Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1171
June 25, 2017
“The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther”
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How the FBI, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Black Panther leader Fred Hampton – from 2009.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. On December 4th, 1969, Chicago police raided Fred Hampton’s apartment, shot and killed him in his bed. He was just 21 years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid.
While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. Noam Chomsky has called Hampton’s killing “the gravest domestic crime of the Nixon administration.”
Today, on this 40th anniversary of his death, we spend the rest of the hour on Fred Hampton. In 1969, he had emerged…
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Who Got Rich Off the Student Debt Crisis?
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A generation ago, Congress privatized the US student loan program, creating a major profit center for Wall Street. Today, just about everyone involved in the student loan industry makes money off students – the banks, private investors, even the federal government.
Source – revealnews.org
– “…Decades ago, the federal government relinquished direct control of the student loan program, opening its bank to corporations concerned with profits, not diplomas. Private equity companies and Wall Street banks seized on the flow of federal loan dollars by peddling loans that students sometimes could not afford and then collecting fees from the government to hound those students when they defaulted”
(A History of Student Loans Every Student Should Read: Who Got Rich Off the Student Debt Crisis – by James B. Steele and Lance Williams)
A generation ago, Congress privatized a student loan program intended to give more Americans access to higher education.
In its place, lawmakers created another profit center for Wall Street and a system of college finance that has fed the nation’s cycle of inequality. Step by step, Congress has enacted one law after another to make student debt the…
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Inside Afghanistan’s Opium Trade
Afghan Overdose: Inside the Opium Trade
RT (2015)
Film Review
Afghan Overdose is an RT documentary that seems more geared for Russian than foreign consumption. Although the narrator is dubbed in English, actual dialogue is Russian or Farsi with subtitles.
As its northern neighbor, Russia is one of the primary destinations of Afghan heroin smugglers – roughly 30,000 Russians die of heroin overdose annually. The Russian government is so concerned about their heroin epidemic that they routinely provide the Afghan government with satellite imagery of the country’s heroin labs.
Segments from so-called opium “raids” leave no doubt the government’s heroin eradication efforts are purely cosmetic. Because the 15 1/2 year war with the US has totally destroyed the nation’s infrastructure, opium production is the only source of livelihood open to tens of thousands of residents
The arrival of ISIS in Afghanistan – who oppose the Taliban – only contributes to the overall chaos and instability.
The film’s only weakness is its lack of historical or political perspective. According to RT, opium production is the primary source of revenue for the Taliban (who control most of the country outside of Kabul). However it’s not clear how the Taliban switched over from being adamantly anti-opium prior to the US invasion to relying on it as their primary source of revenue.
It’s intriguing to hear to anti-Taliban locals talking about the US/CIA creating the Taliban as a cover for their heroin trafficking, about NATO soldiers fighting alongside the Taliban against anti-Taliban warlords and about US troops that directly engage in various aspects of opium production. I think this would have been a better documentary were some of these lines of inquiry pursued.
June 24, 2017
British opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn puts politics centre stage at Glastonbury Festival
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British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn got a rock star reception at Glastonbury Festival on June 24, telling a headliner-sized crowd that millions of young people who voted for him would not be silenced or sidelined.
(Source: www.straitstimes.com)
GLASTONBURY, England (REUTERS) – British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn got a rock star reception at Glastonbury Festival on Saturday (June 24), telling a headliner-sized crowd that millions of young people who voted for him would not be silenced or sidelined.
Dismissed as a left-wing no-hoper before elections on June 8, Corbyn attracted a surge of support from 18-24 year-olds that helped his Labour Party deny Prime Minister Theresa May a parliamentary majority.
The 68-year old’s popularity at Worthy Farm in south-west England could be measured by the number of pro-Corbyn banners on display and Corbyn T-shirts.
They easily outnumbered those for the biggest names on the musical bill – Radiohead, Foo Fighters and Ed Sheeran – and the chant “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” rang round the world’s biggest greenfield festival.
Appearing between British singer-songwriter Craig David and US rap act Run The Jewels, Corbyn – who promised during campaigning to…
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Green France: Macron bans Fracking and welcomes US renewables Scientists fleeing Trump | Informed Comment
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The French government wants to steal increasingly unemployed US green energy scientists, who are being systematically defunded by the Trump administration.
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The French government wants to steal increasingly unemployed US green energy …
Germany mulling over sanctions against the US
from Sputnik, Moscow
It appears that the US-EU “geopolitical marriage” is bursting at the seams due to the irresponsible foreign strategy of the US political elite, Russian economist Ivan Danilov wrote for RIA Novosti, revealing what could become the final straw for the long-lasting trans-Atlantic union.
It seems that the geopolitical divorce between the US and the EU may take place sooner than anyone expected, Ivan Danilov, a Russian economist and author of the popular blog Crimson Alter, notes in his op-ed for RIA Novosti. In his earlier articles Danilov called attention to the growing dissatisfaction with Washington among European leaders, highlighting that the US-EU “marriage” had begun to crack. However, there is a factor that could accelerate the process, the economist pointed out.
“When the US senators voted for a new package of sanctions against Russia, they were solving domestic political issues, and also tried to limit the freedom of foreign policy maneuver for President Donald Trump. They couldn’t imagine that their actions would not only cause a sharp diplomatic reaction from the leading EU countries, but would also lead to the emergence of the issue of retaliatory sanctions against the United States of America in the European media,” Danilov wrote.
Indeed, the recent package of anti-Russian measures which is meant to be codified into law has caused a storm of criticism from US allies in Europe. The problem is that the new bill is targeting Russia’s energy sector, most notably the Nord Stream 2 project which is intended to carry cheap natural gas from Russia to Europe.
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Furthermore, Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper, Austria’s OMV, Anglo-Dutch Shell and France’s Engie are directly involved in the project. In a joint statement, Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austria’s Chancellor Christian Kern slammed the decision by the US Senate to impose new sanctions on Moscow over its alleged interference in the US presidential election as well as the ongoing situations in Ukraine and Syria.
“Threatening German, Austrian and other European enterprises with penalties on the US market only because they take part in the gas supply projects such as the Nord Stream 2 together with Russia or finance them, is adding an absolutely new and highly negative aspect in relations between the US and Europe,” the joint statement reads.
For his part, the leader of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), Martin Schulz, lambasted US senators’ move and called upon German Chancellor Angela Merkel to oppose it.
“We have seen that the US is pursuing a course in energy policy that is dangerous and is directed against Germany,” Schulz told the Federal Association of German Industry (BDI). “We have the right to defend the industrial interests of the Federal Republic of Germany and Europe,” Schulz stressed.
It cannot be excluded that the EU resistance may translate into concrete action, Danilov noted. The economist referred to the article by Stuart Elliott of S&P Global Platts who emphasized that the reaction to sanctions from Germany and Austria was “as fierce as it was immediate” and that “there has even been talk already in Berlin of reciprocal sanctions against the US.”
What Elliott was writing about isn’t just a rumor given the fact that earlier, on June 16, German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries told Reuters that Berlin would mull over counter-measures if US President Trump signs the anti-Russian sanctions bill . . .
Source: Germany mulling over sanctions against the US
June 23, 2017
Court Rules USS Reagan crew can sue Japanese company over Fukushima nuclear disaster
A federal appeals court has ruled that members of the US Navy can now, in a US court, pursue their lawsuit which alleges that they were exposed to radiation while providing aid after the nuclear crisis in Fukushima, Japan.
On Thursday, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in favor of the sailors who were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation while providing humanitarian aid after an earthquake destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.
The ruling allows sailors, who were aboard the ship at the time, to pursue their lawsuit against the state-owned Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) for misrepresented radiation levels in the surrounding air and water. The lawsuit alleges that TEPCO misled them about the extent of the radiation leak.
An investigation into the incident found that TEPCO did not take proper precautions to prevent the incident and described the meltdown as a “manmade” disaster. TEPCO later admitted the meltdown could have been avoided.
Read more
US Navy sailors sue Japan for lying about Fukushima radiation
The Japanese government set up the Nuclear Damage Claim Dispute Resolution Center to deal with all the claims against TEPCO. So far, a total of $58 billion has been paid out to victims of the disaster.
However, TEPCO asked the courts to dismiss the case from the US sailors under the “firefighter’s rule,” which states that first responders cannot sue those who caused the emergency.
Up to 75,000 US citizens could have been affected by the meltdown, according to former Democratic senator and presidential candidate John Edwards who is presenting the case in court.
“These members of the United States Navy deserve their day in court, and they will get it,”said Edwards. “These American heroes served the United States and were innocent victims in a nuclear disaster that never should have happened. This case has broad US interests, both because of our nation’s long-standing relationship with Japan, and because plaintiffs in this case are members of the US military harmed while on a humanitarian mission.”
The sailors continue to suffer from blindness, thyroid cancer, leukemia and brain tumors, Edwards said.
Attorneys are seeking $1 billion in damages from TEPCO and several other defendants, including General Electric, EBASCO, Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi. . .
Source: USS Reagan crew can sue Japanese company over Fukushima nuclear disaster – court
Police Searches Drop Dramatically in States that Legalized Marijuana
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Traffic searches by highway patrols in Colorado and Washington dropped by nearly half after the two states legalized marijuana in 2012.
Truth Troubles: Why people hate the truths' of the real world
(THIS ARTICLE IS COURTESY OF NBC NEWS)
Police Searches Drop Dramatically in States that Legalized Marijuana
bySAM PETULLAandJON SCHUPPE
Traffic searches by highway patrols in Colorado and Washington dropped by nearly half after the two states legalized marijuana in 2012. That also reduced the racial disparities in the stops, according to a new analysis of police data, but not by much. Blacks and Hispanics are still searched at higher rates than whites.
Highway stops have long been a tool in the war on drugs, and remain a charged issue amid a furious national debate about police treatment of minorities. Last week, protests erupted over the acquittal of a Minnesota police officer who shot to death Philando Castile after pulling him over for a broken tail light.
Sam PetullaThe overuse of traffic stops can damage the public trust in police, particularly when searches disproportionately involve black and…
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Mexico Just Legalized Medical Cannabis Nationwide
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The ruling eliminates the prohibition and criminalization of acts related to the medicinal use of marijuana and its scientific research, and those relating to the production and distribution of the plant for these purposes.
Source: ActivistPost.com
Rachel Blevins
June 20, 2017
As a growing number of individual states in the U.S. stand up to the federal government on marijuana prohibition, Mexico legalized medical marijuana nationwide on Monday.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto issued a decree, following the bill’s overwhelming approval from Mexico’s Senate in December, with a vote of 98-7, and from Mexico’s Lower House of Congress in April, with a vote of 374-7 vote.
The ruling eliminates the prohibition and criminalization of acts related to the medicinal use of marijuana and its scientific research, and those relating to the production and distribution of the plant for these purposes.
The decree stated that the nation’s Ministry of Health would be in charge of “public policies regulating the medicinal use of pharmacological derivatives of cannabis sativa, indica and Americana or marijuana, including tetrahydrocannabinol, its isomers and stereochemical variants, as well as how to regulate…
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Chevron vs the Amazon
Chevron vs the Amazon
Abbey Martin (2016)
Film Review
Chevron vs the Amazon is an Abbey Martin documentary about Texaco-Chevron’s deliberate dumping of oil and toxic waste in Ecuador’s Amazon rain forest and the vicious dirty tricks they have engaged in to avoid responsibility for cleaning it up.
Texas began drilling for oil in Ecuador in 1964, under a US-installed dictatorship that agreed not to regulate their activities. The amount of oil they spilled into the Amazon was 1700 times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and 140 times that of BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. Indigenous groups filed suit for the extensive damage to their water, health and livelihoods in 1993, a year after Texaco abandoned their Ecuadoran well sites. Texaco settled this first suit by agreeing to a phony remediation scheme that never happened.
Part 1 consists of great footage of the vast amount of oil remaining in Ecuador’s Amazon rain forest and interviews with indigenous Ecuadorans whose entire families have been devastated by the health effects (cancer, leukemia, rashes, miscarriages, birth defects) of the contaminated water they are forced to drink.
Part 2 provides background to the second class action lawsuit brought against Texaco by 30,000 indigenous residents – the largest environmental lawsuit in history. Texaco has a really ugly human rights history, beginning with the bankrolling of Spain’s fascist dictator Francisco Franco and illegal provision of oil, financial support and secret intelligence to Hitler and Mussolini. After losing a series of punitive lawsuits over its environmental crimes, they were forced to merge with Chevron in 2000.
The latter has its own history of human rights and environmental crimes in Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Chad, Cameroons, Equatorial Guinea and Richmond California.
After fighting the suit for eight years in US courts, Chevron eventually won a court ruling that that the suit had to be tried in Ecuador instead. When it was re-filed in Ecuador, Chevron engaged in blackmail, extortion, bribery, illegal surveillance, “judicial terrorism” (bringing 30 lawsuits against oil spill victims for “racketeering”), and “financial terrorism” (suing all the non-profit groups supporting the indigenous plaintiffs).
In 2011 the Ecuadoran plaintiffs ultimately won their suit for $9.6 billion – a ruling confirmed by Ecuador’s supreme court. Instead of paying up, Chevron forced them to file suit in various countries where Chevron has financial assents (including Canada, Brazil and Argentina). A 2016 ruling in US court makes it illegal for Ecuador to file a claim against Chevron’s US holdings.
Part 3 explores the long history of US economic colonization in Latin America (on behalf of Wall Street corporations) via direct military intervention, the installation of puppet dictators and the paramilitary death squad terrorism carried out through Henry Kissinger’s notorious Operation Condor. All this has changed with the 2007 election of Rafael Correa (who granted Julian Assange asylum in London’s Ecuadoran embassy).
At present Chevron seek to perpetuate their economic imperialism via a secret World Bank tribunal in the Hague. There 20 hand picked corporate “judges” have found that the successful lawsuit against Chevron retroactively violates of the 1997 US-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty (Texaco-Chevron left Ecuador in 1992) and ordered Ecuador to pay Chevron $112 million in damages.
2017 update: In March 2017 lawyers representing the Ecuadoran plaintiffs have petitioned the US Supreme Court to overturn the flawed (by bribery and corruption) racketeering conviction against the Ecuadoran plaintiffs and their lawyers. (See Chevron in Ecuador )
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