Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1269
August 7, 2016
Empire Building US-Style
Apologies of an Economic Hitman
Directed by Stelios Kouloglou (2008)
Film Review
This is a very intriguing Greek documentary about John Perkins, author of the 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hitman. In the film, Perkins summarizes his recruitment by the NSA to work as an “economic hitman.” Despite his close affiliation to US intelligence, he was technically under the employ of a private engineering company called Charles T Main Inc. It was his role to approach third world presidents with bribes to accept World Bank loans for massive infrastructure projects – which were usually built by major US companies such as Bechtel and Halliburton.
This was done with the deliberate intention of saddling the third world countries with debt they couldn’t repay. Their only option would be to seek refinancing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which usually demanded they slash public services and open up their resources to further exploitation by Wall Street interests .
As Perkins describes it, this was the strategy of choice (as opposed to direct military intervention) for expanding US empire between 1945-2000. Any third world leader who refused to play ball was openly threatened with assassination. The first step in dealing with a recalcitrant leader was to send in the “jackals,” CIA officers and contractors who would try to instigate a military coup. If this failed, US intelligence would send in an assassination team. If this also failed, they would fall back on military invasion and occupation (always a last resort).
The film zeroes in on the assassination (via plane crash) of Ecuadorian president Jaime Roldós Aguilera and Panamanian president Omar Torrijos in 1981. It also provides interesting background to the US invasion of Iraq, following Saddam Hussein’s rejection of a massive Bechtel oil pipeline project.
I was previously unaware of the CIA effort to instigate a military coup against Saddam in 1996. The CIA discarded the option of assassinating him because he had too many doubles. Even his own bodyguards never knew if they were guarding the real Saddam.
August 6, 2016
Monsanto Losing Millions As Farmers In India Rebel, Plant Indigenous Seed
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Monsanto losing millions on failed GM cotton.
By Christina Sarich, Natural Blaze
India — Monsanto is losing millions on failed GM cotton. The company illegally pushed a form of Bt cotton into India and Africa more than a decade ago, but farmers are now pushing back by planting their own indigenous seed.
Monsanto is accused of writing laws and then breaking them to enter the market in India, but after more than 300,000 farmer deaths between 1995 and 2013, many of them attributed to Monsanto, the company is finally paying for their misdeeds. The corporation’s greed is linked to farmer suicides throughout Maharashtra, considered the ‘Cotton Belt’ in India.
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The Dangers of Excessive Trump Bashing
photo credit: 20160507_190610 via photopin (license)
By Robert Parry Consortium News
The prospect of Donald Trump in the White House alarms many people but bashing him over his contrarian views on NATO and U.S.-Russian relations could set the stage for disasters under President Hillary Clinton.
The widespread disdain for Donald Trump and the fear of what his presidency might mean have led to an abandonment of any sense of objectivity by many Trump opponents and, most notably, the mainstream U.S. news media. If Trump is for something, it must be bad and must be transformed into one more club to use for hobbling his candidacy.
While that attitude may be understandable given Trump’s frequently feckless and often offensive behavior – he seems not to know basic facts and insults large swaths of the world’s population – this Trump bashing also has dangerous implications because some of his ideas deserve serious debate rather than blanket dismissal.
Amid his incoherence and insults, Trump has raised valid points on several important questions, such as the risks involved in the voracious expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders and the wisdom of demonizing Russia and its internally popular President Vladimir Putin.
Over the past several years, Washington’s neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment has pushed a stunning policy of destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia in pursuit of a “regime change” in Moscow. This existentially risky strategy has taken shape with minimal substantive debate behind a “group think” driven by anti-Russian and anti-Putin propaganda. (All we hear is what’s wrong with Putin and Russia: He doesn’t wear a shirt! He’s the new Hitler! Putin and Trump have a bro-mance! Russian aggression! Their athletes cheat!)
Read more (source): Consortium News
THIRD WORLD: Flint mayor suspends garbage pick-ups, tells residents to keep trash inside pending further notice
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Meanwhile Flint’s tap water remains undrinkable.
YOUR PERCEPTION IS NOT REALITY
(NaturalNews) A dispute over who should be paid to pick up the trash has left residents of Flint, Michigan, which made national headlines this last spring over its ongoing water crisis, with nowhere to put their garbage but piled up inside their homes.
The office of the city’s mayor, Karen Weaver, issued a notice on July 30, one day after Flint’s previous contract with Republic Waste Services expired, notifying residents that they should avoid putting out their trash on August 1, and instead keep it inside.
“Due to the circumstances, there will be no trash pick-up in the city starting this Monday, Aug. 1, 2016,” the notice read. “Until a new agreement is officially in place, we ask the residents not set their trash out at the curb to prevent animals from disturbing it and make [sic] the situation worse.”
The circumstances center around an ongoing battle between Mayor…
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August 5, 2016
Pentagon Papers, CIA and the Lies of Daniel Ellsberg
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How Daniel Ellsberg carefully concealed his links to the CIA and drug trade.
A ‘spy vs spy’ episode
Deep State Series, part eight
“Nobody on the left questions Ellsberg about these things” -Doug Valentine
There is a CIA liaised Ford Foundation funded, Nation Institute project ‘Tom Dispatch’ 7,800 word excuse for an article or example of how the Daniel Ellsberg propaganda myth of the left never seems to run out of traction. The lame premise of ‘the forgotten whistleblower’ is to prostitute the legacy of a dead man, Rand Corporation’s Anthony Russo, whilst in actuality reinforcing a lie of 40 plus years: Ellsberg’s disingenuous rationale for ‘leaking’ The Pentagon Papers. It is amazing to me that CIA cover story apologists are still working an Indochina information operations project forty plus years after the fact. But on second sight, this makes perfect sense. If the ‘Myth of Daniel Ellsberg’ were ever to unravel, so would the decades of CIA misinformation on a whole plethora…
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Process Server and Activist In DNC Fraud Lawsuit Found DEAD
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Political opposition to the Clinton agenda seems to be an even bigger health hazard than smoking.
PastorBones
Fury News [Edited]
The list of dead people in connection with Hillary Clinton continues to grow longer. On Tuesday morning, a process server and political activist who publicized service of court papers to the DNC in the class action Wilding et al. v. Democratic National Committee Services Corp. et al. was found dead at his home by a family member.
Political activist and process server Shawn Lucas outside DNC Headquarters July 1, 2016
[Shawn Lucas served court papers to DNC personnel in Washington DC on behalf of the Florida law firm bringing suit. Early reports suggest that his body was found in the bathroom of his residence by his girlfriend on August 2. Responding paramedics could not revive him and the official cause of death is not known. In the video below, posted on YouTube July 4, 2016, Lucas negotiates with security and finally serves a DNC representative…
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What Really Happened at Waco?
Waco: The Rules of Engagement
Directed by William Gazecki (1997)
Film Review
Waco is a long but well-made documentary about what was essentially an FBI coverup of an unlawful military assault on innocent civilians. What immediately struck me about the film are the obvious parallels between the military assault at Waco, the 1975 incident at Pine Ridge in which Leonard Peltier and other AIM activists were arrested for resisting an armed FBI assault and the FBI/Philadelphia police decision to bomb the MOVE compound in 1985 (see The Day Philadelphia Police Dropped a Bomb on 61 Families).
The documentary is anchored around a 1995 Congressional investigation which, unlike the whitewash of the JFK assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing and 9-11, successfully unearthed most of the sordid facts about the government’s illegal (and unconstitutional) military assault in Waco. Predictably the corporate media buried the investigation and its findings. Thus the systematic disinformation the Clinton administration disseminated about David, Koresh and the Branch Davidians is what remains uppermost in the public mind.
What surprised me most about the film was learning that the Branch Davidians weren’t a cult, that the Mount Carmel church where they lived wasn’t a bunker and that David Koresh himself wasn’t a deranged psychopath who buffaloed his followers into a virtual suicide pact.
The Branch Davidians were actually an old offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventist Church which relocated from Los Angeles to the Mount Carmel center at Waco in the 1930s. Koresh (born Vernon Howell) was raised there and eventually selected as the group’s spiritual leader.
Testimony given during the Congressional hearings establishes quite clearly that the initial ATF assault (in which the Branch Davidians defended themselves and killed four ATF agents) was a public relations stunt aimed at influencing upcoming ATF appropriations hearings.
The supposed justification for the assault was the presence of illegal weapons on the premises. As good Texans, the Branch Davidians visited a lot of gun shows and bought and sold weapons as a source of revenue. The search warrant accused them of illegally modifying automatic weapons – which Koresh denied. He invited the ATF to come and inspect their guns in mid-1992. The ATF declined to do so.
Most of the media attention (and the search warrant itself) focused on the fact that Koresh had multiple wives, included several who were underage teenagers. While both polygamy and child rape are illegal under Texas law, they in no way justify a full scale military assault that kills innocent civilians, including the rape victims themselves.
The FBI would follow up the failed ATF operation with a full scale military siege (with tanks) that lasted 51 days.
The evidence presented during the hearings includes intriguing clips from a video camera FBI negotiators gave the Branch Davidians to talk about themselves and their beliefs and infrared footage showing the FBI, Janet Reno and Bill Clinton lied through their teeth about not firing on the Branch Davidians and David Koresh deliberately starting the fire that destroyed the compound.
It also comes out that the FBI deliberately destroyed the crime scene (as Bush would later do at Ground Zero), as well as systematically obstructing efforts by the local medical examiner and the Texas Rangers to conduct independent investigations.
August 4, 2016
It’s Not Just Subtropical Cornwall — Climate Zones Everywhere are on the March Poleward
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A few weeks ago, the University of Exeter found that parts of Cornwall, England had become subtropical – like numerous other previously temperate zones. Consequences include drought, habitat loss for important species and new infectious disease dangers, like the recent anthrax outbreak in Russia: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/488400947/anthrax-outbreak-in-russia-thought-to-be-result-of-thawing-permafrost
A few weeks ago, the University of Exeter found that parts of Cornwall, England had become subtropical. The study stated that since average temperatures had risen to above 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) for periods of time longer than seven months, this part of England situated on a latitude line north of most of Newfoundland has become part of a climate zone that during the early 20th century extended as far south as the southern tip of Florida.
Parts of Cornwall have become subtropical since 2000 and this could create opportunities to grow new, unusual plants. Sunflowers, maize, grapevines and tea are already grown in the Duchy.
The study also pointed out that the added heat might present a problem or two, instances that…
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Syrian Children Fight Back Against Carpet Bombing*
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Syrian children are burning tyres in Aleppo’s city streets in an effort to forcibly create no-fly-zones for Russian and government jets. The thick black smoke obscures the view of pilots, and is apparently effective at preventing them from carrying out bombing.
Syrian Children Fight Back Against Carpet Bombing*
By Elizabeth Mizon
The Syrian city of Aleppo has been under siege since last month, when the Syrian regime cut off all supply lines to rebel fighters and citizens. However, a co-ordinated counter-offensive by rebel factions, apparently planned for months, was reported on 2 Aug. It is being called the Battle of Aleppo, and a “major pivot point” in the Syrian conflict.
According to UNICEF, there are 2.5 million child refugees who have fled Syria, and 6m affected who remain in the country. It’s estimated that 250,000 people are currently under siege in rebel-held cities. And of those children who remain in besieged cities, some have taken up a new method of protecting themselves and their families.
Airstrikes by the Syrian government continue to be carried out on rebel strongholds, joined by Russian fighters who are intensifying their bombing campaign. Rebels continue to fight back, attempting to…
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ICTY Exonerates Slobodan Milosevic for War Crimes
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Vindication of yet another world leader demonized by the US government (like Noriega, Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein) to justify an American resource war.
By Inserbia
Global Research, August 03, 2016
Inserbia 24 July 2016
This decision comes ten years after Milosevic was assassinated in the ICTY prison. He was poisoned.
The ICTY is complicit in his death.
The distinguished judges are not only responsible for the death of Slobodan Milosevic, they are responsible for “legalizing” an illegal invasion of a sovereign country as well as covering up the most heinous crimes committed by US-NATO against the former Republic of Yugoslavia.
At the outset of Milosevic’s defense, the ICTY denied him the fundamental right of self defense and appointed two bogus British amicus curiae. The latter were appointed without the consent of the defendant.
Milosevic was also denied medical treatment while in detention.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research Editor, August 3, 2016
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The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has…
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