December 23, 2012

Learned Social Classism, Is Working Even Ethical?

As explained in the article Learning Careerism As A Moral Reward System; our society, specifically our education system teaches and prepared us for a careerist lifestyle. Or simply put, working for money is considered success in our societies.

But not only does it teach us to work for currency. Just as we are put down in school for having poor grades, in society we are put down and even ridiculed, almost as criminals, for having low paid jobs, and even more so for having no paid job at all.

This video shows how people are eager to help someone until people assume they are homeless, and that the homeless are also more eager to help people in need:

We live in a society where those with the most important jobs to our survival work long hours, often physically tiring and are not paid very much. There are only a few kinds of workers that we really need, farmers/food producers, construction/manufacturers, delivery, maintenance/repair, and public services such as hospital workers and good police.

As time goes on there is more automation, so there are less jobs available but more people and so more food, building, maintenance, healthcare, and so on is required. However farmers are being paid less as time goes on, many selling their farms to get a different job, as their valuable work doesn’t even pay the bills. Construction workers, store workers, repair services and delivery are often paid low or minimum wage. Construction or farm work is much physically harder than sitting in an office trading stocks, yet those people are praised because they make more money.

There are often stories of fire-fighters and medical workers on strike because they are on a low wage or have poor quality working conditions, but these are the true heroes of our society, these people save us from death. Farmers, medical workers and fire-fighters should be the highest rewarded and praised workers of society, not some of the least.

We should also give more credit to those who are building and maintaining places for us to live comfortably in.

It is shameful that the harder a job is, the less money the workers will make, and those who make the most money in society actually have the easier jobs and often work the least.

In our society even these workers that we require for survival are not made a priority, money is. We are taught that if we work hard we can get a good job, and a good job pays well, most people still believe this and look up to those with ‘well-paid’ jobs and look down on those with a low paid job or those who are considered poor.

The truth is that in almost all cases the LESS-ethical the persons job, the more money they will earn. We could consider the most ethical of all work to be charity work, helping those with less, yet most of this work is either volunteer work or paid minimum wage. Those without jobs at all are looked down on, even when they volunteer to do charity work. Looked down on by those who mess around with numbers to make bigger numbers (trading stocks and shares), or managers; people who make sure that other people work so that they can take a larger cut.

Our parents tried to teach us good ethics and morals, but then they told us to obey at school, which taught us that these twisted careerist ideologies were moral and ethical.

Those without any paid employment, often also without any debt are sometimes homeless, and our society also tells us that they are homeless because they are drug addicts or alcoholics, and therefore we should not help them, even though many of these people are not drug-addicts or alcoholics, and if they are, it is often a sickness that is created by the world they live in, they simply didn’t have enough money or got kicked out by an ex-partner. Relationship breakdown and illness can happen to anyone.

So we have those who work very unethical jobs making ridiculously high amounts of money, those looked down on for having low paid work, even though it is physically more productive, those who are ridiculed for not having a ‘paid’ job or claiming some kind of state benefit, and then the homeless who cannot even apply for many kinds of state benefits or most jobs because they cannot complete the forms without a valid address, and often an email address or phone number; sometimes even the phone number must be a landline number, and of course to apply for a job most of the time these days a printed Résumé/CV is required.

Amnesty international reported that approximately 3.5 million people in the U.S. are homeless, many of them veterans. It is worth noting that, at the same time, there are 18.5 million vacant homes in the country.

AP also reports that nearly 1 in 2 Americans have fallen into poverty.

CBS News reports that “According to a new report out this past week, poverty in America has reached its highest level since 1965″.

So as a whole this brings up a question, apart from a few specific careers, is paid work ethical? How many ethical jobs do you know that are helping people to survive or live comfortably and are not profiting some corporation, or share holders, sat back, relaxing, watching the money you make entering their bank accounts.

When we do get paid, a high percentage of that money gets cut to go to government as income tax, however we give them another chunk of money from VAT, another tax, then depending on where you live there are multiple other taxes such as state tax, council tax, road tax, import tax, property tax, inheritance tax, and so on…

Click for larger image

Learning Careerism As A Moral Reward System

The concepts of consumerism and careerism are predominant in first world countries, and are increasing in countries with less “advanced” economies too, but why?

The definition of careerism or a careerist is “the characteristics associated with one who advances his career even at the expense of his pride and dignity.” Simply looking at this definition, many of us instantly assume ‘it has nothing to do with my career’.

Image source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1026998/Parents-told-attend-Maths-lessons-children-improve-primary-results.html

As a child we are brought up by our parents or carers, usually with a mixture of two learning methodologies, the first of which is a reward based learning system, where a child is rewarded for doing good and importantly, doing as they are told. The second is the opposite side of the same coin, a punishment based system, punished for disobeying and for doing bad. In general parents try to give children the best morals and ethics that they are able to comprehend for themselves.

Image source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/27/florida-education-model-reform

However that same parent then tells the child to do as they are told at school. The child goes to school and learns a very systematic, rigid and standardised education without much flexibility, creativity, play, freedom, and importantly, without parental guidance. Parents tend to assume that the governments education programmes have our children’s futures and interests at heart, usually the teachers also believe this.

When we reach 11/12 in the USA people are moved from Elementary school to Middle School, until 14/15 where people are moved to High School. Typically in the UK children go to Secondary School from 10/11/12 until 15/16, why change schools, and why between 10 and 12?

Some school uniforms also represent “smart” worker clothing. (Image from: https://www.theuniformshoponline.co.uk/secondary-school-uniforms.php)

Puberty, during this time of questioning, rebelling against our parents as authority figures to find our own path, we are given alternative answers by our new schools. A lot of these school changes are careerist ideologies, once we reach these ages we are taught that we need to get the grades to get a job because having a job is successful; the better the grades the better the career and pay, right?

In the USA this is pushed even farther as children must pass tests to even get to the next grade/school year, a very early way of learning a careerist promotion based system and also something that appears to be non-optional. Those who do not follow these rules are ridiculed as they are held back, just as people in society are ridiculed for having a low paid job or no job at all.

The poor or jobless considered by many of the rich, the media and the government to be worthless people of society that do not deserve, because they haven’t worked enough.. Even when these people volunteer to do charitable work they are perceived as some kind of hippie scum.

It’s important to note that government taxes and bank’s debt interest are two other ways of getting something without working for it.

Monopoly Money

All along our parents tried to teach us good morals and ethics; what is good and what is bad. Schooling takes over and teaches us that more obeying and work is good, and anything else is bad. By the time we leave school we have learned that working is good and money is a replacement of our parents reward based system.

There’s no longer a reward based system for doing good, now there is only a reward based system of working for currency by obeying. Numbers printed on paper or a computer screen. This is now where our morals are firmly based in society.

Continues to: Learned Social Classism, Is Working Even Ethical?

Americans Toss Out As Much As 40% Of Their Food, Study Says

Originally posted by Tiffany Hsu on LATimes.com, August 21, 2012

Americans waste up to 40% of their food, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council. (Beth Hall / Bloomberg News)

Americans are throwing out nearly every other bite of food, wasting up to 40% of the country’s supply each year – a mass of uneaten provisions worth $165 billion, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

An average family of four squanders $2,275 in food each year, or 20 pounds per person per month, according to the nonprofit and nonpartisan environmental advocacy group.

Food waste is the largest single portion of solid waste cramming American landfills. Since the 1970s, the amount of uneaten fare that is dumped has jumped 50%. The average American trashes 10 times as much food as a consumer in Southeast Asia, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Such profligacy is especially unwarranted in a time of record drought, high food prices expected to get higher and families unable to afford food, according to the council. Efforts are already in place in Europe to cut back on food waste.

But American consumers are used to seeing pyramids of fresh produce in their local markets and grocery stores, which results in $15 billion annually in unsold fruits and vegetables, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. In restaurants and home kitchens, massive portions often end up partly in the trash.

Half of American soil and many other key resources are used for agriculture – the Natural Resources Defense Council says wasted food eats up a quarter of all freshwater consumed in the U.S. along with 4% of the oil while producing 23% of the methane emissions.

In its report, the council urges the government to set a target for food-waste reduction. Companies should look for alternatives in their supply chain, such as making so-called baby carrots out of carrots too bent to be sold whole at the retail level.

The study also asks Americans to learn when food goes bad and to become less averse to buying scarred or otherwise imperfect produce. The average consumer should also save and eat leftovers, researchers said.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-food-waste-nrdc-20120821,0,7810321.story

Gold Stockpiling: Is It Worth It?

Originally posted by weare1776.org on August 18, 2012

Author: Alec Scheer

 

Alternative news websites, such as my own, are generally perceived by their fans to perform the service that mainstream media (MSM) should perform, but either can’t or won’t. Our job is to spread the message of truth and liberty and to act as the watchdog over government, a role that MSM has all but abandoned.

Every day we see ads and articles on alternative news websites like Info Wars (www.infowars.com) and Occupy Corporatism (www.occupycorporatism.com) addressing the imminent banking/financial collapse, which is bound to happen. It is not a question of if, but of when. These ads and articles suggest that everybody buy gold or other precious metals. When a friend recently pointed out this gold scheme, I did my own research into the matter and arrived at the conclusion that there is, in fact, a giant confidence game being pulled off by the wealthy elite. My intent is to alert you to the potential for fraud and to dispel some of the misconceptions.

Business Insider (www.businessinsider.com) has published an article entitled “Soros Reveals Stake in Facebook” in which it is stated that George Soros “completely dumped his stakes” in Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs. Here is an excerpt from that article:

According to the report, Soros completely dumped his stakes in Citigroup (420,000 shares), JP Morgan (701,400 shares) and Goldman Sachs (120,000 shares), leaving him with no position in any major financials at all.

Before and after dumping his shares, Soros and many other banksters have been stockpiling gold and other precious metals. The following excerpt is from Mini Web (www.miniweb.com) describing the latest trend in gold buying with regard to Soros:

According to SEC filings George Soros has been back buying gold – and this on its own has probably given a lift to the gold price, with many big money investors likely to see that as a lead to follow.

Now, let us put all of the legitimate financial collapse theories aside and focus on this theory: Since Soros is selling, followed by Paulson (Forbes article), the idea seems to be that the public will soon follow. The reason as to why this would happen is because the public, noticing the activities of the investors who are presumed to have the “inside scoop,” will sell their shares in the stock market and proceed to buy gold, just like the elites who are setting the trend. Next thing you know the sheeple mindset kicks in and many others start buying gold because “oh, well, the Wall Street insiders (elitist crooks) are buying gold, so they must be preparing for something—I should buy some gold, as well.” This mentality actually creates the demand for gold, but who will supply the gold? Well, it is this simple: while you were being duped by the stock market, men like Soros and Paulsen were stockpiling gold in preparation for snookering you again. How are they duping you again? After stockpiling mass amounts of gold, they pull out their shares from the market creating a panic, which causes the public to follow suit selling their shares and following the gold buying trend. These deceptive acts of investors such as Soros and Paulsen alter both the supply and demand of gold and other precious metals, which in turn influences the market rates of these commodities, artificially driving the prices up or down at will. Essentially the people who will supply the gold to the public now demanding it will be the wealthy interests who drove the price up in the first place knowing they could con the public into a massive scam via an artificial panic, and a gold purchasing spree. When it is all said and done, the bankers will have pulled off another get rich quick scheme.

Remember, that this is a trend created by the people we oppose because they so consistently act contrary to the best interests of the people. It is rather simple:

They buy gold, and then sell their shares.

This creates a panic.

The public follows suit by demanding gold.

The bankers who stocked up in preparation for this demand then supply the gold to the purchasers demanding it.

They rake in mass amounts of money from an artificial panic/gold buying scheme they devised.

I want to point out that a monetary system would not be effective in a complete financial collapse because it would not benefit anyone; however, a system of barter would benefit everyone because people would exchange their resources for other services/resources.

Think before you buy. Resist the lies. Open minds. Spread liberty worldwide.

 

Source: https://weare1776.org/1441/us-news/gold-stockpiling-is-it-worth-it/

Film Review: Consuming Kids - A Must-See Documentary For All Parents

By Tara Green

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uUU7cjfcdM

 

Parents, educators and anyone interested in how children in the US are affected by the media will want to watch “Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood.” The film, available for viewing online (www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uUU7cjfcdM), traces the connection between the full-scale media immersion children are subject to and rising levels of childhood obesity, hypertension, ADD and other diseases.

Advertising Unleashed

This brief (66 minutes) documentary looks at the explosion in US children’s advertising following deregulation in 1980. The filmmakers delineate how the snowballing effect of increased advertising to children since that time, combined with advances in media technology, resulted in a 40% per year increase, over a thirty year period, in the level of consumer spending directly influenced by children. The film reveals that the annual amount of child-influenced consumer spending in this country reached an astounding $700 billion dollars in 2010.

Filmmakers Adriana Barbaro and Jeremy Earp interview a range of experts including child psychiatrists and family advocates about the effects of advertising on children. They intersperse these interviews with clips of marketing experts discussing how to use psychology to recruit children into brand loyalty. A clip of one child psychiatrist likening these marketing experts to pedophiles seems extreme — but is followed by a clip of a marketing expert talking about “branding and owning children.”

Stalking Children

The film reveals many facets of advertising to children that some parents may be unaware of, including how closely marketers study children and how they reach children without parental knowledge. “Scientific stalking” is how one expert characterizes marketing companies research into child behavior which now ranges from measuring blink rates of toddlers watching media clips to MRI observation of child brain activity while viewing films. Marketers employ child psychology experts who advise them on the different techniques to use to engage the toddler market or the toddler’s slightly older siblings.

Stealth marketing takes place through an organization known as the GIA (Girls Intelligence Agency) which uses product placement at slumber parties. Marketing to children is ubiquitous, with many cash-strapped schools accepting sponsorship from corporations, meaning brand names are present even while children study. Cell phones which many parents buy their children for safety and communication purposes become another avenue for corporations to reach young consumers with games and other content. Many websites offering games for children are actually an opportunity for corporations to learn more about individual children in order to engage in “microtargetting.”

The film notes that advertisers are reaching children at increasingly young ages. Only very high-end stores now carry baby products which do not bear the image of one media character or another, meaning most middle and lower income parents are forced to buy products imprinted with popular characters. Children are especially susceptible to these characters, explains one child psychiatrist interviewed in the film because the familiar faces form touchstones of stability which make children feel secure during changes of growth and development. The psychiatrist expresses his concern that the US is raising “a generation of superconsumers.”

Educational?

The film also debunks the myth of “good media as an antidote to bad media.” Companies which sell videos such as Baby Einstein, filmmakers explain make millions of dollars yet there is no evidence that watching these films increases intelligence. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen media at all for children under two. There is evidence that prolonged and regular exposure to media can result in concentration difficulties.

Protecting Children

The filmmakers note that among industrialized nations, only the US lacks any regulations protecting children from this kind of aggressive advertising. The consequences of rampant advertising are visible in the physical and emotional health of a child as they participate less frequently in active, creative play and more often in passive screen time. As one child advocate interviewed in the film notes “We have laws about child safety, putting helmets on kids, tobacco marketing to kids, but somehow we think it’s OK to make children fair game to marketers who want to profit from them, irrespective of the impact on their health and well-being.”

Source: https://www.naturalnews.com/034398_consuming_kids_film_review.html#ixzz1gcRa8Jxl

Britain’s High Streets Reach ‘Crisis Point’

More than 50% of total consumer spend is now off British high streets for the first time in history.

The shock statistic is revealed with the publication of a report compiled by Mary Portas, star of the BBC’s Mary Queen of Shops programme.

The retail expert has come up with a plan to rejuvenate Britain’s ailing high streets, some of which she claims are in crisis.

Her independent review, carried out at the request of Prime Minister David Cameron, also maintains that town centre vacancy rates have doubled over the past two years.

“I believe that our high streets have reached a crisis point. Unless urgent action is taken, much of Britain will lose, irretrievably, something that is fundamental to our society, and which has real social and economic worth to our communities,” she said.

“I would like to state from the start that this report is not about pointing fingers of blame.

“While I do believe that there are many compelling instances where out-of-town retail has drained the traffic and shopping trade from our town centres, it would be naive and far too easy simply to think that they are to blame for the decline of our high streets.

“The fact is that the major supermarkets and malls have delivered highly convenient, needs-based retailing, which serves today’s consumers well.

“Sadly, the high streets didn’t adapt as quickly or as effectively. Now they need to.”

Ms Portas has called for change and recommends licensing rules on high street stalls be relaxed and that a national market day be introduced.

She also wants free parking in certain areas, some form of high street management system to form coherent policies, as well as a review of business rates and shop rents.

Tom Ironside from the British Retail Consortium agrees that there is much to be done.

“There are some long-standing challenges facing the high street locations which include planning, transport, safety and security and also the cost of doing business in high street locations as well,” he said.

“All of those need to be tackled if we’re to get to a situation where our towns and city centres can thrive.

“Certainly where new business rates come into play we think that there’s a real role for a better business rates regime in supporting new businesses as they come forward.

“But business rates need to be cheaper for everyone. At the moment they go up very quickly year-on-year and we want to see that take place in a much more affordable way.”

In the Worcestershire market town of Pershore rates for small businesses have been frozen.

Those small businesses with a rateable value of £6,000 and under will pay no business rates at all until March 2013.

High street butcher Dave Goodyear said: “It has been a lifeline. Without that freeze, a lot of people would have sunk and gone under. But this is just what the independent trade needs.”

Despite the pressures of out of town shopping centres, supermarkets and the internet, Pershore is now fairing well.

Ms Portas added: “The phenomenal growth of online retailing, the rise of shopping by mobile, the speed and sophistication of the major national and international retailers, the epic and immersive experiences offered by today’s new breed of shopping mall, combined with a crippling recession, have all conspired to change today’s retail landscape.

“New expectations have been created in terms of value, service, entertainment and experience against which the average high street has, in many cases, failed to deliver.

“The only hope our high streets have of surviving is to recognise what has happened and to provide something new.”

 

Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/britains-high-streets-reach-crisis-point-003705028.html

Corzine Can’t Explain Missing MF Global Funds

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Former Wall Street high-flyer and Democratic politician Jon Corzine told US lawmakers Thursday he did not know what happened to an estimated $1.2 billion that disappeared from the accounts of now bankrupt broker MF Global.

Corzine — former US senator, New Jersey governor, head of Goldman Sachs and later MF Global — apologized to investors and claimed he could account for the loss of “many hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” he told lawmakers, as he faced the glare of TV cameras for the first time since the firm went bust.

MF Global collapsed in October after making vast bets on European sovereign debt — particularly Belgium, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal — that turned sour amid the eurozone financial crisis.

Around $1.2 billion appears to be missing from the customer accounts of failed US broker, which especially served investors in commodity futures and derivatives, a liquidator of the company has said.
In contrite testimony, Corzine described for the House of Representatives Agriculture Committee in broad strokes his tenure at the head of the company and the events leading up to bankruptcy.

“I appear at today’s hearing with great sadness,” said Corzine, clad in a deep blue grey suit and tie, speaking softly and shifting in his seat as he began his testimony.

“My sadness, of course, pales in comparison to the losses and hardships that customers, employees and investors have suffered as a result of MF Global’s bankruptcy.”

The committee’s Republican chairman Frank Lucas said stressed the impact of the firm’s failure on farmers and agricultural businesses that used MF to hedge for shifts in commodity prices.

“Thousands of your former customers across the country are experiencing severe financial hardship because of events that occurred under your watch,” he told Corzine.

The former CEO acknowledged he had strongly advocated MF’s investment of its own money in eurozone debt, but insisted he knew nothing about the missing funds the day before its formal bankruptcy.

Many transactions occurred in those last chaotic days.”

(I) believed that (MF Global’s) investments in short-term European debt securities were prudent,” he said.

With Republicans sharpening the knives for regulators appointed by President Barack Obama, Corzine was at pains to stress his limited contact with the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission Mary Schapiro and the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Gary Gensler.

In one telling exchange Democrat Collin Peterson said he did not know how address the former CEO, lawmaker and governor.

Many people have bad names,” Corzine interjected.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/corzine-cant-explain-missing-mf-global.html

Energy Efficient Light Bulbs Are Killing Us!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS5ogZxoZ2Y&sns=fb

The energy efficient light bulbs in your house are affecting you and your neighbour’s health.

70% of World’s Raw Chocolate Soon To Be Genetically Modified

With the intention of flooding 70% of the global cocoa supply with genetically modified (GMO) cocoa tree hybrids, a collaboration involving Mars, USDA and IBM is accelerating this process.

With primary funding from US chocolate producer Mars, the partnership includes scientists based at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the US Department of Agriculture and Science as well as researchers working at IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Center.

The scientists are determined to finalize gene sequencing of the cocoa genome which they say will “benefit” the chocolate industry and cocoa growers in West Africa where 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is produced, and in other tropical zones.

According to the global head of plant science and research at the confectionery firm, Howard-Yana Shapiro, the sequence is of great importance.

“As plant breeders, we’re always looking after the golden traits: pest and disease resistant, drought tolerance, the ability to adapt to climate change, tree architecture, yield quality, etc,” said Dr Shapiro.

The researchers including ARS based molecular biologist David Kuhn and geneticist Raymond Schnell said that they released the findings of sequencing into the public domain in order to assist scientists to begin applying the findings immediately.

The results have been published on the Cacao Genome Database website.

The researchers state that it also means that cocoa will no longer be the ‘orphan crop’ compared to corn wheat and rice in terms of focused breeding research.

Consumption

Although cocoa is largely produced in developing countries, it is mostly consumed in industrialized countries. For cocoa, the buyers in the consuming countries are the processors and the chocolate manufacturers. A few multinational companies dominate both processing and chocolate manufacturing.

The United States, Germany and France make up more than half of the world’s cocoa consumption with the United States by far the largest consumer. Consequently, should the effects of genetically modified cocoa result in unintended health effects or consequences to consumers, the US population will be the first to exhibit those effects on a mass scale.

 

Source: https://preventdisease.com/news/10/092010_GMO_chocolate.shtml

Black Friday Sales Start With Pepper Spray Stampede

Woman pepper-sprayed her rival bargain-hunters as 152m expected to flock to stores

Shoppers in the US kicked off their annual “Black Friday” orgy of consumerism amid scenes of pushing, pulling, running and – in one case – pepper-spraying their way through the doors of the nation’s shops and malls.

The annual tradition, when many stores open early with cut-price sales on the day after Thanksgiving, has become a source of controversy amid frequent scenes of near-rioting and injuries as mobs of people crowd into big-name shops.

But few can have expected even the most determined of bargain-hunters to adopt the brutal tactics of one female shopper in a Los Angeles suburb who attacked her rivals with pepper-spray: a substance more recently associated with police brutality against Occupy Wall Street protesters.

At least 20 people, including several children, were injured as the woman deployed her weapon. “I heard screaming and I heard yelling. Moments later my throat stung. I was coughing really bad,” said Matthew Lopez, a shopper who recounted his story to the Los Angeles Times.

The woman, whom witnesses said appeared to be defending an X-Box games console, has not been found or yet identified. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the gigantic store remained open amid the mayhem and other shoppers continued to roam the aisles filling their trolleys with goods.

The incident occurred late on Thanksgiving evening as the Walmart – like some other stores – had pushed back its Black Friday opening to begin late on Thursday.

The day gets its name from the idea that the period after Thanksgiving marks the part of the year when many shops finally get in the “black” and start turning a profit for the year.

But America in 2011 is stranded in a moribund economy marked by sluggish growth and a headline jobless rate stuck around 9%. Many retailers have pinned their hopes on a strong shopping season in the run up to Christmas and will be looking pouring through data from Black Friday for signs of increased spending.

Experts expect 152m people to hit the shops over the Black Friday weekend, up 27% on last year, with many retailers hoping for a desperately needed shot-in-the-arm to consumer spending in a still battered economy.

Even Apple, which has until now eschewed a discounting policy, cut its prices for one day on Friday.

Elsewhere in America the queues and rush to get through the doors was a little more steady and less violen than in Los Angeles. There were several shooting incidents, in Florida and in North Carolina, but it was far from clear these were directly linked to Black Friday shopping.

Yet, despite the problems, millions of people queued up outside stores in order to be first inside and snap up some of the bargains on offer on anything from TVs and consumer electronics to fashion and furniture. At Macy’s in New York an estimated 9,000 people waited in the street for a midnight opening.

In recent years, as media coverage of the event has grown and scenes of rioting and stampedes have become more common, Black Friday has drawn its share of criticism.

However, this year, as the Occupy movement has sprung up across the country, shoppers in some parts of America have also been joined by protesters trying to persuade them to put down their bags and go home, or at least avoid large chains and shop smaller and more locally.

Some campaigners called for a boycott of stores by consumers, though judging by the mayhem and huge queues that had little impact. Elsewhere protests were held at stores. At Macy’s in Manhattan a small group of people chanted “Occupy it, don’t buy it” to waiting shoppers.

In places such as Seattle protesters planned to hold rallies outside Walmarts in the city. In the small city of Boise, Idaho, a local Occupy group aimed to dress up as the undead to symbolise “consumer zombies”.

In Iowa “flash mobs” of protesters were set to target malls to try and convince shoppers to stay or away or think more politically about their purchases.

Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/25/black-friday-sales-pepper-spray-stampede