Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1158
August 6, 2017
North Korea’s Offer to Freeze Its Nuclear Program
*
*
As Tensions Explode on Korean Peninsula, US Peace Delegation Calls for Immediate Response to DPRK Proposal.
As Tensions Explode on Korean Peninsula, US Peace Delegation Calls for Immediate Response to DPRK Proposal
By Zoom in Korea
Global Research, August 05, 2017
Zoom in Korea 4 August 2017
The Solidarity Peace Delegation, concluding their July 23-28 visit to South Korea, calls for immediate US-South Korean action to de-escalate growing military tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The delegation was composed of Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, Reece Chenault of US Labor Against the War, Will Griffin of Veterans for Peace, and recent Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
It was sponsored by The Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation and the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific (STIK).
The delegation issued the following statement:
The Korean Peninsula is rapidly approaching the boiling point. On the last day of our visit, July 28, North Korea conducted a missile test…
View original post 773 more words
Imagine What Would Happen if China Decided to Impose Economic Sanctions on the USA?
*
*
Imagine what would happen if China respond to Trump’s threats by significantly curtailing its “Made in China” exports to the USA. It would be absolutely devastating, disrupting the consumer economy and creating economic and financial chaos.
With permission from
Covert Geopolitics
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research
August 03, 2017
In June, Washington threatened Beijing with a sanctions regime, in response to China’s increased bilateral commodity trade with North Korea. Initially, the US sanctions were not intended to be against the Chinese government: selected Chinese banks and trading companies involved in the financing of China-DPRK commodity trade would be potential targets of US reprisals.
View original post 1,064 more words
Homelessness: The Low Income Housing Scandal
Poverty in America
Frontline (2017)
Film Review
Poverty in America is about the massive corruption scandal behind homelessness and the dearth of affordable housing for low income Americans.
Despite the nearly ten years that have passed since the 2008 economic crisis, 2.5 million Americans are made homeless through home eviction every year. The limited stock of affordable housing has no way of absorbing this many new renters. This, in turn, drives up rents at a time when real wages are decreasing. In many cities, families are forced to pay over 50% of their income in rent – a precarious situation leaving them one family emergency away from the streets.
This documentary focuses on two grossly inadequate federal programs dedicated to increasing access to affordable housing. The first is the Section 8 voucher program enacted in 1968. Under this program, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awards vouchers to low income renters that pay the different between the rent a landlord charges and the rent a tenant can afford based on income.
There are currently 2 million Americans on the waiting list for Section 8 vouchers and only 25 percent will ever receive vouchers. The filmmakers follow three women who have waited six years or longer to qualify for Section 8 vouchers. None of them can find a landlord willing to accept their voucher within the 90 day limit they are given.
The second federal program Frontline explores is one in which the IRS allocates tax credits to states to grant to developers – who, in turn, sell the credits to investors. An entire tax credit industry has grown up around this scheme. Owing to inadequate IRS monitoring (only seven companies have been audited in 29 years), the scheme has been plagued by bribery and kickback scandals.
In Florida, for example, developers routinely cheat the program by over inflating the cost of development projects and either pocketing the difference of siphoning it off to shell companies (including one in Costa Rico specifically created for this purpose).
Despite heroic efforts of a handful of Department of Justice attorneys and Senator (R) Charles Grassley from Iowa, there seems to be little interest on the part of federal or state authorities to end this corruption. The IRS and HUD declined to be interviewed for this program.
August 5, 2017
US Puts Boots on the Ground in Yemen
(ANTIWAR.COM) — A day after the US was reported to have participated in an anti al-Qaeda offensive in southern Shabwa Province of Yemen, the Pentagon is confirming that a “small number” of US ground troops have been deployed into Yemen for an ongoing operation against the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) force.
Details are still scant, but the operation is said to be taking place across central Yemen in a major al-Qaeda stronghold. The Pentagon said the main purposes of their presence is “intelligence sharing,” at least for now.
That’s because the Pentagon said they are not ruling out sending even more troops into Yemen in the coming weeks, as they appear to intend to continue escalating the fight against AQAP, in an offensive which apparently is being coordinated with the United Arab Emirates.
This operation is distinct from the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which is not focused on fighting against AQAP, but the presence of US ground troops in the country at all is likely to be controversial, given the human rights disaster the US-backed Saudi conflict has turned into.
Source: US Puts Boots on the Ground in Yemen
photo credit: enigmabadger Very Special Ops! – BrickArms M4-SBR via photopin (license)
Generations of Chemical Exposure May Lead to Absolute Infertility in Males
Science : Are we in a male fertility death spiral ?
Environmental Health Sciences, July 26, 2017.
Margaret Atwood’s 1985 book, The Handmaid’s Tale, played out in a world with declining human births because pollution and sexually transmitted disease were causing sterility.
Does fiction anticipate reality? Two new research papers add scientific weight to the possibility that pollution, especially endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), are undermining male fertility.
The first, published Tuesday, is the strongest confirmation yet obtained that human sperm concentration and count are in a long-term decline: more than 50 percent from 1973 to 2013, with no sign that the decline is slowing.
The second, published last week by different authors, offers a possible explanation. It found that early life exposure of male mouse pups to a model environmental estrogen, ethinyl estradiol, causes mistakes in development in the reproductive tract that will lead to lower sperm counts.
But there is much more to this study, led by Washington State University doctoral student Tegan Horan and published in the journal PLoS Genet. The senior author on the paper, Washington State University’s Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biosciences, Patricia Hunt, is one of the world’s leading authorities on how endocrine disrupting chemicals harm the development of sperm and eggs.
What makes this study unique is that it examined what happened when three successive generations of males were exposed—instead of just looking only at the first. . .
Equis Energy secures approval for 1 GW Australian solar farm
[image error]
Equis Energy has secured approval to begin constructing one of the largest solar farms in the world – a 1 GW installation in the Australian state of Queensland.
The Western Downs Regional Council has approved the plans submitted by Singapore-based renewable energy developer Equis Energy to build the AU$1.5 billion to $2 billion project.
Equis Energy chairman David Russell confirmed to pv magazine on Friday that the developer had been given the greenlight to build the Wandoan South Solar Projects (WSSP), stating: “The project will not only provide significant amounts of low-cost clean energy, but will also generate new jobs and training opportunities, with millions of dollar invested throughout local communities.
“The WSSP will have the ability to add battery storage when commercially feasible. This will allow energy to be stored and facilitate the generation of power into the evening,” added Russell.
The project is expected to generate up to 400 jobs during the construction phase, according to local Mayor Paul McVeigh. . .
Source: BREAKING: Equis Energy secures approval for 1 GW Australian solar farm
August 4, 2017
FOOD FRAUD: ‘Concentration and Power in the Food System’, Who Controls What We Eat?
*
An estimated two-thirds of the farm commodities sold in the U.S. come from just 100,000 farms, and these middle-to-large-scale farms just keep getting bigger. The reasons for this trend are manifold, but government subsidies play a significant role. About 85 percent of federal subsidies go to the top 10 percent of farms, which reinforces their advantages, allowing them to expand and buy out neighboring farms.
Source – galacticconnection.com
– “… An estimated two-thirds of the farm commodities sold in the U.S. come from just 100,000 farms, and these middle-to-large-scale farms just keep getting bigger. The reasons for this trend are manifold, but government subsidies play a significant role. About 85 percent of federal subsidies go to the top 10 percent of farms, which reinforces their advantages, allowing them to expand and buy out neighboring farms”:
Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat?
Story at-a-glance
The trend is for fewer but bigger firms increasing their power to control what we eat; four European firms control the global beer market; six firms control the global seed market; two firms control food distribution in the U.S.
Monopolies benefit corporations, not the public, reinforcing the company’s power and political clout. Many corporate executives even serve on federal advisory committees and global trade agreement…
View original post 3,277 more words
Post-Capitalism is Already Arriving… help the Virus go Viral
*
*
All over the world there are thousands of small and big coops, surviving and expressing our anti capitalist dreams, which could multiply and become immensely viable in the context of capitalist collapse.
How the Revolution could Happen
by The Free 03/08/17 Late capitalism is like an express train screeching down a hill towards a cliff edge.. and the only way to stay on the rails, as is unanimously agreed, is BY ACCELERATING the ‘growth rate’..
So how will the revolution happen? The classic answer is that the workers will unite, strike, takeover, banish the insane 1% and put the world to rights.
Not likely to happen any time soon. For one thing we are divided and marginalised and being replaced by precarious labour and willing anti-union robots.
The Nation States each demand a monopoly of violence and coercion. They need to be abolished, ASAP, but they have 24.7 million bored troops, armed to the teeth and just longing for us to attack.
Capitalism needs to crash to the ground in smithereens, but most of us are dependent on its crumbs…
View original post 2,601 more words
British PR Firm Tries to Start Race War in South Africa
The number of corruption scandals dogging South African president Jacob Zuma is legendary. The worst so far involves his relationship with the Gupta brothers, an Indian family that immigrated to South Africa in 1993. Taking advantage of South Africa’s legendary lack of “red tape” (i.e. corporate regulation), the Gupta’s quickly leveraged their small computer business into a multimillion dollar enterprise. As well as computers, they have interests in mining, air travel, energy, technology and media.
The generous favors they lavished on Zuma and his family has bought them an unprecedented level of influence over the South African government, including lucrative government contracts. It is not clear how much money, if any, the Guptas have donated to the governing party because political parties are not obliged to disclose donations from private sources.
In March 2016, popular anger over “state capture” by the Gupta family erupted into widespread popular. The Guptas responded by hiring British PR firm Bell Pottinger to counteract growing public perception that South Africa was a shadow state run by the Gupta family. The latter attempted to salvage the reputations of the Gupta and Zuma families by portraying them as victims of a racist backlash by “white monopoly capital.”
A recent cache of leaked Gupta emails reveal that Bell Pottinger approached this task by trying to stoke a full blown race war in South Africa. In addition to using social media to promote anger against “white monopoly capitalists,” they wrote speeches for Zuma’s son; created a Black First Land First campaign (similar to Mugabe’s historic campaign ousting white farmers from their in Zimbabwe) for the ANC Youth League directed; launched Twitter campaigns against journalists who tried to publicize corrupt ties between Zuma and the Gutpas; and helped organize a Black First Land First protest at a white journalist’s home.
Following a leaked report earlier this year, the ensuing uproar led Bell Pottinger to drop the Guptas as clients and sack the partner responsible for the campaign.
Zuma faces a no confidence vote (which could force him to step down) in Parliament on August 8:
#GuptaLeaks
August 3, 2017
Americans Spend The Most For Health Care, Still Die Young
*
*
Although the US spends more (nearly double) per capita on health care than any of the 34 other OECD member states, its average life expectancy of 78.8 years ranks among the lowest.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development just released its latest batch of data seeking to measure the quality of health care in each of its member states.
The rankings show that although the US spends more per capita on health care than any of the 34 other OECD member states, its average life expectancy of 78.8 years ranks is among the lowest found in the group, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
According to the data, the US ranks near the bottom compared with its developed-country peers in prevalence of infant mortality and maternal mortality, as well as deaths from cancer and cardiovascular disease.
?It has the fourth highest infant mortality rate in the OECD, the sixth highest maternal mortality rate and the ninth highest likelihood of dying at a younger age from a host of ailments, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.?
There?s also a surprising disconnect between how…
View original post 401 more words
The Most Revolutionary Act
- Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's profile
- 11 followers
