Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1314

After Decades of Living in a Food Desert, Locals are Building a $2mn Co-op They Own*

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Brilliant example of community organizers opting out of corporate control and running their communities themselves.

Originally posted on Hwaairfan's Blog:

After Decades of Living in a Food Desert, Locals are Building a $2mn Co-op They Own*

For nearly 20 years, the residents of this mostly African American Greensboro community had nowhere to shop for food. They tried to attract a big-box grocery store; when that didn’t work, they started their own.

By Liz Pleasant

Guilford County, North Carolina, has 24 food deserts—high-poverty neighbourhoods where at least one-third of the residents live a mile or more from a grocery store. Seventeen of those food deserts are in the city of Greensboro. According to a 2014 report from North Carolina’s Committee on Food Desert Zones, people living in these neighbourhoods are more likely to suffer from obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and more.

“The consequences of food deserts could be enormous for public health, the economy, national security and more,” the report said.

The neighbourhood of Northeast Greensboro is one of those food…

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South Africa’s 2012 Miners Massacre

 

Miners Shot Down

By Rehand Desai (2014)

Film Review

Miners Shot Down follows the Marikana Commission of Inquiry investigation into the government massacre of striking platinum miners in August 2012. Thanks to the public investigation, filmmakers gained access to secret police files and footage that totally demolishes their claim that they fired at the miners in self-defense. In total 112 miners were shot. Thirty-four of them died.

The documentary paints an extremely ugly picture of the worsening economic apartheid which followed the end of political apartheid in 1994. Prior to their 2012 strike, miners at the Lonmin platinum mine lived in abject poverty, earning an average wage of 5,000 South African rand ($US 500) a week. The 2012 strike was a wildcat strike, owing to the refusal of the corrupt Nation Union of Miners (NUM) to support miners’ demand for higher wages.

Eyewitness testimony and documentary and forensic evidence presented to the Marikana Commission leave no doubt whatsoever that orders to fire on the miners came from the highest level of government.

Among the more damning evidence is the decision by the Commissioner of Police to supply police with four mortuary vans, in addition to 4,000 rounds of ammunition. Police footage shows them ordering protesting strikers to disperse, boxing them in with razor wire and armored vehicles, demanding journalists leave and shooting down fleeing miners.

Eyewitnesses report the police repeatedly shot strikers as they were surrendering.

Following the massacre the strike lasted another four weeks, and Lonmin miners eventually won pay increases of 7-22%. The Marikana massacre prompted 100,000 miners to undertake wildcat strikes across Africa.

The Marikana Commission report, issued in June 2015, largely exonerates key government figures implicated in the massacre, and victims families plan to the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

270 miners have been charged with murder based on events at Marikana. No police officers have been charged.

 

HIGH SOCIETY: Oregon Now Has More Marijuana Shops than Starbucks or McDonald’s

stuartbramhall:

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The real life outcome of careful, sustained political action. Don’t forget, ordinary people fought for this. I first went door-to-door for marijuana legalization in San Francisco in 1972.

Originally posted on RIELPOLITIK:

Source – theantimedia.org

– In the state of Oregon, where marijuana for recreational purposes was legalized just over a month ago, there are already more retail marijuana shops than there are McDonald’s or Starbucks.

According to Oregon’s Health Authority, there are 281 marijuana businesses in the state due to the fact that there was already a vast network of medical dispensaries there. When legalization kicked in, these dispensaries were able to quickly repurpose themselves as retail outlets. This allowed the industry to grow much quicker in Oregon than it did in Colorado or Washington.

In Oregon, there were over 250 medical marijuana dispensaries that were immediately able to sell to recreational customers, while in Colorado there were just 24 retailers open on the first day of legalization — and Washington had only four.

In fact, in Oregon, the cannabis industry is already becoming as visible as major fast food…

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Donald Trump: the Face of Greed

You’ve Been Trumped

Directed by Anthony Baxter (2012)

Film Review

You’ve Been Trumped is about a group of Scottish farmers battling Donald Trump’s bid to destroy one of Britain’s last pristine wilderness areas. Why? To build a golf course for jet-setting millionaires and billionaires.

The documentary, originally filmed in 2011, has been re-released in honor of Trump’s presidential ambitions. It’s been taken down from YouTube owing to its commercial re-launch. Maori TV, our best political documentary channel, showed it this past week.

In 2007, Aberdeenshire Council denied Trump planning permission for the gold course. Former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond overruled them, as well as giving the go-head for compulsory purchase orders (which would force local residents to see their farms to Trump).

You’ve Been Trumped differs from Baxter’s 2015 sequel Dark Side of the Greens in its greater focus on the careful and sustained campaign of local citizens who opposed Trump’s development plans. Although the first golf course ultimately went ahead, activists successfully blocked the second. They also blocked the CPOs (compulsory purchase orders) and Trump’s bid to have an offshore wind farm dismantled. He claimed it ruined the view from his luxury time shares.

In addition to featuring more footage of Donald Trump Jr (who turns out to be every bit as obnoxious as his father), the first film also highlights Trumps criminal behavior behavior during the construction process. In addition to illegally annexing land belonging to local farmers, Trump construction crews also cut off the spring that supplied their water. Interfering with a household water service is illegal under British law.

A particular highlight of You’ve Been Trumped is a scene of the filmmakers beings assaulted, handcuffed and jailed for supporting the local residents’ cause.

The full film can’t be embedded but can be viewed at the Maori TV website for the next few weeks: Maori TV

Pwr 2 the WEED-SMOKING Soldiers!

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Bravo to US veterans who protested over Veterans Day over the VA’s refusal to allow their doctors to prescribe medical marijuana (even in 23 states where medical marijuana is legal). Fed up with being prescribed ineffective and addictive medication with toxic side effects, they dumped a mountain of prescription bottles in front of the White House to make their point.

Originally posted on Wolfessblog -- Guillotine mediocrity in all its forms!:

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Weed For Warriors


by
Abby Zimet, staff writer

Meds: “We don’t want it,” said veterans in D.C. this week. Washington Post photo

Convincingly arguing they’ve lost enough of their lives and limbs and peace of mind to earn the right to seek relief from their ensuing pain – physical or psychological – however they damn choose, veterans and their advocates are increasingly demanding freedom from toxic, addictive, often-calamitous prescription meds and access to medical weed. Several national protests this week around Veterans Day culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., where  protesting veterans dumped a mountain of pill bottles in front of the White House to make their harrowing point. “Here’s what the over-medication of our veterans looks like,” one declared. “We don’t want it.”

Millions of veterans back from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from a devastating array of physical and psychological ills, from post-traumatic stress…

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The Battle of Blair Mountain

Storming Heaven

by Denise Giardina

Ballantine Books (1987)

Book Review

Storming Heaven, a fictional account The Battle of Blair Mountain (featured in the recently released film Plutocracy), has to be one of my favorite novels of all time. The author, Denise Giardina, grew up in a coal camp.

The book concerns the unionizing drive (often employing skilled African American organizers) among West Virginia mine workers leading up to the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. This was one of the most shameful episodes of US history, in which the US Army attacked 10,000 striking pro-union miners with airplanes, bombs and poison gas.

Giardina strikes just the right note in juxtaposing the brutal corruption of the miners who stole the land deeds, homes and labor of the entire region – and the energy, excitement and pure romance of a union drive that organizes against immense odds to reclaim its members’ rights to a living wage and safe working conditions.

In her afterward, the author reveals that the leaders of the United Miners Association District 17 were arrested and tried for treason. Although they had strong popular support and were acquitted, it would be another twelve years before Roosevelt abolished the mine guard system that terrorized union organizers and awarded mine workers the freedom to form unions.

When she wrote the book in 1987, Giardina was president of her local coal union. In the late nineties she became active in the movement opposing mountain top removal. In 2000 she ran for governor of West Virginia.

US airlines have offshored aircraft maintenance to the Third World…what could possibly go wrong?

stuartbramhall:

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Not sure if it’s a good idea to offshore maintenance of US aircraft to 3rd world sweatshops where few mechanics speak English or have FAA certification and where inspections have no teeth. According to the Vanity Fair article, this has been going on for 10 years. I wonder if this partly explains the increase in maintenance problems and crashes?

 

Originally posted on YOUR PERCEPTION IS NOT REALITY:

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In the last decade, most of the big U.S. airlines have shifted major maintenance work to places like El Salvador, Mexico, and China, where few mechanics are F.A.A. certified and inspections have no teeth.

MORE:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance-disturbing-truth

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The Hidden History of the US Constitution

Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and other Illusions

by Jerry Fresia

South End Press (1988)

Book Review

This book is a great follow-up for people wanting to know more about the secret machinations behind the US Constitution after watching the film Plutocracy.

I knew virtually nothing about the framing of the Constitution when I first read Toward an American Revolution in the mid-nineties. Fresia reveals how the first Constitutional Convention was actually a secret meeting of rich property owners and merchants whose business interests (expanded trade and personal wealth) were threatened by farmers who had seized control of legislatures in twelve out of thirteen states.

The clear intent of Washington, Hamilton, Madison and the other businessmen and plantation ownders who wrote the Constitution was to transfer power from relatively autonomous state assemblies to a centralized federal government. Most agreed from the outset that they wanted a system of government more like Britain’s, ie one in which the business elite could use government authority to enhance their economic interests.

According to Fresia, the true purpose of constitutional “checks and balances” (ie the three branches of government) was to insure that moneyed interests enjoyed a greater voice than ordinary people. The Senate, a distinctly unrepresentative body, plays a major role in minimizing popular input. The Senate, in which a tiny state like Rhode Island has the same number of votes as an a big state like California, is given sole authority to approve treaties and presidential appointees. Their longer terms (six years) mean senators are less accountable to voters than congress people (who have two years terms). Until 1913, senators were still chosen by the electoral college (as opposed by direct vote) as the president is.

In 2015, more than 200 years after the Constitution was first written, Americans are still denied the right to vote directly for President.

Toward an American Revolution also describes the dirty tricks the founding father used to get 9 legislatures to ratify the Constitution, despite overwhelming opposition from the majority of enfranchised American voters.

The second half of the book fast forwards to the twentieth century to demonstrate how the US has continued to be ruled by a secret political elite. The latter have a specific agenda of suppressing democracy when it interferes with their business interests.

The examples given include America’s “secret police” force under the FBI’s Cointelpo operation, the role played by President Herbert Hoover and US industrialists (represented by Wall Street lawyer Allen Dulles) in financing the rise of Hitler, the subsequent appointment of Dulles to head the most powerful secret police apparatus in history (the CIA), his incorporation of Nazi war criminals into US intelligence networks, the role of “secret government” in the assassination of JFK, the corruption of our democratically elected representatives by corporate lobbyists and Reagan’s illegal war in Nicaragua.

Fresia has kindly made excerpts of this book available at http://cyberjournal.org/authors/fresia/

Politically Incorrect Anti-ISIS Coloring Book Debuts “to Educate America”

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People who like this coloring book will also want to check out other Really Big Coloring Book titles, such as The Republican Party – Grand Old Party Coloring and Activity Book and Ted Cruz to the Future: Comic Coloring Activity Book (I’m not making this up). Kinda makes you wonder where they get their funding – from the Koch brothers, the CIA or both. According to their website they “use green technology that’s friendly to the environment.” Thank heavens for that.

Originally posted on Memory Hole:

Via Behind the News Israel

A St. Louis-based company made waves again Sunday, after it released a new coloring book on Islamic State (ISIS) – “ISIS: A Culture of Evil.”

Wayne Bell, CEO of Really Big Coloring Books, reached out to Arutz Sheva to discuss the work – which follows two other coloring books on Islamist terrorism.

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Reclaiming Our History

Plutocracy: Political Repression in the United States

Scott Noble (2015)

Film Review

As German philosopher Walter Benjamin famously stated, “History is written by the victors.” In the US, most history books are written by and for the corporate oligarchs who run our government. Plutocracy is the first documentary to comprehensively examine early American history from the perspective of the working class. Part II (Solidarity Forever) will cover the late 19th Century to the early twenties. The filmmaker is currently seeking donations to complete the project. If you’d like to help, you can donate to their Patreon account.

The film can’t be embedded but can be viewed free at Plutocracy

Plutocracy starts with Shay’s Rebellion in 1786, the insurrection of Massachusetts farmers against the courts and banks that were fleecing them of their meager wealth and property. Similar rebellions in Rhode Island and Virginia would cause leading US bankers, merchants and plantation owners to organize a secret convention to create a central government and standing army. Each of the 13 original states, which in 1787 were still independent and sovereign, sent delegates to Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation.

Instead of revising the Articles, as authorized by their state legislatures, the delegates closed the meeting to the public and voted to replace them with a federal constitution. The latter substantially limited the freedom and power of state legislatures and ordinary Americans.

Plutocracy moves on to cover the massive Irish immigration of the mid-nineteenth century and the appalling squalor so-called “white Negroes” lived in. During the 19th century, 80% of babies born to Irish immigrants died in infancy.

The film touches only briefly on the Civil War, describing laws that enabled robber barons like John Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt to evade the Civil War draft by paying a poor person $300 to replace them.

It offers a detailed depiction of post-Civil War Reconstruction, which coincided with the 1871 Paris commune and saw blacks collaborating with poor whites to establish the South’s first public schools and hospitals. This was in addition to the election of numerous former slaves to judgeships and legislative positions.

Their eagerness to return Negroes to productive status on plantations led northern industrialists to pressure Congress to end Reconstruction by removing the federal troops protecting the rights of former slaves. It also led to their passive acceptance of unconstitutional Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan terrorism. The chief aim of both was to prevent poor backs and whites from associating with one another.

The federal troops withdrawn from the South were redeployed in genocidal campaigns against Native Americans and Mexicans. By the end of the 19th century, not only had Mexico ceded half their territory to the US (including California, Texas, Utah, Nevada and parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Montana – in the 1984 Treaty of Guadalupe), but US corporations enjoyed de facto control of all land remaining under sovereign Mexican control.

Stripping the Native Americans and Mexicans of their land in the West, readied the US for the rise of the robber barons of industry (Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie and Vanderbilt) and a corrupt system of federal and local government run entirely by bribery and patronage.

The corruption and squalid living conditions of the late 19th century would give rise to militant trade unionism, socialism, anarchism and populism. Plutocracy depicts the Pullman and similar strikes in which strikers were brutally beaten and killed by Pinkerton’s Detectives and other goons hired by industrial bosses, as well as national guardsmen and, on several occasions, federal troops.

The film opens with a poignant depiction of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in US history. It’s the largest armed uprising since the Civil War, involving 10,000 coal miners. Denise Giardini memorializes the Battle of Blair Mountain in her 1987 novel Storming Heaven.

*Rockefeller and Morgan had a relative monopoly on the banks, Carnegie on steel and Vanderbilt on the railroads.