Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1337
March 23, 2015
What S. Australia did to Increase Crop Yield by 300% without GMO’s!*
China, Australia’s number one trading partner, values their GM-free crops. China is also New Zealand’s major export partner, a major reason why our crops remain GE-free.
Originally posted on Hwaairfan's Blog:
What S. Australia did to Increase Crop Yield by 300% without GMO’s!*
By Heather Callaghan
Why would you go for 7% when you can get 50 – 100% increases in yield without having to use genetically modified seeds?
The South Australian Agriculture Minister has just reported “amazing” results after trialing a new soil program. Minister Leon Bignell describes using technology that works with the soil and other organic matter. This type of innovation, that he calls an “evolution in science” abounds over genetic engineering, he said.
The results of the following trial experiment strengthened his view that a moratorium on GM technology should remain indefinitely as it proves that GMOs are not needed. Incidentally, this year’s government test run was called “New Horizons” and some of the trial sites boasted a 300% increase in yields.
Minister Bignell – who has stood with protesters against GM technology – said…
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March 22, 2015
The GI Revolt That Ended the Vietnam War
Sir, No Sir: The GI Revolt
Directed by David Zeiger (2005)
Film Review
Sir, No Sir examines the GI revolt that effectively ended the Vietnam War. While it’s common to hear about fragging* incidents which occurred in Vietnam, I was totally unaware of the vast GI anti-war movement built by three years of sustained organizing in barracks, on bases, battlefields and ships and at armed forces academies like West Point.
This documentary traces the origin of this GI resistance movement to the 1967 court martial of a dermatologist who refused to train Green Berets how to treat common skin conditions of Vietnamese civilians. Captain Howard Levy took this stand due to his personal conviction that the US torture and murder of Vietnamese civilians was immoral. Levy, who was court-martialed and sentenced to three years in prison, inspired for hundreds of other GIs once they realized the US government was at war with the entire civilian population of Vietnam.
Levy’s court martial was followed by many others, as active duty GIs began organizing anti-war meetings and participating in civilian anti-war protests while in uniform. Black GIs could be court-martialed for doing a soul handshake.
Word of the GI anti-war movement spread mainly through underground GI newspapers that sprang up on many bases. However GI coffee houses and Jane Fonda’s FTA (Fuck the Army) shows were also major organizing tools.
Civilian peace activists opened GI coffee houses near bases, where off duty GIs could listen to subversive rock music and get counseling, legal advice and accurate information about Vietnam and the anti-war movement. Although the FTA shows were also held off base, GIs attended in droves.
Refusing to Deploy Against US Civilians
In 1968, Fort Hood GIs newly returned from Vietnam were ordered to police the anti-war protests at the Chicago. Democratic Convention. After a group of black GIs met about refusing to deploy, they were beaten up by MPs and court martialed. The white “subversives” at Ft Hood (including one of my friends from high school) were treated more leniently. They were confined to base instead of being sent to Chicago.
In 1969 a thousand active duty GIs participated in an anti-war march at Fort Hood on Armed Forces Day. A year later 4,000 participated.
1971 Winter Soldier Conference
The Winter Soldier Conference the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organized in 1971 was the real turning point for the GI resistance movement. The purpose of the conference was to establish that the 1968 My Lai massacre wasn’t an isolated incident – that superior officers were ordering the deliberate targeting of civilians. Testimony at the Detroit conference also focused media attention on the government’s genocidal policies towards the Vietnamese. Specific examples included widespread use of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange and the deliberate reconfiguration of Napalm** to make it stick better.
Nixon Forced to “Vietnamize” the War
By 1971, so many GIs were refusing orders, fragging and killing officers and deserting that the Pentagon warned Nixon the military was on the verge of collapse. In response, the latter ordered the “Vietnamization” of the war. This would translate into a massive increase in aerial bombardment, as US troops withdrew, and the gradual transfer of combat duties to the South Vietnamese Army.
*Fragging is the murder or deliberate injury of members of the military, particularly commanders of a fighting unit. The term originates from the fragmentation grenades commonly used in these incidents.
**Napalm is a mixture of a gelling agent and petroleum or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device. It was initially used against buildings and later primarily as an anti-personnel weapon, as it sticks to skin and causes severe burns when on fire.
March 21, 2015
Barbie: From Sexualizing Children to Spy*
While people at Mattel assure that the information collected will only be used to “improve the product”, it is obvious that Hello Barbie could be easily intercepted by all kinds of agencies such as the NSA.
Originally posted on Hwaairfan's Blog:
Barbie: From Sexualizing Children to Spy*
Hello Barbie is “the world’s first interactive Barbie doll” … and it is rather creepy. Equipped with a microphone and internet connectivity, the doll asks questions to children, records their answers and send the information back to Mattel servers where it is filed and processed by a powerful algorithm.
Hello Barbie works by recording a child’s voice with an embedded microphone that is triggered by pressing a button on the doll. As the doll “listens,” audio recordings travel over the Web to a server where the snippets of speech are recognized and processed. That information is used to help form Hello Barbie’s responses.
– Washington Post, Privacy advocates try to keep ‘creepy,’ ‘eavesdropping’ Hello Barbie from hitting shelves
At the New York toy fair, Mattel representatives demonstrated Hello Barbie’s capabilities.
At the demonstration at the New York toy fair, the Mattel representative chatting with Hello Barbie mentioned…
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March 20, 2015
The Sugar Conspiracy
The Secrets of Sugar
By Fifth Estate (2014)
Film Review
The Secrets of Sugar is a Canadian documentary about the conspiracy by the sugar industry and processed food companies to conceal the damaging effects of sugar on human health. For decades, the medical establishment has led us to believe that our intake of animal fat is responsible for soaring rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. It turns out the real culprit all along is sugar (see The Big Fat Surprise).
Investigators have uncovered industry documents going back to the 1950s linking excess sugar intake with health problems. In 1972, researcher John Yudkin published the book Pure, White and Deadly about research linking sugar to heart disease. The response by the food industry was a vicious campaign to portray Yudkin as an incompetent quack. This, in turn, led to a thirty-year shutdown of institutional funding for research into sugar’s health effects.
For me, the film’s most shocking revelation was the immense amount of sugar hidden in so- called “healthy” processed foods, such as yoghurt, oatmeal, soup and Healthy Choice frozen dinners. In one segment, a former industry scientist nicknamed “Dr Bliss” explains the importance of the “bliss point,” the quantity of added sugar that makes you crave a particular product.
A close look at product labels suggests they are designed to confuse consumers about the actual sugar content of foods. Meanwhile like the tobacco industry, Food Inc spends billions of dollars lobbying against government (and UN) recommendations for a maximum daily sugar intake and clearer food labeling laws.
For years, doctors and dieticians have been telling us that sugar is bad because of all the “empty” calories. New research indicates sugar acts as a poison, inflicting direct damage on the liver and brain via its impact on insulin production. In addition to studies implicating high sugar intake in obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, others point to its role in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease and polycystic ovarian disease.
Industry scientists interviewed in the film manifest the same “blame the victim” mentality as the tobacco industry. They maintain the responsibility lies with the consumer to choose whether to eat sugar – or to smoke. The filmmakers counter that healthy choices are impossible without good information.
The film follows an obese couple over three weeks, who achieve significant weight loss, as well as reductions in cholesterol and triglycerides, simply by eliminating all processed foods from their diet.
Also posted in Veterans Today
March 19, 2015
US Soldiers guarding opium in Afghanistan, with Louis Armstrong (2:24)
Delightful film clip of US GIs making the world safe for heroin trafficking.
Originally posted on Tales from the Conspiratum:
▶ US Soldiers guarding opium in Afghanistan – YouTube.
March 17, 2015
LAPD CONSIDERED TO THWART ISIS – LIKE FOR LIKE
Originally posted on 
March 16, 2015
Health Benefits of Time Banks
Give and Take: How Timebanking is Transforming Health Care
by David Boyle and Sarah Bird (Timebanking UK 2014)
Book Review
Give and Take summarizes a remarkable 2012-13 study by Timebanking UK, in which time banks were incorporated into GP practices to address unmet needs of patients over 65-year olds.
The project was the brain child of Timebanking UK coordinator Susan Ross-Turner and incorporated the work of John McKnight, founder of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute in Chicago. Ross-Turner saw it as an innovative solution to an overburdened health and social service sector struggling to serve a burgeoning elderly population.
High unemployment and lower wages – combined with high prices for food and energy – are really bad news for local economies. Residents want and need products and services local merchants have to offer but no money to pay for them.
A complementary currency is an alternative form of money used alongside an official or national currency. New Plymouth has had a complementary currency called the “talent” since the mid nineties. It was created by a group of retired and disabled residents to swap home grown veggies, soap, preserves, hand knit sweaters and second hand clothes books, books and household items.
A time bank is used to trade services rather than products. Through the Taranaki Time Bank, I can earn an hour credit for weeding someone’s garden. I can then use that credit to get my law mowed or the washers replaced in my sink.
Besides affording the cash-poor a new avenue to meet basic needs, forming a time bank is also very effective way of rebuilding communities that have been fragmented by globalization and corporatization.
Cooperation and mutual interdependence are fundamental to any healthy society. Time banks help move us in that direction. They encourage us to rely on one another for basic needs, rather than experts and technology.
The Timebanking UK Experiment
A total of 92 GP practices joined Ross-Turner’s timebanking project. They enrolled 1660 patients over 65 in time banking activities. They would participate in over 29,000 exchanges.
In one area, GPs wrote prescriptions for home visits by fellow patients instead of medication. Unsurprisingly both patients derived health benefits from the exchange. Other research confirms that the ability to a make meaningful social contribution is the single most important factor in elderly mortality rates. In one study, people over seventy who volunteered 1,000 or more hours a year were one-third less likely to die and two-thirds less likely to report bad health.
In another district, the time bank operated a health self-help telephone service. Time bank volunteers staffed the service using an assessment designed by clinicians.
One rural health scheme automatically enrolled every hospitalized patient over 65 in a time bank at the time of discharge.
Other health-related time bank services offer included prostate cancer group meetings, pilates classes, tai chi classes, aquafit classes, sewing groups and a “keep history alive” group.
Study findings:
Time bank involvement led to a significant decrease in depression, social isolation, hospitalizations and ER visits.
Time bank involvement enabled participants to remain in their own homes longer and postpone the need for nursing home care.
Time banks were an excellent way to attract people who don’t normally volunteer.
Joining a Time Bank
I have just joined the Taranaki Time Bank here in New Plymouth.
People can find a time bank in their own area through the following links:
Time Banking UK http://www.timebanking.org/
TimeBanks USA http://timebanks.org/
Time Bank Australia http://www.timebanking.com.au/
Time Bank Aotearoa New Zealand http://www.timebank.org.nz/
Genocide American Style
Red Cry
Lakota Solidarity Project (2013)
Film Review
Red Cry is about past and present genocide of the Lakota nation.
The first third of the film concerns the ugly history of legalized genocide of Native American peoples. Some of the highlights include
• Columbus’s slaughter of 8 million Arouac in Hispaniola
• The 1823 Supreme Court ruling that the “divine right of discovery” took precedence over the land rights of indigenous peoples.
• The mass slaughter of 1.5 million buffalo by the US army and settlers between 1871 and 1910 with the deliberate intent of destroying the primary Sioux source of food.
• The 1871 Indian Appropriation Act which invalidated the right of Native American tribes to be recognized as sovereign nations and invalidated all prior treaties.
• The criminalization of Native American culture, starting from the 1880s, and forced attendance of Native Americans at “Indian” boarding schools.
• The conscious federal desecration of sacred sites on the Pine Ridge Reservation and the ravaging of native lands with more than 3,000 uranium mines, leading to radioactive contamination of the air, water and food chain.
• The forced sterilization of Native American women by the Indian Health Service in the sixties and seventies.
• The 1973 appointment and arming (by the US government) of half-breed goon squads to terrorize and assassinate tribal elders.
The remainder of the film consists of interviews with tribal leaders describing present day genocidal conditions on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where life expectancy is 44 years for men and 52 years for women (in contrast to 76 years for men and 81 years for women in the general population).
Pine Ridge is plagued with miscarriages, birth defects and the highest cancer rate in the country due to radium, lead, mercury and arsenic contamination of the land and water by the mining industry.
Rape is four times the national average, with only one-third of the perpetrators facing prosecution.
Youth suicide is 1 ½ times the national average.
Eight out of ten families are affected by alcoholism.
One-third of the homes on the reservation lack running water and 40% have no electricity. Eighty percent of families live below the poverty line.
Traditional Lakota governance is matriarchal. For more than a century the US government has deliberately undermined matriarchal rule by only appointing men to positions of tribal authority.
March 15, 2015
All NASA can suggest is ‘water rationing’ for Californians?
California has only one year of water left. NASA’s top water scientist calls for immediate water rationing for domestic, municipal and industrial uses (eg fracking). A recent Field Poll shows that 94 percent of Californians surveyed believe the drought is serious, and one-third support mandatory rationing.
Originally posted on Satu Insan - Malaysia:
…with all their space technology and the “landings” on the Moon and Mars blah blah blah….the rocket scientists at NASA can only offer a suggestion to Californians water problem – “Rationing” This however has been proven to work successfully for astronauts in space and should work well for people on the flat Earth. I would have hoped they would come up with some Photoshop ‘rainfalls’…. or something like it. That would be fucking awesome let me tell you.
Only 1 year of water left in California, NASA scientist suggests rationing
NASA’s latest space technology to combat the California drought.
NASA’s top water scientist says California only has about one year’s worth of water left in storage, and its groundwater – often used as a backup for reservoirs and other reserves – is rapidly depleting. He suggests immediately rationing water.
California just had the driest January since record-keeping began in…
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March 14, 2015
Reducing Foreign Policy to Good vs Evil
Bitter Lake
by Adam Curtis (BBC) 2015
Film Review
By now, people will have noticed I’m a bit of an Adam Curtis fanatic (Curtis also produced The Century of the Self). Like all his documentaries, Bitter Lake focuses on propaganda and ideological manipulation by the political elite. This film traces how fanatical Muslim sects like the Taliban and ISIS are the direct result of western colonization of the Middle East – and how US and British leaders deliberately deceive their citizens by reducing foreign policy to a simple metric of good and evil.
In Afghanistan, this oversimplification created an extraordinary dilemma for US and British troops and confronting the spontaneous Afghan insurgency that opposed the occupation. They naively believed they were bringing democracy to Afghanistan. In reality, they were substantially increasing the power and brutality of corrupt, heroin-trafficking war lords. The documentary artfully intersperses great footage of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan with video from the more recent US occupation. The parallels between the two are uncanny.
Roosevelt’s Meeting with the Saudi King
The film takes its title from a 1945 meeting Roosevelt had with Ibn Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia, at Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal. The purpose of the meeting was to draw up a mutual security agreement that would keep Saudi oil fields under US control.
Curtis goes on to trace the rise of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, starting with the Wahhabist Bedouins who first brought the House of Saud to power in 1932. There was constant tension between the Saudi princes, who sought to modernize Saudi Arabia, and the Whahhabists, who opposed all imperialist development and sought to transform the country into a seventh century caliphate.
In 1964, King Faisal sought to alleviate this tension by sending the Wahhabists abroad to fight the growing influence of communism in the Muslim world. With US support, he used them to set up up madrassa throughout the Muslim world to train low income boys in Wahhabism.
The Economic Impact of Higher Oil Prices
In 1973 the US-Saudi relationship experienced a major breakdown when the US sided with Israel in its war against its Arab neighbors. By quintupling the price of oil, King Faisal forced the US and Israel to agree to a ceasefire.
The higher oil prices led to a total transformation of the global economic system. It caused mucho petrol dollars to flood into the Middle East, which the Saudis and other Mid East governments turned over to US and British banks to invest for them. This would provide the impetus for the “financialization” of the global economy, in which western capitalism would abandon manufacturing to focus on creating and selling financial products.
Higher prices for all commodities would also result in massive economic instability in the western world over the next seven years. A steep reduction in manufacturing jobs and wages would led to widespread popular unrest, which would bring right wing governments to power in most western democracies.
The Soviet Invasion
Curtis carefully outlines the historical events in Afghanistan that would lead to the overthrow of the monarchy in 1973, the Marxist revolution in 1978, the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the US/Saudi collaboration to recruit Saudi Wahhabists to defeat the Soviet occupation. The most prominent of these freedom fighters, known as the Mujahideen, was a Saudi highway engineer and CIA asset known as Osama bin Ladin.
Reducing Foreign Policy to Good vs Evil
Like Ronald Reagan, George W Bush attempted to reduce the US role in Afghanistan to a simple battle of good vs evil. The political reality was far more complex. US and Saudi intervention during the Soviet occupation brought corrupt warlords to power who supported their fiefdoms through Afghanistan’s heroin trade.
The Taliban, consisting mainly of Afghan orphans raised in Pakistani Madrassa, were primarily driven by a desire to end the heroin trade and this endemic corruption, which they (rightly) blamed on the interference of western imperialists in their country’s domestic affairs.
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