Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1091

Couple spied on, raided and kidnapped by feds for peaceful posts questioning gov’t

Leach told The Free Thought Project that the investigators gave “no other reason for the raid than inflammatory social media posts.”

tomfernandez28's Blog

By Free Thought Project

The owners of a tactical supply company were violently arrested and then detained for hours with no explanation while their home was raided by a SWAT Team and their assets were seized—but the evidence used against them by police had nothing to do with alleged illegal activities.

In an exclusive interview with The Free Thought Project, Sarah Leach said that she and her husband, Andrew, were ambushed and detained by police for more than 13 hours before they finally received an explanation for their arrest. The evidence the officers claimed to have against them came in the form of a previous error made by state police and a stack of papers that contained detailed screenshots of posts from their social media accounts.

“The raid was a result of two things, according to the Riverside Sheriff’s Investigator who interviewed me after having detained me for 13 hours…

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Looting Africa

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The Looting Machine: Warlords, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth

Tom Burgis

Harper Collins (2017)

Book Review

This book centers around something global economists refer to as the “Dutch curse.” In 1959, the discovery of oil in the Netherlands led to massive unemployment outside the oil industry. A big increase in dollars generated by oil exports caused major inflation in the local currency. This made imports cheaper than locally produced goods, shutting down hundreds of Dutch businesses and putting thousands out of work.

It’s typical of mineral and oil/gas mining everywhere (including here in New Plymouth) that these industries require vast capital investment but employ only small numbers of workers. According to Burgis, it was the “Dutch curse” that resulted in Russian’s oil-fueled criminal oligarchy prior to the rise of Putin. As the continent richest in natural resources, Africa, which has been ruthlessly exploited by multinational corporations, has a severe case of the “Dutch curse.”

Although multinationals pay far less than market value for oil, gas and precious minerals, they pay corrupt puppet dictators enough that they don’t need to tax their citizens. Burgis maintains this absence of taxation results in a lack of accountability to their citizenry. Instead of holding leaders to account for their failure to provide basic infrastructure, citizens of “resource states” are far more likely to angle for their share of the loot. Retaining power becomes a simple matter of maintain elaborate patronage (payoff) systems and harsh military/security networks.

Burgis also refutes the myth that Africa’s multiple civil wars stem from tribal and religious conflict. Most African wars are pure resource wars (often triggered by CIA and French and British intelligence), with the conflict used as a cover for resource smuggling and even lower net cost to multinationals.

The US government has attempted to crack down on its own corporations via stricter enforcement (since 2000) of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and a section of the 2010 Dodd Frank Act that prohibits the the purchase of Coltan* from armed rebel groups. The new law, which has done little to reduce Coltan smuggling, has opened the door to a Chinese monopoly on the Coltan market.

The Looting Machine presents a detailed country by country analysis, as well as an examination of the Chinese company responsible for most private investment in Africa (there’s less publicly available information about investment by state-owned Chinese companies). Both engage in far more infrastructure development than Western agents do.

Angola – principle export oil, with 70% of oil ventures owned by Hong Kong billionaire Sam Pa, operating as Queensway Group or Chinese International Fund. Half of Angolan residents get by on less than $1.25/day.
Congo – second most important produce of Coltan outside of Australia, also gold, tin, tungsten and diamonds. Residents live on less than $1.00/day.
Nigeria – oil and gas. Cotton/textile industry that flourished in 1980s shut down (causing mass unemployment) by continuous flood of smuggled Chinese counterfeit textiles. Sam Pa and the French oil company Total have teamed up to challenge Shell’s longstanding monopoly on Nigerian oil.
South Africa – rich gold, diamond and platinum exports financed the creation of the apartheid state, in which a tiny white minority controlled the entire economy. Since the fall of apartheid in 1994, this minority has been joined by a handful of Black entrepreneurs.
Botswana – diamonds. Somewhat protected from “Dutch curse” by the creation of value added industries that cut and polish their diamonds prior to export.
Guinea – among world’s richest reserves of iron and aluminum. Bought out by Sam Pa as a result of Western sanctions.
Niger – rich in uranium and the world’s poorest country. France previously held monopoly on Niger’s uranium industry, being replaced by Queensway group based on agreement to invest in infrastructure development and employ local labor. (In most countries, Chinese investors import Chinese labor.)
Ghana – gold. Financed by Chinese Investment Fund after IMF tried to impose structural adjustment conditions** to refinance a World Bank Loan.
Zimbabwe – diamonds, platinum, nickel, gold. Mugabe used revenues from export industries to finance particularly brutal security force. Diamond industry bought out by Queensway as direct result of Western sanctions.

*Coltan is a rare precious metal in high demand for cellphones and laptops.

**IMF structural adjustment conditions typically require debtor companies to privatize state owned industries, legislate deep cuts in social services and accept extensive foreign investment as a condition of receiving World Bank loans.

 

 

 

 

Bombshell Report: Yulia Skripal Says Her Father is “All Right”

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)

According to the official UK narrative, Sergey and Yulia Skripal, along with police detective Nick Bailey, were poisoned by a deadly military-grade novichock nerve agent. 

No antidote exists, no recovery possible. The official narrative failed to explain exposure causes death in minutes.

From March 4 to recent days, the Tory narrative changed several times, explained in a late March article as follows:

First it was claimed father and daughter Skripal were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent while eating lunch at a Salisbury restaurant.

The narrative switched to Yulia unwittingly transporting the nerve agent planted in her luggage on her flight from Moscow to London.

The story then shifted to Skripal’s BMW, the deadly toxin smeared on its handle, suggesting he and Yulia were poisoned this way.

Next came the claim about the nerve agent perhaps in aerosolized form affecting them through the vehicle’s ventilation system.

The latest official version claims the alleged nerve agent was smeared on the front door of Skripal’s home.

If any of the above accounts were valid, the Skripals, Bailey and at least 38 reported others exposed to the same toxin would be dead – surely many others as well.

Yet a month later, no one died. Bailey recovered enough to be discharged from hospitalization. Yulia’s doctor said she improved markedly. Days earlier, Sergey was reported in stable condition.

The military-grade poisoning claim is a bald-faced lie, obvious to anyone following events and reports. . .

Source: Bombshell Report: Yulia Skripal Says Her Father is “All Right”

GAO Reports That Black Students Receive Disproportionate Discipline

The GAO released fresh evidence Wednesday that black students, boys and students with disabilities are all disproportionately disciplined in the nation’s public schools.

Diane Ravitch's blog

This was posted by Politico Morning Education.

I don’t know which outrages me more:

1) the administration’s efforts to link the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to the Obama guidelines that sought to reduce disparate punishment based on race. As Politico points out, there is no evidence to connect the Obama guidelines with the shooting.

2) the statement that Betsy DeVos opened every meeting yesterday with an acknowledgement of the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the suggestion that she was engaged in fulfilling his life’s work. What Chutzpah! She has been trying to slash the budget of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and appointed a woman to run it who is opposed to its mission.

Politico writes:

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE GAO’S SCHOOL DISCIPLINE REPORT: The GAO released fresh evidence Wednesday that black students, boys and students with disabilities are all disproportionately disciplined…

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Quitting Facebook Reduces Cancer Risk, Study Finds

A recent study in Journal of Social Psychology reveals that people who quit Facebook for just 5 days experienced a drop in cortisol – a stress hormone that has been linked to the development and progression of cancer.

Nwo Report

Quitting Facebook can lower your chances of getting cancer, according to an astonishing study published in the Journal of Social Psychology. 

Researchers found that people who quit Facebook for just 5 days would experience a drop in cortisol –  a stress hormone that has been linked to the development and progression of cancer.

“I have been a Facebook user for 10 years. I had talked to my co-authors about how I occasionally had to ‘quit’ Facebook from time to time because I found it overwhelming as the number of my friends grew,” said Eric Vanman, lead author of the study.

“We talked and realised that this was happening to them and their friends too. Whenever I would quit Facebook, I’d feel an immediate sense of relief that lasted for days. But then I would start feeling like I was missing out (FOMO!) and I would have to rejoin. The…

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Childhood Allergy Epidemic: Are the Increasing Number of Vaccines Injected into Children to Blame?

According to Robert F Kennedy Jr, it stands to reason that vaccines— which purposefully set out to “reprogram immunity”—are major contenders as allergy triggers.

AGR Daily 60 Second News Bites

Over-vaccinated Children and the Allergy Epidemic

by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Chairman, World Mercury Project

The global prevalence of allergic diseases is skyrocketing, affecting 30% to 40% of the world’s population.

Allergic conditions include food allergies, anaphylaxis, asthma, eczema, allergic rhinitis, allergic conjunctivitis and reactions to drugs and insects.

Often, these burdensome conditions start young, are overlapping and have the potential to be severe or fatal.

A study of children with peanut allergy, for example, found that the median age of onset was 12 months; 40% to 60% of peanut-allergic children had concurrent asthma, atopic dermatitis, and/or other food allergies; and over a third (35%) had experienced anaphylaxis upon initial peanut exposure. Anaphylactic outcomes are worse when multiple allergic conditions are present.

…an escalating number of children have been hospitalized for food allergies or have visited an emergency department for primarily food-related anaphylaxis over the past couple of decades.

In…

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Haitians Want No Charity, Prefer World Freeing Them from Fake Humanitarian NGOs

Of the billions that the concerned people of the world gave to Red Cross, the humanitarian agency was only able to build 7 houses for the Haitians.

Covert Geopolitics

Haiti was struck by a manufactured disaster back on 12 January 2011 to pave the way for US ground invasion, NGO exploitation, and the corporate systematic plunder of its natural resources including gold. Of the billions that the concerned people of the world gave to Red Cross, the humanitarian agency was only able to build 7 houses for the Haitians.

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Swiss Physician Rejects Medical Status Quo

by Charlie Smith

Dr. Thomas Rau’s biological-medicine approach builds up the body’s strength.

Swiss physician and alternative-medicine guru Thomas Rau isn’t afraid to utter the unspeakable.

“The main message is chronic diseases are curable,” the medical director of the Paracelsus Clinic says on the line from his office just outside of Zurich.

Rau, author of The Swiss Secret to Optimal Health: Dr. Rau’s Diet for Whole Body Healing, maintains that several chronic diseases—including multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Hashimoto’s disease — can be successfully treated by strengthening intestinal membranes and microorganisms in the gut. He even claims to have had success treating cancer patients in this way.

“We should be proseptic, not antiseptic,” he says.

At the Paracelsus Clinic, which employs 92 staff and treats 300 patients per day, staff conduct comprehensive stool analyses, examine fatty-acid profiles, and conduct environmental-toxin tests on patients. According to Rau, the goal is to determine the degree to which the patient’s body has degenerated.

Louis Pasteur, a 19th-century French chemist, is credited with discovering how bacteria cause disease by invading the body. Antibiotics work on the premise that by killing bacteria, the patient will be cured.

Rau turns that notion on its head by maintaining that a deteriorating human body provides fertile opportunities for outside pathogens to flourish. But if the body is sufficiently upgraded—and, according to him, 80 percent of the immune system’s T cells are in the gut—then these outside agents will not pack nearly as much punch. So he practises “biological medicine” by focusing attention on building up the body’s defences.

“We work for the body rather than against the bacteria,” Rau says.

He mentions that testing has demonstrated that a large number of Swiss residents of the Rhine Valley carry the spirochete bacteria that cause Lyme disease in their bodies, but show no symptoms. “They were all positive for Lyme, but they were as healthy as can be,” he says.

Rau also claims that neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, are linked to an imbalance between the body’s deterioration and its capacity to rebuild itself. “ALS is, of course, not my favourite [disease to treat] because there is not a real cure,” he concedes.

The physician and author is also a staunch critic of antibiotics because he feels that these drugs destroy the intestinal microbes. He rejects the use of anti-inflammatory medications, and says the worst are probably the anticholesterol remedies.

“We always have to integrate the intestines in all the healing processes because when the intestines are good, the upbuilding forces get better,” he says. . .

via Swiss physician Thomas Rau rejects medical status quo

The Trump Movement: How it All Began

Trumpland: Kill All the Normies

Fusion (2018)

Film Review

This documentary, featuring Kill All the Normies* author Angela Nagle, examines the origin of the political movement that elected an openly racist, misogynist and xenophobe to the US presidency. Nagle believes that Trump initially gathered most of his support from the “dark” sections of the Internet, namely 4Chan and a variety of its spinoff sites. 4Chan is a roughly 20-year-old site where anonymous geeks – mainly teenagers – try to outdo each other with the most repulsive and/or obscene posts they can think of.

According to Nagle, 4CHan and similar sites made an ideal platform for insecure white males to anonymously scapegoat specific social groups (women, Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims) that they blame for their unhappiness. These sites came to be collectively known as the “manosphere community,” a multitude of social media sites hosted by PUA (pickup artists) and other members of the InCel (Involuntarily Celibate) known for their open hatred and degradation of women. The primary themes promoted by these sites are that women aren’t to be trusted, that they must be tricked into having sex by dwelling on their insecurities and that they should only deserve enough education to have children.

Eventually this “manosphere” would “weaponize” Twitter, by using it for toxic harassment of feminists and other publicly prominent women, with insults and threats to kill and/or rape them.

Trumps’ closest political advisor Steve Bannon, who tracked all these right wing sites, assisted Trump in mainstreaming the discontent he found there. Trump’s willingness to publicly give voice to these views provided him with an immediate fan base. Trump is the ultimate troll, drawing attention to himself by insulting people and generating outrage – a trait supporters fed up with “political correctness” particularly adore about him.

For me the most interesting segment criticizes Obama for setting the stage for the Trump movement by abandoning marginalized white workers, focusing instead on identity politics (mainly gay and gender rights) to maintain his liberal credentials.

One commentator blames backlash against against the “gender fluidity” movement, an extreme manifestation of identity politics (mainly concerned with gay and transgender rights) for the rise of the Trump phenomenon. This movement also weaponizes social media to attack views they deem to be “politically incorrect.”

*A “Normie” is Alt-Right speak for “mainstream.”

Britain Pressures New Zealand to Join Anti-Russian Sanctions

By John Braddock

26 March 2018

In an extraordinary intervention, Britain’s High Commissioner to New Zealand, Laura Clarke, fired a public warning shot at the Labour-led government over its plans to seek a free trade deal with Russia. Following the Skripal poisoning in the UK, Clarke successfully pressured NZ to join the sanctions that Britain and its allies have imposed on Russia.

War tensions in Europe have spiked as the UK government has escalated accusations that Moscow attempted to kill British spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Julia, on March 4 in Salisbury. European Union (EU) foreign ministers last week pledged “unqualified solidarity” with the UK in condemning the “reckless and illegal” poisoning.

The case hinges on the unsubstantiated assertion that Moscow targeted the Skripals with a “Novichok”-style nerve agent “developed” in the former Soviet Union. Britain expelled 23 Russian diplomats and is promising “further measures” against the Kremlin.

There are, however, divisions within European ruling elites over Russia. UK Prime Minister Theresa May has pressed European leaders to expel Russian agents, in a bid to dismantle “Kremlin networks” across Europe. Britain is pushing allies such as New Zealand—which, along with the UK, is part of the US-led “Five Eyes” intelligence network—to fall into line.

Speaking on Radio NZ on March 15, Clarke warned that efforts to pursue a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Russia would jeopardise future deals with both the EU and the UK. Clarke declared that New Zealand had to “prioritise” its FTAs, and trade negotiations with the EU and UK “never happen in a vacuum.”

The day after Clarke’s radio interview, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the government had rescinded moves to restart trade talks with Russia. The government had intended to resume the talks, which were suspended in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea.

Ardern said “the situation [with Russia] has changed.” She and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters now agree that efforts to restart negotiations should be suspended. Ardern added that “in the light of the Salisbury incident” she did not know when, or if, the government would be in a position to resume trade talks.

Ardern supported the joint statements by British, US, German and French leaders on the nerve agent attack. “Outrage at the brazen and callous use of chemical weapons in a UK town is fully justified,” Ardern declared. She agreed with the British government’s claims that there was “no plausible explanation” the attack could have come from “anywhere other than Russia” and Russia had “serious questions to answer.”

The about-face came after months during which Peters, who is also deputy prime minister and leader of the right-wing New Zealand First Party, had reiterated his plans to develop Russian trade. He claimed this was necessary to reduce New Zealand’s economic reliance on China, the country’s second most important trading partner. A commitment to pursue a FTA with the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan customs union was included in NZ First’s coalition agreement with Labour following last September’s election.

In a television program on March 10, Peters declared New Zealand was “deadly serious” about a free trade deal and defended Russia. He said there was “no evidence” Russia had a hand in shooting down flight MH17 over the Ukraine or that it meddled in the US election. “We have a lot of allegations, but we do not have the facts laid out clearly,” he said. “When you start talking about those moral judgments, you might not be trading with anybody,” Peters added. . .

Read more: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/26/nzru-m26.html