Phil1111

"Saudi Arabia is warning it will sell off billions in American assets if the U.S. Congress passes a bipartisan bill that would allow victims of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks to sue foreign governments... Former Sen. Bob Graham, the co-chair of the 9/11 congressional inquiry, told CNN's Michael Smerconish Saturday morning that he is "outraged but not surprised" by the warning from the Saudi government. "The Saudis have known what they did in 9/11, and they knew that we knew what they did, at least at the highest levels of the U.S. government," Graham said on "Smerconish.".... The government of Saudi Arabia, a longtime and key strategic U.S. ally in the Middle East, has never been formally implicated in the 9/11 attacks and Saudi officials have long denied any involvement. But 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, and in February, Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker" who pleaded guilty to participating in an al Qaeda conspiracy in connection to the 9/11 attacks, alleged members of the Saudi royal family supported al Qaeda." http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/16/politics/saudi-arabia-government-9-11-congress-bill/ "Saudi Arabia and the United States have been close allies for decades. But the effusive reaction to the king's death reveals an uncomfortable truth about Washington's relationship to the kingdom. Despite Riyadh's repulsive human rights record, unproductive role in regional security, and American advances in shale oil production, the United States needs Saudi Arabia more than ever. So why does the U.S. put up with Saudi Arabia? The simplest explanation, of course, is oil. The kingdom is the largest and most important producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the bloc that controls around 40 percent of the world's oil. Because the United States was until recently the world's top oil importer, an alliance with Saudi Arabia made geopolitical sense...." http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/why-the-us-is-stuck-with-saudi-arabia/384805/ "The attacks killed 2,551 civilians (i.e., non-emergency-response personnel) and seriously injured another 215. The vast majority of these victims and their families sought compensation through the VCF. This group received a total of $8.7 billion in benefits, or an average of $3.1 million per recipient. Sixty-nine percent of the benefits came from the government, 23 percent from insurance, and 8 percent from charities." http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9087.html

Congratulations. There are worse places to get a started with a disciplined work ethic.

Somewhat WRONG. Overbilling by lawyers is the standard procedure of the industry. Most use software for billing that assists in this endeavor. One that I dealt with had .25 hour billing for the receipt of any letter or any phone call. Receipt of a single tax record(a one page receipt) for which his assistant was doing the work generated a bill from the lawyer of over $80. Its conceivable for a lawyer to bill over 24 hours in a single day using this scam. When the entire affair was over you can go through a "taxation" of a lawyers bill. After taxation of one lawyers bill every single item I bought to the taxation officers attention was reduced, not once did the lawyer win the argument and the MINIMUM amount that that item of the bill was reduced was 24%. This is how lawyers go golfing during weekdays and still manage to generate 3000 billable hours a year. "The federal government is suing a Saskatchewan law firm, alleging lawyers fraudulently overbilled for their work with survivors of Indian residential schools. In a statement of claim filed this week in Regina, the government says a 2014 audit report shows the Merchant Law Group claimed tens of millions of dollars in work time entries that were “intentionally inflated, duplicated or simply fabricated.” The suit alleges that some individual lawyers billed for more than 24 hours of work in a single day. Entries were also backdated, some by years, it says." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ottawa-sues-law-firm-for-alleged-legal-fee-fraud-in-residential-schools-case/article22731017/ Here the irony is natives first got screwed by the injustices of the Indian schools travesty and then got screwed again by lawyers. But since non-natives get it from lawyers why should they be treated differently?

Some good advise there. Many years ago I had a student who was so uncoordinated it was a wonder he could run. I spent at least three hours one on one with him to try and get some sort of recognizable PLF. He had one redeeming quality. He was a bodybuilder and built like a brick shithouse. He ended up making about 20 jumps, several of which included downwind landings. He just pounded into the ground. He would get up covered in dirt, grinning from ear to ear. Ready to do it again. Thankfully he quit because the cognitive skills didn't match the body or the sport. Back to the post above. If you go into a football or hockey locker room. The sound of velcro ripping from custom braces is heard from one rend of the room to the other. They work.

http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/risk/sports.html http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120302-extreme-sports-a-risky-business

Lots of good advise above so that sort of disputes the idea that you can't learn from the internet. Your instructors can answer your questions as well. Thats their job. When you first start out you will often think of the different scenarios of malfunction and what actions should be taken. Its natural because most people are nervous about how they would react to emergency situations. If you practice your procedures, understand the different problems and the functions of your equipment. You should be good to go. As others have already stated altitude awareness is important. I'd be embarrassed to talk about the number of reserve rides I have. But even so I was never under a reserve under 1500' and the usual reaction time from malfunction to reserve pull was never over five seconds. After more jumps you will become more confident in diagnosing problems and understanding the timeliness of problem diagnosis and action.

"BMD significantly increased after 6 months of RT or JUMP and this increase was maintained at 12 mo; "... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8756328215002446 "There are two types of exercises that are important for building and maintaining bone density: weight-bearing and muscle-strengthening exercises. Weight-bearing Exercises These exercises include activities that make you move against gravity while staying upright. Weight-bearing exercises can be high-impact or low-impact. High-impact weight-bearing exercises help build bones and keep them strong. If you have broken a bone due to osteoporosis or are at risk of breaking a bone, you may need to avoid high-impact exercises. If you’re not sure, you should check with your healthcare provider. http://nof.org/exercise "Like muscle, bone is living tissue that responds to exercise by becoming stronger. Young women and men who exercise regularly generally achieve greater peak bone mass (maximum bone density and strength) than those who do not. For most people, bone mass peaks during the third decade of life. After that time, we can begin to lose bone. Women and men older than age 20 can help prevent bone loss with regular exercise. Exercising allows us to maintain muscle strength, coordination, and balance, which in turn helps to prevent falls and related fractures. This is especially important for older adults and people who have been diagnosed with osteoporosis. The Best Bone Building Exercise The best exercise for your bones is the weight-bearing kind, which forces you to work against gravity. Some examples of weight-bearing exercises include weight training, walking, hiking, jogging, climbing stairs, tennis, and dancing." http://www.niams.nih.gov/health_info/bone/Bone_Health/Exercise/default.asp I'll rely upon national institutes health and scientific study. Who formulate guidelines on general proven scientific concepts rather than one doctor that offers one opinion. Dr. OZ offers ideas on TV and some people accept them as fact. Most all of his ideas are unsupported by the scientific community.

I think that study is fatally flawed. http://www.space.com/6354-space-station-astronauts-lose-bone-strength-fast.html https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150714150936.htm July 2015 From 10 years ago, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/health/exercise-is-not-the-path-to-strong-bones.html Debunked Below: From the Journal BONE 2015 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8756328215002446 and recently from Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, Aug. 2015: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jbmr.2499/abstract;jsessionid=D93E1FF712699A74D7241C9881A25BDE.f01t01?systemMessage=Subscribe+and+renew+is+currently+unavailable+online.+Please+contact+customer+care+to+place+an+order%3A++http%3A%2F%2Folabout.wiley.com%2FWileyCDA%2FSection%2Fid-397203.html++.Apologies+for+the+inconvenience.&userIsAuthenticated=false&deniedAccessCustomisedMessage= Which showed a 6-12% increase in bone strength as a result of exercise and quantified by CT scan. "Thirty-four men aged mean (SD) 70 (4) years exercised for 12-months, attending 92% of prescribed sessions. In traditional regions of interest, cortical and trabecular BMC increased over time in both legs. Cortical BMC at the trochanter increased more in the exercise than control leg, whereas femoral neck buckling ratio declined more in the exercise than control leg. Across the entire proximal femur, cortical mass surface density increased significantly with exercise (2.7%; p  6%) at anterior and posterior aspects of the femoral neck and anterior shaft. Endocortical trabecular density also increased (6.4%; p  12% at the anterior femoral neck, trochanter, and inferior femoral head. Odd impact exercise increased cortical mass surface density and endocortical trabecular density, at regions that may be important to structural integrity. These exercise-induced changes were localized rather than being evenly distributed across the proximal femur."

WRONG!!! Without sidetracking this thread too much. Once you have a real experience in the courts you realize that lawyers are actors. That the courts are a Kabuki theater where stories or pantomimes are presented in the hopes that their story is accepted by the judge or jury. Years from now you will still be thinking about how to deal with lawyers and your skepticism with any court decisions.

Weight training, plain and simple. Google weight training and increased bone density. A backpack with 40 plus lbs of sand and a couple heavy dumbbells together with a regime of squats,walking or light bouncing will build the bone density. “Exercise stimulates bone formation, because bone put under moderate stress responds by building density, and, depending on your age and workout regimen, it can either increase or maintain bone-mass density,” says Steven Hawkins, PhD, professor of exercise science at California Lutheran University. That’s why physical activity can reduce your risk of sustaining a hip fracture (which is usually caused by osteoporosis) by as much as a whopping 50%. If your bones are still healthy, working out with weight-training machines, free weights, or resistance bands, as well as doing exercises that use your body weight as resistance (sit-ups and push-ups, for example), will all build your bone density. The single best way to increase bone density is jumping (think jumping rope, jump squats, plyometrics), according to Dr. Hawkins. http://www.prevention.com/health/health-concerns/strength-training-exercises-strong-bones

It's not about money. Canada gives billions and billions and billions of dollars every year to First Nations and yet the average aboriginal person living on the reserves lives in poverty only seen in the 3rd world. So where does all that money go? I could go on and on about the corruption. But what's the point. Clearly the leadership of the Federal Government nor the leadership of the First Nations feel that they need to be accountable to the aboriginals living on the reserves. The lack of jobs is just a side effect. The real problem is the out of date and racist Indian Act. Want to fix the problem with Canada's First Nations? Do away with the Indian Act. The best thing a young aboriginal person can do for themselves is get off of the reserve and join the rest of us in the real world. Yes that does mean being responsible for your own actions. But it also means bringing pride and purpose back into one's life instead of being a ward of the welfare state. But that's not the message they are being sold nor is that the message that the countless elites who earn big money working in the Indian Welfare Industry as well the MSM wants to champion. Completely agree. But a job is not all about money. If the figures in the quote above are correct every man, women and child on Attawapiskat receive $20,142 a year ($31.2 million and 1,549 residents). The residents are crammed into about 300 houses. With cash average income $16,160 per person. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/first-nations-housing-in-dire-need-of-overhaul-1.981227 A real job is independence, an opportunity to get ahead and feel pride. Currently 57% of natives live off reserves. Its those communities that insist on living on the teat of the Indian industry and Indian act that create these ghettos. BTW the federal government have chosen to fly three "health care professionals" into the community to solve the attempted suicide problem. That means three months from now the whole reserve should be on anti-depressants. That should fix the problem.

Darn government supported communist socialized medicine you foreigners have! Just go marry a German, Brit, Canadian, Frenchman, Irishman, Swede, Norwegian, etc. etc. Perhaps Obamacare ll, i.e. Hillary-care or Sanders-care will include the procedure!

So upholding the constitution and the inherent right to justice and equality is trumped by the opinion of a small group religious ultraconservatives. "The Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2) establishes that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority, constitute the supreme law of the land.[1] It provides that state courts are bound by the supreme law; in case of conflict between federal and state law, the federal law must be applied. Even state constitutions are subordinate to federal law.[2]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause

IMO the problem with Attawapiskat and other isolated first nations is a complete lack of JOBS. There is no year round road to the community. It and the other communities in the area have winter roads.Supplies to the community com via supply ships in the summer. Over 95% of all income in the community is welfare or government jobs. i.e. federal or provincial jobs supplying services to the community. The problem arises because older natives have a traditional attachment to the land. Hunting and fishing traditions run strong. But aside from the odd job guiding US hunters there is no cash income from this. There is no commercial fishing, little fur income from trapping. No opportunity to earn a real income. There are successful native First Nation communities. They have commercial fishing, mines close-by, or are close to sizeable Canadian population centers. Some have oil, mining, logging or other income from electrical power generating rights. But if the community has no real jobs it becomes a ghetto. Doomed to poverty, joblessness and despair. This system is somewhat encouraged by Indian chiefs that get salaries and benefits that they themselves quantify. They reward their families and friends with the few administrative jobs. The average tribe... er Native community member gets the leftovers. Its encouraged by the Canadian Indian act that has financial incentives for the status quo. Communities like this first need to be relocated. Just as other mining and resource based towns in Canada have been shut down and abandoned when the mine ran out of ore or became uneconomical. But leaving a community where people have lived for generations is very, very difficult. Fraught with huge difficulties. " If the news of squalid housing conditions in the northwestern Ontario First Nations community of Attawapaskat sounds familiar, it should. Here are just a few of the other Canadian native reserves that have made similar headlines: Pikangikum: This Ontario community has been cited as having the highest suicide rate in the world. At least 16 people committed suicide between 2006 and 2008, with five youth taking their own lives during a two-month stretch earlier this year. The reserve's only school has not been replaced since it was burned to the ground in June 2007. In October 2006, local health officials warned residents were at risk of developing serious diseases because the community lacked a proper water system. Constance Lake: This reserve near Cochrane, Ont., issued a plea to the federal government in 2010 after Ottawa announced it was cutting shipments of bottled water to the community. Community members say their water is unsafe to drink and they depend on outside assistance. Eabametoong First Nation: Rising crime rates and rampant drug use prompted a state of emergency in this northern Ontario community in November 2010. The federal and provincial government sent resources for 24-hour policing. Cross Lake: Manitoba's second-largest reserve, located 800 kilometres north of Winnipeg, declared a state of emergency in July 2006 when its nursing station was shut down indefinitely. Community members said they were in a state of medical crisis due to lack of adequate health care resources and said people were dying while en route to the nearest medical facility three hours away. Kashechewan: This fly-in community in northwestern Ontario was evacuated three times between 2005 and 2006 due to water contamination, poor housing and repeated flooding. The federal government has promised to relocate the community to higher ground, a project it says will take at least a decade. Sheshatshiu/Davis Inlet: These neighbouring Innu communities near Goose Bay in Labrador made national headlines due to an epidemic of alcoholism and drug use, particularly among youth. Davis Inlet was relocated and renamed Natuashish in 2002, and an alcohol ban was narrowly implemented in 2008. Both communities, however, complained of a housing shortage as recently as February 2011." http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/29/northern-ontario-aboriginal-communities-attawapiskat_n_1119308.html

Mark Milke: Crunching Attawapiskat’s numbers By Mark Milke Imagine two small Ontario towns. One is a reserve that blocks an outside investigation into its $31.2-million annual operating budget. That town, Attawapiskat First Nation, has 1,549 people on the reserve according to the last census. Now imagine another town, a non-native one, where recent budget estimates peg its annual operating expenditures at $8.4-million. That’s the township of Atikokan, near Thunder Bay, with 3,293 people Careful readers will notice that the larger town, Atikokan, has a much smaller operating budget than does Attawapiskat. Where the money is spent is also curious. According to Attawapiskat’s latest budget documents, $11.2-million went to salaries, wages and employee benefits. That equates to $7,249 per reserve resident for compensation. In contrast, according to the latest available estimates from Atikokan, that town spends just less than $3-million on salaries and benefits, or $904 per person. That contrast might explain the resistance by some to a third-party investigation into the finances of Attawapiskat First Nation. After all, one might reasonably ask this question: given Atikokan spent $3-million on compensation for all city staff, why must Attawapiskat spend $11.2-million? That’s an $8.2-million difference, some of which could have paid for needed housing in the Attawapiskat reserve. Here’s another contrast. In Atikokan, (for the fiscal year ending in December 2009), the mayor’s salary was $7,713 with travel expenses of $4,268. The total cost to taxpayers thus just less than $12,000. In fact, the total for salaries and expenses for Atikokan’s mayor and seven councillors was just $46,691. On the Attawapiskat reserve (for the fiscal year ending in March 2010) the chief’s salary alone was $51,803. In total, salaries for Attawapiskat’s chief, deputy chief and 18 councillors that year amounted to $386,129. With $28,535 in expenses, the total cost to taxpayers was $414,664. In the next fiscal year, that cost jumped to $615,552 — a 48% increase. The Attawapiskat-Atikokan comparison isn’t the only useful contrast. Consider other northern Canadian towns that are also not reserves. In 2010, the northern Alberta town of Athabasca, with a population of 2,575, had an operating budget of $5.5-million. It spent just over $1.6-million on wages and benefits for all city staff, council included, or $644 per Athabascan. The village of Valemount, B.C., with 1,018 people, has an annual operating budget of $3.2-million. It paid out $811,852 in compensation-related expenses, or $797 per capita. If the City of Toronto spent as much on wages, salaries and benefits as Attawapiskat, Toronto’s remuneration bill would have been $20.1-billion in 2010, as opposed to $4.8-billion (and its curiously high $1,741 per capita figure). Such comparisons should be recalled by everyone when Chief Shawn Atleo from the Assembly of First Nations, and Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence mount the rhetorical barricades and urge everyone to move on without “assigning blame,” which is a dodge. Or when they blame “colonialism.” A lack of money isn’t the problem. Rather, it’s how that money is spent. With the exception of obvious short-term help for the people of Attawapiskat in winter — to make up for past monies that were spent on a large bureaucracy instead of housing — more money won’t solve anything. Instead, a long-term strategy is needed with the following elements: accountability for money spent; eventual transfers directly to individual natives with money then taxed back for band services; and property rights for individual natives on reserves, which would help instill accountability, entrepreneurship and pride. Lastly, realism is needed about the fact so many reserves are not economically viable. For the past two centuries, people around the world have moved from rural areas to the cities. Similarly, many people on reserves (mostly in rural areas) need to find their way close to educational, economic and social opportunities in proximity to major population centres, if not for themselves, then certainly for their kids. Such opportunities are why the majority of First Nations people, 57% of them, already choose to live off-reserve. The challenge for politicians, native and non-native alike, is to remove existing incentives for people to stay on remote reserves, and to provide transitional help those same people move closer to opportunities. National Post Mark Milke is a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute and author of Life is Better in the Cities, which compares economic and social indicators on reserves with those of urban Canada. http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/mark-milke-crunching-attawapiskats-numbers

Be thankful that you hear of cases like this. Hear of cops charged with corruption, drinking driving, etc. It shows that there is a modest level of integrity in the justice system. Be very leery about governments and political systems for which everybody seems honest, law abiding and filled to the brim with "integrity". "The Panama Papers, a collection of leaked documents covering the tax-sensitive offshore business of world political leaders, has prompted the prime minister of Iceland to resign and put his British peer David Cameron on a Q&A defensive. The papers point also to China, suggesting that family members of eight current or former senior Communist Party leaders have offshore companies set up by the document aggregator, Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The brother-in-law of Chinese President Xi Jinping is among those named. The legal and financial records emerge as China tries to stop corruption. With that irony closing in, the criticism-wary country ruled by a single party has responded as it usually does to slaps from offshore: angry rejection. “In China, Web postings are taken down, foreign publications blocked, Communist Party media blames the West, and leaders act as if nothing had happened,” http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2016/04/10/china-plans-a-single-chilling-response-to-the-panama-papers/#37451072ccd1

Meanwhile in Europe: "Ariane 6.1 and Ariane 6.2 In June 2014 Airbus and Safran surprised the ESA by announcing a counter proposal for the Ariane 6. They also announced a 50/50 joint venture to develop the rocket. This joint venture would also involve buying out the French government's (CNES's) interest in Arianespace.[15][16] This proposed launch system would come in two variants, the Ariane 6.1 and the Ariane 6.2.[17] While both would use a cryogenic main stage powered by a Vulcain 2 engine and two P145 solid boosters, the Ariane 6.1 would feature a cryogenic upper stage powered by the Vinci engine and boost up to 8,500 kg (18,700 lb) to GTO, while the Ariane 6.2 would use a lower-cost hypergolic upper stage powered by the Aestus engine. The Ariane 6.1 would have the ability to launch two electrically powered satellites at once, while the Ariane 6.2 was intended mostly for government payloads. French newspaper La Tribune questioned if Airbus Space Systems could match promised costs for their Ariane 6 proposal, and whether Airbus and Safran Group could be trusted when they were found to be responsible for a failure of Ariane 5 flight 517 in 2002 and a more recent 2013 failure of the M51 ballistic missile.[5] The companies were also criticized for being unwilling to take the risks of development and asking for higher initial funding than originally planned to start development - €2.6 billion instead of €2.3 billion. Proposed launch prices of €85 million for Ariane 6.1 and €69 million for Ariane 6.2 were also deemed too high by the La Tribune in comparison to SpaceX[18] During the meeting of EU ministers in Geneva on 7 June 2014 these prices were deemed too high and no agreement with manufacturers was reached.[19]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_6 "PARIS—The head of the European Space Agency’s launcher directorate on July 7(2015) issued a surprising endorsement of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a French parliamentary hearing that was ostensibly about the status of Europe’s next-generation Ariane 6 vehicle. Gaele Winters, who is expected to ask ESA’s check-writing body on July 16 to approve a nearly $3 billion contract with Airbus Safran Launchers to develop Ariane 6, said the June 28 Falcon 9 failure in no way changes ESA’s assessment of SpaceX. “We have seen the outstanding success of Falcon 9,” Winters said. “Despite the issue of about a week ago, it is a fantastic track record for this launcher.” Winters was addressing the French Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices, which regularly reviews Europe’s and France’s space policy. - See more at: http://spacenews.com/spacex-looms-large-as-esa-readies-ariane-6-contract/#sthash.tJuiX3sX.dpuf Three billion Euro for a rocket that cant match Space X costs today. Let alone if Space X establishes reusable first stages and reduce launch costs another 30%. They should rename Ariane, Europork.

Yes, US rates are too high: https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/tax-rates-online/corporate-tax-rates-table.html But the US is still a competitive jurisdiction: http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2015-2016/competitiveness-rankings/

That is the way the corporate tax law is written. US corporations do not pay tax on foreign earnings reinvested overseas unless it is repatriated into the US. Or if the foreign subsidiary invests in US property. If there was a tax law change, or a tax holiday on foreign dividends, these companies would be happy to bring it back. 100% legal, and it is their duty to shareholders to comply with tax law in the way that best maximizes shareholder value. Shareholders also happen to be 401k's, mutual funds, and pensions. Completely correct. Any CEO has the primary duty to shareholders. The problem with tax laws is they allow profits generated in one jurisdiction to be sheltered in another. Thats a result of lobbying by special interest groups and corporations. Its not like politicians don't know whats going on. US citizens pay the highest drug costs in the world and companies like Merck and Pfizer sidestep US taxes using offshore tax shelters. http://healthcareforamericanow.org/2013/04/15/pfizer-merck-tax-dodgers/

"Fortune 500 corporations are avoiding up to $695 billion in U.S. federal income taxes on $2.4 trillion in offshore holdings. While this figure is higher than “official” estimates—a report by the Congressional Research Service estimated that large corporations are avoiding $100 billion in US taxes—the CTJ uses a number of assumptions based on company accounts to create a more complete picture of corporate tax avoidance. For example, it notes that Pfizer PFE -0.27% , which has subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Isle of Jersey, Luxembourg, and Singapore, holds almost $200 billion in what is called unrepatriated income. This is not disclosed directly anywhere in Pfizer’s accounts, but since the company estimates, in a footnote, a figure for the deferred taxes it would owe if it brought the cash back to the U.S., the CTJ worked backwards to calculate a total offshore cash figure. Pfizer’s contemplated tax inversion, whereby it would reincorporate in Ireland, would move this cash permanently offshore. Apple is another such company. Its offshore cash, which it calls “cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities,” rose from $158 billion in 2014 to $200 billion in 2015, the CTJ says. Apple AAPL -2.18% declined to comment for this story and referred me to the company’s annual report. However, CTJ’s figures come from the company’s latest quarterly report. Fortune was able to confirm those figures. " http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/sanders-trump-offshore-tax-havens/ Lets see... its OK for Fortune 500 companies to avoid taxes using existing tax laws but not OK for a small businessman or small corporation?

I really do wish that when caught in the act US politicians resigned the way Japanese politicians traditionally do. Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_A0GigrQl0 Or like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcO4MMzdYE8

Not since 1970 has this happened.Forty six years ago. The Prime Minister should order a national review of this situation to see if conspiracies, NHL corruption, Gary Bettman or other unknown factors are involved. Clearly citizenship needs to be revoked from someone.

Just can't help shooting off childish bullshit can you? It's a shame what the younger generation has let themselves become. True, Trump has been setting such a great example and with millions thinking he is the best candidate to be President of the United States of America, he is quite the role model. Yeah.. He's the best of the worst. And he's gone and done it again... Made an exception to his statement about banning Muslims from entering the U.S. by saying he would let "rich Muslims" in. " WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists Hillary Clinton memo highlights Gulf states' failure to block funding for groups like al-Qaida, Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton. "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," she said. Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The cables highlight an often ignored factor in the Pakistani and Afghan conflicts: that the violence is partly bankrolled by rich, conservative donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them. The problem is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where militants soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims, set up front companies to launder funds and receive money from government-sanctioned charities. One cable details how the Pakistani militant outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, used a Saudi-based front company to fund its activities in 2005. Meanwhile officials with the LeT's charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, travelled to Saudi Arabia seeking donations for new schools at vastly inflated costs – then siphoned off the excess money to fund militant operations. Militants seeking donations often come during the hajj pilgrimage – "a major security loophole since pilgrims often travel with large amounts of cash and the Saudis cannot refuse them entry into Saudi Arabia". Even a small donation can go far: LeT operates on a budget of just $5.25m (£3.25m) a year, according to American estimates. Saudi officials are often painted as reluctant partners. Clinton complained of the "ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist funds emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority". Washington is critical of the Saudi refusal to ban three charities classified as terrorist entities in the US. "Intelligence suggests that these groups continue to send money overseas and, at times, fund extremism overseas," she said. There has been some progress. This year US officials reported that al-Qaida's fundraising ability had "deteriorated substantially" since a government crackdown. As a result Bin Laden's group was "in its weakest state since 9/11" in Saudi Arabia. Any criticisms are generally offered in private. The cables show that when it comes to powerful oil-rich allies US diplomats save their concerns for closed-door talks, in stark contrast to the often pointed criticism meted out to allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Instead, officials at the Riyadh embassy worry about protecting Saudi oilfields from al-Qaida attacks. The other major headache for the US in the Gulf region is the United Arab Emirates. The Afghan Taliban and their militant partners the Haqqani network earn "significant funds" through UAE-based businesses, according to one report. The Taliban extort money from the large Pashtun community in the UAE, which is home to 1 million Pakistanis and 150,000 Afghans. They also fundraise by kidnapping Pashtun businessmen based in Dubai or their relatives. "Some Afghan businessmen in the UAE have resorted to purchasing tickets on the day of travel to limit the chance of being kidnapped themselves upon arrival in either Afghanistan or Pakistan," the report says. Last January US intelligence sources said two senior Taliban fundraisers had regularly travelled to the UAE, where the Taliban and Haqqani networks laundered money through local front companies. One report singled out a Kabul-based "Haqqani facilitator", Haji Khalil Zadran, as a key figure. But, Clinton complained, it was hard to be sure: the UAE's weak financial regulation and porous borders left US investigators with "limited information" on the identity of Taliban and LeT facilitators. The lack of border controls was "exploited by Taliban couriers and Afghan drug lords camouflaged among traders, businessmen and migrant workers", she said. In an effort to stem the flow of funds American and UAE officials are increasingly co-operating to catch the "cash couriers" – smugglers who fly giant sums of money into Pakistan and Afghanistan. In common with its neighbours Kuwait is described as a "source of funds and a key transit point" for al-Qaida and other militant groups. While the government has acted against attacks on its own soil, it is "less inclined to take action against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators plotting attacks outside of Kuwait". Kuwait has refused to ban the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, a charity the US designated a terrorist entity in June 2008 for providing aid to al-Qaida and affiliated groups, including LeT. There is little information about militant fundraising in the fourth Gulf country singled out, Qatar, other than to say its "overall level of CT co-operation with the US is considered the worst in the region". The funding quagmire extends to Pakistan itself, where the US cables detail sharp criticism of the government's ambivalence towards funding of militant groups that enjoy covert military support. The cables show how before the Mumbai attacks in 2008, Pakistani and Chinese diplomats manoeuvred hard to block UN sanctions against Jamaat-ud-Dawa. But in August 2009, nine months after sanctions were finally imposed, US diplomats wrote: "We continue to see reporting indicating that JUD is still operating in multiple locations in Pakistan and that the group continues to openly raise funds". JUD denies it is the charity wing of LeT. • This article was amended on 15 December 2010. The original caption referred to the Chatrapathi Sivaji station in Mumbai. This has been corrected." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-saudi-terrorist-funding "5–The Bin Laden Family, $7 billion. The Saudi Bin Laden Group towers over the Middle East construction business through its Saudi Bin Laden Group. Its Dubai arm is building two new cities in Djibouti and Yemen, along with a bridge to connect them. The company has also started forging ties to China. The company’s founder, Mohammed Bin Laden, left 54 sons and daughters from several marriages. Thirteen of his sons sit on the board of the family’s business—the most prominent being Baker, Hassan, Islam and Yehya. Baker, Mohammed’s second son, is now head of the company." http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2009/08/31/the-five-richest-saudis/

Trump has suggested that "taking out" the families of terrorists would control the problem. Europe | Memo From Moscow NY Times Russia Shows What Happens When Terrorists’ Families Are Targeted By ANDREW E. KRAMERMARCH 29, 2016 "MOSCOW — Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, was widely condemned when he called for the United States to “take out the families” of terrorists. His approach — even after he clarified that he was not talking about killing the relatives — was dismissed by many as immoral and unlawful. Yet, it is the very tactic that Russia has pursued for decades. It is the signature, though officially unacknowledged, policy behind Moscow’s counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strategies, and Russia’s actions in smashing a Muslim separatist rebellion in the Caucasus provide a laboratory for testing Mr. Trump’s ideas. The family ties that bind in terrorist groups came into focus last week after the police in Brussels disclosed that two of the three suicide bombers in the attacks there were brothers, Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui. All told, analysts estimate that a third of the participants in terrorist acts are related to another attacker. In the conflict that began in Chechnya and has since metastasized into a loosely organized Islamic rebellion throughout the Caucasus region, Russian security services routinely arrest, torture and kill relatives, rights groups say. The Russian approach, enough to make supporters of waterboarding wince, has by some accounts been grimly effective. Abductions of family members unwound the rebel leadership in Chechnya, for example. And siblings have a bloody track record here, as elsewhere. In 2004, Chechen sisters blew themselves up in an airplane and a subway station a week apart. In 2011, the police say, a teenager and his older sister from Ingushetia, another troubled region, helped build a bomb that their brother exploded in the unguarded arrivals hall of Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, killing himself and 36 other people. In the Russian view, the family is the thread that needs to be pulled to unravel the terrorist group. “He should understand his relatives will be treated as accomplices,” Kirill V. Kabanov, a member of President Vladimir V. Putin’s human rights council, said of a potential suicide attacker. “When a person leaves to become a terrorist, he can kill hundreds of innocents,” he said. “Those are the morals we are talking about. We should understand, the relatives must fight this first. If the relative, before the fact, reported it, he is not guilty. If he did not, he is guilty.” By law, Russian security services have no authority to specifically target relatives. But the intelligence forces seldom let a detail like the lack of a legal basis interfere with their activities. In Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan, they routinely burn or demolish the houses of people suspected of being insurgents or terrorists. Most strikingly, whole extended families are rounded up in high-profile cases, and are often held until the militant either gives up or is killed. Maryam Akmedova, from Kabardino-Balkaria region in the North Caucasus, has seen it firsthand. Distressing though it was, she says she understood when Russian prosecutors accused her eldest son of participating in a terrorist attack, as he had never denied his involvement. But her woes hardly stopped there. Soon enough, security agents were questioning her younger son, though there was no evidence linking him to the attack his brother was accused of in the city of Nalchik in 2005. Eventually, the younger brother was shot and killed in 2013 by Russian security forces during an attempted arrest under murky circumstances. “He had no involvement with anything,” Ms. Akmedova said in a telephone interview. “They killed him because his brother was in prison.” The most sweeping application of the tactic came during the pacification of Chechnya, after Mr. Putin engineered the recapture of the separatist territory early in his tenure. Relatives were used as “hooks” to lure in militants. If the militant did not switch sides, the family member disappeared. Chechnya had about 3,000 to 5,000 unresolved disappearances from 2000 to 2005 or so. The policy, executed by the Chechen leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the scion of a prominent Chechen family that itself switched sides, broke the organized resistance. The Russian security services have also manipulated relatives for various ends, such as to inadvertently pass poisoned food to suspected militants on the run. The practice, not surprisingly, has spawned dozens of cases in the European Court of Human Rights and widespread criticism of tactics that, while seemingly effective in the short term, have deeply alienated extended families whose members bear grudges to this day. “There is systematic abuse of the family members of insurgents,” Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, and an expert on the Caucasus, said in a telephone interview. “There can be short-term results, but I wouldn’t call it success,” she said. “You can prevent some episodes of violence at the moment, but you are radicalizing whole communities.” “When innocent Muslims are targeted for the expediency of security services, this legitimizes the jihadist cause,” she said. Ms. Akmedova explained how the sense of injustice and outrage develops. After her younger son was killed in 2013, she said, the police came by and told her and her son’s widow that the grandchildren, despite being in kindergarten and elementary school, would be put on watch lists. “The children go to kindergarten,” Ms. Akmedova, 63, a retired drugstore clerk, said. “They are no different from any other children.” In perhaps the highest-profile operation, Russian security services detained in 2004 several dozen members of the extended family of the Chechen rebel defense minister, Magomed Khambiyev, including the wives of his brothers. Aslanbek Khambiyev, a 19-year-old cousin with no known ties, other than familial, was abducted from a university, beaten semiconscious and shoved from a car in the rebel leader’s home village. “Yes, they detained my relatives,” Magomed Khambiyev told the Kommersant newspaper after he surrendered to save their lives. “But they were guilty. Do you understand? Because they were my relatives.” “If I’m a bandit, then they’re bandits, too,” he explained." http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/world/europe/russia-chechnya-caucasus-terrorists-families.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Really? I have four National ratings, and next year will pursue FAI. My profile info is all correct. I was also a very experienced DZSO before I even had my A license (I bring that up because someone made a comment about it once). Might be surprised who's judging competitions, certifying records, or "pulling dirt!" And this explains a lot about some of the judging I have seen at some of the competitions over the years.... lots of credentials, but not much experience. top Everyone has to start somewhere and in my experience you work your way up the judging totem pole. In addition finding qualified judges is difficult in every sport. Especially so if there is no compensation.