Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1198

El Salvador Becomes First Country to Ban Metal Mining

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Source: RT

 

The smallest country in Central America – El Salvador – has approved a law prohibiting all metal mining in an attempt to protect the environment and natural resources. It is the first country in the world to do so.

The new law, supported by 70 lawmakers, bans all exploration, extraction, and processing of metals both in open pits and mines.

“It’s a historic day in El Salvador. It’s a historic day for the whole world,”, Environment Minister Lina Pohl told reporters after a vote in Congress, as quoted by the Financial Times.

“This is a brave step, an extraordinary step, and an enormous step toward reversing the environmental degradation in this country,” she added.

The level of environmental pollution in El Salvador is one of the highest in the region, second only to Haiti, and the availability of drinking water is the lowest, according to UN data.

“Mining is an industry whose primary and first victim is water. We are talking about an issue that is a life-or-death issue for the country,” said Andrés McKinley, a mining and water specialist at Central American University in San Salvador, as quoted by the New York Times.

The legislation was passed despite interest from international gold and silver mining companies.

In October, El Salvador won a lawsuit at the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) against the Australian-Canadian miner OceanaGold Corp.

The company demanded $250 million compensation after El Salvador retracted an extraction permit in 2009. OceanaGold was instead obliged to pay the country $8 million in legal costs.

El Salvador has the population of about six million people and has a $25.9 billion gross domestic product.

Source: El Salvador says no to gold to become 1st country to ban metal mining

DEA Stole $3.2 Billion in Cash From Innocent People in Only a Decade

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Source: Justin Gardner

A bombshell report from the Inspector General (IG) at the Department of Justice has exposed the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for the colossal thieves they are. According to the report, DEA seized more than $4 billion in cash from people since 2007, but $3.2 billion of the seizures were never connected to any criminal charges. That figure does not even include the seizure of cars and electronics.

This thievery is possible through the insidious practice of civil asset forfeiture (CAF), where law enforcement can seize cash and property on the mere suspicion of being involved in criminal activity. Originally developed in the 1980s to go after organized crime, CAF has mushroomed into a source of revenue for cops across the country – from local to state to federal – in what’s become known as Policing for Profit.

When an innocent person’s cash is stolen by DEA, that person must petition to get it back, meaning the burden of proof (and the burden of time and expense) is on the unlucky victim who never did anything wrong in the first place. In fact, “forfeiture proceedings start from the presumption of guilt.”

It’s a clever scheme, and DEA knows it. The IG found that petitions were filed in only 20 percent of DEA cash seizures. As Reason Magazine points out, the IG report highlights just how arbitrary these seizures can be.

“We found that different task force officers made different decisions in similar situations when deciding whether to seize all of the cash discovered,” the Inspector General wrote. “These differences demonstrate how seizure decisions can appear arbitrary, which should be a concern for the Department, both because of potentially improper conduct and because even the appearance of arbitrary decision-making in asset seizure can fuel public perception that law enforcement is not using this authority legitimately, thereby undermining public confidence in law enforcement.”

The case of a man traveling at an airport with $27,000 is a prime example of how DEA can just take the cash on a whim, without even bothering to pretend it has to do with criminal activity.

“When a task force officer explained that the U.S. currency in the bag was going to be seized pending further investigation, the passenger asked whether he could keep some of the currency to travel home. The passenger asserted that all of the currency in the bag was his, and the task force officers allowed him to retain $1,000. This seizure resulted in an administrative forfeiture of $27,000 to the U.S. government, and the DEA explained to the OIG that, other than the events surrounding the seizure, there was no subsequent investigative activity or additional law enforcement benefit.”

Reason Magainze sums it up perfectly.

“If the DEA task force agents thought that man’s cash was connected to drug activity, why allow him to keep some of it? If they weren’t sure, why take it in the first place? The answer, of course, is there is no logical or legal rationale for this sequence of events.”

Indeed, most of the DEA’s cash seizures don’t relate to any criminal investigation, and 82 percent of the cases reviewed by the IG were settled without any judicial review. The DEA focuses on airports, train stations and bus terminals, relying on travel records and a host of confidential informants to target people they believe will have lots of cash.

DEA gives itself wide latitude to pin you as a suspect for detainment and search. Woe to those “traveling to or from a known source city for drug trafficking, purchasing a ticket within 24 hours of travel, purchasing a ticket for a long flight with an immediate return, purchasing a one-way ticket, and traveling without checked luggage.”

The IG concludes that DEA is posing great risks to civil liberties by continuing the practices highlighted in its report.

‘‘When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution, law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution.’’

The IG states that “risks to civil liberties are particularly significant when seizures that do not advance or relate to an investigation are conducted without a court-issued seizure warrant, the presence of illicit narcotics, or subsequent judicial involvement prior to administrative forfeiture.”

The threat to civil liberties posed by CAF is being recognized more and more, as states continue to abolish the practice by requiring a criminal conviction before cash and assets can be seized. But the federal government is a primary reason why CAF still runs rampant, through the euphemistically named Equitable Sharing Fund where the stolen loot (amounting to $28 billion over the last decade) is shared by federal and state drug task forces.

“These findings fundamentally undercut law enforcement’s claim that civil forfeiture is a vital crime-fighting tool. Americans are already outraged at the Justice Department’s aggressive use of civil forfeiture, which has mushroomed into a multibillion dollar program in the last decade. This report only further confirms what we have been saying all along: Forfeiture laws create perverse financial incentives to seize property without judicial oversight and violate due process.

This report is one more illustration that the only solution to resolving these issues is to end the use of civil forfeiture once and for all. – The Institute for Justice“

Source: Gang of Thieves: DEA Stole $3.2 Billion in Cash From Innocent People in Only a Decade

photo credit: what’s_the_frequency silver certificates via photopin (license)

Toshiba’s Westinghouse Nuclear Declared Bankruptcy; US Taxpayers and Ratepayers Left on the Hook for Billions?

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With Toshiba’s Westinghouse subsidiary filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the US taxpayer could end up losing billions due to the Federal loan guarantees facilitated by a Republican Congress in 2005, and handed over by Obama, and the head of the US Dept of Energy, Ernst Moniz. Obama was apparently owned by the nuclear industry, especially Exelon

Mining Awareness +

Even with gross subsidies, the nuclear industry is not viable. “Westinghouse Electric Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Wednesday, saying it needed to restructure because of “certain financial and construction challenges” from its nuclear power plant projects.” http://www.voanews.com/a/westinghouse-chapter-11-bankurptcy/3786377.html

With Toshiba’s Westinghouse subsidiary filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the US taxpayer could end up losing billions due to the Federal loan guarantees facilitated by a Republican Congress in 2005, and handed over by Obama, and the head of the US Dept of Energy, Ernst Moniz. Obama was apparently owned by the nuclear industry, especially Exelon, and the wife of Moniz has Japanese roots. Ratepayers have been, and will be, scammed, as well. The chance of losing the taxpayer money was known to be in the range of 40 to 50% based on history, but it’s not their money so they didn’t care.

The Federal loan guarantee was given…

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1493 and the Hidden History of Industrial Capitalism

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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

By Charles C Mann

Vintage Books (2012)

Book Review

1493 is a fascinating book tracing a totally neglected aspect of the rise of capitalism and industrial civilization – namely the transfer of new crops, livestock, trees, diseases, guano (nitrogen-rich bird poop, silver and diverse ethnic groups to every continent except Antarctica. Based on his detailed investigations, Mann cites numerous examples of major historical events and movements that can be directly traced to this “Columbian Exchange.”

Mann begins by tracing the history of tobacco, which was first transferred from the lower Amazon to Jamestown Virginia, and from there to China. An immensely popular drug of addiction, it provided the cash England needed to support colonization of the South-eastern US.

He next focuses on the potato, which was transferred from the Andes in South America to Northern Europe, where it replaced wheat as the staple crop in Ireland, northern Germany, Belgium and Russia (potatoes flourish in colder climates and on more marginal land than wheat and are four times more productive). Thanks to the introduction of the potato, Europe was finally able to end the famines that occurred every ten years. At a time, when China, India and various African and South American civilizations were far more advanced than Europe, the main factor holding back European development was its inability to feed its population.

Next Mann covers the important of sugar (originally domesticated in New Guinea) to the West Indies and the importation of coffee and bananas (to South America) from Africa.

African Slaves Resistant to Malaria

He devotes a whole section to the transfer of diseases, which played a significant role in wiping out America’s indigenous population, to the New World. I was previously aware that new settlers also brought malaria with them. This often fatal illness was endemic to England in the 1500s – thanks to misguided schemes to reclaim wetlands for agriculture. The high prevalence of malaria meant that 8 out of 10 settlers in Jamestown and other southern colonies could be expected to die in the first 18 months. Mann makes a case that the natural resistance present in slaves from West and Central Africa** was a main factor in England (a historically antislavery nation) turning to slaves in their desperation to establish a labor force to work the tobacco fields.

Silver, Sweet Potatoes and the Downfall of China

The chapter on the role of the Columbian Exchange in the downfall of China as the most prosperous, politically developed and culturally sophisticated country in the world is also extremely enlightening. I was totally unaware that between 1/3 and 1/2 of all the silver mined in 16th century Peru was transported to China via the Philippines for use in their monetary system. Nor the importance of sweet potatoes and maize (which, like potatoes, thrive on marginal land) in feeding poor farmers displaced by China’s dynastic wars. China is still the number one world producer of sweet potatoes.

Why the US was the Last to Free Their Slaves

For me, the most interesting section was the one on slavery, particularly the chapter on the “maroon”*** revolts and guerilla warfare that forced Central and South America to abolish slavery long before the US did. Except for Florida, escaped slaves in the US tended not to form rebellious maroon enclaves. The reason, according to Mann, was their difficulty surviving on their own in a colder climate and the opportunity for legal freedom if they fled to the North.

In Florida, escaped slaves formed alliances with the Seminole Indians. Their guerilla bands conducted continual attacks (with covert British support) on Georgia – until 1839 when Florida maroons were granted their freedom if they agreed to resettle of the Mississippi.

*The Columbian Exchange was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, and ideas between the Americas and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries, related to European colonization and trade after Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage.

**Approximately 97% of people indigenous to West and Central Africa are resistant to malaria owing to the presence of the Duffy Negative Antigen.

***Maroon is a term applied to fugitive black slaves.

Copy the UK: How Trump Can Bring Down Prescription Prices

While attempts at repealing Obamacare appear dead (at least for the foreseeable future), US president Donald Trump still has an opportunity to tackle the soaring costs of American-style healthcare by addressing one of its biggest problems—the high cost of prescription drugs.

The US spent $3.2 trillion on healthcare in 2015—almost a fifth of its total GDP—and 10% was on prescription drugs. That comes to more than $1,000 per person, per year. Drug prices have climbed at about 10% annually, and will continue to climb as more sophisticated treatments for cancer and heart disease are introduced. One cutting-edge treatments for melanoma, for example, now costs $256,000 a year (paywall).

Trump has loudly and often proclaimed his outrage over this. He convened the CEOs of the largest pharmaceutical companies in January, and more recently, said he wants the Medicare, the federal insurance program for seniors, to negotiate the cost of drugs, which is now forbidden by law. Drug stocks quake when he raises the subject, but they recover because no plan has been proposed.

If Trump truly wants to bend the arc of rising drug prices, he might want to look at how it’s done in the UK.

In England, the National Health Service, the government agency which provides mostly free healthcare to 65 million people, spends about $391 per person (pdf)—around two-fifths of per-capita US spending. Prescription drugs there cost three times less than in the US. Putting aside the issue of whether it’s cheaper for the US to simply adopt universal healthcare, one way the NHS does this is by negotiating down the cost of of some drugs, and simply refusing to buy others.

Once drugs are deemed safe and effective, they’re subject to a cost-benefit analysis by the UK’s National Institute of Cost Effectiveness (NICE). NICE determines whether the drugs are actually worth the money, and whether they should be bought by the NHS. Since the government buys the overwhelming majority of drugs in the UK, NICE’s recommendations—and the fear of a rejection—are hugely influential.

It’s not an empty threat: The agency turns down about a fifth of the drugs and treatments it evaluates.

When analyzing drugs, the agency considers the cost of extending a patient’s life for a year, adjusted for the quality of that additional year, and compares it to the next best alternative. Generally, NICE won’t approve drugs that cost more than £20-30,000 ($25-38,000) per quality-adjusted “life year” than the next best alternative. The US has a far higher appetite for cost: according to one analysis, the average difference for renal dialysis, for example, and the next best option to treat kidney failure is $129,000.

A NICE rejection can also serve to open negotiations.

For example, in 2015, the agency said the almost $5,000 per month cost of Lynparza, a new drug for certain types of ovarian cancer, would cost as much as £66,500 for the benefit it provided compared to existing treatments. After discussions, Lynparza’s manufacturer, AstraZeneca, agreed to both lower the price by an undisclosed amount, and pay for the cost of the drug if a patient remains on it after 15 months.

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration has the mandate of ensuring drugs are first safe, then effective, but is silent about whether the drugs it approves are worth the money. Medicare and Medicaid, the biggest buyers of drugs in the US, can’t ask, either. Pharmacy-benefit managers, like Express Scripts and CVS, which administer prescription plans for private insurers, can refuse to add drugs to their lists of approved medications, but are subject to the pressures of both pharma companies and customers.

Things may be starting to change, though. US insurance companies are beginning to discuss value-based pricing for drugs, and an association of cancer doctors now recommends oncologists weigh a drug’s cost when prescribing. But until Medicare and Medicaid start demanding that drugs be priced according to their effectiveness, US drug prices are likely to continue climbing.

 

If Trump really wants to bring down US drug prices, he’ll borrow this smart tactic from the UK — Quartz

How Big Coal Infiltrated the Trump Administration to Reverse Climate Policy

Many of the US’s biggest coal companies declared bankruptcy last year, after piling on debt during a series of mergers when coal prices were at a peak. The industry has been suffering for years, thanks to cheaper local natural gas, a federal government push for clean energy, and China’s slowing economy.

President Donald Trump’s executive order yesterday to start dismantling the Clean Power Plan, which limits power-plant carbon emissions, was “an end to the war on coal,” as he put it, and a rare victory for the industry. It’s also no coincidence. Coal executives supported and funded the Trump presidential campaign, and industry-backed lawyers and talking heads stocked his cabinet, even as the industry sputtered and thousands lost their jobs.

In July of last year, Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, the largest coal-mining company in the US, blamed Barack Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for “virtually destroying” the industry. On Tuesday, he had a front seat at the signing of the executive order, and declared Trump’s action “wonderful, not just for the United States coal industry, our miners and their families,” but for America.

Here’s how Big Coal fought the Clean Power Plan and won.

One-study science

The only study the Trump administration cited in a briefing to explain its decision was conducted by NERA Economic Consulting (pdf) in 2015. The study, which says the Clean Power Plan makes electricity more expensive for consumers, has been criticized by economists (pdf) and scientists alike because it uses higher-than-normal estimates of the cost of solar and wind power, and doesn’t factor in the fact that these costs are also steadily falling.

The study was commissioned by the “American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity,” a group that scientist watchdogs EPI define as a “coal-industry trade association working to increase the longevity of the coal industry.”

Inside team Trump

“The coal industry has a long history of collaborating with and supporting several of the people and institutions shaping the new administration’s energy and climate-change policy,” says Luke Hartig, the executive director of the National Journal’s Network Science Initiative, which analyzes people making government policy and the connections between them. (The National Journal is a sister publication to Quartz.)

Key among them is Myron Ebell, the Trump transition team leader for the EPA, who has been at the Competitive Energy Institute (CEI) since 1999. The institute opposes subsidies for clean energy, and “questions global warming alarmism, makes the case for access to affordable energy, and opposes energy-rationing,” according to its website.

Coal giants including Murray Energy (paywall) were big spenders at a CEI annual dinner, and Ebell said in 2015 he’d like to see more funding from coal companies:

Ebell’s CEI colleague Christopher Horner also joined the Trump EPA transition team. A long-time climate-change denier, Horner was lauded by coal industry CEOs in 2015 for his work at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E)—another group that works to discredit climate science—where he coined the word “Climategate” and sued to get the private emails of environmental scientists while accusing them of fraud. Horner personally was paid by Alpha Resources, one of the largest US coal companies, according to Alpha’s recent bankruptcy filings, the Intercept reported.

Another transition team member, David Schnare, was a three-decade-long employee of the EPA, then went to E&E where he became well known for suing universities for climate scientists’ personal emails.

Department of Energy head Rick Perry was a big supporter of the industry’s “Clean Coal Initiative” as the governor of Texas, and pushed to fast-track more coal plants in the state, after receiving over $600,000 in donations from the TXU, the utility company behind the plan. Suzie Jaworowski, the former head of government relations for Sunshine Coal and Trump’s campaign manager in Indiana, has also joined the energy department.

Deep pockets

Big-name donors from the coal industry include Joe Craft, the CEO of Alliance Resource Partners, who co-chaired a $1,000-per-plate fundraiser for Trump in Oklahoma last September, and gave a combined $1.85 million to pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Clinton super-PACs this year, according to Opensecrets, a non-partisan groups that tracks donations and lobbying funds. He was awarded with two seats on the inauguration platform.

Murray Energy donated $1.9 million during the presidential election. Bob Murray told Fox News Trump called him shortly after his election victory, and said “I love you, man.”

In fact, as the US’s largest coal companies hit hard times they continued to spend millions to fund politicians and lobbying groups hoping to turn the tide. Five of the top US companies that went bankrupt since 2015 have paid $100 million to lobbyists and politicians in the past decade (pdf, p. 1), according to a 2016 report from the Western Values Project, which represents residents of the Rocky Mountain states.

Despite the money spent, and the vows to dismantle clean power plant rules, few but Trump and a handful of mining companies are predicting that coal jobs are coming back, because the mining industry is automating and power generators are phasing out coal-burning plants.

via How Big Coal infiltrated the Trump administration to put its stamp on climate policy — Quartz

More Than Ever, Employees Want Say in How Companies Run

Employees have been unhappy with their employers since the invention of wages 5,000 years ago. While workers have traditionally looked to unions to address their grievances, a new generation is trusting in the power of petitions to force changes.

At the Wall Street Journal, 160 reporters and editors, delivered a letter to their managers protesting the lack of women and minorities running the organization, Business Insider reported yesterday (March 28). “Nearly all the people at high levels at the paper deciding what we cover and how are white men,” the letter read.

IBM employees are circulating an online petition objecting to the tone of CEO Ginni Rometty’s letter to US president Donald Trump, and calling on her affirm what they call the company’s progressive values. The employees also asking her to allow them to opt out of government contracts they feel violate civil liberties, such as surveillance projects, and restoring benefits that had been cut for laid off workers. So far, 2,140 have signed the petition, although it’s not clear how many are IBM employees. (IBM employs around 380,000 people.)

Other employee petitions call for Oracle to oppose US president Donald Trump’s second travel ban, and to let men who work at US regional supermarket Publix grow beards. Employee petitions are now so popular there’s a website, coworker.org, devoted to hosting them. In some cases, the campaigns work: Starbuck’s relaxed its rules about visible tattoos and unnatural hair color for baristas after thousands signed petitions asking for a change. Sometimes, they fail disastrously. Interns at one (unnamed) company described in a blog about being fired en masse after signing a petition asking for a more relaxed dress code.

While a growing number of employers see the value of involving workers in decision making—giving rise to “holacracy” and other decentralized business models—for most, labor remains a cost to be managed and reduced. Outsourcing and offshoring of American jobs has made employment less certain—The Wall Street Journal is cutting newsroom jobs and IBM is both laying off thousands and demanding its workers who telecommuted to return to offices, sometimes in new cities.

And automation looms as a threat over many industries. Companies have become more sophisticated about shutting down unions, and only 6.4% of US private-sector workers are organized. Petitions only work if employers are willing to entertain them, but for many employees, they’re the only way to be heard.

via More than ever, employees want a say in how their companies are run — Quartz

Sen. Rand Paul Drops Truth Bombs in Congress About Sending Americans to Die in Undeclared Wars

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“It took me some 45 years to come to the realization that NOTHING I had ever done for the Marine Corps ever had ANYTHING to do with “freedom in America” or “protecting the constitution” or any other of that flag waving horse shit. EVERYTHING I ever did for the Marine Corps had EVERYTHING to do with the aggrandizement of the state and the enrichment of the politicos and their cronies in the military-industrial-congrssional-educational-and law enforcement Cartel.

Flyover-Press.com

My Marine Corps career spanned some 35 years (with a lot of reserve and broken time) and included 2 wars–Vietnam and Desert Storm.

I’m a slow learner. It took me some 45 years to come to the realization that NOTHING I had ever done for the Marine Corps ever had ANYTHING to do with “freedom in America” or “protecting the constitution” or any other of that flag waving horse shit.

EVERYTHING I ever did for the Marine Corps had EVERYTHING to do with the aggrandizement of the state and the enrichment of the politicos and their cronies in the military-industrial-congrssional-educational-and law enforcement Cartel.

In short, I was a dupe.

It pains me to realize that the uS government used to pay me to kill people who were just exactly like the people who run the uS government.

And please do not “thank” me for my service. I did not do…

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Study Finds More Than 24,000 Chemicals In Bottled Water: Which Ones Are Harming You?

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German researchers have discovered endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which could adversely affect development and reproduction, to be contained in 18 different bottled water products. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can interfere with the hormone system. They can cause cancerous tumours, birth defects, cardiovascular disorders, metabolic disorders, and as mentioned earlier, other developmental disorders.

peoples trust toronto

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German researchers have discovered endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which could adversely affect development and reproduction, to be contained in 18 different bottled water products. Of the 24,520 suspect chemicals found to be present in bottled water, the one that showed consistent results and illustrated anti-androgenic and anti-estrogenic activity is di(2-ethylhexyl) fumarate (DEHF). Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can interfere with the hormone system. They can cause cancerous tumours, birth defects, cardiovascular disorders, metabolic disorders, and as mentioned earlier,  other developmental disorders(1).

This study comes from Martin Wagner and Jorg Oehlmann of the Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, and Michael Schlusener and Thomas Ternes of the German Federal Institute of Hydrology. They determined that bottled water could contain serious amounts of EDCs that should be a cause for concern.

Researchers used spectrometric simulation to narrow down their findings to DEHF as the only possible EDC giving rise to harmful…

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Black Skin White Masks

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Black Skin White Masks

By Frantz Fanon (1952)

Book Review

Free PDF: Black Skin White Masks

Frantz Fanon was born in Martinique in 1925 of mixed heritage. He fought with the French resistance during World War II and received a scholarship to study medicine and psychiatry in France. In 1953, he accepted a hospital position in Algeria, where he joined the Algerian National Liberation Front. He died of leukemia in 1961.

Fanon was the first to systematically document and analyze the tendency of people of color to internalize the racism of the dominant culture. This process can include both self-deprecation based on race and unconscious adoption of European culture in preference to their own.

The book received international acclaim following Fanon’s death (from leukemia) in 1961 and was highly influential in the 1960s black power movement, both in Africa and the US.

Fanon’s analysis is a bit too Freudian for my tastes, though it makes important observations about the systematic destruction of African language and culture during colonization and enslavement. It also includes some fascinating observations about European family life, eg the fact that 30% of children born to typical European families become neurotic.