Add Monday night in Las Vegas to the increasingly long list of Donald Trump campaign events that have descended into violence.

BuzzFeed writer McKay Coppins attended the rally for the GOP presidential candidate and real estate mogul, reporting from the Westgate Hotel and Resort. Coppins posted video of a black protester being roughed up, with a supporter shouting, “Light that motherf*cker on fire!”

The video, which Coppins posted to Twitter, shows an African-American man down on the ground, surrounded by burly security guards. A woman can be heard shouting, “Let him get up!” while a man screams, “Get your hands off him!” Trump can be heard continuing to speak to the crowd during the scuffle. A police officer intervenes and pulls the man to his feet right before the video ends.

Coppins reports that Trump “gleefully narrates clashes between activists and security, press swarm with cameras/phones, supporters crowd around cheering. Surreal.”

“Every time another activist gets dragged out of room, Trump berates reporters for taking pics,” Coppins reports. ‘They are terrible! The worst!’ Crowd boos.” .................(more)

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/light-that-motherfcker-on-fire-vegas-trump-rally-off-the-charts-as-private-guards-toss-black-activist/

Retail Sales in Texas Plunge
by Wolf Richter • December 14, 2015


[font color="blue"]Oil Bust Contagion Spreads[/font]

Retail sales in Texas, based on sales tax collections as reported by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, have been booming since March 2010, the low point in the Great Recession.

Sales tax collections jumped 44% from $18.3 billion during the first 11 months of 2010 to $26.3 billion during the same period in 2015! The state government was ecstatic. Retailers were happy. People were spending money they didn’t have on things they preferably didn’t need, and in doing so, were paying lots of taxes. The state was firing on all cylinders.

Sales tax collections aren’t a perfect indicator of retail sales. Not all sales are taxable, such as food products (flour, sugar, bread, milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and similar groceries), though many edible goods are taxable, as are most other goods. Taxes on motor vehicle sales and rentals are in a separate category. And collections are raw data, not seasonally adjusted, so they can only be compared to data from the same months in prior years. But they’re an unvarnished approximation of the movements of retail sales.

....(snip)....

The first hint arrived in the June sales tax collections. Collections lag sales by one month. So collections reported in June were on sales that occurred in May. And those collections, instead of rising on a year-over-year basis, as they’d done every June since 2009, suddenly fell 1.4%.

It broke the perfect trend of year-over-year increases every month since the low point in March 2010. But in July they rose again. Then in August, they fell 0.4%. Something was amiss. But in September, sales tax collections rose again, and observers breathed a collective sigh of relief. It had just been a brief dip.

But then came the October collections: they plunged 5.4% year-over year; and now November collections that fell 3.3%. Two months in a row of declines; four months of the last six, and the first declines since the Great Recession low of March 2010. ......................(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2015/12/14/retail-sales-in-texas-plunge/

from truthdig:


by Chris Hedges


HOUSTON—Bryan Parras stood in the shadows cast by glaring floodlights ringing the massive white, cylindrical tanks of the Valero oil refinery. He, like many other poor Mexican-Americans who grew up in this part of Houston, struggles with asthma, sore throats, headaches, rashes, nosebleeds and a host of other illnesses and symptoms. The air was heavy with the smell of sulfur and benzene. The faint, acrid taste of a metallic substance was on our tongues. The sprawling refinery emitted a high-pitched electric hum. The periodic roar of flares, red-tongued flames of spent emissions, leapt upward into the Stygian darkness. The refinery seemed to be a living being, a giant, malignant antediluvian deity.

Parras and those who live near him are among the hundreds of millions of human sacrifices that industrial capitalism demands. They are cursed from birth to endure poverty, disease, toxic contamination and, often, early death. They are forced to kneel like bound captives to be slain on the altar of capitalism in the name of progress. They have gone first. We are next. In the late stages of global capitalism, we all will be destroyed in an orgy of mass extermination to satiate corporate greed.

Idols come in many forms, from Moloch of the ancient Canaanites to the utopian and bloody visions of fascism and communism. The primacy of profit and the glory of the American empire—what political theorist Sheldon Wolin called “inverted totalitarianism”—is the latest iteration. The demand of idols from antiquity to modernity is the same: human sacrifice. And our cult of human sacrifice, while technologically advanced, is as primitive and bloodthirsty as that which carried out killings atop the great Aztec temple at Tenochtitlán. Not until we smash our idols and liberate ourselves from their power can we speak of hope. It would have been far, far better for the thousands of activists who descended on Paris for the climate summit to instead go to a sacrifice zone such as Parras’ neighborhood and, in waves of 50 or 100, day after day, block the rail lines and service roads to shut down refineries before being taken to jail. That is the only form of mass mobilization with any chance of success.

Parras—who organizes protests and resistance in the community through Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS), a local group he co-founded with his father, Juan—was standing in Hartman Park. He pointed out the array of storage tanks and other equipment clustered around refineries run by Valero, LyondellBasell and Texas Petrochemicals. The neighborhood, known as Manchester, is hemmed in by the Rhodia chemical plant; a yard for trains that transport tar sands oil, gas, coal and toxic chemicals; a Goodyear synthetic rubber plant; a fertilizer plant; a molasses plant; wastewater treatment plants; and tanks of liquefied chicken. There are numerous superfund sites here. The neighborhood is one of the most polluted in the United States. A yellowish-brown dust coats everything. The corporations, Parras said, are not required to disclose the toxic chemicals they store and use to refine or treat their products. The people who live in this industrial wasteland, who dream of escape but remain trapped because they are poor or because no one will buy their homes, know they are being poisoned but they do not know exactly what is poisoning them. And that, he said, “is the really scary thing.” ...................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/capitalisms_cult_of_human_sacrifice_20151213

PARIS—A kindergarten teacher in suburban Paris admitted to fabricating a story that he was stabbed Monday by a masked man who invoked Islamic State, French police and prosecutor’s office said.

The teacher initially told authorities that an attacker, dressed in a painter’s uniform with his face concealed, entered an elementary school located in the north suburb of Aubervilliers on Monday morning at around 7:10 a.m., police said. The teacher alleged the attacker then assaulted him with a box cutter and scissors found inside the classroom, declaring it was an act of “warning” from Islamic State.

The accusations set off a scramble by government and law enforcement, showing how jittery France has become in the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead. ..................(more)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/teacher-stabbed-in-paris-by-attacker-invoking-islamic-state-2015-12-14

The “scientifically catastrophic” Paris climate change agreement was like someone agreeing to cut down from five burgers a day to four, according to leading environmental activist Naomi Klein.

In an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post UK in London this morning, the best-selling author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine set out her views on the deal.

While she praised the agreement secured this weekend as “politically historic”, Ms Klein accused David Cameron of throwing his early green credentials “under the bus” in the wake of the 2008 global banking collapse.

Speaking ahead of her appearance at University College London’s ‘Socialism, Capitalism and the Alternatives: Lessons from Russia and Eastern Europe’ event, Ms Klein gave her reaction to seeing “politicians wildly cheering for themselves in Paris” after the deal was agreed.

She said: “I couldn’t watch for long. It’s a very strange thing to cheer for setting a target that you are knowingly failing to meet. ..................(more)

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/12/14/naomi-klein-paris-climate-change_n_8804658.html

[font size="3"]......of demagogues like the brothers Gracchi. The use of the citizen assemblies for popular agendas tore at the very fabric of Senatorial power.

Men like Marius and Sulla, with their own personal agendas and rivalries wreaked havoc in an already weakened structure. Partisan politics of the conservative Optimate Senators trying to keep power with the elite class, while the tactics of the Populares, who looked to the lower classes for support, divided the people and classes into what seemed like warring factions. For nearly 100 years, the climate was unpredictable at best, and brutally bloody at worst."[/font]

- from Fall of the Roman Republic


Dejavu all over again.

A white man who claimed to be a Marine confronted a group of Black Lives Matter protesters, calling the African-American activists “n*ggers” and “spider monkeys” while threatening them with violence.

The confrontation was caught on video and posted on the MediaStakeOut Facebook page.

The white man, dressed in street clothes and behaving like a steroid-pumped professional wrestler, attempted to counter-protest the Black Lives Matter activists by standing on the other side of a right-turn lane while holding a sign that apparently read, “Police Lives Matter.” After flipping his middle fingers at the BLM group, the man crossed the intersection and gestured to his hat, which featured a Marines logo, “See the hat? (garbled) I kill, bitch!”

The unidentified man continued, “Fuck you, bitch. You wanna run your mouth, I’ll put my fist right through your fucking skull. Fuck you, and fuck you, too, you bitch.”

The man’s threats rapidly became overtly racist, “You wanna do something about it boy? I’ll fuck you up, boy!” ............(more)

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/12/13/watch-racist-white-marine-freaks-out-calls-black-lives-matter-protesters-spider-monkeys-video/

Published on Dec 9, 2015

The leading presidential candidates on both the Democratic and Republican side can agree on one issue: freedom of speech on the internet isn’t that big of a deal. They basically think terrorism means giving up some fundamental rights. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola, hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"Yesterday, we wrote about Hillary Clinton's absolutely terrible plan for undermining both encryption and free speech on the internet as a way to "deal" with ISIS. I left out the worst quote of all that she stated in the process, mockingly:

"You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, et cetera..."
Free speech et cetera? That's handwaving it away. You can see the whole clip here, of the leading Democratic Presidential candidate who will almost certainly win the nomination...

Her full statement:

You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, et cetera. But if we truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we’ve got to shut off their means of communicating. It’s more complicated with some of what they do on encrypted apps, and I’m well aware of that, and that requires even more thinking about how to do it.
Shut off their means of communicating? These tools are tools that everyone uses -- and, in fact, which Hillary Clinton herself did a tremendous amount of (good) work helping to spread around the globe as Secretary of State. And now she's trying to cut it all off?”*

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151207/21225233018/two-leading-presidential-candidates-clinton-trump-both-mocked-free-speech-internet.shtml

from truthdig:


by Chris Hedges


HOUSTON—Bryan Parras stood in the shadows cast by glaring floodlights ringing the massive white, cylindrical tanks of the Valero oil refinery. He, like many other poor Mexican-Americans who grew up in this part of Houston, struggles with asthma, sore throats, headaches, rashes, nosebleeds and a host of other illnesses and symptoms. The air was heavy with the smell of sulfur and benzene. The faint, acrid taste of a metallic substance was on our tongues. The sprawling refinery emitted a high-pitched electric hum. The periodic roar of flares, red-tongued flames of spent emissions, leapt upward into the Stygian darkness. The refinery seemed to be a living being, a giant, malignant antediluvian deity.

Parras and those who live near him are among the hundreds of millions of human sacrifices that industrial capitalism demands. They are cursed from birth to endure poverty, disease, toxic contamination and, often, early death. They are forced to kneel like bound captives to be slain on the altar of capitalism in the name of progress. They have gone first. We are next. In the late stages of global capitalism, we all will be destroyed in an orgy of mass extermination to satiate corporate greed.

Idols come in many forms, from Moloch of the ancient Canaanites to the utopian and bloody visions of fascism and communism. The primacy of profit and the glory of the American empire—what political theorist Sheldon Wolin called “inverted totalitarianism”—is the latest iteration. The demand of idols from antiquity to modernity is the same: human sacrifice. And our cult of human sacrifice, while technologically advanced, is as primitive and bloodthirsty as that which carried out killings atop the great Aztec temple at Tenochtitlán. Not until we smash our idols and liberate ourselves from their power can we speak of hope. It would have been far, far better for the thousands of activists who descended on Paris for the climate summit to instead go to a sacrifice zone such as Parras’ neighborhood and, in waves of 50 or 100, day after day, block the rail lines and service roads to shut down refineries before being taken to jail. That is the only form of mass mobilization with any chance of success.

Parras—who organizes protests and resistance in the community through Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS), a local group he co-founded with his father, Juan—was standing in Hartman Park. He pointed out the array of storage tanks and other equipment clustered around refineries run by Valero, LyondellBasell and Texas Petrochemicals. The neighborhood, known as Manchester, is hemmed in by the Rhodia chemical plant; a yard for trains that transport tar sands oil, gas, coal and toxic chemicals; a Goodyear synthetic rubber plant; a fertilizer plant; a molasses plant; wastewater treatment plants; and tanks of liquefied chicken. There are numerous superfund sites here. The neighborhood is one of the most polluted in the United States. A yellowish-brown dust coats everything. The corporations, Parras said, are not required to disclose the toxic chemicals they store and use to refine or treat their products. The people who live in this industrial wasteland, who dream of escape but remain trapped because they are poor or because no one will buy their homes, know they are being poisoned but they do not know exactly what is poisoning them. And that, he said, “is the really scary thing.” ...................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/capitalisms_cult_of_human_sacrifice_20151213

A Georgia middle school teacher is not facing any repercussions after she asked a Muslim 8th grader if she had a bomb in her backpack, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting.

Saying there was no “ill intent” involved, the unidentified teacher at Shiloh Middle School in Gwinnett County was only told by school administrators that her comments were “not appropriate,” which has the father of the girl disgusted with the whole incident.

“I was upset,” explained the girl’s father, Abdirazik Aden, who owns a business in the area. “I was going to take my daughter out (of that school). “

According to Aden, his daughter was stopped on Monday by the teacher who asked the young girl what she had in her book bag. After the girl replied “books,” the teacher inquired further, asking if she had a bomb in the bag.

Aden said his daughter called him afterwards upset with the line of questioning. .............(more)

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/georgia-school-says-teacher-had-no-ill-intent-asking-muslim-student-if-she-had-a-bomb-in-her-backpack/