Society's Child
The University of Texas made headlines in 2010 by adding more than $500 million in gold to their endowment. The decision to plough half a billion dollars into gold was only the first chapter of the story. Perhaps the bigger news was the choice not to simply buy shares in a gold ETF or gold futures contracts. Custodians decided to buy physical bars instead - signaling a distinct lack of faith in paper gold.
Like most gold investors, they have seen very little to inspire confidence since. In fact, those with the fiduciary responsibility for managing the Texas gold are feeling less certain than ever. That's why they convinced state officials to build a depository and move the gold bars home from Wall Street. Texas joins Germany, Venezuela, the Netherlands, and other governments that have lost trust in New York depositories for safeguarding their metal.
Who could blame them?
Stewart brought up the massacre in South Carolina; the shooting, Stewart said, simply left him unable to do his job. He was all out of jokes.
"I honestly have nothing, other than just sadness, once again, that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other, and the nexus of a gaping racial wound that will not heal, yet we pretend does not exist," he said, before launching into a critique of Americans' refusal to acknowledge the problems of racism and gun violence. "This is a terrorist attack. This is a violent attack on a church, that is a symbol for that community," he said. "This wasn't a tornado. This was a racist...And we're going to keep pretending like, 'I don't get it, what happened?'"
Amnesty International found that nine states have no laws whatsoever in place to deal with police use of force, and 13 states fall short of the standards set by US constitutional law, which are considerably more lax than international standards.
"While law enforcement in the United States is given the authority to use lethal force, there is no equal obligation to respect and preserve human life. It's shocking that while we give law enforcement this extraordinary power, so many states either have no regulation on their books or nothing that complies with international standards," Amnesty USA's executive director, Steven Hawkins, told the Guardian.
The United Nations' principles state that lethal force should be limited to use only when less extreme means have failed and there is no other option available to law enforcement. They also state that officers should provide warning of their intent before using lethal force — a standard that is only required by law in eight US states.
A video posted by local news outlet WRIC shows the white man outside United Nations Church International in Richmond, rapping on a window and shouting racial slurs.
"All I know is he had a weapon in his hand, banging on the glass, and calling us n*****s," the church's senior pastor, Bishop Oren Pullings, told the station.
Church member Lydia Jones said the man was shouting "You're taking over!" at those inside.
The incident began around 8:45 p.m., when children inside the church first spotted the man.

Police lead suspected shooter Dylann Roof, 21, into the courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina, June 18, 2015
On Wednesday 9 African-Americans were killed in a church in South Carolina, allegedly by a white man named Dylann Storm Roof. The attack took place during evening prayers at the city's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church, one of the oldest in the United States which has one of the largest black congregations in the south. Nevertheless, US officials and the President do not seem to see any hate crime in this story.
Is America colorblind only when covering crimes involving whites? For more on this, RT's show "In the Now" talked to Solomon Comissiong, host and founder of Your World News Radio Show.

Mourner kneels outside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina June 18, 2015
Police made the announcement in a Friday Twitter post, adding that Roof's bond hearing will take place at 2 p.m. local time on Friday.
Roof reportedly said he wanted to start a race war.
The 21-year-old was arrested by authorities in Shelby, North Carolina, on Thursday, following the tragic shooting which left six women and three men dead.
The .45-caliber handgun used in the attack was apparently purchased by Roof in Charleston in April. Previous reports stated that the gun was a birthday gift from his father. However, his grandfather stated that Roof was merely given "birthday money," and that his family didn't know what he used it for.
The easyJet flight returned to Liverpool shortly after take-off, with officials confirming the defect.
The aircraft was headed to Paris when the pilot radioed air traffic control and declared an emergency.
Fire crews assembled on the runway, before the aircraft landed safely around 20 minutes later.
A spokesman for the airline said the decision to return to Liverpool was purely a 'precaution.'
Eyewitnesses said the twin-engine Airbus A320 'sounded bad' as it came into land.
Others also suggested the planes doors were open, but this was denied by both easyJet and the airport.
Passenger Jan Nethercote told how it was around 20 minutes into the flight to the French capital when the announcement was made.
'They told us a minor fault had happened with one of the engines and they were taking us back to Liverpool,' she told the Liverpool Echo.
'It was explained to us later the fault happened at take off but they made the decision to continue.
'However it developed into something more serious and in the end it looks like they lost the use of an engine.'
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, a familiar, shameful charade of exploitation unfolded yet again, seeking to reassert the "gun control" agenda amid both national public opinion and across America's legislative bodies.
Yet the engineered, concerted, deceitful propaganda campaign launched by the corporate media and America's political circles fails to put into perspective the recent shooting and the greater "gun control" debate.
Instead, a mad rush has ensued to exploit anger, sorrow, and fear to once again attempt to snatch from responsible Americans their right to bear arms based on the criminal actions of a single individual.
Comment: In the coming days we are likely to hear more about the shootings and how the facts don't quite fit the narrative being presented by the mass media. Its happened before and fits a pattern that serves no one but the groups involved in stripping away the rights of US citizens. Ever wonder why these mass shootings only ever seem to happen in the United States? Where else in the world has the relentless drive towards totalitarianism been so rife? In any case, Obama has wasted no time in responding to the shootings:
President Obama renewed his call for stricter gun laws Thursday following a shooting spree at a Charleston, S.C. church that killed nine people.
"We don't have all the facts, but we do know that, once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun," Obama said.
Obama's remarks were not unlike the 13 others he's given following a mass shooting during his presidency. But this time, he said the usual condolences could not express "the heartache and the sadness and the anger we feel" about the overnight shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church Wednesday night.
"Any death of this sort is a tragedy. Any shooting involving multiple victims is a tragedy. There is something particularly heartbreaking about the death happening in a place in which we seek solace, and we seek peace, in a place of worship," Obama said.
The Charleston shooting hit home to Obama in part because Obama knew at least one of the victims, and because of the historic nature of the church, which Obama called "a sacred place in the history of Charleston, and the history of America."
"We knew their pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who along with eight others, gathered in prayer and fellowship and was murdered last night," he said.
"An estimated 90 percent of low-income older adults do not receive meals services like those funded by Title III programs, according to our analysis of 2013 CPS data," the GAO wrote in a report released Monday. "About 83 percent do not receive meals among low-income adults who are food insecure, meaning they report three or more conditions such as skipping meals because they did not have enough money for food."
The GAO analyzed the most recent data from two national surveys, the 2013 Current Population Survey (CPS) and the 2012 Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The report, requested by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), updated the agency's findings from a 2011 report on what is known about older Americans' need for services that were provided for by the Older Americans Act.
Comment: They are insisting on more tax money for social services? They can't take care of the adults they have now:
Another dirty little secret in America: Adult Protective Services often perpetrators of elder abuse
The way the U.S. treats and impoverish the elderly, infirm and even children portrays itself, in many different ways, like a death march. How disgusting for a country so 'exceptional'.
"The United States has failed to track how many people are killed by law enforcement officers. No-one knows exactly how many people are killed each year but estimates range from 400 to over 1,000," the Amnesty International USA stated in the report.
People of African-American descent and those with darker skin color in the United States often fall victim to a disproportionate use of lethal force by police, the human rights group highlighted.
Comment: Since law enforcement organizations are not required to report how many citizens they have killed, it's likely that the number of citizens killed by police is much larger than 1,000.
Comment: There have been numerous incidences of airplane mishaps around the world since March of this year, and they seem to be increasing quite dramatically. See: