Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1315

BIG BROTHER: Making Sense Of The MOVE Bombing – By Gene Demby (Flashback)

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The first WACO. In 1985, when the US government collaborated with the Philadelphia police to bomb an entire city block, I finally recognized for the first time that the most powerful government in the world is controlled by career criminals.

Originally posted on RIELPOLITIK:

Source – constantinereport.com

– Talk to some of the folks who lived through the bombing of 62nd and Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia 30 years ago, and you’ll notice that they refer to the event by its full date. May 13, 1985.

That’s how Gerald Renfrow refers to it when we talk about the inferno. His house is about 30 yards from the compound on which the bomb was dropped — practically ground zero. He’d been living there since long before the bombing, and now he’s the block captain, trying to hold on to the home where he grew up and raised his own family.

That’s how Perry Moody refers to it, too. His house is on the north side of Pine Street. On that day three decades ago, he had been evacuated from the block but watched as the houses on the other side of the street were…

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One Sure Fire Way to Stop Fracking

Corridors of Resistance: Stopping Oil and Gas Pipelines

By Leah Temper

Film Review

Corridors of Resistance is about the inspiring Unisto’ot’en campaign in northwest British Columbia to block the intrusion of oil and gas companies on their territory. This has to be the most effective grassroots challenge I’ve seen to the supposedly unchallengeable oil and gas industry.

Although the Unisto’ot’en never ceded their territory by treaty, British Columbia and the former Harper government illegally granted seven oil and gas companies concessions for ten pipelines. The purpose of the pipelines is to carry tar sands condensate, fracked natural gas and liquefied natural gas to Pacific seaports.

The right of Unisto’ot’en to occupy their unceded traditional lands was recognized by the Canadian high court in 1997.

The Canadian indigenous group isn’t merely protecting their land rights. They also have major concerns about the health and environmental effects of fracking and tar sands mining. Studies show people living adjacent to these activities are dying of cancer and losing livestock owing to air and water contamination. Likewise a pipeline spill or leak could wipe out the salmon and animals they hunt, which would be catastrophic to their survival.

The Unisto’ot’en also worry about Canada’s excessive reliance on fossil fuels and the threat it poses to climate stability.

Many “colonized” (ie city dwelling) Unisto’ot’en, as well as European supporters, are moving back to their traditional land to help maintain the blockade.

My favorite part is the scenes in which Unist’ot’en women confront oil and gas workers who attempt to enter their territory and turn them away.

BRAVE NEW WORLD: Oxford University Study, 47 percent of all U.S. jobs are under threat to be replaced by automation

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While the Oxford study paints a pretty bleak picture, I’ve yet to see a realistic analysis of the energy demands of a robot economy. While the cost of the technology is decreasing, we can only expect the cost of energy to increase over time – as high extraction costs drive up the cost of fossil fuels. Most energy analysts predict that the high cost of renewable energy will greatly reduce the number of personal vehicles in use. The notion that society can afford a bunch of robots powered by solar and wind energy – once they can no longer afford to run personal vehicles – seems pretty unrealistic to me.

Originally posted on RIELPOLITIK:

Source – pcmag.com, By Evan Dashevsky

– Economists of the past century have, for the most part, rejected the notion that technological advancement destroys the need for human labor. Or, if there was to be any effect on the labor force, they’ve claimed it would only be beneficial.

Back in the 1930s, for example, the eminent economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological advancements would slice the work week down to 15 hours and society would be forced to contend with an overabundance of leisure time. (Heh.)

Meanwhile, the pessimists who warned of impending “technological unemployment” were dismissed as reactive Luddites. And, as it turns out, this intra-academic derision has been mostly validated by history. Time and time again, the industrial era has demonstrated that technology only evolves the workforce, it doesn’t replace it.

While many jobs have indeed been rendered obsolete over the decades (wherest thou, o’…

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Big Sugar, Inc

Big Sugar: Sweet, White and Deadly

Brian McKenna (2005)

Film Review

Big Sugar is about the sugar lobby and how they use their wealth and power to prevent the World Health Organization (WHO) and other regulatory agencies from dispensing accurate information about the link between high sugar intake and obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

This Canadian documentary is divided into two parts. Part I deals with the links between sugar and slavery and the modern sugar barons have replaced the slaveholders who effectively controlled British foreign and domestic policy for 200 years. Part II is about the global obesity epidemic and efforts by WHO in 2005 to issue guidelines limiting daily sugar intake to 10% of total calories. The powerful sugar lobby defeated this initiative by employing many of the same techniques as the tobacco industry (and the climate denial industry). After attacking the science linking high sugar intake and obesity, they attacked the scientists themselves as biased fanatics. They then got them fired, demoted, and/or transferred. Under pressure from Big Sugar, both Bush administrations threatened to withhold the funding they owed WHO, and the pesky nutritionists who sought to warn people about the dangers of sugar magically vanished.

The documentary focuses on two of the most prominent slave holding families, as well a Canadian woman of African descent whose ancestors were owned by the Church of England and worked on a plantation in Barbados. The filmmakers liken these historical paragons to a modern day Cuban exile family in Florida called the Fanjuls. The latter donate generously to both major parties to make sure the US government continues to subsidize sugar production. The Fanjuls and other Florida sugar barons reap $1.5 billion in subsidies for $3.1 million in campaign contributions.

In addition to exposing the ecological devastation sugar cultivation has caused in the Florida Everglades, the filmmakers also visit the Fanjuls’ sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic. Despite the official abolition of slavery, working conditions on Dominican sugar plantations remain virtually unchanged. The Fanjuls lure Haitian immigrants across the border with a promise of paying work. Once their passports are confiscated, they become virtual slaves. Workers, who are paid $2 for a twelve hour day, experience chronic hunger and malnutrition. Forbidden to grow their own vegetables, they’re forced to rely on a company store that charges them three times the normal price for food. They have no access to medical care, and child labor is rife.

The ISIS Oil Fraud

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ISIS is one of the wealthiest terrorist groups in history, earning roughly $500 million from oil exports. Since Obama already knows where all the ISIS wells are, it seems ridiculously easy to put them out of commission by bombing them. Instead he concentrates his bombing raids on civilian infrastructure, such as power plants and water purification facilities. The charade of the US war against ISIS is wearing really thin, in the face of growing evidence Obama is using them as a proxy army to overthrow Assad.

Originally posted on Political Film Blog:

Mr. Obama,

Oil wells have addresses.

Are you still pretending to fight ISIS, when you could, on any day, and at any time, have simply bombed the Islamic State oil wells and put them out of commission?

The NY Times claimed, in sycophantic fashion, that you are “struggling” on this question. I don’t personally believe that.

Struggling to Starve ISIS of Oil Revenue, U.S. Seeks Assistance From Turkey

“WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is struggling to cut off the millions of dollars in oil revenue that has made the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria one of the wealthiest terror groups in history, but so far has been unable to persuade Turkey, the NATO ally where much of the oil is traded on the black market, to crack down on an extensive sales network.”

The Times never once mentions the oil wells.

This is an oil well:

TO GO…

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Let’s All Move to Michigan, Shall We?

Exported from Michigan

Jon Vander Pol (2014)

Film Review

Exported from Michigan is a slick rah-rah promotional film about the glories of doing business in the state of Michigan. Even though it’s an obvious propaganda piece, it’s always interesting to track the key messages the mainstream media is trying to foist on us. The main message I see this film promoting is that society (ie government and corporations) no longer have an obligation to guarantee full employment. It’s up to the 20-30% of American young people who are unemployed to solve the problem themselves by becoming self-employed entrepreneurs.

Despite the film’s irritating lack of balance, I was gratified to see its heavy emphasis on local economies, civic engagement and community building. I’m in total agreement that local businesses are the key to a thriving economy – states tried to increase employment with tax breaks for multinational corporations learned from bitter experience corporations have no loyalty to the welfare of local communities.

The filmmakers argue that Michigan began sliding into recession long before the 2008 economic crisis, owing to a steady exodus of the big three automakers that began in the 1970s. Michael Moore’s 1989 film Roger and Me focuses on the economic devastation Flint Michigan experienced after GM closed their auto plant and laid off 30,000 workers.

Among the film’s highlights are the urban agriculture movement in Detroit, where one-third of the land is abandoned; the craft beer movement, involving 140 microbreweries across the state and employing 37,000 people; a proliferation local art fairs and music festivals aimed at building community awareness and civic engagement, high tech manufacturing start-us that focus on robots and wind and solar technology and the development of a specialized medical research center in Grand Rapids. In all these endeavors, there’s a strong expectation that new physical plants will be sustainably constructed and adhere to triple bottom line principles.*

The decision to showcase the Big 3 auto companies, which still employ one out of seven Michigan workers, mystified me. A GM executive talks about the failure to innovate and “complacency” over consumer needs that led to their bankruptcy and bailout in 2008. He doesn’t mention the 30 million vehicles GM recalled in February 2014 due to faulty ignition features that caused cars to catch fire – nor that GM knew about the fault for a decade before issuing the recall.

Although there’s brief mention of the Detroit seniors who’ve had their pensions cut as the city’s 2013 bankruptcy, the film fails to examine the tragic effect of these cuts on their lives. There’s also no mention of the tens of thousands of Detroit residents who’ve experienced water shutoffs nor the city’s condemnation by UN human rights.

View the film free at Exported from Michigan

*Triple bottom line principles place people and planet before profit.

 

Let’s All Move to Michigan

Exported from Michigan

Jon Vander Pol (2014)

Film Review

Exported from Michigan is a slick rah-rah promotional film about the glories of doing business in the state of Michigan. Even though it’s an obvious propaganda piece, it’s always interesting to track the key messages the mainstream media is trying to foist on us. The main message I see this film promoting is that society (ie government and corporations) no longer have an obligation to guarantee full employment. It’s up to the 20-30% of American young people who are unemployed to solve the problem themselves by becoming self-employed entrepreneurs.

Despite the film’s irritating lack of balance, I was gratified to see its heavy emphasis on local economies, civic engagement and community building. I’m in total agreement that local businesses are the key to a thriving economy – states tried to increase employment with tax breaks for multinational corporations learned from bitter experience corporations have no loyalty to the welfare of local communities.

The filmmakers argue that Michigan began sliding into recession long before the 2008 economic crisis, owing to a steady exodus of the big three automakers that began in the 1970s. Michael Moore’s 1989 film Roger and Me focuses on the economic devastation Flint Michigan experienced after GM closed their auto plant and laid off 30,000 workers.

Among the film’s highlights are the urban agriculture movement in Detroit, where one-third of the land is abandoned; the craft beer movement, involving 140 microbreweries across the state and employing 37,000 people; a proliferation local art fairs and music festivals aimed at building community awareness and civic engagement, high tech manufacturing start-us that focus on robots and wind and solar technology and the development of a specialized medical research center in Grand Rapids. In all these endeavors, there’s a strong expectation that new physical plants will be sustainably constructed and adhere to triple bottom line principles.*

The decision to showcase the Big 3 auto companies, which still employ one out of seven Michigan workers, mystified me. A GM executive talks about the failure to innovate and “complacency” over consumer needs that led to their bankruptcy and bailout in 2008. He doesn’t mention the 30 million vehicles GM recalled in February 2014 due to faulty ignition features that caused cars to catch fire – nor that GM knew about the fault for a decade before issuing the recall.

Although there’s brief mention of the Detroit seniors who’ve had their pensions cut as the city’s 2013 bankruptcy, it fails to take a serious look at the effect on their lives. There’s also no mention of the tens of thousands of Detroit residents who’ve experienced water shutoffs nor the city’s condemnation by UN human rights.

View the film free at Exported from Michigan

*Triple bottom line principles place people and planet before profit.

 

The MetroJet Disaster was No Accident

stuartbramhall:

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Interesting coincidence, isn’t it? Russia angers the US by routing their CIA/ISIS proxies in Syria and kaboom – a Russian passenger liner mysteriously disintegrates in the skies adjoining Israel. Midair explosions are rarely – if ever – accidental.

Originally posted on Memory Hole:

Someone targeted the Metro-Jet Flight 7K9268

James R
Crimes of Empire

Debris of Metrojet Flight 7K9268 on the ground in Sinai, Egypt, October 31st, 2015.

Debris of Metrojet Flight 7K9268 on the ground in Sinai, Egypt, October 31st, 2015.

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How Banks Invent Money Out of Thin Air

Money as Debt

Directed by Paul Grignon (2006)

Film Review

Money as Debt is the classic primer for understanding where money comes from in contemporary society.

Most people erroneously believe that government issues all the money in circulation by printing bills and minting coins.

In reality, less that 5% of all the money circulating in the global economy is issued by government. More than 95% is issued by private banks as loans to businesses, families and governments.

Most people also mistakenly assume that banks lend money their customers have deposited in savings accounts. The truth is that banks lend out vastly more money than they have on deposit. In fact, every time they issue a loan, they simply create the money out of thin error as a bookkeeping entry.

There is a deliberate effort (by banks and government) to conceal these facts. Even front line bank employees don’t understand this is how money is issued.

The belief that the economy would improve if all government and private debt were repaid is also erroneous. Because nearly all the money in circulation is debt-based money issued by banks, if we paid off all the debt, there would be no money left to run the economy.

A severe shortage of debt triggered both the Great Depression of 1929 and the 2008 economic crisis. Both occurred when banks drastically reduced the supply of new bank loans.

Money as Debt also makes an important link between this debt-based monetary system and the drive for perpetual economic growth. Banks only create (out of thin air) the principal for new loans. Money to pay the interest can only be found by creating more debt through new loans. This pressure to create more and more debt requires a continual increase in production and simultaneous depletion of resources.

The film traces how our current debt based money system first started in England in 1694 and how US founding fathers fought to resist private bank control of the US monetary system until 1913. That was the year Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, handing control of the US monetary system over to a consortium of private banks called the Federal Reserve.

Filmmaker Paul Grignon is particularly concerned about a system in which governments are forced to borrow from private banks to run military and public services. Because it gives banks far more control than voters over government decisions, he calls it an invisible economic dictatorship.

Check out Positive Money to examine some of the alternatives.

The US Police State

stuartbramhall:

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Undeclared martial law in the US. The numbers speak for themselves.

Originally posted on Political Film Blog:

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