American is NOT a True Democracy, Laws By Ballot is TRUE Democracy

This is brilliant. This will truly determine what the people believe rather than what corporations can buy

Amplify’d from ni4d.us

The National Initiative for Democracy is a proposal which will permit citizens to make laws by ballot initiative.

Creates a ballot initiative process at all levels of government including at the federal level

Becomes a new check in our system of checks and balances

Does not modify Congress, the President, or the judicial system

Fair, non-partisan, promotes freedom of speech

Endorsed by some highly respected people

What to do:

Learn about NI4D Vote for it Get Involved Donate to the cause Read more at ni4d.us

 

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VIDEO: Hemp Legalization For Biofuels and National Security

Really, why is a non-narcotic plant is illegal? It's a great biofuel and biomass feedstock, so legalize it, tax it, and let's reduce our dependency on foreign oil!

Amplify’d from hempstrategies.com

How can we end prohibition against hemp nationally?

How do we end the tyranny from the federal government in regards to cannabis laws in the US states that have decriminalized cannabis for medical use or otherwise? Read more at hempstrategies.com

 

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BOA Homeowners Should be F*CKING OUTRAGED! BOA Strikes a Deal w/ Investors for $8.5B

So BOA leaves homeowners high and dry as they decline mortgage refinancing deals and robosign foreclosures but they agree to pay PIMCO, Blackrock, and the Fed, and the stock price increases.



The HAMP program and the Obama administration's efforts to save foreclosures and distressed homeowners has been a complete flop and NOTHING gets done. People just lost their homes, all their equity or previous investment.



Meanwhile the mega wealthy hedge fund managers get paid back.



There should be RIOTS in the streets. People who have lost their home to BOA should be F*CKING OUTRAGED!

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

Bank of America Near $8.5 Billion Deal on Mortgage Securities

Bank of America is near to a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle a suit by investors who purchased mortgage securities that soured, handing a victory to a group of money managers including Pimco and BlackRock as well as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The company’s board has yet to approve the settlement, but both sides are aiming to get it done by Thursday, according to an individual close to the negotiations. The timing is intended to take place before the second quarter ends.

Bank of America stock jumped 38 cents in after-hours trading to $11.19 a share after news reports of the deal.

“I think this is huge,” said Mike Mayo, a bank analyst with Credit Agricole in New York. “It’s about time the industry resolves issues from the financial crisis and focuses more on righting their companies and improving the economy. This is the most significant step since the financial crisis that helps do that."

Last fall, analysts warned that the toll from suits by these investors and other private holders could total tens of billions of dollars, but the proposed deal would lift some of that uncertainty. The securities affected by the deal come almost entirely from Countrywide, the subprime mortgage lender whose excesses have come to symbolize the excesses of the housing boom. Bank of America bought Countrywide in 2008.

The $8.5 billion settlement represents just a portion of the bank’s total exposure to faulty mortgage bonds. Analysts say it appears to cover about $56 billion of the roughly $222 billion of troubled loans that were bundled into securities, largely by the Countrywide Financial business in acquired in early 2008.

Other huge risks from the fallout of the subprime mortgage crisis still loom — both for Bank of America and its giant peers.  All 50 state attorneys general are in the final stages of settling an investigation into abuses by the biggest mortgage servicers,  and are pressing the banks to pay up to $30 billion in fines and penalties. Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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Educated Spaniards Follow Their Ancestors Back to Thriving Latin America

Meanwhile latinos educated in Latin America are finding it hard to improve their work life conditions outside of the major metropolis

Amplify’d from www.presseurop.eu

The Spanish brain-drain

24 June 2011 El País Madrid

Faced with record unemployment and poor job prospects, a generation of young Spaniards is decamping to the economic boomtowns of Latin America

Despite everything the press writes about this special period of prosperity and stability that Latin America is going through, the continent continues to surprise the Spaniards. “Many Spanish companies come and say they want to have a base in Mexico from which they can springboard to the United States. And then they grasp that Mexico is a huge market itself, and it’s growing fast.” So they give up on their planned jump to Uncle Sam and build a growth strategy for where they are, says the young Spaniard.

The Spanish banking sector understood this many years ago. Javier Lopez, president of the CreditServices financial company, explained a few months ago that a good chunk of the company’s activity had shifted to Brazil following the financial crisis:  “Today, I’m managing finances in Latin America like I was doing in Spain five years ago."   "In Mexico, the world of work has nothing in common with Spain,” Juan Arteaga goes on. “You work really hard, and there is less time off. But hard work is rewarded.  Someone who works well moves up fast.  I landed here with no money, no network, and five years later I’m handling communications for Coca-Cola in its second global market. And all that by the age of 30.” It’s a career that’s unthinkable for most young people in Spain. Juan sums it up succinctly:  “In Spain, I would still be living off scholarships.”

The Colombian consulate in Madrid is seeing an unprecedented increase in applications for work visas.  In 2008, the consular services were handling an average of 45 visas a month. This year, the average has yet to drop below 70, counting all types of visas, including the special permit to create business contacts.

Money, the desire to be active, Hispanic culture, lush natural landscapes, a demand for the Spaniards...  Who would even want to move to Germany when there is Latin America? But other factors, such as distance and lack of social security, dull the lustre of the new Eldorado: emigration remains a possibility for only a minority of the unemployed Spaniards who might seem a natural fit, although it is becoming more popular. “Latin America is a very faraway continent, and some news coverage [of the violence] doesn’t help,” Juan Arteaga admits.

Within Europe, the Spanish emigrant is never more than four hours by plane from home. From Latin America, the nearest European destination is nine hours away. Pilar Pin, executive director of Spain’s Office for Expatriate Affairs, which studies the lives of Spanish expatriates around the world, singles out as problems the “wages, labour laws, poor coverage in case of unemployment and the health system… We are used to a free and universal system, and health care in the Americas is extremely expensive.”

The numbers are clear, and they show there is no wave of Spanish migration to Latin America. It’s not forlorn and hungry emigrants clutching cardboard suitcases that we’re seeing headed for the boats, but university students in search of experience.

Still, the fact remains that over the next decade there is a whole continent out there where Spanish is spoken and where the emigrants can put their hand to something.  At the same time, back in Spain, a generation of young graduates finds itself stuck in economic agony. Those two realities are now beginning to come together. Read more at www.presseurop.eu

 

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German Mark Set for Comeback As EURO Crisis Deepens

It would be interesting to hear what the French think of this.

Amplify’d from www.express.co.uk

MARK ‘SET FOR COMEBACK’ AS GERMAN EURO CRISIS DEEPENS

ALMOST three-quarters of Germans doubt that the euro has a future, a poll reveals.

They also believe rescue attempts are futile as billions more euros will be paid to bail out Greece.

Sixty eight per cent said they did not think the emergency bail out of Greece would work.

A separate poll last week showed more than half of Germans thought that Greece should be thrown out of the euro.

Rumours are also rife in Germany that Deutsche Mark bank notes are being printed again in preparation for ditching the euro.

It is said Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, has been ordered to print marks as part of contingency plans to leave Europe’s single currency.

The Bundesbank has been ordered to print marks

This would be an extraordinary step for Germany and would deepen the growing divide between Europe’s leading states.

Since its introduction in 1999, the euro has had a tough time trying to win over a sceptical German public, who saw the mark – one of the world’s most stable currencies – as a symbol of post-war prosperity, second only to the US dollar as the reserve option for investors.

Chancellor Angela Merkel now faces her biggest crisis. The opposition is speculating her government may fall as Germans become more vocal in their opposition to bailing out Greece. Read more at www.express.co.uk

 

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Despite EU Budget Woes, Swiss Engineers Strive to Outdo Japan

Is there some sort of strange competition going on between the Swiss and the Japanese for sophisticated railway? Certainly the Chinese will outdo all of us.



2020 Events:



Two other transalpine tunnels are planned to exceed 50km but are unlikely to be complete until the 2020s. One tunnel will connect Lyon in France to Turin in Italy and another is due to replace the Brenner tunnel between Austria and Italy.

Amplify’d from www.bbc.co.uk

Swiss create world's longest tunnel

Engineers have drilled through the last remaining rock to create the world's longest tunnel, under the Swiss Alps.

The 9.8bn Swiss franc (£6.4bn; $10.3bn) project will take up to 300 trains each day underneath the Alps.

The length of the Gotthard tunnel exceeds the 53.8km Seikan rail tunnel linking the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido and the 50km Channel Tunnel linking England and France.

Switzerland is one of Europe's major junctions for freight and the tunnel is part of a larger project aiming to move cargo off the roads and on to rail.

Improvements on the northern and southern approaches to the new Gotthard tunnel have been postponed, so trains will run on existing track there.

Swiss Transport Minister Moritz Leuenberger said that the Gotthard Tunnel would become a spectacular and grandiose monument with which all tunnels would be compared.

Two other transalpine tunnels are planned to exceed 50km but are unlikely to be complete until the 2020s. One tunnel will connect Lyon in France to Turin in Italy and another is due to replace the Brenner tunnel between Austria and Italy. Read more at www.bbc.co.uk

 

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Cuba Survived #PeakOil w/ Permaculture Like USA in WW2

when the USSR collapsed in 1991, its ally Cuba lost its primary supplier of oil. the began to plant Victory Gardens all over the place.



The USA can adopt this conservation movement to reduce the need for war abroad and reduce the shock of peak oil as the supply of cheap and easily accessible oil and natural gas dwindles.



But this would mean less power for the corporations that benefit from our expensive military industrial complex.

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

A LESSON FOR OUR FUTURE: The Cuban Experience (1/4)

See more at www.youtube.com

 

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#counterculture and #environmentalists Knew About #Peakoil

Counterculture environmentalists were quick to grasp the early (i.e., 1970s) analyses of the reality and the import of the Hubbert "peak oil" prediction

Amplify’d from en.wikipedia.org

Counterculture of the 1960s

The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement[1] that mainly developed in the United States and the United Kingdom and spread throughout much of the western world between 1956 and 1974. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam.[2][3] Many scholars of this era believe that the peak years of the counterculture movement were from 1965 to 1972.

The Cold War (between Stalinism and capitalism) involved espionage on a global scale,[7] along with political and military interference in the internal affairs of lesser nations (see Timeline of events in the Cold War). Poor outcomes from some of these activities set the stage for disillusionment with, and distrust of, post-war governments.[8] Examples included harsh Soviet Union responses to popular anti-communist uprisings, such as the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring in 1968, as well as the botched U.S. Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961. In the U.S., President Dwight D. Eisenhower's initial deception[9][10] over the nature of the 1960 U-2 incident resulted in the government being caught in a blatant lie at the highest levels, and set the stage for a growing distrust of authority among many who came of age during the period.[11][12] Read more at en.wikipedia.org

 

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National Security Committee Advise Obama to Support Natural Gas and Fracking Despite Health Issues

American energy policy has always sucked for those poor bastards that live in countries where the USA finds oil, and now it will suck for Americans who live anywhere near natural gas reserves. Big money and fear of war with China are clearly behind this as we are faced with stiff competition for scarce oil around the world and capitalist strive to keep capitalism alive for a little longer.

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

national security committee

Lawmakers Urge Obama To Pursue Energy Security Through Natural Gas

Eight members of Congress, including several representatives of powerful national security committees, have prepared a letter imploring President Obama to press for expanded natural gas exploration and production in the United States -- primarily though the use of an unconventional and contentious technique known as horizontal hydraulic fracturing. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

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Climate change will end economic growth

Lateline - 17/06/2011: Climate change will end economic growth

Former Greenpeace chief Paul Gilding and columnist Thomas Friedman say economic growth is dead in a post-climate change world.

The End Of The American Dream | COLLAPSENET

The End Of The American Dream | COLLAPSENET

Can this be the format for our t-shirt business? Cartoons?

Unlike rats, humans creatively facilitate their own enslavement voluntarily

GREAT NEWS! No need to stop working EVER! Now you can own the latest SuperTreadMill T1000. Complete with urine waste tubes, running station, heart monitor, computer and telephone connectivity, There is even an IV add on which allows users to plugin intraveneously and get a vitamin feed.



In order to support our lifestyle, humans creatively and voluntarily facilitate their own enslavement to the almighty dollar, instead of getting off the treadmill from time to time.



What will these people do when the economy collapses? Prepare for post-collapse stress disorder (PCSD) which will be treated with work-like conditions which allow the human to slowly wean itself from 10 hr days while undertaking fake projects allowing them to achieve make believe deadlines.

Amplify’d from www.cnn.com

Sitting for hours can shave years off life

(CNN) -- Sitting too much will probably shorten your life.

That might sound ridiculous -- or obvious -- depending on your perspective, but the findings don't come from a fringe study. They come from the American Cancer Society, whose researchers studied 123,216 people's health outcomes during a 14-year period. Read more at www.cnn.com

 

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#Transitiontowns Can Drive A New Economic Model #jobs

1. Net zero buildings

2. Constructed by volunteers (some may be the unemployed or homeless)

3. Everyone teaches

4. Everyone learns

5. Everyone works

6. Everyone participates in the democracy

7. Limited size

8. All towns built on mass transit corridors



- See Jonathan Rose Companies

Amplify’d from transitionus.org

92 official US initiatives 381 official initiatives worldwide 28 US states 34 countries 10 languages   Newsletter Signup Email * First Name * Last Name *

See more at transitionus.org

 

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Business Idea - Climate Capitalism - Build Transition Towns

Transition Town -
Must be self sustaining
Must be a democracy
Must use all existing materials (no new fabrication)
Must use "jobless" labor  (people who are no working now)
Must be free to live
Everyone must "work" -
Everyone must teach
The democratic counsil (which is everyone) must decide who stays or goes
The whole town cannot be too large
Must be 20 miles from another
Be like a charter school
Must be chartered - so that all who enter sign the charter and know the rules. Every couple of years they retest or they retrain.
Drawing, Modeling, Video tape - the business case, recorded, - Request videos from people for ideas

Social engineering experiment to see if we can live in peace without money or oil
Everybody must

Opium Trade in Taiwan under Japanese rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Taiwan under Japanese rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opium

Shortly after acquiring Taiwan in 1895, then Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi ordered that opium should be banned in Taiwan as soon as possible. However, due to the pervasiveness of opium addiction in Taiwanese society at the time, and the social and economic problems caused by complete prohibition, the initial hard line policy was relaxed in a few years. On January 21, 1897, the Colonial Government issued the Taiwan Opium Edict mandating a government monopoly of the opium trade, and restricting the sale of opium to those with government issued permits, with the ultimate goal of total abolition. The number of opium addicts in Taiwan quickly dropped from millions to 169,064 in 1900 (6.3% of the total population at the time), and 45,832 (1.3% of the population) by 1921. However, the numbers were still higher than those in nations where opium was completely prohibited. It was generally believed that one important factor behind the Colonial Government's reluctance to completely ban opium was the potential profit to be made through a state run narcotics monopoly.

Is The Taiwanese Drug Trade Under the Japanese in 1897 a Model for the USA and the World Today?

Free trade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Free trade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The USA is not applying free trade theories. We are taxing and subsidizing every industry and foreign imports in all the wrong ways.

We should apply a higher tax on gasoline derived from foreign oil to support green investments and conservation programs. This would reduce the need to fight foreign wars for oil, and we could pull out of Iraq. We should tax natural gas to support green investments and end the war in Afghanistan.

But if the history of imperialism and empire building suggests anything, its that the rest of the leading nations must do it as well, or we will be seen as giving up territory.

The Israel and Palestine states are the tough one. The British created the Jewish territory and was forced to protect it. Later became a nation and had to fend for its self. Now it is surrounded by various peoples with 100 years of animosity after the French, British, Russian, and American governments and corporations have plundered and depleted their land and sea of resources while imposing sanctions and preventing food and medical supplies from entering. Their own local capitalists have been their own domestic enemy while doing business with us.

>>>>>>>

In Kicking Away the Ladder, development economist Ha-Joon Chang reviews the history of free trade policies and economic growth, and notes that many of the now-industrialized countries had significant barriers to trade throughout their history. The United States and Britain, sometimes considered to be the homes of free trade policy, employed protectionism to varying degrees at all times. Britain abolished the Corn Laws, which restricted import of grain, in 1846 in response to domestic pressures, and it reduced protectionism for manufactures in the mid 19th century, when its technological advantage was at its height, but tariffs on manufactured products had returned to 23% by 1950. The United States maintained weighted average tariffs on manufactured products of approximately 40–50% up until the 1950s, augmented by the natural protectionism of high transportation costs in the 19th century.^[10] The most consistent practitioners of free trade have been Switzerland, the Netherlands, and to a lesser degree Belgium.^[11] Chang describes the export-oriented industrialization policies of the Asian Tigers as "far more sophisticated and fine-tuned than their historical equivalents".^[12]

FINISH READING Theories of New Imperialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Theories of New Imperialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Free trade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Free trade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Grany said its better to export more than you import - merchantilism,

In literature

The value of free trade was first observed and documented by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, in 1776.^[2] He wrote,

"It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy (buy vs. build). . . If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage."^[3]

This statement uses the concept of absolute advantage to present an argument in opposition to merchantilism, the dominant view surrounding trade at the time, which held that a country should aim to export more than it imports, and thus amass wealth.^[4] Instead, Smith argues, countries could gain from each producing exclusively the good(s) in which they are most suited to, trading between each other as required for the purposes of consumption. In this vein, it is not the value of exports relative to that of imports that is important, but the value of the goods produced by a nation. The concept of absolute advantage however does not address a situation where a country has no advantage in the production of a particular good or type of good.^[5]

This theoretical shortcoming was addressed by the theory of comparative advantage. Generally attributed to David Ricardo who expanded on it in his 1817 book On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,^[6] it makes a case for free trade based not on absolute advantage in production of a good, but on the relative opportunity costs of production. A country should specialize in whatever good it can produce at the lowest cost, trading this good to buy other goods it requires for consumption. This allows for countries to benefit from trade even when they do not have an absolute advantage in any area of production. While their gains from trade might not be equal to those of a country which is more productive in all goods, they will still be better off economically from trade than they would be under a state of autarky. ^[7][8]

Theories of Imperialism

Theories of Imperialism, More here: Explanations of Japan’s Imperialistic Expansion, 1894-1910

The four theories to be reviewed will be

1. Hobson's theory of domestic market underconsumption that leads to capitalists seeking profits overseas

2. Lenin's theory of the monopoly stage of capitalism

3. Schumpeter's theory of inherited warlike tendencies from prior generations

4. Nationalism's focus on politics as the critical factor

Unification of Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unification of Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The nationalists everywhere want to unify their country to end foreign tyranny. The capitalists continue to do business with the other side, not caring about national damage, but focus on the generation of profits.

German capitalists supported Russia during the war. American capitalists like Preston Bush and IBM, Standard Oil, etc, did business with the "enemy" during the war as well. Still today, Russia, France, and Britain continue to do business with middle eastern nations with who we are at odds. Cuba, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran,

What the capitalists doing business with Iran now?

With Iraq during the war?

Should they be considered as doing business with the enemy?

What about Afghanistan?

Now China enters the game. Fortunately India and Brazil are peaceful because the stage could be crowded.

The formal unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871 at the Versailles Palace's Hall of Mirrors in France. Princes of the German states gathered there to proclaim Wilhelm of Prussia as Emperor Wilhelm of the German Empire after the French capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War. Unofficially, the transition of most of the German-speaking populations into a federated organization of states occurred over nearly a century of experimentation. Unification exposed several glaring religious, linguistic, social, and cultural differences between and among the inhabitants of the new nation, suggesting that 1871 only represents one moment in a continuum of the larger unification processes.

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which had included more than 300 independent states, was effectively dissolved when Emperor Francis II abdicated (6 August 1806) during the War of the Third Coalition. Despite the legal, administrative, and political disruption associated with the end of the Empire, the people of the German-speaking areas of the old Empire had a common linguistic, cultural and legal tradition further enhanced by their shared experience in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.European liberalism offered an intellectual basis for unification by challenging dynastic and absolutistmodels of social and political organization; its German manifestation emphasized the importance of tradition, education, and linguistic unity of peoples in a geographic region. Economically, the creation of thePrussian Zollverein (customs union) in 1818, and its subsequent expansion to include other states of theGerman Confederation, reduced competition between and within states. Emerging modes of transportation facilitated business and recreational travel, leading to contact and sometimes conflict between and among German-speakers from throughout Central Europe.

The model of diplomatic spheres of influence resulting from the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15 after theNapoleonic Wars endorsed Austrian dominance in Central Europe. However, the negotiators at Vienna took no account of Prussia's growing strength within and among the German states, failing to foresee that Prussia would challenge Austria for leadership within the German states. This German dualism presented two solutions to the problem of unification: Kleindeutsche Lösung, the small Germany solution (Germany without Austria), or Großdeutsche Lösung, greater Germany solution (Germany with Austria).

Historians debate whether or not Otto von Bismarck, the Minister President of Prussia, had a master plan to expand the North German Confederation of 1866 to include the remaining independent German states into a single entity, or whether he simply sought to expand the power of the Kingdom of Prussia. They conclude that factors in addition to the strength of Bismarck's Realpolitik led a collection of early modern polities to reorganize political, economic, military and diplomatic relationships in the 19th century. Reaction to Danish and Frenchnationalism provided foci for expressions of German unity. Military successes—especially Prussian ones—in three regional wars generated enthusiasm and pride that politicians could harness to promote unification. This experience echoed the memory of mutual accomplishment in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly in the War of Liberation of 1813–14. By establishing a Germany without Austria, the political and administrative unification in 1871 at least temporarily solved the problem of dualism.