Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1194

Glyphosate Residue Free Certification Creates New Transparency Shift for US Consumers

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Roundup Free certification for U.S. food products launched by The Detox Project – it’s designed to give consumers a way of avoiding the ‘probably carcinogenic’ chemical.

Mountain Republic

Glyphosate Residue Free certification for U.S. food products has been launched on Tuesday by The Detox Project, in a move that gives consumers a way of avoiding the ‘probably carcinogenic’ chemical.

Glyphosate is the most used herbicide in the World and has the highest public profile of any chemical used in food production. It has been found in a range of popular American food products and in the urine of 93% of people tested by the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

The revelation from WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015 that glyphosate is a ‘probable human carcinogen’ has led to consumers around the World asking for transparency regarding the levels of glyphosate in their food.

Glyphosate Residue Free Certification

Henry Rowlands, Director of The Detox Project, stated on Tuesday that “Glyphosate Residue Free certification enables food manufacturers to give consumers what they really want –…

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Tulsi Gabbard blasts liberal left hypocrisy, ‘Resist Trump! Except when it comes to waging war on Syria’

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When it comes to waging war on Syria, the liberal left loves Trump.

Friends of Syria

by ALEX CHRISTOFOROU

When it comes to waging war on Syria, the liberal left loves Trump.

Democrat lawmaker Tulsi Gabbard is one of the few voices in the US congress publicly speaking out Trump’s illegal and reckless strike against Syria which proved to help and support ISIS in its war against Assad.

Gabbard took to twitter to call on American citizens to resist US escalation in Syria so to avoid another Iraq WMD war disaster.

Establishment: Resist, resist, resist! Except when it comes to waging war on Syria. #ResistTrumpsWar

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Establishment: Resist, resist, resist! Except when it comes to waging war on Syria. #ResistTrumpsWar

2:37 AM – 10 Apr 2017

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Gabbard appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight on Friday, being the only American lawmaker not gushing out in praise of Trump’s missle strike.

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Millennials Abandoning Postwar Engines of Growth: Suburbs and Autos

By Charles Hugh Smith washingtonsblog.com

If anything defined the postwar economy between 1946 and 1999, it was the exodus of the middle class from cities to suburbs and the glorification of what Jim Kunstler calls Happy Motoring: freeways, cars and trucks, ten lanes of private vehicles, the vast majority of which are transporting one person.

The build-out of suburbia drove growth for decades: millions of new suburban homes, miles of new freeways, sprawling shopping malls, and tens of millions of new autos, trucks, and SUVs, transforming one-car households into three vehicle households. Then there was all the furnishings for those expansive new homes, and the credit necessary to fund the homes, vehicles, furnishings, etc.

Now the Millennial generation is turning its back on both of these bedrock engines of growth. As various metrics reveal, the Millennials are fine with taking Uber to work, buying their shoes from Zappos (return them if they don’t fit, no problem), and making whatever tradeoffs are necessary to live in urban cores.

Simply put, the natural progression of this generation is away from suburban malls, suburban home ownership and the car-centric commuter lifestyle that goes with suburban homeownership.

Saddled with insanely high student debt loads imposed by the rapaciously predatory higher education cartel, Millennials avoid additional debt like the plague. Millennials have relatively high savings rates. As for a lifetime of penury to service debt–hey, they already have that, thanks to their “I borrowed $100,000 and all I got was this worthless college degree” student loans.

Consider the secondary effects of these trend changes. If Millennials are earning less and already carrying heavy debt loads, who is going to buy the Baby Boom’s millions of pricey suburban McMansions. The answer might be “no one.”

If vehicle sales decline, all the secondary auto-related sales decline, too. Auto insurance, for example.

Furnishing a small expensive urban flat requires a lot less furnishings than a 3,000 square foot suburban house. What happens to sales of big dining sets and backyard furniture?

As retail malls die, property taxes, sales taxes and payroll taxes decline, too.Many cheerlead the notion of repurposed commercial space, but uses such as community college classes pay a lot less per square foot than retail did, and generate little in the way of sales and payroll taxes.

Financial losses will also mount. Valuations and property taxes will decline, and commercial real estate loans based on nose-bleed valuations and high retail lease rates will go south, triggering significant financial-sector losses.

Retail is already shrinking fast. Look at the store closings–the 2017 number already exceeds the post-financial crisis surge in 2008:

Where’s the growth going to come from as the dominant generation makes less, borrows less, spends less, saves more and turns away from long commutes, malls and suburban living and abandons the worship of private vehicles? Toss in the convergence of technology (i.e. a mobile phone does everything) and the answer is growth is being replaced by DeGrowth. . . .

via Millennials Are Abandoning the Postwar Engines of Growth: Suburbs and Autos — Dark Politricks

#SyriaStrikes Aftermath: What We Know So Far

We’re now 72 hours into the post-Syria Strikes world and the dust is beginning to settle on the crazy events of last week. I hope you’ve been following all the latest information in the comments section of The Corbett Report’s own open source investigation as The Corbett Report community has been doing yeoman’s work in assembling and collating all the data streaming forth from the newsfeeds. But in case you haven’t been following the developments this weekend let’s just go over what we know, what we don’t yet know, and what we can read in the tea leaves about what is to come.

Source: #SyriaStrikes Aftermath: What We Know So Far

VT Reports: Trump Humilated, Syria Shoots Down 34 of 59 Cruise Missiles

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Turns out the main reason why Trump’s cruise missiles failed to reach their target is that Syrian forces shot them down.

Deus Nexus

Source:Veterans Today | by Gordon Duff

Editor’s note:  It is OK for an American to feel good, elated even, if something evil “done in our name” fails.  

By Gordon Duff with Dr. Bassam Barakat, Damascus with Press TV Tehran

Breaking:  Since putting this story up, Syrian officials agreed to talk to us about this.  The reason this story was withheld is explained below, but as “the gloves are off,” we are going public.  America’s failure to upgrade its cruise missiles, to harden them against modern ECM and to assume that Syria was defenseless is only part of the story.  We might remind readers of the USS Donald Cook as well.  America is lucky it didn’t have to tow its two destroyers home, after all, it has happened before.

Tomahawk cruise missile fell, guidance system disabled, 40 miles from target

Example of type

The last time the US…

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Cheney, Rothschild, and Murdoch Violate International Law By Drilling For Oil In Syria

 

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Source: Claire Bernish

 

After concluding the flow testing phase, Afek Oil and Gas will now begin analyzing samples drawn from the Ness-2 drilling site, euphemistically dubbed “Deborah’s Well,” in the Israeli-occupied region of Syria known as the Golan Heights. New Jersey-based Genie Energy, Ltd., Afek’s parent company, claims a dubious cadre of investors cum war profiteers, including Rupert Murdoch, Dick Cheney, Lord Jacob Rothschild, James Woolsey — as well as a number of current and former U.S. politicians.

Prior testing at a separate Afek site did not meet expectations, so the company sought other “sweet spots” in the area. Analysis of samples from additional wells will be performed by Afek scientists in conjunction with “external international experts.”

To understand U.S. involvement in the quagmire in Syria, Afek’s oil exploration is of critical import.

Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights region violates international law — thus, Israeli permits granting Afek the ostensible right to perform exploratory tests of a possible “large reservoir” of natural gas and light oil is also illegal. But in a world where Big Oil remains powerful enough to drive foreign policy of the U.S. empire, this direct violation of the Geneva Convention might not even be worthy of a footnote — except to the people of Syria.

In fact, as The Free Thought Project’s Justin Gardner previously reported, the unsavory character heading Genie Oil is none other than Efraim “Effie” Eitam, an Israeli military commander and former Knesset member who once called for the expulsion of the “cancer” of Arabs from Israel.

“Expel most of the Judea and Samaria Arabs from here,” Eitam arrogantly asserted during a soldier’s memorial service in 2006. “We cannot be with all these Arabs and we cannot give up the land because we have already seen what they do there. Some of them may be able to stay under certain conditions, but most of them will have to go.”

In addition to the eyebrow-raising cabal of Eitam, Murdoch, Cheney, and Rothschild, Genie Oil and Gas appointed new members to its Strategic Advisory Board last September, including:

“Dr. Lawrence Summers, 71st Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton and Director of the National Economic Council under Pres. Obama; former Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, who is credited with helping pass the U.S.-Israel Energy Cooperation Bill while she chaired the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources; former governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, who became an energy insider after serving as the Clinton administration’s Energy Secretary; and former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, who co-founded the U.S. Energy Security Council.”

At stake is a 153 square-mile region in the Golan Heights, demarcated by Israeli authorities as exclusive territory for Afek to perform exploratory testing, which began in 2015, through early April 2017.

However, even beyond the not-at-all-minor issue of legality, Afek’s drilling in the region has stirred another, perhaps more imperative, concern. A large aquifer supplying the entire region’s drinking water is positioned uncomfortably close to the stores of fossil fuel — raising contamination concerns sufficiently serious that an Israeli high court issued a temporary restraining order in 2014, though it was quickly dismissed.

But none of this bothers Murdoch, Cheney, Rothschild, and the others, as the Golan Heights to Big Oil represents little more than an exploitative business opportunity. Syria, in fact, has been systematically torn apart primarily because foreign powers and radical groups seek to protect their varied oil interests.

While the Afek ilk set their sights on Golan Heights oil and natural gas, Turkey, the U.S., Russia, Daesh, and a spate of others have been fighting over Syria’s geostrategic location for major oil pipelines under the cover of religious and civil strife.

“[W]e may want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology and focus on the more complex rationales of history and oil, which mostly point the finger of blame for terrorism back at the champions of militarism, imperialism and petroleum here on our own shores,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., intoned in an April editorial for Ecowatch.

As Kennedy astutely noted, U.S. interventionism in the Middle East, and particularly Syria, has little to do with fighting terrorism and far more to do with the region’s rich petroleum reserves  — as in the case of Genie’s magnates. And such insistent international meddling at the behest of corporate oil interests so destabilized the entire region, it led to the formation of Daesh (ISIS) and similar radical groups.

Of course, oil exploration certainly benefits the ongoing push by Israel to expand its occupation and settlements, since U.S.-backed Big Oil operates under the premise the manufactured nation’s encroachment on Syrian territory is perfectly legal. Often, as is the case with Afek and Genie, the Golan Heights is dismissively referred to as “Northern Israel.”

Environmental and humanitarian groups vocally criticize Afek’s exploratory drilling, but despite growing international outcry, have not succeeded in halting ongoing tests.

Considering the notoriously powerful, monied warmongers backing Afek’s petroleum plans, outrage and violation of international law wouldn’t factor one iota in matters concerning the Golan Heights.

Source: Cheney, Rothschild, And Fox News’ Murdoch Violate International Law By Drilling For Oil In Syria

Exposing Scientology as a Cult

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Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

Directed by Alex Gibney (2015)

Film Review

Last night Maori TV aired Alex Gibney’s startling expose Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. People can view it free at the Maori TV website for the next two weeks:  Going Clear

This documentary leaves absolutely no doubt that the Church of Scientology is a cult, founded (in 1954) and tyrannically run by science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard and following his death (in 1986) by David Miscavage.

Gibney begins by tracing Hubbard’s early life as a science fiction writer and naval officer. A clear weakness of the film is its failure to mention Hubbard’s background in naval intelligence. Ex-intelligence officer Fletcher Prouty has always maintained Hubbard’s military records were falsified to conceal his intelligence activities

The documentary does, however, detail his bizarre relationship with Jet Propulsion Lab scientist Jack Parsons. Together they engaged in bizarre black magic rituals Parsons had learned from Alistair Crowley (best known as the founder of modern occultism), who worked for British intelligence.

Most of Going Clear centers around the testimonials of long time high level Scientology officers who became disenchanted and left the organization – some after 20 years or more. They all describe a highly evolved system of brainwashing, mind control and cultic manipulation, coupled with systematic emotional, physical and sexual abuse, financial extortion, psychological harassment, blackmail, stalking, covert break-ins, kidnapping and involuntary imprisonment in “rehabilitation centers.” These more extreme measures kicked in whenever long time high level officers express doubts or attempt to leave.

Describing Scientology as the largest intelligence operation in the world, the film depicts how they used these capabilities to muscle the IRS into granting them non-profit status (as a “church”) in 1993. The organization keeps massive personal files on all their members, who are required to undergo frequent “auditing” sessions. During auditing, they’re pressured to reveal their deepest personal secrets and innermost feelings an “auditor” who keeps detailed records of these sessions on behalf of the leadership.

For new members, on the surface auditing appears to resemble Freudian-style catharsis directed at resolving traumatic memories that hold people back in their lives. However as advanced Scientologists work themselves up the ranks (at great personal expense), they eventually engage in OT (Operation Thetan) level audits. At OTIII, which is only reached after many years of dedication and financial investment (OT sessions typically cost $1,000 or more each), initiates are finally brought into Scientology’s carefully guarded creation myth. The latter involves the possession of the human species by alien demons known as “thetans.” From this point forward, members are expected to use their auditing sessions to rid themselves of these thetans.

Typically it’s at this point members begin to have doubts about Scientology and are subjected to escalating coercive tactics to prevent them from leaving.

Gibney also explores John Travolta’s and Tom Cruise’s bizarre and troubled relationship with Scientology – as well as the vicious attach of the organization’s intelligence arm against Cruise’s ex-wife Nicole Kidman.

 

New York State First to Offer Free College to Students Who Can’t Afford It

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Under a historic new budget written by governor Andrew Cuomo and approved by state lawmakers over the weekend, nearly one million families in the state of New York will now qualify for free tuition at the state’s public colleges, universities, and community colleges.

The program—the first of its kind in the US, phasing in over the next three years, and costing New York an estimated $163 million—will cover any student who:

comes from a household making $100,000 or less (with that threshold rising to $125,000 in 2019)
meets certain class load and grade-point restrictions
agrees to stay in New York state after graduation for the same number of years that they receive the financial support.

A bachelor’s degree from CUNY and SUNY, New York’s city- and state-run four-year college systems, respectively, currently costs around $6,500 a year; community college tuition runs about $4,500.

New York’s plan revives the free college concept that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders earnestly pushed during his US presidential campaign, and that fellow candidate Hillary Clinton later adopted as well. Many assumed the idea died with the election of Donald Trump—but Cuomo, with help from Sanders, has fought vigorously for several months for the plan to be rolled out in New York. . .

via New York is the first US state to make college free for those who can’t afford it — Quartz

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Desperate Farmers Pirating Software to Run Tractors

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Source: Boing Boing

John Deere says that farmers don’t really own their tractors — even the ones they buy used! — because the copyrighted software necessary to run those tractors is licensed, not sold.

They say that the fine-print on the license agreement, combined with the ban on breaking software locks in Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, means that farmers who reconfigure their tractors to recognize new parts without having them activated by technicians who charge hundreds of dollars, and take days, to travel to their farms and type in a password.

Which is why John Deere tractor owners are downloading DRM-breaking tools from Ukraine, a practice that’s taken hold in Canada (where the old Conservative government rammed through Bill C-11, which mirrors the US DMCA and gives the same abusive powers to businesses as they enjoy in the US). The alternative isn’t just forking over hundreds of wasted dollars to John Deere for the privilege of using their own goddamned tractors: it’s the ability to harvest a crop when it is ripe, and not days later, when John Deere grudgingly permits you to do so.

Right to Repair bills are pending now in eight states, which would force companies like Deere to provide independent service centers — and their customers — with the tools to fix their devices and gadgets.

Modern tractors, essentially, have two keys to make the engine work. One key starts the engine. But because today’s tractors are high-tech machines that can steer themselves by GPS, you also need a software key — to fix the programs that make a tractor run properly. And farmers don’t get that key.

“You’re paying for the metal but the electronic parts technically you don’t own it. They do,” says Kyle Schwarting, who plants and harvests fields in southeast Nebraska.

He previously ran auto shops fixing cars and trucks. So when he started farming, he thought he’d be a natural to do the mechanical work himself.

Even a used combine like his Deere S670 can cost $200,000 or $300,000. As he lifts the side panel on this giant green harvester, he explains that the engine is basically off limits.

“Maybe a gasket or something you can fix, but everything else is computer controlled and so if it breaks down I’m really in a bad spot,” Schwarting says. He has to call the dealer.

Only dealerships have the software to make those parts work, and it costs hundreds of dollars just to get a service call. Schwarting worries about being broken down in a field, waiting for a dealer to show up with a software key. If he had that key, he could likely fix the machine himself

Source: More on the desperate farmers jailbreaking their tractors’ DRM to bring in the harvest

photo credit: UnitedSoybeanBoard Tilling the Fields via photopin (license)

States Weigh Laws Requiring Manufacturers to Make Electronic Devices Repairable

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Source: Motherboard

The right to repair movement is spreading. In recent weeks legislators in Iowa, Missouri, and North Carolina have introduced bills that would make it easier for you to fix your electronics, joining eight other states that introduced right-to-repair legislation earlier this year.

The bills would require manufacturers to sell replacement parts to consumers and independent repair companies and would also require them to open source diagnostic manuals. It would also give independent repair professionals the ability to bypass software locks that prevent repairs, allowing them to return a gadget back to its factory settings.

Right to repair advocates are looking at this movement as a perhaps decade-long process that will require a grassroots movement of consumers to push back against the long-entrenched repair monopolies of companies like Apple, John Deere, and video game console manufacturers.

It’s heartening, then, that the bills in Iowa, Missouri, and North Carolina were introduced without the help of Repair.org, the trade organization of independent repair professionals that is pushing for these laws elsewhere. While Repair.org has been heavily involved in crafting legislation in places like New York, Massachusetts, and Nebraska, the group wasn’t even aware that the movement had spread to three new states until last week.

“It came out of the blue to me,” Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the organization, told me. “We did nothing and they just popped up, which validates that this is an important problem for a lot of people who have been independently looking for a solution to repair monopolies.”

“The fact that there were eight states that had already filed bills seems to have served as an inspiration,” she added.

Read More…

Source: There Are Now 11 States Considering Bills to Protect Your ‘Right to Repair’ Electronics

photo credit: Kaptain Kobold Tool Users via photopin (license)