Massive police presence mounts in Apple's mid-town

Quitting time confrontation is afternoon tactic

Bloomberg, beware
Zuccotti Park is everywhere - marchers chant

New York – As rush hour approaches, protesters and police are beginning to clash with greater frequency.

Occupy Wall Street activists are turning over barricades, police are blocking traffic, and the central conflict is all about who will dominate the streets from mid-town to the financial district.

Bridge and tunnel traffic is slowed and the streets are under a constant onslaught of protesters who appear to be marching for the sole purpose of blocking the daily exodus from the city's massive and deep-cut canyons that lead to the skyscrapers of the Wall Street area.

Live U-Stream coverage from the corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue reveals that New York's finest are using motor scooters for cavalry, baton-wielding patrolmen for infantry, and motor vehicles as armored units to drive the protesters to ground that is out of the pattern of commuter traffic.

Constant commands to “Get on the sidewalk” are met with chants of “Whose park? Our park” and “Whose street? Our street.”

Police have arrested hundreds who are blocking such financial institutions as Citibank, Chase and Bank of America.

Several thousand people are mounting a challenge to police authority by marching down Broadway en route to City Hall Park and Foley Square where the Occupy Wall Street and Anonymous communiques have announced there will be a quitting time confrontation.

Three country boys wag dog in YouTube interview

Waco – The venerable Waco “Tribune-Herald” gave a nod to “The Legendary,” got down off the wagon, and talked to folks about an article and video interview we printed in these columns last week.

In the video, Jim Parks, editor and publisher of "The Legendary" and R.S. Gates, a seasoned investigative reporter and Tea Party watch dog specialist, may be heard interviewing Precinct 3 McLennan County Commissioner Joe Mashek.

Staff writer Regina Dennis, who covers the McLennan County Commissioenrs' Court and local government, devoted an extensive story detailing the various statements and some rather serious allegations made by Mr. Mashek about the dealings of the Court, particularly the operating style of County Judge Jim Lewis.

As such, it is a milestone in the history of “The Legendary;” more particularly, it is an example of the type of interaction that is taking place these days in the so-called “social media.”

Emblematical of what such media luminaries as Arthur C. Clarke, R. Buckminster Fuller and Dr. Marshall McLuhan were predicting in the mid-60's, this development is not untypical of the non-linear, spherical and expanding critical path of cyber-communications as practiced in today's suddenly shrunken world.

In fact, Mr. Fuller, who was the innovator of such wonders as the geodesic dome and once described our world as “Spaceship Earth,” once described critical path as “a reduction valve on the universe.”

Click here for a link to the article and video, which is public on YouTube.com as “Joe Mashek exit interview” because Mr. Mashek is not seeking re-election in the 2012 primary for nomination as the candidate for Precinct 3.

Live video stream from OccupyWallSt

Protesters outside the New York Stock Exchange are attempting to halt trading

BULLETIN: The opening bell signaling trading has begun on the New York Stock Exchange is heard ringing at this time in New York. The OccupyWallSt protesters were able to cause business men and women to be diverted from their chosen path to their offices as New York's finest enforced barriers, but the day's trading began in any case.

A day of planned civil disobediance and demonstration will take place all over the city, beginning at the stock exchange, then extending to 16 hub subway platforms throughout the 5 boroughs, and culminating at Foley Square near City Hall at 5 p.m. ET. - The Legendary

People in the crowd outside the stock exchange, home viewers and folks in their offices are monitoring the Dow as trading continues. Much speculation is taking place as to the rumored downturn in industrial average shares. - The Legendary

TransCanada pipeline clears key EPA hurdle

Oil prices surge as glut of crude builds

Lincoln - The Nebraska legislature voted unanimously Wednesday to advance a proposed law that would reroute the controversial TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline to avoid the sensitive Sandhills and Ogallala aquifer as crude prices surged to more than $100 per barrel.

Trading closed at a five-month high after a Canadian energy company ended the standoff by agreeing to shift the route of the proposed TransCanada pipeline out of the environmentally sensitive areas of Nebraska.

The agreement has two companies, Enbridge Inc. and TransCanada Corp., setting in forward motion plans in keen competition to undo a year of EPA stalling. Earlier this month the Department of State and the Obama Administration announced plans to stall until after the elections of 2012 to give final approval for the international agreement that would allow the pipeline to be built from the Alberta tar sands to the refineries of Houston and Port Arthur.

A glut of oil that has built up in the Midwest has created what has been described as an unprecedented distortion in crude markets, with the global Brent crude benchmark trading for about $9 a barrel more that domestic West Texas Intermediate. The gap, which had been more than $12, narrowed Wednesday as U.S. crude rose about $3 to $102.59, while Brent fell 51 cents to $111.67.

Outrage in Haaretz editorial about "not so bad" holocaust

Tel Aviv - This editorial appeared in the Nov. 17 edition of the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, regarding the remarks of certain officials about Iranian capability to make a nuclear attack on that nation.

...But the most problematic comment of all was made by Prof. Yitzhak Ben Israel, the chairman of the Israel Space Agency. It's hard to believe that a man who was a major general in the Israel Defense Forces, a head of the Defense Ministry's arms development authority, a Knesset member and a university lecturer with degrees in math, physics and philosophy is saying such things.

In an interview last week with Globes' Yuval Azulai, he was quoted as saying - after prefacing his remark with the words "the public is ignorant" - that "a single nuclear bomb doesn't destroy a country, not even a neighborhood in Tel Aviv. A nuclear bomb like the one the Iranians want to build has a radius of destruction and death of about 500 meters, and of lighter damage of 1,000 meters .... The public doesn't know exactly what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ... but it's not sexy to talk about it."

"...One could speculate that in an attack on Tel Aviv some 80,000 people could die. An equal number would die painful deaths over the next few months..."

So first of all, a reminder to Prof. Ben Israel about what really could happen if a "small" bomb of 10 kilotons (about as powerful as the bombs dropped on Japan ) explodes over Tel Aviv's city hall. In a radius of around 500 meters, everything, buildings and people, would be melted and vaporized. There would be nothing left south Jabotinsky Street, east of Dizengoff Street, north of King Saul Boulevard and west of Ichilov Hospital. Up to 30,000 people would die.

Within the next radius - up to 1,200 meters covering an area east of the beach, west of Namir Road, south of the Yarkon River and north of Sheinkin Street, most buildings would be destroyed, burying some 30,000 beneath them. There may be survivors, but there would apparently not be anyone to take care of them. The third radius would reach 2,500 meters; huge fires would rage there. No one would be available to rush to put out them out.

One could speculate that in an attack on Tel Aviv some 80,000 people could die. An equal number would die painful deaths over the next few months. This scenario is based on similar scenarios in Graham Ellison's book "Nuclear Terrorism," which describes what would happen in New York and other American cities if they were attacked with nuclear weapons.

And who says Iran would launch just one bomb at Israel and not two or three? This is the truth about the "not so bad" apocalyptic vision of Ben Israel, whose salary is paid for by the Israeli taxpayer...

"Little Boy" exploding over Hiroshima, 1945

'The math won't change...' and neither will party lines -

Capitol Hill sees no hope for Super Committee

After more than three months of work, the congressional panel charged with finding ways to cut the nation\'s budget deficit seems to be stuck in neutral. Judy Woodruff discusses the deadlock with super committee member Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

Why Germany is richer than Italy...

It's all in the transport capabilities and routes
You know what's happening in Greece. Italy, Portugal and Spain will be the next countries to weather the storm. But why is it Europe's southern nations that are struggling the most?

The dense river network in northwestern Europe (not to mention more roads and railways) affords that region much lower transportation costs. Thus, Northern nations have a significant competitive advantage in exporting. The one trick Southern nations had up their sleeves—devaluing their currencies to make their exports cheaper—ended with the adoption of the euro.

The result? A Germany with a trade surplus, and an Italy with a national debt at 120% of GDP and more choppy water on the horizon...

- Stratfor, “Germany v. Italy”