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The U.S. Federal Reserve gave out $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to U.S. and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the government’s first-ever audit of the central bank.
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor,” Martin Luther King Jr. warned in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” “It must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Then there are the laws constructed for the elite, which allow bankers who crash the economy to walk free. They’re the laws which allow police officers to avoid prosecution when they shoot unarmed citizens, strip search non-violent criminals, or taser pregnant women on the side of the road, or pepper spray peaceful protesters. These are the laws of the new age we are entering, an age of neo-feudalism, in which corporate-state rulers dominate the rest of us, where the elite create the laws which can result in a person being jailed for possessing a small amount of marijuana while bankers that launder money for drug cartels walk free. In other words, we have moved into an age where we are the slaves and they are the rulers.
Add: Best health care in America
Indeed, although America is supposed to be a representative republic, these people-- who earn six-figure salaries and inhabit a world exempt from parking tickets, where gym membership is free and health care is second-to-none, where you only have to work two, maybe three days a week and get 32 fully reimbursed road trips home a year, travel to foreign lands, discounts in Capitol Hill tax-free shops and restaurants, free reserved parking at Washington National Airport, free fresh-cut flowers from the Botanic Gardens, and free assistance in the preparation of income taxes--neither represent nor serve the American people. They have instead appointed themselves our masters.
Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift--through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price--it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
Pro-government lawmakers on Thursday pushed legislation through Ukraine's parliament on Thursday that criminalised acts of protest, an apparent bid to undermine months of demonstrations against President Viktor Yanukovych.
Backed by 235 of Ukraine's 450 lawmakers, blockading public buildings will now be punishable by up to five years in prison.
Yesterday's incident was the latest in a series of violent attacks targeting the seven protest sites in the city and places belonging to supporters or sympathisers of the movement, including opposition politicians. Hand grenades and assault rifles were among the weapons used.
About half an hour after the attack, the government's Centre for the Administration of Peace and Order warned members of the public and state officials against joining street protests organised by the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC).