Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1179
May 30, 2017
Venezuela May Refuse to Pay $2.8 Billion Bonds Held by Goldman Sachs
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Venezuela threatens to stop Goldman Sachs from making ‘a quick buck’ off its suffering people.
Venezuela continues to defy western financial attack by never knelling to western banks seeking to profit on the agony of its citizens. Goldman Sachs is betting on the current low priced state oil firm stocks, while the other arm of the Deep State is doing all it can to put in power Venezuelan opposition parties under its thumb.
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The US Military Occupation of Africa
The Shadow War in the Sahara
Al Jazeera (2017)
Film Review
The Shadow War in the Sahara is a thumbnail history of the US military occupation of Africa. The documentary begins with the 1885 Berlin Conference, at which the major European powers divided up all of Saharan Africa to better exploit its rich resources of gas, oil, copper, uranium, coltan and other rare earth minerals.
France initially came out the winner, controlling three-fourths of Saharan Africa until World War II. Even after all their Saharan colonies won independence (1945-62), France continued to maintain a military presence, as well economic dominance over most of its former colonies.
With the discovery of oil in the Gulf of Guinea in the sixties, this began to change – with the covert US support of armed rebellions in Ethiopia and Angola and its failed invasion of Somalia. Over time, most French troops have been replaced by US troops. While this was done in the name of “fighting terrorism,” the real US agenda has always been to secure oil and mineral resources in the face of Chinese domination over African oil.
Instead of employing military force and direct political intervention via the International Monetary Fund and their “structural adjustment”* policies, China has gained a major foothold in Africa in offering debt-free development loans and a policy of non-interference in domestic policy.
The US is the only major power to divide up the entire world into military command and control regions: USNorthcom (North America), USSouthcom (South America), USEUCom (Europe), USCentcom (Middle East and Central Asia), USPACom (Pacific region and Australia) and USAfricom.
Former Libyan ruler Omar Gaddafi successfully blocked the US from locating the USAfricom headquarters in Africa – so the US built it in Germany instead.
Prior to his assassination by US-backed rebels, Gadaffi was a powerful advocate for African unity. His primary goal in founding and bankrolling (from his massive oil revenues) the African Development Bank and an African Monetary Fund was to assist other African countries to resist western colonialism.
In 2009, he was elected chairman of the African Union, and in 2011 he cancelled major contracts with the powerful (US) Bechtel corporation and with France (for millions of dollars of military hardware). The punishment inflicted by the US and France was swift – a NATO bombing campaign in support of CIA-backed rebels charged with overthrowing his government.
*Structural adjustment describes a process by which the US-controlled IMF forces countries to privatize public utilities, cut public services and open third world economies to western investment as a condition of debt refinancing.
May 29, 2017
Honest Accounts 2017: How the world profits from Africa’s wealth
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The countries of Africa are net creditors to the rest of the world, to the tune of $41.3 billion in 2015 – as the western world continues to loot their rich resources.
Jubilee Debt Campaign | May 24, 2017
Research for this report calculates the movement of financial resources into and out of Africa and some key costs imposed on Africa by the rest of the world. We find that the countries of Africa are collectively net creditors to the rest of the world, to the tune of $41.3 billion in 2015.1 Thus much more wealth is leaving the world’s most impoverished continent than is entering it.
Honest Accounts 2017: How the world profits from Africa’s wealth
Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) Company Hired “War on Terror” Contractors to Suppress Native Uprising
Global Research, May 29, 2017
Common Dreams 27 May 2017
The years-long, Indigenous-led fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) briefly captured the nation’s attention last fall as images of peaceful resisters being sprayed with water canons and surrounded by police in tanks and other military-grade equipment were spread widely, fueling global outrage and a fierce protest movement against the oil pipeline.
Now that the pipeline is operational and already leaking, internal documents obtained by The Intercept and reported on Saturday reveal the deep collusion between local police forces, the pipeline company, and defense contractors as they executed “military-style counterterrorism measures” to suppress the water protectors.
TigerSwan, described as a “shadowy international mercenary and security firm” that “originated as a U.S. military and State Department contractor helping to execute the global war on terror,” was hired by Energy Transfer Partners to spearhead “a multifaceted private security operation characterized by sweeping and invasive surveillance of protesters,” The Intercept wrote.
Sacred Burial Grounds Destroyed, Judge Halts Construction on Portion of Dakota Access Pipeline (Source: EcoWatch)
Reportedly, one of TigerSwan’s contractors leaked 100 internal documents to reporters Alleen Brown, Will Parrish, and Alice Speri, who were able to assemble roughly 1,000 more via public records requests.
The trove paints a damning picture of the police response to the Indigenous-led effort to block construction of the pipeline on sacred, treaty land and is a shocking example of how anti-terrorist rhetoric and tactics could be applied to any uprising the government would like to suppress.
According to the reporting:
Internal TigerSwan communications describe the movement as “an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component” and compare the anti-pipeline water protectors to jihadist fighters. One report, dated February 27, 2017, states that since the movement “generally followed the jihadist insurgency model while active, we can expect the individuals who fought for and supported it to follow a post-insurgency model after its collapse.” Drawing comparisons with post-Soviet Afghanistan, the report warns, “While we can expect to see the continued spread of the anti-DAPL diaspora…aggressive intelligence preparation of the battlefield and active coordination between intelligence and security elements are now a proven method of defeating pipeline insurgencies.”
“As policing continues to be militarized and state legislatures around the country pass laws criminalizing protest,” Brown, Parrish, and Speri write, “the fact that a private security firm retained by a Fortune 500 oil and gas company coordinated its efforts with local, state, and federal law enforcement to undermine the protest movement has profoundly anti-democratic implications.”
Indeed, in the wake of the 2016 election, Republican legislatures in at least 19 states introduced various anti-protest laws, many with a deliberate nod to the uprising in North Dakota.
Not only that, but Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, who oversaw the police response to the DAPL resistance, has been advising other law enforcement on how to deal with protests and demonstrations.
Indeed, the documents reportedly show that Energy Transfer Partners has “continued to retain TigerSwan,” despite the fact that the anti-DAPL camps have disbanded. The security firm continues to produce so-called situation reports that document “the threat of growing activism around other pipeline projects across the country.” These reports include “intelligence on upcoming protests,” information gleaned from social media, and “extensive evidence of aerial surveillance and radio eavesdropping, as well as infiltration of camps and activist circles.”
In some cases, persons “of interest” were even tracked when they crossed over state lines.
What’s more, the documents obtained via open records requests include “communications among agents from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Justice Department, the Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as state and local police,” that reveals interagency collusion and information sharing on the anti-DAPL protesters.
Read the extensive reporting and several published documents at The Intercept.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Featured image: Dark Sevier/flickr/cc
The original source of this article is Common Dreams
Copyright © Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, 2017
Global Research link: http://www.globalresearch.ca/dakota-access-pipeline-dapl-company-hired-war-on-terror-contractors-to-suppress-native-uprising/5592510
Fukushima prognosis and how radioactivity affects the body: Medical facts from Dr. Helen Caldicott
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Great summary of the health effects of nuclear radiation.
With specific information on Tritium, Strontium 90, Cesium 137, radioactive Iodine 131, and Plutonium.
By Helen Caldicott, Volume 4, Issue 2 2014, Australian Medical Student Journal
…Fukushima is now described as the greatest industrial accident in history.
The Japanese government was so concerned that they were considering plans to evacuate 35 million people from Tokyo, as other reactors including Fukushima Daiini on the east coast were also at risk. Thousands of people fleeing from the smoldering reactors were not notified where the radioactive plumes were travelling, despite the fact that there was a system in place to track the plumes. As a result, people fled directly into regions with the highest radiation concentrations, where they were exposed to high levels of whole-body external gamma radiation being emitted by the radioactive elements, inhaling radioactive air and swallowing radioactive elements. [2] Unfortunately, inert potassium iodide was not supplied, which would have blocked…
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May 28, 2017
The long history of CIA involvement in the international narcotics trade
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According to his son, the notorious cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar worked closely with the CIA.
“US officials in Central America failed to address this drug issue for fear of jeopardising the war efforts against Nicaragua … and senior US policymakers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras’ funding problems.”
US Senator John Kerry
“Drug Boss Escobar Worked for the CIA” is a short documentary made by Newsbud. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
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Dioxin and Endometriosis: Activists Want Pads and Tampons Labeled.
Period activists want pads and tampon makers to disclose ingredients
Who knows what chemicals and other ingredients are in (your) tampons? Many sanitary pads don’t list any ingredients at all on the package…
One longtime concern about menstrual products has been whether the process of purifying or bleaching cotton and rayon with chlorine compounds may leave worrisome traces of toxic dioxins behind. Some research in nonhuman primates has linked exposure to dioxins to endometriosis.
Abstract
Endometriosis is a common gynecologic problem of unknown etiology. Estrogen dependence and immune modulation are established features of this disease, and environmental contaminants have been suggested to play a role in the pathobiology of this disease as well.
Previous work in nonhuman primates has shown that exposure to the dioxin 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is associated with an increased prevalence and severity of endometriosis. Further animal experiments have implicated dioxin and dioxin-like compounds in this disease. Rodent studies support the plausibility of a role of environmental contaminants in the pathophysiology of endometriosis, although a convincing mechanistic hypothesis has yet to be advanced.
Small hospital-based case-control studies have failed to provide compelling evidence for or against an association of environmental contaminants and endometriosis. Herein we review evidence that dioxin and dioxin-like compounds are potent modulators of immune and endocrine function critical to the pathobiology of endometriosis.
Furthermore, perspectives on the potential mechanism(s) of dioxin and dioxin-like compound-induced toxicity in endometriosis, important knowledge needs, potential animal models for endometriosis studies, and considerations integral to future human case-control studies are discussed.
via Environmental dioxins and endometriosis — DES Daughter Network
Radical Voluntary Simplicity
A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity
by Jordan Osmund and Samuel Alexander (2016)
Film Review
A Simpler Way is about an experiment in radical voluntary simplicity in Victoria Australia in 2016 Using donated land, volunteers from Australia, New Zealand and the UK agree to opt out of the money/corporate system and spend a year in an intentional community. The documentary is a record of their experiences.
The premises behind this experiment, called The Simpler Way Project, are as follows:
1. Contemporary civilization has begun to exceed the limits of a finite planet – the fragile Earth cannot support and indefinite increase in people living affluent lifestyles.
2. Technology and the free market can’t save us.
3. We can’t afford to wait for government to find a solution.
4. It’s up to ordinary people to figure out ways of meeting their basic needs that consume fewer resources.
Most of the film focuses on the shelters they erected (after seeking outside expertise) – a combination of tiny houses built from recycled construction materials, cobb houses (see The Revolutionary Mud House Movement) and earthships (see The Earthship Movement: Transforming Garbage into Homes).
Although they would try to grow most of their own food, initially they rely on local organic food from CSA’s (see Top 10 Reasons to Join a CSA). They cook with a combination of open fire and solar and mud overs.
Most find it far more satisfying relying on themselves and other community members to meet their survival needs, as opposed to working at a desk for money. The biggest challenge for all of them is learning the communication and conflict resolution skills necessary to make group decisions. A few become so frustrated with this process they leave and are replaced by new volunteers.
May 27, 2017
Family to Receive More than $20 Million in First-Ever Vaccine-Autism Court Award
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In the first court award in a vaccine-autism claim, the family of Hannah Poling will receive more than $20 million.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-to-receive-15m-plus-in-first-ever-vaccine-autism-court-award/
CBS News Investigates
Family to Receive $1.5M+ in First-Ever Vaccine-Autism Court Award
By Sharyl Attkisson
On CBS News
The first court award in a vaccine-autism claim is a big one. CBS News has learned the family of Hannah Poling will receive more than $1.5 million dollars for her life care; lost earnings; and pain and suffering for the first year alone.
In addition to the first year, the family will receive more than $500,000 per year to pay for Hannah’s care. Those familiar with the case believe the compensation could easily amount to $20 million over the child’s lifetime.
Hannah was described as normal, happy and precocious in her first 18 months.
Then, in July 2000, she was vaccinated against nine diseases in one doctor’s visit: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, varicella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and Haemophilus influenzae.
Afterward, her health declined rapidly. She developed high fevers, stopped eating, didn’t…
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Dry Laundry Naturally
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Here in New Zealand, most of my friends dry their clothes on drying racks and clothes lines – in part because it’s better for the environment and in part because electricity is very expensive here.
You all know my feelings on laundry… What you may not know is my complete dislike of the dryer. Using the dryer costs a lot of money to run. Using the dryer creates static, is too hot (especially in summer) and makes clothes, linens and the like smell — well stale.
There are many benefits to drying your laundry naturally:
Saves Money
Smells Fantastic
Softens Clothes Naturally
Your Clothes and Linens Last Longer – A Lot Longer
Eliminates Static and Dryer Sheet Chemicals
Is a Great Biceps and Triceps Exercise
Is Environmentally Friendly
Whitens Your Whites
Reduces Wrinkles
In full disclosure, it isn’t as though I do not use the dryer. A dryer is a convenience. But, my drying preference is to hang clothes or line dry. I do have some great cheats to help you get through those laundry blues.
Drying Racks
Drying racks are brilliant things for several…
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