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Philip G. Zimbardo, a Stanford University social psychologist whose aborted 1971 experiment, employing college students to play prison guards and inmates, became one of the most controversial episodes in modern psychology and yielded disturbing insights into the effect of stress on human behavior, died Oct. 14. He was 91. For his prison experiment, conducted over a school break, Dr. Zimbardo recruited 24 male students, screening them to ensure that they had no history of crime or violence and that they were emotionally stable. He randomly assigned half to be guards and half to be prisoners. The guards were instructed not to physically harm the prisoners but to otherwise maintain control as they saw fit. Wearing uniforms and sunglasses, they forced the prisoners to follow strict rules, and punishments for violators included solitary confinement in a converted closet. The prisoners ... were referred to by numbers. After an attempted revolt on the second day, the guards began asserting their authority by turning fire extinguishers on the prisoners and demanding that they ... strip naked. Dr. Zimbardo [wrote] that the experiment was "a cautionary tale" about what can happen when "we underestimate the extent to which the power of social roles and external pressures can influence our actions." He saw parallels between the guards' behavior during his exercise and the conduct of U.S. soldiers who had abused prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Note: Read more about Zimbardo's revealing experiments. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind control from reliable major media sources.
A Department of Homeland Security inspector general's report from August reveals more than $7 billion remain in emergency funding that could be used for natural disasters – even though DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week none was available after Hurricane Helene. Mayorkas, 64, told reporters following the devastation of Helene in North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) "does not have the funds" to endure more hurricanes this fall. "We are expecting another hurricane hitting," the DHS chief said. "FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season." But DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari found in his Aug. 14 report that as of October 2022, FEMA had $8.3 billion in unliquidated funds meant to relieve declared disasters from 2012 or earlier. More than $7 billion of that "could potentially be returned to the Disaster Relief Fund," the report notes. So far, the feds have paid just $4 million to Americans hit by Helene. "It took one week for some of the county mayors in my home state to even get a phone call from FEMA, and Kamala Harris has the nerve to announce â€a dire humanitarian situation' in another country," Sen. Marsha Blackburn [said], referencing the VP's announcement of $157 million in US aid to Lebanon. The Biden-Harris administration has shelled out $1.4 billion [to] groups helping migrants settle in the US.
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Two large-scale, coordinated attacks this week rocked Lebanon – the latest iteration in a historical pattern of booby-trapping electronics. On Tuesday, one attack caused pagers to explode across Lebanon and Syria, injuring thousands of people and killing at least 12. A second wave of bombings unfolded on Wednesday, when explosives detonated inside a slew of hand-held radios across the country, leaving nine dead and 300 wounded. Israel, which is widely assumed to be behind both attacks, reportedly booby-trapped pagers used by Hezbollah members, carrying out a similar feat with the hand-held radios. The bombings appear to be supply-chain attacks – meaning the gadgets were tampered with or outright replaced with rigged devices containing explosives and a detonator at some point prior to arriving in the hands of the targets. The tactic of turning an electronic gadget into an explosive device ... dates back at least half a century. Field Manual 5-31, titled simply "Boobytraps" and first published by the U.S. Department of the Army in 1965, describes the titular objects as explosive charges "cunningly contrived to be fired by an unsuspecting person who disturbs an apparently harmless object or performs a presumably safe act." In 1996, the Israeli Security Agency, also known as Shin Bet, is said to used a similar technique to detonate a small charge of explosives near the ear of Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Abba Gana was only 10 years old when Boko Haram insurgents attacked his village in northern Nigeria in 2014. Along with the other boys his age, he was kidnapped. By the time he was 15, Mr. Gana had joined the ranks of the group's fighters, carrying out raids like the one on his own village. "Growing up with them, I thought I was fighting for a greater cause," he says of his time with the group, whose goal is to create a fundamentalist Islamic state. In 2022, he heard a government radio program urging Boko Haram members to surrender. "They said ... that we are welcome back [to our communities] if we repent," he recalls. For the first time, Mr. Gana says, he allowed himself to imagine that he might be able to go home. Today, some 160,000 former fighters and their families have been "reintegrated" into Nigerian society, according to estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The experiences of former child soldiers ... point to how complex those efforts can be. Many have struggled to find a place for themselves. But their supporters say it isn't impossible. "Kindness always pays," says Bulama Maina Audu, whose nephew was abducted by Boko Haram in 2014, and who now works with a group helping former child soldiers return home. "The fears and concerns of the communities they are returning to are completely legitimate, but they can only be addressed through dialogue," says Oliver Stolpe, UNODC country representative for Nigeria.
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On the sidelines of the International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual Shangri-La Dialogue in June, US Indo-Pacific Command chief Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo colorfully described the US military's contingency plan for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as flooding the narrow Taiwan Strait between the two countries with swarms of thousands upon thousands of drones, by land, sea, and air, to delay a Chinese attack enough for the US and its allies to muster additional military assets. "I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities," Paparo said, "so that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything." China has a lot of drones and can make a lot more drones quickly, creating a likely advantage during a protracted conflict. This stands in contrast to American and Taiwanese forces, who do not have large inventories of drones. The Pentagon's "hellscape" plan proposes that the US military make up for this growing gap by producing and deploying what amounts to a massive screen of autonomous drone swarms designed to confound enemy aircraft, provide guidance and targeting to allied missiles, knock out surface warships and landing craft, and generally create enough chaos to blunt (if not fully halt) a Chinese push across the Taiwan Strait. Planning a "hellscape" of hundreds of thousands of drones is one thing, but actually making it a reality is another.
Note: Learn more about warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
As the chief scientist of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. – the world's leading center for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence – I am convinced that finding life beyond Earth is not a matter of if but a matter of when. As recently as May of this year, scientists discovered a new potentially habitable planet, Gliese 12 b, just 40 light years away. This Earth-sized exoplanet, identified using NASA's TESS satellite system, orbits a cool red dwarf star and shares intriguing similarities with Venus. Nearly 200 hundred types of prebiotic organic molecules have been detected over decades of astronomical observation in interstellar clouds near the center of our galaxy. They include the kinds of molecules that could play a role in forming amino acids – those building blocks of life. The sheer number of potential alien worlds adds to the probability that life could be abundant in the universe. Tens of billions of Earth-sized planets could be located in the habitable zone of sun-like stars in our galaxy alone. Because the probability distribution in nature predicts more puddles than large lakes ... the universe is likely teeming with planets harboring that simple life. Even if only one in a billion of those planets has developed life that's made it to higher levels of complexity and intelligence, nearly a dozen advanced civilizations could populate our entire galaxy. Even if it were only one per 100 galaxies, there could still be billions of them throughout the cosmos.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
Body camera footage from a police officer who responded to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last month in Pennsylvania shows the intra-cop quarrels in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Video footage from body cameras on Butler Township Police Department officers, obtained by The Intercept, shed light on the chaos among law enforcement officials responding to the assassination attempt. The videos confirm previous reporting that a lack of communication and coordination between federal, state, and local police led to confusion at the rally and reflected insufficient preparation. Additional body camera footage shows one officer telling his colleagues minutes after the shooting that he warned the Secret Service well ahead of the rally to post agents at the building used by the shooter. One Butler Township police officer started to help other law enforcement teams climb onto a plastic shed to access the roof. As police teams scattered around the building debriefed on what happened, two Butler officers and the Secret Service agent stood looking at the storage shed. "Is that how he got up?" one police officer asked. "I have no idea," the other said. "I fucking told them they need to post the guys fucking over here," the first officer said to his colleague. "I told them that – the Secret Service – I told them that fucking Tuesday. I told them to post fucking guys over here." "I thought you guys were on the roof?" the other cop responded.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on assassinations and government corruption from reliable major media sources.
State House Republicans defended former colleague, presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in a letter sent Sunday to the Transportation Security Administration demanding she be removed from the federal government's terrorist watch list. The letter, sent to David P. Pekoske, TSA's director in Washington, D.C., noted that one of their "former Hawaii State House colleagues, one of Hawaii's â€favorite daughters', former Congresswoman, former Presidential Candidate, and combat veteran is on your TSA terrorist watch list." "We understand that you are harassing her with your Air Marshals from flight to flight. We strongly urge you to immediately withdraw her name from the Quiet Skies program and/or provide full public transparency of the TSA's reasons for maligning her name and reputation," read the letter. Gabbard ... said that her inclusion on the watch list "is clearly an act of political retaliation." "It's no accident that I was placed on the Quiet Skies list the day after I did a prime-time interview warning the American people about ... why Kamala Harris would be bad for our country if elected as President and Commander in Chief. What hurts me the most is the fact that like so many Americans I enlisted because of the terrorist attack on 9/11, deployed to war zones to go after those terrorists, still serve in the US Army for over 21 years, and now my government is surveilling me as a potential domestic terrorist," Gabbard said. "The real pain this has caused is the stress of forever looking over my shoulder, wondering if and how I am being watched, what secret terror watch list I'm on, and having no transparency or due process."
Note: Why is the government targeting individuals who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Once upon a time, you could have yourself a nice little Saturday of stocking up at Costco (using your sister's membership card, naturally), before hitting up a museum (free admission with your 15-year-old expired student ID) or settling into a reality TV binge sesh (streaming on your college roommate's ex-boyfriend's Netflix login). Thanks to the fine-tuning of the tech that Corporate America uses to police subscriptions, those freeloading days are over. Costco and Disney this month took a page from the Netflix playbook and announced they are cracking down on account sharers. Want to put on "Frozen" for the kids so you can have two hours to do literally anything else? You're going to need a Disney+ login associated with your household. The tech that tracks your IP address and can read your face has gotten more sophisticated. Retailers and streaming services are increasingly turning to status-verification tech that make it harder for folks to claim student discounts on services like Amazon Prime or Spotify beyond graduation. Cracking down on sharing was hugely successful for Netflix. For years, the streaming giant turned a blind eye to password sharing because doing so allowed more people to experience the product and, crucially, come to rely on it. Netflix kept growing and growing until 2022, when [it] cashed in on its brand loyalty, betting that it had made itself indispensable to enough viewers that they'd be willing to cough up $7-$15 a month to keep their access.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
On July 16, the S&P 500 index, one of the most widely cited benchmarks in American capitalism, reached its highest-ever market value: $47 trillion. 1.4 percent of those companies were worth more than $16 trillion, the greatest concentration of capital in the smallest number of companies in the history of the U.S. stock market. The names are familiar: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet, and Tesla. All of them, too, have made giant bets on artificial intelligence. For all their similarities, these trillion-dollar-plus companies have been grouped together under a single banner: the Magnificent Seven. In the past month, though, these giants of the U.S. economy have been faltering. A recent rout led to a collapse of $2.6 trillion in their market value. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs issued a deeply skeptical report on the industry, calling it too expensive, too clunky, and just simply not as useful as it has been chalked up to be. "There's not a single thing that this is being used for that's cost-effective at this point," Jim Covello, an influential Goldman analyst, said on a company podcast. AI is not going away, and it will surely become more sophisticated. This explains why, even with the tempering of the AI-investment thesis, these companies are still absolutely massive. When you talk with Silicon Valley CEOs, they love to roll their eyes at their East Coast skeptics. Banks, especially, are too cautious, too concerned with short-term goals, too myopic to imagine another world.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
On June 28, 2009, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a military coup. The coup led to nearly 13 years of right-wing rule, marked by collusion with drug trafficking organizations, widespread privatization, violence, repression, and a significant migrant exodus. "During these 13 years that the right wing was in power, they were fully supported by the U.S. government," [said Zelaya]. "There was a lot of repression. There were killings of activists and land defenders throughout the country. Also, a lot of right-wing neoliberal policies that were put in place. We have no preference in [US] elections, between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. In the end, they act the same. They act in the interest of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the interest of a global elite that, through capitalism, has already taken over all the assets of wealth: the rivers, the seas, the forests, oil – the world elite manages it all through the speculative financial system. The planet's main resources, of raw economic goods, are those that influence the United States' government. Here, the coup plotters don't even get a traffic ticket – not even a slap on the wrist. Instead, they are offered political parties as if they are a democratic option. It is so absurd: the Honduran right, which put the generals in office who carried out the coup, proclaim themselves to be a democratic alternative. Those who murdered, those who looted, are democratic alternatives – totally absurd."
Note: Read more about the narco-state that the US supported in Honduras. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
Real estate companies are making an explicit appeal to wartime patriotism, leading with the conflict as a selling point and a reason to invest. In late June, a company called My Israel Home hosted an expo at a Los Angeles synagogue catering to a specific clientele: Jewish Americans looking to buy a new home in Israel – or on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Similar real estate fairs have popped up across North America this year ... and several have faced protests as the war on Gaza has brought the issue of Israeli settlements and Palestinian sovereignty to the fore. On websites largely tailored for Jewish American buyers looking to move to Israel, prospective homeowners can browse properties that include listings for homes in settlement communities, which offer the typical trappings of suburban life. Around a dozen real estate firms have participated in real estate fairs organized by My Israel Home across North America this year. Six of these firms are actively marketing at least two dozen separate properties for sale located within eight different West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, according to their online listings. Other real estate firms commonly list dozens of West Bank properties on their sites. West Bank settlements have long drawn criticism from the international community, which regards the settlements as illegal, in violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions. Criticism of settlements have only intensified in recent months amid a spike in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied territory.
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The tobacco company Philip Morris International has been accused of "manipulating science for profit" through funding research and advocacy work with scientists. Campaigners say that leaked documents from PMI and its Japanese affiliate also reveal plans to target politicians, doctors and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as part of the multinational's marketing strategy to attract non-smokers to its heated tobacco product, IQOS. A paper from researchers at the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath said that Philip Morris Japan (PMJ), funded a Kyoto University study into smoking cessation via a third-party research organisation. The researchers said they could find no public record of PMJ's involvement, although a PMI spokesperson said its involvement had been attributed when the results were presented at a scientific conference in Greece in 2021. PMJ paid about Ł20,000 a month to FTI-Innovations, a life sciences consultancy run by a Tokyo University professor, for tasks such as promoting PMI's science and products at academic events. In one internal email, a PMJ employee claimed they had been told "to keep it a secret". Dr Sophie Braznell, one of [the paper's] authors, said: "The manipulation of science for profit harms us all, especially policymakers and consumers. It slows down and undermines public health policies, while encouraging the widespread use of harmful products."
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Research from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) details the widespread burdens that plastic pollution places on US cities and states, and argues that plastic producers may be breaking public-nuisance, product-liability and consumer-protection laws. It comes as cities such as Baltimore have begun to file claims against plastic manufacturers, but the authors write that existing cases "are likely only the beginning, as more states and municipalities grapple with the challenges of accumulating plastic waste and microplastics contamination." Taxpayers foot the bill to clean plastic pollution from streets and waterways, and research shows people could ingest the equivalent of one credit card's worth of plastic per week. From 1950 to 2000, global plastic production soared from 2m tons to 234m tons annually. And over the next 20 years, production more than doubled to 460m tons in 2019. As the public grew concerned about plastic pollution, the industry responded with "sophisticated marketing campaigns" to shift blame from producers to consumers – for instance, by popularizing the term litterbug. Plastic has clogged sewer grates, leading to increased flooding. It has also exposed populations to microplastics. The report outlines different legal theories that could help governments pursue accountability. Nuisance could account for the harms themselves ... and consumer-protection law could be used to combat deceitful marketing practices.
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Each year, US cities lose an estimated 36 million trees to development, disease and old age, many of which ultimately end up in landfills. Losing these urban trees – known to help cool their neighborhoods, lower carbon emissions and improve mental health, among other benefits – costs an estimated $96 million annually. In Philadelphia, a partnership is giving the City of Brotherly Love's fallen trees new life. Philadelphia Parks & Rec joined forces with Cambium Carbon, a Washington, D.C.-based startup that repurposes waste wood, and PowerCorpsPHL, a local nonprofit that creates job opportunities for unemployed and under-employed 18- to 30-year-olds, to launch the Reforestation Hub. Rather than sending trees straight to the landfill or the city's organic recycling center to simply become mulch or wood chips, the Reforestation Hub (which is co-located in the city's organic recycling center) will salvage as many trees as it can. As many as possible will be turned into Cambium's Carbon Smart Wood, which stores 5.23 pounds of carbon in each board foot. Fifteen percent of sales that come out of the hub will be donated to Tree Philly at the end of each year to support tree planting and maintenance across the city. While the hub formally launched only recently, in the year and a half that it's taken to get the infrastructure in place, it has already diverted 542 logs to create 28,000 board feet of Carbon Smart Wood.
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Aliens might be living among us, according to a study by Harvard academics. The study by Harvard University's Human Flourishing program further puts forward the idea that UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), may be spaceships visiting their Earth-based alien friends. The researchers have investigated so-called â€cryptoterrestrials'. These could be disguising themselves as humans to fit in, may have come from Earth's future or might have descended from intelligent dinosaurs. The study was created to offer an alternate "unconventional" explanation for UAP sightings and to hypothesize what they might mean, and "the possibility that UAP may involve forms of non-human intelligence (NHI) that are already present in Earth's environment in some sense" that exist "alongside us in distinct stealth". The paper reads: "The author became increasingly aware of the depth of evidence and theory that also tentatively supports another ultraterrestrial explanation: the "cryptoterrestrial" hypothesis (CTH) – our focus here – which holds that UAP may reflect activities of NHIs concealed here on Earth (e.g., underground) and its environs."
Note: Watch our 15-min fascinating video vlog from this year's 10th anniversary of the world's largest UFO/UAP conference. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
This week, images were beamed back to Earth of China's flag unfurled on the Moon. It's the country's fourth landing there. In the past 12 months, India and Japan have also set down spacecraft on the lunar surface. In February, US firm Intuitive Machines became the first private company to put a lander on the Moon. Meanwhile, Nasa wants to send humans back to the Moon, with its Artemis astronauts aiming for a 2026 landing. China says it will send humans to the Moon by 2030. And instead of fleeting visits, the plan is to build permanent bases. A UN agreement from 1967 says no nation can own the Moon. Instead, the fantastically named Outer Space Treaty says it belongs to everyone, and that any exploration has to be carried out for the benefit of all humankind and in the interests of all nations. While the lunar terrain looks rather barren, it contains minerals, including rare earths, metals like iron and titanium - and helium too, which is used in everything from superconductors to medical equipment. Estimates for the value of all this vary wildly, from billions to quadrillions. So it's easy to see why some see the Moon as a place to make lots of money. In 1979, an international treaty declared that no state or organisation could claim to own the resources there. Only 17 countries are party to it, and this does not include any countries who've been to the Moon. The US passed a law in 2015 allowing its citizens and industries to extract, use and sell any space material.
Note: Along with a rush to mine minerals from the moon, a new arms race in space is starting, led by private companies like SpaceX.
In recent weeks, Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have been taking victory laps for the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, a law intended to create jobs and fund innovation in a key global industry. It has already launched a series of grants, incentives and research proposals to help America regain its cutting-edge status in global semiconductor manufacturing. But quietly, in a March spending bill, appropriators in Congress shifted $3.5 billion that the Commerce Department was hoping to use for those grants and pushed it into a separate Pentagon program called Secure Enclave, which is not mentioned in the original law. The diversion of money from a flagship Biden initiative is a case study in how fragile Washington's monumental spending programs can be in practice. Several members of Congress involved in the CHIPS law say they were taken by surprise to see the money shifted to Secure Enclave, a classified project to build chips in a special facility for defense and intelligence needs. Critics say the shift in CHIPS money undermines an important policy by moving funds from a competitive public selection process meant to boost a domestic industry to an untried and classified project likely to benefit only one company. No company has been named yet to execute the project, but interviews reveal that chipmaking giant Intel lobbied for its creation, and is still considered the frontrunner for the money.
Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Over the course of his reporting career, Sebastian Junger has had several close calls with death. In the introduction to his memoir, "In My Time of Dying" ... he describes his own near-drowning while surfing. On June 16, 2020, Junger found himself face-to-face with mortality in a way he'd never been. One minute he was enjoying quiet time with his wife at a remote cabin on Cape Cod in Massachusetts; the next, he was in excruciating pain from a ruptured aneurysm. "It never crossed my mind to start believing in God," [said Junger]. "But what did happen was I was like, maybe we don't understand the universe on a fundamental level. Maybe we just don't understand that this world we experience is just one reality and that there's some reality we can't understand that's engaged when we die. All this stuff happens – ghosts and telepathy and the dead appearing in the rooms of the dying – that's consistent in every culture in the world. Maybe anything's possible. If there's ever an example of "anything can happen," it's the universe popping into existence from nothing. Two nights before I went to the hospital, I dreamed that I had died and was looking down on my grieving family. Because I had that experience, which I still can't explain, it occurred to me that maybe I had died and ... was a ghost. I went into this very weird existential Escher drawing. Am I here, or not? At one point, I said to my wife, "How do I know I didn't die?" She said, "You're here, right in front of me. You survived.""
Note: Sebastian Junger is an American journalist, author and filmmaker focused on wartime issues. Explore more positive stories like this about near-death experiences.
"Community-owned cooperative real estate" ... was developed a decade ago by a nonprofit legal group and a nonprofit neighborhood group in Oakland, Calif., and has been refined by legal and development groups in Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., and other cities. The cooperative strategy enables neighborhood groups to finance unconventional construction or renovation projects that banks and institutional lenders, which prefer strong cash-flow operations, won't touch. Much of the approach stems from efforts by the federal and local governments to make it easier for small investors to put money into real estate developments. Federal rules once barred small investors – those whose net worth is less than $1 million or who make less than $200,000 a year in income – from participating in development projects; that changed in 2015. At the same time, a few states enacted laws allowing small investors to put their money into local developments. "Until that change, 90 percent of the residents in a community couldn't make direct investments in a real estate project," said Chris Miller [with] the National Coalition for Community Capital, a nonprofit group. "Michigan allows nonaccredited investors to invest up to $10,000 in a project now." In Oakland, the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative is widely credited with being one of the first community groups to apply the community-owned cooperative concept to a neighborhood project.
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