L.A. to N.Y. in Half an Hour: 10,000 Plus M.P.H. Tunnel Train Used for Underground Bases?

Shepard Ambellas | This technology is 100% real and fully functional in the present day.

To avoid N.Y. tax, tribes make, and sell, cigarettes

By Thomas Kaplan / New York Times – BendBulletin.com

ONEIDA, N.Y. — The trucks lumber past cornfields and dilapidated farm houses, pull up to a onetime bingo hall, and unload their cargo: boxes of tobacco imported from the Carolinas.

Inside, employees of the Oneida Indian Nation dump the shredded tobacco leaves into rolling machines and fashion them into cigarettes to be sold at a dozen tribal convenience stores midway between Syracuse and Utica.

The cigarettes, branded with names like Niagara’s and Bishop, sell for as little as $ 39.95 for a 10-pack carton — much cheaper than those at non-Indian retailers — and bring in millions of dollars a year to the tribe, which also has a resort casino, five golf courses and a multimedia production house.

“We tried poverty for 200 years,” the Oneidas’ leader, Ray Halbritter, said in an interview. “We decided to try something different.”

The Oneidas’ cigarette manufacturing business is part of a new strategy that is quickly being embraced among New York’s eight federally recognized Indian tribes. After years of fighting a losing battle against the state over the taxation of name-brand cigarettes sold on reservations, many are now manufacturing their own cigarettes.

The tribes argue that because they are sovereign nations, the cigarettes they make are exempt from New York state’s $ 4.35-a-pack excise tax, the highest in the United States. But the tobacco industry and owners of other convenience stores say tribal cigarette manufacturing is just an elaborate form of tax evasion.

To read more, visit:  http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120224/NEWS0107/202240402/1009/NEWS01&nav_category=NEWS01

RE Tea Party » Taxes

Saudi Arabia: House of Saud Integral to U.S. Mideast Policy

American Free Press
By Richard Walker
February 1, 2012

While the Middle East has suffered through a momentous year of turmoil and change, Saudi Arabia has largely remained insulated from any uprising.

This is primarily due to the country’s vast wealth and power, which it has used to buy allegiance from its own people, quash dissent and build the second most powerful military in the region after Israel.

At the insistence of Washington, the Saudis have promised countries like China and India they will increase oil production to make up for any global shortfall should hostilities against Iran stop that country’s oil from flowing.

Such a move is designed to encourage countries that do business with Iran to support sanctions and possible war.

All of this speaks to the way Saudi Arabia’s autocratic rulers have plotted and used their enormous wealth to keep themselves insulated from the vast movements demanding change throughout the region. Internally, they have kept dissent at a minimum, using a carrot and stick approach.

The carrot takes the form of free housing for newly married couples and increased wages in the public sector.

The House of Saud announced in 2011 it planned to spend tens of billions of dollars to modernize housing, education and sports facilities and create enough jobs for all its citizens.

In contrast, the stick is the internal security apparatus. It has sophisticated surveillance capabilities allowing it to maintain extensive files on every individual in the country.

It also possesses absolute power to arrest, detain and torture anyone the country’s leaders deem a threat.

But you will not hear about this in the Western press, as the Saudis have also endeared themselves to Israel by muting criticism of the country as well as by doing business with Israeli arms suppliers and hi-tech companies.

The outcome of all of this is that a regime, which gave the world one of the most extreme forms of Islamic teaching, namely Wahhabism, has behaved as it pleases.

It has tortured prisoners in its secret jails and denied women basic rights. Now it is being applauded for being a partner in Israel’s plot to bring down the Iranian regime.
——
Richard Walker is the pen name of a former N.Y. news producer.

We Are Change TV.US