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Cash isn't king: Businesses have no obligation to accept dollars

Jay L. Zagorsky
The Conversation
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 16:40 UTC
banned cash
We've been talking about society's transition to a cashless society for a long time, but it begs an important question: Can stores and other retail establishments refuse to take your dollars and cents?

As odd as it sounds, this is not hypothetical anymore as a small number of stores and industries have stopped accepting cash and allow payment only by credit card, debit card or via a smartphone app.

Sweetgreen, a high-end salad restaurant, stopped accepting cash in its New York City stores in January. A Boston restaurant near Fenway Park went cashless this past December. Most airlines stopped taking cash for in-flight purchases of food and beverages around 2010.

While the trend of smaller stores refusing to accept credit cards because of the high fees is more well-established, the opposite trend of refusing to take cash hasn't been as well-explored. Let's examine why they do it and if they can get away with it.

Comment: The Powers That Be certainly want to kill cash. The following articles are just a few examples of their efforts to move away from cash.

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Arrow Up

Jury convicts Virginia police officer in fatal shooting of unarmed black teen, jury recommends two-and-half-years jail time


RT
Fri, 05 Aug 2016 01:25 UTC
Stephen Rankin
© Portsmouth Police
A Virginia jury convicted a white police officer for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, William Chapman, who was accused of shoplifting. The jury recommended he serve two-and-half-years in jail.

A Virginia jury has convicted a white police officer for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, William Chapman, who was accused of shoplifting.

The former Portsmouth police officer, Stephen Rankin, shot Chapman, 18, in the face and chest outside a Walmart store last year, after a security guard reported a theft from the store.

Rankin was charged with voluntary manslaughter on Thursday and now faces between one and 10 years in prison. The sentencing phase of his trial began immediately. The jury recommended two-and-a-half years behind bars.

"I think this is a terrible tragedy. I wish it had never happened. I wish none of it had every occurred," Ranking testified after being found guilty, reported Associated Press. "I can't begin to fathom how much pain that family is going through. I wish I could have done more to keep him alive."
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Info

Canada has biggest jobs loss since 2011


Sputnik
Fri, 05 Aug 2016 16:35 UTC
Canadian flag
© AFP 2016/ TIMOTHY A. CLARY
The unemployment rate increased to 6.9%, full-time employment fell by 71,000 from June to July, while part-time work was up by 40,000, according to official statement.

The Canadian economy lost 31,200 full-time jobs in July, making the the biggest drop since October 2011, Statistics Canada said in a statement on Friday.

"The unemployment rate increased...to 6.9%," the release stated. "Full-time employment fell by 71,000 from June to July, while part-time work was up by 40,000."
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Handcuffs

Poll shows many young blacks and Hispanics have experienced police harassment or violence


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 16:05 UTC
NY police
© Brendan McDermid / Reuters
Two-thirds of young blacks and two-fifths of young Hispanics say that they or someone they know has experienced harassment or violence, according to a new poll.

According to the GenForward poll released Thursday, those figures include 20 percent of both blacks and Hispanics aged 18 to 30 said they have personally experienced violence or harassment by police. When only selecting young black men, however, that number increases to 30 percent saying that they have personally been on the receiving end of such behavior.

The poll results were released following high-profile fatal shootings of young black men by police, such as the July 5 shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and of Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota, just a day later.
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MIB

Death of privacy: IDI 'data-fusion' company has a profile on every American adult

David Gauvey Herbert
Bloomberg
Fri, 05 Aug 2016 16:13 UTC
spies
© Mustafa Hacalaki/Getty Images
Forget telephoto lenses and fake mustaches: The most important tools for America's 35,000 private investigators are database subscription services. For more than a decade, professional snoops have been able to search troves of public and nonpublic records—known addresses, DMV records, photographs of a person's car—and condense them into comprehensive reports costing as little as $10. Now they can combine that information with the kinds of things marketers know about you, such as which politicians you donate to, what you spend on groceries, and whether it's weird that you ate in last night, to create a portrait of your life and predict your behavior.

IDI, a year-old company in the so-called data-fusion business, is the first to centralize and weaponize all that information for its customers. The Boca Raton, Fla., company's database service, idiCORE, combines public records with purchasing, demographic, and behavioral data. Chief Executive Officer Derek Dubner says the system isn't waiting for requests from clients—it's already built a profile on every American adult, including young people who wouldn't be swept up in conventional databases, which only index transactions. "We have data on that 21-year-old who's living at home with mom and dad," he says.

Comment: IDI is a private company, and it claims to have a profile for every adult American. Just imagine what the NSA's 'profiles' look like...

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War Whore

Cops who killed unarmed mentally ill man and kept jobs, suing dept — say being put on desk duty is racist

Andrew Emett
The Free Thought Project
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:56 UTC
LAPD kept jobs
Responsible for killing an unarmed, mentally ill man and shooting him in the back, two LAPD officers filed a lawsuit against the city on Wednesday alleging they are victims of racial discrimination within the department. Although the cops illegally stopped Ezell Ford and violated his civil rights without any probable cause, these incompetent officers want financial restitution from the city because they have not received promotions within the last two years.

On August 11, 2014, officers Sharlton Wampler and Antonio Villegas of LAPD's Newton Area Gang Enforcement Detail saw Ford walking down the sidewalk and decided to conduct an investigative stop. According to an LAPD press release, Wampler and Villegas exited their vehicle and attempted to talk to Ford who reportedly continued walking with his hands in his pockets.

Due to the fact that Wampler had arrested Ford for marijuana possession in 2008, the officer had been aware that Ford suffered from depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Seeking another easy drug bust, Wampler and Villegas exited the vehicle with Villegas immediately drawing his gun for no apparent reason.

According to Wampler, Ford stepped between a parked car and some bushes when the officer suddenly grabbed the mentally ill man's right shoulder from behind. Although Wampler claimed that he suspected Ford had been carrying drugs or a weapon, neither were found at the scene.

Comment: See also: Police State Roundup: Cops assault, rape, and shoot civilians - lie about it - and get away with it

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Handcuffs

Scottish aristocrat surprised to be arrested after Kenyan police seize 100kg of cocaine in drug trafficking bust


RT
Fri, 05 Aug 2016 14:42 UTC
Jack Alexander Wolf Marrian
© Stringer / AFP
British national Jack Alexander Wolf Marria
A Scottish aristocrat who went to school with Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton has been arrested in Kenya for allegedly smuggling cocaine. Jack Alexander Wolf Marrian, a trader, has been charged with trafficking nearly 100kg of cocaine, worth £2.2 million (US$2.9 million), in one of Kenya's biggest drug busts. The blue-blooded businessman was remanded in custody by Kenyan authorities and appeared in court on Thursday, where he denied the charges.

Prosecutors successfully argued Marrian, 30, is a flight risk and he will now be held in custody until Monday, when he will return to court for a bail hearing. The British national, who belongs to a noble Scottish clan and is the grandson of the sixth Earl of Cawdor, grew up in Nairobi, but was educated at the expensive private school Marlborough College.

Comment: The 'sugar' wasn't merely contaminated with cocaine. The police found 100kg! Perhaps Marrian recently made some enemies for him to be 'found out' by Interpol.

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Attention

6 injured in Afghanistan as Taliban attacks buses carrying EU, US tourists near Herat


RT
Fri, 05 Aug 2016 15:28 UTC
tourist bus attack afghanistan
© Ruptly
Taliban gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades at a bus with European and American tourists near Afghanistan's third largest city, Herat, calling the assault an attack on "foreign invaders". Five tourists and an Afghani bus driver sustained wounds.

"The foreign tourists - three Americans, six Britons, two Scots and one German - were traveling with an Afghan army convoy when they were ambushed in Chesht-e-Sharif," Jilani Farhad, a spokesman for Herat's governor, confirmed.

The tourists, traveling in two mini buses escorted by the Afghan National Army convoy, were attacked on Thursday some 160 kilometers outside the city of Herat (99 miles), en route from the neighboring provinces of Bamiyan and Ghor. Pictures from the scene showed one of the buses to be completely burned.

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Better Earth

Fix the systemic problems with the Olympics - move them back to Greece, permanently

Amotz Asa-El
MarketWatch
Fri, 05 Aug 2016 15:15 UTC
olympics
Odd as it may sound, Olympic competition once included art, and medalists included musicians, painters, and poets. One was Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the 1912 Stockholm Games' gold medalist in poetry and — by sheer coincidence, surely — also the modern games' founder.

"O sport," the nobleman's winning "Ode to Sport" waxed, "you are beauty," and "audacity," and the "pleasure of the gods."

A century on, the Olympics still embody beauty, but the audacity they now conjure is not what Coubertin had in mind, but a celebration of cheating and a saga of lost innocence — financially, athletically, and politically.

Comment: Asa-El's opinion piece may not be totally objective, but he makes a point. Like everything on this planet, the Olympics have just become another aspect of cultural decline. And moving them permanently to Greece doesn't sound like that bad of an idea. If only we could get all nations to agree to a 2-week cessation of all global hostilities. Now THAT would be something. Unfortunately, with the current clique of psychopaths in power, that's unlikely to happen for a long, long time.

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Pistol

Series of drug raids in Buffalo, NY leaves trail of dead dogs and terrorized innocent residents

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 00:00 UTC
buffalo police kill dogs
In their relentless and often violent pursuit to control what citizens can and cannot put in their bodies, the state leaves behind a trail of blood and suffering. As the Buffalo Police Department illustrated last week, this trail often contains the blood of defenseless animals.

Police incompetence coupled with deadly training came to a head last week and wreaked havoc on the residents of Buffalo. The Narcotics Division of the Buffalo Police Department executed a series of drug raids last week leading to a handful of arrests and the seizure of small quantities of drugs — mostly cannabis.

After the department released their heroic numbers to the press on how much dangerous cannabis was taken off the streets, they remained conveniently silent about the dogs they slaughtered along the way.

On Friday morning, Buffalo cops, in their search for a 170 lb 5'11" black male, raided the home of Michael Urban — a 5'11" 210 lb white male.
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