Truth about OCCUPY WALL STREET

<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Michael Savage reveals what Occupy Wall Street really is...</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>LEARN MORE HERE:</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/search?q=occupy+wall+street" style="color: red;">http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/search?q=occupy+wall+street</a></b></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>There are those of us who are not hoodwinked at what's going on in this nation and the world.  Especially those of us who are in Christ Jesus and are justified through faith in his shed blood.  If you don't like that then don't like it then.  Just go on your merry way and enjoy God's strong delusion coming your way.</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Here's a good clip of Michael Savage:</b></div><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dAcyTE0ZTSU?feature=player_detailpage" width="640"></iframe></div>

Truth about OCCUPY WALL STREET

Michael Savage reveals what Occupy Wall Street really is... LEARN MORE HERE: http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/search?q=occupy+wall+street...

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BANKING INSTITUTIONS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN STANDING ARMIES

<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>IRATE GOD, THE MARKET</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the old times the economy and markets managed to function without stock exchanges, daily ratings and real time minute by minute updates. With the coming of the “Information Highway” all this changed. Suddenly an entire eco political system panics when stock markets numbers plunge and cheer soaring stock figures. It seems the entire world has been drawn into this matrix which revolves around one thing, numbers which provide the illusion of money, ratings based on assumptions and economic power based on speculation. </span><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>THE POWER OF NUMBERS</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">The majority of us does not even understanding the complex and obscured arithmetic’s of the “holy grail”, The Stock Market, but nevertheless we seems to be drawn into the believe that such fluctuations will affect our live. Considering that physical money accounts only for 10% in today’s markets and that 90% of “money transactions” are simple numeral data transfer within “cyberspace”, it becomes clear that physical money is only a tool to control people but not a necessity. Money gives the illusion of freedom and independence to the common man, yet we see how that very tool is used to implement austerity over the working class. US President Thomas Jefferson back in 1826 said:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: blue; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">“<b>I BELIEVE THAT BANKING INSTITUTIONS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN STANDING ARMIES…</b></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE EVER ALLOW PRIVATE BANKS TO CONTROL THE ISSUE OF CURRENCY …… THE BANKS AND CORPORATIONS THAT WILL GROW UP AROUND THEM WILL DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE OF THEIR PROPERTY UNTIL THEIR CHILDREN WAKE UP HOMELESS ON THE CONTINENT THEIR FATHERS CONQUERED”</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">THOMAS JEFFERSON <b>1743 -1826</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Wise words, unfortunately no one seemed to take the advice, not in the 19^th century, nor in the 20^th century and certainly not in the 21^st century.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">To a large extend Financial institutions have caused the havoc we are currently experiencing, especially in Europe. Nevertheless governments are using taxpayer’s money to rescue those very institutions that caused the chaos in the first place.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">GREECE’S LOOMING DEFAULT,......... A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">To solve the current financial crisis in Europe and especially Greece one should consider asking exactly those institutions that caused to a large extent the crisis in Greece to bail out Greece, namely GOLDMAN SACHS.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><div style="color: red; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b> FOOD FOR THOUGHT </b></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="266" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-kKlUXeCWpM?feature=player_embedded" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="320"></iframe></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Sreeram Chaulia,</b> Geopolitical analyst kindly permitted me to republish an article he wrote for <b>THE GLOBALIST</b>, which highlights the Goldman Sachs involvement in Greece’s dept dilemma. </span></div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 0in;" valign="top"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td style="color: blue; padding: 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Dateline Greece: Goldman, Just Pay Up</b></span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></td> </tr><tr> <td style="color: blue; padding: 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />By <b>SREERAM CHAULIA </b> </span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">As Greece teeters on the edge of sovereign default of around $300 billion and sends shudders of premonition throughout the global economy, the fingerprints of <span style="color: red;">Goldman Sachs </span> are once again to be found, as in so many crises beforehand. Sreeram Chaulia argues that Goldman should accept moral responsibility and contribute funds to bailing out Greece.</span></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="266" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7VTdUWk9DLM?feature=player_embedded" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="320"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; mso-cellspacing: 0in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; width: 97.12%;"><tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"> <td style="padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in; width: 454.5pt;" valign="top" width="606"><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;">A</span><span style="font-size: large;">s more skeletons fall out of the closet, it is coming to light that Greece's profligacy was abetted and managed for several years by the top Wall Street financial firms via complex instruments. </span></div><table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; width: 151px;"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 0in;"><table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 130px;"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 3pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></td> </tr><tr> <td style="padding: 3pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Economies of developing countries have endured decades of bitter experiences of falling into debt traps that sap productive resources.</span></b></span></div></td> </tr><tr> <td style="padding: 3pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></td> </tr></tbody></table></td> </tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 2001, before spendthrift Greece could enter the eurozone by satisfying the deficit limit rules of the currency union, Goldman Sachs entered the picture with a tricky currency trade deal that would hide billions of dollars of additional public borrowing and not make it look like debt. For this piece of consultancy, which helped Greece join the euro by hook or by crook, Goldman received fees of $300 million. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 2005, Goldman sold to the National Bank of Greece an “interest rate swap,” one of the notorious derivatives that have come under scrutiny since the Wall Street implosion of 2008. Greek critics of such dubious debt-hiding transactions had warned their government of the mounting long-term liabilities to the likes of Goldman, but to no avail. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">According to news reports, Greece mortgaged revenue-generating assets like the national lottery, airports and highways as part of the agreements with Goldman in what amounted to "a garage sale on a national scale." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Goldman Sachs is reported to have attempted a redux of 2001 when its president, Gary Cohn, landed in Athens in November 2009 with a similar debt deferral proposal that would continue to fool investors and the EU. This time around, Greece did not oblige. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">But the damage had already been done over a decade of spiraling foreign debt that was repackaged and postponed with Wall Street's wizardry. We now know that similar borrowing binges were occurring in the rest of the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) economies courtesy of the financial dodging expertise of Goldman, JPMorgan and the entire cadre of hedge funds. </span></div><table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; width: 151px;"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 0in;"><table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 130px;"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 3pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></td> </tr><tr> <td style="padding: 3pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">It may not be unfair if the EU demands that Goldman accept moral responsibility and contribute to bailing out Greece.</span></b></span></div></td> </tr><tr> <td style="padding: 3pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></td> </tr></tbody></table></td> </tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Economies of developing countries, especially in Africa and Latin America, have endured decades of bitter experiences of falling into debt traps that sap productive resources, benefit speculative financiers and weaken state capacities to govern. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">In their cases, the Bretton Woods institutions acted as economic restructuring consultants and funding taps that only opened if the recipients met crushing conditionalities. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">John Perkins's book, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," reveals how highly paid professionals with knowledge of macroeconomics and world affairs were deployed to convince political and financial leaders of poor countries to accept massive "development loans" from the World Bank and USAID. Once ensnared, the supplicants would be subjected to pressure on different issues from Washington. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the PIGS economies, it was not so much strategically motivated hit men working for the U.S. government but rather some freewheeling U.S. financial corporations that could make a killing out of clients who were addicted to reckless state spending. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">In late February 2010, as the EU began investigating the Wall Street shenanigans in Athens, Goldman defended its Greek misadventures by arguing, predictably enough, that they were legal actions consistent with the regulations of their time. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Of course, much of the fault lay with the Greek politicians who were seduced by the Wall Street financial advisers who, for their part, were simply pursuing the bread-and-butter business of circulating wealth for profit. </span></div><table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; width: 151px;"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 0in;"><table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 130px;"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 3pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></td> </tr><tr> <td style="padding: 3pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Of course, much of the fault lay with the Greek politicians who were seduced by Wall Street financial advisers.</span></b></span></div></td> </tr><tr> <td style="padding: 3pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></td> </tr></tbody></table></td> </tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Had Athens been more disciplined in organizing its finances, there would not have been a window of opportunity for Goldman and company to exploit its vulnerability. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">But southern Europe's debt-proneness has systemic consequences from which Wall Street cannot easily extricate itself. While there is no evidence to suggest that U.S. investment banks deliberately dug the graves of PIGS to weaken the euro, the disastrous social costs of their financial chicanery call for reparations. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">It may not be unfair if the EU demands that Goldman, which now leads the earnings chart on Wall Street, accept moral responsibility and contribute to bailing out Greece. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Who knows — now that even the U.S. Federal Reserve is making noises about investigating Goldman’s practices, the firm may be in a hurry to pay up. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Editor's Note: This feature is adapted from a longer version published in The Financial Express on February 25, 2010</span></i></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: blue; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 115%;"><b>Interesting reading:</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b></span></div><div style="color: blue; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: blue; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Occupy World Street</b> </span></div><div style="color: blue; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 115%;"><b>By Pepe Escobar</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 115%;"><b><span style="color: yellow;"> </span> </b><b> </b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> </span></i></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MJ19Dj02.html">http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MJ19Dj02.html</a></span></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="266" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ufOTAFidGY8?feature=player_embedded" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="320"></iframe></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div></td> </tr></tbody></table>

BANKING INSTITUTIONS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN STANDING ARMIES

IRATE GOD, THE MARKET In the old times the economy and markets managed to function without stock exchanges, daily ratings and real time minu...

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Today's Teamster News 11.14.13

<a href="http://www.teamster.org/content/hundreds-teamster-taxi-drivers-rally-outside-dc-taxicab-commission-meeting" rel="nofollow">Drivers Rally Outside D.C. Taxicab Commission Meeting</a>  teamster.org   ...Hundreds of taxi drivers rallied outside the monthly meeting of the D.C. Taxicab Commission today to protest the unfair towing and ticketing of cabs and to demand a voice in the regulatory process. Also, <a href="http://www.teamster.org/content/taxi-drivers-rally-freedom-plaza-wilson-building" rel="nofollow">watch this video</a> of D.C. taxi drivers rallying November 4 at Freedom Plaza and delivering a letter outlining their concerns to Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray...<br /><a href="http://www.teamster.org/content/congress-city-have-role-improving-retirement-confidence" rel="nofollow">Hoffa: Congress, Detroit Have Role in Improving Retirement Confidence</a>  teamster.org   ...A secure retirement used to be seen as a right for all hardworking Michiganders. Whether you were a city government employee in Detroit or a private sector worker in Pontiac, if you put in the time and did your job well, you would be rewarded with a nest egg for your golden years that would allow you live comfortably...<br /><a href="http://portside.org/2013-11-12/wal-mart-workers-strike-target-workers-threaten-join-black-friday-walkout" rel="nofollow">Wal-Mart Workers Strike, Target Workers Threaten to Join Black Friday Walkout </a> Portside   ...Sub-contracted Twin Cities janitorial workers who clean stores for Target and other corporations plan to announce today that they’re prepared to strike that day as well...<br /><a href="http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/writers/steven_elbow/reports-shed-light-on-how-koch-brothers-money-flows-to/article_3fc32d79-f8fb-5c22-b5ee-78d4e4109afa.html" rel="nofollow">Reports shed light on how Koch brothers' money flows to campaigns</a>  The Cap Times   ...A slew of reports released Wednesday reveal that a network of conservative think tanks, funded by multinational corporations and industrialists — most notably Charles and David Koch — comprise a vast dark-money campaign funding mechanism that funnels cash to conservative candidates, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in last year’s recall election...<br /><a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/11/13/scalias_chance_to_smash_unions_the_huge_under_the_radar_case/" rel="nofollow">Scalia’s chance to smash unions: The huge under-the-radar case</a>  Salon   ...A Supreme Court case being argued Wednesday could take away a tactic that's kept unions alive...<br /><a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/11/13/you_wont_believe_how_much_companies_make_every_single_second/" rel="nofollow">You won’t believe how much companies make every single second</a>  Salon   ...The highest grosser on the list is Samsung, which hauls in almost $6,500 a second (In the five minutes it took us to write this post, Samsung made almost $2 million). It is followed closely by Apple at $4,540 a second...<br /><a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/house-pushing-back-on-trade-deal-more-detail-on-how-secretive-arbitration-panels-undermine-laws-and-regulations.html" rel="nofollow">House Pushing Back on Trade Deal; More Detail on How Secret Arbitration Panels Undermine Laws and Regulations </a>  naked capitalism   ...Wow, this is amazing. Word has apparently gotten out even to Congressmen who can normally be lulled to sleep with the invocation of the magic phrase “free trade” that the pending Trans Pacific Partnership is toxic...<br /><a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/11/13/wikileaks_releases_major_trade_agreement_draft_chapter/" rel="nofollow">WikiLeaks releases major trade agreement draft chapter </a> Salon   ...“One could see the TPP as a Christmas wish-list for major corporations, and the copyright parts of the text support such a view...”<br /><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/12/bank-of-america-freddie-mac-dispute_n_4258095.html" rel="nofollow">Bank Of America, Freddie Mac May Settle $1.4 Billion Mortgage Dispute</a>  Reuters   ...The Bank of America is in talks with Freddie Mac to resolve disputes involving more than $1.4 billion in defective mortgages that Freddie wants the bank to take back...<br /><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/13/us-apple-italy-tax-idUSBRE9AC0RW20131113" rel="nofollow">Apple under investigation in Italy for alleged tax fraud</a>  Reuters   ...U.S. tech giant <a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAPL&lc=int_mb_1001">Apple</a> is under investigation in Milan for allegedly hiding more than 1 billion euros ($1.34 billion) from the Italian taxman, a judicial source with direct knowledge of the matter, confirming a local media report...<br /><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/165809/congressional-approval-sinks-record-low.aspx" rel="nofollow">Congressional Approval Sinks to Record Low</a>  Gallup   ...Americans' approval of the way Congress is handling its job has dropped to 9%, the lowest in Gallup's 39-year history of asking the question...<br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/opinion/a-living-wage-in-bangladesh.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">A Living Wage in Bangladesh</a> (opinion)  New York Times   ...The government of Bangladesh is expected to soon announce an increase in the minimum wage for workers in the country’s clothing factories, which are big suppliers to Western retailers like Walmart and H&M. Its decision could improve the lives of millions of families that struggle to eke out an existence on as little as the equivalent of about $38 a month, the current minimum wage...<br /><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/costco-thanksgiving_n_4262774.html?utm_hp_ref=business" rel="nofollow">Costco, Nordstrom Refuse To Ruin Thanksgiving</a>  Huffington Post   ...If you make a last-minute run to Costco on Thanksgiving Day, you'll be out of luck...<br /><a href="http://www.alternet.org/economy/fixing-and-expanding-social-security-wildly-popular" rel="nofollow">Top Democratic Pollster Says Don't Mess with Social Security -- Or Else Face the Wrath of Voters in 2014</a>  Alternet   ...more than half of the 77 million baby boomers heading toward their mid-60s and older—especially women and people of color—have literally no retirement savings, and will fall into poverty as they age...<br /><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt" rel="nofollow">Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15 million of Americans' personal debt</a>  The Guardian   ...A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15,000,000 of Americans' personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit...<br /><a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/13/socialist-candidate-leadiing-in-seattle-city-council-race/" rel="nofollow">Socialist candidate leading in Seattle City Council race</a>  Raw Story   ...With about 62,000 ballots from King County yet to be counted following the Nov. 4 election, 41-year-old economics professor Kshama Sawant was reportedly ahead of longtime incumbent Richard Conlin by 41 votes, with Sawant gathering 79,751 votes against 79,710 for Conlin...<br /><a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/11/13/corporate_crime_wave_in_texas_how_a_crackdown_could_be_coming/" rel="nofollow">Corporate crime wave in Texas: How a crackdown could be coming</a>  Salon   ...The nation’s fourth-largest city, Houston, is slated to vote today on cracking down on an alleged national epidemic: companies not paying employees the wages they’re legally owed. The proposed ordinance would make companies found guilty of serious “wage theft” ineligible for city support...<br /><a href="http://expressmilwaukee.com/article-22149-exclusive:-koch-brothers%E2%80%99-dark-money-flowed-into-wisconsin-recall-fight.html" rel="nofollow">Koch Brothers’ Dark Money Flowed into Wisconsin Recall Fight</a>  Express Milwaukee   ...Group busted in California gave serious money to Wisconsin Club for Growth...<br /><a href="http://portside.org/2013-11-13/unintimidated-scott-walker-reveals-depth-disdain-unions-protesters" rel="nofollow">In Unintimidated, Scott Walker Reveals Depth of Disdain for Unions, Protesters </a> Portside   ...He ...charges that collective bargaining "isn't a right, but a racket."...<br /><a href="http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/11/michigan_bill_would_ban_employ.html#incart_river" rel="nofollow">Michigan bill would ban employers from asking about felony convictions on job applications</a> Michigan Live   ...Michigan lawmakers are considering banning felony conviction check boxes on job applications. Supporters of the measure say the check boxes unfairly discriminate against people with criminal histories and hinder their ability to become successful members of society...<br /><a href="http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/11/freedom_of_information_act_req.html#incart_river_default" rel="nofollow">Freedom of Information Act requests could be cheaper, easier under Michigan House bill</a>  Michigan Live   ...A state House panel on Tuesday unanimously approved a bill designed to update Michigan's Freedom of Information Act and ensure that government offices are not making it unnecessarily difficult for citizens to access public records...<br /><a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20131112/NEWS06/311120095/state-employee-contract-negotiations-impasse-waste-michigan" rel="nofollow">State employee unions launch campaign to highlight government waste</a>  Detroit Free Press   ...A coalition of unions representing 35,000 state employees has launched an effort to highlight areas where Michigan government can be more efficient and improve services to citizens...

Today's Teamster News 11.14.13

Drivers Rally Outside D.C. Taxicab Commission Meeting   teamster.org   ...Hundreds of taxi drivers rallied outside the monthly meeting of th...

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT

<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Have you ever thought why no mainstream media reports on the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, which is in its 6th day ?????</b><br /><br /><div style="color: red;"><b>Updated 27 September 2011  </b></div><b><span style="color: red;">with a link to</span></b><br /><a href="http://rt.com/news/wall-street-protest-arrests-331/">http://rt.com/news/wall-street-protest-arrests-331/</a></div><div style="color: red; text-align: center;"><b>which confirms my question</b></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="266" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KrFQs5X-I1Y?feature=player_embedded" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="320"></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="266" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AjJ9nEi6Qdw?feature=player_embedded" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="320"></iframe></div>

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Have you ever thought why no mainstream media reports on the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, which is in its 6th day ????? Updated ...

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28 in 28 #26: Beyond Zuccotti Park

<i>February is Book Month on A Daily Dose of Architecture. The "<a href="http://archidose.blogspot.com/search/label/28%20in%2028">28 in 28</a>" series features a different book every day of the month.</i><br /><br /><a href="http://www.newvillagepress.net/book/?GCOI=97660100321610"><b><i>Beyond Zuccotti Park: Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space</i></b></a> edited by Ron Shiffman, Rick Bell, Lance Jay Brown, and Lynne Elizabeth, with Anastassia Fisyak, and Anusha Venkataraman<br />New Village Press, 2012<br />Paperback, 432 pages<br /><br /><img alt="28-28_zuccotti.jpg" src="http://www.archidose.org/Blog/28-28_zuccotti.jpg" title="Book cover" /><br /><blockquote><i>You can't evict an idea whose time has come.</i></blockquote><a href="http://occupywallst.org/article/you-cant-evict-idea-whose-time-has-come/">The above words were written</a> when New York City police were evicting Liberty Square (aka Zuccotti Park) and the Occupy Wall Street encampment in November 2011. The statement attempts to maintain the momentum that OWS had gained since taking over Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan on September 17 of the same year. But it also implies that the idea is more important than the physical occupation of (semi-)public space, and therefore the latter is not as important or not integral to the movement. Given that OWS is nowhere to be found in the news 15 months after the eviction, this would seem to indicate that physical presence in public space is really important after all. But even if OWS lies in wait, did those two short months have a lasting impact on how public spaces are seen and used? And what does the movement point to in the design and evolution of the city, particularly in regard to open and public spaces?<br /><br />These and many more questions are tackled by the numerous contributors to <a href="http://www.beyondzuccotti.org/"><i>Beyond Zuccotti Park</i></a>, a book and initiative that are a collaboration of the Center for Architecture, City College of New York School of Architecture, and Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, with New Village Press and Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. As the title indicates, the collection of essays is not about OWS; it's about the impact of OWS and the thinking about assembly and public space that it has sparked. Of course there are contributions that focus on those couple months in 2011, such as Alexander Cooper's (the designer of Zuccotti Park) analysis of various Occupation sites relative to public transit and Rick Bell's 20 common points among the Occupy "mini-cities." Most of the essays addressing OWS are put into the first section—Occupy! The next four sections attempt to categorize the remainder—Emplacing Equity and Social Justice, Reimagining Public Space, Public Space Over Time, and Responsive Change (the last is split into Public Sector Agents of Change and Designers and Developers as Agents of Change).<br /><br />If the book were limited to OWS and Zuccotti Park essays it would be much more honed but also a lot slimmer. As is, the topics are looser but the contributions greater and from a larger pool of voices, some of them quite well known. Their takes on public space and assembly could be read as recipes for making urban open spaces amenable for exercising democratic rights. It's certainly a goal that goes well beyond design; or more accurately, the context that design works within is much more charged and contested than in other realms of building and landscape. Consensus won't be found in the varied collection, but like OWS itself, there is a shared dissatisfaction with things, in this case how the public fits into public space.<br /><br /><b>US: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613320094/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1613320094&linkCode=as2&tag=aweeklydoseof-20" target="_blank"><img alt="Buy from Amazon.com" border="0" src="http://www.archidose.org/books/buy-from-tan.gif" /></a> CA: <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1613320094/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1613320094&linkCode=as2&tag=aweeklydoseof-20" target="_blank"><img alt="Buy from Amazon.ca" border="0" height="28" src="http://www.archidose.org/books/buy-from-tan-ca.gif" width="90" /></a> UK: <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1613320094/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1613320094&linkCode=as2&tag=aweeklydoseof-20" target="_blank"><img alt="Buy from Amazon.co.uk" border="0" height="28" src="http://www.archidose.org/books/buy-from-tan-uk.gif" width="90" /></a></b>

28 in 28 #26: Beyond Zuccotti Park

February is Book Month on A Daily Dose of Architecture. The " 28 in 28 " series features a different book every day of the month. ...

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PROTESTS & SOCIETAL COLLAPSE: "We Are Legion!" - The Anonymous Group Protest Against Corruption In Global Million Mask March; More Precursors To The Collapse Of The FAILED White Supremacy Paradigm!

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: yellow;"><span style="color: orange;"><b><i>"All these wars, protests and color revolutions,... are all in divine order,... all connected to the rise of the Moors."</i></b></span> - Aseer, The Duke of Tiers.<br /><br />November 05, 2013 - EARTH </span></b>- Members and supporters of hacktivist collective Anonymous are marking Guy Fawkes Day with a global ‘Million Mask March’ to protest against government corruption, corporate malfeasance and the expanding surveillance state.<br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FWDE-YeFNbo/Unk7VtiFeII/AAAAAAABNEQ/bFCfaG9-qVE/s1600/anonymousmarch01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FWDE-YeFNbo/Unk7VtiFeII/AAAAAAABNEQ/bFCfaG9-qVE/s1600/anonymousmarch01.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from twitter.com @YourAnonNews.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hkFK5rFGgdU/Unk7VlEcAbI/AAAAAAABNEU/FlrNNEP1H64/s1600/anonymousmarch02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hkFK5rFGgdU/Unk7VlEcAbI/AAAAAAABNEU/FlrNNEP1H64/s1600/anonymousmarch02.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from twitter.com @OccupySydney.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />The global action on November 5 coincides with Guy Fawkes Day, which is celebrated by Britain with fireworks to remind of the botched attempt to blow up the Parliament in 1605. But the image of the notorious plotter has a new meaning for Anonymous and their supporters today. The Guy Fawkes mask was adopted by the hacker activists from the V for Vendetta graphic novel and film as a symbol of the anarchic fight against tyranny. <br /><br /><br /><span style="color: lime;"><b>WATCH:</b></span> Anonymous supporters rally worldwide to protest corruption, police state.  <br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="321" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/vi7YhCRaJM8?showinfo=0&version=3" width="570"></iframe></div><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.45em;">Cities in Japan, Australia, and New Zealand have already started their local events. Activists in Europe and US are expected to join soon.</span> Event organizers have planned rallies and marches at <a href="http://millionmaskmarch.org/locations" target="_blank">450 locations</a> around the world, although the majority of the events have thus far attracted between several dozen people or a couple of hundred people.   <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PoZgotzVB74/Unk7u138O_I/AAAAAAABNEg/of06ZvULwjI/s1600/anonymousmarch03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PoZgotzVB74/Unk7u138O_I/AAAAAAABNEg/of06ZvULwjI/s1600/anonymousmarch03.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from twitter.com @YourAnonNews.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />In London, thousands are expected to rally at Trafalgar Square, where supporters of Anonymous have congregated on past Guy Fawkes Days in huge numbers. <br /><br />On the website for London’s OpVendetta event, an administrator wrote, “Anonymous have changed the rules by turning this morality of petition into more of a festival of ideas and new age discussion that has formed the political views of the youth of today. Anonymous understand now that we have filled the void in the protest world that others have failed Anonymous have managed to hold on to the system of having no system which allows everyone's beliefs to join the great debate.” <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ncwBkE4gpqk/Unk8BkwSU_I/AAAAAAABNEo/TMXSzHHazs0/s1600/anonymousmarch04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ncwBkE4gpqk/Unk8BkwSU_I/AAAAAAABNEo/TMXSzHHazs0/s1600/anonymousmarch04.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from twitter.com @YourAnonNews.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />The US capital Washington is expected to hold a massive ‘Million Mask March’ event. <br /><br />“To remind this world what it has forgotten, that fairness, justice and freedom are more than just words,” is the stated aim, according to the gathering’s Facebook page. The rally is scheduled to involve a meet-up near the Washington Monument that will then involve a march up the street to the nearby White House. <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n2rQMQSW_LM/Unk8Njv38gI/AAAAAAABNEw/g3aNVUnb-AM/s1600/anonymousmarch05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n2rQMQSW_LM/Unk8Njv38gI/AAAAAAABNEw/g3aNVUnb-AM/s1600/anonymousmarch05.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from twitter.com @YourAnonNews.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Often described in the media as a loose-knit collective, Anonymous was propelled to public prominence over the last years for a series of politically-motivated cyber-attacks on businesses and government institutions. Groups calling themselves by that name targeted entertainment industry, financial institutions, websites of governments from Latin America to Asia and international organizations. <br /><br /><br /><span style="color: lime;"><b>WATCH:</b></span> Million Mask March in Washington DC.  <br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="321" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/d2vG3hQ_jCQ?showinfo=0&version=3" width="570"></iframe></div><br /><br /><br />The current agenda of the people behind Tuesday’s protest is wide-ranging. Some are protesting whatever crimes their local governments committed. Others take on global goals, like stopping the mass digital surveillance by the US National Security Agency and its allies, or the advance of genetically modified food championed by Monsanto and similar companies. The movement is apparently growing in strength. <br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kzFcYXH3AKM/Unk8alu5HoI/AAAAAAABNE4/HiSKzx0ohnA/s1600/anonymousmarch06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kzFcYXH3AKM/Unk8alu5HoI/AAAAAAABNE4/HiSKzx0ohnA/s1600/anonymousmarch06.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br />“We are not slowing down, we are speeding up,” John Anthony Fairhurst, one of the organizers of the Million Mask March in Washington, DC, told RT. “These people all over the world need some serious change.” <br /><br />As a worldwide movement, Anonymous-at-large has in the past rallied in support of the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and Army soldier-turned-whistleblower Chelsea Manning. They supported Arab Spring anti-dictatorship protesters in the Middle East as well as the Occupy Wall Street movement, which started in New York City two years ago, but has since spread across the world as a means of addressing the overt, allegedly corrupt ties between corporations and the authorities. - <span style="color: orange;"><b><a href="http://rt.com/news/anonymous-million-mask-march-225/">RT</a></b></span>.<br /><br /></div>

Anonymous Corporate Malfeasance Corruption Global Million Mask March Guy Fawkes Day Protests Revolution Rise of the Moors Societal Collapse Surveillance State We Are Legion White Supremacy Paradigm PROTESTS & SOCIETAL COLLAPSE: "We Are Legion!" - The Anonymous Group Protest Against Corruption In Global Million Mask March; More Precursors To The Collapse Of The FAILED White Supremacy Paradigm!

"All these wars, protests and color revolutions,... are all in divine order,... all connected to the rise of the Moors." - Aseer,...

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Where is Jan Brewer?

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />Hola y’all! Arizona governor Jan Brewer has <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/270909-arizona-senators-dont-know-gov-jan-brewers-whereabouts" target="_blank">up and left the state of Arizona</a> and while her staff appears to know where she is, they’re refusing to tell anyway. Needless to say this has a lot of people very worried. Is she sick? Is she off finding herself? Did she just wander off and get lost? Well, I’ve put together a list of places and things she could be doing that should put everyone’s at ease…<br /><br />- She’s off getting an abortion because the laws in her state have made it nearly impossible for a woman to get one.<br /><br />- She’s gone to Kenya in one last attempt to prove Obama isn’t a citizen before the electoral college votes.<br /><br />- She’s getting a face lift. Might need an extra week.<br /><br />- She’s here in Redneckville helping me put this TV stand together.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0PLBRAGsAvp33A5WIHq_44-gt5xArfSDAYukWYEhmO_DmMAfgkElUUBJKaeptCzE3Rc3KUogOv9WBmbO26FeetzY6RG_njwwmkJZ5TdA3jNdbtS3Xao_ignhEoNo8sRoG_a5AOzrKbPs/s1600/IMG_2995.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0PLBRAGsAvp33A5WIHq_44-gt5xArfSDAYukWYEhmO_DmMAfgkElUUBJKaeptCzE3Rc3KUogOv9WBmbO26FeetzY6RG_njwwmkJZ5TdA3jNdbtS3Xao_ignhEoNo8sRoG_a5AOzrKbPs/s400/IMG_2995.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />- Hiking the Appalachian Trail.<br /><br />- She’s at a secret resort in Mexico with her lover, Guillermo.<br /><br />- The Betty Ford Clinic. OH COME ONE! YOU WERE THINKING IT TOO!<br /><br />- Klan meetings.<br /><br />- Shacked up in a Washington hotel with fellow drunk John Boehner helping him with his own personal physical cliff. (Okay that one was pretty weak and I don’t know what it means either.)<br /><br />- Filling in for Elena Roger for a week in Evita on Broadway.<br /><br />- Getting her apocalypse bunker ready for before the December, 21 deadline.<br /><br />- She’s spending the week in quiet reflection at the Dhammakaya Internation Meditation Center of Taipei.<br /><br />- She bought the “undisclosed location” that Dick Cheney used while VP and is refurnishing it.<br /><br />- Following the Lady GaGa tour through Russia.<br /><br />- She’s “interviewing” to be Matt-Man’s <a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/2012/11/i-need-ten-day-surrogate.html" target="_blank">intern</a> while Schmoop is in the hospital.<br /><br />- She’s taking care of Kate Middleton for a week or so while she gets over her severe morning sickness.<br /><br />- She’s spending the week on the Greenpeace ship “Rainbow Warrior” heading to New Zealand.<br /><br />- She’s helping Occupy Wall Street prepare for their winter assault.<br /><br />- She’s gone to Disneyland!<br /><br />As you can see Gov. Brewer has lots of options and is probably off doing something fun and educational or she’s out there doing good things for the world. There’s obviously nothing to worry about.<br /><br />Jayman<br /><a href="mailto:Jayman3768@gmail.com">Jayman3768@gmail.com</a><br /><a href="http://twitter.com/jayman_iws" target="_blank">@Jayman_IWS </a><br /><br /></div>

Where is Jan Brewer?

Hola y’all! Arizona governor Jan Brewer has up and left the state of Arizona and while her staff appears to know where she is, they’re refu...

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Daniel Ameduri's 6 YEAR Anniversary from the NIA

<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>G4T, NIA, penny stocks, GOLD and SILVER, etc.</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>You've come a long way baby!</b></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A lesson in successful American entrepreneurship </b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Daniel Ameduri reflects on his successful entrepreneurship and accomplishments.  His motto is, "Do what you want and monetize it."</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>(Josh Galt, G4T, Survive and Thrive T.V., National Inflation Association, Rick Rule, Mike Maloney, Cambridge House Investment Conference, Vision Victory, The Day the Dollar Died, Gold, Silver, Future Money Trends, Casey Research, Sprott Asset Management, conspiracy theories, Inflation.us, trolls, shills, Texas Hog Ranch, Ranch Boss, Sons of Liberty, Hodder, Royal Metals Group, INFOWARS, truthers, patriots, LIbertarians, Ron Paul, Occupy Wall Street, etc...)</b><br /><br /><b>This is precisely why America is turning into a society of entertainment and anything goes entrepreneurship.  This nation is no longer progressing but rather I'll describe it as being in the advanced stages of a combined high tech business and entertainment driven society of chaos which ultimately leads to entropy:</b></div></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/XhsB508azVM?feature=player_detailpage" width="640"></iframe><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2N8gJSMoOJc?feature=player_detailpage" width="640"></iframe><br /><br /><b>RELATED STUDIES:</b><br /><b><a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-trip-down-g4t-memory-lane.html" style="color: red;">http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-trip-down-g4t-memory-lane.html</a></b><br /><b><br /></b><b><a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/2014/01/g4ts-old-truther-pal-from-nia-pumps.html" style="color: red;">http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/2014/01/g4ts-old-truther-pal-from-nia-pumps.html</a></b><br /><b><br /></b><b><a href="http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/2014/01/g4ts-old-truther-pal-from-nia-pumps.html" style="color: red;">http://news-these-days.blogspot.com/2014/01/g4ts-old-truther-pal-from-nia-pumps.html</a></b><br /><br /><b>...developing...</b></div>

Daniel Ameduri's 6 YEAR Anniversary from the NIA

G4T, NIA, penny stocks, GOLD and SILVER, etc. You've come a long way baby! A lesson in successful American entrepreneurship Daniel Amedu...

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Examining Lindsey Williams and who he really is

<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Who is this Lindsey Williams?</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Who is SGTbull07? BrotherJohnF? Chris Duane?  The Truth Never Told?  The Sons of Liberty? Silver Bullet Silver Shield? The National Inflation Association? Future Money Trends? Mike Maloney? David Morgan? Sprott Asset Management?  The Silver Community?  Truthers?  Patriots?  Greg Mannarino?  Greg Hunter?  Dr. Paul Craig Roberts?  INFOWARS?  Joel Skousen?  Jesse Ventura?  David Icke?  Sheriff Mack?  Ron Paul?  Libertarians?  Occupy Wall Street?  Mark Dice? Jsnip4? Pastor Dowell? Alt Investors Hangout? G4T? INFOWARS?  RTTV? Max Keiser?.....and more...?</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Who are all of these and MUCH MORE?</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/wVR4jdo8hw0?feature=player_detailpage" width="640"></iframe><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>...developing...</b></div>

Examining Lindsey Williams and who he really is

Who is this Lindsey Williams? Who is SGTbull07? BrotherJohnF? Chris Duane?  The Truth Never Told?  The Sons of Liberty? Silver Bullet Silver...

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Islam versus Christians

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16pt;"><br /></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Coincident, or Strategy? </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">With alleged Anti Christian violence erupting in the Middle East, Northern Africa and in a turn of latest events in Nigeria, the article blow should provide some  food for thought. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Feel free to form your own opinion!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Anti-Christian Violence in the Middle East?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">by Anthony Wile </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Daily Bell</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">The UK <i>Daily Telegraph</i> recently posted an article entitled, "How can we remain silent while Christians are being persecuted?" Anybody reading the Daily Bell this past year will not be surprised by this headline, nor the article itself. Turns out that the writer is reporting on "a new evil [that] is sweeping the Middle East" – and that evil is violence against Christians.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">"How can we remain silent while Christians are being persecuted?" the article asks. "The Americans have gone now, and Iraq's Christian communities – some of the world's oldest – are undergoing an exodus on a biblical scale."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">The article does not only mention Iraq and makes it clear that the anti-Christian sentiment is broad-based: "The attacks, which peak at Christmas, have already spread to Egypt, where Coptic Christians have seen their churches firebombed by Islamic fundamentalists </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">"In Tunisia, priests are being murdered. Maronite Christians in Lebanon have, for the first time, become targets of bombing campaigns. Christians in Syria, who have suffered as much as anyone from the Assad regime, now pray for its survival. If it falls, and the Islamists triumph, persecution may begin in earnest."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Early in January 2011, we predicted this. In an article entitled, “Western Elites Still Secretly Building Islam" we wrote about the West's strategic undermining of non-religious or Christian regimes in the Ivory Coast, Tunisia and Egypt. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here's an excerpt:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Is the war on terror a success? The Anglo - American elite needs an enemy if the authoritarianism that is rising in the West is to continue – because despotism (and globalism) is more easily created when there is an outside enemy. But fighting against 100 Al Qaeda soldiers in Afghanistan is not anybody's idea of a substantive threat. And the Taliban are evidently and obviously fighting an occupying force.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>What if the powers-that-be had decided to do what they could to expand the Muslim threat – and thus expand (in the Western mind anyway) the specter of resurgent, militant Islam? A cynical idea isn't it, dear reader. It is merely speculation, but there are reasons to explore it further ...</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>We are proposing a new stage in the manipulated war on terror. Having built up the Middle East through enormous cash infusions, the Anglosphere is continually expanding the role of fundamental Islam and may even be prepared to overthrow old and trusted allies to do so. The war on terror so far has not proven very terrible (except to Afghan and Iraqi citizens) but if the Jasmine revolution "spreads" throughout the Middle East, resurgent, fundamentalist Islam may indeed become a reality.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Right on time comes this article in the UK <i>Telegraph</i>, almost exactly a year later, demanding that the British foreign office does more to help victims of Arab prejudice. It's an amazing article only because it is so predictable and (surprise) neglects to provide a frame of reference that would explain the rising violence.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why would the article neglect a frame of reference? Because the Anglosphere power elite that wants to create world government, needs to continually manufacture enemies – to create fear. We call this fear-mongering the production of "dominate social themes.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">The idea is to frighten Western middle classes into surrendering wealth and power to a variety of globalist institutions that the power elite has built and put into place – and is now expanding on. These include the UN, IMF, World Bank, ICC (International Criminal Court), BIS (Bank of International Settlement), etc.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the biggest memes the power elite employs is war. Through war, all sorts of authoritarianism can be enhanced and the globalist agenda expanded efficiently in ways that it never could be otherwise. But in order to have war, one must create an enemy. And at this task Western elites are most efficient. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here's some more from the article:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>These dividing lines are now being made into battle lines by hardline Salafists, who are emerging as victors of the Arab Spring. They belong to the same mutant strain of Sunni Islam which inspired al-Qaeda. Their agenda is sectarian warfare, and they loathe Shia Islam as much as they do Christians and Jews. Their enemy lies not over a border, but in a church, synagogue or Shia mosque. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Salafists may be detested by the Muslim mainstream. But as they are finding out, you don't need to be popular to seize power in a post-dictatorship Arab world – you just need to be the best organised. The West is so obsessed with government structure that it doesn't notice when power lies elsewhere, and Islamist death squads are executing barbers and unveiled women in places like Basra.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Two years ago, the idea of such bloody sectarianism would have sounded like a macabre fantasy in a country as civilised as Egypt. After al-Qaeda bombed a church on New Year's Day, Muslim elders sat in the front pews forming a human shield and defying the terrorists. </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>But moderate Egyptians are now losing this power struggle. The killing has started, with another 25 Copts murdered in October. Tens of thousands of Egypt's Christians have already joined their Iraqi counterparts in exile: as Iraq proved, one death can lead to a thousand emigrations. The Salafists are finding it staggeringly easy to realise their fantasy of a "purer" Egypt.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Without explaining the triggering principles of Western intelligence manipulation of Islamic cultures, the article attributes the violence to the nascent Arab Spring. Of course, as is well known in alternative media circles, the Arab Spring itself is an incipient Western invention.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">The US State Department and apparently the CIA, through various facilities such as AYM, have sponsored a far-flung youth movement of rebellious young men and women who have been trained to use various tools, including social media, to cause unrest in their home countries. Apparently, these same tactics have been used to create Occupy Wall Street unrest.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">"The Arab Spring was always going to mean danger for religious minorities, unleashing the Islamic extremists who previously were kept at bay," the article informs us. We also learn that religious persecution was not a hallmark of previous (overthrown) regimes. "For all their evil, the old secular tyrants abused their victims equally, whether they wore the cross, hijab or skullcap."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">The article damns the British foreign office as being "typically slow to recognise the gathering threat, despite repeated warnings." Of course, the obvious reason for this slowness is that the unrest in the Middle East is being deliberately provoked by MI6 – along with counterparts in DC.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">You won't read such speculation in this article, however. The rationale pro-offered is psychological rather than strategic: "It might be that the Foreign Office sees this as part of a soppy equalities agenda, unworthy of diplomatic attention. Those who have raised the issue directly with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, say he is unenthusiastic."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Predictably, the psychological speculation is buttressed by that old rationale: ignorance. "The Foreign Office did not realise the full evil of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans until it was too late: it did not take civil tensions seriously enough. It can do better now, making clear that it regards religious cleansing as an emerging evil that ought to be confronted wherever it is being incubated."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Really? It's funny how much Western foreign policy is larded with ignorance and stupidity. The Anglosphere, for all of its abilities to win wars and dominate the world, is constantly making elemental mistakes: the Treaty of Versailles, Yalta, the emergence of Communist China, etc.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now as we watch militant Islam emerge from the shadows, we are informed yet again that Western powers-that-be are being caught unawares. "Outright religious oppression is quietly ignored, from Saudi Arabia to the Maldives."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Distribution of World  Religions </span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUdcVMIliC3WxKFaSz2j7sw8rWEiPRXnvlfNH-hgQwbZ65hHJl7qT7HBPhLu0E8LwBLQ1-71-vs-B2FxidIFs8GMLtVIvoJnKSfJYI4liK363B-AKAckQEAdi5ojdsBuR2nP8Y4JF6-cA/s1600/Christ_Islam.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUdcVMIliC3WxKFaSz2j7sw8rWEiPRXnvlfNH-hgQwbZ65hHJl7qT7HBPhLu0E8LwBLQ1-71-vs-B2FxidIFs8GMLtVIvoJnKSfJYI4liK363B-AKAckQEAdi5ojdsBuR2nP8Y4JF6-cA/s400/Christ_Islam.png" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Red: Christian faith, Green: Islam (Source: Wikipedia) </span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: justify;"><br /></div>

Islam versus Christians

Coincident, or Strategy?  With alleged Anti Christian violence erupting in the Middle East, Northern Africa and in a turn of latest events i...

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De Blasio’s Next Task Is Turning Passion Into Policy (BLOG)

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWjwV186tQ4qVn2tYPx6Eb4C8TxL9br1uRXMJx-QZ4Nlp1pZSmRUhzVVooam7jVLwL1u1AswVv5oK3KJyElsmIkOUyahbYWA8XI92TuhGS_sB2X5U7_vluiKGrCRzGYgd14mF9Aw42aWQ/s1600/05PROGRESSIVE1-articleLarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWjwV186tQ4qVn2tYPx6Eb4C8TxL9br1uRXMJx-QZ4Nlp1pZSmRUhzVVooam7jVLwL1u1AswVv5oK3KJyElsmIkOUyahbYWA8XI92TuhGS_sB2X5U7_vluiKGrCRzGYgd14mF9Aw42aWQ/s320/05PROGRESSIVE1-articleLarge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-top: 1.5em;"><nyt_text></nyt_text><br /><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;">A week after his election, the mayor-elect, a tall crane of a man, edged into a low-ceilinged conference room in Downtown Brooklyn to celebrate the city’s progressive movement and its progressive victory, which happened to be his own.</div></div><div class="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-top: 1.5em;"><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span class="carded" style="color: #004276; cursor: pointer; position: relative; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="card_name"><a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/bill_de_blasio/index.html?inline=nyt-per" style="color: #666699;" title=""><br />Bill de Blasio</a></span></span> smiled at the activists, who washed him in waves of applause. “The best thing we can do is keep winning progressive victories,” he said. “Superficial democracy isn’t good enough.”</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The progressives who have taken possession of Gracie Mansion and the New York City Council are fond of chatting of historic moments. After a dozen years of a billionaire’s version of quasi-liberal government, they are not shy about doubling down on their ambition. They want to take a city focused intently on the top and train its eyes on the remaining 97 or 98 percent.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">They played a sometimes bare-knuckle game to get here. The greatest torrent of so-called independent spending in the last election came from the teachers’ union and a group ostensibly opposed to carriage horses but closely aligned with the de Blasio campaign</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;"><br /></span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;">When a primal tug-of-war arose to control the City Council, Mr. de Blasio</span><span style="font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;"> </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/nyregion/de-blasio-pressing-city-council-members-to-install-a-liberal-ally-as-speaker.html" style="color: #666699; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;" title="Times coverage.">cut a deal</a><span style="font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;">with the Brooklyn Democratic boss to hand the speakership to a progressive. Asked by reporters what he had traded away, the mayor-elect offered the laugh of a non-answer.</span></div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Ideological discipline is central. It will be a rare Republican, Mr. de Blasio has suggested, who takes a senior position. “They have to share our values,” he said. “That might be a high bar.”</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">But for all their self-assurance and claims made about historical turning points, the progressives have yet to define themselves. How will they distinguish themselves from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose policies on housing, the streetscape, transportation, public health and taxis edged noticeably to the left?</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">A forest of question marks rises around the new mayor. He was a political operative, a public advocate with little power and a Council member who stood in the liberal mainstream. Now he carries a standard for urban progressives. What is the nature of his vision?</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">There is more at stake than his success or failure. New York City has taken its place in a row of global jewels: Paris, London, Los Angeles and Berlin. Turbocharged attention to wealth and privilege has become central to how these cities define their economic advantage.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">In this city, inequality has reached appalling levels, and a growing body of research finds that the chasm could poison economic growth. New York has added jobs at a fast clip, but most offer low wages and come without the benefits that are markers of civilized societies. Affordable housing is a wellspring turned dry.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The de Blasio family embodies middle-class anxiety about the direction of New York. They lived in a modest Park Slope rowhouse with three bedrooms and a single bathroom. It is worth north of $1 million. But the children’s generation could have difficulty finding a reasonably priced apartment anywhere near the city’s core.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Can progressives raise taxes, hold down rents and build dikes against the waves of riches without spooking the wealthy? Can they preserve benefits and wages that allow pensioners and municipal workers alike to scrape by without emptying the treasury?</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">“Politicians see a tremendous market out there now for progressive rhetoric,” said Elvin Wyly, a geographer at the University of British Columbia and a chronicler of the gentrification of America’s cities. “But retail presentation of these politics is not the same as dealing with the fundamental production of inequality.”</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">A transition committee for Mr. de Blasio recently considered candidates to run a meat-and-potatoes city agency, the sort to which most New Yorkers give little thought unless its services fail.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Which qualifications, the chairman asked, do we desire? “A progressive,” a committee member offered. A progressive, another chirped. Nods and assents. A progressive, definitely.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Put to the side esoteric questions of whether there can be progressive garbage collection or firefighting. Defining the word “progressive” can prove elusive.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">New York progressives share a traditional-left concern with class, labor unions and higher wage standards. Mr. de Blasio nods to this when he speaks in support of organizing fast-food and carwash workers.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">But progressives, particularly Mr. de Blasio, do not share the old New Left’s penetrating critique of American society. Many distinguish between their interests and those of municipal labor. And the new mayor is careful to note that he so far proposes just a single tax increase — to support universal prekindergarten.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">He was also careful to share postelection laughs with real estate barons.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Lonnie Soury, a former Dinkins administration official sympathetic to the de Blasio agenda, noted that President Lyndon B. Johnson proposed prekindergarten a half-century ago. “It’s a measure of how far our politics have drifted to the right that this now establishes Bill’s left-wing bona fides,” Mr. Soury said.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Progressives are assertive about racial, ethnic and gender diversity. Quite a few members of the liberal gentry labored in the Bloomberg administration, but few were Latino or black, and fewer still were working-class. Mr. de Blasio insists that his administration will look and sound like the city.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">It is no accident that he has picked three Hispanic women, all respected government hands, for high-ranking slots: Lilliam Barrios-Paoli as deputy mayor for health and human services, Gladys Carrión as child welfare commissioner and Carmen Fariña as schools chancellor. And he has picked a black former prosecutor, Zachary W. Carter, as corporation counsel.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">“We liberals often define ourselves as an intellectual class,” said Denise Scott, executive vice president of programs at <a href="http://www.lisc.org/section/aboutus/leadership" style="color: #666699;">the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a national community development group</a>. “But sometimes we tend to be out of touch with issues that affect the majority of New Yorkers. We talk about it, but are not always in tune with it.”</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Peter Beinart, a liberal essayist for the news website The Daily Beast, rustled the tea leaves after Mr. de Blasio’s victory in the Democratic primary and divined a glorious future.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">“The deeper you look, the stronger the evidence that de Blasio’s victory is an omen of what may become the defining story of America’s next political era: the challenge, to both parties, from the left,” <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/12/the-rise-of-the-new-new-left.html" style="color: #666699;" title="Link to the essay">Mr. Beinart wrote</a>.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The difference, he said, is the influence of the millennial generation (born between the early 1980s and about 2000), whose left-wing populism gave rise to Occupy Wall Street. It is, Mr. Beinart wrote, remaking the <a class="meta-org" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/d/democratic_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org" style="color: #666699;" title="More articles about Democratic Party">Democratic Party</a>.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Amid the huzzahs, keep a desultory fact in mind: Fewer than 25 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the mayoral election, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/news/election-2013/2013/11/06/new-york-turnout-appears-headed-for-record-low/" style="color: #666699;" title="Times coverage">a record poor turnout</a>. An <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/projects/elections/2013/general/nyc-mayor/exit-polls.html" style="color: #666699;" title="Times graphic.">exit poll</a> by Edison Research found that nearly two-thirds of the voters were 45 or older.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">If you overlay the map of 2013 on that of 2009, you see that many tens of thousands of New Yorkers who supported Mayor Bloomberg voted for Mr. de Blasio. That so many forded this ideological brook suggests more continuity than progressives might imagine.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Last, it’s instructive to compare the 1989 election of David N. Dinkins, the city’s first black mayor and the inheritor of a liberal populist movement, with that of Mr. de Blasio, who as a young man worked for Mayor Dinkins.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The Democratic primary in 1989 between Mr. Dinkins and Mayor Edward I. Koch drew nearly one million voters. The general election, in which Mr. Dinkins beat Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, drew 1.8 million voters.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">New York City’s population has grown by one million people since those elections. Yet 700,000 fewer New Yorkers voted in the general election of 2013.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Mr. de Blasio will lay claim to a mandate for change. But his election offers a more modest lesson in popular and generational mobilization than his oratory suggests.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Progressives did not create our torpid democracy. But it’s their inheritance.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Again and again, elected officials speak, almost giddily, of their progressive moment. “Today we commit to a new progressive direction in New York, “ Mr. de Blasio said at his inauguration. “And that same progressive impulse has written our city’s history. It’s in our DNA.” But moments can prove evanescent. It has been two decades since New York’s progressives held the wheel of power. Should they fumble, the wilderness beckons.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The new mayor’s greatest challenge is to handle his putative allies in the municipal labor movement. The former mayor left behind expired contracts like a pile of dirty laundry. If Mr. de Blasio miscalculates, settling those contracts could empty his coffers.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">And with that we circle back to the most intriguing question: Who is this new self-styled progressive mayor?</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">He proved to be a masterful tactician, enlisting his family in choreographed commercials. He played political boss, and he has raised expectations. Now, alone on the stage, he must define himself and that progressive movement.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">“<span class="carded" style="color: #004276; cursor: pointer; position: relative; text-decoration: underline; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="card_name">Bill de Blasio</span></span> probably doesn’t know precisely who Bill de Blasio is just yet,” a long-serving liberal said. “He’s going to find out, and my guess is that he’s got a window of months, not years.”</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">.</div></div></div>

De Blasio’s Next Task Is Turning Passion Into Policy (BLOG)

A week after his election, the mayor-elect, a tall crane of a man, edged into a low-ceilinged conference room in Downtown Brooklyn to celebr...

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Pros and cons of legal cannabis

<div class="imgon2"><img alt="A vendor displays products in Seattle. Washington State was one of the first to legalize recreational marijuana. (photo: Jason Redmond/Reuters)" border="0" height="181" src="http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs10/010719-washington-state-092913.jpg" style="border: 0px none;" title="A vendor displays products in Seattle. Washington State was one of the first to legalize recreational marijuana. (photo: Jason Redmond/Reuters)" width="400" /> <br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>A vendor displays products in Seattle. Washington State was one of the first to legalize recreational marijuana. (photo: Jason Redmond/Reuters)</b></span></span></div><div class="imgon2"><br /></div><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b></b><b> </b><b></b></span></span><div class="txtauthor"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></span><div class="date"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>29 September 13</b></span></span></div><div class="date"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><a href="http://readersupportednews.org/">readersupportednews.org</a> </b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></span><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><img border="0" src="http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/alphabet/rsn-A.jpg" />t the CPC, or Center for Palliative Care, in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle, a friend and I walked into Ben Reagan's office in the back of the clinic. The walls were lined with extracts, concentrates, and edibles. Rotating shelves containing tubes of different strains of cannabis were neatly labeled with the name of the strain, the price per gram, and the percentage concentrations of Sativa and Indica. My friend asked Reagan what the difference was between White Widow and Widow's Peak.</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"The White Widow species produces several different kinds of plants that produce different kinds of effects," Reagan said. "Widow's Peak is usually seen as the height of potential for White Widow. What kind of effect are you looking for?"</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"I want to have really great sex," said my friend, who was visiting the CPC as a carrier of a medical card that gave him permission by the state of Washington to use medical cannabis for the back pain he had contracted from his years as a firefighter. "And I don't want my partner to fall asleep."</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"Then you want to blend the Harlequin and the White Widow," Reagan said. "It's kind of heady, but still a little more on the fun side than the sleepy side. The White Widow is 60% Sativa blend, making it more of a daytime thing. The Indica strain is more for joint pain and insomnia."</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Washington approved the use of medical cannabis in 1998, and the CPC has been in business in Seattle for roughly four years. Just last year, voters in both Colorado and Washington State <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/07/news/economy/marijuana-legalization-washington-colorado/index.html" target="_hplink">approved ballot initiatives</a> that legalized the recreational sale of cannabis while instituting regulations similar to those governing the sale of alcohol.</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>For example, nobody under the age of 21 can buy it, it's still illegal to consume it in public, and getting caught driving under the influence of cannabis will still result in a DUI charge. It's still not possible for anyone without a medical card to buy cannabis in Washington, but regulations are expected to go fully into effect by spring of 2014.</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"As a business that's been around for a long time, Ben and I have been lucky to serve as consultants to state legislators, city officials, police departments, and district attorneys who now have to figure out how to regulate a product that can be used as medicine, fuel, polymer, plastic, and other products that are already regulated," said Jeremy Kaufman, executive director of the CPC. "The entire world is watching [Washington State] and how we're handling this, how we're putting it all together."</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>The CPC is still legally classified as a nonprofit medical R&D firm. Kaufman explained the concept of palliative care as the type of care you receive for various ailments and conditions, and said there hasn't been one case that's walked through his doors whom he hasn't been able to help with cannabis.</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"A big part of what we do is education," Kaufman said. "We've been able to help treat cancer, chronic pain, loss of appetite, insomnia, nerve disorders, psychological disorders, and a lot of other conditions. As symbiotic, organic organisms, human beings and cannabis have a very unique relationship."</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>However, Kaufman still hasn't reclassified his business under the new 502 law that was passed by Washington voters last fall, because the end result would be more costly to customers. Under the new system, there would be an additional 50 to 70 percent increase in sales taxes on top of the 9.8 percent sales tax the CPC <a href="http://dor.wa.gov/content/getaformorpublication/publicationbysubject/taxtopics/medicalcannabis.aspx" target="_hplink">already charges</a>. Kaufman said the additional taxes come from a 25% sales tax any time the product changes hands.</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"You get taxed 25 percent when it goes from the grower to the extractor, to the processor, to the baker, to the retailer, before it even gets to the end user," Kaufman said. "The state is seeing the CPC as a model to build off of going forward, so a big part of our education is also showing that there are more efficient ways of regulating cannabis."</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Under the new laws, the sale of recreational cannabis is being regulated by the same state agency that regulates the sale of liquor. But because cannabis used to be regarded as an illegal substance, there's no existing case law establishing legal precedent for how cannabis can be sold and regulated by a public entity. According to Kaufman, this means the laws literally are up to interpretation by anybody who participates in any part of the trade whenever a product changes hands, making the process a giant headache for both producers and consumers.</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"At first, there was an immediate flooding of the market, and a huge free-for-all when 502 passed," Kaufman said. "People were opening all kinds of businesses, shipping in stuff from out of state, getting really cannibalistic."</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Obviously, legalizing and taxing cannabis for recreational use would mean a huge increase in state tax revenues. A <a href="http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/DrugProhibitionWP.pdf" target="_hplink">2010 Cato Institute study</a> estimated $8.7 billion in new federal and state tax revenue if cannabis were to be legalized all over the United States. Washington State's I-502 alone is projected to generate <a href="http://vote.wa.gov/guides/2012/I-502-Fiscal-Impact.html" target="_hplink">$1.9 billion</a> in additional tax revenue in the next five years.</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>But at the same time, as an illegal substance becomes legal, other budgets will be cut. Because of the lack of people being arrested, jailed, and prosecuted for smoking or possessing marijuana, Washington State just passed through <a href="http://www.doc.wa.gov/aboutdoc/budget/docs/Governors2011-2013ProposedBudgetRequest.pdf" target="_hplink">sweeping cuts</a> to the departments of public safety and corrections. While there's a clear benefit in fewer lives ruined from the war on drugs, the budget cuts are nonetheless <a href="http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/how-local-murders-child-rapists-would-be-unsupervi/nYTRH/" target="_hplink">laying off people</a> like parole officers who are monitoring murderers, rapists, and sex offenders who are out on bond.</b></span></span></div><div class="indent"><br /></div><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Washington's shortcomings in the process of legalizing and taxing marijuana shouldn't discourage other states from trying, as Oregon, California, Hawaii, Alaska and Maine are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/marijuana-legalization-states_n_3838866.html" target="_hplink">likely to do soon</a>, but should serve as an example of what went right and what can be improved the next time.</b></span></span><br /></div><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></span><hr size="3" style="width: 25%;" /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></span><div class="indent"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><em>Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at <a href="mailto:carl@rsnorg.org">carl@rsnorg.org</a>, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.</em></b></span></span></div>

CONSUMER NEWS HEALTH NATIONAL NEWS SIGN OF THE TIMES Pros and cons of legal cannabis

A vendor displays products in Seattle. Washington State was one of the first to legalize recreational marijuana. (photo: Jason Redmond/...

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