Transcripts of official FBI COINTELPRO documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Source: http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/COINTELPRO-FBI.docs.html
(via disciplesofmalcolm)
During an air raid alert, residents of Hanoi wait in chest-deep sidewalk shelters for the all-clear signal. This photo was taken by the first American photographer since 1954 permitted to report on daily life in the capital of North Vietnam, 1967
by Lee Lockwood
(via asianhistory)
#herbs #wholistichealth
270+ arrested in Montreal over freedom of assembly rally
April 6, 2013At least 279 protesters have been arrested in central Montreal during a rally against police tactics as police claimed the assembly was illegal, local media reported quoting law enforcers.
Protesters began gathering at Place Émilie-Gamelin on Friday evening, the Montreal Gazette website reports. Shortly afterwards police officer announced, via loudspeakers, that the demonstration was illegal.
Montreal police said three people were arrested for assault, while the rest were detained for illegal assembly, according to CBC News. No injuries were reported.
The protest was organized by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (the CLAC) to contest a controversial bylaw.
The demonstration sought to “assert our opposition to bylaw P-6” in a year “marked by an escalation of police repression against political protesters in Montreal,” the CLAC said in a statement issued before the protest.
Bylaw P-6 requires groups to provide police with an itinerary of their demonstration beforehand. Otherwise police can declare the gathering illegal. The law also prohibits to wear masks at gatherings. The legislation carries a fine of CA$637 for the first offense.
In early March some 250 protesters were arrested in Montreal for violating P-6, as they gathered for an annual march against police brutality.
The P-6 bylaw was adopted following the surge in mass protests in Montreal in 2012. The city saw numerous massive student demonstrations last year as thousands protested tuition hikes. Some of the protests turned violent.
(via disciplesofmalcolm)
Got this in my email today:
Dear friends,
We are elders of the Maasai from Tanzania, one of Africa’s oldest tribes. The government has just announced that it plans to kick thousands of our families off our lands so that wealthy tourists can use them to shoot lions and leopards.The evictions are to begin immediately.
Last year, when word first leaked about this plan, almost one million Avaaz members rallied to our aid. Your attention and the storm it created forced the government to deny the plan, and set them back months. But the President has waited for international attention to die down, and now he’s revived his plan to take our land. We need your help again, urgently.
President Kikwete may not care about us, but he has shown he’ll respond to global media and public pressure — to all of you! We may only have hours. Please stand with us to protect our land, our people and our world’s most majestic animals, and tell everyone before it is too late. This is our last hope:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/maasai_fb_dm_3/?bNDofcb&v=23793
Our people have lived off the land in Tanzania and Kenya for centuries. Our communities respect our fellow animals and protect and preserve the delicate ecosystem. But the government has for years sought to profit by giving rich princes and kings from the Middle East access to our land to kill. In 2009, when they tried to clear our land to make way for these hunting sprees, we resisted, and hundreds of us were arrested and beaten. Last year, rich princes shot at birds in trees from helicopters. This killing goes against everything in our culture.
Now the government has announced it will clear a huge swath of our land to make way for what it claims will be a wildlife corridor, but many suspect it’s just a ruse to give a foreign hunting corporation and the rich tourists it caters to easier access to shoot at majestic animals. The government claims this new arrangement is some sort of accommodation, but its effect on our people’s way of life will be disastrous. There are thousands of us who could have our lives uprooted, losing our homes, the land on which our animals graze, or both.
President Kikwete knows this deal would be controversial with Tanzania’s tourists - a critical source of national income - and does not want a big PR disaster. If we can urgently generate even more global outrage than we did before, and get the media writing about it, we know it can make him think twice. Stand with us now to call on Kikwete to stop the sell off:
This land grab could spell the end for the Maasai in this part of Tanzania and many of our community have said they would rather die than be forced from their homes. On behalf of our people and the animals who graze in these lands, please stand with us to change the mind of our President.
With hope and determination,
— The Maasai community of Ngorongoro DistrictSources:
- The Endorois people (also in Kenya) were removed from their sacred land in the 1970s under similar circumstances & for similar motives (the establishment of parks for colonial tourists.)
(via disciplesofmalcolm)
(Source: faitheboss, via disciplesofmalcolm)
(Source: militantbyexistence, via disciplesofmalcolm)
US law says no ‘oil’ spilled in Arkansas, exempting Exxon from cleanup dues
April 3, 2013The central Arkansas spill caused by Exxon’s aging Pegasus pipeline has reportedly unleashed 10,000 barrels of Canadian heavy crude - but a technicality says it’s not oil, letting the energy giant off the hook from paying into a national cleanup fund.
At least legally speaking, diluted bitumen like the heavy crude that’s overrun Mayflower, Arkansas is not classified as ‘oil.’ While the distinction might normally not mean much, in the case of the disastrous spill in Arkansas it ensures that ExxonMobil will not have to pay into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.
According to ThinkProgress, which has brought attention on the strange legal exemption, ExxonMobil has already confirmed that the compromised pipeline was transporting “low-quality Wabasca Heavy crude” from Canada’s Alberta region. That particular form of crude must be diluted with lighter fluids to evenly flow through a pipeline - it also contains large quantities of bitumen (commonly known as asphalt).
The end result is that both the US Congress and the Internal Revenue Service do not consider tar sand oil as oil at all, and thus exempt any company transporting the crude from paying an $0.08-per-barrel tax - which is the primary source of cash for the federal government’s oil spill cleanup fund.
The strange exemption of heavy bitumen crude from classification as oil dates back to a time when the extraction of tar sands on a large scale was thought improbable with then-contemporary technology. However, as oil companies developed the means to develop Canadian tar sands into a booming energy sector, the legal definition of oil has remained the same.
Funds from that same fund have already helped to clean up another spill caused by a ruptured pipeline. In 2010, more than 1 million barrels of diluted bitumen (crude oil) were spilled into the Kalamazoo River. To make matters worse, unlike conventional crude oil, bitumen heavy crude sinks. The ensuing environmental impact has made that Michigan spill the most expensive in US history, as toxic substances seeped into the surrounding soil.
There is also the fear that bitumen heavy crude could be more corrosive to pipelines than conventional crude. Lorne Stockman, research director at Oil Change International, told ThinkProgress that it’s past time for the law to be changed:
“The question is why we should continue this exemption given that it’s clear tar sands oil is more likely to spill because it’s more corrosive… and more and more tar sands is coming into the US.”
For its part the oil industry disputes the claim, and has produced scientific impact research that does not reflect higher corrosion by transporting bitumen heavy crude.
Judge Allen Dodson of Arkansas’ Faulkner County seemed to reflect the concerns of those impacted by the latest spill of heavy bitumen crude, saying: “Crude oil is crude oil. None of it is real good to touch.”
As the Obama administration deliberates on the Keystone XL, two spills happened in the past week: this one in Arkansas & another in Minnesota, where 15,000 gallons of tar sands spilled from a derailed train.
(via disciplesofmalcolm)
