November 30, 2013

Cheap DVD players.....Reduced-price TVs......Glocks ........ Black Friday in Amurka

Every year on Black Friday, shoppers across the United States brave crowds to battle each other for door-buster sales on flat-screen TVs, video games, Uggs and the hottest toys.

But other bargain hunters are out stalking a different sort of discounted prey: firearms. And they should find plenty of deals. Gunmakers are marketing aggressively, trying to revive sales that have slowed a bit after a flurry a year ago.

Gun-buying after Thanksgiving is becoming something of a holiday tradition. In each of the past two years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has reported a record number of calls for background checks for gun purchases on the Friday after Thanksgiving. A flood of 154,873 calls on Black Friday in 2012, nearly three times the daily average that year, caused outages at some of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System's call centers.

The FBI does not track actual firearms purchases, and customers can buy multiple guns at one time, suggesting the total number of weapons sold on Black Friday could be even higher than the number of background-check calls. The bureau has reported 17,238,102 background checks this year through Oct. 31. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/29/black-friday-gun-sales_n_4351663.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037&ir=Politics

November 30, 2013

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer Says He Has The RIGHT To Use Medical Marijuana While On Duty

November 30, 2013

'at what point are the retailers ... to blame for creating this totally artificial competition'

(Truthdig) It happened again. Someone got hurt—in this case stabbed—participating in the annual shopping mayhem known as Black Friday.

One man in Virginia allegedly stabbed another over a parking space. Such behavior, whatever it says about our culture, has become almost expected.

“Stampede” is now a word associated with shopping.

.....(snip).....

So at what point are the retailers themselves to blame for creating this totally artificial competition around shopping, which is good for their bottom line, but bad for those who get crushed by other shoppers? Speaking of which, what poor taste this industry must have to advertise “doorbusters”—especially good deals—when people have actually died from this grotesque behavior. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/black_friday_stabbing_at_what_point_are_retailers_responsible_20131129

November 30, 2013

Richard Wolff & Thom Hartmann: Maximum pay for the rich?

Maximum pay for the rich?


Published on Nov 26, 2013

Dr. Richard Wolff, Economist, joins Thom Hartmann. The Swiss have realized that CEO pay is out-of-control and are taking steps to limit it. So when will politicians in America take a cue from our friends across the pond and start trying to put a cap on the super-rich?

November 30, 2013

No Line in Front of Best Buy in Affluent DC Suburb

Published on Friday, November 29, 2013 by FireDogLake
No Line in Front of Best Buy in Affluent DC Suburb

by Jane Hamsher


I was watching CNN this morning and the inevitable wall-to-wall “shoppers go crazy on Black Friday” stories. Pope Francis’s invocation against the Western economic promotion of “unbridled consumerism” two days ago seemed remarkably well timed.

But as I watched video of people camped out on sidewalks in the freezing cold this year and mobs violently pushing through doors, consumerism seemed at best a partial explanation

.....(snip).....

If CNN was right, and this was all great fun, then there should be just as many people outside Best Buys in wealthy areas as there are in places where people are struggling. So the dogs and I hopped in the car and went to a Best Buy in a well-to-do area of DC to see how long the lines are.

And, of course, there was no line. Unless one person could be considered a line. A woman was sitting just inside the main door and had organized a short list of people (22) who would return later in the day and assume an orderly place in line. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/29-4

November 29, 2013

Double Standards for US War Crimes

from Consortium News:



Double Standards for US War Crimes
November 28, 2013

U.S. pundits cheer when some African warlord or East European brute is dragged before an international tribunal, but not at the thought of justice being meted out to George W. Bush or other architects of post-9/11 torture and aggressive war on Iraq, as John LaForge notes.

By John LaForge


In response to regular reports of atrocities by U.S. soldiers, drone controllers, pilots and interrogators, the White House routinely tries to help. Every president promises to honor U.S. armed forces and says they are the finest military of all, etc.

At Veterans’ Day ceremonies, president fill-in-the-blank boast, “America is and always will be the greatest nation on Earth.” This past Nov. 11, President Barack Obama said that since 9/11 the U.S. is “defining one of the greatest generations of military service this country has ever produced,” and, of course,“[W]e have the best-led, best-trained, best-equipped military in the world.”

Really? On Veterans’ Day 2011, one headline blared: “American Soldier is Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians for Sport.” U.S. aggression, occupation, torture of prisoners, massacres, drone attacks, offshore penal colonies and sexual assaults against our own service members, take the luster from the official self-image of “exceptionality.”

In a bold invitation, Human Rights Watch has called on 154 parties to the UN Convention on Torture to bring charges against U.S. officials under explicit language in the treaty, ratified by the US in 1994. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/11/28/double-standards-for-us-war-crimes/

November 29, 2013

The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday

from The Nation:



The Workers Who Bring You Black Friday
My life as a temp in California’s Inland Empire, the belly of the online shopping beast.

Gabriel Thompson
November 26, 2013


The call from the temp agency comes in late October. I’ve passed the drug test, cleared the background check, sat down for a quick interview—“Can you lift fifty-pound boxes?”—and completed a worksheet of basic math problems. Now there’s a job. A warehouse just outside the city of Ontario, about forty miles east of Los Angeles, needs more bodies to meet the holiday crush.

They do work for Walmart, Best Buy, “all sorts of big companies,” says the female voice on the line. Orientation starts at 8:15 am; pay is $9 an hour. “Make sure you’re early.” Before hanging up she repeats the order. “Be early.”

On an overcast Tuesday, I pull into the parking lot, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Looming to my left is a giant rectangle of windowless cement. At 800,000 square feet, the warehouse is the size of Madison Square Garden, big enough that any misplaced products are as good as lost. I get my picture snapped for an ID badge and join thirty other new hires in the cafeteria. It is a diverse group, evenly divided by gender, mostly Latino but with a fair number of whites and blacks. As we sit, several men swap rumors of better opportunities elsewhere: a warehouse where pay starts at $12 an hour, another with productivity bonuses that can boost hourly wages to $15. But those are direct hire positions, and hard to land. During my job search, each warehouse I visited gave directions to the nearest temp agency.

After waiting twenty minutes, we are ushered into a room upstairs. A woman from the agency hands each of us a time sheet. For the sign-in, she tells us to write 8:30. “I know you were told to be here at 8:15,” she says, anticipating a protest that never comes, “but that was just to make sure you got here early.” .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/article/177377/holiday-crush

November 29, 2013

World Fights Back Against the Biggest Brother in History

from truthdig:


World Fights Back Against the Biggest Brother in History

Posted on Nov 28, 2013
By Sonali Kolhatkar


The United States’ vast and indiscriminate worldwide surveillance of ordinary people and heads of state has no historical precedent. Now countries around the world are fighting back using the United Nations as a vehicle for change. In a move that received little media coverage in the U.S., a United Nations committee approved without a vote a draft resolution entitled “The Right to Privacy in a Digital Age.” The nonbinding resolution, which will now head to the General Assembly where it has broad support, follows from a report published in June by the United Nations Human Rights Council. It detailed the negative impact of state surveillance on free expression and human rights and lamented that technology has outpaced legislation.

The remarkable U.N. draft resolution affirms privacy as a human right, on par with other globally recognized civil and political rights. Several leading advocacy groups, including Access Now, Amnesty International, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch and Privacy International, signed an open letter to the U.N. General Assembly backing the resolution. The letter stresses the “importance of protecting privacy and free expression in the face of technological advancements and encroaching State power.”

Carly Nyst, the head of international advocacy at Privacy International, told me, “This resolution could not be more important. At the moment we’re seeing serious threats to the protection of the right to privacy in the form of (National Security Agency) spying but also in the form of other surveillance practices that are taking place across the world. We think that voting in favor of this resolution is a really important stand for states to take so that they will no longer stand for global surveillance practices undertaken by the U.S. and others. This is a pivotal moment.”

Opposition to the U.N. resolution has come primarily from a small alliance of countries that share surveillance data, known as the “Five Eyes” (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia). These five countries are party to a secret treaty originally signed by the U.S. and U.K. in 1941, which came to light only in 2010. Little is known about the details of the agreement. According to Nyst, “We know that there is a very, very high level of integration between the intelligence services of each of the [Five Eyes] countries to the extent that Americans are working out of Australian bases, the British are working out of New Zealand bases, etc. That information is shared, almost is standard across all five countries and there is no such thing as a no-spy deal. That means that even though they have a very high level of cooperation there are also instances in which they are spying on each other.” Nyst added, “It’s a completely secret, covert arrangement that implicates the privacy rights of almost everyone who uses the Internet.” ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/world_fights_back_against_the_biggest_brother_in_history_20131128

November 29, 2013

UK: The railway workers trained to stop suicides

(BBC) Nearly every day someone tries to take their life on Britain's railways, but thousands of rail staff have now been trained to spot the signs before it is too late. What are they looking for and what impact does suicide have on the network?

"He just poured his heart out to me, saying he hated life, he hated everything and he wanted it to all just go away and it was going to go away tonight."

Sharon Willett was eight hours into her shift for East Coast Trains when she noticed the teenage boy sitting alone on a platform bench.

He was cocooned in his hooded top and looked like he might be crying, but as he was hiding his face she could not be sure. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25036838

November 29, 2013

Twin Cities: Complaints rise about Metro Transit bus drivers

(Star-Tribune) Cut off in traffic by a bus and then flipped off by its driver, Roger Watts filed a complaint with Metro Transit. Mark Jackson did the same thing after he endured a harrowing bus ride with “a very aggressive driver.”

A sharp rise in complaints about bus drivers has accompanied the recent jump in transit ridership. Metro Transit logged more than 6,111 complaints against bus drivers in 2012, up 30 percent from 4,686 filed five years ago. Last year, there was one complaint for every 11,431 rides, compared to one in 15,283 in 2008.

Metro Transit and bus driver’s union leaders explain the surge in gripes as a sign that it’s easier than ever to file a complaint, rather than indicating any problem with drivers. While the majority of complaints still come in by phone, agency officials say the complaints arrive by e-mail, text message, Twitter and Facebook, and through a portal on its website. In 2010, Metro Transit also installed a new system to better track complaints.

“Many of our riders are well connected,” said Brian Funk, Metro Transit’s assistant director of field operations. “They use mobile devices. That lends to instant connection. If they want to comment, good or bad, you have the ability to provide instant feedback.” ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.startribune.com/local/233173721.html