Monthly Archives: November 2018

Rendition: How the CIA and MI6 Kidnapped and Rendered Dissidents to Libya to be Tortured

Posted on by
1

Libya’s Muamar Gaddafi, Torture, Rendition and the West

Al Jazeera (2018)

Film Review

This documentary is about a secret agreement between US, UK and German intelligence to kidnap anti-Gaddafi dissidents around the world and fly them to Libya – to be imprisoned, tortured and/or killed by Gaddafi’s security officials.

Following the 2011 Libyan revolution, rebels captured a trove of security documents verifying these secret agreements. One document reveals the CIA, as well as UK and German intelligence, met with Libyan intelligence officials one week after 9-11 (while Libya was still under UN sanctions) to agree the details of the program. Documents also reveal that western intelligence officers were fully aware that Gaddafi tortured and murdered dissidents he detained in his prisons.

Western intelligence referred to the secret kidnappings – of victims that included pregnant women and children as young as six – as extraordinary rendition.

Following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Gaddafi claimed to have a nuclear weapons program and offered to give it up to have Libyan sanctions lifted. There followed an eight year period of improved relations involving billions in oil deals for British Petroleum, as well as Gaddafi’s alleged funding of French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign .

The film focuses on two anti-Gaddafi dissidents kidnapped and “rendered” to Libya by UK intelligence. Both filed suit against the British government in 2012. One withdrew from the lawsuit in 2015 after receiving a 2.2 million pound settlement. The other received a full apology from Prime Minister Theresa May in May 2018.

*Sarkozy has been indicted for violating French campaign financing laws but has yet to go to trial.

 

Bankrupt Sears wants to give executives $19 million in bonuses

Posted on by
Reply

Source: CNN

Sears is seeking court approval to pay executives as much as $19 million in quarterly bonuses while the company struggles to restructure in bankruptcy. Three top executives could get nearly $1 million each if the company goes out of business. If Sears remains in business, they could get nearly $500,000 each for hitting the top performance targets.

Sears filed two different types of bonus plans in bankruptcy court Thursday. The first is for the top 18 “key” executives, who would collectively get as much as $2.1 million per quarter. The bonuses would only be paid in full if Sears reaches its cash-flow targets. Sears Holdings, which includes both Sears and Kmart, has been burning through cash at a rate of about $125 million a month.

A second retention bonus plan was designed to encourage 322 other unnamed executives to stay put during Sears’ reorganization. They would collectively get $16.9 million a quarter, which works out to an average of about $52,000 per quarter per executive [. . .]

Source: Bankrupt Sears wants to give executives $19 million in bonuses

Racism is at the Heart of the New Gig Economy

Quote

Posted on by
Reply

Daria Roithmayr –

This post argues that race and racism are segmenting the new “on demand” labor markets, in ways that facilitate the transition to this new sector of the economy.  Scholars of racial capitalism have argued that modern capitalism could never have gotten off the ground without the violence of slave labor in the cotton economy. Violent racism operated to segment plantation workers into free and unfree labor, and unfree labor made cultivating cotton in bulk possible, facilitating the transition to industrialized cotton production and then to industrialization more generally.

Likewise, I argue here that race and racism are segmenting the new labor markets into more free and less free labor, and that this segmentation plays a central role in the transition to the new economy.  Platform-based “on demand” service firms like Amazon and Instacart rely for their flexibility on a core of so-called “motivated” gig workers—workers whose economic survival depend on gig work. As it turns out, these workers are “motivated” because they are workers of color who are less free to turn down unstable work, or to bargain for a wage premium for doing risky, back-breaking or otherwise odious work. As we’ll see, race does very important work in constituting this segment of the workforce, and in keeping this core of workers “motivated.” [ . . .]

via Racism is at the Heart of the Platform Economy — Law and Political Economy

Democrat Wins as Maine Becomes First State to Use Ranked-Choice Voting in National Race

Posted on by
Reply

Ranked choice voting results in fairer elections. By electing candidates approved by the largest number of voters, it ends least-worst voting. People can vote for the person they really want without fear of their vote being lost if their first choice candidate doesn’t win.

Like proportional representation, it’s a more democratic alternative to archaic “winner takes all” elections. The US, Britain and Canada are the only three countries in the world that still conduct “winner takes all” elections. See The Case for Proportional Representation.

The Shocking Lack of Evidence Supporting Flu Vaccines

Posted on by
Reply

It is a heavily guarded secret within the medical establishment (especially within the corridors of the CDC) that the Cochrane Database Review (CDR), considered by many within the evidence-based medical model to be the gold standard for assessing the therapeutic value of common medical interventions, does not lend unequivocal scientific support to the belief and/or outright propaganda that flu vaccines are ‘safe and effective.

The Civil War in Libya

Posted on by
Reply

The Lust for Libya: How a Nation Was Torn Apart Part 2

Al Jazeera (2018)

Film Review

Part 2 of Lust for Libya links the 2011 “uprisings” in Libya to the Arab Spring uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.

It makes no mention of the CIA role in fomenting and arming the rebellion in Libya, along with the more peaceful 2001 Arab Spring “color revolutions.” See The Arab Spring: Made in the USA

I was surprised to learn the 2011 NATO bombing campaign was spearheaded by French president Nicolas Sarkozy (whose 2007 election campaign was financed by Gaddafi) and former UK prime minister David Cameron. It was they who approached the Obama administration as a third partner.

In total NATO bombers embarked on 20,000 sorties and 67,000 total bombings to virtually destroy Libya’s civilian infrastructure. With US intelligence support, rebel fighters captured, tortured and executed Gaddafi as he was fleeing Tripoli. With his demise, Libya became a failed state as it descended into a civil war between rival armed militias.

Libya’s National Oil Company and its central bank continued to operate, and for some bizarre reason the new de facto government (National Transition Council) granted a salary to all past and present militia fighters – a move that clearly fuels the ongoing war.

Libya has held a number of parliamentary elections since 2011, but none has been able to control the militias or effectively rebuild state institutions.

In 2015, the UN created the government of National Accord, which meets in Tripoli, although any government institutions that continue to operate are run by militias. A CIA-linked exile General Khalifa Hafter has created a rival government run by the Libyan National Army and which has seized the oil ports and all oil production.

France, the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are all supplying Hafter with weapons, in open violation of a UN arms embargo. Italy backs the Government of National Accord because they control natural gas resources Italy depends on – and, to some extent, the flow of African refugees departing from Libya for Italy.

Part 2 begins at 47 minutes.

NY Taxpayers To Pay $61,000 Per Amazon HQ2 Job, by Tyler Durden

Posted on by
Reply

Amazon is already one of the richest companies in the world. Why, exactly, do they need New York taxpayers to bail them out?

Robert Gore's avatarSTRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Amazon probably extracted enough from New York taxpayers to offset the costs of putting its second headquarters on Long Island. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

New York taxpayers will shell out $61,000 for each of the 25,000 jobs to be created over the next 15 years from Amazon’s new split-model HQ2 plan. This works out to nearly double the $32,000 in tax incentives that Virginia residents will shoulder for the same number of jobs, according to Bloomberg.

In the long run, the public expense, along with the number of jobs created, would likely be even higher in Long Island City – as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state and city will spend as much as $3 billion to secure as many as 40,000 jobs in what he described at a Tuesday press conference as “the largest economic development initiative that has ever been done by the city…

View original post 441 more words

U.S: Hormone-Disrupting Weed Killer Taints Tap Water for Millions in Corn Belt

Posted on by
Reply

The Safe Drinking Water Act, last updated in 1996, only requires the reporting of annual averages of testing for the chemical. That means the utilities don’t have to tell the EPA or their customers they exceeded the legal limit for multiple days or weeks during the growing season.

Journal of People Peasants and Workers's avatarJournal of People

Environmental Working Group (EWG) | November 14, 2018

WASHINGTON – Seasonal spikes of atrazine – a weed killer that can disrupt hormones and harm developing fetuses – contaminate drinking water in corn-growing areas of the Midwest and beyond, according to an analysis of federal records by the Environmental Working Group.

Environmental Protection Agency data show that in some Corn Belt communities, atrazine levels can spike three to seven times above the legal limit in late spring and early summer. But by avoiding water testing during peak periods, some water utilities stay in compliance with drinking water regulations – and don’t have to tell customers they were exposed to a hazardous chemical in their tap water.

View original post 556 more words

Slave labor isn’t dead; it’s just fighting fires

Posted on by
Reply

The danger in permitting such a program is not that it provides much needed help to fight devastating fires throughout the state, but that it puts an already highly disadvantaged group into a disadvantaged situation that can likely cause lifelong medical issues and can even prove fatal. Being in the wake of intense fire and smoke can result in severe lung and heart complications and intense reactions in the ears, nose and throat that last for decades.