Pro-Palestinian protesters still demand CEASEFIRE as U.S. cops crack down
(Status Coup News) Feb. 7, 2024: Status Coup's Jon Farina has covered over 20 pro-Palestinian demonstrations in NYC and Washington D.C. since the October 7th Hamas retaliation on Israel and Israel's US-funded reactionary genocidal slaughter of nearly of 1% of Gaza's population (at least 30,000 Palestinians, more than 10,000 beheaded and dismembered children, not counting all the bodies still under the rubble of bombed out civilian structures that militant Israeli state-sponsored terrorists have leveled.
Jewish Senator Chuck Schumer (related to his racist Jewish cousin, Israel-supporting comedienne Amy Schumer) is a rabid advocate of war, military weapons sales, Zionism, and genocide by any other name than what it is. He is bought and paid for -- and delivering on his promises to Israel. Here is all the money asked for and more. Be our proxy in the Middle East, and we'll provide diplomatic cover in the U.N., NATO, in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, and on the world stage.
Send money and weapons already, Joe - OK, Bibi
The USA will be as the UK once was. Zionist Jews, rejoice! With friends like this in high places, there is no crime against humanity that is out of reach for the IDF.
We're Ashkenazi (German) European Jews, and we're better than everyone else. We will do for Western nations in the Middle East what the British failed to finish -- take it over.
What I do is never shower: If I stink, I won't get raped. Hungry? Go to the dumpster; dive in.
SEATTLE, Washington, USA - Dumpsters are their cafeterias. Trash bins are their supply stores. If they're lucky they can find enough cardboard for some warmth and a temporary makeshift shelter. The homeless young in Seattle have found ways to survive.
I'm trying to get away from all this.
Documentarian Steven Keller has lived outside Seattle for over ten years. Like most Americans, however, he didn't really see homeless youths he encountered. They become invisible. When he did see them he asked, Why?
What did the system do to protect me?
Eighteen months later "Invisible Young" was completed. In it Keller answers the most compelling question of all, "How does a 13-year-old end up on the streets of a prosperous country?" In his film he focuses on the riveting stories of four youths who were homeless in Seattle, in the great Pacific Northwest of the USA. Synopsis
Are we doing it to ourselves, an Art of Allowing, co-creating by our dominant vibration?
Buddhism as it spread throughout history tended to do so among the educated and affluent, those with leisure time to consider life and yearn for a solution to the problem of unsatisfactoriness. The rich are caught up and consumed by consumption. The poor are caught up and consumed by survival. Administrators and paupers are occupied. But princes, the children of the elite who themselves are not yet burdened with ruling, are usually those with the time to seek and a reason to search for spiritual answers. But what will happen to Buddhism in America if our middle class is disappearing?
The Middle Class in America is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it
Michael Snyder (editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com) from Recession The Business Insider The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations.
The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
Here are the statistics to prove it: • 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people. • 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007. • 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans. • 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings. • A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement. • 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year. • Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008. • Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975. • For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together. • In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one. • As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets. • The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. • Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008. • In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector. • The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago. • In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. • More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying. • For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011. • This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour. • Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years. • Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009. • The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
Giant Sucking Sound The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job?
The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.
What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.
So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.
What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.
Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.
But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart. The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild. Source
Nearly 1,000,000 L.A. residents received food assistance from food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters during 2009.
LOS ANGELES (Feb. 2, 2010) - A new study published by the LA Regional Foodbank today reports that a record 983,400 Los Angeles County residents received food assistance from food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters served by the Foodbank in 2009.
This total represents nearly 1 in 10 residents. Children comprise 40 percent of people receiving food assistance; seniors comprise 5 percent. An estimated 393,000 kids and 49,000 seniors benefited from food distributed by the Foodbank over the course of the year.
The study "Hunger in Los Angeles County 2010" was released today in conjunction with survey results collected by food banks throughout the U.S. and compiled at the national level by Feeding America. The national and local results provide the most comprehensive snapshot of the charitable food assistance network to date.
Comparing the results of this survey to a similar survey conducted four years ago, Foodbank President Michael Flood stated that, “Even though food pantries and other agencies are serving more people than ever. These agencies are also reporting the need for more food and other resources to meet the growing demand due primarily to the high unemployment rate.”
An estimated 584,300 LA residents are unemployed. The current 12 percent unemployment rate has more than in four years. The new study -- based on 451 face-to-face interviews with clients at food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters -- as well as 363 surveys of volunteers and staff who manage food programs, shows that in Los Angeles County:
The total number of people receiving food assistance has increased by 46 percent since 2005 (from 674,100 people annually to 983,400 people in 2009).
The number of children receiving food assistance has more than doubled from 185,000 in 2005 to 393,000 children in 2009.
Health problems are one indicator of need as 30 percent of households have at least one member in poor health. In addition, 35 percent of adult recipients do not have health insurance.
While 37 percent of households include at least one employed adult, two-thirds of these adults are working part-time while only one-third of the adults are working full-time.
For adults currently working or who have worked before, 20 percent have held managerial or professional jobs during their career.
More than one-quarter of adults (27%) have a college or technical school education although 44% of clients do not have a high school diploma;
Families and individuals face difficult economic decisions when attempting to meet their basic needs as 48 percent report having to choose between paying for food and paying for utilities, 46 percent choosing between food and rent, and 42 percent between food and transportation. View the full study.
The Los Angeles Regional Foodbank is a non-profit, charitable organization established in 1973 and is one of the largest food banks in the United States. Through a network of 544 charitable agencies providing service from 902 agency sites, the Foodbank supplies enough food for 750,000 meals each week throughout Los Angeles County. The Foodbank is a partner with Feeding America.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida – A man needed some new office furniture. Thanks to a flamboyant financier's downfall, he found a matching set with an infamous pedigree. For $1,500, the man bought a maroon chair, a cherry-wood desk, and a credenza — all once owned by Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford (pictured), whom the Securities and Exchange Commission has accused of running a massive Ponzi scheme. More>>
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