Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1078
May 18, 2018
Trump urged Postal Service to double package rates for Amazon: Washington Post
President Donald Trump has personally pushed the postmaster general to double the rates the U.S. Postal Service charges Amazon.com and other companies to ship packages.
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May 18, 2018
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Donald Trump has personally pushed the postmaster general to double the rates the U.S. Postal Service charges Amazon.com and other companies to ship packages, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing three unnamed sources.
Postmaster General Megan Brennan resisted Trump?s suggestion in private conversations in 2017 and 2018, telling him that package delivery rates are set by contract and reviewed by an independent commission, and that the arrangements have helped the financially challenged Postal Service, the sources told the newspaper. Trump has claimed without evidence that deliveries for Amazon were costing the service money.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment and a spokesperson for the Postal Service could not be immediately reached.
(Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Tim Ahmann)
Vía One America News Network https://ift.tt/2k9rvYB
The ‘Deep State’ Is Very Real, But Trump’s White House Is A Part Of It
It’s becoming more and more clear that president Donald Trump’s White House, at least in some capacity, is a part of the same deep state the president promised to eliminate by “draining the swamp.”
Mac Slavo
Most don’t have to look very hard to see clear evidence that there’s a deep state. But now it’s becoming even more clear that president Donald Trump’s White House, at least in some capacity, is a part of the same deep state the president promised to eliminate by “draining the swamp.”
Trump does indeed have a problem with people working against him, but some of those people are awfully close by…
Leaks to the media have plagued Trump’s presidency since his first day in office, and a new report on leakers’ motives opens a window into the extent of the subterfuge. “To be honest, it probably falls into a couple of categories,” one White House official told Axios‘s Jonathan Swan. “The first is personal vendettas. And two is to make sure there’s an accurate record of what’s really going on in the White House.” Many…
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Al-Naqba: Palestine’s 200-Year History of Ethnic Cleansing
Al-Naqba: The Palestinian Catastrophe Episode 1 (1799-1936)
Al Jazeera (2013)
Film Review
This is the most comprehensive documentary of the Zionist movement I’ve ever watched. The cinematography is incredibly beautiful and moving and includes scarce footage of vibrant pre-World War II Palestine.
I continue to be surprised by all the important events Western accounts leave out regarding the history of Zionism. Contrary to Western belief, the Jewish colonization of Israel didn’t began in 1916 with the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement, but with Napoleon’s 1799 proposal to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine under French protection.
In 1840, when the British Foreign office tried to persuade the Sultan of the Ottoman empire to open Palestine to Jewish immigration, there were only 3,000 Jews in Palestine.
In the 1880s, as the power of the Ottoman empire started to decline, French banking magnate Baron de Rothschild openly campaigned to expand Jewish immigration, spending 40 million francs on the establishment of Jewish settlements in Palestine. The term Zionism* was first coined in 1885, with the first Zionist conference held in Basel Switzerland in 1906.
In 1907, as western Europe actively worked to usurp Ottoman colonies, the British Foreign Office called for the creation of a buffer state in the Arab-dominated Middle East – one that would be friendly to Europeans and hostile to Arabs.
The same year, 40,000 Palestinian farmers were forced off their lands by Jewish immigrants from Europe and Yemen.
By the close of World War I, when Palestine became a British protectorate, there were 50,000 Jews in Israel, 100,000 Arab Christians and 400,000 Arab Muslims.
In 1922, when the League of Nations charged Britain with preparing for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, it was opposed by US president Woodrow Wilson.
During the 1920s, Jewish immigration continued to increase, accompanied by increasing confiscation of Arab lands. Between 1922-25, 33,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine. Between 1925-1930, the country was flooded by an additional 175,000 immigrants.
Palestine’s ruler, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, approached the issue of Jewish immigration by trying to curry favor with the British colonizers. In contrast Arab (both Muslim and Christian) farmers who were being displaced began organizing and protesting Jewish immigration from 1925 on. The initially peaceful protests were brutally and barbarically suppressed by British troops, in the same fashion as India’s independence movement. Hundreds of protestors were jailed, executed or forcibly exiled.
As Jewish immigration continued to increase (42,000 in 1934 and 62,000 in 1935, The al-Qassam movement, which called for violent revolution to expel the British, launched a six-month Palestine-wide general strike in 1936.
*An international movement calling for the establishment of a majority Jewish state in Palestine via forced displacement of its Arab occupants.
May 17, 2018
Tesla’s Giant Battery Saving Consumers Huge Dollars – Gas Turbines in Trouble
General Electric, Siemens, and Mitsubishi are all scaling back production of gas turbines – due to the greater economic viability of storage batteries for renewable energy.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week
General Electric,Siemens, and Mitsubishi, all scaling back production of gas turbines. This is one reason why. Future muddier for gas, bright for batteries.
I’ve asked the question before: Will Gas break wind? or Will Wind Pass Gas?
The Tesla big battery in South Australia has already taken a 55 per cent share in the state’s frequency and ancillary services market, and lowered prices in that market by 90 per cent, new data has shown.
The stunning numbers on the economics of the country’s first utility-scale battery were presented at the Australian Energy Week conference in Melbourne on Thursday by McKinsey and Co partner Godart van Gendt.
Speaking as part of a panel on the leading technologies and strategies that will help manage the transition to renewables in Australia, van Gendt said the data was more evidence that battery storage would “play a very big role.”
He…
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Europe to ditch petrodollar for Iran deals
The European Union is planning to switch payments to the euro for its oil purchases from Iran, eliminating US dollar transactions.
AGR Daily 60 Second News Bites
The European Union is planning to switch payments to the euro for its oil purchases from Iran, eliminating US dollar transactions, a diplomatic source claimed.
Brussels has been at odds with Washington over the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, which was reached during the administration of Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has pledged to re-impose sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
“I’m privy to the information that the EU is going to shift from dollar to euro to pay for crude from Iran,” the source told the agency.
Earlier this week, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that the foreign ministers of the UK, France, Germany, and Iran had agreed to work out practical solutions in response to Washington’s move in the next few weeks. The bloc is reportedly planning to maintain and deepen economic ties with Iran, including in the area of oil and gas supplies.
via EnNews
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Sign Petition: Don’t let Big Pharma Buy Our Health Care System via Secret Payments to Trump
When Trump became President, the pharmaceutical corporation Novartis entered into a secret $1.2 million contract with Michael Cohen, Trump’s corrupt lawyer. Novartis has been involved in a global bribery scandal that ousted their previous CEO, in each country, working to prevent government-scale price negotiations.
Petition link: Social Security Works
AGR Daily 60 Second News Bites
Wonder why your drug prices are so high? Here’s your answer.
When Donald Trump was running for President, he proposed to let Medicare negotiate lower drug prices. He stated at the time that anyone who opposed that tactic was “in Big Pharma’s pocket.”
When Trump became President, the pharmaceutical corporation Novartis entered into a secret $1.2 million contract with Michael Cohen, Trump’s corrupt lawyer. Novartis has been involved in a global bribery scandal that ousted their previous CEO, in each country, working to prevent government-scale price negotiations.
Last week, Big Pharma got what they paid for: Donald Trump broke his promise on Medicare and drug prices, and sent Pharma stocks soaring. This is why drug prices are so high. Corrupt pharmaceutical corporations are spending their money protecting their profits.
This isn’t how our country should work. Drug prices are already too high. Medicare negotiation is one of the best tools…
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May 16, 2018
Taxing Amazon and Starbucks: Seattle Passes Corporate Wealth Tax to Fund Low Income Housing
According to the The Guardian, Seattle City Council has passed a new tax that will charge large corporations $275 annually per worker to help address the city’s growing homelessness crisis.
About 60% of the tax revenue will go to new housing projects for low and middle-income Seattle residents. The remainder would go to homeless services, including shelter beds, camps and overnight parking.
Source: Tax Amazon: Seattle Passes Corporate Wealth Tax to Fund Housing
The End of Petrodollar Era? How Trump’s Iran Deal Undermines the Dollar – bY SPUTNIK
On May 14, Reuters reported that Washington’s decision to re-impose sanctions on Iran had bolstered investor interest in trading crude in yuan instead of US dollars.
© REUTERS / China Daily
China’s Petro-Yuan Contracts on Steady Rise Amid Renewed US Sanctions on Iran
However, the launch of the first-ever yuan-denominated oil futures on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange by China on March 26 and the global role of euro could serve as a game changer upsetting Trump’s plan. On May 14, Reuters reported that Washington’s decision to re-impose sanctions on Iran had bolstered investor interest in trading crude in yuan instead of US dollars. As a result, Shanghai crude oil futures ISCc1 have seen a steady rise in trading reaching a record 250,000 lots on May 9, a day after Trump’s pullout from the JCPOA.
The crux of the matter is that the yuan-denominated transactions are non-transparent for US financial regulators, the economist pointed out, assuming that Chinese and European consumers could use Shanghai as a “black box” to evade US sanctions while buying Iranian crude.
According to Irina Fyodorova, a senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), China has experience circumventing…
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Meet Noam Chomsky: Academic Gatekeeper
Meet Noam Chomsky: Academic Gatekeeper
James Corbett (2012)
Film Review
This documentary explores prominent dissident Noam Chomsky’s peculiarly pro-corporate neoliberal positions on the Federal Reserve, the JFK assassination and 9-11.
Using archival footage of Chomsky presentations, Corbett begins by outlining issues in which he (and most of the activist community) share Chomsky’s political views.
Obama was for worse (ie anti-democratic) than Bush.
Drone strikes are terror weapons.
Bush merely tortured people, Obama assassinated them without trial.
The military Industrial Complex only survives thanks to corporate welfare.
The ruling elite exerts control over the US population mainly via propaganda and indoctrination.
Corbett continues by examining other areas of activist concern that Chomsky totally refuses to address – specifically the Federal Reserve and the role of private banks in money creation, the JFK assassination and government insider involvement in 9-11.
Corbett, like many of us, finds the arguments Chomsky advances on these issues totally irrational and contradictory.
For example, it’s totally mystifying to hear an “anarcho-syndicalist” like Chomsky sing the praises of private central banks and their control of money creation.
In contrast, his dismissal of any “conspiracy” in the JFK assassination seems to be based on a deliberate lie. He claims to have never “looked at” any of the evidence. A prominent JFK researcher disputes, based on a four-hour face-to-face meeting during which he shared a selection of assassination research with Chomsky.
Chomsky’s dismissal of insider involvement in 9-11 is just plain bizarre. His disingenuous claim that the 9-11 Trust movement is made up of non-activists who have spent an hour studying physics, architecture and engineering on the Internet is a slap in the face to the over 2,500 professional architects and engineers who make up Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth. As his claim that the 9-11 Truth movement diverts attention from “more serious activism.”
In 2018, Chomsky further solidified is neoliberal credentials with his call for US military involvement in Syria: Chomsky Among Progressives Calling for US Intervention in Syria
Caveat: Several readers have cautioned me that Corbett himself (a prominent climate denier) may also be controlled opposition. In this case, I think his analysis of Chomsky’s neoliberal contradictions are spot on.
May 15, 2018
Shop At Thrift Stores? You Bet!
A woman after my own heart. I have bought nearly all my clothes (except for shoes, socks and underwear) in thrift stores for more than 30 years.
I recently spent a weekend in Ventura, California, and the main reason I go there is to visit their thrift stores on Main Street. Thrift store shopping has become one of my newest hobbies! From the SPARC Second Chance Store, to the Goodwill, there are so many great thrift stores to visit, a person could get lost in all the bargins found!
If you’re not someone that’s picky about wearing or using items that belonged to someone else, and you like to save money, then walking through rows and rows in any given thrift store could become your new passion as well. When I visited my first thrift store, I still remember how I felt going inside. It was a Goodwill in Hollywood, California, on Sunset Blvd. The first thing I noticed was that the store itself was huge! Rows and rows of used clothes, toys, shoes, kitchen items, books…
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The Most Revolutionary Act
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