Monday, April 28, 2014

(Democracy Dies from Crime of Peaceful Protest) How Long Will We (US) Put Up With This Treatment from the .01%? (The First Trillionaire Will Be - 25 April 2014 Gold/Silver Charts - Madness, Ending Badly)



BREAKING!

Search for Flight 370 to be Expanded, Privatized and Drawn Out to 8 Months at an “Estimated” Cost of $60 Million

Remember how hundreds of people were seen being arrested and loaded into vans during the Occupy Police Riot?

Did you think they'd be released due to lack of evidence concerning real crimes?

Do you remember with whom the courts were populated during the Cheney/Bush Junta takeover?

The Occupy Wall Street movement was not only about battling back against the rise of a corporate oligarchy that has sabotaged our democracy and made war on the poor and the working class. It was also about our right to peaceful protest. The police in cities across the country have been used to short-circuit this right.

I watched New York City police during the Occupy protests yank people from sidewalks into the street, where they would be arrested. I saw police routinely shove protesters and beat them with batons. I saw activists slammed against police cars. I saw groups of protesters suddenly herded like sheep to be confined within police barricades. I saw, and was caught up in, mass arrests in which those around me were handcuffed and then thrown violently onto the sidewalk.

The police often blasted pepper spray into faces from inches away, temporarily blinding the victims. This violence, carried out against nonviolent protesters, came amid draconian city ordinances that effectively outlawed protest and banned demonstrators from public spaces.

It was buttressed by heavy police infiltration and surveillance of the movement. When the press or activists attempted to document the abuse by police they often were assaulted or otherwise blocked from taking photographs or videos. The message the state delivered is clear: Do not dissent. And the McMillan trial is part of the process.

The Crime of Peaceful Protest


By Chris Hedges
April 28, 2014


NEW YORK — Cecily McMillan, wearing a red dress and high heels, her dark, shoulder-length hair stylishly curled, sat behind a table with her two lawyers Friday morning facing Judge Ronald A. Zweibel in Room 1116 at the Manhattan Criminal Court. The judge seems to have alternated between boredom and rage throughout the trial, now three weeks old. He has repeatedly thrown caustic barbs at her lawyers and arbitrarily shut down many of the avenues of defense. Friday was no exception.

The silver-haired Zweibel curtly dismissed a request by defense lawyers Martin Stolar and Rebecca Heinegg for a motion to dismiss the case. The lawyers had attempted to argue that testimony from the officer who arrested McMillan violated Fifth Amendment restrictions against the use of comments made by a defendant at the time of arrest.

But the judge, who has issued an unusual gag order that bars McMillan’s lawyers from speaking to the press, was visibly impatient, snapping, “This debate is going to end.” He then went on to uphold his earlier decision to heavily censor videos taken during the arrest, a decision Stolar said “is cutting the heart out of my ability to refute” the prosecution’s charge that McMillan faked a medical seizure in an attempt to avoid being arrested. “I’m totally handicapped,” Stolar lamented to Zweibel.


The trial of McMillan, 25, is one of the last criminal cases originating from the Occupy protest movement. It is also one of the most emblematic.

The state, after the coordinated nationwide eradication of Occupy encampments, has relentlessly used the courts to harass and neutralize Occupy activists, often handing out long probation terms that come with activists’ forced acceptance of felony charges. A felony charge makes it harder to find employment and bars those with such convictions from serving on juries or working for law enforcement. Most important, the long probation terms effectively prohibit further activism.

Click here for the whole story.


According to tax lawyer Bob Lord — who has become something of an elite wealth wonk since his professional work planning estates in recent decades led him to become acutely aware of the issue, "We're sliding back to Gilded Age levels of wealth concentration. My guess is 2039 is the most likely time frame to cross that threshold."

When Forbes began tracking the wealth of the richest 400 Americans in 1982, it only took $75 million to make the low end of the list. Today, $1 billion is the minimum requirement. If you added up the net worth of the 51 richest Americans last year, the trillionaire mark would be reached. This year, that number is down to 37 individuals. Twenty years from today, will it take only one?

Who will the first 21st century trillionaire be?


From that super-civil blog, Jesse's Café Américain, we learn so much about our little world:

People Renouncing US Citizenship and Why

Obama's War On Press and Whistleblowers

Barclay Boss Slaps Down Pay Irate Investors

Outlandish CEO Pay Matter Between Friends

Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck

Weimar Files: Bring On the Trillionaires

New York Allows No Limit Super-Pacs

25 April 2014

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Madness, Ending Badly

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one...

In February 1720 an edict was published, which, instead of restoring the credit of the paper, as was intended, destroyed it irrecoverably, and drove the country to the very brink of revolution...”

Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds
_ _ _ _
Self-awareness, empathy, and foresight are not, unfortunately, high in the ordered skill set of narcissists.

If Europe had any decency, leadership, and moral courage they would take the US financial system's car keys, sit them down in the kitchen, pour black coffee down their throats until they sober up, and then arrange for an extended intervention.

And they need to do it because the American people themselves have fallen into a slumber of indifference and denial about what is being done in their name, and how the world sees their elite.

Have a pleasant week.









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