Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1342

Shell urges shareholders to accept climate resolution

stuartbramhall:

 

 

Wow, a major oil company backing an activist shareholder resolution. This is sure a first.

Originally posted on thekirkshow:

Shell is set to confront the risk that climate change may pose to its future, after backing a resolution from activist shareholders. The move came on the same day it announced $15bn (£10bn) in cost cutting due to plummeting oil prices and said it wanted to resume drilling for oil in the Arctic.

The resolution, filed by 150 investors who control hundreds of billions of pounds, requires the oil major to test whether its business model is compatible with the pledge by the world’s nations to limit global warming to 2C.

The 2C target means only a quarter of existing, exploitable fossil fuel reserves are burnable, according to a series of recent analyses. That implies trillions of dollars of oil, gas and coal held by investors could become worthless and that continuing exploration for fossil fuels may be pointless.

The resolution, also filed with BP, includes a ban on corporate…

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Mae Brussell and the John Lennon Assassination

The second of two posts about the late political researcher Mae Brussell

Operation Chaos

In addition to her other research, Mae Brussell also played a vital role in bringing the CIA’s Operation CHAOS to public attention. According to Brussell CHAOS, which was launched in 1967, played a significant role in “neutralizing” popular rock musicians who were contributing to the rise of the New Left. According to Brussell, most of these murders were disguised to look like accidental drug overdoses or plane crashes. However, as with the JFK assassination, there was always a typical pattern of lost or destroyed evidence and an official report that was full of contradictions and discrepancies.

The list of prematurely dead rock musicians, entertainers and managers Brussell investigated includes John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendris, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Duane Allman, Mama Cass Elliot, Phil Oakes, Keith Moon Jim Reaves, Jim Croce, Lenny Bruce, Bon Scott (AC/DC), Bob Marley, Sal Mineo, Rod McKernan (Grateful Dead), Brian Epstein (Beatles manager), Michael Jeffery (Jimi Hendrix’s manager and Donald Rex Jackson (grateful Dead manager).

John Lennon’s Assassin Mark Chapman

Brussell had a special interest in John Lennon’s alleged assassin Mark Chapman and all the unanswered questions posed by the “official” police account. In a 1981 interview with Tom Davis, Brussell talks at length about Chapman’s unusual background, which clearly suggests prior intelligence involvement.

She also raises a number of troubling questions the New York police should have investigated (and which likely would have come out at trial if Chapman hadn’t been pressured to plead guilty):

• Why did a security guard Chapman met in DeKalb Georgia arrange for him to spend six months in war torn Lebanon (Brussell believed it was to attend a CIA-run military training camp)?

• Why did Chapman return from Lebanon to Fort Chaffee Arkansas to work at a World Vision camp for Vietnam refugees (World Vision, run by Bush senior’s friend John Hinckley Sr, was closely linked with the CIA, which frequently used their refugee camps to recruit operatives)?

• Who paid for Chapman, who was chronically unemployed, to take a long round the world trip shortly before he shot Lennon?

• Where did Chapman get the money to purchase $7,500 worth of Norman Rockwell lithographs and to stay in expensive hotels?

• How could someone who was hospitalized for mental illness in Hawaii manage to buy a weapon there – and transport it to the mainland? And why did the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have no interest in investigating this?

Forced Off the Air by Death Threats

After 17 years on the radio, Brussell left the air in March 1988 as a result of a death threat related to her investigation of followers of satanic cults in the military. She continued to record weekly audiotapes, which she sent to her followers, until June 1988. She died, from breast cancer, in October 1988.

In the following 1971 broadcast, she discusses the 28,000 page cross filing system she used to analyze the Warren Commission report and establish clear links between Oswald, his probable CIA handler George DeMohrenschildt and 28 white Russian CIA assets in Dallas/Fort Worth.

photo credit: Flickred! via photopin cc

Also posted at Veterans Today

Mae Brussell: Forgotten Superhero

Part I of a two-part post on political researcher Mae Brussell

For more than 25 years, Mae Brussell (1922-1988) was America’s preeminent researcher into the suppressed history of political assassinations, covert operations, mind control, secret societies, organized banking crime and international fascism.

When I first learned of her work in 1992, Brussell had already been dead for four years. I had contacted the Christic Institute* to request copies of the literature they were putting out regarding their lawsuit against CIA operatives involved in either the Iran Contra Affair** or the CIA-backed cocaine trafficking used to finance the Contra war against Nicaragua. The staff member I talked to phone informed me the judge had dismissed their suit as frivolous and stripped them of their non-profit status. They had turned all their literature and tapes over to Prevailing Winds Research (PWR) in Santa Barbara. If I wanted more information, I would need to contact them.

Accessing Suppressed Documents Before the Internet

As I was to learn, PWR was an archival service for political activists, journalists, academics and former intelligence operatives whose writing on government crimes had been suppressed by the mainstream media. In 2015, most of this material is widely available on the Internet. Back in 1992, you had to order it through the PWR catalog.A week after I contacted them, they sent me an astonishing catalog of economically priced books, articles, tapes and monographs that had suppressed by the mainstream media (including, but not limited to, Philip Agee, Peter Dale Scott, Mae Brussell, Ralph Schoenman, Larry Flynt, John Judge, Seymour Hersh, John Stockwell and Abbie Hoffman).Given my strong interest in the JFK assassination, my first order consisted of Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal by William Torbitt, a collection of interviews with the late JFK assassination researcher John Judge*** and a collection of Mae Brussell’s articles.

Just an Ordinary Housewife (and Mother of Five)

Brussell had doubts about the official version of the JFK assassination from the moment she watched Jack Ruby assassinate Lee Harvey Oswald on live nation televisions. When Brussell’s daughter first saw Oswald in the hallway of the Dallas jail, it was obvious he’d been beaten and she felt sorry for him. She was wrapping up her teddy bear to send him when they saw Ruby shoot him.

Because it also bothered Brussell that the newspaper and TV coverage regarding Oswald’s background was full of discrepancies and contradictions. In 1964 she paid $86 to purchase the 26 volume Warren Commission report of the Kennedy assassination, which contained even more discrepancies and contradictions. As she stated in a 1974 interview with Playgirl Magazine, “Twenty-three adjectives were used to describe him in the Warren Report. They said he had no friends, no meaningful relationships, couldn’t hold a job, and so on. But the evidence all pointed in the opposite direction.”

So she began a seven-year project to cross index all the key witnesses and findings, filling dozens of notebooks with 28,000 pages of files on each witness and their specific link to Oswald. What she ultimately discovered was that the international terror network had gone underground and were continuing their fascist campaign to take over one country after another, including the US.

Thirty-Nine File Cabinets

Her determination to dig deeper into the JFK and other assassinations led her to read 15 newspapers every day and subscribe to more than 150 periodicals. The clippings she cut and saved would eventually fill 39 file cabinets.

As a result of her careful research, Brussell would conclude that the Kennedy assassinations, Martin Luther King’s assassination, the Manson family murders, Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick affair and the Patty Hearst kidnapping were all orchestrated by the far right, the CIA, the FBI and the Mafia with the dual purpose of discrediting the left and establishing a fascist state.

World Watchers International

Starting in 1971, Brussell hosted a weekly radio program called World Watchers International. She broadcast on KLRB in Carmel from 1971 from 1971 to 1983 and on public radio station KAZU in Pacific Grove from 1983-1988. Her program was syndicated to a half dozen stations around the country (including Sacramento, Boston, Syracuse and San Francisco), and hundreds of followers subscribed to her tapes and bibliographies. She also lectured extensively and had articles published in the Realist, People’s Almanac, Berkeley Barb, Penthouse and Hustler.

Other Assassinations

In addition to researching the US intelligence link to the Kennedy assassinations, the Martin Luther King Assassination and the attempted assassinations on Ronald Reagan, George Wallace and Pope John Paul II, assassination researcher Mae Brussell investigated the assassination of John Lennon and the suspicious deaths of dozens of other rock stars.

She was the first to uncover the role of former Nazi war criminals in the JFK assassination, as well as the US intelligence link to the Watergate break-in in June 1972. Brussell always believed Watergate was a coup to remove Nixon from power, a hypothesis corroborated more than thirty years later by Russ Baker in his 2009 book about the Bush family, Family of Secrets. In investigating the assassination attempt on Reagan, Brussell was the first to uncover that the father of the alleged assassin, John Hinkley Sr was an oil tycoon and close family friend and supporter of vice president George H. W. Bush.

Brussell’s friend (and former Chicago 7  defendant****) Paul Krassner published her the article she wrote about Watergate in August 1972, Why Was Martha Mitchell Kidnapped? John Lennon, who had undergone years of FBI surveillance and harassment, paid the $5,000 printing bill.

Brussell first published her article The Nazi Connection to the JFK Assassination in Larry Flint’s short lived publication The Rebel in 1984.

The following is an early interview with Mae from 7/21/71. In it she discusses the longstanding power struggle between the Eastern banking/oil elite and the Western military/space elite and the role of the John Kennedy in this power struggle. She also discusses Oswald’s role as an intelligence operative.

*The Christic Institute was a public interest law firm founded by Daniel Sheehan in 1980. Christic represented victims of the nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island; they prosecuted KKK members for killing civil rights demonstrators in the Greensboro Massacre, and they defended Catholic workers providing sanctuary to Salvadoran refugees (American Sanctuary Movement). Most famously, the Christic Institute uncovered the Iran Contra Affair, and led the lawsuit at the heart of the scandal.Along with the suit, the Institute launched a massive public education campaign to raise public consciousness about the Iran Contra affair. Their work eventually led to the appointment of Iran Contra special Prosecutor Lawrence Welsh. His investigation led to the convictions of both former National Security Adviser John Poindexter and National Security Council member Oliver North, although both convictions were subsequently reversed.

**The Iran–Contra affair, also referred to as Irangate, was a political scandal in which senior Reagan administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of weapons to Iran, which was illegal under a US embargo. The allowed the CIA to fund efforts by the Nicaraguan Contras to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress.

***In addition to his work as an independent assassinations researcher, John Judge (1947-2014) was also co-founder of 9-11 Citizen Watch, Special Projects Assistant to former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and cofounder of the Coalition on Political Assassination. COPA was founded in 1994 following the release of thousands of classified JFK documents by Clinton’s Assassination Review Board, and Special Projects Assistant former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

****The Chicago Seven were seven defendants charged with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to street protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

photo credit: http://www.maebrussell.com

Also published in Veterans Today

To be continued, with a discussion of Brussell’s research into John Lennon’s assassination

Startling Revelations: IS Operative Confesses To Getting Funds Via US

stuartbramhall:

 

 

Following his recent arrest, the alleged Pakistan commander of Islamic State confessed that he’s been receiving funds via the US to run the organization in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria.

Originally posted on Counter Information:

By Naveed Miraj

January 28, 2015 “ICH” – “Express Tribune” – ISLAMABAD: Yousaf al Salafi – allegedly the Pakistan commander of Islamic State (IS) or Daish – has confessed during investigations that he has been receiving funds through the United States.

Law enforcing agencies on January 22 claimed that they arrested al Salafi, along with his two companions, during a joint raid in Lahore. However, sources revealed that al Salafi was actually arrested sometimes in December last year and it was only disclosed on January 22.

“During the investigations, Yousaf al Salafi revealed that he was getting funding – routed through America – to run the organisation in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria,” a source privy to the investigations revealed to Daily Express on the condition of anonymity.

Al Salafi is a Pakistani-Syrian, who entered Pakistan through Turkey five months ago. Earlier, it…

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25,000 angry users: Facebook privacy class action lawsuit to be heard by European court

stuartbramhall:

 

 

Hurray! The court approved our suit. I happen to be one of the 25,000 angry users. The substance of the suit is that Facebook has been engaging in illegal data gathering and information sharing with the US government (eg by participating in the PRISM program) and corporate interests. They have also violated EU privacy laws.

As you can see from the update which I posted in the comment section, Facebook has taken every opportunity to delay things.

For some reason, the class action suit is only open to non-US residents.

Originally posted on Satu Insan - Malaysia:

RT

Max Schrems

.

An Austrian court has approved a class action of some 25,000 people around the world against Facebook. The social network is accused of breaching its users’ privacy. A preliminary hearing into the complaint has been set for April.

“The hearing on April 9 will consider the admissibility of the lawsuit,” Beatrix Engelmann of the Vienna regional court for criminal matters, told AFP.

The lawsuit was first filed last August by Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer and founder of the group Europe versus Facebook. Schrems had already challenged the Irish Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) in 2013 by demanding an inquiry into the activities of US companies, including Facebook, to assess their involvement in the NSA spy scandal. The action resulted in a privacy audit by the data protection commissioner.

READ MORE: Facebook given deadline in ‘largest privacy class action in Europe’

Reuters /…

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Hundreds of Drone Operators Quit Air Force

“We didn’t even really know who we were firing at.”

The traumatic nature of their work is leading drone operators to quit the Air Force by the hundreds.

In the following video, former senior drone operator Brandon Bryant expresses deep regret for the six years he spent with the US drone program between 2005 and 2011. It especially bothered him that he was expected to fire on targets without being clear of their identities: “We didn’t even really know who we were firing at.”

Last November the human rights group Reprieve published a study indicating attempts to kill 41 alleged terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen resulted in more than 1100 civilian deaths.

photo credit: KAZVorpal via photopin cc

 

Also published in Veterans Today

 

Jay Leno Defends Women Alleging Sexual Assault Against Bill Cosby

 

From the Guardian:

 

Former host of NBC’s The Tonight Show Jay Leno voices support for the women have come forward claiming they were sexually assaulted by comedian Bill Cosby. ‘I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe women,’ Leno tells the audience at the annual convention of the National Association of Television Program Executives. ‘I mean, you go to Saudi Arabia and you need two women to testify against a man, here you need 25′

See video clip here: Guardian

Mobilize: Cell Phones Causing Brain Tumors?

stuartbramhall:

 

 

You’ve been warned. Keep frying your brains at your own risk. Info about upcoming screenings at http://www.saferemr.com/

Originally posted on Political Film Blog:

more

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Why We ALL Resist the Truth About Climate Change

Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change

By Clive Hamilton

Allen and Unwin (2010)

Book Review

Most of Requiem for a Species is a detailed analysis of the sociological and psychological factors that lead all of us (including climate activists) to deny the grim reality of the massive climate disruption that faces us. Australian author Clive Hamilton begins by confronting readers with the most likely climate scenario over coming decades. I have always had difficulty getting my head around climate science and found these the most valuable chapters.

Predicting the Behavior of Politicians

For the last two decades politicians have been giving lip service to limiting global warming to a “safe” increase of 2 degrees centigrade. According to Hamilton, most climate scientists recognized this was no longer possible when the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference failed to agree on a treaty to replace the Kyoto Accord. Most climate models agree that the only way to limit global warming to 2 degrees Centigrade would require for global emissions to peak in 2015 (this year) and decrease by 20-40% by 2020. This translates into a 6-7% per year reduction in rich countries – it assumes that developing countries (including China, India and Brazil) will continue business as usual until 2030, before reducing their emission by 3% a year. Hamilton believes there’s no way developing countries will agree to sacrifice economic growth (and bringing their populations out of poverty) before then.

Already in 2010, Hamilton was predicting that rich countries wouldn’t start cutting their emissions by 6-7% annually in 2015. He reckons 3% per annum is the highest emissions reduction compatible with continued economic growth. Cuts above 5% would likely translate into unspeakable human misery, witness the immense human cost in Russia when the Soviet economy collapsed in 1989 (which caused a 5.6% reduction in carbon emissions).

He feels politicians are very unlikely to agree to start cutting in emissions in 2020, either. At present most OECD countries have committed to reducing carbon emissions by 60-80% by 2050. Such a distant target is worse than useless. If politicians fail to act before 2030-2040, most of the earth’s ice cover will have melted and will remain that way for thousands of years. If politicians continue business as usual (and do nothing), global temperatures will increase by 3.1 degrees C by 2100 and 5-6 degrees C by 2200.

Hamilton believes the best we can hope for is this both rich and developing countries will begin cutting emissions by 3% per year in 2030.* In the absolute best case scenario, this translates into an increased average global temperature of 2.6 degrees C by 2100 and 3.5 degrees C by 2200.

What 4 Degrees Warming Looks Like

Because Hamilton considers a 4 degree C increase a likely scenario, he provides a detailed description of what that looks like. With 4 degrees C of average global warming, there will be no Arctic sea ice in summer, and Greenland, the west continental shelf of Antarctica and the Himalayan glaciers will melt. If all the earth’s ice cover melts sea levels will rise by 70 meters.

More than a billion of Earth’s inhabitants will have no access to water, especially in the India, Pakistan and China which rely on the Himalayan glaciers for drinking water. Fifteen percent of current arable land will be unsuitable for cultivation due to drought (in India, Pakistan, China, Australia, southern Europe, the central and southern US, North Africa and the Amazon). In northern climates like Canada and Siberia, there will be a 20% increase in arable land.

It’s impossible for climate scientists to predict exactly how many people will die from starvation, dehydration and extreme weather events. Some predict a reduction in the global population to one billion or less. All we know for sure is the die-off will be most severe in poor developing countries.

The Climate Denial Industry.

There’s also an excellent chapter on the climate denial movement, which profiles climate scientists (most were also strong advocates of Reagan’s Strategic Defense initiative and nuclear power) who colluded with fossil fuel industry, right wing think tanks and the public relations firm APCO (which master minded the campaign to deny the health risks of tobacco) to create an extremely slick climate denial campaign. I found it especially intriguing to learn of the role of the Revolutionary Communist Party (who produced the 2007 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle) and other far left groups in the climate denial movement.

There’s also an excellent chapter on the gungho technofixers who believe catastrophic climate change can be prevented through pie-in-the-sky technofixes, such as carbon capture, geoengineering and wide scale adoption of nuclear power. Hamilton explores each of these technologies in considerable detail. Each of them costs far more than improving energy efficiency and switching to renewable energy. All of these approaches would take at least ten to twenty years to implement. And as Hamilton points out, waiting another 20 years to begin cutting emissions will have catastrophic consequences.

Hamilton also makes the prediction that the global recession might temporarily reduce emissions before the economy rebounds again. He was correct:

• In 2009, global emissions fell by 1.2% after increasing by an average of 2.5% a year between 1990 and 2009.

• In 2010 global emissions increased by 5.9%

• In 2011 global emissions increased by 3.2%

• In 2012 global emissions increased by 1.4%

• In 2013 global emissions increased by 2.1%

*Hamilton was overly pessimistic here. In November, Obama and Xi Jinping made a bilateral agreement in which Obama committed the US to cutting its carbon emissions by 26-28% from 2005 levels by 2025. China committed to start cutting emissions in 2030 and make “best efforts” to peak emissions before 2030.

**The Revolutionary Communist Party was always regarded skeptically (as heavily infiltrated) by other progressive groups when I lived in Seattle. For a grassroots leftist group, they seemed to have virtually unlimited funds and repeatedly tried to instigate violence during peaceful protests. An RCP member was linked to the suspicious death of a one of my African American patients who exposed the DEA’s role in laundering cocaine profits in the professional race car circuit.

Long-term use of birth control pills linked to higher risk of brain tumors, study finds

stuartbramhall:

 

 

Women who use birth control pills have higher risk of glioma.

Originally posted on thekirkshow:

Taking certain forms of birth control for over five years more than doubles the risk of developing a rare brain tumor, a study led by a Danish neurologist has found.

The study, due to be published Thursday in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, says that women who take hormonal contraceptives showed higher rates of glioma, a tumor that affects around five people in every 100,000.

The study examined the contraception methods over 317 women with glioma aged 15 years to 49 years and compared them to a control group. The researchers found that those who used contraceptives containing only progestin for more than five years had a risk that was 2.4 times higher than the control group. Those who used other types of birth control saw their risk for glioma raised, but not quite as high.

Overall, women who had used hormonal contraceptives at any point for any length…

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