Puppet Masters
Information released Wednesday from police wiretaps has Toronto Mayor Rob Ford facing a host of new accusations and revelations.
The allegations, from a police investigation called Project Brazen 2, are unproven and have not been tested in court.
Here are some of the allegations in the documents:
Heroin use:
When Ford admitted after months of denials to having smoked crack cocaine once likely during one of his "drunken stupors," he said he "has nothing left to hide."
But wiretap interceptions from the Toronto police investigation suggest crack cocaine may not have been the only drug the mayor has used.
During an April 20 phone conversation between Liban Siyad and Abdullahi Harun, Harun claims he has multiple photographs of Ford "doing the hezza," or heroin.
The new "exit"
They've been called pods, bubbles, capsules, even Willy Wonka's glass elevator, and they have caused confusion and frustration.
Adam Hayes, who was traveling from Fort Worth Texas, said "I've never see those before, so I travel quite a bit through many airports and I don't understand the purpose of that right there. So it bottlenecks you coming out, when they should want you to leave."A futuristic voice gives the captive instructions on how to handle the temporary imprisonment. And yes, these new "portals" were designed and approved by the TSA. We are told to expect these to spread to airports all over the US in the near future. Some really bloody, sick tyrants came up with this contraption.
© RODGER BOSCH/AFP/Getty Images
People taking part in a protest agaianst poor public services sing and dance around a rubbish fire on October 30, 2013, in the centre of Cape Town. The people congregated outside the Western Cape provincial Legislature, calling for Western Cape Premier(not visible) to come and address them.
People taking part in a protest agaianst poor public services sing and dance around a rubbish fire on October 30, 2013, in the centre of Cape Town. The people congregated outside the Western Cape provincial Legislature, calling for Western Cape Premier(not visible) to come and address them.
South Africa has declared ten days of official mourning for Nelson Mandela. As people reflect on his legacy, it's important to remember that his struggle against apartheid was a fight against a system of political and economic oppression.
When he was sworn in as president in 1994, justice and peace for all were at the top of his list of goals for South Africa. But in his next breath came an economic hope. "Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all," he said.
But the country has continued to struggle with economic inequality. The black middle class in South America has nearly doubled just in the last decade.
For many South Africans, "work, bread, water and salt" are still hard to come by. The country has an unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent. For those who do find work, wages can be widely divergent. South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of income distribution, and the differences often fall along racial lines. As Bloomberg's Mike Cohen points out, white households earn an average of six times more than black ones. And while nearly all white homes have modern plumbing, two thirds of black homes do not, notes Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development.
As we reported earlier, while on the surface the headline revised Q3 GDP number was a stunner coming at 3.6%, the reality is that more than 100% of the growth from the initial estimate came from a revised estimate of how many private Inventories were stockpiled in the quarter. The reality was that of the $230 billion in total increase in SAAR GDP, $146 billion of this, or over 63%, was due to inventory stockpiling.
So how does inventory hoarding - that most hollow of "growth" components as it relies on future purchases by a consumer who has increasingly less purchasing power - look like historically? The chart below shows the quarterly change in the revised GDP series broken down by Inventory (yellow) and all other non-Inventory components comprising GDP (blue).
So how does inventory hoarding - that most hollow of "growth" components as it relies on future purchases by a consumer who has increasingly less purchasing power - look like historically? The chart below shows the quarterly change in the revised GDP series broken down by Inventory (yellow) and all other non-Inventory components comprising GDP (blue).
© BEA, Zero Hedge
Comment: The definitions of many government macro economic indicators have changed over the years for the purpose of perception management. For instance, John Williams of Shadowstats estimates the current annualized rate of inflation to be over 9% according to government methodology used prior to 1980.
Mr. Mandela was in Canada this week to receive the highest honour my country has to offer: he was the second person in our history to be made an honorary citizen. So only someone with no sense of timing would have mentioned that, as the Liberal government was honouring Mr. Mandela, it is ramming through an anti-terrorism bill that would have sabotaged the anti-apartheid movement on several fronts had it been in place at the time. (Many other countries are passing similar laws.)
The anti-apartheid movement here in Canada and elsewhere actively raised money for the African National Congress, which would easily have fit most anti-terrorism bills' sloppy definitions of a terrorist organization. Furthermore, anti-apartheid activists deliberately caused "serious disruption" to the activities of companies invested in South Africa, eventually forcing many to pull out. These disruptions would also have been illegal under most proposed anti-terrorism laws.
© Barry Chin/ Boston Globe
The crowd of people, estimated at 250,000, at the Hatch Shell sang the national anthem of the African National Congress, the leading antiapartheid group in South Africa.
The crowd of people, estimated at 250,000, at the Hatch Shell sang the national anthem of the African National Congress, the leading antiapartheid group in South Africa.
"It was the first time that I recall standing and looking out at a massive audience and seeing white and black, young and old, people from the neighborhoods, people from the suburbs," Flynn said. "It was almost like a Celtics celebration, only this had a greater significance than even that."Just a few months earlier, the Berlin Wall had fallen in November 1989. People were crossing boundaries and breaking bonds that had held them back. Not all the uprisings were successful, the Tiananmen Square uprising in China in June 1989 was brutally suppressed, but overall you could feel the sense of hope for a better world.
There was only one problem. In the United States, the Bush family was in power. If there was one thing the Bushes could not abide, it is ordinary people rising up against their oppressors. That sort of thing goes against their whole business model. So the sense of hope had to be crushed, and sure enough, just several weeks after Mandela's tour, the world was plunged into what felt like something from the 1930s when Iraq invaded Kuwait. There were news reports of forces massing on the border with Saudi Arabia. An old-style war between invading nation states? Could this really be happening?
© Nelson Mandela (Reuters)
Here are seven quotes from the leader that are less likely to be published as his life is honored and his death commemorated in the mainstream media.
Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, Mandela slammed the actions of the US at a speech made at the International Women's Forum in Johannesburg, declaring that former President George W. Bush's primary motive was 'oil', while adding that Bush was undermining the UN.
"If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care for human beings," Mandela said.
© Unknown
Comment: As all the worlds leaders do their best to make political capital out of Nelson Mandela a lot is left unsaid.
REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R-VA): Professor Turley, the constitution, the system of separated powers is not simply about stopping one branch of government from usurping another. It's about protecting the liberty of Americans from the dangers of concentrated government power. How does the president's unilateral modification of act of Congress affect both the balance of power between the political branches and the liberty interests of the American people?
© Wall Street on Parade
Yaron Brook promoting his Greed Is Good platform on the John Stossel show on Fox Business
Yaron Brook promoting his Greed Is Good platform on the John Stossel show on Fox Business
New York University presents an ideal forum for Brook. It's a microcosm of the pitched battle for the soul of America. The Wall Street cartel has oozed itself into NYU's boards, municipal bond issuance, student loans, mortgage loans, credit cards and naming rights on buildings and auditoriums. NYU now has the highest tuition in the country, crippling student debt, while it simultaneously doles out forgivable loans to elite administrators for mansions in the suburbs.
As a determined group of over 400 faculty attempt to restore the University to its core educational mission and reduce the need for student loans, they are being maligned by the pro Wall Street university leadership much as any populist message is maligned on the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.
In a speech hosted by the Center for American Progress yesterday, the President said the U.S. now ranks along the lines of Jamaica and Argentina in terms of income inequality. "The top 10 percent no longer takes in one-third of our income - it now takes half," said the President. "Whereas in the past, the average CEO made about 20 to 30 times the income of the average worker, today's CEO now makes 273 times more. And meanwhile, a family in the top 1 percent has a net worth 288 times higher than the typical family, which is a record for this country."
© JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
The most startling finding of Harvard University's Institute of Politics: A majority of Americans under age 25--the youngest millennials--would favor throwing Obama out of office.
The survey, part of a unique 13-year study of the attitudes of young adults, finds that America's rising generation is worried about its future, disillusioned with the U.S. political system, strongly opposed to the government's domestic surveillance apparatus, and drifting away from both major parties. "Young Americans hold the president, Congress and the federal government in less esteem almost by the day, and the level of engagement they are having in politics are also on the decline," reads the IOP's analysis of its poll. "Millennials are losing touch with government and its programs because they believe government is losing touch with them."
The results blow a gaping hole in the belief among many Democrats that Obama's two elections signaled a durable grip on the youth vote.
Indeed, millennials are not so hot on their president.
Obama's approval rating among young Americans is just 41 percent, down 11 points from a year ago, and now tracking with all adults. While 55 percent said they voted for Obama in 2012, only 46 percent said they would do so again.
Comment: See also: The Economic Apartheid that replaced Racial Apartheid was WORSE for Black South Africans