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The lifestyles of LA’s rich and famous include concierge firefighters

Written by Lila MacLellan

Massive wildfires in Southern California have burned more than 100 acres in the past few days, forcing thousands of people to evacuate. Most grab their valuables and run, hoping that the already-stretched local fire department will arrive in time to preserve their homes, should that be necessary.

But many residents of the Los Angeles area’s most exclusive neighborhoods have greater peace of mind. They can decamp to, presumably, a luxury hotel, with the knowledge that private firefighters will be rushing in to fireproof their properties, or even tame nearby flames that put their posh homes in jeopardy.

Wildfire Defense System, whose president David Torgenson talked to Quartz, is one of the firms that has been dispatching crews to protect homes in at-risk zones this week. . .

via The lifestyles of LA’s rich and famous include concierge firefighters — Quartz

Pentagon Quadruples Troop Levels in Syria to ‘Stabilize’ Liberated Areas

RT | December 7, 2017

The US military has increased the number of troops in Syria from 500 to 2,000, the Pentagon says, adding that the “conditions-based” military presence is justified by the need to “stabilize” liberated areas.

The Pentagon has officially announced that there are now 2,000 troops in Syria – a fourfold increase from the previous figures given. “The United States will continue necessary counterterrorism and stabilization effort,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning said.

“The United States will sustain a conditions-based military presence in Syria to combat the threat of insurgent-led insurgency, prevent the resurgence of ISIS and to stabilize liberated areas.”

Manning claimed that the Iraqi Army and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have liberated about 97 percent “of the people and land” previously controlled by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in Iraq and Syria respectively. He said the campaign to defeat IS is now in a new phase in these countries.

Coalition forces are still needed in the two countries, Manning said, adding that they will now focus on “train, advise and assist” missions. “As the terrorist group continues to lose territory, important work remains to ensure its lasting defeat.”

The US military has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the number of troops and “military advisers” it has fighting alongside anti-government rebel forces. Under the Obama administration, the Pentagon routinely announced foreign troop deployments, but the Trump administration stopped disclosing such information regarding Operation Inherent Resolve. The policy was reversed in the spring of 2017 in order to maintain the “element of surprise” against Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq.

Damascus views the US military engagement in Syria as illegitimate, as there was no official request for intervention from the government. Early in November, Syrian leader Bashar Assad said his government will deal with any “illegal invader force.” He added that the war in Syria will continue until there is a full “recovery of security and stability to all Syrian lands.”

Washington insists its military presence in Syria is lawful and justified by UN mandate. In mid-November, US Defense Secretary James Mattis claimed the United Nations sanctioned the US presence in Syria.

“You know, the UN said that… basically we can go after ISIS. And we’re there to take them out,” Mattis said. Moscow responded by saying the UN cannot greenlight a foreign invasion of Syria, as it is contrary to international law.

Media reports indicate that the US is not planning to leave any time soon. According to the Washington Post, the US wants to keep troops in Syria long after Islamic State is defeated to help the Western-backed SDF establish “new local governance” structures in order to prevent complete victory by the Syrian government and its ally, Iran.

via Pentagon quadruples troop levels in Syria to ‘stabilize’ liberated areas

Dupont: A Textbook Case in Corporate Criminality

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DuPont Dynasty: Behind the Iron Curtain

Gerald Colby

Prentice Hall (1984)

Book Review

If you want a precise understanding of how a major corporation sets out (and succeeds) in corrupting all aspects of democratic government, Behind the Nylon Curtain is for you. If it doesn’t convince you that democracy is impossible in a capitalist economy, I don’t know what will. This 800+ page book traces every bribery and corruption scandal; every flagrant violation of labor, environmental and trading with the enemy laws; every frivolous lawsuit (eg challenging the EPA’s ability to regulate air and water pollution); every instance of war profiteering and gouging the US taxpayer; and every case of electoral fraud the DuPont company has engaged in their 215-year history.

DuPont’s Role in Potting 1934 Coup Against Roosevelt

In addition, Colby details the prominent role DuPont played in the formation of the American Liberty League and the 1934 fascist coup the group plotted to remove Roosevelt from the residency; in re-arming the Third Reich prior to World War II; in arming private vigilante groups to attack union organizers and strikers; and in secretly building the nuclear facilities supplying uranium and plutonium to the Manhattan Project. In the mid-seventies (when DuPont workers and Delaware residents began dying of cancer in unprecedented numbers), they successfully blocked a bill to require safety testing on all new chemicals before they could be marketed.

Colby also enumerates numerous efforts by Congress, unions and consumer advocates like Ralph Nader to challenge DuPont’s overtly criminal behavior. Owing to the company’s long time control over local and national media, the Delaware State government and the executive, legislative and judicial branch of the federal government, it has been virtually impossible to sanction DuPont for their illegal activities.

How DuPont Came to Own Delaware

Historically the DuPonts have totally controlled Delaware (government, newspapers, radio, TV, colleges and newspapers).  Thanks to DuPont, Delaware has the lowest business tax in the country and the lowest cost of incorporation. It’s also the only state allowing Delaware corporations to hold out-of-state stockholder and board meetings. The majority of Americans largest corporations are incorporated in Delaware.  In 1980 governor Pierre DuPont successful introduced a law enabling Delaware banks to circumvent other states’ usury laws by setting credit card interest rates that are binding on out-of-sate residents. (see How Banks Use Credit Cards to Rip Us Off )

Roosevelt: More Pro-Corporate than Pro-Labor

I found Colby’s revelations about Franklin D Roosevelt – a significant departure from the pro-labor image promoted by the Democratic Party – the most illuminating. Prior to reading this book I had no idea that Roosevelt

imposed wage freezes during a period that prices increased by 45%
tried to pressure sit-down strikers at General Motors (then owned by DuPont) to settle with GM on management’s  terms
vetoed a law authorizing World War I veterans to be paid the Bonus Bond they were promised (the military assault Hoover ordered on Bonus Army protestors was instrumental to his defeat in 1932).
triggered a new economic depression in 1937 by implementing across the board austerity cuts.

*DuPont also blocked distribution of this book for 40 years. Although initially published by Prentice Hall in 1974, DuPont fought Colby in the courts for 30 years to block its distribution (Colby describes his legal ordeal in the introduction). In 2014, he finally released the 1984 edition as an ebook. Although Prentice Hall still owns the print rights, the author retains electronic rights. Used print editions are available from Amazon. The Kindle edition is $9.99.

 

 

Iran & China Seek to Eliminate US dollar from Bilateral Trade

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Iran, Russia and China seek to hasten the decline of the dollar – and US economic and political supremacy.

Covert Geopolitics

Dollar dumping used to be mere rumor 5 years ago, but Tehran, Russia and Beijing are determined to find ways to avoid using the US dollar as a settlement currency in trade, according to a report by Iranian economic daily Financial Tribune.

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UN Expert: No Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela

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Venezuela’s opposition and private media have often alleged that the country is suffering from a humanitarian crisis in a bid to promote international intervention from foreign governments and agencies such as the UN.

Journal of People

by Rachael Boothroyd Rojas




VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM | December 06, 2017





Independent UN expert Alfred de Zayas visited Venezuela in late November. (Twitter/AlfredDeZayas)

An independent United Nations expert has publicly stated that Venezuela is not suffering from a humanitarian crisis following a recent trip to the country.

Alfred De Zayas, an independent expert on International Democratic and Equitable Order at the United Nations (UN), visited Venezuela in late November to assess its social and economic progress.

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War on Venezuela: The Lucrative Business of Humanitarian Aid

Misión Verdad

Translated by Internationalist 360°

After months of promoting the narrative of a  “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela, the  opposition is attempting to instrumentalize it as a mechanism for foreign intervention. Behind all of this, predatory aid agencies and a private corporate network lurk,  eager to profit from this intervention.

Although politicians and anti-Chavez media have spoken of a “humanitarian crisis” since 2016, referring to the food and health situation in Venezuela caused by the US financial siege, sabotage and inflationary induction inside the country,  now the opposition – in the midst of dialogue  –  brings to the forefront the issue of “humanitarian aid” from abroad, specifically from the United States and the European Union (EU).

The promotion of the idea of there being a “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela has no real support, as defined within the parameters set forth on the subject by the United Nations (UN). However, from the US, there is constant talk that this crisis is indeed  occurring in our country and they have appealed to Latin American nations  to support the propaganda to justify  American intervention in Venezuela.

The local opposition, those interlocutors of the American elite with interests in the country, members of the Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular parties,  campaigned to manage the blockade and the financial sanctions that currently affect the lives  of the Venezuelan population. Those who sought to bring about a social and economic catastrophe in Venezuela, via embargo, sanctions and sabotage, are the same ones demanding “humanitarian aid”  to supposedly mitigate the effects generated by their criminal  policies.

Rostros y víctimas describen una cruda realidad en nuestro especial de Crisis Humanitaria. https://t.co/mGV3kXoIVN pic.twitter.com/8MwDDuVTAL

— El Nacional (@ElNacionalWeb) 4 de diciembre de 2017

Faces of victims describe the harsh reality of our Humanitarian Crisis. https://t.co/mGV3kXoIVN pic.twitter.com/8MwDDuVTAL

– El Nacional (@ElNacionalWeb) December 4, 2017

We must understand the true nature of the request made by the opposition for Venezuela to open a “humanitarian channel” to its biggest creditor: the US government and US corporations.

Julio Borges traveled to the Dominican Republic with a document composed by the NGO Codevida,  funded by the US government, which describes the steps to be taken to promote “international cooperation” around “humanitarian aid” in Venezuela. This petition is allegedly supported by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who is in league with the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, with the intent of criminalizing Venezuela in order to prosecute the government before the International Criminal Court.

Political uses of “humanitarian aid”

Some anti-Chavez spokespersons have spoken  against the Venezuelan government for refusing to open “humanitarian channels”,  however, as applied by them,  this concept has strictly political and military objectives, not humanitarian.

Venezuela has provided humanitarian aid to populations that needed it without assistance being a pretext for invasion or the establishment of commercial relations at the expense of the suffering of others.  A recent example that demonstrates how Venezuelan humanitarian aid differs from that offered by Americans  is when Venezuela  delivered food and medicines to Caribbean countries.

Behind the “humanitarian crisis” promoted by the US and their local agents in the Venezuelan opposition, is the possibility of using the Responsibility to Protect  Doctrine (R2P). This idea  developed from the genocide in Rwanda (April 1994), and was modeled on the so-called Sbrebrenica Massacre in Bosnia-Herzegovina (July 1995). Its diplomatic promoter today is Samantha Power. ( The “American War Party”  is a conglomerate of notorious individuals such as  Suzanne Rice, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Nikki Haley, current US ambassador to the UN.).

The humanitarian crisis goes hand in hand with “intervention through  humanitarian aid”  and complements the military doctrine of preventive war established after the destruction of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

R2P was used against Libya when the Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, paving the way for NATO to establish a “no fly zone”,  allegedly to prevent a massacre of the population by the “regime”.  The result: Libya is an open-air slave market , a minefield of terrorists and a zone for illicit industries such as drug trafficking. Before NATO intervention, Libya was also under financial sanctions and its foreign assets were seized.

In the same vein, “humanitarian aid” promoted by anti-Chavez media, is a political tool. It is no coincidence that this call comes at the same time that the US is conducting  military exercises in the region. The Venezuelan opposition demand is a request for military intervention.

The business of “humanitarian aid”

Beyond humanitarian intervention and humanitarian channels, there is a private corporate network that involves  US organizations, such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID receives funds from the US government allegedly to provide “aid” to countries, but  in reality, it opens  sovereign nations to financial extortion by the  United States.

The USAID Global Development Partnership program facilitates the union between the North American organization and private conglomerates, as the agency states, “to develop and implement activities that leverage and apply our respective assets and expertise to advance core business interests, achieve USAID’s development objectives, and increase the sustainable impact of USAID’s development investments.“

An example of this alliance between USAID and corporations is the relationship with Coca-Cola, a symbol of industrial and financial capitalism, which offers water services for African populations and other dependent nations through networks owned by the company. This is a business that profits from the misery that corporations have created through their wars over natural resources.

The project to supply clean water to impoverished communities in El Salvador and Guatemala is applied through the corresponding program of USAID together with private sectors in the region under the umbrella provided by the free trade agreement imposed by the US, in which Coca-Cola  benefits from using infrastructure of local factories to make bottles and other supplies, and whose global capital is at about 33 million dollars,.

 

via War on Venezuela: The Lucrative Business of Humanitarian Aid

ABC Suspends Anchor Over Fake News Report on Trump-Flynn ‘Russian Collusion’

 

21st Century Wire | December 5, 2107

After 18 months of rampant speculation over Trump and “Russian collusion” and alleged “Russian hacking” in the 2016 election, in a cloud of non-stop, 24/7 fake news being generated by CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, as well as notorious MSM fake news outsourcing agencies like The Daily Beast – the Never Trump Resistance has yet to present a single item of evidence to justify their year and a half-long political witch hunt.

In this sea of delusion, there are still a number of desperate media persons who are willing to punt on a contrived plot or narrative – hoping that theirs will be “the one” to finally nail the embattled President on grounds for impeachment beyond a reasonable doubt. Already a number of mainstream journalists, including three reporters from CNN, have been fired or let go as networks are now fear legal repercussions from their new normalized practice of lying and inventing plots about the White House and ‘Russian meddling.’

This week saw another high-profile casualty, ABC’s Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross, as the “resistance” continues to launch blind media attacks on the President.

On Saturday, ABC News executives announced that star anchor Ross would be suspended for one month without pay over an alleged ‘botched’ “exclusive” implicating former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

During Ross’s live “special report”, an invented story-line was fed to a clueless Ross which claimed that Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had “ordered him” to make contact with Russians about foreign policy – while Trump was still a candidate in the general election.

According to FOX News, the fake news report “raised the specter of Trump’s impeachment and sent the stock market plummeting.”

Later in the day, ABC issued a “clarification” to Ross’s report, saying that Trump’s alleged directive came after he’d been elected president. Ross himself appeared on “World News Tonight,” several hours after the initial report, to clarify his error.

Afterwards, ABC News tried to justify the fake news release, claiming that Ross’ report “had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process.”

Clearly, Ross took one for the team (The Resistance) here, as anyone who works in media will know. He would have been fed the bogus report by news producers, before doing what mainstream media news anchors do everyday of their careers – unwittingly reading whatever words are scrolling down his teleprompter.

ABC News statement went on to try and gloss over their fake news report saying, “It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience.”

News officials then sounded even more ridiculous as they scrambled to pave-over their propaganda practices claiming that, “These are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday.”

What’s clear from this story is that when it comes to all things Trump and Russia, the US mainstream media feel they are within their right to dispense with all normal journalistic standards so long as the story falls in line with a specific political agenda.

via ABC News Suspend Anchor Brian Ross Over Fake News Report on Trump-Flynn ‘Russian Collusion’

The Tangled Threads of Russia-gate

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | December 5, 2017

A curious feature about the Russia-gate “scandal” is that its proponents ignore the growing number of moments when their evidence undercuts their narrative. Instead, they press ahead toward a predetermined destination in much the way that true-believing conspiracy theorists are known to do.

For instance, The New York Times ran a story on Monday, entitled “Operative Offered Trump Campaign Access to Putin,” detailing how a conservative operative “told a Trump adviser that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, according to an email sent to the Trump campaign” — and apparently described to the Times by a helpful source on Capitol Hill.

The Times quoted the email from National Rifle Association member Paul Erickson to Trump campaign adviser Rick Dearborn as saying, “Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump. … [Putin] wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election.”

An NRA conference in Louisville, Kentucky, was supposed to be the location for the “first contact” between the Russians and the Trump campaign, according to the email.

The Times treated its new information as further confirmation of nefarious connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Immediately after introducing this May 2016 email, which had the subject line, ”Kremlin Connection,” the Times reprised the background of former FBI Director Robert Mueller conducting a special-prosecutor investigation into “Russian interference in the election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.”

Note how the Times’ reference to “Russian interference” was treated as flat fact although the Times still hedges on “possible collusion” between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. Like much of the U.S. mainstream media, the Times no longer bothers to use “alleged” in front of “Russian interference” even though no solid evidence of a coordinated Kremlin effort has been presented.

But there is a bigger problem with this “scoop”: If the Russia-gate narrative were correct – that the Kremlin had identified Trump years earlier as a likely U.S. president and undertook a multi-year campaign to bribe and blackmail him to be Moscow’s Manchurian candidate or Putin’s “puppet” as Hillary Clinton charged – the Russians wouldn’t need some little-known “conservative operative” to serve as an intermediary in May 2016 to set up a back-channel meeting.

The Contradiction

In other words, assuming that the Times’ story is correct, the email suggests the opposite of the impression that the Times wants its readers to get. The email is either meaningless in that it led to no actual meeting or it contradicts the storyline about a longstanding Russian operation to plant a patsy in the White House.

Times reporter Nicholas Fandos noted that it was unclear what Dearborn did in response to this overture, although the Times reported that Dearborn had forwarded a similar proposal by Christian conservative activist Rick Clay to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who rebuffed the offer.

On Monday, I read the rest of the Times email story looking for some acknowledgement of the problems with its implied scenario, but found none. Fandos made references to other low-level efforts by Russians to make contact with Trump’s advisers (without noticeable success, I might add), but again these examples actually run counter to the image of Trump as the Kremlin’s prized chump.

If Putin had several years ago foreseen what no one else did – that Trump would become the U.S. president – then these ad hoc contacts with members of Trump’s entourage in 2016 would not have been needed.

The Times’ scoop parallels the story of the plea deal that Russia-gate prosecutors struck with low-level Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos who admitted lying about his contacts with an obscure academic in Stirling, Scotland, who supposedly offered to be another intermediary between Trump’s team and the Kremlin.

According to court documents, Papadopoulos, a 30-year-old campaign aide, got to know a professor of international relations who claimed to have “substantial connections with Russian government officials,” with the professor identified in press reports as Joseph Mifsud, who is associated with the University of Stirling.

The first contact between Mifsud and Papadopoulos supposedly occurred in mid-March 2016 in Italy, with a second meeting in London on March 24 when the professor purportedly introduced Papadopoulos to a Russian woman whom the young campaign aide believed to be Putin’s niece, an assertion that Mueller’s investigators determined wasn’t true.

Trump, who then was under pressure for not having a foreign policy team, included Papadopoulos as part of a list drawn up to fill that gap, and Papadopoulos participated in a campaign meeting on March 31 in Washington at which he suggested a meeting between Trump and Putin, a prospect that other senior aides reportedly slapped down.

In other words, at least based on the reporting about the Dearborn email and the Papadopoulos overture, there is no reason to believe that Trump was colluding with Moscow or had any significant relationship at all.

If these developments point to anything, it is to the opposite; that Russia was fishing for some contacts with what – however implausibly – was starting to look like a possible future U.S. president, but with whom they were not well-connected.

Gotcha Moments

There have been similar problems with other Russia-gate “gotcha” moments, such as disclosures of a possible Trump hotel deal in Moscow with Mikhail Fridman of Russia’s Alfa Bank. Though Trump’s presumed financial tie-ins to Russian oligarchs close to Putin were supposed to be fundamental to the Russia-gate narrative, the outcome of the hotel deal turned out to be a big nothing.

One source knowledgeable about the proposed deal told me it fell apart because Trump was willing to put little on the table beyond the branding value of the Trump name. However, if Putin were actually trying to buy Trump’s loyalty, money presumably would have been no obstacle. Indeed, you would think that the more money used to line Trump’s pockets the better. But the hotel deal collapsed; there is no Trump hotel in Moscow.

Other Russia-gate cases are equally disconnected from what had been the original narrative about senior Russians spending years cultivating Trump as their Manchurian candidate. . .

 

via The Tangled Threads of Russia-gate

Flashback: WSJ Article that Forced Comey to Reopen Investigation into Clinton’s Emails

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Andrew McCabe and the $675,000 Bribe Not to Investigate Clinton

In the following radio interview, Canadian researcher Michel Chossudovsky discusses an article he posted in Global Research on Novermber 2, 2016. In it he discusses the  $675,000 donation (ie bribe) Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe  donated to the state senate campaign of Jill McCabe, the wife of a top FBI official (Andrew McCabe). Subsequently McCable, conveniently promoted to deputy  director,  oversaw the FBI investigation into Clinton’s secret email server.

When McCabe cleared Clinton of wrongdoing, FBI Director James Comey was willing to let the decision stand until an expose in the Wall Street Journal disclosed the secret $675,000 campaign donation/bribe (which McCabe neglected to disclose on her electoral return). Eleven days prior to the 2016 election, Comey announced he was reopening the investigation.

In this Guns and Butter interview, Chossudovsky officers a fascinating analysis of what he believes is a split in the US military-intelligence complex between the neocons who support Clinton’s agenda of war against Syria, Iran and Russia and military/intelligence dissidents who are gravely concerned about Clinton’s criminal past and her potential to recklessly launch full blown nuclear war.

According to Chossudovsky, the neocons continue to rely on the traditional CIA-controlled media outlets (CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, ABC etc), while intelligence dissidents tend to speak through Rupert Murdoch’s media outlets (Wall Street Journal, Fox News, New York Post, Daily Mail) to promote a pro-Trump, anti-neocon perspective.

Chossudovsky also discusses Wikileaks’ role in this divide. At the moment, Wikileaks is mainly publishing emails and documents leaked by pro-Trump military/intelligence officials. Chossudovsky believes this represents a deliberate decision by Julian Assange.

Although this interview is over a year old, it serves to remind us that most of the current media frenzy (the Putin-bashing, Russiagate, impeachment threats) being played is actually a war between competing intelligence factions and has virtually nothing to do with the interests of ordinary Americans.

Read Chossudovsky’s full article here:

Hillary Clinton: Wall Street’s Losing Horse? Constitutional Crisis? What’s the End Game?

MARIJUANA BUSINESS UPTRENDS DRASTICALLY

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Netflix now sells marijuana! Netflix partnered with a dispensary, Alternative Herbal Health Services, or AHHS, to distribute 12 strains of marijuana based on 10 of its shows: Disjointed, Lady Dynamite, BoJack Horseman, Orange Is the New Black, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, Mystery Science 3000: The Return, Arrested Development, Grace and Frankie, Chelsea and Santa Clarita Diet.

venitism

As the marijuana business starts to professionalize, players are emerging who want to create multinational franchises and empires, in effect, building the Starbucks or McDonald’s of ganja.

Marijuana is gaining ground the world over, having recently been legalized in numerous states in the United States. Even though it is described as one cure for many ailments, there are some subtle nuances that make it more like a multitude of cures.

Marijuana comes in two overarching varieties- sativa and indica. Under these two varieties are numerous strains, each of which produces different results to treat different ailments. Sativa produces a cerebral high that allows the user to have energy and mental clarity. Indica produces a calming and sedating body high, allowing for relaxation.

Different strains of sativa can be used to treat stress, pain, depression, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Hybrids of the two varieties can be used to treat stress, depression, pain…

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