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Tue, 19 Nov 2019
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Man underpaid his property taxes by $8.41. The county seized his property, sold it—and kept the profits

Eric Boehm
Reason
Wed, 06 Nov 2019 07:40 UTC
foreclosure
© Robin Nelson/ZUMA Press/Newscom
A Michigan man underpaid his property taxes by $8.41. The County seized his property, sold It — and kept the profits.

An 83-year-old retired engineer in Michigan underpaid his property taxes by $8.41. In response, Oakland County seized his property, auctioned it off to settle the debt, and pocketed nearly $24,500 in excess revenue from the sale.

Under Michigan law, it was all legal. And hardly uncommon.

Uri Rafaeli, who lost his property and all the equity associated with it, is just one of thousands of people to be victimized by Michigan's uniquely aggressive property tax statute. The law, passed in 1999 in an attempt to accelerate the rehabilitation of abandoned properties, empowers county treasurers to act as debt collectors. In the process, it creates a perverse incentive by allowing treasurers' offices to retain excess revenue raised by seizing and selling properties with delinquent taxes — even when the amount owed is miniscule, and even when the homes aren't abandoned or blighted at all.

Comment: Michigan's War on Drugs: Lieber Code Article 17:
War is not carried on by arms alone. It is lawful to starve the hostile belligerent, armed or unarmed, so that it leads to the speedier subjection of the enemy.
Lieber Code Article 18.
When a commander of a besieged place expels the noncombatants, in order to lessen the number of those who consume his stock of provisions, it is lawful, though an extreme measure, to drive them back, so as to hasten on the surrender.


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Yellow Vest

Protests everywhere! Violent clashes erupt between police and students in Delhi over rising fees and housing costs


RT
Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:28 UTC
protests Jawaharlal Nehru University

Students forced their way through the barricades and police officers struck students after they pushed through barriers.
Violent clashes broke out between police and students protesting grievances including rising fees and housing costs in Delhi on Monday, with authorities at one point deploying water cannons.

Authorities attempted to put the All India Council of Technical Education building on lockdown as hundreds of students from nearby Jawaharlal Nehru University turned out to protest an event there featuring Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal.

Students forced their way through the barricades, preventing the minister from leaving the site for hours. Footage from the scene shows police officers striking students after they pushed through barriers.

Comment: World in Flames: Why Are Protests Raging Around The Globe?
Whatever their outward, stated rationale for protesting, it strikes us that people generally are 'acting out' because they sense that something is seriously 'amiss' with the world. Greta got one thing right y'know: we are living through the Sixth Extinction (except it's NOT man-made)...


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Fire

Democrazis run rampage in Hong Kong - Police chief warns 'society on brink of total breakdown'


RT
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 20:23 UTC

Comment: The situation's reaching boiling point in Hong Kong. Stand by for mystery snipers shooting protesters and/or police...


hong kong map riots

Just some of the flash-points across Hong Kong today, 12 Nov 2019
Protests in Hong Kong have reached new heights of violence, with bomb-throwing rioters seizing control of university campuses and pushing out police while authorities admit that the riot-ravaged city hangs by a thread.

Demonstrators armed to the teeth with molotov cocktails, javelins, and (in one case, at least) a chainsaw have seized control of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), pushing riot police off the campus on Tuesday night and leaving a shocking amount of destruction in their wake.

Videos and photos posted to social media show the rioters fortifying their position with barricades and setting "huge" fires on the campus. Classes were unsurprisingly canceled at CUHK and other universities around the city, some of which also played host to clashes between the demonstrators - still dubbed 'pro-democracy activists' in the media despite the increasing levels of violence on display - and police. On at least one campus, rioters stole sporting equipment including javelins and shot puts and weaponized them.

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NPC

I was a liberal NY prof, but when I said the Left was going too far, colleagues called me a NAZI & treated me like a RUSSIAN SPY

Michael Rectenwald
RT
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 18:20 UTC
nyu graduates
© (L) AFP / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Drew Angerer; (R) Wikimedia / Jonathan71
What's wrong with the American left? Suffering from Trump anxiety disorder, acting like cult members, and engaging in a new McCarthyism, the left has lost its collective mind. I saw it coming and left the left in the nick of time.

My break with the left began in the fall of 2016. I was a professor at New York University, a left-liberal, and an active social media participant. My skepticism and resentment at my political tribe's insistence that I affirm its increasingly crazy claims had been growing steadily to this point.

Much like Jordan Peterson, my tipping point involved the pronoun wars, although, as you'll see, I enjoyed a more satirical approach. When the University of Michigan instituted a policy that offered students a carte blanche pronoun preference opportunity, a clever student offered "His Majesty" as his chosen pronoun, and his blasphemous pronoun choice made the news. The satirical trope hilariously underscored the absurdity of gender and pronoun proliferation, and the institutional lunacy that has attempted to keep pace with it. I posted a link to an article about the spoof on Facebook, without comment. I then proceeded to teach for the rest of the afternoon.
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Handcuffs

Indiana ordered to pay convicted murderer $425K after keeping him in solitary confinement for 4 years

Amaznda Woods
New York Post
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 19:19 UTC
Jay Vermillon
© Vigo County Sheriff’s Office
The state of Indiana must pay a convicted killer $425,000 after keeping him in solitary confinement for more than four years without conducting a single review to determine whether he should remain segregated, according to a new report.

Jay Vermillon, who is serving time for murder and other offenses, entered solitary confinement at Westville Correctional Facility in 2009, but he was never given a clear explanation for his segregation — or the chance to argue his case against staying there, attorney Maggie Filler of the Chicago-based MacArthur Justice Center told The Indianapolis Star.

Comment: It's a sad state of affairs when taxpayers have to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars to a convicted killer because prison officials couldn't bother with a review.

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Ambulance

Another school attack in China: Man breaks in, burns 51 children and 3 teachers with chemicals

Amanda Woods
New York Post
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 19:04 UTC
Dongcheng Kindergarten in China

Dongcheng Kindergarten in China, where students and teachers were burned in a chemical attack.
A man scaled the wall of a school building in China and sprayed a corrosive substance on the kindergartners inside — burning 51 kids and three teachers, according to new reports.

The 23-year-old suspect, only identified by his surname, Kong, cut wires and climbed over a wall into the Dongcheng Kindergarten in Kaiyuan, Yunnan province, where he sprayed sodium hydroxide on children and staff around 3:30 p.m. Monday, the South China Morning Post reported.

About 40 minutes later, Kong — who authorities believe was acting alone — was taken into custody, according to the report. Local police believe he carried out the attack "as a revenge on society," the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.


Comment: In China the way this tends to manifest is by attacks on parents' investment in the future, i.e. their children. For more on the phenomenon:



The dozens of students and their teachers were taken to local hospitals — where two of the injuries are considered serious but not life-threatening.

Kong bought the caustic soda online, the Kaiyuan municipal government said in a statement obtained by the Morning Post.
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Stock Up

China could launch its own digital currency in the next 2-3 months, predicts investor

Yee Nee Lee
CNBC
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 18:52 UTC
China digital currency
China could start rolling out its digital currency as early as the next two to three months, predicted the managing partner of an investment firm backed by Foxconn Technology Group.

China has developed a framework called the Digital Currency Electronic Payment or DCEP, according to Jack Lee, managing partner of HCM Capital. That would allow its central bank to issue a digital currency to commercial banks and third-party payment networks by Alipay and WeChat Pay, he explained.

"So, they already have all the system and the network ready. I think you will see it very soon, in the next maybe two to three months," Lee told CNBC's Tanvir Gill at the Singapore FinTech Festival on Monday.

Comment: From RT:

According to Max Keiser, there could be "a catastrophic trapdoor opening underneath the US economy."

When China announces as a surprise its 20,000 tons of gold and a gold-backed cryptocurrency that "will kill the US dollar deader than a doornail," it will be a "Pearl Harbor-type event and it's coming in the next six to nine months," he predicts.


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Che Guevara

Why Extinction Rebellion seems so nuts

Brendan O'Neill
Spiked
Thu, 07 Nov 2019 00:01 UTC
extinction rebellion
© Getty
This is an edited version of a short speech Brendan O'Neill gave at the Battle of Ideas festival in London on 3 November 2019.

One of my favourite political events this year was the Battle of Canning Town. This was the moment when Extinction Rebellion decided to send its painfully middle-class agitators to a working-class part of East London early in the morning to lecture and inconvenience people who just wanted to get to work. What could go wrong?

Quite a lot, it turned out. There were many wonderful moments. The two posh greens who climbed on top of a Tube train at Canning Town were mocked and eventually dragged down. A commuter can be heard branding one of the protesters a 'ponytail weirdo'. Elsewhere on the Tube system that day, commuters pointed out that the London Underground is run on electricity and is therefore pretty eco-friendly. 'Are you that fucking stupid?', one asked a smug-looking couple of XR agitators. 'No wonder you can't get jobs...'

Comment: See also:

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Yellow Vest

French riot police join Catalan cops dragging independence protesters away from border crossing


RT
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 16:52 UTC

Comment: There's nothing like cross-border cooperation to reassure Europeans that the EU is working as it should...


Estelada
© REUTERS/Rafael Marchante
A man holds an Estelada (Catalan separatist flag) in front of French police officers at the AP-7 highway on the French side of the Spanish-French border November 12, 2019.
Catalan independence protesters who blocked a border crossing with France were routed - in some cases physically dragged away - by French riot police working with Catalan police, just a day into a planned three-day protest.

Hundreds of heavily-armored French riot cops descended on La Jonquera border crossing on Tuesday, arresting 18 protesters and reportedly using pepper spray and tear gas to disperse scores more manning a large roadblock spanning both sides of the normally-busy highway. The Catalan autonomous police (Mosses d'Esquadra) have also arrested at least one protester, reportedly for attacking a law enforcement officer.

Video of the police breaking up the protest shows French gendarmes and Catalan autonomous police literally dragging demonstrators away from the barricade, while reports from Figaro and Vanguardia suggest more violent methods were used to disperse protesters who insist theirs was an act of "peaceful civil disobedience."

Comment: The French, of course, have lots of experience dealing with pro-democracy protesters.

See also: And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Kurdistan and Catalonia: The Politics of Self-Determination

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NPC

Wait, what? Campus newspaper apologizes for DOING JOURNALISM, calls protest coverage 'retraumatizing and invasive'


RT
Tue, 12 Nov 2019 17:47 UTC
sessions
© Reuters / Jonathan Ernst
A US college newspaper has apologized for photographing and talking to protesters who picketed a speech by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The paper claims that standard journalistic practice hurt their feelings.

Sessions was invited to Northwestern University last week by the College Republicans. Northwestern being an American campus, protesters turned out to heckle Sessions, in particular for his role in implementing President Donald Trump's administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policies last year.

The social justice crowd booing a Republican is nothing new, but the college newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, reported the event dutifully, photographing the protests and texting demonstrators for comment. All standard journalistic practice.

But in the age of 'safe spaces' and 'trigger warnings,' basic journalism school techniques are apparently too much. After some of its reporters shared photos of the protests (as the First Amendment entitles them to do), the paper abruptly pulled the photos on Sunday and issued an apology.
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