Flurry of local laws tout immigration reform as key part of growth strategy

US cities race to attract immigrants

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed announced plans to make Atlanta’s immigrant population feel more welcome in order to boost the city’s “cultural fabric, economic growth and global competitiveness.”

Atlanta is not the only city in the South embracing a vision that recognizes the potential benefits of demographic change. Memphis and Nashville, Tenn.; Charlotte, N.C.; and Louisville, Ky. have all pledged to create an immigrant-friendly climate, bucking not only a recent trend in the region but also the rhetoric on immigration coming from some corners on Capitol Hill. These cities are joined by dozens more pursuing policies that celebrate their diverse communities and ensure inclusion and opportunity for all people, including immigrants.

Egypt Launches Renewed Crackdown On Muslim Brotherhood

Egyptian riot police run after Muslim Brotherhood members
 after a demonstration in Cairo's eastern Nasr City district on Friday.

Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

Egyptian security forces carried out widespread arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members just days after the government labeled the group, which supports ousted President Mohammed Morsi, a terrorist organization. 

Three people were reported killed in Muslim Brotherhood-led protests and some 265 people were arrested as part of the nationwide crackdown, which came as the political group renewed calls for massive anti-government rallies.

The BBC reports:

"As Friday prayers ended, riot police tried to stop Mr Morsi's supporters holding protest rallies.

"A man was killed in clashes in the city of Samalut in Minya, while an 18-year-old Muslim Brotherhood supporter was shot dead amid violent confrontations in the Nile Delta city of Damietta, police said.

"The interior ministry said a third person was killed in Cairo, without giving further details."

Police fired tear gas in various parts of the capital, and Interior Ministry officials said several security forces personnel were hurt in clashes with protesters.

The Associated Press says:

"In Cairo, riot police chased student protesters chanting against the military and the police at the Islamic Al-Azhar University. Footage on private TV networks showed demonstrators hurling stones and setting fire on tree branches to defuse tear gas smoke. ...

"Clashes also erupted Friday in several other districts of the capital. Al-Jazeera Mubashir Misr TV showed footage of police vehicle on fire in a highway linking Cairo with Giza."

The crackdown comes after Morsi was put on trial and the government lifted a three-month state of emergency implemented after the former president's July 3 ouster in a military coup.

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“You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake”

Ku Klux Klan Fliers Found in Chicago Suburb

A member of the Fraternal White Knights of the Ku Klux Clan participates in the 11th Annual Nathan Bedford Forrest Birthday march July 11, 2009 in Pulaski, Tennessee. With a poor economy and the first African-American president in office, there has been a rise in extremist activity in many parts of America. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2008 the number of hate groups rose to 926, up 4 percent from 2007, and 54 percent since 2000. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War and played a role in the postwar establishment of the first Ku Klux Klan organization opposing the reconstruction era in the South.

The fliers were discovered Monday in southwest suburban Tinley Park in at least five driveways on or near the 7000 block of 173rd Place, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake,” one flier read, according to the Tribune. The message was coupled with a candy cane.

Police reportedly claim no other incidents of racial or hate-crime nature were discovered, and said it remains unclear if the fliers are real or just somebody “goofing off.”

In October, residents of southwest suburban New Lenox Township received similar fliers.

The New Lenox flier was a call to "Join the Klan," and included a link to a website and the address of a post office box in North Carolina. A hotline number led to a recording with a "white power" recruitment message from the Loyal White Knights division of the Klan.

"I haven't seen anything like this, hate like this in 30 years," said Janice Dellar, who found a flier at her home. "I'm just very shocked to find it in this neighborhood."

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Government Violates One's Only Right

Everything the State does involves violating the natural right of man. I intentionally use the singular form of natural right because there really only is one right and that is the right to be free of the initiation of force. There could not be a positive right because it will always necessarily violate a positive right of a different individual. Therefor, positive rights is a self destructing concept. The right from the initiation of force is obligatory to defining freedom, the power to determine action without restraint. The only way for something to be a law of nature, which a natural right by definition is derived from, it must be consistent in it's explanation across all applications in all points of space. For instance, the law of thermodynamics is the same no matter how it is applied or when or where. If you cool a hot potato in Idaho in 2013 it will lose energy just as it would in Greece in 1700 BCE. The only way one individual can take as a universal law that they should live with the power to determine their own action without restraint, they must make sure to not restrain the power of others to determine their own action. The logical conclusion is that the only natural right that can be is the right from the initiation of force, and this natural right is the only moral that can be honored to attain freedom and consequentially peace. Once you go on honoring any positive right you have violate another's natural right, thus their freedom, thus their state of peace. The State represents society's collective ignorance to this fact manifested as institutionalized freedom violation.

-Steve Moss

WTF is EDTA?!

Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) is an aminopolycarboxylic acid and a colorless, water-soluble solid. It's industrial uses include dissolving limescale and decreasing reactivity between certain metals. EDTA is mainly synthesized from ethylenediamine, formaldehyde, and sodium cyanide. EDTA is also used as a food preservative that serves to prevent discoloring oxidation and the formulation of a carcinogenic compound, benzene, in products such as soft drinks. I don't know if adding a carcinogenic to reduce the presence of a carcinogenic is a self-defeating concept or not, that would depend on the cost benefit analysis of the effects of both, you explore that knowledge for yourself, check out the MSDS sheet for benzene and the MSDS sheet for EDTA, which is surprisingly understudied for such a pervasive food additive.