Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1119

The UN’s Shocking Report on US Poverty

This Al Jazeera news feature highlights the recent report by UN Special Raconteur Philip Alston on extreme poverty levels in the US. Panelists include Alston himself and antipoverty activists from Alabama and Skid Row in Los Angeles. A Guardian reporter accompanied Alston on his tour of American communities. The photos are heart wrenching.

Alston points out the US is very different from other poverty-stricken countries he visits. Other countries have large indigent populations because their governments are too poor to assist them. In contrast, the US has just awarded $1.5 trillion to its most wealthy citizens.

According to Alston, the US has 40 million people living in poverty and many of them are employed. During his investigation, he spoke to WalMart employees who can’t afford to feed their families without federal food stamps. The US government provides $6 billion in food stamps to WalMart employees.

Top CEOs Don’t Plan to Invest Tax Windfalls in US

Written by Michael J. Coren @MJ_Coren

 

America’s CEOs have soured on Donald Trump. The onetime real-estate developer/reality TV star—whose enterprises have declared bankruptcy at least six times—luxuriated in a brief honeymoon with the business community after ascending to the White House. No longer.

At the annual Yale CEO Summit on Dec. 13-14, more than a hundred of the country’s top executives—running the gamut from Black & Decker to UPS—roundly panned Trump’s performance as an “embarrassment” on issues from foreign policy to trade.

Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who leads the event, said most chief executives felt the Trump administration had opted for saber rattling and empty populism over truly defending US interests. Tax reform, as it finally emerged in the Republican plan, was singled out as one of the biggest disappointments. “Last year, there was so much enthusiasm about prospects of tax reform,” Sonnenfeld told Quartz. “I was astounded at how disappointed they were.”

The GOP had sold its signature tax bill, which passed this week along party lines, as rocket fuel for the economy by lowering corporate taxes so business can plow that money back into their domestic operations.

That’s not how many CEOs (or economists) see it. Of more than 100 executives in a Yale survey, 86% said their firms would not “immediately make large domestic capital investments” if the tax bill was passed. They spared few critiques of the bill: 71% said it was “wrong for this package to add so much to the nation’s debt,” 62% called its treatment of state and local taxes “an unfair attack on blue states,” and 62% were “concerned about the health care impact of the tax proposal.”

Question
Yes
No
Votes




Once this law passes, my company will immediately make large domestic capital investments
14%
86%
105


I think the SLT treatment is an unfair attack on blue states.
62%
38%
125


I am concerned about the health-care impact of the tax proposal.
61%
39%
125


I believe that the proposed tax-reform package should be signed into law.
55%
45%
120

 

And yet a slight majority of the 120 respondents—55%—said “the proposed tax-reform package should be signed into law.” Apparently, a rich package of lower taxes and handouts for corporations was too much to refuse. . . .

via America’s top CEOs don’t plan to invest their tax windfalls in America — Quartz

Russia boosting trade with Cuba as US backs away

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Cold War allies Moscow and Havana are marking a renaissance in relations as the US cuts ties with Cuba. Russian firms are returning to the Caribbean nation with billion-dollar projects in hand.

The SAFIA Blog

Author: Alexandre Meneghini

Posted on: Russia Today| December 19, 2017

Cold War allies Moscow and Havana are marking a renaissance in relations as the US cuts ties with Cuba. Russian firms are returning to the Caribbean nation with billion-dollar projects in hand.

Russian corporations, including Rosneft, AvtoVaz and Russian Railways (RZD) have been boosting investment in Cuba with trade between the countries expected to reach $400 million by the end of the year.

Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft resumed fuel shipments to the Caribbean island. The step is seen as major support to the country after reduced shipments of oil from neighboring Venezuela. Rosneft also announced plans to modernize the island’s Cienfuegos oil refinery.
State-run monopoly Russian Railways (RZD) is reportedly in talks with Cuban authorities to upgrade over a thousand kilometers of railroads. The company is also planning to build a high-speed railway connecting Havana and the beach resort…

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Water Protectors block all entrances LNG facility in Tacoma

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150+ Water Protectors are still blocking all entrances of the construction site to the LNG facility in Tacoma, WA. In 2008, a local grassroots group blocked construction of an LNG terminal at the Port of New Plymouth.

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Call To Action: Write New Zealand Politicians And Demand They #FreeBrendon O’Connell

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Campaign to free Australian videographer sentenced to 3 years in Australia for posting a verbal altercation with pro-Zionist detractors on-line. Currently being held indefinitely in New Zealand (where he sought asylum) for “character problems.” Watch the video he posted. There is something terribly wrong here. The last time I checked the NZ bill of rights guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Joseph Davis | Freedom Advocate in Memphis, TN

Below is the letter I’ve emailed New Zealand politicians regarding Australian activist, Brendon O’Connell, who is currently in a New Zealand prison on “character grounds”. I encourage everyone to do the same. Contact links are below.

Subject line: Please free Brendon O’Connell

Dear Prime Minister and Members of the New Zealand Parliament,

I’m writing you all in regards to Brendon O’Connell, who is currently being detained in a New Zealand prison on “character grounds”. Those of us following Brendon’s situation are hearing that his living conditions are tortuous and unbearable. If you aren’t familiar with Brendon’s case, he was sentenced to three years prison in Australia for a verbal altercation that Brendon posted online. Below is the video of that altercation. Does this really justify a three year sentence in Australia, and being held indefinitely in a New Zealand prison?

Those of us who value free speech and human rights are…

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The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

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Google and Facebook’s monopoly over online activity means that more than 90% of Americans rely on the two corporations as their major source of news.

AGR Daily 60 Second News Bites

‘A monopoly on the means of communication,” Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson wrote in “Leviathan,” their 1975 novel, “may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of ‘monopoly in the means of production.’ ” Bear that in mind when you hear this next statistic: In 2017 Google and Facebook have accounted for 84% of all digital advertising outside China, including 96% of its growth, according to an industry forecast this month from Zenith, Magna and GroupM.

Those figures should create more than the typical economic concerns about market concentration. Specifically, the tech duopoly’s dominance threatens the marketplace of ideas. Beyond advertising, Google and Facebook control how millions of people find their news. Americans are far likelier, collectively, to encounter articles via search engines and social media than on a news site’s home page.

Google is used for nearly 90% of online searches in the U.S. A…

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The Saga of Kim Dotcom or How New Zealand is Merely America’s Lapdog

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Kim Dotcom Caught in the Web: The Most Wanted Man Online

Directed by Annie Goldson

Film Review

I was extremely impressed by the high quality of Annie Goldson’s recent Kim Dotcom documentary, which showed last night on TVNZ. The video, which can’t be embedded, can be viewed at the TVNZ website: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/kim-dotcom-caught-in-the-web

Nearly six years after his January 2012 arrest, Kim Dotcom and his three co-defendants are still fighting extradition to the US on copyright infringement charges. His main legal grounds for challenging the extradition are 1) the search warrant leading to his arrest and the confiscation of his funds and property were illegal 2) as a legal resident, GCSB (New Zealand intelligence) was illegally spying on all his phone, email and Internet use and 3) New Zealand’s extradition treaty  has no provision for copyright infringement, which isn’t a criminal offense under New Zealand law.

Except for the illegal spying, Dotcom’s initial court wins on these issues were overturned when the government appealed them.* Former Prime Minister John Key addressed the spying issue through a law change making it legal to spy on all New Zealand citizens and legal residents.

The first hour of the documentary, based on hours of Dotcom’s private video footage, concerns his early life in Germany as Kim Schmidt. He made his first fortune as a hacker turned security consultant and came to New Zealand with two criminal convictions on his record – for credit card fraud and insider trading.

He comes across in the film as an especially extremely arrogant, conceited, privileged and ostentatious white male, who became enormously rich (and bragged about it) when millions of users employed his cloud service (Megaupload) to illegally share copyright Hollywood films. His legal advice at the time was that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protected service providers against the illegal actions of their users. He has consistently argued that his activities were no more illegal than YouTube’s because a) he warned Megaupload users that sharing copyright material was illegal and b) like YouTube, he took down illegal files when copyright owners requested it.

His extensive legal battle has brought to light all manner of illegal activity on the part of both the US and New Zealand government, starting with a threat the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) made not to fund Obama’s 2012 campaign unless he directed the Justice Department to indict Kim Dotcom. The email correspondence between the FBI (which directed the SWAT team raid on Dotcom’s house), is also highly embarrassing, as is correspondence about the deal New Zealand Immigration made with MPAA to grant Dotcom permanent residency (despite his two criminal convictions) to facilitate his extradition to the US.

The film also briefly covers his unsuccessful effort to get into government in 2014 by collaborating with the Mana Party to form the Internet Mana Party. Some of the most dramatic footage is from an historic town hall meeting in which Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange made explosive revelations about the extent of mass surveillance on New Zealand residents.

In addition to commentary by MPAA advocates, journalists and civil liberties advocates, the documentary also includes snippets of an interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

*As of December 15, 2017, Dotcom’s appeal against his extradition order is ongoing: https://www.rt.com/news/413364-kim-dotcom-appeals-judge/

 

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Birth Control Pill Officially Linked to Increased Risk of Breast Cancer

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Danish study confirms link between birth control pill use and breast cancer.

News For The Blind

http://www.renegadetribune.com/birth-control-pill-officially-linked-increased-risk-breast-cancer/

By Alex Pietrowski

Some predict that in coming years cancer rates will climb to 1 in 2 adults, and in the throes of such a serious cancer epidemic, all eyes are on causes and cures. Hormonal birth control has long been suspected of contributing to the risk of developing cancer, and this claim is further supported by a European study of cancer rates in women who use this hugely popular method of birth control.

Looking at a large swath of data collected on Danish women using hormonal birth control, researchers note a link to the development of breast cancer, coming to the following conclusions:

For those who had been taking some form of hormonal contraceptive – whether orally, via an implant, patch, IUD, or vaginal ring – the risk of getting breast cancer was comparatively increased.

This risk depends on the amount of time they’d been taking…

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Common Food Ingredient is Zapping Your Memory Away Leading to Alzheimer’s

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Canola oil was recently linked to declining memory, learning deficits and obesity. And canola oil is everywhere – in most restaurants, in pretty much all fast food items, every packaged snack you can think of, in everything you can store in a cabinet and in nearly all natural health snack goods.

Openhearted Rebel

By Heather Callaghan, Natural Blaze

One of the world’s most common food ingredients is finally being outed as a big, fat fraud. We hope you are sitting down for this one!

This polyunsaturated oil is touted as healthy by the big food industries, fast food industries, the natural health communities (!), and even our regulatory agencies.

We’re talking about canola oil! One of the worst food creations in modern history if you can even call it a food product. A study came out showing that canola oil was like battery acid to the cardiovascular system – and no one listened. Cooked polyunsaturated oils were recently linked to cancer….nothing but crickets.

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Chicago Police Caught Disappearing People Into Secret CIA-Style Detention Center

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The Guardian reports that Chicago Police are operating a secret detention facility that mirrors the CIA’s “black sites.

Nwo Report

(Anti Media) The Guardian has reported that Chicago Police are operating a secret detention facility that mirrors the CIA’s “black sites.” From violations of due process to torture, the revelations raise serious concerns about the deteriorating state of freedom and justice in the United States.

According the the Guardian’s investigation, the process at Homan is as follows:

Suspects are taken to the facility without being booked or processed. Chicago lawyer, Julia Bartemes, said,

“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there.”

They are interrogated without lawyers present and in fact, lawyers are often refused entry. Those who have gained access to clients claim that police still withhold information about the suspects.

The detainees are not read Miranda rights or offered due process. Brian Jacob Church, who…

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