Within twelve hours of America electing Donald Trump, no less than four instances of graffiti were reported to local police in South Philadelphia. Some of that graffiti was openly and cowardly racist.

I saw the report from Philly.com, which included a picture of the words ‘Sieg Heil’ spray painted in black on an empty storefront window on Broad Street. I recognized the storefront. I’d passed it dozens of times, on my way to and back from the local grocery store. Immediately, I stopped what I was working on, putting my keys in my pocket and slipping out of my slippers and into a pair of shoes. I darted down the steps of my apartment and out into the street.

Running the nearly two and a half blocks to Broad Street, I stopped at the corner. A group of people were situated on the curb, about twenty feet from the empty storefront window. I observed the glass. Everything was wiped away. And yet the picture, I realized, would stay in my brain. How did I know that? I felt it, when I got back to my apartment in the hazy, drizzling rain, gray and cloudy skies above, a damp and somber impression fecundated into my head and heart.

I’m going to remember this day.

More racist graffiti was also reported on the 1300 block of South Broad Street. ‘RUMP’ spray painted in black. The letter ‘T’ was there instead of a swastika.

It is hard to know if the graffiti was sprayed by someone supporting Trump – or someone mocking Trump’s election as racist.

Philadelphia is its own county, a blue one, in Pennsylvania. When the election results started coming in last night, it was almost assumed that Clinton would be taking the 20 electoral votes from the state. Instead, those results didn’t come in until well after ten o’clock at night. Maybe it was even after eleven o’clock, when finally Trump was declared the winner of Pennsylvania, one of many red states that solidified his victory in the presidential election which endlessly exuded a divided nation.

Clinton secured about ten counties in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t enough. Trump won the state by nearly 70,000 votes. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson took 142,653 votes, while Green Party Candidate Jill Stein won 48,912 votes in the state. Ultimately, this Third Party shift gave Trump his victory in Pennsylvania, among a whole lot of other political baggage.

Clinton reportedly won 82.18% of the vote, in the city of Philadelphia. Trump won nearly 16% of the vote, here.

South Philly is already feeling the effects of one of the biggest political upsets in American politics, in decades.

After these results the racist “Trump” graffiti turned up in the morning.

A third report of graffiti in South Philly came from Twitter. More black spray paint, this time on a white SUV, with the words “Black Bitch” and “Trump Rules”. The car had been dropped off by its owner at a Liberty Auto Body. Local police was said to have already visited the auto shop.

Also reported to local police were myriad … what’s the word I’m looking for … incidents? Vandalism. There we go. More vandalism was reported. Vandalism on cars and houses, on the 900 block of South 6th Street, identified at 8:30 a.m. local time.

A staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer also posted the following picture on Twitter.

A view from 6th and Carpenter in South Philadelphia. @PhillyInquirer pic.twitter.com/9NNa8sda2m

— Michael Matza (@MichaelMatza1) November 9, 2016

Aside from the fact that when I would return to my apartment from wanting to see the racist Trump graffiti out on Broad Street, I’d already been sipping at a glass of red wine. French red wine with ice cubes in it. To go with my late-afternoon breakfast, and a hangover unlike any other before it. Increasingly, it seems that something is missing from the narrative of a heavy Democratic defeat that was a long time coming.

The thing about revolutionary movements, these worldwide uprisings — is that sometimes you get a new government that was worse than the one you had before it.

Whether these were the pernicious acts of phony liberals in their rude awakening or racist bigots with the flag of Christianity strapped across their backs — or maybe it was just some dumb praecox half-wit out on a politicized spree — the racist sentiments and overtones in the backwash of this wine seem out of order.

That is, when it comes to the law.

However, it is in lockstep with the chain of events that has riddled this political spectacle all across the nation.

In other words, what’s next? And how bad will it be?

The new right has taken over America.

Waking up on this first morning, with these reports, as fickle or troubling as they might seem to those of us getting a whiff of it right here in our neighborhoods, in the city that gave birth to some of the most important documents in U.S. history — it’s leaving me with a very bad taste in my mouth.

Pour me another glass, laddie. While I think out how to return the fire.

And skip the ice.

The post Multiple Reports of Racist Trump Graffiti in South Philly appeared first on We Are Change.

Back on Sept. 3, 2016, Labor Day weekend in America, protesters in North Dakota representing the Standing Rock Sioux were attacked with dogs and pepper spray while attempting to halt construction on an approximately $4 billion crude oil pipeline that would extend nearly 1,200 miles from the northern interior of the U.S. to south-central Illinois. One of the oil companies “responsible” for the pipeline is Dakota Access, LLC — a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Crude Oil Company, LLC.

Some quick facts about the pipeline, from an Energy Transfer Partners website:

The pipeline will “…transport crude oil from the Bakken/Three Forks play in North Dakota to a terminus in Illinois with additional potential points of destination along the pipeline route.”

“The pipeline will translate into millions in state and local revenues during the construction phase and an estimated $156 million in sales and income taxes.”

“The Dakota Access Pipeline Project is a $3.7 billion investment into the United States directly impacting the local and national labor force by creating 8,000–12,000 construction jobs and up to 40 permanent operating jobs.”

“The pipeline is anticipated to be fully functional by 2016.”

Ultimately, this is conjecture.

WHO ARE THE SIOUX?

About the Sioux:

“The Standing Rock Sioux Reservation is situated in North and South Dakota. The people of Standing Rock, often called Sioux, are members of the Dakota and Lakota nations. ‘Dakota’ and ‘Lakota’ mean ‘friends’ or ‘allies’. The people of both these nations are often called ‘Sioux’, a term that dates back to the seventeenth century when the people were living in the Great Lakes area. The Ojibwa called the Lakota and Dakota ‘Nadouwesou’ meaning ‘adders’. This term, shortened and corrupted by French traders, resulted in retention of the last syllable as ‘Sioux.’ There are various Sioux divisions and each has important cultural, linguistic, territorial, and political distinctions.”

Where do they live?

“The Great Sioux Reservation comprised all of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River, including the sacred Black Hills and the life-giving Missouri River. Under article 11 of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, the Great Sioux Nation retained off-reservation hunting rights to a much larger area, south to the Republican and Platte Rivers, and east to the Big Horn Mountains. Under article 12, no cession of land would be valid unless approved by three-fourths of the adult males. Nevertheless, the Congress unilaterally passed the Act of February 28, 1877, removing the Sacred Black Hills from the Great Sioux Reservation. The United States never obtained the consent of three-fourths of the Sioux, as required in article 12 of the 1868 Treaty. The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that ‘A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.'”

As the years wore on, and more of their land was claimed by the invader — the U.S. government — the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe eventually formed their own constitution in 1959 to be overseen by a Tribal Council.

“The Tribal Council consists of a Chairman, Vice-Chairman, a Secretary, and fourteen additional Councilmen which are elected by the tribal members.”

And now, once again, they are up against the sprawling U.S. empire, which will stop at nothing when natural resources are coveted for the invader’s profit machine. This time, it’s the unelected bureaucracy of oil companies and monopolistic energy partnerships in America paired with the funding from nearly 20 U.S., U.K., and other international banking institutions who are all involved in this endless destruction of Native lands.

Combined with a militarized police state — hundreds of arrests, assaults with batons and rubber bullets, armored vehicles with sound cannons, Humvees, helicopters flying overhead, and troops from the National Guard — the recent events in North Dakota resemble that of a war zone, more than a peaceful protest.

TRANSPORTING OIL OUT OF NORTH DAKOTA

Crude oil transported out of North Dakota has traditionally been shipped on rail cars to get to the east coast. Over the years, the competitive push to match domestic demand with imported crude oil pressurized the internal transport system, increasing rail-car shipping incidents.

From Pennsylvania StateImpact, “a reporting project of NPR member stations”:

“Refineries on the East Coast used to rely on crude oil from Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico shipped on large tankers. Today, trains carrying crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale travel on rail lines through Pennsylvania. The rail shipments are part of a larger nationwide boom in rail traffic resulting from the oil and gas boom and have helped keep refineries in the Philadelphia region stay in business.

However, increased traffic on the rails has resulted in a surge in accidents, including an explosive derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec that left 47 people dead in July 2013. The crude-by-rail phenomenon has come under intense scrutiny from federal agencies, as well as state and local governments across the country who worry that a derailment in more populous cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia could result in catastrophe.”

This, in tandem with crashing oil prices.

Paired with a previous announcement in May 2015 from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), for new rules to “strengthen the safe transportation of flammable liquids by rail”.

And you’ve got a perfect environment for vulture capitalist intervention.

THE BANKS SWOOP IN

Back in September, Democracy Now! did an exclusive report entitled “Who’s Investing in the Dakota Access Pipeline? Meet the Banks Financing Attacks on Protesters”.

“We continue our conversation with Hugh MacMillan (senior researcher at Food & Water Watch) on his new investigation revealing the financial institutions backing the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline project.

The investigation, published by research outlet LittleSis, names more than two dozen major banks and financial institutions helping to finance the Dakota Access pipeline. It details how Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and other financial institutions have, combined, extended a $3.75 billion credit line to Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of Dakota Access.”

In the interview, MacMillan begins:

“Dakota Access, LLC is a joint venture of Phillips 66, and a joint venture of two members of the Energy Transfer family, Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics. Enbridge (Energy Partners) and Marathon (Petroleum Corporation) oil have bought into this joint venture. Together, they now have about a 37% stake in the pipeline, the Dakota Access pipeline.”

When Amy Goodman asked how the banks were involved, MacMillan responded:

“They’re banking on this company, and banking on being able to drill and frack for the oil to [be sent] through the pipeline over the coming decades. So they’re providing the capital for the construction of this pipeline.”

MacMillan then asserts that the 17 banks in their funding of the Dakota Access pipeline through Energy Transfer Partners are also coupled together with an existing pipeline that will be converted to extend from the southern end of the Dakota Access pipeline all the way down to the Gulf Coast.

“Where there are refineries and also export infrastructure.”

Here is a picture of that proposal from the Sunoco Logistics website:

MacMillan stated the ultimate goal of the pipeline projects will be to have one pipeline that would run from “near the Canadian border on down to the Gulf Coast of Texas, over 1,800 miles.”

As to which banks, specifically, are directly involved in the Dakota Access pipeline:

“Citibank is the bank that’s been running the books on the project. And that’s the bank that ‘beat the bushes’ and got other banks to join in. So we have Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Mizuho Bank, TD Securities, ABN AMRO, DNB First bank (based in Philadelphia), ICBC London, SMBC Nikko Securities, and Societe Generale.”

Goodman then asked MacMillan about the drop in demand for oil, in the past year, with regard to a personal conversation she had with an oil trucker.

“If you ask Morgan Stanley, they said a year ago that the oil producers are getting into ‘prison shape’ — without irony. So these are long term investments from the banks. They fully expect the United States to maximize its production of oil and gas through widespread fracking.”

MacMillan summarized what he believed was most crucial for people to understand about the Dakota Access pipeline:

“Well, I think it’s important to see the forces behind this particular pipeline as the same forces behind numerous other pipelines across the country, both to support fracking for tight oil as well as fracking for shale gas, all toward maximizing production of oil and gas. When the science is clear that we need to maximize what we keep in the ground. Our current policy has not made that switch. And if you look at the Department of Energy’s Quadrennial Technology Review, published a year ago, you’ll see under clean energy technologies, permeability manipulation is included along with improved understanding of well integrity and improved understanding of injections and how they’re causing earthquakes, such as [what] occurred over the weekend in Oklahoma. The Quadrennial Technology Review speaks of a future mastery of the subsurface towards maximizing production.”

OTHER HANDS IN THE POT

Most recently, it has come out that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million invested in Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of the Dakota Access pipeline, in addition to having $500,000 – $1 million invested in Phillips 66 — a company which will also hold a 25% stake in the pipeline. Kelcy Warren, co-founder and chief executive of Energy Transfer Partners, donated more than $100,000 to Trump’s campaign, and he gave nearly $67,000 to the Republican National Committee since Trump became the party’s controversial candidate for president in the 2016 election.

According to the Guardian, Warren gave a $3,000 personal donation to Trump’s election campaign back in June. That amount exceeded $2,700 — the legal limit for individual contributions. Previously, Warren donated $550,000 to current Texas governor Greg Abbott’s 2014 campaign. After Abbott won the election, he then appointed Warren and his wife to state boards, the Guardian reported.

“Warren has worked in the energy industry for the past 25 years and has a net worth of $3.8bn, according to Forbes. The Texas-based businessman has said concerns over the Dakota Access pipeline are ‘unfounded’ and insisted there are no Native American artifacts at risk from its construction. He vowed that Energy Transfer Partners will press ahead with the project.”

RECENT RESPONSES FROM POLITICIANS ON DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE

On Thursday, Oct. 27, Hillary Clinton’s campaign released a statement with regard to the Dakota Access pipeline project and the ongoing protests where hundreds have been arrested in recent weeks.

“It’s important that on the ground in North Dakota, everyone respects demonstrators’ rights to protest peacefully, and workers’ rights to do their jobs safely…”

Bernie Sanders made a much less benign statement on the issue:

“The major global crisis facing our planet today is climate change. The vast majority of scientists tell us that climate change is real, it is caused by humans and it is already causing devastating problems. They say that if we do not aggressively transition our energy system away from fossil fuels toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy, the planet we leave our children will be a much less habitable place.

Like the Keystone XL pipeline, which I opposed since day one, the Dakota Access fracked oil pipeline, will transport some of the dirtiest fuel on the planet. Regardless of the court’s decision, the Dakota Access pipeline must be stopped. As a nation, our job is to break our addiction to fossil fuels, not increase our dependence on oil. I join with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the many tribal nations fighting this dangerous pipeline.”

Here is Sanders’ letter to U.S. President Barack Obama on this issue, from Oct. 28.

A previous letter, dated Oct. 13, was also sent to the president, regarding the halting of construction on the Dakota Access pipeline. That letter was also signed by Sanders, in addition to four other U.S. Senators.

Collectively, banks from nearly a dozen countries are involved in the funding of the Dakota Access pipeline.

And, last weekend, on Friday, Oct. 21, an oil pipeline was breached, spilling gasoline in close proximity to the Susquehanna River, in an area of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania — about 100 miles north of the state capital, Harrisburg. The spill was estimated at 1,300 barrels, or 55,000 gallons of gasoline.

The owner of that pipeline is Sunoco Logistics, which has had over 200 leaks of crude since 2010, much more than any of its competitors.

It’s the same oil company that will be operating the Dakota Access pipeline.

The post Dakota Access Pipeline Funding: Banks and Oil Companies in the Endless Destruction of Native Lands appeared first on We Are Change.

In today’s political climate even our beer is up for debate. And why shouldn’t it be? This is America. We debate things here. That’s how democracy works. (At least when the issues aren’t taboo.) Recently, it’s shown up in the state of Pennsylvania with Eric Trump, Donald Trump’s son, garnering an endorsement for the Republican candidate from Yuengling, America’s oldest brewery.

And now the debate turns to political action.

With the most recent statement from Richard “Dick” Yuengling Jr., the 73-year-old owner of D. G. Yuengling & Son Inc., located in Pottsville, Pennsylvania — the seat of Schuylkill County — Yuengling said that his company was “behind” Trump. Inevitably, a lashing out occurred in the digital realm with regard to political correctness and expressively personal views. Customers weren’t pleased. They were offended. In fact, some even claimed that they’d never drink Yuengling again.

This is what democracy is, and should be. Sure. And yet, something is lost in the politicized scramble of this ugly election year.

A Pennsylvania state representative, Brian Sims, announced on his Facebook page that he was saying “GOOD BYE” to Yuengling Brewery.

“I’m not normally one to call for boycotts but I absolutely believe that how we spend our dollars is a reflection of our votes and values! Supporting Yuengling Brewery, that uses my dollars to bolster a man, and an agenda, that wants to punish me for being a member of the LGBT community and punish the black and brown members of my community for not being white, is something I’m too smart and too grown up to do.”

Sims represents the 182nd district of Philadelphia, which includes a majority of Center City, in addition to parts of Rittenhouse Square, Grays Ferry, and South Philadelphia. I live here. I walk those areas of the city.

And I see, feel, and hear other elements of our society that go unnoticed or receive little to no attention. To observe this sort of outcry against a presidential candidate is expectantly what democracy was birthed upon, as we know in the city of Philadelphia. We take action. (We like to think.) However, along the way I’ve seen the incessant results of many issues that get buried, in favor of political expediency and trending topics that ultimately define our aggressive actions towards “voting with our dollars”.

If that’s the case, then what about all the other detriments to our standard of living? For instance, the opiate epidemic that is sweeping Pennsylvania and the surrounding states and the rest of the country by storm.

According to a June 2016 report from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, entitled “The Epidemic of Overdoses From Opioids in Philadelphia”, drug deaths involving the fatal use of opioids, from 2000-2014, had tripled. In 2014, approximately 47,000 people died from overdoses in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). Sixty-one percent of that total was attributed to the use of opioids.

“Since 1999, the number of prescriptions for pharmaceutical opioid pain relievers in the U.S. more than quadrupled.”

Opioid-related overdose deaths in Philadelphia were nearly three times higher in men than among women in 2015. Those deaths were also more than two times as high among whites, as opposed to deaths among African Americans.

Between 2003 and 2015, in Philadelphia, cocaine and benzodiazepines were detected in overdose deaths in tandem with opioids at a rate of 70% and 90%, respectively. During that same period, overdose deaths related to heroin more than doubled in the city, with approximately 400 deaths reported in 2015.

In that same year, there were nearly 700 drug overdose deaths in Philadelphia. That’s more than twice as many deaths from homicide.

From 2014-2015, 10% of the nearly 1,300 overdose deaths in Philadelphia were from non-residents. Most of those non-residents were people from New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and other parts of Pennsylvania.

Once the president is elected, these issues won’t go away. In fact, they’re extant — some as a surrogate to the system we attribute to healthcare. (One of the most hotly contested issues of partisan bickering in the country.)

Additionally, these effects are increasingly felt in Philadelphia hospitals.

“The percentage of Philadelphia hospital emergency department visits related to opioid overdoses increased from approximately 0.4% in 2007 to nearly 0.7% in 2015. In 2015, there were over 6,500 emergency department visits for opioid overdoses. For each opioid-related death, there were approximately 12 hospital emergency department visits.”

So while the country politically corrects itself — whatever that means — myriad issues get buried beneath picking and choosing a side, in response to the emotional disturbances of partisan bickering.

Rather than dealing with facts, the web of society becomes entangled with He Said, She Said.

Ultimately, this coercive cultural backwardness and evolutionary substandard, the rattle-mouthed bickering of intellectual thought and deceptive, manipulative action, that matches up more closely with the reptilian species, rather than the spirit of the human heart and the cultural celebration of life and all its wonder, is exactly what gave rise to Trump.

And our opioid epidemic.

Somewhere along the way, these facts were buried beneath a lie. And the truth has become something else, entirely.

Sources

http://www.phillyvoice.com/beer-drinkers-disavow-yuengling-after-owner-shows-support-for-trump/

The post Political Correctness for Yuengling Brewery; What About Our Opioid Epidemic? appeared first on We Are Change.

South Texas Family Residential Center

In one week, the U.S. government reneged on saying they wouldn’t be doing business with private prison contractors and nearly 10,000 soldiers were told they’d be required to return their signing bonuses from almost a decade ago. This is the freedom of empire on display.

On Wednesday, Oct. 19, Mother Jones ran a story about the Obama administration’s renewal of a contract with Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The deal, announced last Monday, Oct. 17, was with the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Through the contract, the center agreed to staff reductions in terms that would cut costs by 40 percent.

The center, which inters most of the country’s immigrant mothers and children, is now set to be running until 2021. When the facility first opened in 2014, their contract had been awarded directly from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), superseding the bidding process. With that deal, the DHS was to pay the center a set amount, no matter how many of their beds were occupied. The detention facility currently has 2,400 beds.

According to Mother Jones, CCA had earned 14 percent of its 2015 revenue from the South Texas facility.

CCA CEO Damon Hininger

More U.S. government contracts are in the works, with detention centers across the country operated by CCA. The company’s CEO, Damon Hininger, told the Tennessean that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — a branch of the DHS — wouldn’t be able to afford funding for new detention facilities that weren’t privately run.

Previous complaints of the CCA-operated detention center in South Texas included under-staffing and illness among incarcerated children. Most of the mothers at the facility insinuated that they were being treated unfairly, living in conditions that were prison-like, after fleeing gang violence in Central America, and elsewhere.

U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) called the South Texas Family Residential Center “costly to taxpayers,” saying that it “achieves almost nothing, other than trauma to already traumatized individuals.”

Only months after the Justice Department said it would end business with private prison contractors, the U.S. government reneged on that promise.

“CCA shares climbed on Monday [Oct. 17] after the company announced the renewed contract in Texas.”

U.S. National Guard troops

Additionally, the LA Times reported on a horde of California National Guard soldiers who had been ordered to pay back their enlistment bonuses from a previous decade, to the U.S. government.

“Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist to go to war.

Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.”

Over-payment is the name of the game here. The money awarded in enlistment bonuses to Guard troops was apparently handed out illegally. Now, those soldiers who risked their lives going to war are required to incur interest on what they were previously paid. If they don’t, they could potentially face having their wages garnished.

Officials in the Guard were handing out funds apropos of their wilting to pressure to meet demand. That is, the demand of never-ending war.

Christopher Van Meter, 42, an Iraq war vet who formerly held rank as a Captain in the U.S. Army, told the LA Times that he had to re-work the mortgage on his house in order to pay back the debt he owed the Pentagon. The Army claimed he shouldn’t have received his $25,000 in reenlistment bonuses, in tandem with $21,000 in student loan repayments.

“People like me got screwed,” Van Meter said.

The former Army Captain was awarded a Purple Heart for his injuries in an incident where he had been struck by a roadside bomb that his vehicle had accidentally detonated.

A former master sergeant in the Army, Susan Haley, 47, who served a tour of duty in Afghanistan, in 2008, is currently paying back $20,500 in bonuses. Haley served in the Army for 26 years. Her husband and eldest son also served. While stationed in Afghanistan, her son lost a leg.

“I feel totally betrayed,” Haley claimed.

She worries she’ll have to sell her house, in order to pay back the bonuses.

“They’ll get their money, but I want those years back.”

With the burgeoning demand for soldiers, the Pentagon and California National Guard were under the gun to fulfill enlistment numbers. An official in California’s Guard, Col. Michael S. Piazzoni, was responsible for some of the audits over the impropriety of the bonuses handed out to the unsuspecting men and women who had enlisted.

“The system paid everybody up front,” Piazzoni said, “and then we spent the next five years figuring out if they were eligible.”

From the LA Times:

“In 2010, after reports surfaced of improper payments, a federal investigation found that thousands of bonuses and student loan payments were given to California Guard soldiers who did not qualify for them, or were approved despite paperwork errors.”

In 2011, one official from the Guard, Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, was eventually sentenced to 30 months in a federal prison, for $15.2 million in false claims. In addition, three other Guard officials pleaded guilty to fraud.

In total, out of 14,000 cases investigated by auditors, about 9,700 soldiers of the Guard were ordered to repay some, if not all, of their bonuses.

So far, at least $22 million has been recouped. With a multitude of cases and noncompliance, the process is expected to continue for years.

The post U.S. Government Reneged on Private Prison Contracts, Signing Bonuses for 10,000 Soldiers appeared first on We Are Change.

The transmogrification of reality in America continued earlier tonight as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump engaged in the third and final debate of the 2016 presidential election. Clinton came out in Las Vegas, Nevada, dressed as a cream-colored corrupt criminal bureaucrat while Trump wore his usual attire of orange tear-gas tinted facial features and a blood-soaked tie tucked underneath his suit jacket. Fox News hardballer Chris Wallace was set to moderate. He wore glasses. I almost wrote class. There was very little to be involved.

First issue up for debate was debt and entitlements. (At least I think it was.) To me, this was strange. What do Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump know about debt and entitlement?

The debate started off boring as hell. Typical, you might say, for presidential elections — but unexpected for what we’ve seen this entire year, with 16 Republican candidates outrageously whittled down to a billionaire versus a millionaire. One has property and investments spanning more countries than the average American will ever visit in his or her dreams. The other has stipulated a private mandate to enrich herself with public service. In other words, the culmination of what used to be atypical for political standards across the U.S.A. is now a symptom of poetic injustice on a massive scale.

With the entire country now enshrouded in this political mystique (misery), or at least most of it anyway, the climax of the 2016 presidential election hit the Seventh Circle of Hell. Boredom in rhetoric. Claustrophobia in a country with over 300 million people. Fifty states and territories to boot. I almost said loot.

IMMIGRATION

Then it was time to discuss immigration. We all know Trump’s policies, even our friends in outer space. What the hell’s going on here?

I began talking to myself, immediately, with Clinton’s first comments. As she doused the cameras, the moderator, the audience, and her opponent with her public experience, I came across this story from Reason. “Clinton’s 700-Mile Border Fence Is Just 300 Miles Shorter Than Trump’s.” It discusses her bragging, back in November of 2015, about voting for a wall on the Mexican border in 2006. Maybe.

To sum it up, here are Reason’s editor in chief Nick Gillespie’s final sentiments in the piece, from Sept 1:

“So the distance between Clinton and Trump on immigration, especially now that he has ‘softened’ his deportation language, is pretty narrow. Indeed, it might just be 300 miles of useless pork-barrel spending on fencing in the Southwestern desert.”

Clinton, at this moment in the debate, accused Trump of saying he’d send nukes to Saudi Arabia. Trump responded by calling Clinton a liar. Then, Clinton said that the “US has kept peace with alliances.”

During Barack Obama’s tenure as President of the United States, the US government has sold $115 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia. That’s more than the previous Bush administration by $30 billion. Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has indiscriminately bombed Yemen, the poorest country in the middle East. Multiple mainstream news media outlets have deemed these actions war crimes. Today, with regard to Obama’s responsibility in the middle East, US News and World Report called the ongoing attacks “unconstitutional and very unwise.”

Within the last two weeks, Saudi Arabia bombed a funeral in Yemen. The New York Times reported on this story, as well as a variety of other publications. In the horrific incident more than 100 people were killed, in addition to hundreds wounded.

As of August 30, Reuters/The Huffington Post reported that 10,000 people have died in Yemen’s civil war, nearly 3,800 of which have been civilians. Sixty percent of 3,800 equates to how many civilians have died in the conflict at the hands of Saudi bombs.

What does this have to do with immigration?

“… the conflict has displaced three million Yemenis and forced 200,000 to seek refuge abroad. The United Nations had information that 900,000 of the displaced intended to try to return to their homes.”

GROWING ECONOMY

Next, Clinton stated that she wanted a “growing economy.” She wanted America to “compete.” She said she wanted to “raise the national minimum wage.”

“The money is going to the top.”

This, from a woman who gave three speeches to Goldman Sachs — one of the largest investment banks on the planet — at $225,000 a pop. You know, as a private citizen. According to Mic, and the rest of the public domain, Clinton gave over 90 speeches which aggregated nearly $22 million in speaking fees. The total for her speaking fees to big banks? One point eight million dollars. ($1.8 million.)

There’s something oddly strange about a candidate for president, who has become exorbitantly wealthy from her work in public service, in collusion with the private sector, informing the American public where their money is going.

JOBS

Clinton continued, remarking that 3.5 million jobs would be lost with Trump’s tax plan. He’d add $20 trillion to the debt, she claimed. Could he possibly match Obama in that regard?

Trump responded that Clinton would “raise and double taxes.”

Clinton quickly retorted that Obama had cut the country’s deficit by two-thirds. She said that he had saved the economy.

Meanwhile, the national debt on the debt clock is set to stand at a whopping $20 trillion by the time Obama leaves office. That figure is nearly double from where it was when he began to “save the economy,” according to Clinton. Forty-three presidents came before Obama. In two terms, he doubled the debt they accumulated over the course of approximately 220 years.

Trump then referenced Clinton’s deletion of tens of thousands of emails, after she’d been subpoenaed by Congress. He intimated that a four-star general who now faces jail time for leaking classified information was abhorrently comparable. Trump called Clinton’s campaign “corrupt.”

What this all has to do with the economy, I couldn’t tell you.

CLINTON FOUNDATION

Wallace then inquired Clinton about the Clinton Foundation. He questioned that, with recent Wikileaks revelations, it was concerning that there had been some quid pro quo going on. A la pay to play.

Clinton responded, without budging in her facial expression, that she was thrilled to be talking about the Clinton Foundation, and all the great work it has done. She droned on, that she could talk about it all night if she’d been allotted the time.

Trump characteristically responded that the Clinton Foundation was a “criminal enterprise.” He mentioned Saudi Arabia and Qatar, specifically, and how both countries had delivered millions of dollars in donations to the foundation. He questioned the humanitarian records of the two countries which, with the Wikileaks emails, equated Clinton to accepting money from countries she knew had hands in funding terrorism.

She was then asked, by Trump, to give back that money to both countries.

WHAT WASN’T MENTIONED

This is where my notes got hazy. I couldn’t take it any more. It’s what wasn’t mentioned by both candidates, that was getting to me.

One of the most important issues of our time, climate change.

And the longest war in the history of the United States, Afghanistan. Where two Americans were recently killed, with three more wounded.

“The shooting [in Afghanistan] comes as the Afghan government in Kabul has come under growing pressure from the Taliban and other armed insurgents despite 15 years of war.”

The fact that these two issues weren’t mentioned and discussed in the final presidential debate is hard to take.

Not to mention two of the other candidates, in the Libertarian and Green parties, who are both on the ballot in more than 40 states.

So we’re all left with the question:

What’s next for democracy in America?

The post Poetic Injustice: Final Debate of the 2016 Presidential Election appeared first on We Are Change.

A truly bizarre story has recently made the rounds of British tabloids and a variety of worldwide news media outlets, regarding the unexplained death of conspiracy theorist and Ufologist Max Spiers. According to several sources, Spiers, 39, who was from Canterbury, was found dead this summer on a couch in Warsaw, Poland. Spiers’ mother, Vanessa Bates, 63, told the press that her son had been staying with a woman he had barely known.

The Daily Mail reported: “Max worked with the supernatural and conspiracy theory group Bases Project and was due to appear at a conference held [in] Wiltshire in August.”

In Warsaw, it seemed that Spiers was engaged with the Polish conspiracy contingent. A story from the Independent hosted a YouTube video clip of what was to be the British conspiracy theorist’s final interview. In the conversation with a Polish YouTube channel, Spiers speculated on the Fourth Reich and its collaborative efforts between Nazis and Zionists, “after a war stretching back 50,000 years.”

“I don’t believe they were always running with each other but I do believe they were at odds. This war stems back 50,000 years. They just weren’t called Nazi and Zion, that’s a modern-day nom.”

His final suggestion in the interview was the implementation of a “New World Order” between the two groups whom he alleged had been working together.

According to his mother, his final message to her was: “Your boy’s in trouble. If anything happens to me, investigate.” Which is exactly what the Foreign Office of the UK stated that they wouldn’t be doing, months after the unexplained death.

Polish authorities ruled that the death was from natural causes. Friends alleged that he had been vomiting “black liquid.” That was never considered by officials.

In town for various speeches and interviews, Max Spiers’ final public conversation also conspiratorially theorized on a “secret underground alien base in New Mexico.” He claimed that he had witnessed the inside of such a facility, and that in it “children were being used for their ‘pure energy.'”

“I have seen a vat of children in disassociated states, some crying, some not and some completely gone. They also have female breeders down there constantly breeding children, thousands of them.”

From the Independent:

“Although his theories appear farfetched, many of Mr Spiers [sic] online followers believe he may have been murdered because of his investigations.”

Max was seemingly involved not just in investigating UFO sightings, but he was also alleged to have been looking into massive government cover-ups stretching back decades.

“Now it has emerged that Spiers was inquiring about allegations of widespread sexual abuse against children that was committed at a military base in California by employees acting under the influence of a satanic cult.

In 1987, the US Army demolished a child care center at its Presidio base in Northern California, just one year after as many as 60 children were sexually abused there, according to the Associated Press.

One civilian employee of the center, Gary Willard Hambright, was indicted for molesting 10 children, though charges against him were ultimately dropped.

One US Army officer at the base, Lt. Col. Michael Aquino, was alleged to have taken part in the abuse, according to The San Jose Mercury News.

Aquino was known as the self-confessed founder of a Satanic movement known as The Temple of Set.

Despite rumors of his involvement and a police investigation, he was never charged.

In subsequent investigations, it was determined that a number of children exhibited signs of being victimized, including four who had contracted sexually transmitted diseases.

Spiers was looking into the Presidio affair and Aquino’s role, which he believed to be part of a larger underground movement that entailed ritual sexual abuse of children in San Francisco in the late 1980s, according to the UK Daily Express.

Shortly before his death, Spiers told Polish YouTube channel PorozmawiajmyTV that he was digging into the story and that his life may be in danger as a result.”

Whether his speculations on other-worldly pseudoscience are utterly outrageous or wildly accurate remains a mystery, much like his death. However, Spiers ended up being right about one thing.

Sarah Adams, 31, his fiancee, spoke with the Evening Standard about Max’s unexplained death.

“‘We were used to getting death threats or stuff like that from people but I think this time it seemed rather real.

‘He’d been sent threats saying that him and me were going to die.

‘He was going to expose black magic,’ she said. ‘He was going to expose some of the stuff that he was working on involving political leaders and celebrities.

‘We had both been due to go to a conference to speak about it.’

She said: ‘He planned on coming back here seeing his family and I was going to have his child. He had messaged me hours before.

‘He sounded fine and he wanted to see me and come back here to England.

‘His message to me said ‘I’m going to see you in a bit and I love you.’”

Ms. Bates spoke publicly about what she felt remained an unsolved mystery surrounding her son’s death, saying that he had been experiencing migraines and was taking antibiotics up until the day of his death. He had even cancelled an interview around that time and was reported to have been complaining on social media of being “way too tired.”

From a Yahoo! News affiliate out of Australia:

“The father of two was ruled to have died of natural causes, however his mother claims there was no post-mortem examination carried out on his body in Poland.

Ms Bates told Daily Mail she felt her son could have been poisoned by occultists who he had come into contact with during his paranormal research.

In the days before he died Spiers was filmed slurring his speech and struggling to put sentences together.

His mother believes this was evidence of him being drugged.

She claimed she heard ‘satanic rituals’ being carried out over her son’s body, while she spoke with his housemate on the phone.

‘There were strange suggestions of things that should be done like put milk by this side and get garlic and put flowers and put vinegar and very weird goings on,’ she told The Mail.

‘I could hear it being said. It sounded like rituals going on. Some sort of satanic rituals.

‘I think Max had been digging in some dark places and I fear that somebody wanted him dead,’ she said.

She claimed she was sent a ‘threatening’ book on Satan worship by a Polish woman that her son was reportedly staying with before he died.

The same woman also allegedly sent her a photograph of her son with a head wound and another of him in a coffin.”

Max Spiers’ unexplained death left behind a sister, a brother, and two sons. A coroner’s office from North East Kent told the press that the investigation into his death was in its early stages.

To raise funds for a headstone and memorial service for friends, which is yet to occur in Canterbury, a GoFundMe site is available for donations, as of the previous week.

Additional sources for this story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3845622/British-conspiracy-theorist-dead-sofa-Poland-investigating-alleged-Army-pedophilia-ring-just-death.html

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/conspiracy-theorist-max-spiers-about-to-reveal-details-of-black-magic-ring-before-death-in-poland-a3371541.html

https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/32921595/ufo-expert-found-dead-days-after-texting-mum-if-anything-happens-to-me-investigate/#page1

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/max-spiers-conspiracy-theorist-poland-death-ufos-a7365276.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/17/ufo-experts-death-prompts-conspiracy-theories/

The post Unexplained Death of British Conspiracy Theorist Max Spiers appeared first on We Are Change.

About ten miles north of Chapel Hill, and just 15 miles northwest of Durham, a firebomb was hurled into the Republican headquarters in the seat of Orange County, Hillsborough, North Carolina. Local media reported that the incident took place in a local shopping center, somewhere between Saturday night and Sunday morning. According to the New York Times, the damage wasn’t discovered until 9 a.m. on Sunday, when a business owner informed the authorities.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory deemed the act “an attack on our democracy.” The executive director of the state GOP, Dallas Woodhouse, called the attack “political terrorism.” He claimed a Molotov cocktail was thrown through a window of the GOP headquarters where a sign had read: “Freedom spoken here.”

The Republican headquarters in town is located at 347 Ja’ Max Drive, in the Shops at Daniel Boone.

Also discovered was racist graffiti on a building adjacent to the property. The words “NAZI REPUBLICANS LEAVE TOWN OR ELSE” were spray-painted in black, in addition to a swastika.

Woodhouse, the state’s GOP leader, publicly condemned the acts as “horrific” and vowed to not be furled by the political intimidation in the town of just under 6,500 people. The Charlotte Observer reported that Hillsborough, an area of a Democratic majority, had already received a van of volunteers from Durham.

One volunteer, Bob Randall, reportedly told the local media that these acts would “backfire” on the perpetrators (if there were more than one), whom he believed were attempting to brutally ensnare the political divide within the country’s current tense political climate, during an election season that has all-but-spun out of morally civil control. These attacks of sheer vandalism — a firebomb hurled into a Republican headquarters in Hillsborough, North Carolina — are truly troubling.

“We’re so grateful that no one was hurt,” Hillsborough mayor Tom Stevens responded to the blast. “I have every confidence … of our law enforcement agencies to find and prosecute … this reprehensible act.” The office headquarters suffered charred furniture, in addition to smoke and fire damage.

Police Chief of Hillsborough, Duane Hampton, stated that:

“The SBI [State Bureau of Investigation] will be partnering with us, and resources from the ATF and FBI have been involved. I also received a call from Sheriff [Charles S.] Blackwood, who offered to make any resources of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office that we need available. In the shadow of such an ugly crime, we truly appreciate the unity of support that has been offered and want to assure our citizens that we are working to ensure the safety of our community.”

As leader of the state GOP, Woodhouse reiterated to the public that his party “will not succumb to” these acts.

“When people try to stifle freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, you must come back with more speech and aggressively defend your rights.

“Or else what? Because we’re not going anywhere.”

As of Sunday night, no numbers were available on the total loss of property damage.

The town of Hillsborough stated that anyone with information about these criminal acts should contact investigator Jon Purvis by email or phone at 919-732-9381, ext. 37. An anonymous tip line is also available at 919-732-3975, in addition to the town’s website.

Additional sources for this story:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/orange-county/article108628192.html

Follow WE ARE CHANGE on SOCIAL MEDIA

Sign up become a patron and Show your support for alternative news

We use Bitcoin Too !  

The post Firebomb Hurled into Republican Headquarters in Hillsborough, North Carolina appeared first on We Are Change.