In case you were wondering why Grist
magazine, based in Seattle, is pro-GMO and pro-Nukes (as is Bill
Gates), following the money is probably a good place to start. Funders
of Grist include Tides Foundation (an oil industry money laundry), Ford
Foundation (a partner of the World Bank in ethnic cleansing of
Indigenous peoples worldwide), and the Rockefeller Brothers (inheritors
of the Standard Oil fortune).
Enough said.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
The Twilight Zone
Friday, April 29, 2016
This Changes Everything--Take Two
Next time you hear some Naomi Klein groupie repeat her idiotic mantra
"This Changes Everything" regarding the 'clean energy/New Economy' scam,
you might remind the gullible moron that the bank bailouts did, too.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Time for American Regime Change
The American regime of two corrupt political parties that favor Wall Street over Main Street is the message young people need to carry with them into the California and Oregon primaries, as well as to the streets outside the DNC in July. As noted at Shadow Proof, this is a movement, not a cult.
Young people, fed up with the oligarchy that Clinton and Trump represent, voted overwhelmingly for Sanders in the primaries he lost, and they are by no means Democratic Party loyalists. And why should they be? They have been betrayed in every way possible by Obama and Clinton for eight straight years, and their future is bleak with either Clinton or Trump in the White House.
Whatever happens at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, or in the general election, the movement Sanders' campaign catalyzed is the only hope for democratic renewal in the US, and the only hope for humanity, that is suffering from relentless American aggression. A little creative anarchy and social organizing against what Clinton and Trump stand for couldn't hurt a bit.
Young people, fed up with the oligarchy that Clinton and Trump represent, voted overwhelmingly for Sanders in the primaries he lost, and they are by no means Democratic Party loyalists. And why should they be? They have been betrayed in every way possible by Obama and Clinton for eight straight years, and their future is bleak with either Clinton or Trump in the White House.
Whatever happens at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, or in the general election, the movement Sanders' campaign catalyzed is the only hope for democratic renewal in the US, and the only hope for humanity, that is suffering from relentless American aggression. A little creative anarchy and social organizing against what Clinton and Trump stand for couldn't hurt a bit.
Monday, April 25, 2016
Renewable Energy Unsustainable
Energy demand is much more than electricity. Electricity is only 18% of energy demand worldwide. 82% of energy demand is for manufacturing, transportation, housing and food production--using fossil fuels.
Solar and wind energy currently provide 3% of total world energy demand. Switching to electric vehicles would double electrical demand, requiring burning more fossil fuels and mining of rare earth minerals for batteries, often in regions that are militantly resistant to having their homelands ravaged.
Electrical storage and grid infrastructure for solar and wind energy creates increased energy demand to mine minerals, as well as to manufacture and transport materials for this new infrastructure. Mining and manufacture of solar and wind infrastructure generates toxic waste, as well as polluted air and water.
Solar and wind energy systems have to be replaced every 30 years. It takes a ton of coal to make a dozen solar panels. Renewable energy without massive cuts in energy demand is thus unsustainable. With two million people born every week, consumerism and militarism are wasteful energy habits we can no longer afford.
REDACTED
Historian Jefferson Morley explains How the CIA Writes History--REDACTED.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Hillary Goes Ballistic
Hillary goes ballistic in her campaign's netwar against Sanders. It's the equivalent of 'shock and awe' by the candidate of Wall Street, unnerved by the growing support for the voice of Main Street.
Friday, April 22, 2016
Googling the White House
In the ideal totalitarian state, the state knows everything about you, and you know nothing about it. When the state forms a partnership with corporations that control information, that makes it a lot easier--for them. When the state is reduced to a conduit for transferring public wealth (your tax dollars) to private parties (Wall Street), controlling information is essential to preventing public organizing against corruption. Read more in The Android Administration.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Doing the Numbers
As of today, the numbers in the Democratic presidential primary are Clinton 1,442 and Sanders 1,209--a 233 lead for Clinton. There are 1,400 delegate pledges left, 475 in California alone.
In other words, it ain't over.
In other words, it ain't over.
Cutting Pensions
True to form, Obama -- Son of Reagan -- bails out banks, then cuts worker pensions.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Gates vs Democracy
A prima donna of the aristocracy as a social engineer vs the "nuisance of democracy".
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Grinding Grist
Friday, April 15, 2016
Exploding Heads
Having inadvertently supplied ISIS with thousands of surface-to-air missiles during the Libya intervention, the US is now arming the Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra with rocket-launcher systems. In case you've been in a coma for fifteen years, Al-Qaeda is the outfit that brought down the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City, and ISIS is the extended villain family on a holy murderous rampage from Tripoli to Baghdad. The one hitch in this, as noted at the Wall Street Journal, is that these guys might get it in their heads to do some target practice on commercial jetliners, which is potentially embarrassing to the CIA.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
That Human Rights Thing
As Holly Wood observes in her recent post:
Millions of Americans cannot tell you what is contained in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They could not tell you when it was signed. They cannot tell you why it was needed. I wager if you asked most Americans right now, they would not know this document exists.Why does this matter, you might ask? Consider:
According to Article 5 of the UNDHR, torture is recognized as a human rights violation and proscribed by international law. However! America believes itself exempt from the Geneva Conventions. Many Americans plainly do not seem to give a fuck. In fact, consumers of conservative talk radio seem pretty into torture as a weapon in the War on Terror. Perhaps one of the most terrifying historical consequences of 9/11 is that it revealed to the rest of the world how eager and willing a great number of Americans are to disregard the United Nations Human Rights Declaration. And if that was the terrorists’ intention — to make the world see how inhumane we really are — the case could be made that they succeeded.So what can we do? Well:
Today, millions are gleefully campaigning for Hillary Clinton without giving a second of critical thought as to her position as Secretary of State atop a multinational system of torture and state violence. She can run for President because millions of Americans think this is good foreign policy experience that qualifies her for the Presidency. Few Americans seem willing to engage with its objective reality: Hillary Clinton is a profiteer of state torture. Slay, queen.Run that by me again? OK:
The logic of human rights agreements is that when we agree that under no circumstances should a human body be tortured, under no circumstances is the torture of a human body legitimate. No exceptions. Hard and fast. Black and white. Cross your heart and hope to die. This is a promise we make to the world and future generations that torture will be no more. The promise was to never again be as cavalier towards the sanctity of human life as were the Nazis. That was the point of the agreement. No hyperbole necessary.But we freed the slaves, right? Jesus:
According to the UNDHR, “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude.” Yet, human trafficking persists all over the world. At no point has human slavery ended. At no point has there been a unified commitment to eradicating human slavery, either. Sure, people think human slavery is awful and shouldn’t happen, and yet still it does.Surely, that can't happen here! Right:
As democracies, we could demand that our governments unite in eradicating slavery across the globe. And yet people hear about sex trafficking and child soldiers and somehow their existence doesn’t consume our media attention. We should be hearing stories about Boko Haram every fucking day. But we don’t have to go to Africa to see bondage. Our landscape is littered with cement boxes where the bodies of Blacks and Latinos are caged for years. And in many of these for-profit prisons, they are conscripted to work for corporations such as Microsoft, Quaker Oats and Victoria’s Secret in exchange for what amounts to a tube of toothpaste a week in their hyper-inflated prison economy.At least we got Obamacare! Christ:
This is too complicated. Really:Right now, healthcare is run on a for-profit basis. Health insurance is privatized in America. It is illegal for the government to regulate drug prices. Even executives of ostensibly non-profit hospitals make millions of dollars a year in personal income, wildly stretching the meaning of nonprofit. To put it bluntly:Until we come together to recognize healthcare as a right — not a financial privilege — we are violating a basic tenet of the UNDHR. Many people want to claim healthcare is not a human right but a commodity. But here’s the thing: in the same breath you are saying you don’t care that America is violating the human rights of its citizens to appease Capitalists. That’s what you’re saying. You’re saying Capitalism matters more than this basic human right. You can believe that, but just admit to yourself that you’re that kind of an asshole. Don’t sugar-coat it.
America, the most radical thing we can do is go back and honor our agreements to the world in the UNDHR. They weren’t fancy. They weren’t complex. They were simple promises we made to a world in crisis the American government would be pioneers in modeling good governance for its own people. They were basic tenets of a good society.
Acknowledgement
Acknowledgement
Vi Hilbert (1918-2008) -- a
Native American from the Upper Skagit tribe, and National Heritage Fellow of
the National Endowment of the Arts -- once made the following observation:
The first psychiatrist of this land,
our medicine men, used the simplest things. They realized how important
acknowledgment was. If a person was to rise to the highest goal that their
families expected them to practice and if their deeds and accomplishments went
unnoticed, why should they try? Why should they do anything? Nobody paid any
attention to that anyway.
Our medicine men knew that this was very important. If you could see somebody doing a great piece of work at great hardship to him or her, then you pointed that out. You paid attention in public for the great thing you had just seen accomplished by this person. What a wonderful job this person was able to do because somebody had taught them how to use their hands and their mind and their eyes in a good way.
They would give credit to the teacher and to the student. Everyone was acknowledged in having a part in this great work that was being done because this person had been able to learn about what was important. So this is acknowledgment. It's medicine used by the greatest of our medicine men, because if you sit in a roomful of people and you go unnoticed forever, why should you come to be with any of the people who are there. Nobody knows that you're there. Nobody cares that you're there. Why should you be there to learn anything?
So that person might have a medicine man sense the sadness in your heart that nobody ever paid any attention to. Nobody ever notices that you even exist. The moment a medicine man points out to the houseful of people that you are there and you have been seen to do this. You have been acknowledged for the gifts that you yourself have given and then you are known then you feel good about who you are because somebody has paid attention to what you do and who you are. Acknowledgement is the best medicine that could ever, ever be practiced.
Our medicine men knew that this was very important. If you could see somebody doing a great piece of work at great hardship to him or her, then you pointed that out. You paid attention in public for the great thing you had just seen accomplished by this person. What a wonderful job this person was able to do because somebody had taught them how to use their hands and their mind and their eyes in a good way.
They would give credit to the teacher and to the student. Everyone was acknowledged in having a part in this great work that was being done because this person had been able to learn about what was important. So this is acknowledgment. It's medicine used by the greatest of our medicine men, because if you sit in a roomful of people and you go unnoticed forever, why should you come to be with any of the people who are there. Nobody knows that you're there. Nobody cares that you're there. Why should you be there to learn anything?
So that person might have a medicine man sense the sadness in your heart that nobody ever paid any attention to. Nobody ever notices that you even exist. The moment a medicine man points out to the houseful of people that you are there and you have been seen to do this. You have been acknowledged for the gifts that you yourself have given and then you are known then you feel good about who you are because somebody has paid attention to what you do and who you are. Acknowledgement is the best medicine that could ever, ever be practiced.
Navajo Holocaust
Peabody Coal’s 40 Year Holocaust for Navajos, “a long mourning song in the land”.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Crime and Pretense
Destroying Aboriginal self-determination in Australia is the subject of filmmaker John Pilger’s commentary Starvation of Australia’s Indigenous Peoples: Utopia’s Dirty Secret.
Ending Brothel Slavery
France joins Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Canada and Northern Ireland in
adopting the “Nordic Model” of helping victims of sex-trafficking by criminalizing clients, not prostitutes,
and by providing support and exit services for the 89% of prostitutes
who are not prostitutes by choice. Recognizing the tremendous violence
in prostitution, including assault, rape, physical and psychological
torture, the French National Assembly on April 6, 2016 chose to protect
prostitutes’ fundamental rights as human beings.
Friday, April 08, 2016
To Tell the Truth
Calling out the Clintons on their fictitious claims about Black Lives Matter, ShadowProof examines the real record of Bill and Hillary–a sordid story of callous disregard, financial opportunism, and campaign fraud.
Tuesday, April 05, 2016
A Time for Accountability
Tim Robbins introduces Bernie Sanders, a politician that has a moral bottom line.
Monday, April 04, 2016
Gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant
Habitat for Humanity NYC and slumlords combine to turn the poor into the homeless.
