Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1172
June 22, 2017
Godzilla Amazon: The Amount of Power in Jeff Bezos’ Hands Should Frighten All Americans
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Like Google and Facebook, Amazon uses technology and data to sidestep traditional restrictions on monopoly power. Now, Bezos is attempting to add more power to his empire with the surprise announcement that the company will pay $13.7 billion for Whole Foods Market.
Amazon very effectively uses technology and data to sidestep traditional restrictions on monopoly power.
By Matt Stoller
Source: AlterNet
To understand the depth and breadth of Jeff Bezos’ ambitions for the company he built, type www.relentless.com into your browser. The domain Bezos registered in 1994 will redirect to Amazon, the company aptly, and ambitiously, nicknamed The Everything Store. He tells his shareholders that the company will act like an aggressive startup — that at Amazon, it is always Day One.
Like Google and Facebook, Amazon uses technology and data to sidestep traditional restrictions on monopoly power. Our lives are increasingly organized by the platforms these companies run, platforms which now mediate the way we communicate and engage in commerce with each other. We are living in a world organized by tech monopolists, a change in power relationships that no one voted for but has been imposed upon us nonetheless.
Now…
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3.5 Billion Unknowingly Poisoned By Airlines Each Year?*
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There’s a flurry of global reporting on new research from Stirling University (hosted on the WHO website that confirms a clear pattern of and chronic symptoms ranging from breathing and vision problems, to neurological ones like headaches and dizziness in passengers exposed air blown from engines into aircraft cabins.
3.5 Billion Unknowingly Poisoned By Airlines Each Year?*
By Sayer Ji
It’s been five months since our first investigative report about the serious health hazards associated with modern air travel: “Asbestos of the Sky” – The Aviation Industry’s Darkest Coverup.
I wish the title of the article were hyperbole, but it really is that dark, and the cover-up stretches over half a century, being no less devastating to public health than other agendas you may already be familiar with such as Big Tobacco’s Smoking-Cancer link and the CDC’s Vaccine-Autism coverup.
The proof is in how many people still know absolutely nothing about the devastating health risks of bleed-air being fed directly into the cabins of planes from their engines.
Thankfully, the tides are beginning to shift. There has been a flurry of global reporting on new research from Stirling University hosted on the WHO’s website that confirms there is a clear pattern of…
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Hawaii may become the first US state to adopt basic income
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An unprecedented bill supporting the idea of universal basic income (UBI) has been introduced in the American state of Hawaii.
https://www.rt.com/business/392573-hawaii-pass-bill-basic-income/
An unprecedented bill supporting the idea of universal basic income (UBI) has been introduced in the American state of Hawaii.
The bill, titled House Concurrent Resolution 89, was brought by Hawaii State Representative Chris Lee and was passed by both houses of the state legislature in a unanimous vote.
The resolution declares that all the islanders “deserve basic financial security.”
It also orders government offices to weigh the state’s economy and find ways to ensure all families have basic financial security, including an evaluation of different forms of a full or partial universal basic income.
“As innovation and automation and inequality disrupt our economy, we want to make sure that everybody benefits and nobody is left behind. It’s past time that we had a serious talk about not just tweaking our economic policies, but having a new discussion from the ground up about what our values and priorities are,”
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June 21, 2017
Radioactive Waste Flowing Freely into Columbia River Because There’s No Money to Stop It
Vic Bishop, Staff Writer
Waking Times
A member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently informed the public that radioactive waste from the decommissioned Hanford nuclear power plant is ‘flowing freely’ into the Columbia river.
The mighty Columbia river is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of America, flowing down from Canada, winding through eastern Washington state and along the border between Oregon, ultimately moving through downtown Portland and into the Pacific. The Hanford site, located near Kennewick, WA is up river from a million or so people, not to mention the wildlife.
Constructed in the 1940’s as part of the Manhattan Project, the plant was decommissioned after the Cold War, leaving behind some 53 million gallons of high level radioactive waste. Proposed as a Superfund site in 1988, Hanford is an uncontrollable ecological and public health disaster . . .
UN-Backed Libyan Government Installs two ISIS Ministers
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ISIS education ministers appointed to UN-backed Libyan government.
How shifty do these two men on the left of this Photo look? Their names are Abdilbasit Gowela and Mohamed Algeriani. During the rule of #ISIS in #Sirte and just before, they joined ISIS and became their “Education Ministers”, 100% responsible for the Brainwashing of those areas they captured as has been seen everywhere ISIS goes. ………..In some BIzarre attempt to link #Tripoli#Libya and the #USA#Washington D.C. backed Regime there with #Misrata (where 500 US Marines are stationed and where these two men are backed, by #Qatar, #Israel and #Turkey), they have been appointed some time ago as “The Minister of Education” and his Deputy for the entire Country of Libya!………….there are many reasons why the vast Majority of Libyans are still fighting a Civil War and Peace will never come. And these 2 men are 2 of those…
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No Maternity Leave? Only in the US
Maternity Leave and Why the US is the Only Developed Nation Without It
Broadly (2016)
Film Review
Maternity Leave focuses on the failure of the US government to offer working mothers paid maternity leave. The US is one of two countries globally (the other is Papua New Guinea) and the only developed country without it. The rest of the world provides paid maternity leave for two simple reasons: 1) because spending time with mom is vital to newborn development and 2) because studies show financial advantages for employers, taxpayers and GDP.
Three states require employers to provide paid maternity leave: California six weeks at 55% salary, Rhode Island four weeks at 60% salary and New Jersey six weeks at 67% salary.
Ninety percent of California businesses report an increase in profitability (owing to the high cost of recruiting and training replacement workers) since they started providing paid maternity leave. Nationwide replacement workers for women who leave work to start a family cost billions of dollars. Forty percent of women without access to paid maternity leave are forced to apply for public assistance, which is also a major burden to taxpayers.
The filmmakers visit excruciatingly poor Papua New Guinea, to investigate their failure to provide paid maternity to leave – only to discover the government of Papua New Guinea provides three months paid maternity leave for public employees. This is a start contrast with an extremely anemic executive order Obama signed in 2015 allowing federal employees to “pre-use” six weeks of paid sick leave (which they haven’t earned yet) as maternity leave.
The filmmakers also visit Sweden, which has the world’s best maternity leave policy. Their generous paid parental leave (480 days per child split between both parents) has helped to bring more Swedish women into the workforce while simultaneously increasing GDP.
They interview a member of Sweden’s Feminist Party, who maintains that paid maternity leave is a matter of full equality for women. True equality means that women enjoy the same rights as men to both a job and family time – they shouldn’t have to sacrifice one for the other.
Real equality also means embracing and valuing traditional women’s work (homemaking, child care and elder care).
June 20, 2017
Moms Across America: Powerful new Documentary on GMOs and Roundup Toxicity
Moms Across America has just released a powerful new video called “Communities Rising” that exposes the devastating toxicity of GMOs and glyphosate. Watch the video now at this YouTube link, or watch it below.
“This film highlights everyday citizens across the world that are taking matters into their own hands, healing their families, raising awareness about organic food, and changing local pesticide policies,” filmmaker Zen H. told Natural News. “I’m confident that we’re in the process of ending this chemical era and taking back our food supply.”
GMOs and glyphosate are the leading toxins used in the mass poisoning of our children and our food soils. This mass poisoning is being underwritten and promoted by the deceptive media, prostituted science shills (who are routinely bribed to promote toxic poisons) and even Monsanto-funded “smear” groups that attack clean food activists . . .
Source: Moms Across America releases powerful new documentary exposing toxicity of GMOs and glyphosate
US in trade talks to Replace TPP
South China Morning Post | 20 June 2017
US in trade talks with Asian nations to replace TPP, commerce secretary says
by Robert Delaney
The US has started trade talks with multiple countries in Asia to find an alternative to the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said.
“We expressed a willingness on the US’ part to indulge in bilateral talks with Japan” on a trade agreement, Ross told reporters at the annual SelectUSA investment conference in Washington, organised by the Commerce Department.
“We’ve also had some very, very preliminary scoping sessions with some of the other individual nations.”
Ross declined to specify with which other countries the US has resumed talks, saying: “We like to announce things when it’s agreeable to the other nation. The Japanese have acknowledged our overture. So far, I don’t think other nations have.”
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the US from TPP on his first day in office, following through on a campaign pledge he said would help stem job losses. That move was at odds with the wishes of most US state leaders, Scott Pattison, CEO of the National Governors Association, said in a separate press briefing at SelectUSA.
“Most governors were very pro-TPP, Republicans and Democrats,” Pattison said. “They’re not going to get directly involved in the negotiations because they know their role and it’s not appropriate.
“On the other hand, though, what they’d like to push, because most of them were for TPP, they want to ensure there’s as much trade and investment activity between the states and other countries as possible.”
The other 11 members of the regional trade pact, which doesn’t include China, agreed to continue talks aimed at keeping TPP intact, even without the US.
However, the US’ withdrawal significantly reduces the trade bloc’s influence.
If you include the US, the 12 TPP signatories account for 38 per cent of world GDP and 26 per cent of its trade, according to David Dodwell, executive director of the Hong Kong-Apec Trade Policy Group.
Without the US, this shrivels to 13 per cent of GDP and 15 per cent of trade.
The new trade discussions target multiple countries in Asia, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters at the 2017 SelectUSA investment summit
Source: US in trade talks with Asian nations to replace TPP, commerce secretary says
Syria Already Planning Its Economic Future
Guest Post by Sophie Mengel Inside Syria Media Center.
Last Monday the EU Council extended sanctions against the Syrian government for another year, until June 1, 2018. The event occurred as recent Syrian Arab Army successes raise hopes for an end to the Syrian conflict. It’s clearly not enough to talk about food relief and delivery of basic necessities. Manufacturing and foreign trade have also taken major hits in Syria.
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A women delivers a speech as she stands on a chair of the public art project “Anything to Say?” at the Alexander Square in Berlin, Germany, Friday, May 1, 2015. The sculpture of the Italian artist Davide Dormino shows the whistleblowers Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, from right, to honour their courage. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
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World Bank: Total economic damage by city
Bilateral Ties Between Syria and Iran
Not so long ago, at a Damascus meeting between Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis and Iranian Ambassador Javad Torkabadi, Khamis highlighted the full-scale economic war the West and their Middle East allies have unleashed against Syria. Tehran, with its long experiencing countering “sanctions war,” and Damascus have become a model of strategic cooperation, both militarily and economically. However, strong economic ties between Iran and Syria alone will not solve the problem of Syrian economic degradation.
Courting Qatar
Despite their past support for anti-government terrorists, the current economic boycott of Qatar by its “friendly neighbors” is leading to hope of future Qatari investment in the Syrian economy. For Qatar to invest in Syrian zones of influence or to offer Syria offer a kind of Marshall Plan would go a long way towards repairing Qatar’s international image. It would also allow the country to bypass limitations Saudi Arabia seeks to impose on Qatar’s foreign policy, while making it more independent of the US and the EU.
All this would likely depend on consummating an agreement for Iran to purchase LNG from Qatar for onward transport to external consumers. Iran, which is getting closer to Qatar and has strong positions in Syria, has great potential as an intermediary.
Syria is Already Planning Its Economic Future
Despite the ongoing fighting in Syria, the country is already planning its economic future. Syria is rich in energy resources and minerals, including rare-earth metals. At the same time, the country has an advantageous geographical location for transporting goods to the Mediterranean pass through its territory. All this gives Damascus the potential for rapid economic development.
Stability in the region and restoration of foreign trade would enable the Syrians to have a source of stable foreign direct investment. The country has been in the grip of war for more than six years, but is full of enthusiasm to rebuild the economy. The hope of a new life and recent successes on the battlefield inspire optimism on the part of Syrian citizens, as well as the countries such as Iran, China, India, Russia and Armenia that support them.
Follow the latest developments by reading Inside Syria Media Center.
June 19, 2017
Iran & China Conduct Joint Naval Exercises in Strategic Strait of Hormuz
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The Strait of Hormuz, which lies between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, has become the setting of a faceoff between Tehran and Washington, as around 30 percent of global oil exports pass through the strategic waterway annually.
Iranian and Chinese Naval forces are participating in joint drills in the strategically important Strait of Hormuz. The naval maneuvers come amid growing tensions between the US and Iran, as Washington prepares a new round of sanctions against Tehran.
A total of four vessels and two helicopters displayed their military capabilities on Sunday during a day of joint exercises in the strait connecting the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman.
The Chinese fleet, which includes the Chang Chun guided-missile destroyer, the Chao Hu replenishment ship, the Jin Zhou frigate, and a helicopter, arrived in the Iranian southern port of Bandar Abbas on Thursday. An Iranian destroyer and a helicopter joined them for the drills.
The exercises, which had been planned in advance, are aimed at promoting interaction and strengthening confidence between the navies of the two nations, according to Rear Admiral Shen Hao, Commander of China Navy Task Force…
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