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thinkahol *

Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution ( Occupy Wall Street ) | Occupy P... - 0 views

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    angella on September 27th, 2011 at 1:08 pm # Online Protest Your Voice Will Be Heard Right to political protest The right to political protest is protected by the Constitution. Section 17 of the Bill of Rights provides for rights to conduct peaceful and unarmed activities such as assembly, demonstrations, pickets and petitions. Political protest also involves imparting related information, and this right is guaranteed by the section regarding freedom of expression (Section 16 of the Bill of Rights). Although the right to political protest is protected by the Constitution, this right may be limited by principle. Activists must remember that none of the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are absolute. The Constitution gives government the power to limit these rights. Section 36 of the Bill, however, says the limitation of fundamental rights or freedoms must be reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom. The Following Abstracts from the Bill of Rights Might Apply To Any On-Line Protest Section 15: Freedom of religion, belief and opinion Everyone has the right to believe or think what they want, even if their opinion is different to the government. Everyone has the right to practise the religion they choose. Government institutions, like schools, can follow religious practices (like having prayers in the morning) but this must be done fairly and people cannot be forced to attend them. A person can also get married under the laws of their religion. But these cannot go against the Bill of Rights. For example, a woman who marries according to customary law does not lose her rights of equality when she gets married. Section 16: Freedom of speech and expression Everyone has the right to say what they want, including the press and other media. Limiting this right There are certain kinds of speech that are not protected. These are: propaganda for war inciting (encouraging) people to u
thinkahol *

Dean Baker: Attack Wall Street, Not Social Security - 0 views

  • On the other hand, it is easy to show that if we contain health care costs then our budget problems are relatively minor. In fact, the current projections of enormous budget deficits two or three decades out would flip over to projections of enormous budget surpluses if our health care costs were comparable to those of any other wealthy country.
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    This is essentially the story of the latest attack on social security. Everyone who looks at the projections agrees; the scary budget stories being hyped in the media and by the Wall Street crew are driven almost entirely by projections of exploding health care costs. But instead of proposing ways to fix the health care system, these deficit hawks want to attack social security. They tell us that fixing health care is hard. By contrast they think that cutting money from social security will be relatively easy. The facts on this are straightforward and known by everyone involved in the budget debate. The US health care system is broken. We pay more than twice as much per person as the average for other wealthy countries. And it is projected to get worse. In three or four decades we are projected to pay three or four times as much per person for health care as people in countries like Germany and Canada. Since more than half of our health care is paid through public sector programs like Medicare and Medicaid, this explosion in health care costs will bankrupt the government if it actually occurs. Of course it will also devastate the private sector. On the other hand, it is easy to show that if we contain health care costs then our budget problems are relatively minor. In fact, the current projections of enormous budget deficits two or three decades out would flip over to projections of enormous budget surpluses if our health care costs were comparable to those of any other wealthy country.
thinkahol *

The Blog : How Rich is Too Rich? : Sam Harris - 0 views

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    I've written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of "wealth redistribution" that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles-producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance. Happily, not all billionaires are content to hoard their money in silence. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized our current approach to raising revenue. As he has lamented many times before, he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary is. Many conservatives pretend not to find this embarrassing. Conservatives view taxation as a species of theft-and to raise taxes, on anyone for any reason, is simply to steal more. Conservatives also believe that people become rich by creating value for others. Once rich, they cannot help but create more value by investing their wealth and spawning new jobs in the process. We should not punish our best and brightest for their success, and stealing their money is a form of punishment. Of course, this is just an economic cartoon. We don't have perfectly efficient markets, and many wealthy people don't create much in the way of value for others. In fact, as our recent financial crisis has shown, it is possible for a few people to become extraordinarily rich by wrecking the global economy. Nevertheless, the basic argument often holds: Many people have amassed fortunes because they (or their parent's, parent's, parents) created value. Steve Jobs resurrected Apple Computer and has since produced one gorgeous product after another. It isn't an accident that millions of us are happy to give him our money. But even in the ideal case, where obvious value has been created, how much wealth can one person be allowed to keep? A trillion doll
thinkahol *

How to end this stock market madness - Wall Street - Salon.com - 0 views

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    The Dow Jones average suffered its latest calamitous decline on Thursday, plunging 419 points and erasing much of the progress that had been made after the last series of wild swings two weeks ago. There were many factors at work in Thursday's carnage, which came after markets in Asia and Europe experienced similar turmoil, but the overriding one seems to be this: Just about everyone now believes the U.S. economy is getting worse -- and no one thinks our leaders in Washington are about to do anything meaningful about it. So we thought it might be a good time to take a step back and consider the fundamental absurdity of the paralysis in Washington, where spending cuts and deficit reduction -- and not job creation -- have come to define and dominate the discussion. And who better to illustrate this than ... Robert Reich, playing the roles of both Professor Donald Right and Dr. Hugo Wrong in a one-man show that everyone on Capitol Hill really ought to check out:
trade 4 target

trade 4 target - 0 views

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    Indian Stock Markets are very volatile in very nature but regardless of it everyone tried to predict the daily movements in the markets on his own. Not everyone can do this perfectly, so it requires a specialist's job to track the stock and commodities markets and thus make a conclusion about the market directions. Forecasting or predicting the markets is an art in itself. Trade4target have best tools but a man without any software's or any other modes may just predict the better way. http://www.flickr.com/photos/trade-4-target
trade 4 target

trade 4 target - 0 views

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    Indian Stock Markets are very volatile in very nature but regardless of it everyone tried to predict the daily movements in the markets on his own. Not everyone can do this perfectly, so it requires a specialist's job to track the stock and commodities markets and thus make a conclusion about the market directions. Forecasting or predicting the markets is an art in itself. Trade4target have best tools but a man without any software's or any other modes may just predict the better way.
thinkahol *

Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn't Get It | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone - 0 views

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    I'll have more coming out about this in a few days, but there have been two disgusting developments in the realm of plutocratic intervention on behalf of Wall Street that everyone protesting should take note of. The fact that both of the following things took place in the middle of the full fever of OWS, when everyone is supposedly trying to placate anti-banker sentiment and Obama and the DCCC are supposedly pledging support of the protesters, shows how completely bankrupt this system is and how necessary street-level protests have become. Popular uprising is probably the only move left to stop developments like the following:
thinkahol *

American Soldiers speak out against the wars and accuse the government or crimes - YouTube - 0 views

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    Listen to and SUPPORT those American Veterans that are now AWAKE and MAD AS HELL!! Original maker of this video is http://www.youtube.com/user/StopTheRobbery2 http://www.ivaw.org/about/why-we-are-against-wars http://www.ivaw.org/ I don't think everyone should just comment. I think everyone should re post this video over and over until 1 Billion on the internet have watched this video. End the war by re posting this video. God bless the World and its people with peace and humanity.
Bakari Chavanu

Michael Moore Kills Capitalism with Kool-Aid - Michael W. Covel - Mises Institute - 0 views

  • Oh sure, in theory I would like to see everyone with their own homestead, money in their pocket for regular shopping frenzies, and no health worries despite eating at Burger King 24/7, but arriving at those goals is not exactly doable unless government robs Peter to pay Paul and/or starts up the printing press.
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      This analysis totally overlooks where real wealth originates from: not from dollars printed by the government or even the redistribution of taxes. It originates from what working class people produce, and what capialist thugs mainly profit off of.
  • And that view of course puts me in opposition to Moore since he has no problem with government as his and our father figure. That is his utopia. He truly believes that warehouses of federal workers, in Washington, D.C., remotely running our lives is the optimal plan. He is an unapologetic socialist who really doesn't care why the poor are poor or the rich are rich, he just wants it fixed. So not surprisingly — and with some generalization as I proffer this — Democrats like Moore and Republicans don't.
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      This is not the point he made in the movie. He makes the argument that workers should control and profite from what they produce.
  • I don't care one way or the other that he has that view and I am not knocking union workers, but Moore sees the world through a class-warfare lens resulting in a certain agenda: force wealth to be spread amongst everyone regardless of effort.
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      So you think it's perfectly okay for individuals to have a net worth of millions and billions of dollars while the people who produce the wealth should not profit from their work?
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  • We listen to heartbreaking stories of foreclosed families across America — but we don't learn why the foreclosures happened. Did these people treat their homes as piggy banks? Was there refinancing on top of refinancing just to keep buying mall trinkets and other goodies with no respect to risk or logic? We don't find out.
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      Yes, we do learn the source of foreclosures. It's banks raising interest rates that people can't possibly pay. It's people making huge amounts of money off the misfortunes of others.
  • $1,000 for cleaning out the house that they were just evicted from. Was it sad? Yes. But should we end capitalism due to this one family in Peoria, IL?
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      He presents this as represenetive example.
  • There is a lengthy dissertation on the evils of Goldman Sachs. He rips Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson big time, and I agree with him. In fact, I said to myself, "Moore, you should have done your whole film on Goldman Sachs!"
  • As FDR concluded and the film ended, I was shocked at the reaction. The theater of 400-plus spectators stood and cheered wildly at FDR's 1944 proposal. The questions running through my head were immediate: how does one legislate words like useful, enough, recreation, adequate, decent, and good? Who decides all of this and to what degree?
  • So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
  • Friedman's logic was what I was remembering as a theater full of people cheered wildly for a second Bill of Rights. How did this film crowd actually think FDR's 1944 vision could be executed? Frankly, it was clear to me at that moment that capitalism is on shaky ground. From Bush "abandoning" capitalism to bailouts for everyone, to Obama gifting away the future, we seriously might be past the point of no return toward a socialization of America.
  • This film did not make me angry, but it did punch me in the gut. The people in that theater with me, including Moore, were not bad people. They just seem to all have consumed a lethal dose of Kool-Aid.
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      What Kool-aid are you talking about? What other system is really challenging capitalism? Not even the government is the real kool-aid when you've already noted that it works on behalf of the corporate class.
  • Moore sees Reagan entering the scene as a shill for corporate-banking interests.
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    I include my reacations to this review in which I think Covel misleads readers about Moore's movie.
thinkahol *

t r u t h o u t | Socialism? The Rich Are Winning the US Class War: Facts Show Rich Get... - 0 views

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    The rich and their paid false prophets are doing a bang-up job deceiving the poor and middle class. They have convinced many that an evil socialism is alive in the land and it is taking their fair share. But the deception cannot last - facts say otherwise.
Muslim Academy

Will peace ever be restored in the northern areas of Pakistan - 0 views

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    Northern areas of Pakistan For a decade, the northern areas of Pakistan have been under terrorism. The whole area was destroyed by terrorism and then the 2005 disastrous earthquake almost destroyed the northern area of Pakistan. At first, the innocent residents of northern Pakistan were under the terrorism of the Taliban and Al Qaeda; now, they are in the fear of the U.S. drone attacks. After the event of 9/11, the world has been completely changed, the western world, especially the U.S., has been hostile to countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Will peace ever be restored in the northern areas of Pakistan? The northern area of Pakistan was under the invasion of the Taliban. The Taliban had taken over the area and enforced many severe laws. Girls were banned from acquiring education, girls' educational institutions were destroyed completely, and women were banned from earning a living. Women were also not allowed to go out of the house unnecessarily, if the situation occurs that they have to, they should be accompanied by male Mahram. If a female was caught alone in the street, then she was severely punished. A couple of years ago, a mobile phone recorded video was released in which the Taliban was spanking a girl with a leather belt in front of everyone. The girl was caught in the street with her father in law. The Pakistani Army conducted various operations in the areas and killed most of the Taliban and brought many areas back to peace.
Ian Schlom

At a 60's Style Be-In, Guns Yield to Words, Lots of Words - 0 views

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    This article will allow me to evaluate the mainstream media's interpretation of the Other Campaign. Expectedly, it is full of jokes and superfluity and lacking in legitimate analysis. The NYT guy said that Marcos was vague about what the Other Campaign is about. They say Marcos "even tried to undermine" the "popular leftist candidate," the one from the PRD, who would sell out the country. "Precisely what Marcos hopes to accomplish with the meetings and with a planned national tour by a group of Zapatista representatives remains murky. He has not defined how he would change the Constitution." They say that the EZLN hasn't launched another military offensive because they were pushed back into the jungle by the military in 1995. in article: Still others say Marcos's call for a broad movement reflects a widespread disappointment with left-leaning politicians throughout Latin America, who have become enmeshed in the sort of corruption scandals they once criticized. "What they are saying represents a trend in Latin America, which is that people have lost faith in political parties," said Peter M. Rosset, an expert in agricultural policy who attended the meeting on Sunday. "The basic feeling is that the political class is all the same." That sentiment was expressed over and over here in San Miguel, a former 15,000-acre ranch that the Zapatistas seized in 1994 and divided among former Indian ranch hands. "This movement, for me, its historic," said Arturo Guzmán González, a 29-year-old singer who did a version a cappella of his protest song, "Manifestarse." "It has a moral base, this movement. They seek the words of everyone."
Muslim Academy

burma today-What is Happening Now - 0 views

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    In the midst of fast-moving events in Syria and in the shadows of tyranny, oppression, lethality and massacres practiced by the Syrian regime, the Nation of Islam has been stabbed once again. Another waterfall of Muslim blood has been shed without any humanity. These stabs have been hurting the Muslim nation often and raise many questions about our disbanding and enemy's plots and plans from all sides. In the past weeks, Muslim advocates have been exposed to a gruesome massacre after being attacked by a Buddhist group that killed many Muslims. The media have posted terrible images of the victims of this massacre. The Myanmar government turned a blind eye, and it seems that they agree with the criminal killers. Things did not stop at this massacre but transcended to burn homes and farms of a large number of Muslims and killed dozens by fire. All this happened with the help of police junta Buddhism. On July 10, 2012 a curfew was imposed on villages that was inhabited by the Muslim minority, then the Buddhist groups covered by the Myanmar government started a campaign of ethnic cleansing and religious preference that killed 100 Muslims and injured about 300 people and burned nearly a thousand homes. Also, in this awful campaign they have been targeting scientists, doctors and intellectuals. Away from these events and tension, the main thing that everyone knows is that the Muslims there have been suffering for decades from the oppression and persecution of Buddhists via systematic violations. The group of Buddhists are committed against the Muslims there at different intervals, and force displacement, removal of citizenship, and the sophistication in the torture and "ethnic cleansing." Unjust arrests and the demolition of mosques and Islamic schools have deprived Muslims from the lowest human rights.
Muslim Academy

How to learn Tajweed - 0 views

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    If you have ever wondered how to learn Tajweed which is the proper pronunciation, when reading the Koran there are numerous ways at a student's disposal these days. Everything from a classroom setting to online courses to YouTube videos to podcasts, so there is a way for almost everyone to conveniently learn Tajweed. However, how to learn Tajweed can be overwhelming. It is suggested that the beginner, start by learning the Arabic alphabet as the only true way to learn the rules of tajweed is in the pure Arabic form. The latest on the Arabic alphabet are just as numerous everything from videos on YouTube to online instructions to interactive CD-ROMs to books. Once you have learned in the Arabic alphabet sufficiently then you can start to learn the manners of the heart, which are the rules that govern the Koran itself. Once you have mastered those, you can then start to learn. The external manners which are the rules that govern the person doing the recitation, and teach that individual how to conduct him or herself while reading the Koran.
thinkahol *

"Captured Europe" by Simon Johnson | Project Syndicate - 0 views

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    The Greek default has turned out to be the proverbial dog that didn't bark. The lesson for Europe - and for the US - is clear: it is time to stop listening to what banks say, and start focusing on what they do. We must re-evaluate the distorted political economy of the financial sector, before the excessive power of the few imposes even larger costs on everyone else.
Muslim Academy

Knowledge of Islam: A complete code of life - 0 views

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    Islam is a religion of truth. It is the complete code of life that teaches us everything about the life in this world and how to live it so that we can earn a place in heavens in the life after death. History shows that Muslims have been the most civilized people in the whole world, because of the teachings and rules of the religion Islam. Even when it was revealed on the Prophet and he started inviting everyone to accept Islam, no one was forced in fact they were given a congregational lecture about the truth and lie giving them enough knowledge to make a wise choice. This tolerance was the first reason why the number of people that accepted to Learn Islam rapidly grew in the early Islamic history. It is not at all a difficult religion as most people from other religions and beliefs around the world think it is. It merely teaches the simplest way of leading our lives in the best way. The best thing about Islam is that it not only is specific to the religion based matters but also provides complete guidance in the various other aspects of life that makes it easier to lead a successful life.
Bakari Chavanu

Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For | Politics News | Rolling Stone - 0 views

  • Some economists have proposed running a job guarantee through the non-profit sector, which would make it even easier to suit the job to the worker. Imagine a world where people could contribute the skills that inspire them – teaching, tutoring, urban farming, cleaning up the environment, painting murals – rather than telemarketing or whatever other stupid tasks bosses need done to supplement their millions. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      Jeremey Rifkin's The End of Work proposes this idea.
  • What if people didn't have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone's bank account every month. A proposal along these lines has been gaining traction in Switzerland, and it's starting to get a lot of attention here, too.
  • A universal basic income would address this epidemic at the root and provide everyone, in the words of Duke professor Kathi Weeks, "time to cultivate new needs for pleasures, activities, senses, passions, affects, and socialities that exceed the options of working and saving, producing and accumulating."
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  • Ever noticed how much landlords blow? They don't really do anything to earn their money. They just claim ownership of buildings and charge people who actually work for a living the majority of our incomes for the privilege of staying in boxes that these owners often didn't build and rarely if ever improve.
  • In a few years, my landlord will probably sell my building to another landlord and make off with the appreciated value of the land s/he also claims to own – which won't even get taxed, as long as s/he ploughs it right back into more real estate.
  •  Municipalities themselves can be big-time landowners, and groups can even create large-scale community land trusts so that the land is held in common. In any case, we have to stop letting rich people pretend they privately own what nature provided everyone.
  • Hoarders blow. Take, for instance, the infamous one percent, whose ownership of the capital stock of this country leads to such horrific inequality. "Capital stock" refers to two things here: the buildings and equipment that workers use to produce goods and services, and the stocks and bonds that represent ownership over the former. The top 10 percent's ownership of the means of production is represented by the fact that they control 80 percent of all financial assets.
    • Bakari Chavanu
       
      Defines capital stock
  • You know what else really blows? Wall Street. The whole point of a finance sector is supposed to be collecting the surplus that the whole economy has worked to produce, and channeling that surplus wealth toward its most socially valuable uses. It is difficult to overstate how completely awful our finance sector has been at accomplishing that basic goal. Let's try to change that by allowing state governments into the banking game.
  • There is only one state that currently has a public option for banking: North Dakota.
  • When North Dakotans pay state taxes, the money gets deposited in the state's bank, which in turn offers cheap loans to farmers, students and businesses. The Bank of North Dakota doesn't make seedy, destined-to-default loans, slice them up inscrutably and sell them on a secondary market.
thinkahol *

Tax Cuts Caused The Deficits, Therefore... | OurFuture.org - 0 views

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    No serious person denies that Reagan's 1981 tax cuts and military increases threw the country into a pattern of borrowing and borrowing that we have not escaped. When Reagan took office the national debt was $995 billion. When Reagan left office it was $2.87 trillion and climbing fast. No serious person denies that Bush's 2001 tax cuts and continued military increases dramatically worsened the problem. Bush's last budget year ended with a record single-year deficit of $1.4 trillion. As the country discusses what to do about the borrowing the elephant in the room is that everyone understands that restoring top tax rates to pre-Reagan levels and cutting the military budget in half would solve the problem completely. But we can't do that. We can't even discuss it. And we all know why. And we all know why. It is because the Reagan Revolution transformed the country from a democracy to a plutocracy -- a country run by and for the wealthy. Such sensible and simple ideas are considered off-limits. To even bring up the idea of restoring tax rates to pre-Reagan levels and cutting military spending invites terrible consequences. The speaker risks becoming the target of the money's noise machine: Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge, Fox. Smears. Humiliation. Banishment. Or the noise machine cranks up a campaign of misinformation, convincing people --especially DC people -- that what they see in front of their eyes just isn't so. Repeat it enough and it becomes solid knowledge. We all know this is the way it is. So don't tell me that "we don't have the money" to keep 300,000 teachers from being laid off, or to help the long-term, mostly older unemployed workers get something to live on and keep their health care. The money is right there in front of us, but the Congress is bought and paid for. What do we do? We have to demand representatives who represent us, not make excuses for representing the wealthy. The unfortunate, poor and disadvantaged must count every bit as much as the
thinkahol *

LRB · David Runciman · How messy it all is - 0 views

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    Sometimes inequality is bad for almost everyone, and sometimes only for certain people; sometimes it is worst for the people at the bottom, and sometimes it is just as bad for the people at the top. Different societies are equal or unequal for different reasons, sometimes by necessity, sometimes by choice. More equality is a good thing and it's an idea that's worth defending. It would be nice if there were more politicians willing to stand up and defend it, however they saw fit.
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