Hosted by Dr.G., Minister of Information of the Northbay MDS.
Tune in Thursdays 4 to 5pm (PST), at 89.5FM in the northeast San Pablo Bay Area, or on a Smart Phone [link], Desktop U-stream [link], Live Mp3 (.pls) stream [link], Netbook [link].
Be a Community Journalist with our Community Journalist's Notebook [link]. Send news & info to [NorthbayMDS@) gmail.com]! Northbay Uprising News scripts [link]. Archived webpages at (archive.org) and at (archive.is) are available even if the original is taken down. News links are provided for educational purposes only, and do not constitute an endorsement of political tendencies, or, of foreign governments. Circumvent "Error 451" [archive.is/WOZXx] by using the proxy server at [webproxy.to] or, by using Tor Browser [torproject.org/download/download-easy.html.en].
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Interview with
Abayomi Azikiwe, of Moratorium NOW!
A recent Freedom Friday demonstration, the Moratorium NOW! targeted the monopolist banks who played a big part in the water cut-offs and austerity policies that are killing the people of Detroit! They write [archive.is/kxYuD]: "The major banks, JP Morgan Chase, Citi, UBS and Bank of America were paid $537 million on termination fees for interest rate swaps a/k/a swindles out of the $1.1 billion in DWSD bonds that were issued in 2011 and 2012 for alleged infrastructure repairs. That is more than the entire one year budget of the Detroit water department. At the same time, the poorest Detroiters will continue to be targeted for inhuman and illegal shut-offs in Mayor Duggan’s “plan”. We will demonstrate to say: Make the banks pay bank the DWSD back for the money they pocketed based on their fraudulent activity in Detroit and nationwide. The banks should begin by covering the cost of the $43 million in residential arrearages. The DWSD must restore all those who have been shut off and implement a real water affordablity plan based on ability to pay (not more than 2% of income)."
As they plainly state in their indictment titled "From Ferguson to Detroit: Fight Racist Repression and the Economic Crisis" [archive.is/UjbWz]: In the city of Detroit and throughout Michigan we have been subjected to the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history; large-scale theft of retiree health and pension benefits; the expropriation of public assets including schools, parks, lighting and water systems; and the imposition of corporate agents who occupy the reigns of power in government in order to facilitate the exploitation and looting of the majority working class and African American populations. [...] Youth and workers are blockading streets and highways; shutting down shopping malls where corporations paying slave wages to their employees are reaping billions in profits every year.
The recent revelations about the intentional poisoning of working-class cities has emboldened a community networks to organize against manifestations of the new Jim Crow regime!
Abayomi Azikiwe is a Researcher, organizer, historian, and editor of the Pan-African Newswire [panafricannews.blogspot.com] [twitter.com/panafnewswire]
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ACTION CALENDER
A list of gatherings, workshops, and educational events in the greater Bay Area region
[indybay.org/calendar] [occupyoakland.org/calendar]* SHUT DOWN! Panel of Mothers
- [facebook.com/Oakland-Police-Department-Corruption-Reporting-Page-4986414536366171]
- [facebook.com/Stockton.Police-Department-Corruption-Reporting-Page-2537056281427421]
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ACTION HEADLINES!
Stories are reviewed and provided by Northbay MDS Committees and Affiliates
BAY AREA SOLIDARITY
Updates on campaigns for Peace, Justice, & Freedom across the greater Bay Area, Norcal, and Socal
Justice 4 AMILCAR PEREZ-LOPEZ -
SF Mission District community protest and march to Mission Police Statioin [youtube.com/watch?v=vRghNggMY5k]
Justice for Hernan Jaramillo -
* (2016-04-04) [archive.is/iGbHK]: Hernan Jaramillo, a 51-year-old immigrant from Colombia, was dragged out of his bedroom and murdered in front of his sister by OPD on July 8, 2013. The video footage of his murder was withheld from the family for over 2 years. It was obtained by an investigative journalist Dan Lawton, and published in January 2016.
As a result, the family has decided not to accept a settlement, and will be pursuing a trial.
* "ACLU of Northern California Statement on Hernan Jaramillo’s Death in Oakland Police Custody" (2016-01-29, aclunc.org) [archive.is/OgK6U]
* "Oakland: Body camera shows man screamed "I can't breathe" before death" (2016-01-26, insidebayarea.com) [archive.is/rLpJD]
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* "Postal Police Announce Saturday Morning Raid on Berkeley Homeless Protest" (2016-04-01, by Mike Zint, via Indybay.org) [archive.is/aMYGO]
* "17-month-old protest site at Berkeley Post Office to be evicted today" (2016-04-02, Mike Wilson):
Federal property has been occupied by protesters for 17 months at the Main Berkeley Post Office. The US Postal Police have made what appears to be a serious threat to raid that protest site this morning at 10:00AM and tear it down. We are asking for mutual aid to face down this raid.
Since November 2014, we have maintained a presence on the grounds of the post office at 2000 Allston Way in Berkeley to protest the privatization of the postal service and of publicly held entities, in general. We have done this because we strongly believe that when commonly held goods are sold to corporations, those who need those goods and services most – those who are unable to buy shares in the corporations and, by doing so, have a say in their management – experience new hardships from increased fees and restricted access.
In addition to raising awareness of the dangers of privatization, we have used our site at the Main Berkeley Post Office to provide resources to Berkeley’s homeless population. We have distributed food and clothing; and we’ve offered referrals to community organizations that provide shelter, showers and laundry, help with accessing entitlements, and legal assistance. Our protest site has become a hub where people can connect with others working against corporate domination.
In our time here, we’ve done our best to maintain a shared agreement rejecting the use of alcohol and harmful drugs on the site.
During this past winter, the officers of the Berkeley Police Dept. have directed many people living on the streets to the post office, saying that since it’s Federal property, they have no jurisdiction there. In other words, they’ve told people they can camp at the post office and avoid harassment by local police. The US Postal Police, being few in numbers – and for other reasons that can only be inferred – have allowed this accumulation of urban campers. While this may seem to be a display of compassion by police officers who are ordered to contain homelessness, it has resulted in the disruptive presence of people who are addicted to and distributing methamphetamines. And, for those unfamiliar with the location of the Main Berkeley Post Office, our protest site is situated fifty feet away from Berkeley High School. We feel this harmful drug distribution center, sanctioned by the Berkeley Police and the City Manager, to be an ill-conceived concentration of homelessness.
We intend to defend our protest site against eviction by law enforcement authorities. We reject any all-or-none-at-all arguments for its removal. The mission of our protest serves free speech, making information and resources available to the public not easily found elsewhere. And we believe our mission complements that of the public postal service.
Please come to the Main Berkeley Post Office at 2000 Allston Way in Berkeley and help us defend free expression and the rights of homeless people.
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BAY AREA SOLIDARITY: Updates on campaigns across the Nation!
* (2016-04-02, Rodrigo Starz) [archive.is/76x4z]: Haaaaaa!! We just rolled up on this bitch ass mayor #RahmEmanuel after the flight, this time prepared with cameras and mics, and he was so scared, he had no security with him, he was with his wife and daughter, and We rolled and asked him " how does it feel to have the blood Of Laquan McDonald on your hands?" He responded- "not right now Im with My Family!"... His wife tried to grab G1s camera and i kept asking him about the cover up and how "Laquan McDonald also had a Family and They no longer had him around Cuz he was Dead."
At this point #rahmemanuel and Family Start makin a Run For the door! With Us trailing behind still askin questions. They literally ran!! Then They had a security dude waitin on them, so we fell Back. Not sure if i asked the right questions, but i know We succeeded in lettin him know that the people will not forget that he covers up murders and closes Down schools. I got mad adrenaline runnin thru my body right now and it took a lot to not hit him with the mic, but We held Back and did our Job Of reportin For the people ... Video coming soon!! Its crazy how life Works. We missed our Job yesterday Of covering the Chicago Teachers Unión, but the stars and planets lined up and put Us on the Murder Mayors flight! w/ Gonzalo Rebel Diaz---
* "Prosecutors behind Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice police shooting investigations voted out of office during Tuesday primaries" (2016-03-16, nydailynews.com) [archive.is/DlXYf] [begin excerpt]: The prosecutors behind two high-profile police shooting death investigations — Laquan McDonald in Illinois and Tamir Rice in Ohio — failed to retain their seats in landslide Democratic primaries Tuesday.
Challenger Kim Foxx toppled State's Attorney Anita Alvarez’s hold on Chicago a year after McDonald’s death. The incumbent accumulated months of scrutiny for repeatedly mishandling police brutality investigations and failing to indict Officer Jason Van Dyke until a damning dashcam video inspired a murder charge. [end excerpt]
* "#ByeAnita: State's Attorney Ouster is Victory for Chicago Grassroots; 'We did this for Rekia. We did this for Laquan' " (2016-03-16, commondreams.org) [archive.is/MH9Bo]
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* Photos (2016-04-04) [archive.is/DVdSx]: The "Philly Coalition for REAL Justice" protests Hillary Clinton in lobby of hotel hosting her campaign speech. Activists threatened with arrest.
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* (2016-04-01, words and photos by Joe Piette): CIA Director John Brennan's speech was disrupted three times by banner-carrying activists. Spaced ten minutes apart, the activists chanted "Drones kill kids", "US Out of the Middle East" and other anti-imperialists slogans. Not knowing how many disruptions were yet to come, Brennan decided to end the event and walked off the stage at Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania campus.
Photos: [archive.is/rxl8u] [archive.is/eIGVO] [archive.is/P71w9] [archive.is/2WGJP] [archive.is/sz09b] [archive.is/uFlaz] [archive.is/Tf0ze] [archive.is/54FLU] [archive.is/Ht0nf] [archive.is/XqEB0] [archive.is/iTkYA] [archive.is/YtjCH] [archive.is/LEEp1]
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SOLANO PEACE & FREEDOM PARTY
Use the ballot for our own People's candidates and legislation, campaign for the future!
[SolanoPFP.blogspot.com] [facebook.com/Peace-and-Freedom-Party-45065449911]
When: Sunday, April 17 from 5:00pm to 7:30pm
Where: East Side Arts Alliance, 2277 International Blvd, Oakland. View map at [http://is.gd/8aIphz]
Sponsor: Alameda County Peace and Freeom Party and Movement [peaceandfreedom.org/home/pfp-net/counties-and-chapters/alameda-county]
Contact: Facebook event page [facebook.com/events/1025663430842025]
Cost: free (donations accepted)
The Peace and Freedom Party, born from the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, is committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism, racial equality, and internationalism.
Hear the candidates for the Peace and Freedom Party nomination for President
The candidates are -
* Monica Moorehead (Workers World Party) [facebook.com/mooreheadlilly2016]
* Gloria La Riva (Party for Socialism and Liberation) [votepsl.org]
* Lynn Kahn (independent) [vote4lynn2016.com]
Also appearing:
* The Peace and Freedom Party candidate for U.S. Senate John Parker (Workers World Party) [facebook.com/parkerforsenate]
* "Activists Protest Exclusion from the Ballot" (2016-03-28, peaceandfreedom.org) [archive.is/DwrrG]:
Fifteen people, mostly members of the Peace and Freedom Party of California, along with others concerned about ballot access and democracy, protested in front of the Ca. Secretary of State’s office in Sacramento on Thursday, March 24 at 11:00 a.m. The Secretary of State is not listing Jill Stein, one of four names submitted by the party for the June 7, 2016 Presidential primary ballot, and has not publicly stated any reason for this omission.
On Jan. 18, 2016, Debra Reiger, the State Chairperson of the Peace and Freedom Party of California, submitted the names of four women who have declared that they are seeking the party’s nomination for President: Lynn Kahn, Gloria LaRiva, Monica Moorehead, and Jill Stein. So far, only the first three will be listed as PFP candidates on the June primary ballot. The Secretary of State can correct this before the list is finalized on April 1.
Speakers included Debra Reiger, Laura Wells for the Green Party, and Estevan Hernandez for the Gloria La Riva campaign. Marsha Feinland, vice-chair of the Peace and Freedom Party, was the emcee. The press release is included here [archive.is/VfGDt].
Christopher Martinez covered this event for the KPFA (Pacific Radio) Evening News.
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TOWARDS REVOLUTIONARY SOLUTIONS
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The regime dictated by the "market" presents itself as "freedom"...
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CHICANO POWER! LUCHA PARA LA NUEVA AZTLAN!
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SOLIDARITY WITH THE NEW AFRICAN NATION!Black Power! Revive the Community! Defend the Nation!
* "March 27th, 2016 Free food giveaway sponsored by Black Riders L.A chapter" (2016-03-31) [archive.is/bhTBU]:"HERE'S WHAT WE DO TO UPLIFT THE BLACK COMMUNITY...We patrol the racist police with our Watch-A-Pig program, armed with video cameras and other legal weapons. We also develop survival programs because Black People are facing extermination and genocide. Some of these programs are the George Jackson Freedom School for Black Children, our Educate to Liberate Classes for Black Adults, Free Food programs for the homeless, and many, many more. Overall we push Revolution to get free from the oppressive conditions in the hood that comes from white supremacy and capitalism. Also we develop gang truces between many hoods like the Bloods and Crips in L.A to stop Black on Black violence. We push hard for Black unity! BLACK POWER! ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!"
Photos: [archive.is/HU71L] [archive.is/v87PM] [archive.is/IXM2s] [archive.is/VMse8] [archive.is/lpMEu] [archive.is/yerRa] [archive.is/K263Q] [archive.is/msrFb]
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* "New Black Panthers in armed showdown with anti-Muslim militia in Texas" (2016-04-04, rt.com) [archive.is/7V9qK] [begin excerpt]:
A gun-toting anti-Muslim hate group protesting at a mosque in Texas were weren't expecting to be confronted by armed members of the New Black Panther party and the Huey P Newton Gun Club.The Bureau of American Islamic Relations (BAIR) enjoys showing up at Muslim prayer centers armed with firearms in an effort to intimidate people trying to worship.
They also dress in army gear, perhaps inspired by the Bundy Gang.
The hate group expected an average day of bigotry and aggression at the Nation of Islam mosque on Martin Luther King Boulevard in South Dallas, only to find themselves outnumbered by the armed self-defense group waiting for them.
Members of the community, along with the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Huey P Newton Gun Club, were there to protect the Muslims from the BAIR demonstrators.
Both groups made the most of open carry laws in Texas that allow residents to carry AK-47s and rifles on the streets.
There was a heavy police presence at the scene.
“They have no reason to bring themselves here to South Dallas. David Wright and his band of idiots, they’re out of their minds thinking they can bring their right-wing ideology into South Dallas,” Yafeuh Balogun, a member of the gun club named after the original Black Panther Party leader, explained in his military fatigues.
“We cannot stand by while all these different anti-American, Arab radical Islamists team up with Nation of Islam/Black Panthers and White anti-American anarchist groups, joining together in the goal of destroying our country and killing innocent people to gain dominance through fear! We will be going in full gear for self defense only. This is a full gear situation,” BAIR said on its Facebook page [archive.is/w108J]. [end excerpt]
* "B.A.I.R. Texas Defense force, Rally for Peace" [archive.is/w108J]:
Saturday, April 2 at 1:00 PM in CDT
Muhammed Mosque Number 48
2429 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Dallas, Texas 75215
We have decided to Protest the Nation of Islam for promoting violence against Americans openly and publicly. This is NOT about color of skin, not a white vs black thing, (not for us anyway). This is about RADICAL ISLAM. They have threatened to continue killing Cops, Random White People and their children to further their agenda of hate and dominance through violence. They have teamed up with C.A.I.R. and that is unacceptable as well. We cannot stand by while all these different Anti American, Arab radical Islamists team up with Nation of Islam/Black Panthers and White anti American Anarchist groups, joining together in the goal of destroying our Country and killing innocent people to gain Dominance through fear! We will be going in full gear for self defense only. This is a full gear situation, We have a comprehensive security plan for this event, all the bases are covered, you will be briefed by B.A.I.R. Team leaders and DPD as to how the security and self defense procedures will be handled. There are back up forces, staged strategically around the entire area. Your safety is paramount to B.A.I.R so we have taken extreme precautions. Again I repeat this is a FULL GEAR situation, not required but recommended. We will have the means in place to protect those who do not have weaponry and gear so come one come all its time to stand now, stand for what you believe in and don't let evil win.
Photos taken at Muhammed Mosque Number 48 [facebook.com/search/158194040881608/photos-in]:
part 1 [archive.is/tVr1T], 2 [archive.is/tCIXx], 3 [archive.is/Tf3mT], 4 [archive.is/54Izz], 5 [archive.is/vH2YV], 6 [archive.is/67nAg]
The most frightening photo in the set included with the BAIR event page has got to be the following examples, which display "militancy" among both women [archive.is/lkCgk], and the men, shown in the following photo of a self-defense course against the type of terrorism organized by the BAIR!
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STUDENT POWER!
information collected by the Committee to Defend Public Education!
[firekatehiblog.wordpress.com]
* "Everything happening at the #FireKatehi walkout; 'No justice, no peace, Fire Katehi' ; #FireKatehi protestors took over the MU this morning as part of a walk out to demand the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi" (2016-04-01, thetab.com) [archive.is/5YGgU]
* "UC Davis students march to pressure Katehi to step down; At least 250 students participated in the march on campus Friday; Some have been occupying reception area outside her office for three weeks; Students cite Katehi’s acceptance of board seats on private corporations" (2016-04-01, sacbee.com) [archive.is/buIoJ]
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WORKER'S POWER!
information collected by the Worker's Defense Committee [http://is.gd/VOkmLr]
Meme describing how anti-worker Hllary Clinton used her position to consolidate the economic dictatorship over the Republic of Haiti.
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* "Farm workers march to honor Chavez birthday, stop Trump and push for overtime pay" (2016-03-31, United Farm Workers, ufw.org) [archive.is/Co397]: Thousands of California farm workers will march on Sunday, April 3 in the Central, Coastal and Sonoma valleys to mark Cesar Chavez’s birthday, reject Donald Trump and other anti-immigrant presidential candidates, and support state legislation ending their exclusion from overtime pay after eight hours a day.
Organized by the United Farm Workers, farm workers and community supporters will take to the streets to deliver a resounding “No!” to Trump and remind consumers that #WeFeedYou during three separate marches in Salinas, Merced and Santa Rosa. The marches for social justice are held annually to honor the March 31 birthday of the UFW founder, now celebrated as an official holiday in California and other states. This year marchers will also denounce the anti-immigrant views of Trump’s and other Republican presidential candidates, and remind them and the public who produces the food on their dinner tables.
Farm workers, many undocumented, work long hours for meager wages to feed the nation and much of the world. Despite their hard work and sacrifice, they’re excluded from overtime pay after eight hours of work. During peak season, farm workers often labor 10 hours a day without overtime pay. AB 2757, by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, would gradually phase in standards for farm worker overtime, lowering the current 10-hour day level to the standard eight-hours. AB 2757 wold provide farm workers with the same pay other workers in the United States have received since the 1930s.
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Boycott Sakuma Berries (Families United for Justice) [boycottsakumaberries.com]
* "Boycott Driscoll’s West Coast Tour at Driscoll’s HQ in Watsonville; After a series of strikes in 2013 at Sakuma Brothers Farms in Washington state, farmworkers formed a union in response to denial of lunch and rest breaks, inhumane housing conditions, wage theft, below minimum wage pay, and harassment from supervisors" (2016-03-31, article and photos by Bradley Allen, Indybay.org newswire) [archive.is/CrHPQ]:
March 31 is the birthday of Cesar Chavez. This year on that date, March 31, 2016, Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), an independent farmworker union based in Burlington, Washington, led a demonstration at Driscoll’s headquarters in Watsonville, California to promote the ongoing international boycott of Driscoll’s berries. The workers were in Watsonville as part of a month long tour throughout Oregon and California to build a boycott on the scale of the grape boycott of the 1960s that can win union contracts for berry pickers in both Washington state and San Quintín, México.
Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) President Ramon Torres, rank and file union member Lazaro Matamoros, and Gloria Gracida spokesperson for the independent farmworker union in San Quintín, Mexico, demanded that Driscoll’s get their suppliers to negotiate union contracts with the respective independent unions and informed them that they will continue to organize a consumer boycott of the Driscoll’s label until this demand is met. They were joined by a group of boycott supporters from all over California, many of whom committed to organizing to support the boycott at earlier stops in the tour, including the Watsonville Brown Berets.
FUJ formed out of a series of strikes during the summer of 2013 at Sakuma Brothers Farms in response to denial of lunch and rest breaks, inhumane housing conditions, wage theft, below minimum wage pay, and harassment from supervisors. FUJ first called for a boycott of Sakuma in 2013 after signed agreements made in mediated negotiation sessions between the company and an elected committee of 11 workers were all broken by the company. In 2014 FUJ called for a boycott of Driscoll’s when Sakuma stopped using their own label and had workers picking directly into Driscoll’s flats.
The west coast tour marks a turning point from a localized fight in the state of Washington with little national media attention to an international effort of two independent farmworker unions taking on the corporate food regime and putting farmworker justice and transformation of the food system back into the minds and actions of U.S. consumers. In March of 2015, international grassroots interest in the boycott of Driscoll’s exploded when 80,000 farmworkers in San Quintín, México launched a general strike, formed an independent union, Sindicato Independiente Nacional Democrático de Jornaleros Agrícolas, known as La Alianza, and endorsed the consumer boycott of Driscoll’s. Since then the two independent unions have announced that neither will sign union contracts with their respective Driscoll’s suppliers unless the other union is signing a contract as well.
FUJ is an independent farmworker union in Burlington, Washinton with 489 members fighting for a union contract with Sakuma Brothers Farms to ensure living wages, fair treatment, respect, and dignity of farmworkers. The union’s members are indigenous people from southern México whose first languages are Mixteco and Triqui.
Photo captions:
Boycott Driscoll’s at Driscoll’s Headquarters in Watsonville
Women amplify the call for a global boycott of Driscoll’s berries at Driscoll’s headquarters in Watsonville, California.
Costco Drop Driscoll’s!
Respect the Families Who Pick Your Food
Stop the Slavery! $6 for 12 hours??
No More Blood Berries
La Alianza Spokesperson Gloria Gracida
Dr. Ann López, Center for Farmworker Families
* "March to Driscoll's to protest for the boycott of Driscoll's strawberries!" photo set (2016-04-01, via Indybay.org Newswire) [archive.is/SlIoS]
* "Boycott Driscoll’s Action in Watsonville" article (2016-01-04) [archive.is/P1t5d], photo caption: Gloria Gracida, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice based in San Quintín, Baja California, informs shoppers at Mi Pueblo Market in Watsonville why they should boycott Driscoll's.
* "Boycott Driscoll's Action at Whole Foods Market in Santa Cruz" article (2016-02-29), photo caption: A customer enters a Whole Foods Market in Santa Cruz holding a flyer that says, "Don't Buy Driscoll's: Respect The Families Who Grow Your Food."
* Message from San Quintín to the United States: Boycott Driscoll’s (2016-03-05, via Indybay.org Newswire) [archive.is/UPii1]: Farmworkers declare “we have suffered reprisals, mass dismissals, constant threats, increased workload for the same salary, and are obligated to join corporate unions that have never represented us, in exchange for keeping our jobs, among other labor abuses.”
Driscoll's, with headquarters at 345 Westridge Drive in Watsonville, California, is the world's largest berry distributor and the target of an international boycott.
Besides providing fresh berries to customers around the world, Driscoll’s is often recognized for it's philanthropy [archive.is/PUNIP] and community involvement [archive.is/3L7Wc]. However there is also a dark side to the colorful berry company.
Author and documentarian Tomás Madrigal [archive.is/zFqpI] explains that Driscoll's has a "notorious track record ... when it comes to fighting against farm worker campaigns for worker rights and dignity" [archive.is/Mt5Co].
Farmworkers in Washington State who grow, harvest, and pack Driscoll’s lucrative berries formed a union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice), and initiated a boycott in 2013 against berries grown at Sakuma Brothers Farms in Burlington, Washington. Sakuma Brothers has been a berry grower for Driscoll’s for 25 years, and according to Families United for Justice the two companies have been closely intertwined over those years.
The call to boycott Driscoll’s was internationalized after a farmworker rebellion in the San Quintín Valley of Baja California, Mexico reached a boiling point in March 2015. The farmworkers, organized as an independent farmworker union called the Alianza de Organizaciones por la Justicia Social (Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice), released a communique that contained their grievances and a list of fourteen demands [archive.is/bOe8c].
On April 8, 2015 the Alliance released a second communique [archive.is/c9Ddf] that announced their resolve join Families United for Justice’s ongoing boycott against their employer, Sakuma Brothers Farms, by launching a "boycott against Driscoll’s and against the companies that make a profit based on the exploitation of our labor power."
On February 3, 2016, agricultural workers in San Quintín sent a message to the people of the United States. In the letter, the workers state there are "three levels of the Government in complicity with businessmen" and outline some of the ongoing labor abuses they are forced to endure "in exchange for keeping our jobs."
Farmworkers declare they have been imprisoned, as well as injured, and that "we have suffered reprisals, mass dismissals, constant threats in the fields, increased workload for the same salary, and are obligated to join corporate unions that have never represented us, in exchange for keeping our jobs, among other labor abuses."
The workers announced that a MEGA-MARCH, starting on March 17 in San Quintín, will make it's way through the Baja California towns of Maneadero, Ensenada, and Rosarito before arriving in Tijuana on March 19 for a reunion with organizations, activists, and unionists that support the struggle of farmworkers and their call to Boycott Driscoll's.
In addition to the mobilization in Baja California, called March of the two Californias, Families United for Justice will be "embarking on an historic 28-day tour of the West Coast [archive.is/h4E1y] to energize a major offensive on the boycott of Driscoll’s berries." The tour, which has about 17 scheduled events, begins on March 18 in Portland, Oregon, will march in Sacramento on March 26, then stop in the Bay Area, followed by southern California, including a big action at the US / Mexico Border on April 9, and conclude in the Bay Area on April 13. Families United also announced "a major action at the Driscoll's headquarters in Watsonville" on March 31.
On March 17, 2016, the first anniversary of the strike in San Quintín, farmworkers are asking their supporters "to join voices together ... in every corner of the USA to say: BOYCOTT DRISCOL's; to hold demonstrations in all Driscoll's warehouses and in supermarkets such as Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, Safeway, or any place where Driscoll's products are sold."
MESSAGE FROM SAN QUINTÍN TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMÉRICA
San Quintín, Baja California, February 3, 2016 (translation by Enrique Davalos)
Agricultural workers in the Valley of San Quintín, which rose in strike on March 17, 2015 to demand better working conditions invite you to support our struggle once more. We ask you to mobilize from different points of the state of California from March 17 to 20, 2016, to meet with thousands of workers conducting a MEGA-MARCH from San Quintín up to the border at Playas de Tijuana on March 20.
This MEGA-MARCH is to commemorate the first year of the start of the strike in San Quintín. To publicize that after a year from the historic work stoppage where thousands of workers left the camps and took to the streets demanding better working conditions, employers have not listened in good will to our demands and established measures to ensure our labor and human rights are respected in accordance with the law. On the contrary, we have been harshly repressed by the forces from the three levels of the Government in complicity with businessmen, we were imprisoned, injured, we have suffered reprisals, mass dismissals, constant threats in the fields, increased workload for the same salary, are obligated to join corporate unions that have never represented us, in exchange for keeping our jobs, among other labor abuses.
We ask your support for this day, March 17, to join our voices together with farmworkers of San Quintín, Mexico, in every corner of the USA to say: BOYCOTT DRISCOLL's; to hold demonstrations in all Driscoll's warehouses and in supermarkets such as Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, Safeway, or any place where these products are sold. BOYCOTT DRISCOLL's because it purchases most of the fruits which are harvested in this Valley (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries) and exploits just the same workers in the United States such as our sisters and brothers of "Familias Unidas" in Washington who have called to BOYCOTT DRISCOLL's since more than two years ago.
Support from trade unionists and activists of USA was important in a first major victory that resulted in the legal registration of our National Democratic Independent Union of Agricultural Workers (SINDJA), therefore we ask once more your support to demand corporations such as Driscoll's, and the companies that make up the Agricultural Council of Baja California as well as from each agricultural sector to sign a collective agreement with this unique union which legally represents workers of San Quintín, Mexico. United in the struggle we trust we can count on your support.
Alliance of National, State, and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice
National Democratic Independent Union of Agricultural Workers
For a better future and a new country!
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* "Teachers lead wave of strikes and job actions in Chicago" (2016-03-31, peoplesworld.org) [archive.is/kVKZR]
* "Chicago teachers strike against austerity duo 'Rahm & Rauner' " (2016-04-01, rt.com) [archive.is/qmJYW], photo caption: Teachers in Chicago’s public schools went on strike Friday in a “day of action” to protest funding cuts and poor management by austerity Mayor Rahm Emanuel and billionaire Governor Bruce Rauner.
* (2016-04-01, facebook.com/telesurenglish) [archive.is/kplB2]:
Go Chicago! Tens of thousands of teachers shut down Chicago as they went on strike, staged walkouts and held a massive protest in the centre of the city in defense of public schools and to demand more funding. The strike is the culmination of months of frustration for the teachers, who have been threatening to strike since at least November over the state of school funding and what they consider unfair labor practices.
Led by the militant Chicago Teachers Union, the striking teachers were joined by other unions, community groups as well as parents and students supporting the teachers on strike.
The Chicago Teachers Union strike, the mass walkouts, protests, and blockades are signs of one of the most energetic and hopeful mass movements inspiring working people all over the US right now.
History teacher Tom: "This is much bigger than us, than the teachers. This is for the community."
Special education teacher Sarah: "Striking is the most powerful weapon we have." #CTUStrike #FightForFunding #ShutDownCHI
Photos: [archive.is/rpfCx] [archive.is/EdUPd] [archive.is/fDfqy] [archive.is/Q2z1T] [archive.is/srUDe] [archive.is/gFUrf] [archive.is/tuzDV] [archive.is/GjeQB] [archive.is/S7T3h] [archive.is/5WzfX] [archive.is/Uay3Y] [archive.is/71Thl]
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* "Thousands join UMWA rally for jobs, benefits" (2016-04-02, heraldstandard.com) [archive.is/PJTt4] [begin excerpt]: Thousands of active and retired union coal miners joined United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts and other union leaders in Waynesburg in raising their voices to show solidarity in an effort to protect miners’ benefits and jobs.
The rally was held on Friday, which was Mitchell Day — a day named in honor of early UMWA President John Mitchell who secured eight-hour work days for miners.
After leading a procession of chanting UMWA members on a mile-and-a-half march from the Greene County Airport to the county fairgrounds, Roberts said mine operators such as Alpha Natural Resources, which owns the Cumberland and Emerald mines in Greene County, are trying to cut wages and retiree benefits in its bankruptcy proceedings.
Alpha is seeking to cut employee wages by $6.40 an hour and reduce their health care benefits and eliminate health care benefits for retired miners, Roberts said.
“They worked for their health care. They gave their lives for their health care, and nobody should be allowed to take it,” Roberts exclaimed to a roar from the crowd that filled the dirt-floored 4H Horse Barn.
He said 1,200 miners lost their health care benefits when Murray Energy bought Consol Energy’s mines in 2013.
Mine operators have been trying to take health care benefits and pensions from retired miners since 2012, he said.
“They’ll have to take it because we sure as hell ain’t going to give it to them,” Robert said.
The UMWA has spent $10 million fighting coal mine bankruptcies, he added.
“Bankruptcy is just a way for corporations to rob workers of everything they’ve earned,” Roberts said. [end excerpt]
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===*===*===
HANDS OFF OUR HOMES![HandsOffHomes.blogspot.com]
* "1,200 evictions filed in Oakland from January 2015 through March 2016" (2016-03-3, by Lynda Carson, Indybay.org Newswire) [archive.is/eTHrS]
* "April 5 Oakland City Council: Oakland Declaration of Housing State of Emergency" (2016-04-01, by Lynda Carson, Indybay.org Newswire) [archive.is/bPDHv]
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===*===*===
information collected by the Committee to
DEFEND THOSE WITHOUT HOMES!
* "Vallejo Together, partners, unveil city’s new homeless day center" (2016-04-05, timesheraldonline.com) [archive.is/hc5sg]
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COMMUNITY FASCISM WATCH
* "Public comments on Valero’s appeal" (2016-04-05, timesheraldonline.com) [archive.is/fyYiR], photo caption: Members of Benicians for Safe and Healthy Community unravel a scroll of signed petitions against Valero Benicia Refinery 's proposed crude-by-rail project during the group's public comment slot Monday night at the Benicia City Council Chambers.
[begin excerpt]: At a March hearing, an attorney working with Valero on the project said the company intends to send a request for an opinion from the Surface Transportation Board on the issue of federal preemption in relation to the project.At the end of the hearing, later in April, the council will also decide if it will wait to make a decision on the appeal after the Surface Transportation Board, or STB, returns with a declarative order.
The staff has recommended for the council not to wait because the agency’s decision can be appealed in court and waiting would risk for the EIR to become stale.
Those who support the project are urging the council to wait, while the other side ask for a decision to be made at the end of the hearing.
“Too much money and time have been spent on this process,” a speaker said. “Let’s not postpone it further.”
At stake is the ability for the refinery to bring in two 50-car trains a day carrying up to 70,000 barrels of North American crude oil. The company’s oil is now being transported into the city by marine vessels and pipeline.
Those who supported the project say Valero has been a good neighbor in Benicia and that the project is needed for the company to remain competitive.
The refinery said the $50 million project would result in about 120 temporary construction jobs and 20 full-time jobs, as well as generate tax revenues for the city.
However, those who are against the project said the risks outweigh the benefits.
In fact, the project EIR states that there are 11 “significant and unavoidable” impacts, though staff and Valero have said they cannot be mitigated because they are rail related and are preempted by federal laws.
The Planning Commission, however, disagreed, and denied the project. [end excerpt]
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Community Fascism in Vallejo, the "City of God":
* "Orcem poised to make Vallejo a manufacturing mecca, officials say" (2016-04-12, timesheraldonline.com) [archive.is/7Drqe] [begin excerpt]: The Dublin, Ireland-based "green" white cement manufacturing firm Orcem could become a huge economic driver for Vallejo, the region and the state, speakers at a Thursday breakfast meeting agreed.
Representatives of several regional political figures, Vallejo's economic development department, city government and others filled the Courtyard by Marriott banquet room for the event, presented by the Vallejo Chamber of Commerce and the Solano Economic Development Corporation and hosted by Orcem.
Rebuilding the country's manufacturing capacity is fundamental to its economic health, the speakers agreed. Orcem's proposed reuse of the old South Vallejo General Mills plant is exactly the type of project they mean, they said.
Speakers at "Manufacturing Matters," the name of Thursday's presentation, all noted a need to capitalize on the nation's economic recovery by reinventing America's nearly lost manufacturing sector.
Kish Rajan, Governor Jerry Brown's Office of Business and Economic Development director, said that while some areas of the state, like Silicon Valley, San Francisco and San Diego, are already booming with high-tech manufacturing, other areas, like the state's Inland Empire remain in a quagmire of low job development and high unemployment. [...]
The state need not sacrifice environmental health to achieve these ends, he said.
"We know these objectives can be harmonized; that the infrastructure for industry can be re-purposed for modern use," he said. "I'm very pleased to see Orcem here, and encourage it. This seems to be the type of project we're talking about."
Orcem America president Steve Bryan explained how the product his firm is already creating in Europe can help propel Vallejo to the forefront of a new statewide manufacturing boom, by producing an environmentally friendly cement using an eco-friendly process.
Orcem produces a white-colored, durable cement out of a by-product of Japanese steel-making. They propose to bring the raw material, which looks and behaves like wet sand, to Vallejo in ships that already carry grain to Japan, but now return empty.
The material will be ground into the final product inside a machine, inside a specially-built structure, and shipped by truck to distributors.
The production process replaces the current high-C02-emitting cement-making process with one with a nearly zero carbon footprint, he said.
The firm proposes to invest $50 million in Vallejo, creating 140,000 hours of union construction work, and some 60 permanent jobs, half of those indirectly.
It will mean some $360,000 in annual tax revenue for the city, about $410,000 for Solano County and about $13 million annually to the area's GDP, Bryan said.
Should the project go forward, building will take about 18 months and officials hope it will be operating by 2016's second quarter. [end excerpt]
* "Who is being deceptive?" (2016-04-04, by Jimmy Sarmiento, published by timesheraldonline.com) [archive.is/ZMxA0]: I full agree with letter writer Michael J. Haworth (March 31, “The Key to Orcem”), when he states that “In order to properly decide if any project is right for a community, both pros and cons must be honestly weighed. And by ‘honestly,’ I mean without hyperbole, exaggeration or outright fabrication.”
Is Mr. Haworth being truly honest by saying, “…yes, there will be trucks involved — 119 Orcem specific trucks at maximum production between the hours of 3 a.m. and 3 p.m.”?
I am calling this 119 figure an outright fabrication to bolster Mr. Haworth’s position. Yes, the Draft Environmental Impact Report, Appendix L, indeed shows “119 trucks coming in empty, and 119 trucks coming out loaded” for a total of 238 truck trips a day. However, this is for finished products only, during Mode 2/Milestone 4 of the Orcem project.
Why is Mr. Haworth conveniently omitting the trucks that carry raw materials in, and leave the plant empty? The numbers are on the same table on Appendix L. Who is being deceptive here?
The Draft Environmental Impact Report states that “The maximum daily and peak hour truck trips generated by the Orcem project component would occur in Mode 2/Milestone 5, and these are shown in Table 3.12-9.” The aforementioned Table shows 208 trucks in, and 208 trucks out, for a total of 416 truck-trips. These numbers reflect the raw material and finished product truck traffic at maximum production. Then why is Mr. Haworth touting 119 trucks only, which is from Mode 2/Milestone 4, which is not yet at “maximum production,” and he does not even count raw material trucks? Yes, he claims that 119 trucks are at maximum production. Who is being deceptive here?
This is a joint application with two components that are inextricably intertwined. The DEIR states, 87 trucks in and 87 trucks out for a total of 174 truck trips a day for the VMT component. These VMT numbers are not insignificant. These VMT truck numbers are from Table 3.12-8 of the DEIR. Combining both the VMT and Orcem components, the total “TruckTrip Generations” is stated at 590 a day. I am not making these numbers up. Look it up yourself — they are in the Draft Environmental Impact Report, page 581. Compare “590 truck trip generations” to “119 trucks a day.” Why is Mr. Michael J. Haworth stating only 119 trucks a day when their own DEIR states 590 daily truck trips? Who is being deceptive here? You be the judge.
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* "Mare Island Naval Shipyard closure, 20 years later" (2016-03-31, timesheraldonline.com) [archive.is/YppMG]
* "Mare Island Naval Shipyard Closure – Inevitable or Backroom Political Deal?" (2015-03-12, facebook.com/MareIslandMuseum) [archive.is/lsGmt] [begin excerpt]:
On March 12, 1993 the employees of Mare Island Naval Shipyard were dismayed to learn that the Navy and the Department of Defense (DoD) had recommended the closure of the shipyard. The Mare Island workforce had been in a constant state of downsizing since 1988 with nearly 40% of the workforce eliminated, so it was well understood that the end of the Cold War was driving budgets down and causing significant reductions. However, while rumors of closure had been circulating for years, workers had been reassured when Mare Island survived the most recent base closure round in 1991. The 1993 round of base closure had now turned those rumors into a grim reality as a result of the analysis published by the DoD. The closure of Mare Island was actually just a part of the Navy’s decision to completely abandon the San Francisco Bay area as Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, Moffet Naval Air Station, Skaggs Island, Alameda Naval Air Station, Naval Public Works Center Oakland, the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, Naval Station Treasure Island, Naval Fuel Depot Point Molate and Concord Naval Weapons Station would all be closed down. Those decisions were reputed to be the result of published analyses of capacity and military value that were also represented to have been independently conducted and to have been unrelated to one another. Later review of the analysis of the recommendation to close Mare Island Naval Shipyard would reveal multiple lines of evidence suggesting that the analysis was either bungled or intentionally and sloppily manipulated. [...]
Despite the fact that the Navy treated the Ocean Engineering program as having no military value in the 1993 round, in reality the program remained such a critical component of our nation's defense that it retained the highest priority (“Brickbat”) in the nation and the Navy would spend over $140 million in one-time costs alone to relocate the program. Just as the Ocean Engineering program played no role in the Navy decision making, nor did performance. In the year preceding the closure recommendation Mare Island returned $2.2M to the treasury while one naval shipyard that was excluded from consideration for closure lost $117M. Collectively the other public shipyards would lose well over quarter billion dollars in 1992. [...]
If performance and unique capabilities played no role in the decision-making process that resulted in the closure of Mare Island, what did? In a process whose primary purpose was saving money, why wasn't cost performance even considered? The Navy would steadfastly maintain the closure recommendations were the result of the detailed analysis presented in the DoD report published on this day in 1993, and that results of the numerical analysis presented in the report were only modified when subjected to the military judgment of a panel of top Navy and Marine Corps leaders. Despite the claims that the analysis was impartial and that it drove the decision, many irregularities and factual errors would cause Congressman Miller to advise the Defense Realignment and Base Closure Commission that “It is clear to me that the Navy's methodology and criteria are intended to support the Navy's recommendations for closure developed a priori to conducting the actual analysis of the data calls. We have seen the verdict and sentence first, trial and testimony to follow.”
Was the Congressman's assertion true? If the Mare Island closure decision was not the result of the published Navy analysis; who, how and why was the closure decision made? Was the decision the inevitable result of the end of the Cold War and declining budgets or was it the result of a willful act to manipulate the result as alleged by the congressman? Was the Navy’s complete abandonment of one of the largest natural harbors in California just an uncanny coincidence as the Navy would represent or was the decision to vacate the Bay Area the result of undisclosed criteria, perhaps, simply political payback for the Bay Area’s liberal politics as some would allege?
[comment by Wes Moore]: The case can be made that the whole of military presence in northern California was under attack from the liberal anti-Viet Nam war movement. The Navy took that attack to heart and moved everything out of the Bay Area. Once that decision was made, nothing could change it. And two of the California politicians who were most responsible still hold office in Washington.
- Photo caption [archive.is/9dHPp]: One of the many rally’s that would be held in support of Mare Island.
[comment by Mark Hutchings]: I think I attended most of them. I really thought we had a chance, until that "pre" meeting ahead of the BRAC inspection of Mare Island they had with us Union Presidents.
- Photo caption [archive.is/l2m15]: The Navy and Department of Defense’s report that recommended the closure of Mare Island. Three months after this report was made public, the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission would vote to accept the recommendation and close Mare Island. Interesting that DoD couldn't even create the cover page of the report without an editorial error. Things got worse as one read on.
- Photo caption [archive.is/YumD7]: April 26, 1993 a Mare Island team testified before the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission at hearings in Oakland advising them of numerous lines of evidence based on errors of fact and omission that demonstrated the Navy’s recommendations were deeply flawed. You can view the full 1 hour and 23 minute presentation here [youtube.com/watch?v=hV-JHev85oQ], with Senator Barbara Boxer, Congressman Mike Thompson, Mayor Tony Intintoli, Dan Hamburg, George Miller and Dennis Kelly.
- Image caption [archive.is/2sZW4]: Political Cartoon at the time that turned out to be prescient regarding the outcome of base closure process.
- Photo caption [archive.is/5AYY9]: Unswayed by Mare Island supporters’ presentation of errors of fact and omission in the Navy’s recommendations, the Commissioners voted unanimously to close Mare Island. You can view the discussion and vote to close Mare Island Naval Shipyard here (25 minutes) [http://youtu.be/mkOYOxq_Uw4].
- Photo caption [archive.is/VUiOy]: After first hearing the Base Closure Commission’s vote to close Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California’s senators react to the Commission’s vote to retain the only other Naval Shipyard in California, Long Beach Naval Shipyard. The celebration would be short lived. Within 4 years Long Beach Naval Shipyard would be closed and within 10 years her dry docks would be paved over (including the massive aircraft carrier dry dock that the chairman of the Navy’s base structure and evaluation committee, Charles Nemfakos, had stated just two years earlier in 1993 would “put fleet readiness at risk”). Photo with Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
- Photo caption [archive.is/mAieB]: Shipyard Commander Captain John Cavender addresses a somber workforce the day after the Base Closure Commission’s decision to close Mare Island. Captain Cavender now had the unenviable task of leading his work force to complete ongoing and highly complex submarine overhauls as the highly trained workforce was forced by the circumstance to seek other employment. To his credit he fought to keep those availabilities in the yard and they were completed as scheduled and budgeted. Because of his unwavering position employees were afforded ample time to seek other employment; and the Navy was rewarded with on-time completion of the availabilities. Hats off to Capt. Cavender, the last in the long line of naval leaders going back to Admiral Farragut who lead Mare Island workforces dedicated to serving our Navy.
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Documenting human-rights abuse by domestic security agencies
NORTHBAY COPWATCH
[NorthbayCopwatch.blogspot.com] [copblock.org] [wecopwatch.org] [filmingcops.com]
* "George Gascon is a Racist" whistle-blower page [http://is.gd/3qhCZi], archived at [archive.is/XGs0g], with roughly 1000 likes an hour for the following 13 hours, as shown in the additional likes documented at [archive.is/zHPSJ](retrieved 2016-04-05). Collected postings from the whistle-blower page's administrator:
George Gascon's, Head of Communications, Alex Bastian, contacted numerous San Francisco media outlets to silence publicizing the growing support of this media page and the inside leaks from his office. Why is the San Francisco District Attorney's Office putting public tax dollars at work to silence the media of the corruption and racism that is at the helm of his department? Maybe they know what will be leaked next and are scrambling for their cover ups?
We are going to hold the release our third major leak, just to see who in the San Francisco Press is actually bought by, pressured by, and intimidated by George Gascon or who is willing to challenge the obstruction of justice that he is trying to hide. If you are curious on what he is trying to prevent leaked or why he is utilizing his staff to try to silence the media call him directly at the number below and ask him what he's so afraid of hiding.
+1-415-553-1741
- Inside Leak! Corruption within George Gascon’s District Attorney’s Office Revealed! [archive.is/bbxc5]
- Inside Leak #2. O’Bryan Joseph Kenney is another crooked DA, from San Francisco District Attorney's Office, protected by George Gascón.
Update: O'Bryan Joseph Kenney, the ADA, that George Gascon covered his DUI for had a BAC limit of 0.13!! Full details here: [archive.is/Av8x5].
* "Racist texts by more San Francisco cops affect hundreds of cases" (2016-04-01, rt.com) [archive.is/pIEav]
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La Mesha Irizarry writes:
SFPD Killings since 2014, chronologically :
2014: two: Nieto, Alejandro (Chicano male). O’Shaine Evans (Black Jamaican male)
2015: seven : Matt Hoffman (White Jewish male), Amilcar Perez-Lopez (Guatemalan Male), Alice Angel Brown (white female), Filimoni Raiyawa (Fijian make ), Sandoval, Giovany Contreras (Latino male) Herbert Benitez (Salvadorean Male), Mario Woods (Black male)
2014-09-25 Sandoval, Giovany Contreras (34) California (San Francisco) A carjacker, Giovany Contreras Sandoval, stole a woman's Escalade in Richmond, drove to Marin County, and lead law enforcement on a chase that ended in San Francisco's Financial District. They pursued him across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, onto southbound U.S. Highway 101 and then over the Golden Gate Bridge. Sandoval crashed the car at a road, and a man who walked up to the scene to try and help was shot and wounded in the chest. CHP and San Francisco Police Department officers arrived at the scene of the crash, and a less-lethal bean bag gun was fired. Sandoval then took out his revolver and fired a shot at police. Six officers returned fire, hitting him 32 times
Asa Sullivan (Black) Fatal Mental illness involved 6/6/2006
Unknown Fatal Mental illness involved 9/17/2006
Rene Robinson Fatal Mental illness involved 3/7/2007
Leonard Michael Cole Fatal Mental illness involved 2008
Xiyu Li (Asian) Fatal Mental illness involved 9/5/2009
Edward Smith Fatal Mental illness involved 1/23/2010
Michael Lee (white) Fatal Mental illness involved 9/26/2010
Vinh Bui Fatal Mental illness involved 12/29/2010
2011
Peter Woo (Asian) Fatal Mental illness involved 10/3/2011
Pralith Pralourng (Cambodian) Fatal Mental illness involved 7/19/2012
Dale Wilkerson Fatal Mental illness involved 4/17/2013
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* "Big Surprise: Alameda Sheriff's Deputies Lied in Reports About Beating of Stanislav Petrov" (2016-03-29, via Indybay.org Newswire) [archive.is/h1GtX], attached video [http://is.gd/UYoLqR] : It was almost the perfect cover-up of a serious violent crime by a dozen or so pigs from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. In their official reports, posted below, Deputies Luis Santamaria and Paul Wieber claimed they beat Stanislav Petrov senseless on November 12, 2015, because they feared for their lives and their baton strikes "appeared to have little effect." That might have been the end of the story, as it usually is when police pummel or kill someone out of public view. But this time there was video of the beating the pigs couldn't bury — and anyone who has seen it knows better.
Other pigs lied about the incident, too. One who arrived on the scene after the beating dutifully played a role in the cover-up by reporting that Stanislav continued to act violently.
Separately, it has now come out that one of the pigs present after the beating actually robbed Stanislav after the beating and gave his gold chain, his cigarettes, some change and some other stuff to a homeless man who had witnessed the beating, presumably as a payoff to stay quiet.
On top of all that, almost all of the deputies had their body cameras turned off, although Alameda Sheriff Greg Ahern says Wieber accidentally activated his body camera and that a second video of the beating exists. Accidentally.
At least three of these pigs are now on "paid administrative leave," the two beaters and now the robber. For Luis Santamaria and Paul Wieber, that's a 4 1/2 month paid vacation at this point, and still no charges from San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon.
On March 24, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi issued the following statement on the police reports in the November 12 beating of Stanislav Petrov in San Francisco. The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office reports were released the previous day in response to a citizen’s public records request.
“The deputies’ description of their encounter with Mr. Petrov does not match the surveillance video of the brutal beating released by my office. The report’s narrative attempts to justify the savage attack by claiming Mr. Petrov resisted arrest and reached for his waistband. But the ultimate objective witness—the camera—shows the deputies striking a man with their batons more than 30 times while he writhes helplessly in the street,” Adachi said. “It is also disturbing that none of the 11 deputies involved turned on their body cameras. I do not believe that is a coincidence, but an attempt to cover up their misconduct. I urge the San Francisco District Attorney to file criminal charges against these officers.”
* "Alameda County Sheriff's Office incident reports: a cover-up recorded for all time" (.pdf) [http://is.gd/Adyrwx]: These reports were mistakenly released on March 23 as part of a public records request [archive.is/ameZX].
* "SF homeless pair say deputies offered ‘hush goodies’ after beating" (2016-03-29, sfchronicle.com) [archive.is/AxP9G]
* "Public Defender: Deputies Involved in Beating Lied; Must Be Charged" (2016-03-24, sfweekly.com) [archive.is/zva8Z]
* "Sheriff Deputies Caught on Camera Pummeling Man with Batons" (2015-1-14, Indybay.org Newswire) [archive.is/j2zCH]: On November 13, the San Francisco Public Defender’s office released video of two Alameda County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) Deputies beating a man who is curled up on the ground. The first deputy tackles and punches the man and then both proceed to hit him with their batons for nearly a minute, repeatedly striking the man in the head and all over his body. They only stop beating him after other ACSO deputies and SF police arrive on the scene, making sure to get in a few final whacks before they stop their assault. Instead of rendering immediate medical care or having an ambulance take the man to the hospital, the cops assembled walk around the seriously wounded man, shining flashlights on him as he moans in pain, crying out for help. The Alameda County Sheriff's Office says they are investigating.* "Alameda County Sheriff's Deputies Brutally Beat Man in San Francisco's Mission District" (2015-11-14, via Indybay.org Newswire) [archive.is/6jJcX]: The San Francisco Public Defender’s office this evening released video of two Alameda County Sheriff's Deputies beating a man who is curled up on the ground. The first pig tackles and punches the man and then both proceed to hit him with their batons for nearly a minute, repeatedly striking the man in the head and all over his body. They only stop beating him after other deputies and SFPD arrive on the scene, making sure to get in a few final whacks before they stop their assault. Instead of rendering immediate medical care or having an ambulance take the man to the hospital, the gaggle of pigs assembled walk around the seriously wounded man, shining flashlights on him as he moans in pain, crying out for help.
During the beating, the fat pig on the right hits the man with his baton so vigorously that you can hear the pig grunting with each strike. It's apparent the two pigs relished the opportunity to pummel the man and would have continued for longer had other pigs not arrived when they did. It's not until over eight minutes into the video that a wheelchair is rolled into the scene, with the man being removed from the ground twelve minutes after the beating began. (According to how the defender's office describes the workings of the time-lapse surveillance system that recorded the incident [archive.is/YTGHR], the actual times are double what is shown in the video, meaning the man lay in the street for about sixteen minutes and was not taken away for over twenty.)
While the San Francisco Chronicle's Vivian Ho writes that the video merely raises "questions" about whether there was excessive use of force [archive.is/24kKD], San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi said the two deputies clearly used excessive force in an encounter that was "reminiscent of Rodney King." (Especially in that the severe beating occurred after a car chase.) Alameda County Sheriff's office spokesman Sergeant J.D. Nelson used the fact that video surveillance system records in 10-second segments, with gaps in between, to assert that "We're not getting the entire picture." In other words, Nelson is asking us: who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
Ludicriously, the SF Examiner's headline states that the video "appears to show deputies beating suspect" [archive.is/JGYpr]. Appears? Talk about lying eyes.
Continuing with the round-up of corporate "news" coverage, ABC7 similarly euphemizes the relentless beating caught on video as deputies "aggressively restraining" the man [archive.is/Aru6P]. There was no restraining, even after the beating. The man never got up past his knees after the first deputy tackled him. The man was beaten and left to wallow in the street until the wheelchair is rolled in. In one small step towards honest reporting — an improvement over the Chronicle's refusal to make any sort of factual declaration whatsoever about the beatdown, and the Examiner refusing to even acknowledge it was a beating — ABC7 does show the temerity to characterize what is seen in the Mission District alley as "Disturbing video".
The deputies showed no hesitation before pummeling the man. Most certainly, this would be because these pigs are quite familiar with beating people, on the streets or in Santa Rita or North County jails. It's just how they roll when they assume no one is watching. Stories of jailtime beatings by Alameda County deputies are a dime a dozen and generally hardly anyone cares. But this time it's caught on camera. Props to those who handed the video over to the public defender's office and to Jeff Adachi for releasing it.
ACSO spinmaster J.D. Nelson assures us all that his department will conduct a thorough investigation, although he's already trying to justify the beatdown with claims that the man earlier knocked down and injured a deputy when he rammed his car into theirs. Perhaps the San Francisco DA or the Alameda DA will do a supposed "investigation" as well. The only thing surprising that might come from these investigations will be if they hold either of these violent pigs criminally accountable for the brutal beating, or even release their names to the public. Don't hold your breath waiting.
The victim's name is Stanislav Petrov. We don't know the pigs' names, and maybe never will.
Stanislav was eventually taken to SF General Hospital for a short time before being locked up at Santa Rita, where he remains right now.
Full video of Alameda deputies beating man released by SF Public Defender's office (video 13:01) [youtube.com/watch?v=irh3JUch7Hg].
Note published by the SF Public Defender with the video (2015-11-13): Alameda County Sheriff officers, after chasing a driver across the bridge and then on foot, beat the man with nightsticks in San Francisco's Mission District. Note that the video surveillance system records in 10 second chunks, with a gap in between. So the beating was actually twice as long as what is shown.
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* "Chief Andrew Bidou among “Agents of Change” Honorees" (.pdf) [http://is.gd/3056qs]: The New Dawn Vallejo Corporation's First Annual Gala Dinner on March 19 honored Vallejo and Solano County “Agents of Change,” including Chief Andrew Bidou of the Vallejo Police Department. During the event, the nonprofit presented awards to honorees for providing support to the development of youth, safety and the social and economic development of the people of Vallejo and Solano County.
Vallejo Police Department Continues Community Engagement -
In 2015, Chief Andrew Bidou created a Community Engagement Officer position to assist with the department’s efforts to build stronger relationships with stakeholders within the Vallejo community. As a result of recent engage-ment activities, members of the department are able to better understand the needs, expectations and the importance of collaboration with neighbors, and the community has developed ownership of relevant matters that affect their lives.
In 2015, police officers and members of the department’s professional staff participated in over 450 community engagement activities,including: Late Night Basketball – iBall, VPD Open House, VPD Christmas Toy Drive,; and many Community Services Section Community Workshops covering a wide array of topics designed to educate the public on matters relevant to the community.
In early 2015, the VPD Office of Community Engagement began tracking community events as part of the national Police Data Initiative (PDI) administered by President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The VPD has partnered with other agencies in order to promote the positive advancements in connecting and partnering with the community.
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===*===*===
NORTHBAY COPWATCH: Domestic Security Agencies and private-sector partners
* "DoJ Resumes Program Allowing Cops to Seize Your Assets Without Conviction" (2016-03-29, occupycorporatism.com) [archive.is/JEaiM]
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* "CIA leaves explosives on school bus borrowed for training" (2016-04-01, rt.com) [archive.is/ikR3s]
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* "If Google and Facebook can flip elections does code now rule the real world?" (2016-03-11, newint.org) [archive.is/31trs]
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* "Read between the lines: Reddit indicates it has received classified requests for user data" (2016-04-01, rt.com) [archive.is/NgEyt]
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* "Spying in St Louis: US spy agency HQ to be built in Missouri city" (2016-04-02, rt.com) [archive.is/uuKlZ]
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Porky is the head of the CIA, capitalism's invisible army
===*===*===
NORTHBAY COPWATCH: Five-Eyes, and other transnational partners
* "Israeli firm allegedly helped FBI break into San Bernardino shooter's iPhone" (2016-03-31, rt.com) [archive.is/5bfOb]
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* "Enforcing UK surveillance powers may cost over £1bn, 7 times original estimate" (2016-03-30, rt.com) [archive.is/XyC6P]
===*===*===
from the Committee to
FREE 'EM ALL!
[PoliticalPrisonersUSA.blogspot.com]
End the Drug War! Stop Jim Crow! Close the Torture Chambers! [solitarywatch.com] [facebook.com/incarceratedworkers] [supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org] [denverabc.wordpress.com] [prisonlegalnews.org] [prisonbooks.info] [nycabc.wordpress.com] [powmedicaljustice.com] [sacprisonersupport.wordpress.com]. Become a Human Rights Pen Pal! [link].
* " ‘Stop the Torture’ – UN Official Receives Formal Complaint from Solitary Prisoners’ Family Members and Advocates" (2016-03-31, prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com) [archive.is/yM5de]
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* "US among world leaders in death penalty, surpassed only by Saudi, Iran & Pakistan – Amnesty" (2016-04-06, rt.com) [archive.is/GpcZD]
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* "A Look Inside Alameda County Juvenile Hall" (2016-04-02, by Troy Williams, postnewsgroup.com) [archive.is/Tljmn]
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* "Shoplifter facing 20 years to life after stealing $31 worth of candy" (2016-04-02, rt.com) [archive.is/ex57e]
===*===*===
articles recommended by the
SAN PABLO BAY ECOLOGICAL PRESERVATION ASSOCIATION
Campaigns, info, and more [SanPabloBayEPA.blogspot.com]. Science [discardstudies.com]
* "Groups Sue FDA Over 'Unlawful and Irresponsible' Approval of Frankenfish 'This case is about protecting our fisheries and ocean ecosystems from the foreseeable harms of the first-ever GE fish' " (2016-03-31, commondreams.org) [archive.is/hRWv2]
* "Lawsuit Challenges FDA's Approval of Genetically Engineered Salmon; Coalition of Fishing, Consumer, Environmental Groups Say First-ever Approval of Laboratory-created Food Animal Violated Laws, Ignored Risks to Wild Salmon, Fishing Communities" (2016-03-31, biologicaldiversity.org) [archive.is/YuAaQ]
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* "EPA has not been watching fracking sites for groundwater contamination" (2016-04-01, rt.com) [archive.is/GKPGf]
* " ‘Wake-up call’: Study finds fracking can pollute underground drinking water" (2016-04-02, rt.com) [archive.is/WXkI4]
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* "Monsanto’s Glyphosate Found in California Wines, Even Wines Made With Organic Grapes" (2016-03-27, ecowatch.com) [archive.is/SiyKm]
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* "Park District Moves Forward with Major Enhancements to Eastshore State Park" (2016-03-17, ebparks.org) [archive.is/wwjet]
===*===*===
SAN PABLO BAY EPA: Health and the Human Ecology
Monopolists enforce a regime that does not recognize the natural right to health and life. Info [detoxproject.org].
* "Newly-released Email Details Complicity of Obama’s EPA in Flint Poisoning" (2016-03-30, by James Brewer) [archive.is/kuGq8]
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* "Toxic additive BPA found in 2/3 of canned foods" (2016-04-01, rt.com) [archive.is/cTYXP]
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* "Teen girls see big drop in chemical exposure with switch in cosmetics" (2016-03-07, news.berkeley.edu) [archive.is/nY0o6] [begin excerpt]: A new study led by researchers at UC Berkeley and Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas demonstrates how even a short break from certain kinds of makeup, shampoos and lotions can lead to a significant drop in levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals in the body. [...]
Researchers provided teen study participants with personal care products labeled free of chemicals such as phthalates, parabens, triclosan and oxybenzone. Such chemicals are widely used in personal care products, including cosmetics, fragrance, hair products, soaps and sunscreens, and have been shown in animal studies to interfere with the body’s endocrine system.
“Because women are the primary consumers of many personal care products, they may be disproportionately exposed to these chemicals,” said study lead author Kim Harley, associate director of the UC Berkeley Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health. “Teen girls may be at particular risk since it’s a time of rapid reproductive development, and research has suggested that they use more personal care products per day than the average adult woman.”
Analysis of urine samples before and after a three-day trial in which the participants used the lower- chemical products found significant drops in levels of these chemicals in the body. Metabolites of diethyl phthalate, commonly used in fragrances, decreased 27 percent by the end of the trial period. Methyl and propyl parabens, used as preservatives in cosmetics, dropped 44 and 45 percent respectively. Both triclosan, found in antibacterial soaps and some brands of toothpaste, and benzophenone-3 (BP-3), found in some sunscreens under the name oxybenzone, fell 36 percent.
Surprisingly, there was a small increase in concentrations in two less common parabens. Those levels were small and could have been caused by accidental contamination or a substitution not listed on the labels, the study authors said. [end excerpt]
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* "Company fined $10 million for using nerve agent and poisoning US family" (2016-03-30, rt.com) [archive.is/1qx5f]
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* "Vaccine Maker Admits On FDA Website That DTaP Vaccine Causes Autism" (2016-04-01, by Catherine Frompovich) [http://is.gd/YR475j] [begin excerpt]:
According to the U.S. FDA’s online Biologics Blood Vaccines publication, Sanofi Pasteur’s Diphtheria, Tetanus Toxoids and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine Adsorbed (DTaP) package insert information under the section for Adverse Reactions, which runs from page 6 to page 11, we find the following declared admission that DTaP caused autism “during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine.” See the copy and paste information below. So, why all the denials that a vaccine hasn’t or can’t cause autism?
[begin document]
Diphtheria and Tetanus Toxoids and Acellular Pertussis Vaccine Adsorbed
Tripedia
Additional Adverse Reactions
Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting. Because these events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequencies or to establish a causal relationship to components of Tripedia vaccine.2 [1]
[end document]
The reference 2 above refers to Sanofi Pasteur Inc., Data on File – 072503. [2] Personally, I’d love to examine that Data on File 072503! [end excerpt]
[1] http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/UCM101580.pd Pg. 11, ¶3
[2] Ibid. Pg. 12
* "Vaxxed and the Vaccine Industry: How Did They Threaten Robert De Niro? De Niro allegedly talked to Congressman about censored Vaxxed film" (2016-03-27, by Jon Rappoport) [archive.is/kbXmM]
===*===*===
articles recommended by the
NO NUKES! campaign
[StopNuclearDeath.blogspot.com] [nuclear-news.net] [nukeresister.org] [nukefree.org]
* "Nuclear Power Plants Are Pre-Deployed Weapons of Mass Destruction. We should close them all. Now" (2016-03-31, commondreams.org) [archive.is/IxVV5]
* "Statement from Governor Andrew M. Cuomo Regarding Indian Point Nuclear Facility" (2016-02-06, governor.ny.gov) [archive.is/P5BOR]
* "65,000% spike in radiation outside New York nuclear plant is likely worse than Fukushima" (2016-02-27, activistpost.com) [archive.is/pwYYx]
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* "The Great Fukushima Cover-Up" (2016-02-24, counterpunch.org) [archive.is/rIiuV]
* " 'No one died, no one's health was damaged' - Fukushima's big lie; The nuclear industry and its media cheerleaders have raised a chorus of misinformation over Fukushima, writes Karl Grossman. But their attempts to suppress the truth are ultimately doomed to failure" (2014-03-08, theecologist.org) [archive.is/bVxY2]
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* "Shocking state of world’s riskiest nuclear waste site Huge pools of mystery sludge, leaking silos and risk of explosions: Sellafield needs help, but the UK government has just sacked the firm running the clean-up" (2015-01-21, newscientist.com) [archive.is/0LzsX]
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* "Ukraine to boost nuclear energy production despite ageing reactors" (2016-03-30, rt.com) [archive.is/BNdFT]
* "Ukrainian Dirty Bomb: Issue Excluded from Nuclear Security Summit Agenda" (2016-04-01, strategic-culture.org) [archive.is/Oy2l6] [begin excerpt]: In April 2015 Oleksandr Turchynov, then Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, stated that the Ukrainian authorities were allegedly bracing themselves for implementation of a number of unspecified confidential nuclear programs to create either nuclear weapons or a ‘dirty bomb’ [archive.is/x7Eja].
Even though the statement itself sounded ridiculous, attention still should be given to the issue. There are various sources of nuclear material for the production of a ‘dirty bomb’ available. There were substantial quantities of enriched uranium in the Ukrainian nuclear research related institutes. Nobody knows exactly how much of it remained after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Another source is the nuclear waste of the five nuclear power stations that Ukraine operates at present. Besides, the medical equipment used to fight cancer with the help of radiotherapy can also be used to get nuclear materials as it is replaced by the US-made second hand VARIAN Clinac 2300 linear accelerators.
What game does the Kiev government plays talking about the possible production of a ‘dirty bomb’ to be used against Russia?
A dirty bomb or radiological dispersal device (RDD) is a radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon is to disperse radioactive material over a large area. It is, however, not to be confused with a nuclear explosion, such as a fission bomb, which by releasing nuclear energy produces blast effects far in excess of what is achievable by the use of conventional explosives.
It is thought that a ‘dirty bomb’ can be used by a country, which has no technology nor money to produce a real nuclear munition. The contamination of vast areas can cause wide spread panic. It’s easy to produce such munitions in any quantity. Experts call it a weapon of terrorists.
Ukraine has become the first state in the world where officials state that they consider the possibility of using this kind of weapon.
Unfortunately, it’s not known if this fact has attracted the attention of those who are taking part in the nuclear security summit to wind up on Friday in Washington. [end excerpt]
===*===*===
articles recommended by the
SAN PABLO BAY SOVEREIGNTY Think-tank
[SovereignSanPabloBay.blogspot.com] [permaculture.org]
The stake of a public & private partnership for the people must be ensured so that we may democratically influence the plans for energy infrastructure. Without this stake, the people's democracy is not considered by government, transnational, and capitalist bureaucracies.
For our communities to be free, we must ensure through collective action that our sovereignty is recognized over planning and implementation.
* "China proposes $50tn global renewable energy network" (2016-04-01, rt.com) [archive.is/fFRms]
* "When city planners treat us like infants; The public gets dismissive events and sandbox games -- instead of serious discussions that allow meaningful input from the communities impacted by land-use decisions" (2016-03-29, 48hills.org) [archive.is/hc0UM]
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* "Farewell fossil fuels? Biomass broken down without chemicals for 1st time, study claims" (2016-03-30, rt.com) [archive.is/WOHau]
===*===*===
NORTHBAY ENTHEOGENIC FREEDOM
[NorthbayEntheogen.blogspot.com]
* "Inhale to the chief: Pot activists light up outside the White House" (2016-04-03, rt.com) [archive.is/sNnEC]
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* "Washington Cannabis Regulators May Have Skirted Ethics Rules to Appease Special Interest Group; The Washington CannaBusiness Association, Headed by a Former Microsoft Executive, Is Playing a Major Role in Shaping the Emerging Legal-Marijuana Landscape" (2016-03-27, narcosphere.narconews.com) [archive.is/lTBsn] [begin excerpt]:
The lobbyist for a trade association that helped write legislation that will assimilate Washington State’s unregulated medical-marijuana market into it’s recently legalized recreational cannabis market appears to be having an oversized influence on the course of cannabis policymaking in the state, based on an examination of emails obtained through an open-records request.
That insider influence also appears to have crossed over some ethical borderlines and possibly influenced the course of an investigation into a licensed marijuana producer that was allegedly using banned pesticides on its cannabis crops, email correspondence shows. That investigation is being carried out by the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) — which regulates and issues licenses for the state’s fledgling cannabis industry.
The trade group at the center of this storm is the Washington CannaBusiness Association (WACA), whose executive director and lobbyist is Vicki Christophersen. WACA’s president is Martin Tobias, a former Microsoft executive and serial entrepreneur.
Tobias provided the seed funding for WACA, and through a cannabis-focused real estate venture he controls, South Fork Business Park, he also provided the initial surge of funding, some $25,000, for WACA’s political action committee, state records show.
One of the tenants of the South Fork Business Park in Raymond, Washington, is WACA member BFM Washington LLC, a licensed cannabis grower. BMF is owned by Peter Saladino, who is a founding board member of WACA. Corporation records obtained by Narco News show that Saladino and Tobias also are business partners in two companies incorporated in Nevada: JJ OPCOOR LLC and JUJU OPCOCA LLC. BMF does sell product through a brand called Juju Joints, although it’s not clear if the two Las Vegas companies are connected to that brand.
Those connections and questions matter because they can help put into context where Christophersen and WACAs insider access to legislators and regulators may have been abused. [end excerpt]
===*===*===
articles recommended by the Committee for
ANIMAL RIGHTS
Protect Earth's Sentient Life!
The following article provides insights into the topics contrived by those who advocate against animal rights:
* "The Hypocrisy of the Animal Rights Agenda" (2016-03-31, orientalreview.org) [archive.is/cEl4l]
===*===*===
UNITED STATES FASCISM WATCH
Documenting the process of fascism and for whom it benefits. [UnitedStatesFascism.blogspot.com] [exposefacts.org]
It is essential to read propaganda written by capitalists for their class and "middle-class".
Both of the following editorials are syndicated to thousands of monopolist newspapers across the USA, with different headlines favoring the opinion that unrestricted free trade does more good than harm.
* "Don't fear global trade, no matter what scare-mongers like Trump, Sanders say" (2016-03-25, chicagotribune.com) [archive.is/btCFn]
* "Bluster against free trade makes no economic sense" (2016-03-30, by Benjamin Zycher, The Philadelphia Inquirer) [archive.is/SKTRe]
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* "Housing Crisis, Bankruptcies, Schools, Water: Michigan Struggles Expose Failure of Ruling Class Policies" (2016-03-30, by Abayomi Azikiwe) [archive.is/iQzhJ]
* "Skyscrapers — but no sewage system. Meet a city run by private industry" (2016-03-17, ideas.ted.com) [archive.is/papmm]
* "Sandy Springs, Georgia: The City that Outsourced Everything" (uploaded 2011-04-12) [youtube.com/watch?v=f8qFvo2qJOU]: While cities across the country are cutting services, raising taxes and contemplating bankruptcy, something extraordinary is happening in a suburban community just north of Atlanta, Georgia. Since incorporating in 2005, Sandy Springs has improved its services, invested tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure and kept taxes flat. And get this: Sandy Springs has no long-term liabilities.
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* "The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States; Moving money out of the usual offshore secrecy havens and into the U.S. is a brisk new business" (2016-01-27, bloomberg.com) [archive.is/ztpkT]: Last September, at a law firm overlooking San Francisco Bay, Andrew Penney, a managing director at Rothschild & Co., gave a talk on how the world’s wealthy elite can avoid paying taxes.
His message was clear: You can help your clients move their fortunes to the United States, free of taxes and hidden from their governments.
Some are calling it the new Switzerland.
After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on the act, helping the world’s rich move accounts from places like the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota.
“How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,” wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. “That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.”
Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.
The firm says its Reno operation caters to international families attracted to the stability of the U.S. and that customers must prove they comply with their home countries’ tax laws. Its trusts, moreover, have “not been set up with a view to exploiting that the U.S. has not signed up” for international reporting standards, said Rothschild spokeswoman Emma Rees.
Others are also jumping in: Geneva-based Cisa Trust Co. SA, which advises wealthy Latin Americans, is applying to open in Pierre, S.D., to “serve the needs of our foreign clients,” said John J. Ryan Jr., Cisa’s president.
Trident Trust Co., one of the world’s biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland, Grand Cayman, and other locales and into Sioux Falls, S.D., in December, ahead of a Jan. 1 disclosure deadline.
“Cayman was slammed in December, closing things that people were withdrawing,” said Alice Rokahr, the president of Trident in South Dakota, one of several states promoting low taxes and confidentiality in their trust laws. “I was surprised at how many were coming across that were formerly Swiss bank accounts, but they want out of Switzerland.”
Last September, at a law firm overlooking San Francisco Bay, Andrew Penney, a managing director at Rothschild & Co., gave a talk on how the world’s wealthy elite can avoid paying taxes.
His message was clear: You can help your clients move their fortunes to the United States, free of taxes and hidden from their governments.
Some are calling it the new Switzerland.
After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on the act, helping the world’s rich move accounts from places like the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota.
“How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,” wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. “That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.”
Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.
The U.S. “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world” —Andrew Penney, Rothschild & Co.
The firm says its Reno operation caters to international families attracted to the stability of the U.S. and that customers must prove they comply with their home countries’ tax laws. Its trusts, moreover, have “not been set up with a view to exploiting that the U.S. has not signed up” for international reporting standards, said Rothschild spokeswoman Emma Rees.
Others are also jumping in: Geneva-based Cisa Trust Co. SA, which advises wealthy Latin Americans, is applying to open in Pierre, S.D., to “serve the needs of our foreign clients,” said John J. Ryan Jr., Cisa’s president.
Trident Trust Co., one of the world’s biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland, Grand Cayman, and other locales and into Sioux Falls, S.D., in December, ahead of a Jan. 1 disclosure deadline.
“Cayman was slammed in December, closing things that people were withdrawing,” said Alice Rokahr, the president of Trident in South Dakota, one of several states promoting low taxes and confidentiality in their trust laws. “I was surprised at how many were coming across that were formerly Swiss bank accounts, but they want out of Switzerland.”
Rokahr and other advisers said there is a legitimate need for secrecy. Confidential accounts that hide wealth, whether in the U.S., Switzerland, or elsewhere, protect against kidnappings or extortion in their owners’ home countries. The rich also often feel safer parking their money in the U.S. rather than some other location perceived as less-sure.
“I do not hear anybody saying, ‘I want to avoid taxes,’ ” Rokahr said. “These are people who are legitimately concerned with their own health and welfare.”
No one expects offshore havens to disappear anytime soon. Swiss banks still hold about $1.9 trillion in assets not reported by account holders in their home countries, according to Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Nor is it clear how many of the almost 100 countries and other jurisdictions that have signed on will actually enforce the new disclosure standards, issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a government-funded international policy group.
There’s nothing illegal about banks luring foreigners to put money in the U.S. with promises of confidentiality as long as they are not intentionally helping to evade taxes abroad. Still, the U.S. is one of the few places left where advisers are actively promoting accounts that will remain secret from overseas authorities.
Rothschild’s Reno office is at the forefront of that effort. “The Biggest Little City in the World” is not an obvious choice for a global center of capital flight. If you were going to shoot a film set in Las Vegas circa 1971, you would film it in Reno. Its casino hotels tower above the bail bondsmen across the street, available 24/7, as well as pawnshops stocked with an array of firearms. The pink neon lights at casinos like Harrah’s and the Eldorado still burn bright. But these days, their floors are often empty, with travelers preferring to gamble in Las Vegas, an hour’s flight away.
The offices of Rothschild Trust North America LLC aren’t easy to find. They’re on the 12th floor of Porsche’s former North American headquarters building, a few blocks from the casinos. (The U.S. attorney’s office is on the sixth floor.) Yet the lobby directory does not list Rothschild. Instead, visitors must go to the 10th floor, the offices of McDonald Carano Wilson LLP, a politically connected law firm. Several former high-ranking Nevada state officials work there, as well as the owner of some of Reno’s biggest casinos and numerous registered lobbyists. One of the firm’s tax lobbyists is Robert Armstrong, viewed as the state’s top trusts and estates attorney, and a manager of Rothschild Trust North America.
The trust company was set up in 2013 to cater to international families, particularly those with a mix of assets and relatives in the U.S. and abroad, according to Rothschild. It caters to customers attracted to the “stable, regulated environment” of the U.S., said Rees, the Rothschild spokeswoman.
“We do not offer legal structures to clients unless we are absolutely certain that their tax affairs are in order; both clients themselves and independent tax lawyers must actively confirm to us that this is the case,” Rees said.
The managing director of the Nevada trust company is Scott Cripps, an amiable California tax attorney who used to run the trust services for Bank of the West, now part of French financial-services giant BNP Paribas SA. Cripps explained that moving money out of traditional offshore secrecy jurisdictions and into Nevada is a brisk new line of business for Rothschild.
“There’s a lot of people that are going to do it,” said Cripps. “This added layer of privacy is kicking them over the hurdle” to move their assets into the U.S. For wealthy overseas clients, “privacy is huge, especially in countries where there is corruption.”
One wealthy Turkish family is using Rothschild’s trust company to move assets from the Bahamas into the U.S., he said. Another Rothschild client, a family from Asia, is moving assets from Bermuda into Nevada. He said customers are often international families with offspring in the U.S.
For decades, Switzerland has been the global capital of secret bank accounts. That may be changing. In 2007, UBS Group AG banker Bradley Birkenfeld blew the whistle on his firm helping U.S. clients evade taxes with undeclared accounts offshore. Swiss banks eventually paid a price. More than 80 Swiss banks, including UBS and Credit Suisse Group AG, have agreed to pay about $5 billion to the U.S. in penalties and fines.
Those firms also include Rothschild Bank AG, which last June entered into a nonprosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The bank admitted helping U.S. clients hide income offshore from the Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay an $11.5 million penalty and shut down nearly 300 accounts belonging to U.S. taxpayers, totaling $794 million in assets.
The U.S. was determined to put an end to such practices. That led to a 2010 law, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, that requires financial firms to disclose foreign accounts held by U.S. citizens and report them to the IRS or face steep penalties.
Inspired by Fatca, the OECD drew up even stiffer standards to help other countries ferret out tax dodgers. Since 2014, 97 jurisdictions have agreed to impose new disclosure requirements for bank accounts, trusts, and some other investments held by international customers. Of the nations the OECD asked to sign on, only a handful have declined: Bahrain, Nauru, Vanuatu—and the United States.
“I have a lot of respect for the Obama administration because without their first moves we would not have gotten these reporting standards,” said Sven Giegold, a member of the European Parliament from Germany’s Green Party. “On the other hand, now it’s time for the U.S. to deliver what Europeans are willing to deliver to the U.S.”
The Treasury Department makes no apologies for not agreeing to the OECD standards.
“The U.S. has led the charge in combating international tax evasion using offshore financial accounts,” said Treasury spokesman Ryan Daniels. He said the OECD initiative “builds directly” on the Fatca law.
For financial advisers, the current state of play is simply a good business opportunity. In a draft of his San Francisco presentation, Rothschild’s Penney wrote that the U.S. “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world.” The U.S., he added in language later excised from his prepared remarks, lacks “the resources to enforce foreign tax laws and has little appetite to do so.”
Firms aren’t wasting time to make the most of the current environment. Bolton Global Capital, a Boston-area financial advisory firm, recently circulated this hypothetical example in an e-mail: A wealthy Mexican opens a U.S. bank account using a company in the British Virgin Islands. As a result, only the company’s name would be sent to the BVI government, while the identity of the person owning the account would not be shared with Mexican authorities.
The U.S. failure to sign onto the OECD information-sharing standard is “proving to be a strong driver of growth for our business,” wrote Bolton’s chief executive officer, Ray Grenier, in a marketing e-mail to bankers. His firm is seeing a spike in accounts moved out of European banks—“Switzerland in particular”—and into the U.S. The new OECD standard “was the beginning of the exodus,” he said in an interview.
The U.S. Treasury is proposing standards similar to the OECD’s for foreign-held accounts in the U.S. But similar proposals in the past have stalled in the face of opposition from the Republican-controlled Congress and the banking industry.
At issue is not just non-U.S. citizens skirting their home countries’ taxes. Treasury also is concerned that massive inflows of capital into secret accounts could become a new channel for criminal money laundering. At least $1.6 trillion in illicit funds are laundered through the global financial system each year, according to a United Nations estimate.
Offering secrecy to clients is not against the law, but U.S. firms are not permitted to knowingly help overseas customers evade foreign taxes, said Scott Michel, a criminal tax defense attorney at Washington, D.C.-based Caplin & Drysdale who has represented Swiss banks and foreign account holders.
“To the extent non-U.S. persons are encouraged to come to the U.S. for what may be our own ‘tax haven’ characteristics, the U.S. government would likely take a dim view of any marketing suggesting that evading home country tax is a legal objective,” he said.
Rothschild says it takes “significant care” to ensure account holders’ assets are fully declared. The bank “adheres to the legal, regulatory, and tax rules wherever we operate,” said Rees, the Rothschild spokeswoman.
Penney, who oversees the Reno business, is a longtime Rothschild lawyer who worked his way up from the firm’s trust operations in the tiny British isle of Guernsey. Penney, 56, is now a managing director based in London for Rothschild Wealth Management & Trust, which handles about $23 billion for 7,000 clients from offices including Milan, Zurich, and Hong Kong. A few years ago he was voted “Trustee of the Year” by an elite group of U.K. wealth advisers.
In his September San Francisco talk, called “Using U.S. Trusts in International Planning: 10 Amazing Feats to Impress Clients and Colleagues,” Penney laid out legal ways to avoid both U.S. taxes and disclosures to clients’ home countries.
In a section originally titled “U.S. Trusts to Preserve Privacy,” he included the hypothetical example of an Internet investor named “Wang, a Hong Kong resident,” originally from the People’s Republic of China, concerned that information about his wealth could be shared with Chinese authorities.
Putting his assets into a Nevada LLC, in turn owned by a Nevada trust, would generate no U.S. tax returns, Penney wrote. Any forms the IRS would receive would result in “no meaningful information to exchange under” agreements between Hong Kong and the U.S., according to Penney’s PowerPoint presentation reviewed by Bloomberg.
Penney offered a disclaimer: At least one government, the U.K., intends to make it a criminal offense for any U.K. firm to facilitate tax evasion.
Rothschild said the PowerPoint was subsequently revised before Penney delivered his presentation. The firm provided what it said was the final version of the talk, which this time excluded several potentially controversial passages. Among them: the U.S. being the “biggest tax haven in the world,” the U.S.’s low appetite for enforcing other countries’ tax laws, and two references to “privacy” offered by the U.S.
“The presentation was drafted in response to a request by the organizers to be controversial and create a lively debate among the experienced, professional audience,” Rees said. “On reviewing the initial draft, these lines were not deemed to represent either Rothschild’s or Mr. Penney’s view. They were therefore removed.”
---
* "Human Experimentation Rampant in the United States" (2016-03-27, by Janet Phelan, journal-neo.org) [archive.is/wF710]
---
* "KGO and the Death of Radio" (2016-03-31, soundwavestv.com) [archive.is/q1VeB]
---
* "'Mississippi Goddamn': State Sanctions Sweeping Discrimination; 'Mississippi has been down this road before' " (2016-03-31, commondreams.org) [archive.is/uGBII]
---
* "NARAL Calls Out Latest Dangerous Select Investigative Panel Attack Against Universities, Labs" (2016-03-31, ProChoiceAmerica.org) [archive.is/qdeBA] [begin excerpt]: Today, NARAL Pro-Choice America joins U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and members of the Senate Democratic Caucus to highlight the latest dangerous action from Republicans on the House Select Investigative Panel. Just yesterday, the Panel issued a new round of subpoenas targeting universities, labs, and others as a part of a taxpayer-funded witch hunt by committee Republicans. The senators will join NARAL on Twitter this afternoon to mobilize advocates against these latest attacks. [end excerpt]
---
* "LGBT Families Caught in the GOP’s Culture War Rift" (2016-03-31, ourfuture.org) [archive.is/yRfLu]
---
* "Mississippi’s controversial ‘religious freedom’ bill signed into law" (2016-04-05, rt.com) [archive.is/QHjy7]
Mississippi, the state where it violates your “freedom” to be made to deliver a wedding cake – but not a rapist’s baby! You can’t spell Mississippi without ISIS – twice! They both like to force their religion on others.
* "Betty Explains Religious Freedom" (satire) [youtube.com/watch?v=D1pYoZh5P4w]
---
This is especially funny when one recalls that de Tocqueville himself was aware of the standard American lack of familiarity with texts that define them:"America is therefore one of the countries in the world where philosophy is least studied, and where the precepts of Descartes are best applied. Nor is this surprising. The Americans do not read the works of Descartes, because their social condition deters them from speculative studies; but they follow his maxims because this very social condition naturally disposes their understanding to adopt them."
===*===*===
USA FASCISM: Military State
* "Over 125,000 veterans denied benefits by the VA – report" (2016-03-31, rt.com) [archive.is/cU5K1]
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* "The black hole of Pentagon foreign aid" (2016-03-15, thehill.com) [archive.is/w2HaB]
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===*===*===
USA FASCISM: Two Party Dictatorship
* "Citadel’s Ken Griffin: Poster Child for Americans’ Anger in this Election" (2016-04-01, wallstreetonparade.com) [archive.is/F2CNc]
* "Leader of Clinton's Dark Money Alliance files ethics complaints against Sanders" (2016-03-31, shadowproof.com) [archive.is/gpinQ]
* "Clinton loses it when Greenpeace activist asks about her fossil fuel donors" (2016-04-01, rt.com) [archive.is/xYNdR].
* "Sorting out Hillary Clinton’s fossil fuel contributions" (2016-04-01, politifact.com) [archive.is/ny4no] Comment (2016-04-02): Her staff actually used this defense yesterday afternoon:"A quarter million don't buy shit; she gets ten times that from her larger Wall Street investors."
* Chart comparing the top contributers to the Clinton versus Sanders throughout their political careers [archive.is/BySoo].
---
* "15yo girl sexually assaulted, pepper-sprayed outside Trump rally" (2016-03-30, rt.com) [archive.is/nVTsw]
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===*===*===
USA FASCISM: State Media Watch
Documenting propaganda issued by the monopolist media and members of the state security regime that uphold the economic dictatorship, imperialist wars, and the "New Jim Crow" regime [mediamatters.org]
* "World Class Journalist Spills the Beans & Admits Mainstream Media is Completely Fake; Dr. Udo Ulfkotte is a top German journalist and editor and has been for more than two decades, so you can bet he knows a thing or two about mainstream media and what really happens behind the scenes" (2016-03-24, by Arjun Walia) [archive.is/gbll8]
* "Propaganda In the Eyes of the Beholder" (2016-02-08, by Michael Averko, orientalreview.org) [archive.is/ZHc32]
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* "How They Brainwash Us: 'ISIS, We Were Told, will Bringing its Bombing Attacks to America' " (2016-03-30, by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts) [archive.is/HreGo]
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* "Countering the NATO propaganda on Russia" (2015-01, by Vladimir Kozin, orientalreview.org), part 1 [archive.is/wIpcF], part 2 [archive.is/mIZXI], part 3 [archive.is/nNqrv]
---
* "Why the Major Media Marginalize Sanders" (2016-03-31, by Robert Reich) [archive.is/UjV74]
* "As Sanders Surges, Cable News Runs Prison Reality Show, Jesus Documentary" (2016-03-28, fair.org) [archive.is/R9CrA]
===*===*===
USA FASCISM: Artificial Poverty and Starvation
[talkpoverty.org]
* "Is This Class Warfare? Is there a conspiracy to keep wages from rising or is it just plain-old class warfare?" (by Mike Whitney, counterpunch.org) [archive.is/oraZj]
* "Low-income Americans can no longer afford rent, food, and transportation" (2016-03-30, vox.com) [archive.is/lqfPC] [begin excerpt]: Low-income Americans are experiencing a staggering price hike in housing costs — a change that makes it sometimes impossible to afford basic necessities.
A new Pew Charitable Trusts analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in 2013, low-income Americans spent a median of $6,897 on housing. In 2014, that rose to $9,178 — the biggest jump in housing spending for the 19-year period of data that Pew studied.
The cost of other necessities, like transportation and food, also rose, albeit not as dramatically. 2014 was the first year that Pew studied in which median spending on these three categories was higher than the median income for those in the lower third of income groups.
"We show in these figures that over time, [lower-income groups] consistently spend more on transportation and considerably more on housing," Erin Currier, the project director at Pew Charitable Trusts, said. "Lower-income renters are spending nearly half their income on rent, while upper-income groups spend about 15 percent on rent. The disparity really shows that lower income families don’t have much slack in their budgets for mobility-enhancing investments like savings and wealth building." [end excerpt]
* "No joke: 500k food stamp recipients to lose benefits on April 1" (2016-03-31, rt.com) [archive.is/ftn7u]
* "Insulin cost tripled over 10-year period in US – study" (2016-04-06, rt.com) [archive.is/CPZlK]
---
* "HUD Wants To Make Living In A Tiny House Or RV Illegal" (2016-03-31, Daisy Luther) [http://is.gd/aMuN8j]
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* "Small towns watch aging hospitals shutter" (2016-03-04, pbs.org) [archive.is/KOQjP]
* "Hospital Closures Rattle Small Towns" (2016-03-10, khn.org) [archive.is/YGaxc] [begin excerpt]: or years, Sybil Ammons was the director of nursing at Stewart County’s only hospital. Now, she’s the county coroner.
Since the hospital here closed three years ago, Ammons says more than a dozen local residents were unable to get medical care quickly enough and were either harmed or died because of the delays. “We’ve had a stroke, several heart attacks,” she said, standing along Richland’s main street in this small town about 150 miles south of Atlanta. “We’ve had traumas out on the four-lane.”
Across the country, more than 50 rural hospitals have closed over the last six years, and another 283 are in fragile financial condition, according to the National Rural Health Association. With rural populations long in decline in the United States, small-town hospitals have lost customers and struggled to keep pace with the striking advancements in medical technology.
But the pace of closures has escalated in recent years, hastened by a series of budget control measures passed by Congress that reduced Medicare payments and by the Affordable Care Act, which is slowly restructuring the health care industry. The law rewards scale and connectivity — difficult goals for rural hospitals that are, by their geographic nature, low-volume and remote. [end excerpt]
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* "Detroit teacher: ‘Why is separate and unequal okay in 2016?’ " (2016-01-23, washingtonpost.com) [archive.is/4kGsE]
* "Detroit schools are in financial crisis and won’t be able to pay teachers after April 8" (2016-03-09, washingtonpost.com) [archive.is/AwH0w]
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===*===*===
WORLD FASCISM WATCH
Documenting the global economic dictatorship
* "World’s richest banker charged in bribery scheme" (2016-04-02, rt.com) [archive.is/spqkB]
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* "The Great Ponzi Scheme of the Global Economy" (2016-03-25, by Michael Hudson and Chris Hedges, counterpunch.org) [archive.is/e9JmR]
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PANAMA PAPERS -
Also, not a single western bourgeoisie politician has been named with the exception of Dave Cameron. The leaks hide more than they reveal. as long as there is capitalism, corruption is part of the society.
* Wikileaks criticses the USAID funding of the "Panama Papers" release [archive.is/6wh3f]. USAID is officially a CIA front organization.
* "What's Really Behind the Panama Leaks" (2016-04-05, Felix Abt):
- A selective choice of tax evaders: from the Chinese ex-president’s daughter to Putin’s friends but no U.S. citizens and corporations.
- The re-direction, under U.S. pressure, of money streams from former tax heavens Switzerland, Luxemburg, Monaco, Cyprus, Singapur, and the Cayman Islands to new tax heavens.
- A discovery that wasn’t an accident as media claimed: 400 journalists from 100 media organizations in 80 countries were working on the data for more than 12 months. Since these media organizations belong to international investors it’s not in their interest that the international financial elites are hurt by “revelations”.
- Within the framework of G8 and G20 the U.S. used its leverage to impose the so-called Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) on OECD-nations according to which the 100 signatory nations agreed to expose the revenues of their citizens to foreign tax authorities. Few countries didn’t sign it: Bahrein, Naury, Vanuatu and the United States!
In other words: the U.S. have pushed the whole world to abandon tax secrecy while it didn’t adopt these standards for itself: On the contrary, four of its own states (Texas, Florida, Wyoming, Delaware) were turned into true tax paradises for the international capital…
It's a perfect show piece on how Western media engages in vulgar and banal propaganda while protecting the filthy rich tax dodgers and their perfectly legal safe zones, including in the U.S.
We can assume the U.S. CIA also uses front companies although they will make sure evidence is well concealed. But those who work for the CIA as gun-runners and contractors do use offshore companies for personal and private gain.
* "Panama Papers: Links revealed to spies and Iran-Contra affair; Documents show ex-CIA gun-runners, contractors use offshore firms for personal gain" (2016-04-05, irishtimes.com) [archive.is/E3NaL]
* "Roll call of top Tory tycoons exposed in #PanamaLeaks" (2016-04-05, rt.com) [archive.is/i9TWc]
* "HSBC, Coutts & Rothschild: British banks help the 1% evade tax, #PanamaPapers suggest" (2016-04-05, rt.com) [archive.is/5izIP]
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* "Argentina Turns North; Obama’s visit to Macri’s Argentina fortified commitments to free trade in the Americas, while whitewashing the human rights records of both countries" (2016-03-30, nacla.org) [archive.is/wJEYc]
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* "Mineral interests challenge Colombia under FTA" (2016-03-28, ww4report.com) [archive.is/SclkM]: International environmentalists are condemning Vancouver-based Eco Oro Minerals' (eco-oro.com) announcement that it will initiate arbitration against Colombia over its new policy to protect sensitive highland ecosystems. Eco Oro has stated its intention to sue Colombia under the investment chapter of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement [archive.is/iedcz] over suspension of its proposed Angostura gold mine in Santurbán, Santander department, seeking "monetary compensation for the damages suffered." The case concerns a ruling of Colombia's Constitutional Court last month that revoked all licenses granted to companies that sought to carry out mining activities on paramós [archive.is/2WykQ], the high alpine meadows that protect watersheds. The company maintains the Colombian government did not adequately demarcate the Santurbán paramó before giving a license for the project, which has received backing from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (ifc.org).
Countered Carlos Lozano Acosta of the InterAmerican Association for Defense of the Environment (AIDA, aida-americas.org): "From the beginning of Angostura it has been clear that the constitution and applicable nroms protect the paramós, and that the project would affect Santurbán, and therefore it could not be authorized. States should not be sanctioned for protecting their sources of water, and complying with their national and international obligations." (El Tiempo, March 17 [archive.is/5QKRS]; CIEL, March 14 [archive.is/T4KFT]; Eco Oro Minerals press release, March 7, via PR Newswire [archive.is/EgAeL])
The Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement took force in 2011, despite concerns over human rights and environmental standards [archive.is/jxPOw].
---
* "How to Hack an Election; Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time" (2016-03-31, bloomberg.com) [archive.is/aeCIY]
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* "Qatar: Abuse of World Cup Workers Exposed" (2016-03-31, amnesty.org) [archive.is/NLeZy]
===*===*===
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: Weapons for a New World Order
* "The truth about 3-D Printing and nuclear Proliferation; 3-D Printed Conventional Weapons Pose the Greatest Threat" (2015-12-14, warontherocks.com) [archive.is/IbFVx] [begin excerpt]: A recent article (.pdf) [http://is.gd/2AdxMK] on additive manufacturing sounded the alarm over the use of this technology for the production of a nuclear weapon. While the authors, Matthew Kroenig and Tristan Volpe, are correct to assert that additive manufacturing is changing proliferation, today’s clear and present danger comes from conventional weapons, not just nuclear warheads. To sound an alarm over the latter and signal a call to action on these grounds risks obscuring the scope of this threat and underemphasizing some key issues.
First, it is currently easier to produce a conventional weapon than a nuclear weapon using additive manufacturing technology. Second, significant challenges remain in using additive manufacturing to produce components for nuclear weapons. Third, and perhaps most significantly, a focus exclusively on nuclear proliferation by way of additive manufacturing misses the broader problem. As sensitive information and materials become increasingly digital, they elude our traditional tools for controlling who accesses and uses them. This is a challenge we face for weapon of all kinds, including conventional and cyber — it is not a uniquely nuclear problem. Effective solutions will require a comprehensive approach. [end excerpt]
===*===*===
WORLD FASCISM WATCH: #OPDeathEaters
A study of the personal ideologies and social practices of those who benefit from the global capitalist regime. [WorldFascists.blogspot.com]
* "VIP pedophile probe ‘ruined my life’ - Harvey Proctor" (2016-07-30, rt.com) [archive.is/AKyFc]
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* "Super Troopers' bum bust: Man arrested with equivalent of 1,400 bags of heroin inside his body" (2016-03-30, rt.com) [archive.is/v8HKr]
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* " 'Forced sex with dog': 98 Central African Rep. girls report shocking abuse by UN peacekeepers" (2016-04-01, rt.com) [archive.is/z5SIl]
---
* "How a spy probe wound up as a child pornography prosecution" (2016-04-06, AP Newswire) [archive.is/WSmvF] [beign excerpt]: FBI agents investigating a potential data leak at Boeing obtained a secret warrant to search the home computers of a company manager in California for evidence they hoped would connect him to Chinese economic espionage.
Instead, they say, they found something else entirely: graphic child pornography.
With that discovery two years ago, an investigation that began with sensational but ultimately unproven allegations of espionage veered into an unrelated child pornography prosecution that won Keith Gartenlaub's conviction in December.
Now, the Los Angeles case is testing a defendant's ability to access information about himself that had been presented to the nation's secretive intelligence court, which issued the warrant that let agents scour his computers. At issue is how the government uses evidence derived through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and under what circumstances that information should be seen by defendants, particularly when it's repurposed for a routine criminal prosecution that has nothing to do with national security.
Gartenlaub, 47, says he has a right to know the government's arguments that were used to obtain the warrant, and fight them. "You can't base a search on lies," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
He's seeking a new trial as he awaits his April 18 sentencing, saying there's no evidence he was aware of the child pornography or had ever accessed the images. If that's denied, he's likely to appeal on grounds that the warrant to inspect his computers was based on false assumptions and allegations of a crime — espionage — for which he's never been charged.
It won't be easy. His request to suppress pornography evidence he said was improperly obtained was denied before the trial. He's tried to review the sealed FISA court records in hopes of attacking the FBI search, but the government refused and a judge said he wasn't entitled to it.
"I don't want the FISA warrant for my own personal edification. I need to know whether they provided probable cause to a judge to search a man's computers and home," said his attorney, Mark Werksman. [...]
The FBI interviewed Gartenlaub multiple times in 2013 after a Wired.com article revealed a resemblance between a new Chinese aircraft, the Xian Y-20, and the Boeing C-17, a military cargo plane, and suggested someone within Boeing may have been responsible.
A separate FBI affidavit seeking access to Gartenlaub's Yahoo email account lays out the basis for suspicion, describing Gartenlaub as the "one engineer" who had access to C-17 data, intimate knowledge of Boeing's computer systems and family ties to China. His wife is from China with a family he'd described as "well connected," and he traveled regularly to the country and expressed frustration that Boeing sought to limit his excursions there over security concerns, the affidavit says.
A recent court filing suggested a connection to the prosecution of Su Bin, a Chinese businessman who pleaded guilty last month for his role in a Boeing hack that led to the theft of C-17 secrets.
But Gartenlaub, for his part, maintains he wasn't working on the C-17 program when the Su Bin theft is thought to have occurred and didn't have access to the data in the first place — though, he says, thousands of other Boeing employees did. He says the FBI misstated his position at Boeing, making it sound like he had broader access than he actually had.
The FBI accessed his computers early in 2014 after obtaining the FISA warrant and arrested him months later on pornography charges.
In its search the FBI says it found videos of prepubescent girls on multiple hard drives, and evidence that Gartenlaub maintained a "carefully curated and organized collection" that was copied multiple times. But Jeff Fischbach, a forensic examiner who reviewed the evidence for the defense, said there was no evidence the videos were ever opened or accessed in the years since they'd been downloaded and placed onto his computer and that other computer users may well have been responsible for the files.
"Either I'm this spy-slash-child pornographer, or I'm one of them, or I'm none of them," Gartenlaub said. "I'm telling you, I'm none of them."
Prosecutors, meanwhile, have recommended a 10-year prison term.
"Defendant," they wrote in a recent filing, "continues to deny any personal responsibility for his crimes of conviction." [end excerpt]
===*===*===
information collected by the
SOLANO PEACE, JUSTICE, AND FREEDOM COALITION
[SolanoPeaceJustice.blogspot.com], for justice, dignity and human rights, and an end to the USA's endless wars, in harmony with Principle 1 & 6 of International Law [archive.is/tmncz], the 5 protocols of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) [archive.is/LhUTj], and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [archive.is/U1Ota].
* "Then and Now: SF Bay Area Stars in Cuba/U.S. Diplomacy" (2016-04-04, postnewsgroup.com) [archive.is/fQEJE]
---
* REPORT # 1: SHUT DOWN CREECH (2016-03-29, Toby Blome, SF CODEPINK):
Photo showing Fred & Eleanor (More Photos from our first morning at Creech AFB below)We had a most successful 1st vigil on Mon. Mar. 28, with a good crowd of about 20 "Creechers" joining us for the very 1st morning vigil, with over 16 campers for the first evening at Camp Justice Sunday night.
Monday afternoon spring desert winds picked up ferociously, at times with gusts at over 60mph (evening weather reports said 70mph winds), and temperatures dropped drastically, testing our inner strength to continue our protest of drone warfare at the killer drone base known as Creech AFB, in southern Nevada. Large banners were substituted for smaller visuals and signs, including the 7 small coffins with names of 7 of the predominantly muslim nations we have been bombing over the last 15 years. We also showed a banner for GI RIGHTS HOTLINE with its phone number. Surprisingly, we stayed our ground throughout most of the 2 hour planned vigil, in spite of strong winds and dropping body temperatures.
The winds were still blowing fiercely throughout the night, and CODEPINK welcomed all campers onto the sacred grounds of the Temple of Goddess Spirituality, where the walls of the modest guest house/mobile home provided a haven and protected us from nature's elements. Everyone was well nourished with a simple meal and friendship...and space was found in the guest house for even the campers, as many of their tents had been blown into uninhabitable shapes! The winds howled through the night, and continued into the morning, letting up for only brief moments. Gigantic thanks to Don Kimball who held the peace fort at Camp Justice thru the night, keeping all secure. Dennis, Ralph and Ray have also been super generous, taking on the role of peace camp security crew for the entire week!
Col. Ann Wright joined us in the wee hours of the night, and woke up at 5am with the rest of us for today's vigil....with continuing very cold gales, some of us dared to hold a few of the medium sized banners, and smaller signs and visuals. As body temperatures continued to drop, an impromptu silent "funeral procession" was created with most of the 7 coffins/countries represented, with activist Susan Witka carrying the final message, following the coffins: "Who's Next?" The procession gave a somber tone about the overall human costs of global wars, while allowing some of the activists to warm up while being in continuous motion.
Counter protesters from town, the same 3 to 4 that have been coming regularly for years, are holding their space, in at times a very confrontation-seeking fashion, but thus far we have been able to do our best to stay within our nonviolence guidelines, and keep the confrontations from escalating, though it has been trying for some. The police have lined up barricades on most of both sides of the entrance into the base, anticipates the major civil resistance planned on Friday, but also showing favoritism, at times, to the counter-protesters. A beautiful sight this morning was seeing Phil, a local counter-protester deliver a cart load of firewood for our fire circle.
As I write this message the early afternoon winds continue to blow, with a forecast for calmer weather in time for our 3pm vigil today....let us hope so. Weather predicted to warm as week progresses. The EEK Team, "Environmentally Evolved Kids", our beautiful children's affinity group from Northern California, has been working hard today getting their "Angel attire" ready for the big day on Friday to SHUT DOWN CREECH.
The peace keepers bright yellow headbands were completed yesterday, thanks to the help of Arla, Maggie, Casey and Toby, ready for the "big day."
More folks are due to arrive tonight, as we all get ready for 3 days of more scheduled activities, including civil resistance/affinity group preparedness, the Drone Whistleblowers Symposium on Wed. night, the Concert with David Rovics on Thurs. night, and the big climax on Friday to peacefully and nonviolently put a halt to the killer drone operations at Creech, for as long as possible.
We will try to update you all throughout the week.
Please consider joining us next time.
TOGETHER WE CAN:
Ground the Drones & Stop Global Warfare,
More Photos from our first morning at Creech AFB below:
Camp security crew and VFP members: Ralph and Ray
Dennis, our third peace camp security assistant
The morning line-up: Maggie, Flora, Diana, Brian, Dan, and Mauro
Martha, standing for the GI's...."WE CARE ABOUT YOU TOO"
Dan and Mauro
Toby
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* "World military spending grows to $1.7tn in 2015" (2016-04-05, rt.com) [archive.is/INely]
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* "Military industrial complex: British Army teams up with big business to swell ranks" (2016-04-05, rt.com) [archive.is/vYy8S]
===*===*===
General Updates about the USA's World War and Consolidation for the Global Market Regime
* "Chaos erupts as Turkish security team kicks out media, confronts DC police at Erdogan event" (2016-03-31, rt.com) [archive.is/D33v9]
---
Articles by State and Defense Dept. assets arguing for war against the people of Iran:
* "How the Iran deal could complicate U. S. efforts to prevent a nuclear breakout; Contrary to what we are hearing from the White House, the nuclear deal with Iran could make preventive military action to stop an Iranian bomb an even more problematic proposition than it was before" (2015-08-31, by Michael Eisenstadt, warontherocks.com) [archive.is/vxfZA]
* "Five reasons why the iran nuclear deal is still a really bad idea" (2015-10-14, by David Jonas, warontherocks.com) [archive.is/uuAYT]
---
* "Expensive Weapons of Mass Destruction: As Saudi and Allies Bombard Yemen, US Clocks up $33 Billion Arms Sales in Eleven Months" (2016-04-01, by Felicity Arbuthnot) [archive.is/lQOpy]
---
* "The CIA Just Declassified the Document That Supposedly Justified the Iraq Invasion" (2016-03-19, news.vice.com) [archive.is/Lekdf]
* "Will Obama Murder One Million Iraqis Simply to Steal their Oil?" (2016-03-28, by F. William Engdahl, journal-neo.org) [archive.is/877D2] [begin excerpt]: Has the Obama Administration found the perfect crime that it thinks will allow it to finally grab the vast Iraqi oil riches while no one realizes what’s going on? If what I feel is building up in recent weeks over Iraq’s largest hydroelectric dam, Mosul Dam, is true, Washington is planning to let the dam soon blow, or even covertly blow it, releasing enough water to flood as far south as Baghdad and take out major Iraqi electric power generation, agriculture and oil production. If I am right, it could be the most grotesque way to secure geopolitical goals of Wall Street, Big Oil and of Washington since Vietnam. I hope I’m wrong.
For some weeks there has slowly emerged a theme in the western mainstream media about the danger of Iraq’s largest dam bursting and flooding the countryside under many feet of water from the Mosul region, potentially killing almost one million five hundred Iraqis, mostly Iraqi Kurds, alongside farmers farming along the fertile Tigris Valley. The Mosul Dam structure holds back over 12 billion cubic meters of water crucial for irrigation in the farming areas of Iraq’s western Nineveh province. Since its completion in the 1980s, the Mosul dam (then the Saddam Hussein Dam) has required regular maintenance involving injections of cement on areas of leakage.
The US government has recently invested a pitiful $27 million on “monitoring and repairs,” working together Iraqi teams. How many hundreds of billions has Washington spent with its military occupation of Iraq since March 2003? At least so far $2 Trillion according to a 2013 study. Something big is going on around the Mosul Dam and it doesn’t look at all nice. [end excerpt]
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* "Chemical, Radiological and Environmental Impacts of NATO’s War of Aggression against Yugoslavia" (2016-03-30, by Mirjana Andjelković Lukić, Proceeding of the International Conference on Ecology in Novi Sad) [archive.is/leCnt]
* "NATO’s War of Aggression against Yugoslavia" (2003-09-19, by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky) [archive.is/Xx8bS]
* "The History of “Humanitarian Warfare”: NATO’s Reign of Terror in Kosovo, The Destruction of Yugoslavia" (1999-08-11, by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky) [archive.is/OsT9Z]
* The Hague ICTY Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia: The Karadzic Verdict Intended to Erase US-NATO War Crimes, (2016-03-26, novorossia.today) [archive.is/Mqbow]
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* "Hybrid Wars" (2016-03, by Andrew Korybko, orientalreview.org)
- Part 1: "The Law of Hybrid Warfare" [archive.is/Acmsj]
- Part 2: "Testing the Theory - Syria and Ukraine" [archive.is/RbFHL]
- Part 3: "Predicting Next Hybrid Wars" [archive.is/P80G4]
- Part 4: "In the Greater Heartland" page 1 [archive.is/68jWw], page 2 [archive.is/N3GFG]
* "Pentagon chief seeks reforms, calls Russia ‘No. 1 strategic threat’ " (2016-04-06, rt.com) [archive.is/rz8Tb]
* "Crowdfunding The Color Revolution" (2016-03-24, en.riss.ru) [archive.is/aqyfk]
* "The US, Thai Human Rights, and Saudi Head Choppers" (2016-03-31, journal-neo.org) [archive.is/1QnPE]
* "Thailand: US State Department Gives Award to US-Created/Funded Agitator; Agitator funded by US State Department, gets award from US State Department - or - how to make illegitimacy & foreign-funded subversion look legitimate" (2016-03-30, by Tony Cartalucci, altthainews.blogspot.nl) [archive.is/FSVU4] [begin excerpt]:
The US State Department didn't objectively seek out who it thought was the most effective voice promoting human rights and democracy in Thailand, it simply offloaded a contrived award on one of its own paid-agitators. The organizations leading opposition to the current Thai government hold virtually no support within Thailand, [...]
Why are US-Funded Agitators Protesting the Coup?
It should be remembered that the 2014 coup was aimed at ousting the regime of Thaksin Shinawata - a convicted criminal, fugitive, and mass murderer who was attempting to run the country remotely from the United Arab Emirates through his own sister installed into the office of prime minister in his place.
During his sister Yingluck Shinawatra's 2011-2014 administration of the country, the incompetence of her and her cabinet would leave the nation reeling after catastrophic floods destroyed much of the central and northeaster regions of the country. Shinawatra's election gimmick - offering absurdly unrealistic subsidies for rice farmers - garnered many votes but quickly was plundered by her own party and upon going bankrupt and rice markets crashing, left over a million rice farmers both without their annual harvests and without promised subsidies.
Many farmers would even turn to suicide as a means of escaping the criminally-induced economic disaster the program wrought.
As protests began to swell during 2013-2014, Shinawatra's political machine, including corrupt police and literal terrorists, set out in waves of violence to mass murder and subdue them. Twenty people would die, including men, women, and children in grenade and assault rifle attacks.
A true woman who could be considered a hero is Chitpas Kridakorn - who didn't brave an "attitude adjustment" by the military for taking foreign cash and subverting her nation, but instead braved 40mm M79 rounds, hand grenades, AK-47s, and nearly nightly drive-by shootings to stand up to the Shinawatra regime.
The US State Department, however, sees nothing "heroic" about standing up to their own proxies - only for those shamelessly hiding behind "democracy" and "human rights" to prop those proxies up.
Indeed, Thaksin Shinawatra and his political party, for well over a decade, have proved invaluable to the United States and the corporate-financier special interests residing there.
- In the late 1990's, Thaksin Shinawatra was an adviser to notorious private equity firm, the Carlyle Group [archive.is/aHkW]. He pledged to his foreign contacts that upon taking office, he would still serve as a "matchmaker" between the US equity fund and Thai businesses. It would represent the first of many compromising conflicts of interest that would undermine Thailand's sovereign under his rule.
- In 2001 he privatized Thailand's resources and infrastructure including the nation's oil conglomerate PTT [archive.is/MZyf6] - much to Wall Street's delight.
- In 2003, he would commit Thai troops to the US invasion of Iraq [archive.is/dmOBN], despite widespread protests from both the Thai military and the public. Thaksin would also allow the CIA to use Thailand for its abhorrent rendition program [archive.is/iz7Fg].
- Also in 2004, Thaksin attempted to ramrod through a US-Thailand Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) without parliamentary approval [archive.is/NqK75], backed by the US-ASEAN Business Council [www.us-asean.org/us-thai-fta/ITC.pdf] [archive.is/EbhPt] who just before the 2011 elections that saw Thaksin's sister Yingluck Shinawatra brought into power, hosted the leaders of Thaksin’s "red shirt" "United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship" (UDD) in Washington DC [archive.is/b9Ukn].
- Since the 2006 coup that toppled his regime, Thaksin has been represented by US corporate-financier elites via their lobbying firms including, Kenneth Adelman [archive.is/s5iJK] of the Edelman PR firm (.pdf) [http://is.gd/cuoX1P] (Freedom House [archive.is/nIMFe], International Crisis Group [archive.is/qTEhI], PNAC [archive.is/xBVrH]), James Baker of Baker Botts [http://is.gd/RGKJYG] (CFR [archive.is/74G5J], Carlyle Group), Robert Blackwill [archive.is/RH7vo] (CFR [archive.is/74G5J]) of Barbour Griffith & Rogers (BGR) [http://is.gd/vqTyh8], Kobre & Kim [http://is.gd/Vsq9PV], Bell Pottinger [archive.is/QNWik] (and here [archive.is/dCtIC]) and currently Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Partners [http://is.gd/4JhZwC] (Chatham House [archive.is/z8t8C]).
It is clear then why the United States is really behind both Shinawatra and those who defend his regime, political party, and political networks under the guise of defending "democracy" and "human rights." Citing human rights is particularly ironic considering Shinawatra's regime was the worst violator of such rights in Thai history:
- In 2003, Shinawatra initiated what he called a "war on drugs." Nearly 3,000 were extrajudicially murdered in the streets over the course of just 90 days [archive.is/3Dxt]. It would later turn out that more than half of those killed had nothing to even do with the drug trade. In this act alone, Shinawatra earned himself the title as worst human rights offender in Thai history, and still he was far from finished.
- In 2004, he oversaw the killing of 85 protesters in a single day during his mishandled, heavy-handed policy in the country's troubled deep south. The atrocity is now referred to as the "Tak Bai incident" [archive.is/pwuJz].
Throughout his administration he was notorious for intimidating the press, and crushing dissent. According to Amnesty International [archive.is/C45SA], 18 human rights defenders were either assassinated or disappeared during his first term in office. Among them was human rights activist and lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit [archive.is/8mWdo]. He was last seen in 2004 being arrested by police and never seen again.
Also throughout Shinawatra's administration, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) claimed in its report, "Attacks on the Press 2004: Thailand" [archive.is/rrzue] that the regime was guilty of financial interference, legal intimidation, and coercion of the press.
- In April of 2009 gunmen would fire over 100 rounds into the vehicle of anti-Thaksin Shinawatra activist, protest leader, and media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul in a broad daylight assassination attempt [archive.is/zMRzM]. He was injured but survived.
---
* "Seminar on new society building in Mexico" (2016-03-28, KCNA Newswire) [archive.is/360rj]:
The 20th seminar of the world political parties on the building of a new society took place in Mexico from March 10 to 12.
It was attended by Alberto Anaya Gutierrez, national leader of the Workers’ Party of Mexico, and other members of the party leadership, delegates of its affiliated organizations, and delegations and delegates of over 130 political parties and organizations from more than 40 countries including the DPRK, Russia, China and Vietnam, some 700 in all.
Invited were the leaders of different political parties and parliamentarians of Mexico and diplomatic envoys of various countries such as the DPRK ambassador to Mexico.
Congratulatory speeches were made by political party delegates from the countries in Latin America before the congratulatory messages of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba were read.
They were followed by other speeches.
The head of the DPRK delegation said that the Korean people are now working hard to greet the Seventh Party Congress with unprecedented labour achievements while foiling the imperialists’ moves to stifle the country under the wise leadership of First Secretary Kim Jong Un, reiterating the unshakeable will of the Korean army and people to firmly defend national sovereignty and dignity in the face of the present grave situation in the Korean peninsula.
The seminar laid bare the nature and harmfulness of the political and military offensive of the imperialists and ultra-right forces to overthrow progressive governments, especially the campaign to mislead the public and psychological warfare through publications thoroughly and propaganda articles and the Internet, and discussed the measures to thwart it.
It adopted a document calling for extending positive support to the struggle of the WPK and the Korean people.
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Articles reflecting the views of war planners
(warontherocks.com)
* "How to explain nuclear deterrence to your neighbor" (2016-03-18, by Jonathan Altman and Jonathan Solomon warontherocks.com) [archive.is/trVYc]
* "Making Russia think twice about nuclear threats" (2016-03-09, by Paul I. Bernstein, warontherocks.com) [archive.is/S5gny] [begin excerpt]: On September 11, 2013, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, writing in The New York Times, issued “A Plea for Caution From Russia” [archive.is/T23BB]. Putin sought to communicate directly with the American people, warning against U.S. and Western unilateral military action in Syria — in response to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens — without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council. Such an action, Putin warned, would be destabilizing, deepen the cycle of regional violence, and potentially throw “the entire system of international law and order out of balance.” Putin further chastised the United States for its alarming tendency to intervene militarily in overseas civil wars and implied that U.S. strategies for dealing with problem states were encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons. Putin’s plea: “We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.”
We know that this “plea for caution” was nothing more than an effort to protect a Russian client state dressed up in the language of political and legal principle. How else can we understand Russia’s unilateral, unsanctioned military intervention in the Syria conflict in September 2015? Cynical? [end excerpt]
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