Canada: Man Sends Text Message Urging Colleagues to ‘Blow Away’ the Competition at Trade Show, Has Life Turned Upside Down as Government Launches Terrorism Investigation
February 5th, 2012Via: The Canadian Press:
A casual text message to work colleagues encouraging them to ”blow away” the competition at a trade show allegedly plunged a Muslim man into a terrorism probe.
Telecommunications sales manager Saad Allami says the innocent message, aimed at pumping up his staff, has had devastating consequences on his life.
The Quebec man says he was arrested by provincial police while picking up his seven-year-old son at school. A team of police officers stormed into his home, telling his wife she was married to a terrorist. And his work colleagues were detained for hours at the U.S. border because of their connection to him.
Those are the allegations Allami makes in a lawsuit filed last month.
The Moroccan native is seeking $100,000 from the Quebec provincial police force, one of its sergeants, and the provincial government. The six-figure sum is being sought for unlawful detention, unlawful arrest, loss of income and damage to his reputation.
On Jan. 21, 2011, Allami sent a text message to colleagues urging them to “blow away” the competition at a trade show in New York City.
According to his lawsuit, he was arrested without warning by police three days later and detained for over a day while his house was searched. During his detention, a team of police officers allegedly conducted an “intrusive” four-hour search.
“The whole time, the officers kept repeating to the plaintiff’s wife that her husband was a terrorist,” the filing reads.
“The treatment of the plaintiff and his wife was cavalier, illegal, aggressive, accusatory, and in violation of their most fundamental rights.”
Related: U.S. Detained and Deported Irish and British Citizens Over Idiotic Twitter Messages
Lodge Logic Cast Iron Skillet
February 5th, 2012If you’re lucky enough to have a husband or wife who likes to cook for you, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have them cook for you with a Lodge Logic Skillet.
Lodge Logic Cast Iron Skillet
Becky, my wife, recently bought one of these skillets (with the lid) and she has been cooking all sorts of meals with it. Lamb chops, sausages and quiche all taste much better when prepared in the Lodge skillet. The meats are more succulent and the quiche is lighter and… fluffier??? I don’t know how to describe how the quiche is better, but it definitely is. She also made scrumptious skillet scones which all disappeared as if by magic. *poof* Gone.
Our boys don’t need much encouragement to eat their meals—this is a polite way of describing the ferocity of their hunger after a few hours without eating—but with skillet meals, the only sounds out of them are biting, chewing and the occasional appreciative groan.
This skillet is heirloom quality and made in the U.S.
John Key at Waitangi: Making Friends and Influencing People
February 5th, 2012Via: New Zealand Herald:
Prime Minister John Key and fellow politicians were verbally abused by protesters during ugly scenes at Waitangi this morning.
Protester Wi Popata heckled prominent Maori MPs at Te Tii Marae, calling Dr Pita Sharples, Te Ururoa Flavell and Hekia Parata “John Key’s niggers.”
“The Treaty’s not for sale,” chanted others.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Maori Wardens and Diplomatic Security Services members kept them away from Mr Key as he made a forced exit after a farcical gathering, during which officials could not be heard for all the chanting.
One protester cried “scumbag” as Mr Key entered his vehicle.
Related: Video
Corporatism Is Not the Free Market
February 5th, 2012I wish that I had a nickel for every imbecile (and university faculty member and student) who didn’t understand this.
Via: Reason:
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy,” one is left scratching one’s head. How refreshing it is, then, to hear a prominent establishment economist—a Nobel laureate yet—tell it straight:
The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system . . . is . . . an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism.
Columbia University Professor Edmund S. Phelps, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics, and his coauthor, Saifedean Ammous, assistant professor of economics at the Lebanese American University, write that the U.S. economy ceased to be a free market some time ago, yet the free market is blamed for the economic crisis. (The real question is whether it was ever really free.)
Phelps and Ammous condemn corporatism unequivocally.
In various ways, corporatism chokes off the dynamism that makes for engaging work, faster economic growth, and greater opportunity and inclusiveness. It maintains lethargic, wasteful, unproductive, and well-connected firms at the expense of dynamic newcomers and outsiders, and favors declared goals such as industrialization, economic development, and national greatness over individuals’ economic freedom and responsibility. Today, airlines, auto manufacturers, agricultural companies, media, investment banks, hedge funds, and much more has [sic] at some point been deemed too important to weather the free market on its own, receiving a helping hand from government in the name of the “public good.”
Slab City: Living Off the Grid in California’s Badlands
February 5th, 2012Via: Time:
“Chicago” Joe Angio and his wife Anna did everything by the book to secure their slice of the American Dream. They earned college degrees, started a small business, bought a house and pair of cars, paid their taxes and credit-card bills on time. But when the economy tanked, so did the dream. Between two jobs they could barely pay their mortgage, reaching a point where they had to choose which creditor to shortchange at the end of the month in order to keep the lights on. With foreclosure no longer a matter of if, but of when, the couple looked on the Internet for the ideal place to lay low, spend less and experiment with solar power to “get more for our buck out of our environment.” They bought a used RV and went off the grid. Way off.
Slab City, their home for the past three months, is a squatters’ camp deep in the badlands of California’s poorest county, where the road ends and the sun reigns, about 190 miles southeast of Los Angeles and hour’s drive from the Mexican border. The vast state-owned property gets its name from the concrete slabs spread out across the desert floor, the last remnants of a World War II–era military base. In the decades since it was decommissioned, dropouts and fugitives of all stripes have swelled its winter population to close to a thousand, though no one’s really counting. These days, their numbers are growing thanks to a modest influx of recession refugees like the Angios, attracted by do-it-yourself, rent-free living beyond the reach of electricity, running water and the law. And while the complexion of the Slabs, as the place is locally known, may be changing in some ways, the same old rule applies: respect your neighbor, or stay the hell away.
Similar: New Mexico: Desert Autonomous Zone / Off The Grid: Life on the Mesa
Chris Hedges “Brace Yourself! The American Empire Is Over & The Descent Is Going To Be Horrifying!”
February 5th, 2012Via: CSPAN:
‘Act of Valor’: Top to Bottom U.S. Navy Propaganda Film, Uses Active Duty SEALs as Actors, Raw Footage Kept for ‘Training and Other Purposes’
February 4th, 2012Via: Wikipedia:
Act of Valor began as a recruitment video for the U.S. military’s Naval Special Warfare Command. In 2007, Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh of Bandido Brothers Production filmed a video for the Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen SWCC which led the Navy to allow them to use SEALs for Act of Valor. None of the SEALs’ names will appear in the credits of the film.
Relativity Media acquired the rights to the project on June 12, 2011 for $13 million and a $30 million in prints and advertising commitment. Deadline.com called it “the biggest money paid for a finished film with an unknown cast”. The production budget was estimated between $15 million and $18 million.
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The Navy held final cut privileges in order to remove any frames to address security concerns and kept raw footage to use for real-life training and other purposes.
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Related: YouTube:
States Seek Currencies Made of Silver and Gold
February 4th, 2012Via: CNN:
A growing number of states are seeking shiny new currencies made of silver and gold.
Worried that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. dollar are on the brink of collapse, lawmakers from 13 states, including Minnesota, Tennessee, Iowa, South Carolina and Georgia, are seeking approval from their state governments to either issue their own alternative currency or explore it as an option. Just three years ago, only three states had similar proposals in place.
“In the event of hyperinflation, depression, or other economic calamity related to the breakdown of the Federal Reserve System … the State’s governmental finances and private economy will be thrown into chaos,” said North Carolina Republican Representative Glen Bradley in a currency bill he introduced last year.
Government Motors: Chevy Silverado ‘2012’
February 4th, 2012Via: YouTube:
Inattention to Civilian Deaths in America’s Wars
February 4th, 2012Via: Washington Post:
The major wars the United States has fought since the surrender of Japan in 1945 — in Korea, Indochina, Iraq and Afghanistan — have produced colossal carnage. For most of them, we do not have an accurate sense of how many people died, but a conservative estimate is at least 6 million civilians and soldiers.
