Tune in Thursdays 4 to 5pm (PST), at 89.5FM in the northeast San Pablo Bay Area, or online at [is.gd/kJ1EUt].
Hosted by Dr.G., Minister of Information of the Northbay MDS.
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 [is.gd/r18EVD].
===*===*===
InDIYpendent Media
Spotlight from the Northbay Uprising Media Collective -
Recommended Radical Newsletters:
* U.S. Labor Against the War newsletter (2016-06-06, uslaboragainstwar.org) [archive.is/U9FV3]
* Popular Resistance newsletter (popularresistance.org): Creating "Positive Peace" [archive.is/nVMKv]
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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]The 20th Commemoration of The Life of Tupac
[thenewparish.com/event.cfm?id=239469]
June 18th, Saturday, 3 to 7pm
$25, 21+
at The New Parish Courtyard [1741 San Pablo rd., Oakland]
Block Report Radio - The People's Voice on the Airwaves and Internet.The Block Report is a radio show that was conceived to teach Black people worldwide about ourselves and issues that are important to us. We believe it is our responsibility to teach our people, as well as people that support us, about us. We don't need translator-journalists to tell our story. We speak on our on behalf, unapologetically
DJ FUZE is a hip-hop DJ / Music Producer, who is most known for his work in the early 1990s with the multi-platinum, P-Funk inspired rap group, “digital underground.” Fuze co-produced several songs with d.u. band leader "Shock-G, on digital underground’s grammy nominated, platinum debut album entitled “Sex Packets.” Most notable of these songs is the bay area classic “Freaks of the Industry,” which still receives regular rotation in clubs and on urban radio stations throughout Northern California. Fuze was the DJ for digital underground during the groups entire platinum period, and thus toured with the likes of Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane, L.L. Cool J, Naughty By Nature, Kid and Play, Queen Latifah, 3rd Base, 2 Live Crew, Ice Cube, Ice T, Too Short, Heavy D and The Boys, The D.O.C., EPMD, BBD, etc. FUZE also appeared alongside digital underground in the Hollywood cult film flop entitled “Nothing But Trouble,” which starred Dan Akroyd, John Candy, Chevy Chase, and Demi Moore.
DJ FUZE also collaborated with the late superstar Tupac Shakur (R.I.P.) on his platinum debut album entitled “2PACALYPSE NOW.” In addition to naming the album, FUZE produced the song “Violent,” an immediate Oakland “trunk hit,” due to its bass heavy, dancehall inspired production, (Junior Reeds classic “Pirate Anthem”), as well as its revolutionary lyrics. DJ FUZE appeared several times alongside Tupac in the award winning documentary film “Tupac Resurection,” as well as in Tupac’s first two music videos, including “Trapped” and “Brenda’s Got A Baby.”
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Stop Urban Shield Town Hall
Friday, June 24 at 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
East Bay Media Center, 1939 Addison St, Berkeley, California 94704
[facebook.com/events/509531092580225]
[stopurbanshield.org]
Come through on Friday, June 24 to learn how to support the state-wide mobilization against Urban Shield on Sept. 9 in Pleasanton, CA! This is the second of three Town Halls that Stop Urban Shield is holding, and we encourage all social justice organizations and individuals in Berkeley and surrounding neighborhoods to attend.
Co-hosted by the Stop Urban Shield coalition, Berkeley Copwatch and Anti Police-Terror Project, we'll be facilitating an interactive forum to understand what exactly Urban Shield is, its tactics to repress our communities through increased militarization of police and emergency medical services, and its place within the global context of policing and imperialism. As we always must, we'll be highlighting the voices and deep insights of those who have lost loved ones to police violence and lifting up the ways our communities are building resilience against militarization.
In 2014, communities united to kick Urban Shield out of Oakland.
In 2015, we converged on the Sheriff's office in downtown Oakland to let them know that Urban Shield is not welcome in Alameda County.
And In 2016, we're taking it state-wide and putting Urban Shield on notice that we don't want them in California or anywhere else for that matter.
ABOUT URBAN SHIELD:
Urban Shield is a weapons expo and war-like police training that brings together law enforcement agencies from across the country and world to learn how to better repress, criminalize, and militarize our communities.
Urban Shield is a key player in creating militarized emergency response systems that make police the first responders to everything from climate disasters to uprisings. But as we saw during Hurricane Katrina, when “public safety” relies on armed emergency management, communities of color -- and particularly Black communities -- become an “emergency” that need to be controlled and managed with a military response.
COME JOIN US at this Town Hall to learn how WE can shrink Urban Shield -- and policing as a whole -- out of existence.
Access: Entrance and bathrooms are wheel chair accessible.
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Shut Down Nazi Rally!
[facebook.com/events/1727446437527487/]
Sponsored by AntiFa Sacramento [antifasac.weebly.com]
Get ready for Sacramento on Sunday, June 26th. The Golden State Skinheads, Traditionalist Workers’ Party, the KKK, and other groups are holding a rally at the State Capitol [archive.is/vLWM2]. Be there. This is shaping up to be the largest white power rally on the west coast in some time.
* "Battle for Sacramento: AntiFa Sacramento to confront Traditionalist Worker's Party on June 26th" (2016-05-22, antifascistnews.net) [archive.is/7eIq7]
* "National Mobilization: Blockade and shut down White Supremacy in Sacramento" (2016-05-25, itsgoingdown.org) [archive.is/380s4]
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PROTEST THE NATO SUMMIT
JULY 9, 2016, 12 NOON
[facebook.com/events/1238712506139331]
ABOLISH NATO - The NATO summit is taking place right now in Warsaw, Poland. Generals and other unelected bureaucrats are planning for endless war! STOP THEM!
We will have a Moment of Silence for the victims of NATO violence
- In Los Angeles at Grand Park, Downtown Los Angeles. Grand Park is located in Downtown Los Angeles. Grand Park stretches from The Music Center on the west to City Hall on the east between First and Temple
- In San Francisco at United Nations Plaza
Sponsored by the California Peace Coalition [lapeacecouncil.org]
For more information, contact us:
- In So. Cal. [213-448-4363]
- In Nor. Cal. [707-561-0683]
Post Office Box 741104 Los Angeles, CA. 90004
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Petaluma Progressive Festival
Sunday, July 31, noon-5:00 PM
Note, this annual event is typically held in September and this year is being held in July!
This year the San Francisco Mime Troupe returns! Featured Speakers to be announced.
Free event! For more information visit: [progressivefestival.org]
Walnut Park 201 4th St., Petaluma
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Veterans For Peace Annual Convention
at Clark Kerr campus of University of California Berkeley, CA
Aug 11-15, 2016
[facebook.com/events/515549201948082]
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Remembering the Kellogg Briand Pact
Aug 27
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International Day of Peace
Sep 21
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First SOAW bi-national convergence
Oct 7-10
at the U.S./Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona
[is.gd/CbG7kX]
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Armistice Day in your city
Nov 11
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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
People, Get Ready for Ethnic Cleansing!
I'm ready... to get the word out about human rights abuse.
I'm ready... to publicize the cases of political prisoners
I'm ready... to do what it takes to Protect The People.
Are you?
Are we ready to shut down the slave labor camps in the USA?
Are we ready to blockade the military bases in the USA?
Are we ready to stop the famine prevalent in the USA?
All the freedoms of the 20th century have been legislated away.
The only way the people can reclaim those freedoms is by being able to defend the freedoms our people fought and died for. This is a call to action for all paying attention.
One way or another, we will live free.
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* Labor Poets and Musicians Commemorate Anniversary Of Death Of Joe Hill (55:29) [http://youtu.be/nh0TCCQ9jco]
Vic Sadot & the Revolutionary Poets Brigade on July 14, 2015 in San Francisco. Organized by Steve Zeltzer and the Labor Video Project.
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* "Old growth trees spiked by eco-warriors in Oregon to stop logging" (2016-06-13, rt.com) [archive.is/8lpch]
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BAY AREA SOLIDARITY: Updates on campaigns across the Nation!
* "Black Lives Matter's 1st Political Prisoner Gets 90 Jail Days; The leading Black Lives Matter organizer was charged with "felony lynching," which activists say is worse than ironic" (2016-06-07, telesurtv.net) [archive.is/kLDTO]
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Building a major international campaign for justice for the three girls who were murdered by Pinellas County sheriff’s department. Uncovering the lies about the terror inflicted on these three young girls as the police stood by and watched them drown. Join us!
Uhuru Solidarity Movement - San Diego's event. [www.facebook.com/events/754940431315163]
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* "My Guns Saved My Life when the state and the liberals left me to die" (2016-06-14, by Gerry Bello, mockingbirdpaper.com) [archive.is/ANyvU][begin excerpt]:
I own firearms. I'm a leftist. Not a #feelthebern leftist. Bernie is too far to the right for me. Because of my politics, men have come to my home to kill me. This has happened more than once. When it did happen the only things that saved my life, and the lives of my roommates, were training and the physical possession of effective tools.I'll tell one story that will put the current clamor for more control on everyone and everything in perspective. I was actively organizing against the KKK and other white supremacists. So were my roommates and my entire social circle. The FBI attempted to contact me but claimed they could not find me. They got a call from a payphone via an intermediary. The agent, tired and wishing he didnt have to do this said “I am required by statute to inform you that we have credible threats against your life from white power groups.” He got my lawyer's phone number. I was not going to talk to him.
It was really clear that the FBI would rather bungle the investigation of my death than prevent it. We detected the surveillance attempts by the white supremacists. We allowed their surveillance to see that we were well armed. They went away. The FBI did not have us under surveillance. There was a police precinct house three blocks away. The police were never on our block. We were being set up to die.
The FBI knew what these guys were up to. The FBI knew where we were because these nazis did. Planning to murder someone in conjunction with another person and then putting your target under surveillance is a felony. It is conspiracy to commit murder. The FBI could have arrested and prosecuted these guys at any time. The FBI did not do so. The police were actively not present. The FBI did what was the barest minimum. We saved our own lives and we only could do so because we were armed.
This was not the only time in my life this happened. I was in Mississippi once defending a Planned Parenthood Clinic from militant pro-life activists. Planned Parenthood did not want our help. Both local and national pro-choice groups did not want our help. On the very first day of the protests somebody planted a fake bomb in the park where we were. We marched against this violence. The police arrested some of us for jaywalking.
We had our own house there. We rented it and filled it with activists. We knew that to control our own actions, politics and message we needed total control of our own logistics and safety. Our house had a gun locker. It turned out we needed it.
We took great care not to be followed home by the pro-lifers. They were not successful in finding us through direct surveillance. The police did find us and they did watch us. On the last day of the protests several car loads of pro-lifers came by and circled the block constantly. The only way these people could have found the house was if the police told them. The police were helping them to kill us. I was in the house alone. I displayed that I was armed, and very well armed at that. They're circling stopped. They backed off.
In both situations I had the kind of firearms that people scream to ban. Serious weapons with hi-capacity magazines. The kind of guns that bounce their head off the glass ceiling of legality. I have never discharged these weapons at anything more dangerous then a paper silhouette. However, as soon as my enemies knew that I had this capability, they fled, never to return. My enemies were planning on killing unarmed liberals. The police and the FBI helped my enemies. Once my enemies discovered I was not bringing a bong to a gun fight, they left.
The police will never disarm white supremacists and other right wing thugs. When people clamor for more background checks or denying firearm ownership to people on terrorist watch lists, they fail to understand the mentality of the people that make those lists.
In Minneapolis, now, today, the head of the Police Union is Bob Kroll. He is a white supremacist. He is part of a law enforcement only motorcycle club that openly displays neo-nazi imagery. He is not only allowed, but required to be armed. He has called Black Lives Matters a domestic terrorist organization. [...]
When Bob Kroll calls Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists, he cites a shooting that happened while the group was occupying the entrance to the 4th precinct police station in Minneapolis. Three white supremacists from the suburbs came to force a confrontation. When ejected they fired on the crowd wounding several people. The White Supremacist Cop Union Leader Bob Kroll calls people terrorists for being shot at a non-violent protest by white supremacists while they were unarmed. [...]
Somehow, in all this, middle class liberals who have comfort of protection from a white supremacist state want the rest of us to be disarmed by that state. Their petitions and lobbying did not save my life. I saved my life through my own training and preparation. My life needed saving from people they hate who were being helped by the people that protect them because I putting it on the line for values and ideas they espouse. They can go back to their guarded gated communities and watch the rest of us earn, win, and live our own just society and decent lives. [end excerpt]
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SOLIDARITY WITH THE NEW AFRICAN NATION!Black Power! Revive the Community! Defend the Nation!
National News [blackagendareport.com] [atlantablackstar.com] [sfbayview.com]
* " ‘Black Power’ turns 50: How the catchphrase revolutionized the civil rights movement" (2016-06-16, rt.com) [archive.is/jkle6]
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* "Ferguson Versus the Counter-Insurgency State" (2014-08-26, blackagendareport.com) [archive.is/1UMPT]
* (Ali Ref, BRLP Oakland Chapter) [archive.is/q5UPu]: REVOLUTIONARY BLACK URBAN GUERILLA! DARE 2 STRUGGLE DARE 2 WIN! ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE WHO DONT FEAR FREEDOM!
* "Family of injured Live Oak Classical School student sues school, field trip host" (2016-06-13, wacotrib.com) [archive.is/xwEUS]
* "School Ignored White Bullies Putting Rope Around a Black Girl’s Neck and Dragging Her" (2016-06-15, usuncut.com) [archive.is/IfZ6a]
* "You're not like them..."
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WORKER'S POWER!
information collected by the Worker's Defense Committee [is.gd/VOkmLr]
* "American Unions Form Alliance to Prevent Climate Disaster and Promote Prosperity" (labor4sustainability.org) [archive.is/MtxLc]
* "AFT Resolution on a Just Transition to a Peaceful and Sustainable Economy" (2016-06-06, uslaboragainstwar.org) [archive.is/7Wd7M]
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#PortStrike in Southern California! (2016-06-06, Edgardo, Port truck driver & Anthony, warehouse worker via ActionNetwork.org):
I’m Edgardo Villatoro, a port truck driver at XPO Logistics and I’M ON STRIKE!
I’m Anthony Vallecillo, a California Cartage warehouse worker and I’M ON STRIKE!
We are on strike to demand that the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach stop doing business with companies like California Cartage, XPO Logistics and Intermodal Bridge Transport who are breaking the law.
Right now we need you to help us with two things:
1. Sign our petition today: [https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/stop-lawbreakers-from-doing-business-at-ports]
2. Share our #PortStrike graphic right now on Facebook to show your support for working people like me.
Rampant wage theft, unfair treatment and unsafe conditions have kept port truck drivers and warehouse workers stuck in neutral for too long. Our employers continue to misclassify us as “self employed” or “temporary workers” even though we are doing vital jobs for our companies.
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* "The Women Who Are Taking on Walmart" (2016-06-05, truth-out.org) [archive.is/b1vBD] [begin excerpt]: Pico Rivera is a dusty working-class Latino suburb of Los Angeles. After the school district, Walmart is the city's largest employer and the source of 10 percent of its tax revenue. More than 500 families in the town depend on income from the store.
The town is also the epicenter of activism by Walmart workers in the United States.
Walmart associates have been fighting for four years to pressure the world's largest private employer to grant its workers decent conditions, a living wage and regular hours. [...]
Former Pico Walmart associate Jennie Mills has been living in her car for two years. She parks across from the Walmart where she used to work, sleeping in the little hatchback with her husband and their cat. I met her at the nearby Denny's where employees let the couple wash up every morning in the restaurant bathroom.
"Even when I was working," Mills told me, "I couldn't afford to pay for my apartment. When my son got hurt and couldn't work any more, I was evicted. There were three homeless workers at my Walmart."
Her son also worked for the Pico Walmart, doing lifting and stocking shelves. When he was injured on the job, he was told by his manager to continue working. Injured again, this time more seriously, he could no longer do his job. He was, she says, unceremoniously laid off. Since that time Jennie Mills has been a militant OUR Walmart activist. She wears the group's neon green T-shirt proudly.
Though Walmart workers have been organizing across the U.S. and around the world -- Chile and China have been particularly militant -- Pico's Walmart associates helped start it all.
In fall 2012, Denise Barlage and co-workers Venanzi Luna and Evelin Cruz led the first strikeagainst a Walmart in the United States. Unionized Walmart workers from Italy, Uruguay, Chile and South Africa flew in to support them, walking them back into the store when the strike ended so that managers could not harass or fire them for striking.
That same year, pregnant Walmart workers from California to Maryland also began challenging the stores' labor policies, Girshriela Green of the Crenshaw store in South Central Los Angeles told me.
When Green reached her last trimester of pregnancy, she asked her manager for lighter work. This was the first job she had been able to find since coming off welfare, she told me, and she really liked it. Still, she did not want to risk losing her baby. Her manager's response was not what she had hoped: Take an unpaid leave or "do your job." At that time, Walmart made no accommodations for pregnant workers.
Injured while lifting stock, Green saw no choice but to continue working. She couldn't afford to lose her paycheck. Repeatedly asked to stock bulky, heavy items, she says she ended up with dangerous bone spurs in her throat, and had to take a leave. She was sitting on her living room couch in a neck brace when the call came telling her she'd been fired. That's when she decided to join Organization United for Respect at Walmart, better known as OUR Walmart.
Green reached out to other pregnant Walmart workers. They formed a group called Respect the Bump. With the help of the National Women's Law Center, Respect filed a complaint against Walmart with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They charged violation of the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
Before the complaint could be fully litigated, Walmart announced a change in policy. It would now make accommodations for pregnant workers.
But the changes in policy were not enough to stop injuries on the job -- even after the Supreme Court's 2016 UPS decision ordering that company to make accommodations for pregnant workers. Respect is continuing to fight and to sue.
To protest Walmart's retaliations against activists, workers from 30 cities walked off their jobs in Spring 2013, joining a Ride For Respect to Walmart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Green told me that the "Respect Riders" were met by security and dogs. "We just wanted to talk to our employers. And they threatened to have us arrested."
It was in November of 2014 that Barlage, Luna, Tyfani Faulkner and 25 others staged a sit-down strike, the first retail sit-down since Woolworth workers struck in 1937. "We shut down the store for almost two hours," Luna told me. "Corporate was freaking out."
She and other workers put tape over their mouths bearing the word STRIKE. The tape was meant to illustrate Walmart's attempts to silence workers, Barlage and Luna told me. The strikers held up pictures of the Woolworth sit-down strikers. They felt they were making history.
Meanwhile, in Pico-Rivera, hundreds of protesters sang the old labor anthem "We Shall Not Be Moved." Then, parodying Walmart's slogan "Pay Less, Live Better," they sat down in traffic holding hand-lettered signs that read: "Stand Up, Live Better. Sit Down, Live Better."
At first, the pressure seemed to yield results. In Spring 2015, Walmart announced that it would be raising wages for 500,000 of its lowest-paid workers to US$9 an hour by April 2015 and $10 an hour by 2016. There was a quick shareholder backlash and dire predictionsabout how these wages would affect corporate profits.
Then, in April 2015, corporate headquarters suddenly closed five stores in four states, laying off 2,200 workers without warning. Pico Rivera was among the stores closed. Venanzi Luna told me she came to work that day and found the doors locked. No one saw it coming, she said. Full-time workers and some part-time employees received 60 days severance. Many did not qualify. Walmart claimed that most workers who wanted transfers to other stores were given that opportunity. Luna says that is not true and that none of the transferred workers were members of OUR Walmart.
Management claimed the stores were shut down to repair plumbing problems. OUR Walmart and allies in the United Food and Commercial Workers said it was punishment for the militancy of the Pico workers.
Walmart has a history of shutting down stores to punish strikers. In 2013 and 2014, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that Walmart was illegally intimidating and sanctioning workers in retaliation for their organizing.
Workers at the five closed stores filed Unfair Labor Practice complaints.
In November 2015, in time for Black Friday, the Pico Rivera store was reopened. None of the OUR Walmart activists was rehired, Luna and Barlage told me. Venanzi Luna is still out of work. "I was suicidal for a while," she said, despondent at the thought that her activism had left her neighbors without income. "People came over to me and said 'If it wasn't for you, we would still have our jobs.'" Recently, when Luna tried to shop where she used to work, she says that she was recognized, stopped and escorted out by security.
Still, Luna, Barlage, Cruz, Green, Mills and Tyfani Falkner are in the struggle for the long haul. The Pico Rivera workers and allies from across the U.S. have continued to rally and speak out. Over Thanksgiving 2015, Falkner, Barlage and other current and former Walmart associates staged a Fast for $15 hunger strike in front of the Manhattan apartment of Walmart heiress Alice Walton. They had a banner that read "Alice Walton: Walmart Workers are Hungry." [end excerpt]
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* "B&H Workers Train to Win" (2016-06-08, labornotes.org) [archive.is/Z6nB6] [begin excerpt]:
Union elections are often close—but not at a pair of Brooklyn camera warehouses last fall. Three hundred workers at B&H, a popular video and photography equipment company, won their union election with an overwhelming majority.
How did B&H workers hold so strong even when their boss threatened mass firings? Behind the scenes, they got the organizing skills they needed from in-depth leadership training with the Laundry Workers Center. [...]
The training with the initial group of leaders began in September 2014, and one of their first steps was to map the workplace.
Health and safety soon emerged as urgent concerns. “We realized that all of the workers suffered from nosebleeds, headaches, and many had hurt their backs,” said López. “Many had hernias, loss of vision, neck pain. It really impacted us to see that workers were working in these conditions.”
Workers mapped where the hazards were worst. Then they used their map to identify leaders in each department and floor. “A leader is someone that others follow or respect,” said Rodríguez. “There is always someone who can bring along other workers.”
“Almost always,” adds López, “a leader is someone who speaks up on behalf of other workers.”
The B&H workers used this information to decide which co-workers should be their first priorities to recruit. Using the conversation skills they learned in the trainings, they invited each potential leader to an organizing meeting. As new workers got involved, they too were invited to the mobile institute, where they learned to recruit others and helped develop the campaign plan.
“Usually, the institute is eight weeks,” said Rodríguez, “but with the B&H workers, there were always new people joining and we would have to start from scratch.”
As part of their training, B&H workers went to rallies to support McDonald’s and Wendy’s workers and the Black Lives Matter movement. At first many were nervous, Pedraza said—but once they had some action experience under their belts, their fears diminished.
You can’t send people into war their first day, López explained. “It has to be a process where they are learning from other experiences of struggle. That way, the day they launch their campaign, it is something normal.”
Participating in other actions also helped build networks of solidarity that B&H workers drew on when they were ready to go public themselves. [end excerpt]
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COMMUNITY FASCISM WATCH
Community Fascism in Vallejo, the "City of God":
* (2016-06-13, from a Democrat Party California Primary Election Delegate from Vallejo):
The Community Democratic Club in Vallejo must stop giving cover to those who oppose LGBTQ rights. Thinking that your religion justifies this violates the separation of church and state enshrined in the Constitution of the United States. It also goes against the platform of the Democratic Party. Intolerance and ignorance fester and breed in these types of environments and greatly hinder the struggle for equality. Simply put, it is wrong.
* (2016-06-14, Susan George):
In all honesty, I would really prefer not to have to talk about this and instead say "let's all love one another and move forward". I know it is uncomfortable not only to say these things but to read them as well.
However, the resultant actions of some ways of thinking and of proselytizing have consequences, sometimes tragic, horrible consequences like the vicious hate crime that took place in the early morning hours last Sunday in Orlando, Florida. And when one remains silent in the face of such tragedies, it becomes a kind of crime against one's own conscience. In this case silence becomes complicity to these tragedies past, present, and future.
Last Sunday, a dear friend who happens to be a gay man found this doorhanger on his front porch. Photos [archive.is/WRrmN] [archive.is/ygLX8].
I would guess that the person handing these out and even perhaps most of the members of this and other congregations that distribute these and align themselves with "Transformation Vallejo" in the town that I love probably have no idea of the hateful cancer that is at the root of this "call" to prayer. If we believe in a particular faith, in this case an evangelical Christian faith, that asks us to pray for others and for our neighborhoods and communities, that's a good thing, right?
Well, no, in this case it is not. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Not when Transformation Vallejo is headed by an ultra-homophobic leader, Ed Silvoso, a Dominionist and a major proponent of conversion therapy--scientifically proven to be ineffective and extremely harmful o to LGBTQ people--a vehement anti-gay rights proponent, and a believer in the complete annihilation of the separation of church and state, and much more.
Back in August of last year, Matthew Finkelstein and I wrote an article on this topic that Marc Garman and the Vallejo Independent Bulletin (VIB) ran, after the Vallejo Times Herald chose to not run, for whatever reason.
Please take the time and read this article that I will post in the comments section, and the many links provided at the end of the article. Garman and the VIB have provided excellent investigative journalism on this topic of Dominionism, Ed Silvoso, and its connection to some of Vallejo's faith community and public leaders.
Please, educate yourself, whatever your faith or non-faith may be. I know that the great majority of us would never want to be connected with Dominionism, Ed Silvoso and the terrible hate in the name of religion that it teaches and horrible actions it has condoned.
Then, please, peacefully and lawfully, do whatever you can to help stop this very dangerous culture of ignorance and hate from growing.
* "Door Hangers of Hate - The Truth behind the Blue Butterfly" (2015-08-13, vibvallejo.com) [is.gd/xADMcs]
* "The Evangelicals Engaged In Spiritual Warfare" (2011-08-19, npr.org) [archive.is/pOiS]
* "From U.S. to S. Korea to Africa, Christian Anti-Gay Activism Led By The NAR" (2015-06-28, twocare.org) [archive.is/9QlQc]
===*===*===
Documenting human-rights abuse by domestic security agencies
NORTHBAY COPWATCH
[NorthbayCopwatch.blogspot.com] [copblock.org] [wecopwatch.org] [filmingcops.com]
* "The Real Reason Why Oakland's Police Chief Was Fired A sexual-misconduct scandal involving police brass at multiple agencies, leaked undercover investigations, botched oversight by Sean Whent — Mayor Libby Schaaf got it wrong" (2016-06-10, eastbayexpress.com) [archive.is/40Zk2] [begin excerpt]: The Express has learned that the sexual-misconduct scandal involves more than just a few rank-and-file Oakland cops, but also high-ranking officials from departments throughout the Bay Area. A few committed statutory rape of the victim, who was an under-age sex worker at the time, and informed her of undercover police operations.
According to interviews with the victim, elected officials, and sources close to OPD, in addition to documents obtained by the Express, at least fourteen Oakland Police officers, three Richmond Police officers, and four Alameda County Sheriff's deputies had sex with the girl who goes by the name Celeste Guap. (The Express is not publishing Guap's real name because she was a sexually exploited minor when the abuse began.)
Three Oakland police officers committed statutory rape of Guap when she was under-age. She says all of the law-enforcement agents who had sex with Guap knew she worked as a sex worker.
According to text messages between police officers and the victim, at least three OPD officers leaked her confidential information about undercover prostitution stings. One Oakland cop obtained police reports and criminal histories and shared them with the victim, which is against department policy. Guap also said she slept with cops as a form of protection. [end excerpt]
* "Woman At Center Of Oakland Police Sex Scandal Speaks" (2016-06-10, sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com) [archive.is/4qBzI]
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* "Los Angeles: School Days and Grenade Launchers" (2016-06-09, citywatchla.com) [archive.is/z5ngX] [begin excerpt]: APOLOGIZING FOR THE MILITARIZATION OF THE LA’S SCHOOL POLICE--Come on, they aren’t tanks, they’re armored rescue vehicles. And the, uh, grenade launchers would only be used to launch teargas canisters. When necessary. And the M-16s? Standard police issue.
What a journey these Los Angeles teenagers, and the civil rights group Fight for the Soul of the Cities, had, to get from there — the ho-hum justification by (good Lord) the city’s school district police force, for the accumulation of surplus Defense Department weaponry — to here:
“Our recent meeting and dialogue has led me to review my actions as Board President during this difficult period. Upon reflection, I failed to understand the amount of pain and frustration our participation in the 1033 program could cause in the community and especially with our partners from the Dignity in Schools Campaign and the Fight for the Soul of the Cities...”
These are the words of Los Angeles School Board President Steve Zimmer, speaking in genuine anguish as he acknowledges that militarizing school district police has, to put it mildly, a serious downside. He continues, in his letter last month to the Labor/Community Strategy Center, parent organization of Fight for the Soul of the Cities:
“I now understand that especially in the context of the many conflicts between law enforcement and communities of color across the nation, our participation in this program may have created perceptions about the role of our district and our school police that my silence exacerbated. . . . I now understand that even the possession of such weapons in the context of this moment damaged trust that we now must all work to rebuild. Please accept my apology...”
This is an extraordinary victory — possibly the first of its kind in the nation.
It’s a victory for civil rights. It’s a victory for kids. But primarily, it’s a victory for absolutely basic common sense. The Los Angeles School Police Department — a police force whose sole responsibility is to maintain order in the public schools — has returned all the weapons, including grenade launchers, a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (i.e., a tank) and 61 M-16 automatic rifles, which it had obtained under the controversial 1033 program, to the U.S. Department of Defense.
It provided proof that it did so. And it apologized — to the children and teenagers in the Los Angeles Public Schools. The apology was an acknowledgement — oh, so painfully rare in 21st century America — that real order isn’t a matter of armed domination. It was an acknowledgment that education requires trust and trust is annihilated by the appearance of a military dictatorship.
The struggle with the School Board over this began in 2014, shortly after members of the civil rights group had gone to Ferguson, Mo., to show solidarity with the protests over the police shooting of Michael Brown.
“We come back from Ferguson and find out they have a tank, grenade launchers — it was a declaration of war,” Manuel Criollo, director of organizing at Fight for the Soul of the Cities, told me.
And thus began almost two years of sit-ins and protests. Hundreds of students participated. They refused to compromise or accept half-measures from the school board. “First they got rid of the grenade launchers,” Criollo said. “In the winter of 2014, they got rid of the MRAP tank. By early 2015, they argued that the M-16 was a standard police weapon. They said, ‘We no longer have military weapons’ — even though the M-16 is considered a cruel weapon by the Red Cross.”
But the students didn’t give up. When the School Board finally said it got rid of all its Defense Department armaments, they still weren’t satisfied. They demanded proof, and an apology. [end excerpt]
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* "Woman raped in jail by police dispatcher offered a taco, not hospital attention" (2016-06-10, rt.com) [archive.is/4TK1I] [begin excerpt]: A woman has sued for $70 million after she was raped in a Texas jail in March 2014 following a misdemeanor probation arrest. Though jail officials saw video footage of the rape, they only offered her a taco, refusing to provide access to a hospital.
On May 29, 2014, Felipe Santiago Peralez, a former dispatcher with the La Joya Police Department, sexually assaulted the woman for hours in a cell at the La Joya City Jail, she claims in a lawsuit. Though she said she screamed in pain during the assault, no one came to her aid since all the other officers were on patrol, the lawsuit says.
"Peralez began an all-night invasion of plaintiff's body, by inserting his fingers, hands, and other objects into her buttocks and vaginal areas of plaintiff's body," according to the suit, reported first by Courthouse News.
Peralez entered the woman's cell promising he "would make things right for her if she wanted to use the phone" following her arrest for violating her probation, the complaint says. Peralez proceeded to assault the woman, forcing her to provide oral sex before the encounter was over.
The woman said she told two female officers about the rape, and that other officers viewed surveillance footage of the assault, but no one offered to take her to the hospital for an emergency room examination, which is in fact Texas law for rape investigations. [end excerpt]
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* "Crime “Prediction”: The Algorithms of Racist Injustice" (2016-05-25, blackagendareport.com) [archive.is/m4J77]
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* "Government Probe into POLICHACAO Reveals US Police Training and Embassy Links" (2016-06-07, venezuelanalysis.com) [archive.is/HzIlr] [begin excerpt]: In the initial phase of the 90 day-probe into Chacao’s municipal police force (POLICHACAO), President Nicolás Maduro made public evidence revealing that local officers are training with United States police and are in daily communication with the US Embassy [archive.is/V0nGz].
National police authorities opened an investigation into the opposition-controlled municipality's police force following the murder of Army Major General Félix Velásquez allegedly at the hands of POLICHACAO officers on Sunday, May 29 in Santa Mónica, Caracas.
“We found that a group of officials and officers are training in the United States, sent by the US Embassy. We found a connection between the Director and Sub-Director, [along with] daily conversations with the US Embassy,” said Maduro from the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in the nation's capital.
The South American leader accused POLICHACAO of being at the center of a criminal conspiracy, denouncing the police department's links to what he termed "paramilitary criminal bands”.
Maduro criticized right-wing Chacao Mayor Ramón Machado for his alleged lack of initiative in resolving the issues within the Polichacao department, citing the experience of Venezuela's violent 2013 and 2014 opposition protests known as the guarimbas. Polichacao serves the largely upper middle class municipality of Chacao on the east side of Caracas. [end excerpt]
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* "Crazed Greenwich Village Gunman Also Off-Duty NYPD Officer" (2016-06-14, gawker.com) [archive.is/kK92H]. Motorist drives in bicycle lane, bicyclists get upset, motorist hops out of car with loaded gun drawn on bicyclists. Cops come and a bicyclist - not the gunman - is arrested. Why? Because the gunman is an off duty cop. NYPD has refused to back down on this and refused to identify the gunman cop in the video. Please share share share. Let's get him identified.
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* "Judge Aaron Persky: A Bench is Not a Throne" (2016-06-11, janbtucker.com) [archive.is/EpUmC] [begin excerpt]:
Judge Charles W. Stoll threw out a Family Leave Act case against Disney Imagineering brought by a member of my NOW Chapter. We pulled his Form 700 Statement of Economic Interests and found that his single largest investment was in Disney stock….like around $50,000.00 worth of it. Responding to my press release announcing my complaint to the Commission on Judicial Performance, Stoll told reporters that he didn’t know that state law required him to recuse himself — on the 23 out of 25 cases in the Glendale Branch that had conveniently been assigned to him, not one of which made it to trial — for any conflict of more than $1,500. My response to his claim was that when a judge claims “ignorance of the law” as an excuse, it “is not an excuse; it’s an indictment.” See http://articles.latimes.com/1996-06-04/news/mn-11608_1_improper-conduct
The result: Stoll was publicly reproved by the Commission, and later when I was sued in a case before him, he extended the deadline to allow the Plaintiff to serve me without any legitimate cause. I complained to the Commission that he should have recused himself because I had very publicly gotten him disciplined. The Commission refused to take any action.
Run against a judge and the retaliation will be even worse by the judge’s colleagues and the Commission will do nothing to protect you.
Filing Fees and Ballot Statement Fees -
California filing fees to run for office are a percentage of a year’s salary for the office, so every time they raise their salaries they make it that much harder for working people and the poor to run for office. The current filing fee is $1,890.41 to run for judge and the way the rules are rigged, in order to hope that you can file for one of the several seats that might be vacant, you might have to pay filing fees for more than one seat just to play the game and get into the right race.
Candidate statements will cost Superior Court candidates tens of thousands (I think around $50,000) and you cannot even get those fees waived if you are indigent. [end excerpt]
NORTHBAY COPWATCH: Domestic Security Agencies and private-sector partners
* "Border Patrol Union Scorns Award for Agents Who Follow Policy to Avoid Deadly Force" (2016-06-13, by Chris Rickerd, ACLU Washington Legislative Office, aclu.org) [is.gd/5ajnys]
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* "The Danger of Corporate Facial Recognition Tech; The Illinois Biometric Privacy Statute Survived a Recent Attack. But the Struggle Continues" (2016-06-07, eff.org/deeplinks) [archive.is/wVCLM]
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* "Constitutional Judge Begs America To “Wake Up” Over Fed’s Plan To Spy On Your Web Activity" (2016-06-09, by Matt Agorist) [archive.is/Dijat]
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* "NSA learning how to snoop on pacemakers" (2016-06-12, rt.com) [archive.is/GJ4Yj]
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* "Facebook listens and records your conversations" (2016-06-04, komando.com) [archive.is/Gvv95]
* "Facebook now tracking you using GPS, Wi-Fi and cellphone towers" (2016-06-14, komando.com) [archive.is/bESHg]
* "Google Maps Has Been Tracking Your Every Move, And There’s A Website To Prove It" (anonews.co) [archive.is/vMaYN]
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* "Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government; Broad criticism, but positive performance ratings in many areas" (2015-11-23, Pew Research Center, pewresearch.org) (.pdf) [is.gd/dd7pKF]
* "More Than 1 In 4 Americans Now Believe the U.S. Government is the Enemy of the People" (2015-12-23, by M. David, countercurrentnews.com) [is.gd/11HQCh]:
A startling new study reveals that more than 1 in 4 Americans now believes that the government is the enemy of its very citizens.
The Pew Research Center concluded that 27 percent of all registered voters describe the U.S. government as the “enemy” of the people. That percentage is thought to be lower than the overall average, as many non-voters are assumed to have an extremely negative or despondent view of the government as well.
This is up 8 points since the same survey was done in 1996.
This poll specifically looked at general public opinion regarding the federal government and its relationship to U.S. citizens.But it isn’t just those 27% who the government should be worried about. A full 57% of voters say they feel frustrated with the government, with another 22% feel angry and only 18% feeling “basically content.”
That means 82% of U.S. citizens is in some way pretty upset with the State. Those 22% who are angry could easily sway into the group that the 27% are in – who describe the government as their “enemy.”
A full 59% surveyed say that the government needs “very major reform.” That’s huge when you consider that only 37 percent of voters felt that way in 1997.Lest you fall into the partisan trap of thinking that this is skewed by anti-Obama hatred on the right, 35% of Republicans say that they believe the federal government is the enemy, while 34% of Independents say the same thing.
There are also 12% of Democrats who say that they would outrightly describe the government as the “enemy” of the people.
Only half of Democrats had an overall favorable view of the government as the “friend” of the people. When we consider what the mainstream media sells us about partisan opinions on this matter, that is an extremely high rate of discontent and distrust of the government from the left.
A full 75% of all registered voters acknowledges that the government is essentially “run by a few big interests” and not is not representative of the people.
What do you think about these findings? Do you think the government is representative of its citizens, or is the actual “enemy” of the people?
===*===*===
NORTHBAY COPWATCH: Five-Eyes, and other transnational partners
* "Colossal US rocket loaded with classified snooper satellite cargo shot into space" (2016-06-12, rt.com) [archive.is/KvhCc]
===*===*===
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].
* "Forget Hunger Strikes. What Prisons Fear Most Is Labor Strikes; Prisoners throughout Alabama and Texas reclaim their humanity—and power—by shutting down the economic infrastructure of their prisons" (2016-06-07, yesmagazine.org) [archive.is/QXFrG]
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* Wisconsin Prisoners Hunger Strike [archive.is/vwHKx]
* "Hunger strike begins at Wisconsin prisons" (2016-06-10, channel3000.com) [archive.is/FevMa]
* "WISDOM stands in solidarity with Waupun protesters" (2016-06-07, rocwisconsin.org) [archive.is/QEWnk]
* "Call Today - Support Wisconsin Prisoners on Hunger Strike" call-to-action:
Hello friends and fellow workers!
We still have two requests for people to call in. The first one starts today, Friday, June 10th and one started Monday that is still ongoing.
Details for the Friday call in are here [archive.is/hg2fu] and are also pasted in below.
Details for the Monday call in are here [archive.is/QijK5].
Thank you!!
Starting Friday, June 10, at least six prisoners in longterm solitary confinement at Waupun Correctional Institute and Columbia Correctional Institute will begin a hunger strike to demanding an end to solitary confinement in Wisconsin Department of Corrections. Please take a minute to call, and put pressure on officials to listen to them and stop torture of prisoners in Wisconsin. For day one of the hunger strike, prisoners are asking that you call 608-742-9100 for Columbia Correctional Institute Warden Michael Dittman and 920-324-5571 for Waupon Correctional Institute Warden Brian Foster.
Sample script: "I am calling in support of the food refusal being done by prisoners in longterm solitary confinement in Waupun and Columbia. They are taking this action because of the abusive and extended use of isolation at your facility, and across the Department of Corrections. Resistance from inside prisons and outside support will continue as long as these conditions do. This food refusal has six humanitarian demands, several of which you can immediately address. You need to use your influence to immediately move prisoners who have been in longterm solitary confinement for more than a year. You should also institute proper mental health treatment of these people, and comply with the U.N. Mandela Rules on the use of solitary confinement. This is day one of the hunger strike."
There will be updates and further calls to action as the situation develops.
From a letter by one of the inmates organizing the food refusal:
"In the state of Wisconsin hundreds of prisoners are in the long term solitary confinement unit aka Administrative Confinement (A.C.). Some been on this status from 18 to 20 years concurrents. We are planning a hunger strike for June 10, 2016 and we need all the help we can get to get this to the media, put pressure on the D. O.C and politicians, etc. When calling and/or emailing any of the above be persistent. Do it a minimum of two of two or three times per day. You may also call Waupun Correctional Institution to check on our well being at 920-324-5571".
Here is a "How-To" video for calling prisons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=251DPVDQ17A (the example used is a lot longer than what's expected for this call, but it shows how the process can often look like)
If you're participating internationally, you can make an international voice call to the US very cheaply using google voice / hangouts
If you wish to write to participating prisoners to make message of support, please write to: Cesar Deleon #322800, Lamar Larry #293906,
Rayshun Woods #390831, LaRon McKinley #42642, at:
Waupon Correctional Institute
P.O. Box 351
Waupon, WI 53963
Ras Atum-Ra Uhuru Mutawakkil (s/n Green) #228971 has recently been transferred to Columbia, and can be written at
Columbia Correctional Institute
P.O. Box 900
Portage, WI 53901
When writing, keep statements of support vague, language including "hunger strike" will most likely be blocked. People who wish to write can use the Milwaukee IWW PO Box as a return address, at PO Box 342294, Milwaukee, WI, 53234.
More information on the incarcerated workers participating in this
action and their writings can be found at: [solitarytorture.blogspot.com]
---
Pinkney Hunger Strike
Date: June 2, 2016 at 11:19:02 AM PDT
Dear Readers of the People’s Tribune [http://www.peoplestribune.org],
We received the information below that Rev. Edward Pinkney is on a hunger strike inside Marquette Prison over rotten food served to prisoners and other deplorable prison conditions. Rev. Pinkney, who was unjustly imprisoned in a phony vote fraud trial that sought to unseat a corporate backed mayor in Benton Harbor, Michigan, would like to speak on radio about this. Radio interviews can be arranged by calling 800-691-6888 or by emailing info@speakersforanewamerica.com/ Even if you are unable to arrange an interview, please direct your social media friends to the Free Pinkney! page on the People’s Tribune website for analysis and information about this important struggle, which we have been covering since 2005. Share the link: http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/free-pinkney/ Please also visit bhbanco.org for updates and to make donations for this fight. Contact justice4pinkney.com for more information on his defense.
The fight to Free Rev. Pinkney is part and parcel to the struggle against corporate power/fascism unfolding in our country, which is most visible in the state of Michigan. The destruction of democracy in that state, witnessed in the poisoning of Flint, the inhumane water shutoffs, and the destruction of the public school system, is made possible by the state’s dictatorial Emergency Manager system that throws out elected officials in order to privatize city services, slash union contracts and turn city assets such as water over to the corporations.
The callous treatment given to prisoners in Michigan is but another example of what dictatorship looks like under the reign of the corporations. Whether it is the privatization of water, the schools, or the huge profits made by selling rotten food to the government for the prisoners, the lives of a section of people are now totally expendable. What is happening in Michigan is a harbinger of what’s coming to all of America if people do not act. Defend our leaders! Defend Rev. Pinkney.
Information on the hunger strike:
Last Monday, May 23, the majority of the prisoners held a protest of the horrendous quality of the food served at Marquette by Trinity Services Group, Inc. of Florida. Rev. Pinkney is on his 6th day of a hunger strike to protest deplorable conditions at the prison. He intends to refuse to go to "chow" so that he does not swipe his chow card 1,050 times. This simple act will cost the system money because the food service is privatized and the prison gets a "kickback" if you will, each time an inmate swipes his card. Prior to the hunger strike, Rev. Pinkney would go to chow, swipe his card, and not eat the food.
Rev. Pinkney's statement:
At Marquette Branch Prison in Marquette, MI, on May 23, more than 700 prisoners came together to protest food served by Trinity Services Group, Inc. to the prisoners. The action by the prisoners was also in protest of the poor conditions at Marquette Branch Prison.
These prisoners unified against government waste and corruption in the prison system. They demanded food that doesn't make them sick.
This unity among hundreds shows what people can do when they come together over a common cause. The protest was not organized by any one individual, but was a culmination of conditions that are unbearable at this prison.
This dangerous food is generally eaten by most of the prisoners, and this leads to health issues that must be treated. Ultimately, the healthcare costs, brought on by this corrupt system, become the burden of unsuspecting Michigan taxpayers.
Those on the outside do not realize the inhumanity of the prison system. Prisoners, when released, do not want to talk about the stress they endured while in the system. Prisoners who participate in peaceful protests are retaliated against by the prison officials.
It is my duty, as a reverend, as a servant of God, as an unjustly accused man, and as a concerned citizen of Michigan, to report to you about these conditions. I have personally witnessed seeing worms in the food and prison kitchen workers have reported that spoiled food containing rodent waste, maggots, worms, and bugs have been served regularly to inmates.
Therefore, I, Reverend Edward Pinkney, have decided I must go on a hunger strike to personally protest the deplorable food and conditions at Marquette Branch Prison in Marquette, Michigan.
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* "Special Treatment For Cocaine Dealer Who Judge Said Shouldn’t Be Jailed With ‘Streetwise Criminals’ " (2016-06-07, by Jackson Marciana and Reagan Ali, countercurrentnews.com) [is.gd/iE3GjZ]:
First thing is first, there is no question that the so-called “War on Drugs” has been an abject failure. There’s also no justification for locking someone in a cage for making choices we don’t agree with, as long as they do not directly infringe upon the rights of others.
But why would a judge who locks people up for plants at a near-daily rate, suddenly decide that prison is too severe of a sentence for a convicted cocaine dealer?
That’s what happened when Simon Beveridge managed to keep his freedom.
A judge let the convicted cocaine dealer avoid any time behind bars, because locking him up would expose him to “streetwise” criminals.
Beveridge gave what some called a “breathtakingly frank” testimony. According to the Gazette, the judge openly wondered whether it was “in the public interest” to put him in prison.
The judge described the privileged defendant as “naive” and said he would only attract attention from criminals who were “vastly convicted and streetwise to the nth degree.”
Too bad other’s haven’t been as lucky.
“I ask myself, do the people of Teesside benefit by exposing him to that?” Recorder David Myerson QC, said in the British court. “I have answered that question firmly in the negative.”
They judge called the defendant directly, saying “I want him to come and talk to me. I want to hear it from him.”
The judge understandingly asked, “Why did you agree to supply cocaine?”
Beveridge said, “I had no choice. I got in a bit of debt. They were asking for the money back.
“I never had it. I missed a few payments. They give me a phone and white powder and said ‘that’ll clear your debt off’.”
When police came to the defendant’s Thornaby house, Prosecutor Emma Atkinson said he was on edge and physically shaking. He admitted possession of the cocaine with intent to supply as well as possessing marijuana.
Andrew White, his defense attorney said: “He’s extremely remorseful and through me he expresses his apologies and regret for this.
“He’s a long-term user of cannabis. He’s got himself well out of his depth here.“He’s clearly never been to custody before. He’s a vulnerable young man. I can tell you he’s absolutely terrified at the thought of going to custody.”
“In the normal course there is no doubt that people who sell Class A drugs go to prison,” Recorder Myerson added, saying “Drugs are a scourge. They are corrupting, they are addictive and people who prey on the weaknesses of others should expect immediate custodial sentences.”
The judge added: “Of course his debt problems are entirely his own fault, nonetheless it seems to me there was a degree of pressure there. I’m satisfied he told me the truth. That was, in my judgment, breathtakingly frank.”
Beveridge was then given a two-year jail term which the judge immediately suspended for two years. It’s too bad others have not been treated with this leniency. Why do you think the judge allowed him to walk?
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* "Food As Punishment: Giving U.S. Inmates 'The Loaf' Persists" (2014-01-02, npr.org) [archive.is/Mw8Q1]
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* "Activist Loses Appeal for Free Speech in Prison" (2016-06-07, courthousenews.com) [archive.is/AMc2q]: An environmental activist thrown in solitary confinement for sharing his politics in online magazines does not have a First Amendment case against his former prison officials, the Second Circuit ruled Tuesday.
Daniel McGowan, a former member of the Earth Liberation Front, was involved in the arsons of two Oregon-based lumber companies in 2001.
Four years would pass, however, before McGowan's foray into radical activism caught up with him.
The FBI eventually closed the loop on McGowan's case during "Operation Backfire," an investigation that the bureau described as a crackdown on "eco-terrorism," which critics cast as a green version of the Red Scare.
McGowan insists that he had renounced his affiliation with the group long before authorities arrested him at work, but his later disavowal of their methods did not provide him with any mercy at his criminal prosecution.
In 2007, a federal judge would apply a so-called "terrorism enhancement" in sentencing him to spend seven years in prison.
Initially designated as a low security prisoner, McGowan claimed in a federal lawsuit that officials at FCI Sandstone in Minnesota assigned him to a so-called Communication Management Unit, or CMU, a year into his sentence to squelch his online journalism.
Prison documents reprinted in his lawsuit justified his placement there by citing McGowan's bylines in a handful of movement outlets, including Portland Independent Media, Bite Back and Earth First! Journal.
McGowan received higher-profile media attention after being featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary, "If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front."
The Huffington Post later invited him to write about life in the CMU in articles accusing prison officials of violating his constitutional rights, but he has had trouble convincing judges that his speech deserved protection.
Upholding a Brooklyn federal judge's ruling, the Second Circuit dismissed McGowan's lawsuit on Tuesday.
"We conclude that, at the time the alleged violation occurred, our case law did not clearly establish that McGowan had a First Amendment right to publish his article," a three-judge panel unanimously found.
Judges Robert Katzmann, Jonathan Sack and Raymond Lohier are named as authors of the 19-page opinion.
Their ruling expressed sympathy with the justifications some prisons floated for preventing prisoners from having journalistic bylines.
"For example, in litigating the constitutionality of the byline regulation in the District of Colorado, the government took the position that allowing inmates to publish bylined articles could create security problems by permitting such inmates to become 'big wheels' in the prison community, or could incite violence, or could intimidate prison staff members," the opinion states.
"Whether or not we would agree with that analysis is beside the point," the ruling continues. "We conclude only that, in light of the different interests at stake, our case law establishing a prisoner's right to file a lawsuit or grievance does not clearly establish a prisoner's right to publish an article under a byline."
McGowan's attorney Alexander Reinart, a professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo Law, said in a phone interview that he is "disappointed" in the ruling.
"We're reviewing all of our options right now," he said.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York declined to comment on the ruling.
Meanwhile, McGowan is named as a co-plaintiff in another active lawsuit in Washington that attacks the constitutionality of CMUs.
Created during the George W. Bush administration, CMUs place prisoners under constant surveillance and radically restrict their contact with the outside world. Civil libertarians have long denounced these units as unconstitutional overreaches in the name of fighting terror.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based advocacy group, noted in their lawsuit that 60 percent of prisoners in CMUs are Muslim, even though only 6 percent of the U.S. prison population practices that religion.
The lawsuit lists McGowan among the minority of non-Muslim CMU inmates, largely held in these units for their political affiliations.
The D.C. Circuit has yet to issue a ruling on the case, led by Yassin Muhiddin Aref, who is serving a 15-year sentencing in connection with a counterterrorism sting operation.
---
* "End the Cruelty of Solitary Confinement" petition (retrieved 2016-06-12) [archive.is/D4IJs], live link [is.gd/n63tyB]: This petition will be sent to Governor Andrew Cuomo to encourage him to sign the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act into law, and to our New York senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, to introduce this bill in Congress.
The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act is in the process of passing the New York legislature. It bans solitary confinement for over 15 days, and bans it in all situations for those who are under 21, over 55, physically or mentally disabled, pregnant, LGBTQI, or in need of protective custody. Solitary Confinement is a failed policy. It does not make our prisons safer, save the state any funding, or rehabilitate individuals. It costs the state approximately $20,000 more per annum to keep a prisoner in solitary confinement than it does to keep them in a prison’s general population.
The United Nations considers solitary confinement longer than 15 days as torture. This practice of solitary confinement is institutionalizing torture in our country. Solitary confinement has overwhelming negative effects. For most of recent history solitary confinement was only used as a brief punishment, but in the late 20th century prisons began regularly sending prisoners to solitary for months or even years at a time. It is typical for inmates to spend 23 hours in a small cell with one hour of recreation, which is often only walking laps in a cage.The psychological toll is tremendous.
Studies from the Harvard Medical School show that roughly a third of solitary confinement inmates are acutely psychotic or suicidal before entering solitary. On top of that, the extreme isolation causes panic attacks, self-mutilation, a loss of sense and smell, decreased brain activity, and many other negative symptoms. Eliminating Solitary Housing Units (SHUs) does not mean letting violent offenses in prison go unpunished. Instead, inmates who commit serious crimes could be sent to secure Residential Rehabilitation Units (RRUs). In this setting they are removed from the general prison population, but are given substantial out of cell time to get treatment from therapists, talk with family, and work towards rehabilitation. It is also important to note that contrary to common belief most prisoners who are sent to solitary go for nonviolent infractions. In fact, five out of six inmates in SHUs in New York are in for nonviolent infractions. This is clearly a gross misuse of a very severe form of punishment.
As it is now, solitary confinement infringes on inmates’ citizen rights to not be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act can discontinue this infringement of inmates’ citizen rights. Every signature adds weight to this petition and brings us one step closer to ending solitary confinement, so please sign to help end this gross injustice.
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* "Million dollar A/C: Louisiana spends over $1 million to avoid cooling death row" (2016-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/kF14l]
===*===*===
LIBERATION FOR ALL GENDERS!THE HUMAN RIGHT TO EXISTENCE MUST BE PROTECTED!
* [archive.is/gWehR]: Midwest Queers in Minneapolis take to the streets in response to Queer bashing by Skinheads. Local news notes, "this group is ready to be as radical as the 60's Black Panthers".
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* "Indiana gun nut who planned to attack Los Angeles LGBT pride has a history of criminal violence" (2016-06-12, rawstory.com) [archive.is/pmtUP]
* "Man with weapons was headed to L.A. gay pride parade" (2016-06-12, latimes.com) [archive.is/t1ut6]
* SMPD press release concerning arrest of James Wesley Howell (2016-06-12) [archive.is/aznse]
---
* "Sacramento Baptist Preacher Praises Orlando Gay Nightclub Attack" (2016-06-13, sacramento.cbslocal.com) [archive.is/5G4U0]: A Sacramento Baptist preacher’s sermon praising attack on an Orlando nightclub that killed 50 people has the local LGBT community outraged.
Recordings of the sermon by Pastor Roger Jimenez surfaced under the Verity Baptist Church’s YouTube account.
The remarks were delivered on Sunday morning, hours after the attack happened.
“We don’t need to do anything to help. As far as I’m concerned, Orlando is a little bit safer tonight,” he said.
Sandrea Nelson, the Pride director of the Davis-Phoenix coalition, was left in shock after hearing Jimenez’s sermon. He says in all his years growing up Baptist and attending church, no pastor ever spoke of inequality.
“He’s not a man of God. He is not teaching religion,” he said.
Jimenez’s sermon went on to call for even more death at the hands of the government.
“If we lived in a righteous government, they should round them all up and put them up against a firing wall, and blow their brains out,” Jimenez said in the sermon.
Nelson says it’s hateful and violent statements like these that keep many in the LGBT community shut out.
“Statements like this can cause more harm to our youth and people in the closet; it causes them to feel worthless,” he said.
CBS13 went to speak with Jimenez at his home on Monday morning, but he declined.
With the LGBT community less than a year removed from a Supreme Court ruling opening the door for marriage equality, Nelson says they’ve become complacent. But Jimenez’s remarks are a reminder the fight for equality isn’t over.
“Bottom line is to love thy brother as you love thyself,” Nelson said.
Watch the sermon (.mp4) [is.gd/s1POiq]
===*===*===
WOMYN POWER!
END PATRIARCHY! COMBAT MISOGYNY!
* "Monster: Stanford Rapist Took Naked Photos Of Survivor & Sent Them To His Friends" (2016-06-10, occupydemocrats.com) [archive.is/Beo4k] [begin excerpt]: As the horrifying saga of convicted rapist Brock Turner continues to unfold, it is hard to put into words just how colossal a miscarriage of justice the entire case truly is. Recently, ex-Stanford athlete Turner was convicted unanimously by a jury of three counts of raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster – an unspeakable crime that should have carried a fourteen year sentence. But Judge Aaron Persky – himself a Stanford graduate – was apparently moved by the piteous moaning from the man over his lost career and his half-hearted pledge to teach others about the “dangers of drinking and college promiscuity.”
Turner received six months – which he will only serve three months of, in protective custody. His sentencing was a disgusting validation of Turner’s shifting of blame onto the victim and inanimate liquids, absolving himself of his role in the assault of an unconscious woman and an appalling affirmation that in the United States of America, white cisgender males with money can commit any crime with impunity.
New evidence has emerged which shows that Brock’s insincere contrition was nothing but a lie. The Daily Mail reports that rapist Turner took photographs of the naked woman while he was raping her and then sent them to his friends. This proves that not only was he fully aware of what he was doing, he took pride in the act of raping this girl – enough that he felt confident enough to boast to his friends about the horrendous crime that he was in the process of committing.
Not only did he violate her in multiple ways, he lied to the judge about his long history of drug and alcohol use. His entire defense was based around “the destructive consequences of making decisions while under the influence of alcohol,” painting himself as a poor innocent boy who just had too much to drink and was apparently possessed by the liquor demons, which made him lose control of himself and forced him to rape Emily Doe. [end excerpt]
* "Stanford rapist 'took photograph of his victim's breasts during attack - and shared it with swim team friends who deleted it after his arrest', police believe; Police suspect that Brock Turner, 20, photographed the 23-year-old woman he raped outside a Stanford frat house; Just after message from one of his swim friends appeared on his phone: 'Whos t** is that' [sic]; Witness had told how they saw Turner standing over his victim with his phone and that phone had its light on; Detectives were unable to find evidence of a picture on his phone but found he was using a group messaging app called GroupMe; It allows anyone in the group to delete images from it, which would have effect of making picture untraceable; Turner's six-month sentence has been widely condemned and led to calls for the judge who imposed it to be removed from office" (2016-06-10, dailymail.co.uk) [archive.is/89uC2]
* "No one is perfect, it's time to forgive and forget" (2016-06-11, Brock Turner Family Support) [archive.is/rRVmY]: You will always be my little angel and I will stand by you while you pay your debt to society. I hope everyone can begin to see you for the kind, caring and compassionate young man I raised you to be. Everyone makes mistakes and one minor indiscretion shouldn't taint a person for the rest of their lives. Before you cast judgement on my son, understand that he is a person just like you. He has feelings just like you. Please be considerate of those feelings. He received a fair trial and a a fair sentence but the real injustice is that he will never be able to swim again. Swimming is Brock's passion and he should be free to pursue it.
===*===*===
articles recommended by the
SAN PABLO BAY ECOLOGICAL PRESERVATION ASSOCIATION
Campaigns, info, and more [SanPabloBayEPA.blogspot.com]. Science [discardstudies.com]
this is the fiscal entity that was supposed to be able to financially back Gov. Brown's Delta tunnel project.
* "Water giant gave $1.4M loan to official" (2016-06-09, AP Newswire) [archive.is/ROgUT] [begin excerpt]: A California public water district that earned a rare federal penalty over what it described as "a little Enron accounting" loaned one of its executives $1.4 million to buy a riverfront home, and the loan remains unpaid nine years later although the official has left the agency, according to records and interviews.
Westlands Water District says its 2007 loan to deputy general manager Jason Peltier — now at $1.57 million with a 0.84 percent annual interest rate — is allowed under agency rules on salary.
But experts in governance say the deal raises red flags, not just over the unpaid loan and its generous terms but over whether Peltier and Westlands complied with laws mandating disclosure of the use of public funds.
"Show me the statute that allows this," said Peter Detwiler, long the top consultant, now retired, to the California Senate on local government finance.
"Where else could you borrow $1.6 million dollars for 0.84 percent?" Detwiler asked. "Who wouldn't want a real-estate deal like that? Sweet."
Westlands, which sells water to big farmers and other landowners in the country's largest public irrigation district, came under scrutiny in March, when federal regulators levied a $125,000 penalty against it over bookkeeping that a Westlands' general manager had described as "a little Enron accounting."
The Securities and Exchange Commission had concluded Westlands misled bond investors about its financial condition.
A heavyweight in California water politics, Westlands currently is negotiating two multi-billion-dollar deals with local, state and federal agencies that would reshape water distribution in California, the country's agriculture leader. [end excerpt]
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* "Don’t Look Now, But There Was Just a Mass Exodus of Oil Companies From the Arctic" (2016-06-10, greenpeace.org) [is.gd/SrxUwe]
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* "In a First, Iceland Power Plant Turns Carbon Emissions to Stone Study Shows Unexpectedly Fast Reactions Lock In Greenhouse Gas" (2016-06-09, earthinstitute.columbia.edu) [archive.is/5merQ], photo caption: An experimental drill core held by coauthor Sandra Snaebjornsdottir is laced with solidified carbonate, apparently produced by a new process that turns carbon emissions to stone when pumped underground.
===*===*===
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].
* "Fruits and Vegetables Grown With Oil Field Wastewater?" (2016-06-10, foodandwaterwatch.org):
California's Central Valley produces fruits and vegetables for much of the United States, but did you know they may be grown with wastewater from oil field operations — even some organic brands?1
Last year, our friends at Water Defense revealed that the Cawelo Water District was accepting oil wastewater and selling it to its agricultural water users. But Cawelo wasn't alone.
New Food & Water Watch research shows that this practice is more widespread than previously realized, impacting the North Kern Water Storage District as well.
Even after treatment, oil field wastewater can contain harmful, toxic chemicals, including acetone, methylene chloride and benzene, so the idea that it's being used to grow our food is ludicrous.
Just how big a problem is this? California grows 83% of fresh carrots produced in the U.S. — and Kern County, CA, is a leading producer. Eighty-eight percent of all grapes produced in the U.S. are grown in California, with Kern County a leader in table grape production. And mandarin oranges, like Halos? Kern County's a top producer there too.2 Odds are, something you know and like at the store may have been irrigated with something nasty.
Brands who buy some of their product from farmers receiving water from the Cawelo or North Kern water districts include:
- Sunview Raisins and Grapes
- Trinchero Family Estates (makers of Sutter Home wines)
- Halos mandarins (formerly known as Cuties)
- The Wine Group (makers of Cupcake and Fish Eye wines)
When you look at just how much of our food is potentially impacted by this practice, it quickly becomes clear that we can't shop our way around the problem.
What's being allowed by our state regulators has big implications for food right here at home and across the country. It's time for all of us to demand that this practice is ended.
Food production should not be the oil and gas industry's shortcut for getting rid of its industrial waste.
Tell Governor Brown: No More Oil Field Waste on Our Food!
Petition link [is.gd/sasdNL]
* "These Popular Fruit and Veggie Brands May be Grown With Oil Wastewater; The practice is gaining popularity in drought-plagued California, but is it safe?" (2015-07-24, motherjones.com) [is.gd/3YAO3B]
* California Agricultural Statistics Review, 2014-2015, California Department of Food and Agriculture, pp.10-12. (.pdf) [is.gd/WAPamX]
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* "14% of US children have dangerously high levels of lead in their blood– report" (2016-06-16, rt.com) [archive.is/d62bD]
* "Lead levels 23 times higher than federal limit found in Chicago school for disabled" (206-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/ccgba]
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* "WHO researchers claim very hot drinks ‘probably’ cause cancer, coffee OK though" (2016-06-16, rt.com) [archive.is/iIS6o]
===*===*===
articles recommended by the
NO NUKES! campaign
[StopNuclearDeath.blogspot.com] [nuclear-news.net] [nukeresister.org] [nukefree.org]
* "Social engineering seen as rising cyber threat to nuclear industry; The use of social engineering to mount attacks on business data and information networks is emerging as a major risk to cyber security at nuclear power plants, experts told Nuclear Energy Insider" (2016-06-15, analysis.nuclearenergyinsider.com) [archive.is/2sxjl]
---
* "Finns to bury nuclear waste in world's costliest tomb" (2016-06-07, AFP Newswire) [archive.is/bVDJU]
===*===*===
articles recommended by the
SAN PABLO BAY SOVEREIGNTY Think-tank
[SovereignSanPabloBay.blogspot.com] [permaculture.org]
* "New molecular design to get hydrogen-powered cars motoring" (2016-06-07, bio21.unimelb.edu.au) [archive.is/Gk4kK]
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* "Making biodiesel with used cooking oil and a microwave; SiO2 Beads Decorated with SrO Nanoparticles for Biodiesel Production from Waste Cooking Oil Using Microwave Irradiation" (2016-04-20, acs.org) [archive.is/cDOc9] [begin excerpt]: The researchers developed silica beads coated with a catalyst and added them to waste cooking oil. Then, they zapped the mixture with a modified microwave oven to spur the reaction of the beads with cooking oil. In just 10 seconds, nearly 100 percent of the oil was converted to fuel. The researchers could also easily recover the beads and reuse them at least 10 times with similar results. [end excerpt]
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* "Berkeley Lab Scientists Brew Jet Fuel in One-Pot Recipe JBEI researchers use engineered bacteria to simplify biofuels production, potentially lowering cost" (2016-05-10, newscenter.lbl.gov) [archive.is/3fQ6U]: Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have engineered a strain of bacteria that enables a “one-pot” method for producing advanced biofuels from a slurry of pre-treated plant material.
The Escherichia coli (E. coli) is able to tolerate the liquid salt used to break apart plant biomass into sugary polymers. Because the salt solvent, known as ionic liquids, interferes with later stages in biofuels production, it needs to be removed before proceeding, a process that takes time and money. Developing ionic-liquid-tolerant bacteria eliminates the need to wash away the residual ionic liquid.
The achievement, described in a study published Tuesday, May 10, in the journal Green Chemistry [archive.is/veYdX], is critical to making biofuels a viable competitor to fossil fuels because it helps streamline the production process.
“Being able to put everything together at one point, walk away, come back, and then get your fuel, is a necessary step in moving forward with a biofuel economy,” said study principal investigator Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, vice president of the Fuels Synthesis Division at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) (jbei.org), a DOE Bioenergy Research Center at Berkeley Lab. “The E. coli we’ve developed gets us closer to that goal. It is like a chassis that we build other things onto, like the chassis of a car. It can be used to integrate multiple recent technologies to convert a renewable carbon source like switchgrass to an advanced jet fuel.”
Breaking down the biofuel production process -
The basic steps of biofuel production start with deconstructing, or taking apart, the cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin that are bound together in the complex plant structure. Enzymes are then added to release the sugars from that gooey mixture of cellulose and hemicellulose, a step called saccharification. Bacteria can then take that sugar and churn out the desired biofuel. The multiple steps are all done in separate pots.
Researchers at JBEI pioneered the use of ionic liquids, salts that are liquid at room temperature, to tackle the deconstruction of plant material because of the efficiency with which the solvent works. But what makes ionic liquids great for deconstruction also makes it harmful for the downstream enzymes and bacteria used in biofuel production.
Previous studies have found ways to address these challenges. In 2012, JBEI researchers, including Blake Simmons, a co-author on this new study, had discovered a suite of saccharification enzymes that were tolerant to ionic liquids.
Marijke Frederix, this recent study’s first author and a postdoctoral researcher in Mukhopadhyay’s lab, established that an amino acid mutation in the gene rcdA, which helps regulate various genes, leads to an E. coli strain that is highly tolerant to ionic liquids, providing an important piece to the puzzle. They used this strain as the foundation to build on earlier work – including the ionic-liquid-tolerant enzymes – and take the steps further to the one-pot biofuel finishing line.
Putting the pieces together -
They proceeded to test the E. coli strain using ionic-liquid pretreated switchgrass provided by the DOE’s Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Demonstration Unit (ABPDU) (abpdu.lbl.gov), a biofuels facility at Berkeley Lab launched in 2011 to accelerate the commercialization of biofuels.
“Armed with the rcdA variant, we were able to engineer a strain of E. coli that could not only tolerate ionic liquid, but that could also produce ionic-liquid-tolerant enzymes that chew up the cellulose, make sugars, eat it and make biofuels,” said Frederix. “E. coli remains the workhorse microbial host in synthetic biology, and in our study, using the ionic-liquid-tolerant E. coli strain, we can combine many earlier discoveries to create an advanced biofuel in a single pot.”
While ethanol may be one of the more common products to emerge from this process, researchers have looked to more advanced biofuels that can pack more energy punch. In this case, they used production pathways also developed at JBEI previously, and produced d-limonene, a precursor to jet fuel.
“Ultimately, we at JBEI hope to develop processes that are robust and simple where one can directly convert any renewable plant material to a final fuel in a single pot,” said Mukhopadhyay. “This study puts us one step closer to this moonshot.”
Berkeley Lab’s Innovation and Partnerships Office has filed an application for a patent based on this research.
The research was supported by DOE’s Office of Science. The ABPDU is funded by the Bio-Energy Technologies Office within DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
---
* "Bionic leaf 2.0 increases efficiency for turning sunlight into liquid fuel" (2016-06-02, wyss.harvard.edu) [archive.is/fxDKD], illustration caption: A new "bionic leaf" system uses solar energy to produce liquid fuel.
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* "Perovskite Solar Cells Surpass 20% Efficiency; EPFL researchers are pushing the limits of perovskite solar cell performance by exploring the best way to grow these crystals" (2016-06-09, actu.epfl.ch) [archive.is/KvHjG]
* "EPFL Researchers Push Limits of Perovskite Solar Cell Performance" (2016-06-10, azocleantech.com) [archive.is/EkF6X], photo caption: This is a Perovskite solar cell prototype.
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* "Recyclable, sugar-derived foam — a renewable alternative to traditional polyurethanes?" (2016-04-13, acs.org) [archive.is/qcpma], attached abstract "Chemically Recyclable Biobased Polyurethanes" [archive.is/kClnc]
===*===*===
NORTHBAY ENTHEOGENIC FREEDOM
[NorthbayEntheogen.blogspot.com]
* "Nuns Defy Marijuana Cultivation Ban In Californian Town And Grow The Plant To Heal The Sick" (2016-06-09, by Amando Flavio) [archive.is/Had8T]
===*===*===
UNITED STATES FASCISM WATCH
Documenting the process of fascism and for whom it benefits. [UnitedStatesFascism.blogspot.com] [exposefacts.org]
* "Getting away clean - Why guilty bankers rarely do the perp walk" (2016-06-08, whowhatwhy.org) [archive.is/J70HU]
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* "A Critical and Ignored 2008 Email by Ben Bernanke on the Lehman Collapse" (2016-06-10, wallstreetonparade.com) [archive.is/5KWld]
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* "Boeing, Boeing, gone: Plane manufacturer put ‘undue pressure’ on US regulators" (2016-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/kePcm]
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Young American males have no political consciousness. The RULING CLASS has trained and indoctrinated young men into the "proper, acceptable" use of guns. The ruling class has no fear of selling guns to angry young men. They have been told what to do with the guns.
* "Orlando gun giveaway locked & loaded for GOP fundraiser despite outrage" (2016-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/UEGbl]
* "US gunmaker shares soar after Pulse nightclub massacre; Shares in two biggest gun manufacturers, Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger & Co, rose by 10% and 9% amid fears US will impose tougher gun control measures" (2016-06-13, theguardian.com) [archive.is/dngYm]
* "Gun Industry Executives Say Mass Shootings Are Good for Business" (2015-12-03, theintercept.com) [archive.is/IQl2S]
* "GOP blocks bill to stop terrorists from buying guns" (2015-12-04, msnbc.com) [archive.is/Hp4gY]
* "The NRA Claims the AR-15 Is Useful for Hunting and Home Defense. Not Exactly" (2016-06-12, slate.com) [archive.is/YgUoM]
---
* "After Sending 'Thoughts and Prayers' to Orlando GOP House Chair Blocks LGBT Protections Bill, Republican Committee Chairman Also Denies Pulse Was A Gay Nightclub" (2016-06-15, thenewcivilrightsmovement.com) [archive.is/7U5YC]
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* "Zoned out: ACLU sues Cleveland for fencing protesters out of Republican convention" (2016-06-15, rt.com) [archive.is/DRnFI]
---
Sexism is when a judge gets to legally prioritize the safety of a rapist over the safety of every single woman he'll come across in his life.
Racism is when prison is full of black males charged with non-violent offenses, but considered "too severe" for a white rapist convicted of 3 felonies.
Privilege is being able to read that and still roll your eyes and deny either exist.
===*===*===
USA FASCISM: "Libertarianism & Constitutionalism" to benefit private bureaucracies
===*===*===
USA FASCISM: Military State
* "Gen. Lloyd Austin to join United Technologies" (2016-06-09, UPI Newswire) [archive.is/45Dsh]
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* "Australian military, Raytheon in strategic alliance" (2016-06-08, UPI Newswire) [archive.is/wm402]
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* "Crash and burn: Lockheed loses Air Force records in database fiasco" (2016-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/wovj8]
===*===*===
USA FASCISM: Two Party Dictatorship
* "Pfizer CEO Can’t “Distinguish Between the Policies” of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton" (2016-06-08, theintercept.com) [archive.is/EUGAB]
---
* "Was the Democratic Primary Just Manipulated, or Was It Stolen?" (2016-06-13, truth-out.org) [archive.is/zkD3k]
* "Glitch believed to be based in mobile app erases some D.C. voters’ party affiliation" (2016-06-14, washingtonpost.com) [archive.is/0v565]
* "8.9M people estimated to have voted in California primary" (2016-06-13, sfgate.com) [archive.is/tM9cB]
* "CALIFORNIA COUNTS MILLIONS OF PROVISIONAL AND MAIL-IN BALLOTS, COUNTIES FLIP FOR BERNIE AND NINE MORE SUPERDELEGATES DROP CLINTON" (2016-06-12, DAWN PAPPLE, inquisitr.com) [archive.is/DAngN]
* "Bernie has flipped 3 counties today" (2016-06-10) [archive.is/BUFnm], source (vote.sos.ca.gov) [archive.is/eThdX]
* meme (2016-06-10) [archive.is/gHa8W]: 3 Counties have flipped for Bernie in California since volunteers started counting ballots. We need more help. Email [Lauren@LosAngelesforBernie.org] to get involved.
* "As California Admits 2 Million Ballots Remain Uncounted, Sanders Pushes for Changing Primary Process" (2016-06-10, democracynow.org) [archive.is/pyugN]
* "Ballot Blocks: It's true that millions of California ballots have yet to be certified, but the process is transparent and well documented" (2016-06-09, snopes.com) [archive.is/oHRJK]
* (2016-06-09) [archive.is/sPEcd]: Californians: Make it your business today to find out if your ballot has been counted. Go here and click on your county: [http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-status]
If your ballot is challenged, not counted or lost, get a screenshot. follow the instructions on the screen and then report it to:
1. Email: [CAvoterprotection@berniesanders.com]
2. File a complaint with Election Justice USA- [electionjusticeusa.org]
3. Click here: "Election Justice USA - Voter Problem Report Form - 2016 Presidential Primaries" [is.gd/LHgfJD], archived link [archive.is/0jc4U].
>>> Bernie and his team need to know that many more hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Californians voted for him than the count so far reflects.
PLEASE SHARE THIS TO ALL THE BERNIE GROUPS YOU ARE IN.
* (2016-06-10):
* Delegate Count (2016-06-06) [archive.is/Kax6k], showing how close the Democrat Party Primary Election had been so far between the candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on the eve of the California election.
* (2016-06-10) [archive.is/nMZqY]:
* "What is #ExitPollGate?" (2016-06-11, johnlaurits.com) [archive.is/JX6Y2]
* "Bernie Sanders Says US 'Kill List' Legal, Backs Troops in Syria; The U.S. senator said he thinks President Obama's extrajudicial drone assassination program is constitutional and legal" (2016-04-26, telesurtv.net) [archive.is/1g2bs]
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* "My Role With the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee" (2016-06-04, by James Zogby,
President, Arab American Institute, via huffingtonpost.com) [archive.is/qVuPH]: I wasn’t going to write about this subject, but something happened yesterday over lunch that prompted me to reconsider.
I was having a peaceful meal with my wife when two men sat down in the next booth. In loud voices they began to discuss the state of the presidential contest. At one point, the gentleman directly behind me said, “and Sanders picked that Cornel West and that guy who’s the head of the Arab League who has it in for Israel...”.
That did it. I spun around and said, in a polite but firm voice, “I’m that guy. I’m not the head of the Arab League and I’m asking you to change the subject now.” Shocked, the man responded “you’re him!” and began asking me questions. I cut him off making it clear that I was having lunch and wasn’t interested in pursuing the matter. They promptly changed the subject, as I had requested. After we finished eating, I turned to the two men and explained who I was and why I found the crude description of me to be so aggravating.
In some ways I fault The Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets for having unleashed the mini-firestorm that followed my recent appointment to the Democratic Party’s platform drafting committee. When I first heard from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that I was to be named to the committee, I held my breath, fully expecting an attack from the usual collection of far-right, anti-Arab, and hardline pro-Israel groups. Sure enough, they didn’t disappoint. I was called “a professional Israel-hater”, “a defender of terrorism”, “Bernie’s Svengali”, and it was claimed (falsely) that I had “accused Israel of committing a Holocaust”.
This, unfortunately, is what I have learned to expect from that crowd. What, however, I found most troubling was the first headline that appeared in The Washington Post announcing “Sanders picks pro-Palestinian activist for Democratic platform committee”. With this, the die was cast. Other major newspapers and media outlets followed suit framing the entire discussion of the platform and my appointment around Israel/Palestine—culminating in a call I received yesterday, right after lunch, from a journalist who asked if he was right in assuming that Bernie had appointed me as his hatchet man on this Israel.
I am, of course, a strong supporter of Palestinian rights, so is Bernie Sanders, and so, according to a recent Gallup poll, are a majority of Democrats. But the crude effort to reduce Sanders’ entire campaign and my entire life’s work to an effort to “get Israel” betrays an unsettling anti-Arab bias and a bizarre obsession to which I must respond. It does damage to Sanders, to me, and to our nation’s ability to have an honest conversation about a critical issue of importance.
By focusing exclusively on Israel and ignoring all of the other concerns that Sanders has brought to this year’s presidential campaign, the press does a grave disservice to his efforts to elevate the issues of universal health care, free college tuition, raising the minimum wage, investing in clean energy, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and making Wall Street pay its fair share in taxes. This is a not so subtle attempt to demean the man and dismiss his candidacy as marginal.
The same is true for me. In response to the question from the editorial writer as to why Bernie may have appointed me, I recited a bit of my resume. To be sure, I am the proud founder of a number Arab American organizations, but I have also served on the DNC for 23 years. I have been on the DNC Executive Committee for the past 15 years; co-Chaired the DNC Resolutions Committee for the past 10; and have chaired the party’s Ethnic Council since 2009. I served as Ethnic Outreach Advisor to both the Gore 2000 and the Obama 2008 Campaigns. And President Obama has twice appointed me to two-year terms on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
When the mainstream media and the far-right groups converge in turning my entire life’s work into a one-dimensional caricature—“pro-Palestinian activist”—they are not complimenting me. They are setting me up. Make no mistake, I am proud of my advocacy for Palestinian rights, but given the political climate in which we live, such crude reductionism lays the predicate for political exclusion, violence, and threats of violence. Over the years, Arab Americans have suffered from all of these challenges to our rights. I know. I’ve been there.
When I spoke in favor of a two-state solution in 1988, before this position became fashionable, I was told by Democratic Party leaders “you’ll never have a place in this party again”. Following that year’s convention, Michael Dukakis rejected the endorsement of our Arab American Democratic Federation saying “it was too controversial”. When, in 1990, Ron Brown, then Chair of the DNC, came to speak at an Arab American event I was hosting (becoming the first party chair to attend an Arab American event), he told me that he was threatened with a loss of financial support “if you even go into the room with those people”.
And then there is the violence. The first time I received a death threat was 1970. My office was fire-bombed in 1980 and after 9/11 three men went to jail for threatening my life and the lives of my children. In every instance, the perpetrators claimed to be striking out for reasons to do with my ethnicity and/or Israel. Now, in the wake of the announcement of my platform committee assignment, the hate mail (but, thank God, no threats) has started up again.
Even beyond this danger, by silencing my community and marginalizing us because we might dare to advocate for Palestinians, there is the damage that this hysteria does to our national discourse. For example, I have been denounced for criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but my writings on this subject are not unlike those written by Israelis and some in the American Jewish community. At issue, it appears, is not what we are saying, but that we are the ones saying it. We are accused of “singling Israel out”, while in reality it is our critics who are singling out this issue as the only one we cannot discuss.
In addition to all of the other critical issues Bernie Sanders has raised, he has done our nation and the cause of peace a service by bringing the matter of Israel/Palestine into the national debate. It belongs there and deserves to be discussed on its merits, without rancor and without fear. I am proud that Sanders has demonstrated the courage to do this and I am confident that if we work together on the platform committee with openness and mutual respect we can forge a new consensus that reflects the will of the majority of Democrats on all of the critical issues facing our country—including the way forward to articulating the principles that would help us achieve a just and lasting solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
---
* "The Lesser Evil? Hillary Clinton is Rolling in Money from Wall Street" (2016-05-26, by Jeff Cox) [archive.is/9KeZ3]
* "The Clinton Dynasty and the Shadow Government" (2016-02-26, by Laurence h. Shoup, zcomm.org) [archive.is/rW9CD]
* "10 Clinton insiders who attended Bilderberg this year" (2016-06-12, rt.com) [archive.is/DO9jC]
* "Jesse Jackson endorses Clinton despite controversial civil rights record" (2016-06-12, rt.com) [archive.is/AF7DY]
* "Every time you say 'First Female Nominee'... you're helping erase 144 years of progressive feminist candidates" meme caption [archive.is/zcm0I]: From top left: Victoria Woodhull, 1872, Equal Rights Party; Belva Ann Lockwood, 1884 & 1888, National Equal Rights Party; Charlene Mitchell, 1968, CPUSA; Linda Jenness, 1972, SWP; Margaret Wright, 1976, People's Party; Maureen Smith, 1980, Peace & Freedom Party; Deirdre Griswold, 1980, WWP; Sonia Johnson, 1984, Citizens Party; Gavrielle Holmes, 1984, WWP; Lenora Fulani, 1988 & 1992, New Alliance Party; Willa Kenoyer, 1988, SPUSA; Helen Halyard, 1992,SEP; Gloria La Riva, 1992, 2008 & 2016, WWP & PSL; Monica Moorehead, 1996, 2000 & 2016, WWP; Marsha Feinland,1996, Peace & Freedom Party; Mary Cal Hollis, 1996, SPUSA; Cynthia McKinney, 2008, Green Party; Peta Lindsay, 2012, PSL; Jill Stein, 2012 & 2016, Green Party. Frankly, erasing progressive feminists is exactly what Hillary wants.
Edit: Mary Scully is also running as an independent socialist in 2016
* "Today we made history" satire meme, showing world Women leaders who are just terrible people, including Imelda Marcos, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meier, who all helped to serve the world capitalist regime's consolidation over, respectively, the south-western China Sea, the British Commonwealth (with MI6), and the northeastern Arabia Peninsula, using regimes that practiced extreme human-rights abuses through security and austerity policies in order to financially support a "military first" budget utilized for operations around the world (especially as military advisors for client state governments). These global leaders knowingly allowed for operations that, as advisors, would give names collected for that purpose of political cleansing operations conducted by the state security regimes they worked with, including in their respective homelands, such as in the Philippine's war against the Left which resulted in a popular guerilla war that recently won after 40 years of constant struggle, in the UKGB (financial and security center for the British Commonwealth), and Leftists and adherents to the PFLP in the jurisdiction set aside as a "Palestinian Homeland".
* " 'Clinton makes History': CPUSA's opportunist transformation" (2016-06-09, communismgr.blogspot.nl) [archive.is/wIFhQ]: The transformation of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) into an opportunist political organisation has been a long process. Since 1988, the CPUSA endorses the candidates of the bourgeois Democratic Party: Dukakis (1988), Clinton (1992, 1996), Gore (2000), Kerry (2004), Obama (2008, 2012). In an article published yesterday on 'People's World', the presidential nomination of Hillary Clinton is presented as "a major milestone in the fight for women's rights". Once again, CPUSA endorses a political representative of the U.S. monopoly capital and a war criminal. What a shame really for a party with such a long, significant history and close ties with the U.S labour movement.
Hillary Clinton, like Donald Trump, is a choice of the U.S. monopoly capital, of the country's bourgeois class, for the position of the President. Mrs.Clinton's service as Obama government's Foreign Secretary is known and has been proved disastrous: Libya, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Syria, Yemen. The people of these countries know, better than anyone, what Imperialism means and what was Clinton's contribution in war crimes.However, we aren't surprised by the choice of CPUSA to become a 'left' wing of the bourgeois Democratic Party. Despite it's self-identification as a party devoted to the principles of Marxism-Leninism (CPUSA Program, 19 May 2006), the CPUSA has actually abandoned scientific socialism, thus being transformed into a social-democratic political organisation. What kind of 'communist' would endorse Obama or Clinton? What kind of 'marxist-leninist' would accept to participate in a game of choice between Scylla (Democrats) and Charybdis (Republicans)? Does it make any fundamental difference for the U.S. working class if Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump become President of the country?
The CPUSA leadership's policy fosters illusions and disorientate the U.S. working class from the real aim which must be the struggle for Socialism. Furthermore, the entrapment of the U.S. working class in a choice between "Democrats and Republicans" or "Clinton and Sanders", consist a clear betrayal of the Marxist-Leninist principles and an opportunistic demagogy which works in favor of the bourgeois establishment.We strongly denounce the CPUSA endorsement of Hillary Clinton and call the working class, the low-income people of the United States to avoid being trapped in the bipolarism of "Democrats vs Republicans". The only choice of the U.S. labour movement is to reject opportunism and move towards the revival of the Marxist-Leninist ideals, for a society without exploitation, for the final victory of the American people over capitalist barbarity.
* "Sanders Supporters Cry Foul over Clinton's Suspicious "Secret Win" Email; The image files appear to have been created by the Clinton campaign over the weekend, well before the AP declared Clinton the party winner on Monday" (2016-06-07, commondreams.org) [archive.is/1IL54]
* "Sanders Supporters Claim Clinton Campaign and AP Engaged in a Conspiracy – Complete With a “Secret Win” Code Name" (2016-06-08, wallstreetonparade.com) [archive.is/pQs9E]
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* "Trump revokes Washington Post press credentials" (2016-06-13, rt.com) [archive.is/c6roe]
* "Forgotten Video of Donald Trump. This Is The Man Who May Be Representing The White House" (2016-05-10, thenewyorkevening. com) [archive.is/BOvrq]:
A majority of Americans are familiar with the Hollywood antics or the at times completely ridiculous nature of Donald Trump, but recently an international viewer saw something for the first time and asked us to share it with the world. The following video is meant for entertainment purposes more than anything else, some light hearted humor if you will but it does speak to the absurdity of electing a character like Mr. Trump.
If you think that celebrity apprentice was embarrassing then you are in for a good laugh. As our international friend stated “I pity you if this guy would become your next President.” Personally I think it speaks more to the moral decay of western culture than it does the personality of Donald Trump. He is who he is at this point, we are all well aware. Having gotten this far in an election, Trump seems bullet proof to any and all criticism. As for America, the people have continued to speak and apparently they want Mr. Trump representing their values. America will get what it deserves this election year no matter who we choose.
The following clip was taken in 2007 as Wrestlemania [youtu.be/TuesauNtqTU], if you are an international viewer whom hasn’t seen this before, this is the man who may be commander in chief of our military and head of state – symbol of our nation. Metaphorically speaking, Vince Mcmahon Represents the Republican Party and Donald Trump represents himself – laying the smack down upon every Republican candidate running against him.
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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]
* "MSNBC’s fracking push revealed in new documents" (2016-06-13, rt.com) [archive.is/7d1eJ]
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* "Orlando, race, and the meaning of terror" (2016-06-13, fusion.net) [is.gd/EGJS3w]
Dylan Roof was radicalized by the KKK and killed 9 unarmed African Americans. Yet he was not called a Terrorist. Yet Omar Mateen who was born and raised in America is called a Terrorist! They are either both Terrorist or both Mass Murderers! Which is it?
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* "Fox News Twists Itself In Knots To Find An Explanation Other Than Racism For Charleston Shooting" (2015-06-18, huffingtonpost.com) [archive.is/gNY4N]
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USA FASCISM: Artificial Poverty and Starvation
[talkpoverty.org]
* "The numbers are staggering: US is ‘world leader’ in child poverty" (2015-04-15, rawstory.com) [archive.is/e5WSW]
* "The Poor in the US Are Richer than the Middle Class in Much of Europe" (2015-10-16, mises.org) [archive.is/RX0UH], an article from a fascist think-tank whose policy measures, when implemented, murder elders and starve working-class families by design as part of an economic regime dedicated to placing as much wealth into private bureaucracies as possible in order to perpetrate a "trickle-down" economic theory which has been disproved decade after decade as benefiting the people in general. The article here censors how the lower-income people of the USA's "middle class" spends more of their income on basic necessities as well as being taxed for military and for propping-up private bureaucrats, while in the European Union, workers of the same socio-economic status receive benefits from their state government in the manner of social services paid for by their taxes, and therefore live with a much, much higher quality of life as they have access to more disposable income, unlike their USA counterparts!
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* "I Told Paul Ryan What It's Like to Live in Poverty. Here's What Happened Next" (2016-06-06, TalkPoverty.org) [archive.is/2Lq6L]
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WORLD FASCISM WATCH
Documenting the global economic dictatorship
* "World’s most powerful people at Bilderberg: Where is the mainstream media?" (2016-06-09, dollarvigilante.com) [archive.is/WHXDx]
* "Why are journalists being rounded up by police outside top secret Bilderberg gathering of world’s elite? Officers regularly forcing news teams to hand over paperwork despite acting legally; About 130 guests from 20 countries will attend event in Dresden, German; Secretive meeting brings together tycoons, politicians, royalty and bankers; Guests include ex-CIA chief David Petraeus and ex-MI6 boss John Sawers; Amid tight security at the even there are reports of journalists having paperwork checked" (2016-06-09, dailymail.co.uk) [archive.is/yjerd]
* "One Detailed Chart Exposes Exactly How The Bilderberg Group Controls The World" (2016-06-12, Jay Syrmopoulos) [archive.is/Y9GKr] [begin excerpt]: Considering that these attendees have such a significant presence within private industry, state and global governance, and the overall geopolitical direction of the world, the fact that the details are hidden from public purview is deeply disturbing to anyone that believes in an accountable and transparent global society.
To help readers better understand this complicated web of top-down control, Zero Hedge has created a chart laying out the linkages and various connections of those in attendance [archive.is/Vhyxq]. The graphic below exposes various connections and links – public, private, financial, political, statutory and otherwise – between a small group of individuals that are at the core of Bilderberg and the rest of the world. [end excerpt]
Click here to view full image [archive.is/k1avZ].
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Laissez-Faire Economics!
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* "Investment funds worth $10 trillion center stage at St. Pete Economic Forum" (2016-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/nDLPH]
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* "Libya sues Goldman Sachs for lost $1.2bn, claims hookers & private jets used as bribes" (2016-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/OVdos]
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* "Nestlé, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland lawsuit (re Côte d'Ivoire)" (2016-01, business-humanrights.org) [archive.is/fJl2o]
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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]
* "Judge sentences 'serial child molester' Hastert to 15 months" (2016-04-29, usatoday.com) [archive.is/9ajl1]
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* " ‘Fallen Angels’: Sex tourism & Philippines’ abandoned fatherless kids" (2016-05-30, rt.com) [archive.is/9ToPy]
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* "Clement Freud pedophile scandal: MP & McCann family friend exposed as a child predator" (2016-06-15, rt.com) [archive.is/eEXn9]
===*===*===
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].
* "Trillions Spent on Violence as World Continues Downwards Spiral Away From Peace; Latest Global Peace Index shows that chipping away at trillions spent on violence could render huge 'peace dividend' " (2016-06-08, commondreams.org) [archive.is/QwszH]
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* "CIA agent on terrorism: ‘Stories manufactured by elite to keep us killing each other’ " (2016-06-15, rt.com) [archive.is/4f6Kj]: A former CIA counterterrorism agent has said it is time to talk about why terrorism really happens, and to address the “misguided narratives” that lead to oversimplification of the situation and continued war.
Amaryllis Fox worked on counterterrorism and intelligence in the CIA’s clandestine service for ten years. She told AJ+ that the beliefs surrounding terrorism are “stories manufactured by a really small number of people on both sides, who amass a great deal of power and wealth by convincing the rest of use to keep killing each other.”
Fox says the current conversation about Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in the US “is more oversimplified than ever.”
“Ask most Americans whether ISIS poses an existential threat to this country and they’ll say yes. That’s where the conversation stops,” she said.
Fox compared the attitudes of people in the US and in Iraq and Syria, with inhabitants of both regions believing each side is waging war upon the other. The West believes the narrative that terrorist attacks happen because they “hate our freedoms,” while people in countries that the US has attacked think the United States is “waging war on Islam.”
Fox used a conversation with an al-Qaeda fighter to highlight the point: “He said all these movies that America makes ‒ like ‘Independence Day’, and ‘The Hunger Games’, and ‘Star Wars’ ‒ they’re all about a small scrappy band of rebels who will do anything in their power with the limited resources available to them to expel an outside, technological advanced invader. ‘And what you don’t realize,’ he said, ‘is that to us, to the rest of the world, you are the empire, and we are Luke and Han. You are the aliens and we are Will Smith.’”
Fox believes Americans should ask themselves: “Are we pouring kerosene on a candle?” when it comes to foreign policy.
“The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them,” she said. “If you hear them out, if you’re brave enough to really listen to their story, you can see that more often than not, you might have made some of the same choices if you’d lived their life instead of yours.”
“As long as your enemy is a sub-human psychopath that’s going to kill you no matter what, this never ends,” she added.
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* "Deeper and Deeper into War: Obama Authorizes More Military Force in Afghanistan; '15 years later, lives lost, billions spent...' " (2016-06-10, commondreams.org) [archive.is/5ME0E]
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* "Anti-drone rally at US air base Ramstein draws thousands; Around 5,000 peace activists protested the use of the Ramstein facility in southwestern Germany for the US-led drone war. A nine-kilometer (5.5-mile) human chain was later formed to demand limits on the use of the base" (2016-06-11, dw.com) [archive.is/cD8Ha]
* "Thousands protest against US drone wars at US air base in Germany" (2016-06-11, rt.com) [archive.is/unnSX]
* "Germany: Thousands Protest U.S. Drone War at Ramstein Air Base" (2016-06-13, democracynow.org) [archive.is/lALF0]: In Germany, thousands of people formed a human chain around a U.S. Air Force base to protest the U.S. drone wars. Ramstein Air Base hosts a station that relays communications between drone operators in the United States and the drones they pilot abroad. Clement Walter was among the protesters.
Clement Walter: "I am here because I don’t agree with American weapons, American rockets being directed toward other countries from German soil. We do not have to tolerate that. Above all, I am thinking about our children. I want them to understand that there must not be any war carried out from German soil."
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* "Day 5 of the blockade at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Burghfield, Near Reading" (2016-06-10, tridentploughshares.org) [archive.is/gXc3V]
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* "Petition calling for United Nations investigation into May 2, 2014 massacre in Odessa, Ukraine" (2016-05) [archive.is/rIGj0], petition link [odessa2may.wesign.it/en] [begin excerpt]:
On 2 May 2014, supporters of the Kiev’s authorities represented by various extremist organizations that supported the violent change of Government, and supporters of federalization that would enable Ukraine to maintain its integrity, came into conflict with each other in the streets of Odessa. These actions resulted in the deaths and injuries of many people. Six men died in the city’s center: two were Government supporters four were “pro-federalism” supporters. Later in the day, an aggressive mob went to Kulikovo square. First of all the attackers burned the camp of federalization activists in the square. In the course of these activities people have been attacked and severely beaten with baseball bats, iron chains and even shot with firearm. The camp was set on fire; as a result people took refuge in the building of Trade Unions House. Dozens of people were trapped. But even after the fire in the Trade Unions House the attackers continued beating to death people gathered in the building. Fleeing from the fire, some people jumped from the windows of the second and third floor. After they felt to the ground, some were beaten to death. Other besieged people sought refuge on the roof of the building, from where they were rescued later on. Some died from suffocation or burned alive.
According to Ukrainian media, 48 people were killed: 6 in street clashes and 42 at the Kulikovo Field area. Two of the victims were pro-government demonstrators. The 46 others were supporters of federalization.
Surviving victims were seriously injured and a part of them were taken to hospitals. Some died there of their injuries, one of them died just six months ago. Others were removed from hospitals by their relatives out of fear that they would be killed. Unfortunately, it is not known how many persons really died and disappeared, except the available official information, namely - 48 people were killed in clashes.
These violent actions were unprecedented in the recent history of Odessa. What happened shocked and horrified the entire city, which had traditionally been haven for people of different nationalities, religions and languages.
All this occurred under the eyes of the police, which did not intervene, on the ground that it had "no orders". The fire brigade, located nearby, was called repeatedly for assistance, but took 45 minutes to come.
Some of these events, including the violence in the Kulikovo square were partially monitored by the OHCHR monitoring mission in Ukraine.
In a number of cases, the police eventually provided protection some of the victims but surprisingly took them into custody. Some of those arrested were released the next day, under pressure from Odessa residents who protested against their detention. About 60 “pro-federalism” supporters arrested in the center of the city were taken away from Odessa and detained in other cities. Five people arrested at the time are under arrest in prison and 15 others are under house arrest. All 20 are “pro-federalism” supporters. They were all charged for “mass disorder” (Penal code, Section 294) instead of being individually charged of specific offenses. All indictments are identical, as if they had been cut and pasted from the same model. None of the "pro-government" supporters responsible for the organization and implementation of the murders has been punished. All perpetrators are free (three were initially arrested, but two of them were released, and the third died in detention from TB). One of them is undergoing investigation for murder, but is free and regularly participates in public events. [end excerpt]
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* "Human Rights Groups to OAS: Hands off Venezuela!" (2016-06-02, by Dan Kovalik Human & Labor Rights Lawyer, Adjunct Professor of International Human Rights Law, via mltoday.com) [archive.is/d48jy]
* "Appeal to China and Russia: Please Do Not Let Venezuela Fall!" (2016-06-13, by Andre Vltchek, via counterpunch.org) [archive.is/ypvqa]
* "US Interference in Venezuela during Maduro's presidency: A Short Summary" (2016-05-10, by Stansfield Smith, mltoday.com) [archive.is/RzMWh]
* "How U.S. and U.K. Media Are Trying To Push Maduro and Venezuela Over the Edge" (2016-06-06, venezuelanalysis.com) [archive.is/670nL] [begin excerpt]: Some words you will rarely read in media coverage of Venezuela include “capital strike,” “economic sabotage,” “destabilization plan,” “coup d’état” or others which provide a far more complete and accurate account of what is going on in the country. For while the crisis is real, it is also the result of an ongoing attempt by the country’s elite and international forces like the U.S. government to subvert the Maduro presidency. In so doing, the role of the media is to wage psychological warfare against the Venezuelan government, doing its best to erode public support and sympathy for the struggling government.
Many of the articles lead with stories of babies dying amidst power shortages, antibiotics in short supply and deaths from easily treatable hemorrhages in Venezuela’s public hospital system. The crisis of medicine and medical equipment shortages is real. But for the right-wing press, it is simply a story about a socialist government mismanaging the economy, not providing enough dollars for pharmacies or medical suppliers to import the needed goods or otherwise seriously screwing up that basic mechanism of modern societies, the international supply chain—a cautionary tale about what happens when you hand the keys to a country over to leftists.
But some numbers help explain what is actually going on. In 1998, Venezuela imported $222 million of medicine. In 2013, according to official numbers, that figure supposedly soared to $3.2 billion. But, as the economist Manuel Sutherland points out, the physical quantity of medicines which actually came into Venezuela decreased from 2003-2013, by 75 percent. 2003 was when the government imposed currency controls in reaction to ruinous capital flight.
Sutherland argues that the privately-owned pharmaceutical sector takes advantage of the country’s preferential exchange rate for medical supplies. It obtains dollars cheaply, then sells them dear, whether on the parallel market or to transnational corporations, which then repatriate the capital. The sector inflates its costs by falsifying import bills in order to make up the difference.
The Venezuelan pharmaceutical crisis, then, is not the making of the Venezuelan government; it is largely the making of the private sector, with the government often turning a blind eye, Sutherland suggests, due to fear of further supply shortages, more intense political pressure from those transnationals parent governments and concern for officials’ reputations.
Many in the press are speaking the language of “humanitarianism.” The word is not innocent. Officials have often used it to lull the U.S. population into acceptance of one or another form of U.S-backed violence or political chicanery abroad—for example, unfounded claims about an “imminent massacre” in 2011 Libya, or in Kosovo in 1999. Maduro’s opponents have used this language to actually call for the Organization of American States to suspend Venezuela from membership, under the grounds that its performance proves it is unfit to govern its own people.
If those speaking this language are prepared to be consistent, here is one possibility: They should call for an intervention against the Venezuelan pharmaceutical industry and call for the nationalization of the country’s pharmaceutical supply system.
In fact, the government’s unwillingness to simply expropriate the private pharmaceutical sector or build up a state-owned alternative made it continuously vulnerable to private-sector sabotage. The crisis of the pharmaceutical sector is emblematic of the larger tensions and conflicts around Venezuela’s political trajectory. For years, despite all the fear mongering around Venezuelan socialism Hugo Chávez and then Maduro avoided nationalizing private industry or commerce. Instead, they used massive oil revenues to provide for the country’s poor. In part this was to avoid the explosive domestic class conflict—and perhaps direct U.S. intervention—which would have resulted if the country had struck with more force at its private sector.
But Maduro recently shifted tactics, telling supporters of the government that closed-down factories ought be given to their workers and re-opened. “A stopped factory [is] a factory turned over to the people, the moment to do it has come.” As he said, “Whoever doesn’t want to work should leave and those who do are welcome, we will go united. This country needs all of its economic structure to be functioning.” This followed close on the May 13 declaration of a state of emergency. Such measures are the only ones which could help the government avoid the constant economic sabotage which produces the “crises” which the U.S. media is then able to use to present the Venezuelan government as unfit to govern.
Most reporting on Venezuela claims that the country has haphazardly stumbled onto balance-of-payments crises. After all, that’s what left-of-center governments do: mismanage their economies as ministers with minds clouded by excessive readings of Marx insist on byzantine authoritarian measures like price controls, import controls and currency controls. (Put to the side that state management is simply how development happens basically everywhere, including in the United States.)
In any case, Venezuela is an oil state and relies on oil for the majority of its foreign exchange. This is also one reason that claims of hyper-inflation are misleading. Amidst inflation, the currency loses value against the dollar. But the government gets dollars for the oil it sells on the international markets. The issue is not inflation, but the loss of buying power of workers’ salaries. Since maintaining buying power means subsidizing goods, the problem is not (or at least not merely, and not centrally) the rate of inflation. It is also about the loss of state resources to support workers’ salaries through subsidies. And that in turn is linked to the rate oil prices have fallen—rapidly from 2014 through 2016. Venezuela received $70 million in oil export revenues in February 2016 as against $3 billion in January 2014.
And where are the origins of that descent? Consider the comments of Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud. The country, he said, is not happy with low oil prices, “but it’s something you have to face head on, without hesitation.” OPEC decided not to decrease production quotas at its December 15 meeting, ensuring that prices remain low. Low prices means continued economic disarray for the oil-revenue-dependent countries of Russia, Iran and Venezuela—none of whom are exactly on the best of terms with the U.S. government, the major trading partner, backer, armorer, and funder of Saudi Arabia. As Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh recently put it, what the other Persian Gulf countries “want to achieve is not at all for economic gains.” What he means is that Saudi Arabia, probably at the United States’ behest, is using low oil prices as a weapon against countries which the U.S. does not like.
But the dispatches from correspondents covering Venezuela do not include any account of the reasons for the continued decline in oil prices over the last two years. Be that as it may, the U.S. media’s sudden focus on the Maduro government’s supposedly self-inflicted crises has ultimately little to do with a concern for Venezuela’s citizens, who after all have seen extreme poverty decrease markedly under the Chávez-Maduro governments, and a lot to do with advancing the U.S. regional agenda of what the economist Mark Weisbrot calls “rollback” of the continent’s leftist and populist governments. The Guardian, in a revealing speculation, wonders if the Venezuelan government will be “the next leftwing domino to fall” after Brazil. [end excerpt]
* "Prime Minister Madura, the $170 Hamburger, and the Rising Floodwaters of Shonky Venezuela Coverage" (2016-09-09, venezuelanalysis.com) [archive.is/TgGao]
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* "US Peace Council Denounces Escalation of US War in Syria" (2016-04-29, uspeacecouncil.org) [archive.is/8HzZm]
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* "New Nation, Long War: Hillary Clinton’s State Department Gave South Sudan’s Military a Pass for Its Child Soldiers" (2016-06-09, by Nick Turse, theintercept.com) [archive.is/w39Fc]
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* "A Voter’s Guide to Hillary Clinton’s Policies in Latin America; Support for coup regimes, militarization and privatization, trade deals that wreak economic havoc—they reveal the failure of Clintonism" (2016-04-15, thenation.com) [is.gd/wj6un3]
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* "Honduran Activists Unmask Egregious Govt Human Rights Abuses; Berta Caceres' murder is just one example of an onslaught of attacks against activists and the "invisibility" of basic human rights in Honduras, a new report finds" (2016-06-07, telesurtv.net) [archive.is/dFL78]
* "Honduran State policies erode economic, cultural and social rights; A Honduran civil society-led report reveals that the country’s national policies conflict with the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights and leave human rights defenders extremely vulnerable to criminalization and attacks" (2016-06-06, fian.org) [archive.is/2WqWQ]
* "Report Details How US-Backed Coup Unleashed Wave of Abuses in Honduras; Survey by 54 civil society organizations and social movements presented to UN as alternative to official state report" (2016-06-07, commondreams.org) [archive.is/TAARy] [begin excerpt]: The survey of civil society and regional organizations found that the right-wing government's economic agenda has helped advance extractive development projects while ignoring the rights of those who hold claim to the land.
"According to the report numerous concessions have been granted to hydroelectric and mining projects in areas which indigenous peoples consider sacred or vital to ensure the subsistence of local communities," said global anti-hunger group FIAN International, which published the study.
As a result, peasant communities are "increasingly facing forced evictions" while the individuals and organizations that voice opposition are met with "violence, intimidation, and criminalization," the study found—such as in the case of Cáceres, who was murdered by Honduran military officials and employees of the hydroelectric dam project that she opposed.
"This demonstrates that the mechanisms available in Honduras for their protection do not suffice. The overwhelming majority of the cases go unpunished," the report reads.
What's more, this violence has particularly targeted women—including through structural violence such as restriction of their civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. "The climate of fear in both the public and private sphere, and the lack of accountability for human rights violations against women is the rule, not the exception," the report states.
"All this happens within a context of extreme poverty and imbalanced wealth distribution that leads many to go malnourished," the report continues. According to FIAN, 12.1 percent of the Honduran population is undernourished while a full 95 percent of Indigenous children under 14 suffer from malnutrition. [end excerpt]
* Report (.pdf) [is.gd/siBait]
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* "War With Russia Without Public Debate? NATO is continuing its military buildup and “exercises” on Russia’s borders, Moscow is taking “counter-measures,” while the US mainstream media remains silent" (2016-06-09, thenation.com) [archive.is/ndgly]
* "NATO risks nuclear war with Russia 'within a year', warns senior general; The West has been advised to act now to avert 'potential catastrophe' " (2016-05-18, independent.co.uk) [archive.is/SlbUB]
* "NATO aims to feed fears by painting Russia as ‘treacherous enemy’ – Russian Defense Ministry" (2016-06-16, rt.com) [archive.is/vePeI]
* "West Doesn't Comprehend Putin Is the Last Chance for a Pro-Western Russia Putin didn't reject the West -- he argued Russia should integrate into it as an equal -- but whoever comes after him likely will" (2016-06-08, russia-insider.com) [archive.is/hA9vg] [begin excerpt]: The much-neglected reality is that the only real organised nation-wide opposition in Russia is the fiercely anti-Western Communist Party under Gennady Zyuganov, and to a lesser extent the radical nationalists under the leadership of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In the Russian parliament, the only other opposition party represented is ‘A Just Russia’, a socialist party created in 2006 with the support of the Kremlin. Putin’s intention was to cultivate a more moderate opposition on the left that could siphon off the protest vote that would have gone to the communists. The West’s nostalgia for the 1990s under Yeltsin tends to culminate in the support for a political class and oligarchs that are discredited and politically irrelevant. [...]
Putin’s solution was to reform the pro-Western approach by arguing that Russia should integrate with the West as equals, rather than into the West as an aspirant. This implied negotiating from a position of strength rather than conceding to the demands of the West. Moscow would balance Western unilateralism, while concurrently offering multilateral alternatives. The approach united Russia’s fragmented political spectrum as it accommodated those that recoginised that peace can only be achieved by cooperating with the West, and also incorporating the anti-Western hawks positing that Russia should strengthen and reject any European and international system where Russia is not adequately represented.
A breakthrough was reached with the EU-Russia ‘Common Spaces Agreement’ in 2005. Both sides committed to harmonise integration efforts towards the shared neighbourhood and ‘thereby contributing effectively to creating a Greater Europe without dividing lines’. Moscow followed up the agreement with proposals for an inclusive pan-European security architecture and an EU-Russian Union with free trade and free movement of people from Lisbon to Vladivostok. While Russia intended to establish itself as the foremost proponent of European unification, these proposals were immediately rebuffed as ‘anti-European’ since they would undermine the primacy of the EU and NATO as the representatives of ‘Europe’. European integration instead becomes a zero-sum geopolitical project, where the shared neighbourhood would have to choose between the West and Russia. The EU’s proposed Association Agreement with Ukraine largely annulled the Common Spaces Agreement, as Kiev was expected to de-couple from Moscow and pivot towards Brussels economically, politically and militarily. The EU then rejected the proposal by Kiev and Moscow to preserve the neutrality of Ukraine by replacing the Association Agreement with a trilateral EU-Ukraine-Russia agreement.
While the West devotes much focus to Russia violating its trust, little attention is dedicated to Russia’s sense of being betrayed. A consensus has been reached in Moscow that any prospect of a ‘Greater Europe’ has failed. With the demise of Putin’s reformed ‘pro-Western’ platform, the opposition is winning the argument that Russia must prepare the military to counter NATO. [end excerpt]
* "Stop Vladimir Putin now or Russia will advance to ‘border with Poland or Germany’ says Nadia Savchenko" (2016-06-09, telegraph.co.uk) [archive.is/70x28] [begin excerpt]: As Ukrainian forces confront separatist rebels - reinforced by regular Russian troops and tanks - in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, Ms Savchenko’s comrades on the frontline are often outgunned and outnumbered. [end excerpt]
The article faithfully follows the USA/NATO narrative of a "Russian invasion"... yet, when a researcher looks up evidence for "separatist rebels reinforced by regular Russian troops and tanks", they will find miss-attributed photographs, and nothing definitive showing such a transfer of heavy weapons over a border watched by USA/NATO satellites. The tanks used by the "separatists" were captured after successful battle and mutiny by anti-fascist Ukraine soldiers from military forts and weapons depots. Also, the "separatists" are not known to bomb civilian cities, and are instead being bombed dozens of times a day, far from "outgunning" their adversary, their only crime is to win the battle for survival. The "separatists" are not invaders, but ethnic-Russians from within the Republic of Ukraine facing a hostile fascist government of oligarchs allied with the USA State Dept. whose avowed goal is to spark a war with the Federation of Russia with USA military support.
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A massacre targeting LGBTQ people at a bar in Orlando is boosted for the purposes of political expediency, including by Prediential candidate nominee Donald Trump, and, in a transparent manner, by the USA State Dept. and Dept. of Homeland Security as both mobilized assets to participate in a clandestine public outreach campaign to gain support for gun-control, and for an invasion of the Arab Republic of Syria, ostentatiously to target ISIS and al-Nusra.
* "ISIS claims responsibility for Orlando mass shooting – affiliated agency" (2016-06-12, rt.com) [archive.is/blP60]
* "FBI confirms Orlando shooter claimed links to ISIS & Al-Nusra, cited Boston bombers" (2016-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/AOlu4]
* "Orlando gay club shooter called 911, pledging allegiance to ISIS - officials" (2016-06-12, rt.com) [archive.is/U58ZR]
* "Orlando nightclub victim uploaded this snapchat video before dying" (2016-06-13, conservativeoutfitters.com) [archive.is/OgczJ], video (.mp4) [is.gd/DPZmvC]
The massacre is used as inspiration by those hostile to LGBTQ people, and this threat is brought up as a point of concern by human rights advocates, despite hostility to such concern by the monopolist media...
* "Word Matters: Why the news media is calling Omar Mateen an ‘Islamic Radical’ and not a ‘radical American homophobe’ ; The U.S. media perpetuates Islamaphobia by not telling the truth" (2016-06-13, alldigitocracy.org) [archive.is/muVPe].
* "Journalist Walks Off TV Show When It Won’t Address Real Cause Of Orlando Shooting; 'The bigots must not be allowed to hijack this atrocity' " (2016-06-13, huffingtonpost.com) [archive.is/hprdv]
* " 'On Sky News last night, I realised how far some will go to ignore homophobia,' Owen Jones; The sexualities of those murdered in Orlando shouldn’t be glossed over. This was the worst mass killing of LGBT people in the west since the Holocaust" (2016-06-13, theguardian.com) [archive.is/gZvzE]
* "Orlando shooter Omar Mateen not first G4S employee to go on deadly rampage" (2016-06-13, rt.com) [archive.is/HhXK1]
* "4 Reasons It’s No Coincidence Orlando Shooter Worked for G4S" (2016-06-13, telesurtv.net) [archive.is/wvcAP]
* "Orlando Killer Worked For Company Transporting Illegal Immigrants Inside US; Was Interviewed By FBI 3 Times" (2016-06-12, zerohedge.com) [archive.is/xG6Eu]
* "Officers may have shot Orlando club patrons" (2016-06-14, wfaa.com) [archive.is/vwf06]
* "Police Admit Officers May Also Be Responsible For Gunning Down Orlando Nightclub Patrons" (2016-01-14, by Jay Syrmopoulos) [archive.is/5rIJL]
* "Orlando Shooter Was Reportedly a Regular at Pulse and Had a Profile on Gay Dating App" (2016-06-13, gawker.com) [archive.is/HBMWA]
* "Orlando shooter's classmate: He was gay" (2016-06-13, thehill.com) [archive.is/MIq9a]
The inconsistencies in the narrative and evidence concerning the massacre has been documented, similar to other high profile massacres of similar manner, and this documentation has given doubt to many.
* "5 Reasons To Question The Official Story Of The Orlando Shooting" (2016-06-13, Brandon Turbeville) [archive.is/0GGxO]
* "Media Refusing to Cover Numerous Witness Accounts of Multiple Shooters in Orlando Massacre" (2016-06-13, by Claire Bernish) [archive.is/BMd5g]
* "Facebook post claiming Orlando shooter didn’t act alone sparks online outrage" (2016-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/OqtAh], screenshot of the posting [archive.is/lkYJr].
* "Orlando Shooting False Flag" (2016-06-14, aanirfan.blogspot.nl) [archive.is/3gHXz]
* meme [archive.is/2p3GH]: One of Orlando's premier Gay clubs. No CCTV or cellphone footage of entire mass shooting or hostage standoff.
* "Drill gone live? Orlando mass-casualty drill screenshot" (2016-06-13, by Lori Price, legitgov.org) [archive.is/ZdjXW]
* Crisis Actors: Man is carrying a wounded man who is wearing red shoes... then drops the wounded man to the sidewalk, and they are both standing at ease with no urgency, though the man who did the carrying is shaking off a leg muscle spasm. The "Wounded man" is not wounded.
* "If you see this woman... Run for your life!" meme (2016-06-14) [archive.is/3yRXl]
* The following shows a police helmet chipped in a manner inconsistent with being hit by a bullet or by shrapnel (2016-06-12, twitter.com/OrlandoPolice) [archive.is/XHGej], and is described as showing an impact outcome inconsistent with the caliber and type of gun.
* "Orlando shootings: Killer's father supports Taliban, shunned by Afghan groups" (2016-06-14, rt.com) [archive.is/AvCqI]
* "Orlando suspect’s father hosted a TV show and now pretends to be Afghanistan’s president" (2016-06-12, washingtonpost.com) [archive.is/YYnMj]
Is it normal for the fathers of random shooters to routinely associate with US State Department officials? The father of the Orlando Shooter, Seddique Mateen, is head of Durand Jirga, an American organization promoting right-wing Pashtun nationalism, and Afghan irredentism. It's not particularly religious, but it takes the position of "Long live America, long live Tehreek-i-Taliban (It supports domestic Afghan Taliban, but hates Pakistan, so it opposes Pakistani ISI funded Taliban).
Seddique Mateen worked for DOD and State Department in Afghanistan... his reward was a nice setup in the USA.
Photos [archive.is/xmxXp] [archive.is/XsQHQ] [archive.is/B0alg] [archive.is/rgO9Y][archive.is/FHP2X].
Photo [archive.is/jFs0L] showing Seddique Mateen with the USA State Dept. Deputy Director for Central European Affairs [archive.is/vWVQs] [archive.is/q0Aof], mentioned in the following document (.pdf) [is.gd/1o2VZ2] [archive.is/tHmyl].
* Photo caption (2016-06-12, washingtonpost.com ) [archive.is/YYnMj]: Seddique Mateen, the father of Omar Mateen, who authorities say committed the worst mass killing in U.S. history. The elder Mateen hosted the "Durand Jirga Show," which aired on a channel broadcast from California.
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* "Douce France 2015 (Sweet France)" by Vic Sadot the "Broadside Balladeer" [http://soundcloud.com/broadsideballadeer/douce-france-2015].
A lyrical parody by Vic Sadot of the song written by Charles Trenet in France in 1943 during the Nazi occupation, Vichy collaboration, and the French Resistance. It was recorded in 1947. Although it is a parody, it most certainly is not a mocking one. It expresses a love and a preference for a liberated France, and a disgust for a France misled by corruption towards fascism.
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* "Demand the South Korean government release prisoner of conscience Kim Hye-young!" (2016-06-09, answercoalition.org) [archive.is/blBwr]: Supporters of South Korean political prisoner Kim Hye-young gathered at the South Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 6. Along with others, Kim is the victim of the National Security Law in South Korea, which is being used to repress dissent in the country and is being aimed at those who have been working for peace and the reunification of the peninsula.
Kim was arrested in July 2015 while participating in a peaceful sit-in in Seoul, and in January 2016 was sentenced to two years in prison under the National Security Law. On May 26 her sentence was upheld upon appeal, and Kim began an open-ended hunger strike. Kim has thyroid cancer, and has suffered many panic attacks since being placed in prison. She is currently being held in a 71-square-foot cell with two other inmates and has been denied adequate health care.
Monday’s protest was organized by three women from the Corean Alliance for Independent Reunification and Democracy (CAIRD), a coalition of peace, labor and social justice groups in South Korea. They have been on a peace delegation in the United States for several weeks protesting and raising awareness about the dire situation for activists in South Korea.
After Japan was defeated at the end of World War II in August 1945, the U.S. took over the colonial project in the South and put an anti-communist dictatorship led by Syngman Rhee in power. The dictatorship unleashed a brutal campaign of repression, assassinating 100,000 progressive workers, academics, and labor leaders, and other political opponents. Today, South Korea remains under U.S. occupation, with some 28,000 soldiers stationed there.
Together, the U.S. and South Korean governments have been the main obstacles preventing the peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula. The political repression of activists in South Korea is part and parcel of the continued occupation of the country. As such, it is imperative for all progressive forces in the U.S. to demand an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from the peninsula, and to stand in solidarity with Korean activists fighting for self-determination.
The ANSWER Coalition is supporting the following campaign of the Corean* Alliance for Independent Reunification and Democracy (CAIRD) to demand the immediate release of prisoner of conscience and cancer patient Kim Hye-young and the resignation of the Park Geun-hye government in South Korea
*Corea is the way that Korea was spelled before Western powers intervened and divided it.
Kim Hye-young (photo) was arrested on July 26, 2015, for participating in a sit-in during a peaceful demonstration in Seoul, South Korea.In January 2016, she was sentenced using the National Security Law to two years in prison and sent to the Seoul Detention Center. She appealed the decision.
On May 26, 2016, Kim’s appeal was denied. She went on an open-ended hunger strike to protest the denial.
Kim has thyroid cancer and has suffered panic attacks in prison. She has not received appropriate medical treatment. She is being held in a 71-square-foot cell with two other inmates.
The ANSWER Coalition encourages people to sign and share the petition created by Corean Alliance for Independent Reunification and Democracy (CAIRD) to demand the immediate release of prisoner of conscience and cancer patient Kim Hye-young and the resignation of the Park Geun-hye government in South Korea:
Sign the petition and send a letter to South Korean Ambassador to the United States Ahn Ho-Young:
(live link) [is.gd/SwGj89].
More from the Corean Alliance for Independent Reunification and Democracy (CAIRD):
It is important for people in the United States to join in solidarity with activists in South Korea because the United States has a long history of intervention in Korean affairs, which continues today. The United States first invaded Korea in the late 1800s. It was the U.S. and other Western powers that arbitrarily divided Korea into North and South in the 1940s. The U.S. seized power over South Korea and put Syngman Rhee in as the leader. When pro-democracy activists went on strike to protest U.S. intervention, the U.S. military brutally suppressed them. Rhee, a Korean exile who lived in the United States for 40 years, was responsible for the assassination of democracy leaders.
Corean Alliance for Independent Reunification and Democracy (CAIRD) is calling for:
1. U.S. troops out of South Korea
2. End military exercises against North Korea
3. The U.S. must sign a peace treaty with North Korea to finally end the Korean War
4. The resignation of President Park Geun-hye, the daughter of dictator General Park Chung-hee
5. Discussion of reunification
Read the illustrated story of Kim Hye-young [is.gd/24jdLp]
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* "Erdogan cuts short US trip before Muhammad Ali burial amid reports he was snubbed at funeral" (2016-06-10, rt.com) [archive.is/ltCSh]
Turkey’s butcher wanted to use Muhammad Ali’s funeral for his propaganda platform but denied the chance to speak. #Erdogan
===*===*===
Weapons for a New World Order
* "Scientists Turn Bacteria Into Living Hard Drives; Living organisms can store lines of code and pass them down to their progeny" (2016-06-09, popularmechanics.com) [archive.is/6OTDS]
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* "IAI debuts RoBattle unmanned ground combat vehicle" (2016-06-09, UPI Newswire) [archive.is/1XEqc]
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* "Israel Is Already Selling Kamikaze Micro-Drones That Will Change Modern Warfare; The Hero-30 weighs less than 7 pounds, but can carry a one-pound warhead" (2015-11-03, popularmechanics.com) [archive.is/aXeuW]
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* "Flight of the RoboBee; Long-term NSF support for Harvard University researchers helps develop unique flying micro-robots" (2016-06-07, nsf.gov) [archive.is/p5G1D], photo caption [archive.is/bHH9T]: Robotic bees, or RoboBees, developed by researchers at Harvard and MIT with support from NSF. The Harvard Microrobotics Lab demonstrated the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot. Inspired by the biology of a fly, with submillimeter-scale anatomy and two wafer-thin wings that flap almost invisibly, 120 times per second, the RoboBee takes its first controlled flight. The culmination of a decade's work, RoboBees achieve vertical takeoff, hovering and steering.
Videos and captions:
- The Harvard Microrobotics Lab has demonstrated the first controlled flight of an insect-sized flapping-wing robot. This video shows the 80mg, piezoelectrically actuated robot achieving hovering flight and performing a simple lateral maneuver. Power and control signals are provided via wire tether. NSF and Harvard's Wyss Institute funded the work.
- The RoboBee, pioneered at Harvard Microrobotics Lab, uses an electrode patch and a foam mount that absorbs shock to stick to ceilings and overhangs. The robot takes off and flies normally. When the electrode patch is supplied with a charge, it can stick to almost any surface, from glass to wood to a leaf. To detach, the power supply is simply switched off.
* "Spy-Butterfly: Israel developing insect drone for indoor surveillance" (2012-05-19, rt.com) [archive.is/UHRbP]. photo caption: Israeli "butterfly" UAV. Image courtesy: Israel Hayom (Image from http://www.israelhayom.co.il)
Comments (posted 2012, freerepublic.com) [archive.is/oW2vW]:
- Integrated circuits the size of a tiny speck can perform surveillance of audio/video/?
A crude form of the tech is even getting out to the public at large for 2 dollars.
Just look at this 125 channel 2GHz transceiver that can handle 2mbits/second data rate...the output RF is small but the distance covered can be enormous. The receive sensitivity is impressive. Just imagine how tiny this tech can be made if price is no object!?
Ebay seller of these small xcievers [ebay.com/itm/10-pcs-New-upgrade-NRF24L01-2-4GHz-Wireless-Transceiver-Module-/280794436571].
How far can this sort of sub milliwatt transceiver operate? To a simple antenna perhaps 300 yards. With a 24db dish at each end perhaps 20 miles (such a dish is 50.00 retail) To the NRO 350ft dish systems at 23,000 miles in geo orbit they would have a BIG signal.
Remember, these trinkets are for tinkerers. The sophisticated stuff is far smaller. Of course the 2.4GHz band is saturated and the NRO sats would literally be swamped with signals at these common frequencies. Microwave ovens are at 2450Ghz and would be a particular noise source from orbit. But many other frequency ranges are very quiet.
Want to attract a lot of serious attention? Build a very wideband jammer that covers say 2.5GHz to 100GHz with a weak signal of a few milliwatts.... and just let it run.
As an aside, one of these 2 dollar 2.4GHz transceivers would be detectable by the deep space tracking system if you fired it up on the Martian surface....and this thing can sit on the tip of your finger.
- There is also...
- Seems a logical progression to go from surveillance butterflies to deadly wasps or killer mosquitoes. Why use a JDAM when a drop of poison can do the trick?
If you have ever been stung by a wasp or bee, you know you didn't see it coming & there wasn't anything you could do to avoid it, anyway.
One little bug could seriously ruin a terrorist's day!
A swarm of deadly wasps could quickly empty a nuclear research facility or a missile launch site, maybe permanently - surely for a good while. Ravenous locusts, with a taste for electronics, could trash enemy weapons & equipment. Security systems work pretty good at detecting human intruders, but detecting deadly mosquitoes will be a lot harder - stopping them, even more difficult.
How will you defend yourself or carry out you mission when attacked by a swarm of 1000 or 10,000 killer bees?
If you think my numbers are exaggerated, consider that high tech companies product thousands of tiny integrated circuits every day.
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* "Lower-cost metal 3-D printing solution available" (2015-02-10, phys.org) [archive.is/f6OMo] [begin excerpt]: 3D printing of plastic parts to prototype or manufacture goods is becoming commonplace in industry, but there is an urgent need for lower-cost 3D printing technology to produce metal parts. New substrate release solutions that offer easy, less expensive alternatives to aluminum parts removal during gas metal arc weld 3D printing are described in an article in 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing. [end excerpt]
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* "ESA showcases printed metal parts fit for space" (2013-10-15, AP Newswire) [archive.is/OyNCX]: The European Space Agency says it has developed a technology that allows metal parts for spacecraft and nuclear reactors to be "printed" as a single piece.
In recent years three-dimensional printing has become commonplace in manufacturing. But so far this method has largely been limited to making plastic objects.
ESA says its metal-printing technology can be used to create more complex shapes than with traditional techniques and leaves almost no waste material.
The Paris-based space agency presented several sample objects capable of withstanding temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 Fahrenheit) at an event in London on Tuesday.
It aims to make the parts even more durable in the coming years.
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* "Airbus presents 3D-printed mini aircraft" (2016-06-05, phys.org) [archive.is/9H3lT], photo caption: The world's first 3D-printed aircraft THOR on display in the Airbus booth at the International Aerospace Exhibition in Schoenefeld near Berlin, on 1 June, 2016
Photo caption: In Aribus' 3D printed plane THOR the only parts that are not printed from a substance called polyamide are the electrical elements
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Underground facilities pockmark the USA homeland and worldwide. Private bureaucracies maintain these facilities, military agencies build them for developing and storing ABC weapons, most public-sector government officials are not allowed to know about these faculties for the sake of National Security, however, in the event of an ABC attack against the USA homeland, certain public-sector officials are instructed in the locations of certain underground facilities administered by military or clandestine security agencies.
The following is a diagram for an underground nuclear waste storage facility in the Republic of Finland, from [archive.is/bVDJU].
---
* "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control" (1978, by John Marks) [archive.is/495oL]:
PART I: ORIGINS OF MIND-CONTROL RESEARCH -
1. World War II [archive.is/FnVDV]
2. Cold War on the Mind [archive.is/kXUh2]
3. The Professor and the "A" Treatment [archive.is/n5Tj7]
PART II: INTELLIGENCE OR "WITCHES POTIONS" -
4. LSD [archive.is/Ni5eS]
5. Concerning the Case of Dr. Frank Olsen [archive.is/dY4EV]
6. Them Unwitting: The Safehouses [archive.is/VEnkq]
7. Mushrooms to Counterculture [archive.is/sAkOD]
PART III: SPELLS—ELECTRODES AND HYPNOSIS -
8. Brainwashing [archive.is/OCHQP]
9. Human Ecology [archive.is/4zl5A]
10. The Gittinger Assessment System [archive.is/USFUZ]
11. Hypnosis [archive.is/oGEm7]
PART IV: CONCLUSIONS -
12. The Search for the Truth [archive.is/RrXOy]
===*===*===
Articles reflecting the views of war planners
(warontherocks.com)
* "First World Problems: Defense acquisition and the competition for ideas" (2016-06-10, warontherocks.com) [archive.is/l8KEi]
===*===*===
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