Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1304
February 19, 2016
The US Colonization of Latin America
The War On Democracy
Directed by John Pilger (2007)
Film Review
The War Against Democracy is about the US colonization of Latin America, specifically the role of the CIA and the US military in systematically overthrowing democratically elected governments in Central and South America. In each case, the US installs hand picked right wing dictators who forcibly expel indigenous peasants from their land and privatize publicly owned assets and resources for the benefit of US corporations.
Australian filmmaker John Pilger begins by focusing on the US war against Venezuela’s democratically elected government, carefully debunking Washington and media lies depicting former president Hugo Chavez as a communist dictator. In addition to tracing the massive popular movement that brought Chavez to power, the documentary also features dramatic footage of the failed US-sponsored 2002 coup.
Pilger also highlights the 1954 coup in Guatemala, the 1973 coup in Chile and the Bolivian revolution that overturned Bolivia’s right wing government and bring the country’s first indigenous president (Evo Morales) to power in 2003.
Pilger’s interviews with former CIA agents who helped orchestrate some of these coups are priceless.
February 18, 2016
FDA to Test for Glyphosate
*
*
Golly, I thought the FDA was supposed to test the health effects of toxic chemicals before they approved them. Silly me.
You mean they haven’t been all this time?
Heads should roll. Prosecutions for corruption, negligence and malfeasance should go forward.
FDA to Start Testing for Glyphosate in Food
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation’s chief food safety regulator, plans to start testing certain foods for residues of the world’s most widely used weed killer after the World Health Organization’s cancer experts last year declared the chemical a probable human carcinogen.
View original post 78 more words
February 17, 2016
#FreeTheMove9 Twitter-storm
*
*
Sign petition to release the Move 9 framed by Philadelphia police.
Ona Move,
In the summer of 2015 supporters of the Move Organization initiated a petition to push the U.S. Attorney General to investigate the wrongful and ongoing imprisonment, and support parole for the Move 9 who have been imprisoned since August 8th 1978. Our goal is to reach 25,000 signatures, something that will require work and help from you the public.
Today, Wednesday Feb 17th 2016, we’ve organized a Twitter-storm to help collect these signatures and complete the petition. Here is a link with the instructions on how to participate (this will be going on all day):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0S5xdMsyj9PbUNubFh5d3pHaUk/view?usp=sharing.
Go to https://www.causes.com/campaigns/92454-free-the-move-9 to view and sign the petition.
In August of 1979, the Justice Department filed a suit against the Philadelphia Police Department for abuse and brutality against citizens of the city of Philadelphia. This came one year after the attempted murder, beatings, and arrest of the Move 9. Your help…
View original post 59 more words
Obama’s Double Dealing on Canadian Tar Sands
The Other Keystone: The Alberta Clipper, the Pipeline No One Is Talking About
According to In These Times, while climate activists were celebrating Obama’s November 15, 2015 rejection of the Keystone pipeline, Canadian oil giant Enbridge was already transporting 800,000 barrels of tar sands crude – with State Department approval – along an alternative pipeline network extending from Alberta to Gulf of Mexico refineries.
Enbridge already has State Department approval, granted in 2007, to tranship a maximum of 450,000 barrels a day across the Canadian border via a pipeline known as the Alberta Clipper or Line 67. .
State Department Approves Illegal Switchero
In 2013 Enbridge made application to double Alberta Clipper capacity. When this generated massive public protest, they performed what In These Times describes as an “illegal switchero.”
Instead of relying on Line 67 to transport 800,000 BPD of crude oil across the border, they have been diverting the crude to another existing pipeline called Line 3. This segment transports the oil across the border before it’s ultimately transferred back to Line 67 in Minnesota.
Enbridge describes the project as a “maintenance-driven replacement” of Line 3, which stretches from Edmonton to Superior. As part of this replacement, Enbridge constructed four totally new pipeline interconnections between Line 67 and its new “replacement” Line 3: two at the company’s Gretna, Manitoba station in Canada, and two more in the United States just south of the border.
The State Department ultimately acceded to these changes without requiring new permits or environmental review.
Activists Lose in Court
In November 2014, a coalition of tribal and environmental groups filed suit against the State Department, claiming that it had violated federal preservation and environmental laws and calling for an injunction on the bypass project until it went through the full permitting process. Tar sands oil is the most environmentally damaging form of oil. Enbridge is already responsible for more than 800 pipeline spills, which are linked to major health problems in affected communities.
On December 9, 2015 the federal judge ruled in favor of Enbridge and the State Department, arguing that the State Department’s decision is not subject to judicial review.
Obama’s Gift to Enbridge Stockholders
Ken Rumelt, staff attorney at Vermont Law School’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic, says that Enbridge’s endgame has always been clear: even though projects have been proposed piecemeal, they constitute one large network capable of ramping up transport of Canadian tar sands to the Gulf Coast.
Enbridge has a number of other pipeline projects either already in existence or in the works, which form links in this network. When the rest of the Line 3 replacement goes online in 2017, it will open up a new corridor for tar sands oil to flow in through the Upper Midwest.
Then there’s Line 61, a huge, 42-inch pipeline built in 2007 that runs from Superior to Flanagan, Ill, The final links in this tar sands chain have been around for some time. Two pipelines will run nearly 800,000 BPD from Flanagan to Cushing, Oklahoma., where they link up with Enbridge’s 500-mile long Seaway pipeline and its 850,000 BPD capacity “twin.” These pipelines extend all the way to the Gulf Coast.
Two days before Obama’s Keystone rejection, Enbridge announced plans to build import and export facilities at the Gulf of Mexico region. With Congress and President Obama having lifted the United States’ 40-year ban on oil exports in December, Enbridge is now perfectly positioned to export tar sands oil through the Gulf.
Read more here
Photo credit: chesapeakeclimate (Bill McKibben) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (Creative Commons licenses)], via Wikimedia Commons
February 16, 2016
Where to Invade Next (2016)
*
*
Review of Michael Moore’s latest film.
Your new movie, Where to Invade Next, is very powerful, your best so far for certain.
Get well.
Fast.
We need you.
You’ve packed a great many issues into this film, with visuals, with personalities, with entertainment. If people will watch this, they’ll learn what many of us have struggled to tell them and more, as there was plenty that I learned as well.
I must assume that when U.S. audiences watch scenes that dramatically clash with their world yet seem humane and reasonable they’ll be brought to the point ofthinking.
You show us political candidates, not screeching for more prisons, but holding a televised election debate in a prison in an effort to win the votes of the prisoners, who are permitted to vote. What are we to make of that? You also show us scenes from U.S. prisons of grotesque brutality. Then you show…
View original post 776 more words
February 15, 2016
Gentrifying Black History
*
*
Corporatizing black history.
Originally published at The Progressive magazine
By Gerald Lenoir and Jesse Hagopian
Thanks to a long history of redlining, formerly black neighborhoods in cities around the country are continuously disappearing under the rapacious churn of financial real estate interests. But city blocks in prime locations aren’t the only things being lost. Gentrification is also happening in our classrooms and books, pushing out the past, erasing the lives and struggles of African Americans from our collective memory.
Take A Birthday Cake for George Washington, for example, a children’s book by Ramin Ganeshram published by Scholastic. In it, smiling, happy slaves wrap their arms around their master, the first U.S. president. In a Texas high school geography textbook published by McGraw-Hill, enslaved Africans are described as “workers,” rather than slaves, and placed in a section titled “Patterns of Immigration”—as if they came here looking for a better life. In Jefferson County…
View original post 1,027 more words
The Health Benefits of Fermented Foods
Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods
by Sandor Katz
Chelsea Green (2003)
Book Review
Free PDF
Wild Fermentation is an encyclopedia of do-it-yourself fermentation. Sandor Katz first learned of the health benefits of fermentation in his search for alternative AIDS treatments. Published in 2003, this book foreshadowed recent breakthrough research into the importance of the microbiome* in digestion, mental stability, neuroendocrine function and immunity.
According to Katz, it was Russian immunologist and 1908 Nobel laureate Ilya Mechnikov who first observed – while studying yogurt eating centenarians** – that lactobacilli (the bacteria produced by fermentation) “postpone and ameliorate” old age.
The first half of the book is a historical overview of the art of fermentation. Mead (an alcoholic honey drink) is the earliest example of deliberate fermentation, dating back more than 12,000 years. Following the agricultural revolution, human beings also used fermentation to make other alcoholic drinks, as well as preserving milk and grains. It later came to be used in bread making and chocolate, coffee and tea production.
Prior to the advent of refrigeration (in the early 1900s), all households produced and consumed fermented foods as part of their diet. Katz (and many health practitioners) believe the sudden increase in chronic health conditions (cancer, obesity, diabetes, allergies, asthma, autoimmune disease, autism, etc) relates to a loss of fermented foods in the Western diet. This, in combination, with overuse of antibiotics (and heavy exposure to herbicides like Roundup) causes major a major loss of healthy intestinal bacteria for many of us.
The second half of the book is devoted to recipes for home fermented foods. According to Katz, any food can be fermented and the distinction between “fermented” and “rotten” is purely subjective and cultural. He gives the example the Swedish delicacy lutefisk and Chinese 100-year-old eggs, which are fermented in horse urine for two months.
The video below is from one of Katz’s fermentation workshops:
February 14, 2016
Why is the USA interested in peace? Russia Has Destroyed the CIA’s Arms Smuggling Operation in Syria
*
*
The real reason the US is seeking peace in Syria – they have their back against the wall.
Russia Has Destroyed the CIA’s Arms Smuggling Operation in Syria
No more CIA-supplied guns for ‘moderate’ rebels
No wonder Washington is suing for peace
Let’s cut to the chase: The closing of the Azaz corridor, a major supply artery for the “moderate rebels” in Syria, should be viewed as a crippling military defeat for the United States.
As analysts have pointed out, US Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly implored Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to keep the Azaz corridor open.
The New York Times now explains why Kerry was so anxious:
Mr. Kerry enters the negotiations with very little leverage: The Russians have cut off many of the pathways the C.I.A. has been using for a not-very-secret effort to arm rebel groups, according to several current and former officials. Mr. Kerry’s supporters inside the administration say he has been increasingly frustrated by the low level of American…
View original post 110 more words
Explosive Testimony in Sirhan/RFK Assassination Parole Hearing
Robert Kennedy with Paul Schrade. (photo: unknown)
Source Reader Supported News
By Paul Schrade, Reader Supported News
11 February 16
Full text of Paul Schrade’s prepared remarks for delivery at Sirhan Sirhan’s February 10th Parole Suitability Hearing. Transcription provided by Brad Johnson, Concept Producer for Rob Beemer, Interesting Stuff Entertainment, Los Angeles (Rob accompanied Paul Schrade to yesterday’s Sirhan parole hearing, acting as Mr. Schrade’s support person).
Update, 02/11/16: A California parole panel late yesterday denied Sirhan Sirhan’s parole application for a 15th time.
ood Morning, Gentlemen:
I am Paul Schrade of Los Angeles. I am 91 years old. And back when I was 43, I was among six persons shot at the old Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles at just after Midnight on June 5th, 1968.
I was shot along with Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who had just won California’s Democratic Primary Election for the Presidency of the United States. Five of us survived our wounds. And as history knows, Senator Kennedy was fatally wounded.
I am here to speak for myself, a shooting victim, and to bear witness for my friend, Bob Kennedy.
Kennedy was a man of justice. But, so far, justice has not been served in this case. And I feel obliged as both a shooting victim and as an American to speak out about this – and to honor the memory of the greatest American I’ve ever known, Robert Francis Kennedy.
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was originally scheduled for release in 1984 but, after intense political pressure, his parole date was rescinded and he has since been denied 14 times.
In order for you to make an accurate determination of Sirhan Sirhan’s parole, you need to know my feelings on this case and the full picture of what actually happened.
Sirhan, I forgive you.
The evidence clearly shows you were not the gunman who shot Robert Kennedy. There is clear evidence of a second gunman in that kitchen pantry who shot Robert Kennedy. One of the bullets – the fatal bullet – struck Bob in the back of the head. Two bullets struck Bob literally in his back. A fourth bullet struck the back of his coat’s upper right seam and passed harmlessly through his coat. I believe all four of those bullets were fired from a second gunman standing behind Bob. You were never behind Bob, nor was Bob’s back ever exposed to you.
Indeed, Sirhan, the evidence not only shows that you did not shoot Robert Kennedy but it shows that you could not have shot Robert Kennedy.
Gentlemen, the evidence clearly shows that Sirhan Sirhan could not and did not shoot Senator Bob Kennedy.
Several days ago, I made sure that several documents were submitted to this board for you to review. If you have not done so as yet, I would ask you to please review them very carefully during your deliberation. I will be glad to re-submit these documents to you, here today.
I believe, after you review these documents, that it should become clear to you that Sirhan Sirhan did not shoot – and could not have shot – Robert Kennedy. What I am saying to you is that Sirhan himself was a victim.
Obviously there was someone else there in that pantry also firing a gun. While Sirhan was standing in front of Bob Kennedy and his shots were creating a distraction, the other shooter secretly fired at the senator from behind and fatally wounded him. Bob died 25 hours later.
Gentlemen, I believe you should grant Sirhan Sirhan parole. And I ask you to do that today.
Along with what Sirhan’s lawyers have submitted to you, the following are the documents that I made sure were submitted to you and which should also be factored into your decision today.
First, I want to show you this. It’s a letter written in 2012 by my good friend, Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Bobby wrote this letter to Eric Holder, who was then the Attorney General of the United States. In his letter to Mr. Holder, Bobby requests that federal authorities examine the Pruszynski Recording, the only known audio recording made of his father’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel. The recording was uncovered in 2004 at the California State Archives by CNN International senior writer Brad Johnson.
This next document is a federal court declaration from audio expert Philip Van Praag, who Johnson recruited to analyze the Pruszynski Recording.
In this document, Van Praag declares that his analysis of the recording concludes that two guns were fired in the Robert Kennedy shooting.
Van Praag found a total of 13 gunshots in the Pruszynski Recording. Sirhan’s one and only gun at the crime scene held no more than eight bullets and Sirhan had no opportunity to reload it.
Van Praag also found what he calls “double-shots” – meaning two gunshots fired so close together that they could not both have come from Sirhan’s Iver Johnson Cadet revolver. Van Praag actually found two sets of these “double-shots.”
Additionally, he found that five of the 13 gunshots featured a unique audio resonance characteristic that could not have been produced by Sirhan’s gun model, meaning those five shots were fired from a second gun of a different make.
Van Praag further found that those five gunshots were fired in a direction heading away from Pruszynski’s microphone. Since the microphone was about 40 feet west of the Kennedy shooting, those five shots were fired in an eastward direction, which was opposite the westward direction that Sirhan is known to have fired his eight-shot Iver Johnson Cadet.
These documents are statements from two witnesses to the Robert Kennedy shooting, both of them assistant maître d’s for the Ambassador Hotel. These two men, Karl Uecker and Edward Minasian, escorted Robert Kennedy into the kitchen pantry immediately after the Senator delivered his victory speech in a hotel ballroom for having won the California Primary. Both Uecker and Minasian say Sirhan was in front of Bob Kennedy as the Senator walked toward Sirhan, meaning that Bob and Sirhan were facing each other. Both witnesses say Sirhan was still in front of Bob as Sirhan fired his gun. And both say that after Sirhan fired his first two shots, Uecker quickly pushed Sirhan against a steam table, placing Sirhan in a headlock while grabbing hold of Sirhan’s firing arm, forcing the tip of Sirhan’s gun to point away from where Bob Kennedy was and causing Sirhan to fire blindly his remaining six bullets.
In other words, Sirhan only had full control of his gun at the beginning, when he fired his first two shots, one of which hit me. Sirhan had no opportunity to fire four precisely-placed, point-blank bullets into the back of Bob Kennedy’s head or body while he was pinned against that steam table and while he and Bob were facing each other.
This document is the official Robert Kennedy autopsy report summary. It shows that all bullets directed at Senator Kennedy were fired from behind him at point-blank range. As the autopsy states, and as these drawings show, the bullets traveled from back-to-front at steep upward trajectories. One bullet struck Senator Kennedy at the back of the head, two bullets at the right rear armpit and a fourth bullet at the right rear shoulder of his jacket, which passed harmlessly through his jacket.
Again, Sirhan’s bullets could not have struck the back of Bob Kennedy’s head or the back of his body or the back of his jacket’s right shoulder, as the autopsy clear shows took place, because Sirhan was never in a position to administer any of those four Kennedy shots. The prosecution never placed Sirhan in that location and position.
These are documents from the Los Angeles Police Department that reveal LAPD misconduct in the police investigation of the Robert Kennedy murder. They detail evidence that was destroyed while Sirhan’s appeal was still pending as well as a photograph that was acknowledged by the LAPD to be “effective rebuttal” but was withheld from the defense team.
Indeed, the LAPD and L.A. County District Attorney knew two hours after the shooting of Senator Kennedy that he was shot by a second gunman and they had conclusive evidence that Sirhan could not – and did not – do it. The official record shows that the prosecution at Sirhan’s trial never had one witness – and had no physical nor ballistic evidence – to prove Sirhan shot Bob Kennedy. Evidence locked up for 20 years shows that the LAPD destroyed physical evidence and hid ballistic evidence exonerating Sirhan – and covered up conclusive evidence that a second gunman fatally wounded Robert Kennedy.
This document is a memo written by Criminalist Larry Baggett, who investigated the Robert Kennedy shooting for the LAPD. The Baggett memo states that the bullets that hit Senator Kennedy and William Weisel, another shooting victim in the pantry, were not fired from the same gun. The memo also states that the bullet that traveled upward through Bob Kennedy’s body and into his neck was not fired from Sirhan’s revolver. Such a finding would be proof that Sirhan did not shoot Robert Kennedy.
Mr. Deputy District Attorney, based on all of this information and more, I ask that you inform Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey that I am formally requesting her to order a new investigation of the Robert F. Kennedy assassination. I will also be making the same request of Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck.
Please note, Mr. Deputy District Attorney, that I am using the word “new” here. I am not requesting that the old investigation simply be re-opened. For that would only lead to the same old wrong conclusions. I am requesting a new investigation so that after nearly 50 years, justice finally can be served for me as a shooting victim; for the four other shooting victims who also survived their wounds; for Bob Kennedy who did not survive his wounds because his were the most grievously suffered in that kitchen pantry; for the people of the United States who Bob loved so much and had hoped to lead, just as his brother, President John F. Kennedy, had led only a few years before; and of course for justice, to which Bob Kennedy devoted his life.
Furthermore, Mr. Deputy District Attorney, I ask that you please also tell the District Attorney, Ms. Lacey, that I would appreciate the opportunity to personally meet with her in Los Angeles at her earliest convenience. Would you please convey my message to her?
I hope you will consider all of the accurate details of this crime that I have presented in order for you to accurately determine Sirhan Sirhan’s eligibility for parole. If you do this the right way and the just way, I believe you will come to the same conclusion I have: that Sirhan should be released. If justice is not your aim, then of course you will not.
Again, Sirhan was originally scheduled for release in 1984 but after intense political pressure, his parole date was rescinded and he has since been denied 14 times.
The best example of this can be found in this statement of Los Angeles District Attorney John Van de Kamp.
Again, gentlemen, I believe you should grant Sirhan Sirhan parole. And I ask you to do that today in the name of Robert F. Kennedy and in the name of justice.
Thank you. That concludes my remarks.
February 13, 2016
Bolivia’s Evades NSA Spying through Citizens Internet
Rebel Geeks – The Citizens Network
Al Jazeera (2015)
Film Review
Rebel Geeks is an Al Jazeera documentary about the hackers and activists who make up the Bolivian Campaign for Technological Sovereignty.
Besides paying horrendous fees to US servers and software manufacturers for one of the slowest Internet, the Bolivian government is angry about continually being hacked and spied on by the US government.
At present only 40% of the Bolivian population can afford the Internet service based in Miami. The goal of the technological sovereignty campaign is to make their homemade internet service available free to all citizens.
Their server is called barriohack.net and they already offer homemade platforms like El Mapa (comparable to Google Map), Backpack (comparable to Google Drive) and Chateamos (comparable to Twitter).
The Most Revolutionary Act
- Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's profile
- 11 followers
