Good morning 99percenters!
Morning news dump and music by Arlo Guthrie.

20,000+ Police March In Force Against G7 Protests in Germany
Though more than 20,000 police officers were deployed to keep voice of the people away from powerful leaders, the critiques offered by demonstrators appear highlighted by the enormous efforts made to silence them

Though outnumbered by police by approximately two-to-one, thousands of people took to the streets of the Alpine resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany on Saturday to express their opposition to the hegemonic and neoliberal policies of the G7 nations as they gathered in a nearby luxury hotel ahead their annual summit which begins Sunday.

Speaking out against the destructive policies of the world's leading industrialized nations—which includes the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Japan, Italy, and Germany—organized groups and individuals who participated in the protest carried signs and banners decrying inaction on climate change, the pending TransAtlantic Trade in Partnership (TTIP) agreement, ongoing wars and militarization, and the overarching assault on global democracy that has seen the power of corporations rise alongside nearly unprecedented levels of economic inequality.

Saturday's demonstration follows a larger one that took place in Munich on Thursday which saw tens of thousands march beneath those same messages.

"I'm protesting because the big financial corporations have too much influence over politics," one protester, 50-year-old Thomas Schmidbauer, told Reuters on Saturday. "Poverty isn't being tackled. It is unfair. We could organize our economies much better for the people."

CIA Director John Brennan Admits U.S. Foreign Policy Could Spur Terrorism

John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, went on “Face the Nation” last Sunday and did something weird: he acknowledged that U.S. foreign policy might sometimes cause terrorism. Of course, he didn’t word it exactly like that, but close enough:

BRENNAN: I think the president has tried to make sure that we’re able to push the envelope when we can to protect this country. But we have to recognize that sometimes our engagement and direct involvement will stimulate and spur additional threats to our national security interests.

This is notable because the people who run our foreign policy usually tell us that terrorists are like zombies, driven by some incomprehensible force to kill and kill and kill until we take them out with a head shot/drone strike. Brennan himself did this five years ago while “answering” questions from the late reporter Helen Thomas about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian man who tried to blow up a Northwest flight over Detroit:

Your boss wants to control your vote: The real reason to fear corporate power
Our Citizens United outrage is misplaced: The real influence corporations have is over our livelihood & well-being

Money talks. But how?

From “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” to Citizens United, the story goes like this: The wealthy corrupt and control democracy by purchasing politicians, scripting speech and writing laws. Corporations and rich people make donations to candidates, pay for campaign ads and create PACs. They, or their lobbyists, take members of Congress out to dinner, organize junkets for senators and tell the government what to do. They insinuate money where it doesn’t belong. They don’t build democracy; they buy it.

But that, says Alex Hertel-Fernandez, a PhD student in Harvard’s government department, may not be the only or even the best way to think about the power of money. That power extends far beyond the dollars deposited in a politician’s pocket. It reaches for the votes and voices of workers who the wealthy employ. Money talks loudest where money gets made: in the workplace.

Since December, Hertel-Fernandez has been surveying more than a thousand employees and more than 500 executives—board chairs, presidents, senior vice presidents—and top managers. He’s also conducted follow-up interviews with execs and managers, which he discusses in an unpublished paper “Office Politics: When Do American Firms Recruit Their Workers into Politics?” (He kindly gave me a copy.) His central finding, which has already attracted the attention of Vox and MSNBC, is that one of the most important ways that business influences and controls the political process is by mobilizing employees—sometimes coercively.

What's that bird? New website identifies species by your photo

Your computer just became an ornithologist.

In a breakthrough for bird watchers and the avian-curious everywhere, the Visipedia research project and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have collaborated on a nifty website that has a keen skill: it can identify hundreds of bird species by photo alone.

Called Merlin Bird Photo ID, the identifier is capable of recognizing 400 of the mostly commonly encountered birds in the United States and Canada.

"It gets the bird right in the top three results about 90 percent of the time, and it's designed to keep improving the more people use it," said Jessie Barry at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "That's truly amazing, considering that the computer vision community started working on the challenge of bird identification only a few years ago."