yawps of Rice and Paulson have no place.
In May 2012, the NATO/Group of 8 summit is scheduled to come to the Windy City. Shutting down that event won't be so easy, but with this victory under their belt, we can be sure that the voices of Occupy Chicago will echo around the world.

Bill Black: Best Satire of Faux Austrian Economics Ever

Posted: 15 Nov 2011 09:38 PM PST

Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
Someone has created a fabulous, richly detailed parody of Austrian economics. They call it The Daily Bell and claim that its perspective reflects Austrian economics. In reality, it satirizes faux Austrian economics’ sycophancy toward elite white-collar criminals.
I was delighted to learn that they used my recent column: The Virgin Crisis: Systematically Ignoring Fraud as a Systemic Risk as the vehicle for their send-up.
The send-up captures precisely faux Austrian economists’ disdainful response to adverse data – they ignore it.
The article hits its peak in capturing the servile apologies that Austrian economists offer in defense of the elite white-collar criminals who make a mockery of Austrian claims of “free markets.” The satirist emphasizes the Austrians’ hypocrisy (they love police enforcing a “rule of law” and “property rights” against blue-collar folks), by calling the FBI the “Stasi” (the East German’s secret police) when they enforce the rule of law and property rights against elite white-collar criminals. The satirist then mocks the Austrians by picturing them as eager to prevent the imprisonment of elite white-collar felons. Faux Austrian economists’ heroes have always been elite felons. The author of the satire ridicules the Justice Department’s (DOJ) abject failure to investigate, much less prosecute, the elite felons of finance that drove our ongoing crisis. He skewers DOJ for going AWOL during this crisis by employing over-the-top mockery. The author states that DOJ is so effective in prosecuting the elite white-collar criminals that drove this crisis and sanctions them so viciously that they have created an “ever-expanding gulag of slave-laborers.” One man’s “Club Fed” is a faux Austrian’s “gulag.” The reality, of course, is that no Wall Street bankster inhabits this non-existent white-collar gulag. That gap between reality and the hysterical claims of tortured banksters is what makes the passage hilarious.
The author of the satire of Austrian economics uses the nom de plume of Anthony Wile, which is a fabulous insider joke. The real Anthony Wile was the infamous subject of an SEC action for securities fraud. What a brilliant conceit – assuming the name of a man identified by the SEC as one of the perpetrators of a crude white-collar fraud to advance the proposition that only fascists would prosecute elite white-collar frauds. Here are the lowlights of what the SEC investigation of the real Anthony Wile and his colleagues found:

U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
LITIGATION RELEASE NO. 21696 / OCTOBER 15, 2010
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION V. BRIAN N. LINES, SCOTT G.S. LINES, LOM (HOLDINGS) LTD., LINES OVERSEAS MANAGEMENT LTD., LOM CAPITAL LTD., LOM SECURITIES (BERMUDA) LTD., LOM SECURITIES (CAYMAN) LTD., LOM SECURITIES (BAHAMAS) LTD., ANTHONY W. WILE, WAYNE E. WILE, ROBERT J. CHAPMAN, WILLIAM TODD PEEVER, PHILLIP JAMES CURTIS, AND RYAN G. LEEDS, 1:07-CV-11387 (DLC) (S.D.N.Y., FILED DEC. 19, 2007)
COURT ENTERS FINAL JUDGMENTS AGAINST BRIAN N. LINES, SCOTT G.S. LINES, ANTHONY W. WILE, WAYNE E. WEW (FORMERLY WAYNE E. WILE), LINES OVERSEAS MANAGEMENT LTD., LOM SECURITIES (BERMUDA) LTD., LOM SECURITIES (BAHAMAS) LTD., LOM SECURITIES (CAYMAN) LTD., AND LOM CAPITAL LTD. IN MARKET MANIPULATION CASE
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that the Honorable Denise Cote of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York entered judgments of permanent injunction and other relief against Brian N. Lines, Scott G.S. Lines, Anthony W. Wile, Wayne E. Wew, Lines Overseas Management Ltd., LOM Securities (Bermuda) Ltd., LOM Securities (Bahamas) Ltd., LOM Securities (Cayman) Ltd., and LOM Capital Ltd. on October 15, 2010. (The LOM companies collectively are referred to hereinafter as the “LOM Entities”). All of the foregoing defendants, with the exception of LOM Securities (Bahamas) Ltd. and LOM Securities (Cayman) Ltd., were enjoined by the Court from violating certain of the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws, as described below. The Court also ordered broad ancillary relief against the defendants, including as to certain defendants, disgorgement, civil money penalties, and compliance with undertakings to not trade in penny stocks quoted on certain U.S.-based electronic quotation services and, for the LOM Entities, to not maintain accounts for U.S.-resident customers. Brian and Scott Lines and the LOM Entities were ordered to disgorge over $1.9 million in profits and prejudgment interest and pay civil penalties totalling $600,000.
Without admitting or denying the Commission’s allegations, the defendants consented to the entry of the judgments against them. These judgments resolve the Commission’s claims against these defendants in a civil action that was filed on December 19, 2007, in which the Commission alleged that that these defendants had participated in a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the stock price of Sedona Software Solutions, Inc. (“SSSI”), and, except for Wile and Wew, also had participated in a second stock manipulation scheme involving SHEP Technologies, Inc. (“SHEP”) f/k/a Inside Holdings Inc. (“IHI”).
In addition to entering permanent injunctions, the Court ordered Brian and Scott Lines, who are brothers and during the relevant time were the controlling persons of the LOM Entities, to pay, jointly and severally with the LOM Entities, disgorgement of $1,277,403, prejudgment interest of $654,918. The Court also imposed civil penalties in the following amounts: $450,000 for the LOM Entities, $100,000 for Brian Lines; and $50,000 for Scott Lines. In addition to entering permanent injunctions against Anthony Wile and Wayne Wew, the Court ordered Wile to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $35,000, and Wew to disgorge approximately $8000 and pay a $10,000 civil penalty.
In its Complaint in the civil action, the Commission alleged that, in early 2002, Brian and Scott Lines assisted two LOM customers, defendants William Todd Peever and Phillip James Curtis, to secretly acquire a publicly-traded OTCBB shell company named Inside Holdings, Inc. (“IHI”). Peever and Curtis then arranged for a reverse merger of IHI with SHEP Ltd., a private company that purportedly owned certain intellectual property. Peever and Curtis paid three touters to publish a series of highly positive reports recommending investments in the newly-merged entity, SHEP Technologies, Inc. The Commission’s complaint alleged, in pertinent part, that during the first half of 2003, Peever, Curtis, and the Lines brothers sold over three million SHEP shares into this artificially-stimulated demand in an unregistered distribution of SHEP stock. As part of the alleged scheme, the Lines brothers, Peever, and Curtis failed to file required reports regarding their beneficial ownership of IHI and SHEP stock, and Brian Lines caused several false reports to be filed with the Commission in order to conceal that Peever and Curtis, among others, owned substantial positions in, and had been selling, SHEP stock.
As further alleged in the Commission’s Complaint, in late 2002, Anthony Wile and another individual formed Renaissance Mining Corporation (“Renaissance”) and thereafter engaged in substantial promotional activities that created the misleading impression that Renaissance had acquired three Central American gold mines and was the “Leading Gold Producer in Latin America.” In fact, Renaissance had only executed a non-binding Letter of Intent to acquire those mines and lacked the funding necessary to consummate the acquisition. The Complaint further alleges that Wile acted in concert with the Lines brothers, who acquired a publicly-traded shell, Sedona Software Solutions, Inc., using LOM accounts in the names of nominees to disguise their ownership of the Sedona shell, as part of a plan to merge Sedona with Renaissance.
The Complaint alleges that, in early 2003, Wile and his associate primed the market for Renaissance/Sedona by disseminating materially false and misleading information that misrepresented the ownership of the gold mines and created the impression that the Renaissance/Sedona merger had been completed. Wile and his associate also arranged for the Renaissance/Sedona offering to be touted to prospective investors by Robert Chapman, the publisher of an on-line investment newsletter, and three other newsletter writers, all of whom purchased Renaissance shares for nominal sums. Through this deceptive promotional campaign, Wile and his associate informed the market that there would be an opportunity to invest in Renaissance by acquiring Sedona stock at approximately $10 per share beginning on January 21, 2003.
According to the Complaint’s allegations, on that date, Wile orchestrated a pre-arranged manipulative trade between his uncle, defendant Wayne E. Wile (who subsequently changed his name to Wayne Wew), and Brian Lines to artificially drive up the price of Sedona stock from $.03 per share to over $9.00 per share and stimulate trading in the stock. The Complaint alleged that Scott Lines solicited investors, including at least one LOM customer in the United States, to purchase Renaissance stock in anticipation of the merger between Renaissance and Sedona, without disclosing that he and Brian Lines owned the Sedona shell corporation. The Complaint further alleged that, after Renaissance and Sedona had announced their pending merger, the Lines brothers sold 143,000 shares of Sedona stock in an unregistered distribution to numerous public investors at between $8.95 and $9.45 per share, reaping over $1 million in illegal profits. On January 29, 2003, the Commission suspended trading in Sedona’s stock.
Final judgments were entered by the Court against each defendant and provide the following relief, respectively:
(i) Brian Lines is permanently enjoined from violating the antifraud, securities offering registration, and securities ownership disclosure provisions of the federal securities laws, Sections 5 and 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 (“Securities Act”) and Sections 13(d) and 16(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) and Rules 13d-1, 13d-2, and 16a-3 thereunder; (2) ordered to pay disgorgement, jointly and severally with Scott Lines and the LOM Entities, in the amount of $1,277,403, plus prejudgment interest thereon in the amount of $654,918; (3) ordered to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $100,000; and (4) ordered to comply with an undertaking to not trade for a period of three years in penny stocks that are quoted or displayed on the OTC Bulletin Board Montage, Pink Sheets, or the ArcaEdge Electronic Limit Order File;
(ii) Scott Lines is permanently enjoined from violating the antifraud, broker-dealer registration, securities offering registration, and securities ownership disclosure provisions, Sections 5 and 17(a)(2) and (3) of the Securities Act and Sections 13(d), 15(a), and 16(a) of the Exchange Act and Rules 13d-1, 13d-2, and 16a-3 thereunder; (2) ordered to pay disgorgement, jointly and severally with Brian Lines and the LOM Entities, in the amount of $1,277,403, plus prejudgment interest thereon in the amount of $654,918; (3) ordered to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $50,000; and (4) ordered to comply with an undertaking not to trade for a period of two years in penny stocks that are quoted or displayed on the OTC Bulletin Board Montage, Pink Sheets, or the ArcaEdge Electronic Limit Order File;
(iii) Lines Overseas Management Ltd. is permanently enjoined from violating the antifraud, securities offering registration, and securities ownership disclosure provisions, Sections 5 and 17(a)(2) and (3) of the Securities Act, and Section 13(d) of the Exchange Act and Rules 13d-1, 13d-2, and 16a-3 thereunder; (2) ordered to pay disgorgement, jointly and severally with Brian Lines, Scott Lines and the other settling LOM Entities, in the amount of $1,277,403, plus prejudgment interest thereon in the amount of $654,918; (3) ordered to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $450,000, jointly and severally with the other settling LOM Entities; and (4) ordered to comply with an undertaking to: (a) not trade for a period of two years in penny stocks that are quoted or displayed on the OTC Bulletin Board Montage, Pink Sheets, or the ArcaEdge Electronic Limit Order File; (b) not accept or maintain any account for or on behalf of any United States customer for a period of two years; and (c) hire an independent consultant for two years to monitor compliance with these undertakings;
(iv) LOM Capital Ltd. and LOM Securities (Bermuda) Ltd. are permanently enjoined from violating the antifraud and securities offering registration provisions, Sections 5 and 17(a)(2) and (3) of the Securities Act and, in addition, LOM Securities (Bermuda) is permanently enjoined from violating the broker-dealer registration provision, Section 15(a) of the Exchange Act; (2) ordered to pay disgorgement, jointly and severally with Brian Lines, Scott Lines and the other settling LOM Entities, in the amount of $1,277,403, plus prejudgment interest thereon in the amount of $654,918; (3) ordered to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $450,000, jointly and severally with the other settling LOM Entities; and (4) ordered to comply with an undertaking to: (a) not trade for a period of two years in penny stocks that are quoted or displayed on the OTC Bulletin Board Montage, Pink Sheets, or the ArcaEdge Electronic Limit Order File; (b) not accept or maintain any account for or on behalf of any United States customer for a period of two years; and (c) hire an independent consultant for two years to monitor compliance with these undertakings;
(v) LOM Securities (Bahamas) Ltd. and LOM Securities (Cayman) Ltd. are permanently enjoined from violating the securities offering registration provision, Section 5 of the Securities Act; (2) ordered to pay disgorgement, jointly and severally with Brian Lines, Scott Lines and the other settling LOM Entities, in the amount of $1,277,403, plus prejudgment interest thereon in the amount of $654,918; (3) ordered to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $450,000, jointly and severally among the settling LOM Entities; and (4) ordered to comply with an undertaking to: (a) not trade for a period of two years in penny stocks that are quoted or displayed on the OTC Bulletin Board Montage, Pink Sheets, or the ArcaEdge Electronic Limit Order File; (b) not accept or maintain any account for or on behalf of any United States customer for a period of two years; and (c) hire an independent consultant for two years to monitor compliance with these undertakings;
(vi) Anthony Wile is permanently enjoined from violating the antifraud and securities offering registration provisions, Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and Sections 5 and 17(a) of the Securities Act; (2) ordered to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $35,000; (3) barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for a period of five years; and (4) barred from participating in an offering of penny stock for a period of three years;
(vii) Wayne Wew (formerly Wayne E. Wile) is permanently enjoined from violating the antifraud provisions, Sections 17(a)(2) and (3) of the Securities Act; (2) ordered to pay disgorgement in the amount of $5,422, plus prejudgment interest thereon in the amount of $2,608; and (3) ordered to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $10,000.
As part of a global settlement with the LOM Entities, Brian Lines, and Scott Lines, the Commission agreed to dismiss with prejudice the pending civil enforcement action against LOM Holdings Ltd., which is the parent holding company for the LOM Entities.
The Court previously had entered permanent injunctive relief against defendants Peever, Curtis, and Chapman. The Commission’s claims for monetary relief against those defendants remain pending before the Court.
For additional information, please see Litigation Releases Nos. 20407 (Dec. 17, 2007); 20733 (Sept. 22, 2008); and 21577 (June 28, 2010).”

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2010/lr21696.htm
The faux Austrian satirical web site uses this pathetic episode as another opportunity for humor when it presents a faux bio of the not-as-wily-as-he-thought Wile:

He has put this knowledge to good use, working with top mining executives and venture entrepreneurs to generate some of the most successful business efforts of the 2000s.

There is a similar gem prominently featured on the web site: the admonition that the key to a successful society is “personal accountability.” What a perfect accompaniment to an article demanding that the elites who grew wealthy through fraud not be prosecuted. The satirist has a great gift for irony.
Prior variants of Wile’s website contained this defense of Wile.
http://thedailybell.com/2012/Anthony-Wile
(accessed 11/13/2011)

In 2000, Wile experienced a brief role as the CEO of a start-up junior mining company that became the subject of a civil attack by the SEC. Wile and others fought for more than seven years at great personal and financial expense before eventually settling the case without admitting any wrongdoing. The assets of the company in question were subsequently purchased by a New York Stock Exchange listed company and the properties have now produced more gold than was initially suggested. Hundreds of investors lost literally tens of millions in deserved future profits because the SEC accused the company of over-promising a merger that was actually taking place. Perhaps this experience adds to Wile’s fervor to expose the power elite and their societal manipulations.

[Perhaps? This is supposed to be Wile’s web site. Why is Wile guessing at the source of Wile’s “fervor?” For that matter, why is Wile referring to himself as “Wile” rather than “I?” Why aren’t Wile’s actions (as found by the SEC staff’s investigation) nasty “societal manipulations?” Why isn’t Wile part of the “power elite?” Note that the SEC’s characteristic failure to actually litigate its cases or get admissions of the facts means that Wile gets to pose as the victim of some kind of evil conspiracy. The Department of Justice, equally characteristically, failed to prosecute despite SEC staff investigation findings that should have led to felony charges. Some gulag!]
It is time for a word about real Austrian economists. They hate elite frauds and want them prosecuted vigorously. Ludwig von Mises and Friederich Hayek are the two most famous Austrian economists.
Hayek, F.A. The Road to Serfdom

To create conditions in which competition will be as effective as possible, to prevent fraud and deception, to break up monopolies— these tasks provide a wide and unquestioned field for state activity.

The Constitution of Liberty

There remains, however, one other kind of harmful action that is generally thought desirable to prevent and which at first might seem distinct. This is fraud and deception. Yet, though it would be straining the meaning of words to call them ‘coercion,’ on examination it appears that the reasons why we want to prevent them are the same as those applying to coercion. Deception, like coercion, is a form of manipulating the data on which a person counts, in order to make him do what deceiver wants him to do. Where it is successful, the deceived becomes in the same manner the unwilling tool, serving another man’s ends without advancing his own. Though we have no single word to cover both, all we have said of coercion applies equally to fraud and deception.
With this correction, it seems that freedom demands no more than that coercion and violence, fraud and deception, be prevented, except for the use of coercion by government for the sole purpose of enforcing known rules intended to ensure the best conditions under which the individual may give his activities a coherent, rational pattern…..
Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions…. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.

Mises, L.

Government ought to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of gangsters, and it should defend the country against foreign enemies.

The faux Austrian website and the faux (or real, who can tell) Wile piles layer upon layer of satire. The website contains articles that make the term “bizarre” deeply inadequate. One of the site’s favorite motifs is that an international conspiracy of the top bankers that caused the ongoing global crisis is using the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement to demand that the fraudulent bop bankers that caused the crisis be prosecuted. The dastardly OWS person carrying the water for this conspiracy of international bank elites is David DeGraw.

[T]here is an Anglo-American power elite trying to establish a world government. We cannot necessarily explain WHY anyone would want to do such a thing. But apparently someone does. Actually more than a “someone” – a handful of impossibly wealth banking families, located mainly in the one-square-mile City of London.
These families – and one family in particular – apparently have control of a worldwide central banking apparatus. With the ability to print money-from-nothing around the world, the Rothschilds have amassed a fortune that may be in excess of US$300 trillion. (Nobody really knows.)

This too is a wonderful satiric technique. I particularly like the “Nobody really knows” parenthetical as a modifier for a (gigantic) number that has already been made a non-number by the use of the word “may” (with a lead-in sentence rendered impotent by the use of “apparently”). A true Austrian-school economist, however, would never admit that central banks could create over $300 trillion in money (over 15 times the GDP of the U.S.) without producing even material inflation over the last 30 years. So, where do the Rothschilds invest or deposit their over $300 trillion? Given the fact that the Austrian school considers even massive income disparities irrelevant, it must be a very good thing for the world (from an Austrian perspective) that the Rothschilds have created such a massive increase in societal wealth without producing anything that even approached hyper-inflation.
David DeGraw must be the most skilled operative in the world if the Rothschilds have chosen him to run their “false flag” operation that recruited the OWS as their secret ally. Indeed, the Rothschilds are so clever that they doubtless picked DeGraw as their operative because he has been a persistent critic of central banks (the devils incarnate in this satire), then picked me because I am a persistent critic of central banks and want us to prosecute the elite banksters that drove the crisis. Why? We can’t explain WHY.
I learned that the Rothschilds hate and wish to destroy the largest banks. The largest banks, however, are the central banks leading supporters. Why? We can’t explain WHY. All of this would be confusing if the blog had any pretense to rationality or reality.
The web site and interviews on the web with whoever plays Mr. Wile are so loopy, with such vibrant excursions into multiple Twilight Zones that it is hard to pick a favorite satirical delusion. In an hour of bemused perusing I learned that Osama bin Laden had been dead for years (the raid on his compound in Pakistan was a fake), it is likely that we used military force in Libya because they were about to mint a gold coin that would become their national currency, the World Trade Center towers were blown up by the U.S., and hyper-inflation is about to go global any minute.
I grew up largely in Dearborn, Michigan (home of Ford Motor Company). Henry Ford was infamous for distributing The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (the Czarist forgery exposing the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world), so I found that reading the Rothschild rant was like noshing on comfort food.
Sorry, have to cut this short, but I just received a call from the City of London. Mr. Rothschild may be calling (nobody really knows). And if nobody really knows, it could be true. Why? We don’t know WHY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usSGhZe4I90