The Thunderbolt 073113 Playing With Fire

The Thunderbolt

News — Commentary — Calendar of Activist Events — Dumb Jokes

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1) FYI Section:
1A) Update from Mike at the OMJP
1B) Update from West Central Park Project
2) Hearing on Shoreline Development Plan
3) National Night Out Against Crime
4) Update from Gaza
5) Movies in the Park Meaningful Movie Series: “Addiction Unwoven”
6) Bonus Tip of the Week
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Playing With Fire
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Thunderbolt Celebrity Show Down!

Hey Kids!

It has finally happened! I spoke to a stranger on the street and he recognized my voice from the radio version of the Thunderbolt!

And he said he loves my show!

Yep, I’m a real life celebrity now!

(Don’t worry, I’ll still let you tell people that you know me…)

I’m available for autographs every Wednesday afternoon at the Westside Food CoOp and Thursday thru Friday at the Eastside CoOp.

Unlike Paris Hilton, though, I haven’t figured out a way to make money just by being famous, so you can also purchase a copy of Real Change while you’re at it…

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Official Thunderbolt Question of the Week:

We have two people who don’t have a clue; do these two people combined know more or less than one person who doesn’t have a clue?

(Keep in mind that whilst any individual can know nothing, when two people get together it is actually possible for them to know less than nothing…)

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Official Thunderbolt Prediction Revision

When I expressed the view last week that the civilian airliner shoot-down in the Ukraine was probably a false-flag attack, I was under the impression that it was impossible to ‘accidently’ shoot down a civilian airliner flying at 30,000 feet. When the evidence began mounting I began to question that assumption and thus I did some research. I learned that if you have the capable weaponry then it is not only possible to accidently shoot down a civilian airliner flying at 30,000 feet, but that it is actually even more likely to make a mistake when you are shooting at a blip on a radar screen than it is when you are shooting at something that you are actually looking at…

…so I now officially revise my estimation of the airliner shoot-down from ‘probably a false-flag attack’ to ‘maybe but probably not a false-flag attack’.

It is starting to appear, in fact, that some Eastern Ukrainian — whose enthusiasm was probably exceeded only by his lack of training — made a very serious figoobliation…

As for what a civilian airliner was doing in an active war zone — my very first question and a question that to date I have only heard asked one time by one single NPR reporter — but the answer to that seemingly very important question is that evidently since there are no laws rules or policies on flying civilian airliners through active war zones, then that was why that airliner was flying through an active war zone.

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Official Thunderbolt Irony of the Week!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen and various permutations thereof! It’s time for the big event that you’ve all been waiting for!

It’s time for the Thunderbolt Irony of the Week!

And yes Kids and Elders and Ageless Ones and Aliens — this week’s Irony is brought to us by our recently temporarily retired professional political hack Hillary Clinton!

[Wild applause. Cheers. Ecstatic exuberance.]

Yes Kids etc., here it is: The Thunderbolt Irony of the Week:

Hillary Clinton just warned Iran that they had better not interfere in the internal affairs of Iraq!

[Wild applause. Cheers. Ecstatic exuberance.]

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Bullies!

I champion the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the simple and the persecuted. I maintain that whosoever benefits or hurts a man benefits or hurts the whole species. I sought my liberty and the liberty of all, my happiness and the happiness of all. I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, and light for every intellect. I am convinced that human history has not yet begun, that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric. I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused with the rays of the new millennium.

—Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Anarchist
Victim of the “Palmer Raids”
Executed in 1924
Exonerated in 1977

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The Israelis are intentionally targeting children
—Mohammed Omer
Palestinian Journalist

The big bully Hamas continues to pick on poor defenseless Israel this week. (At least that is the Media Machine narrative — though I must admit that in a move that provides some hope, several times now I have heard NPR effectively air the Palestinian point of view and I even heard a couple of NPR people ask a couple of sharp questions about Israeli claims. I have almost never heard them do any of this before.)

On the Mainstream Media Machine, though, it is impossible to watch. According to Fox News and MSNBC, it is Hamas’ fault that the Israelis are killing hundreds of women and children! The fact that hundreds of Palestinians are dying for every Israeli that dies proves that Hamas is the aggressor because they are all dying so aggressively!

(Actually I made that last part up myself. I haven’t actually heard the Machine try to put that particular spin on things — at least not yet…)

The occupation, the blockade, and the siege, are all war crimes by the way — not that anyone cares about that these days. When you have the top-dog on the planet on a leash, you don’t need to worry about such things, and indeed, rather than offering condolences for all the dead women and children, Benjamin Netanyahu is instead blaming Hamas for using civilians as ‘human shields’ and he referred to ‘telegenically dead’ people that Hamas was using for propaganda purposes.

I saw a clip wherein a Hamas member that was being interviewed by a Western reporter replied to this charge: “The people being killed are my family and friends. My mother could be next. I could be next.”

I could not find this clip again (to be honest, I forget where I even saw it now) but the Hamas spokesperson spoke very slowly and patiently as he explained this; I received the distinct impression that he felt as if he were explaining the obvious to an idiot…

(Note: The Israelis regularly use Palestinian women and children as human shields themselves…)

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And by the way: Netanyahu’s war crimes enjoy 80% support amongst both the American and the Israeli public.

Propaganda works.

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I haven’t got the exact figures and I’m right on deadline right now so — if I remember correctly — over 1,500 Paletinians have been killed and the UN estimates that over 80% of the Palestinian deaths are civilians, including HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN. The Israelis have lost around 50 people with only 3 [three] civilian deaths.

Excuse me, but who is the ‘aggressor’ here? Who is the ‘terrorist’ here?

Israel just bombed Gaza’s only power plant. They have bombed several UN refugee stations now killing dozens of women and children. A Palestinian journalist at first told people to avoid areas where Hamas then to dwell — but when he realized that the Israeli snipers and rockets were intentionally targeting women and children then he started advising people to avoid areas where there were lots of women and children…

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John Stewart tried to do a bit on the Israel Palestine situation — but every time he said ‘Israel’ five of his co-hosts would pop up from behind his desk and begin simultaneously yelling Israeli talking points into Mr. Stewart’s ear and every time he said ‘Palestine’ the same five people would pop back up and start yelling Palestinian talking points into his ear.

He finally gave up trying to even talk about it and asked if it was safe to talk about the Ukraine?

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So, allow me now to scream into your ear:

What is happening in Palestine is ethnic cleansing via genocidal slaughter.

Nothing less.

The only choices facing the Palestinians now are a quick death by bomb or a slow death by blockade. They don’t care anymore. They have nothing left to lose.

(According to some definitions, that means the Palestinians are now free…)

The Israeli model for their Palestinian policy is the same old tried-and-true policy that the Americans deployed so successfully against Native Americans: The Israelis obviously plan to marginalize the Palestinians to the point of complete insignificance and powerlessness, whereupon they will settle the survivors onto small isolated impoverished ‘reservations’…

…whereupon they will be ignored and forgotten.

What is happening in Palestine is a heinous war crime overall and there is a plethora of truly outrageous individual war crimes happening everywhere all the time on a daily basis. This is so despicably immoral so outrageously unfair so maddeningly cruel and inhumane that it makes me want to start screaming profanities and everyone in the rest of the world also views it as such. Only in the United States and Israel are these war crimes accepted, and ironically, even Israel has a much more healthy inner debate amongst its citizens than we do here in the United States.

The only way Israel gets away with what they do is because American politicians seem to have more concern for Israel’s security and well-being than they do for America’s own security and well-being. Our government unquestioningly has Israel’s back no matter how outrageous the crap they pull. I still don’t understand how Israel manages to run the United States government for its own benefit, especially since many if not most of America’s Middle Eastern policies actually provide a great detriment to American interests — but resolutions in support of Israeli war crimes invariably receive 100% support in the American Congress.

As far as Israel’s argument that Hamas is the aggressor in this latest episode of the Palestinian Follies, I hesitate to even give that argument the honour of acknowledging it because it is so off-the-charts insane, but since it has become an established part of our national narrative…

Israel says they were forced to attack Gaza in reaction to Hamas rockets. The rockets were in response to the blockade. The blockade was in response to this and this was in response to that while that was in response to that other this and so on and so forth seemingly ad infinitum…

…but all of those this’s and thats’s lead back to 1948 when the Zionists came in with guns and seized Palestine by armed force. Then they violently evicted over seven-hundred-thousand Palestinians — 80% of the Arab population of Palestine — with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Israelis celebrate this as their ‘Independence Day’.

The Palestinians call this the ‘Nakba’, or the ‘Catastrophe’.

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-nakba.html

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THAT is what started this.

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Israel claims that they had the right to forcibly seize Palestine because Palestine was their historical homeland 2,000 years ago.

That is why Israel is the only country in the world whose ‘right to exist’ is ever even questioned.

If we were to extend the Israeli logic, then we would return the Western Hemisphere to the Native Americans since they were only finally dispossessed less than 120 years ago…

…and while that may seem like a good idea to some, you get the point…

Another factor: There are regular votes in the UN to condemn this or that Israeli outrage and almost invariably the vote for condemning Israel is nearly unanimous with the United States and Israel usually representing the only dissenting votes other than an occasional nay vote from some South Pacific island nation that is trying to suck up to the US. Over and over and over there are votes of 165-2 or 180-3 for sanctioning Israel — but since the United States sits on the Security Council and can thus unilaterally veto any such proposal, Israel continues to commit atrocity with impunity.

Our tax dollars also pay for all this; Israel is the world’s largest recipient of foreign aid from the US government.

The American Media Machine completely ignores these UN votes. If not for Noam Chomsky and the American Free Press I wouldn’t even know about them myself.

The rest of the world doesn’t ignore these votes.

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Playing with Fire

This situation wherein our government appears to be a toady of Israel goes way back…

…one of the most outrageous open secrets in American history came about during the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel launched what was almost certainly intended to be a false-flag attack against an American ship called the USS Liberty. This happened just off the coast of Saudi Arabia.

The Liberty was a spy ship. The Liberty was not a war ship; her entire arsenal consisted of a grand total of two .50 calibre machine guns meant mostly to repel potential boarders.

Most people who have studied this incident believe that the Israeli plan was to sink the ship with all hands and then blame it on the Egyptians, though some believe that the Israelis fired upon the Liberty because were so paranoid about their war plans that they were trying to hide them even from the Americans and their spy ships.

I doubt that there are very many people who actually believe that latter explanation any more than I do.

During the attack on the USS Liberty there were also a large number of Israeli aircraft in the air waiting for orders to incinerate Cairo. They never received these orders — almost certainly because the Liberty was never sunk. It wasn’t for lack of trying. They used missiles, rockets, napalm, strafing runs, and torpedoes. The Israelis also machine-gunned the life-rafts sinking two of them — which was yet another war crime — but who is counting by this point?

While the Israelis killed over 30 American sailors, wounded almost 200, shot two lifeboats out of the water and caused serious damage to the ship — the Liberty didn’t sink and there were numerous survivors. While the deck was still being strafed, Terry Halbardier grabbed a reel of cable, ran out onto the deck, and attached a new cable to the antenna so that a radioman could get out an SOS.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. The Liberty was supposed to go down with all hands so there would be no witnesses. Now an SOS had been broadcast.

Two American aircraft carriers deployed warplanes to come to the Liberty’s rescue.

However: When President Johnson learned of this he personally ordered the rescuers to immediately stand down.

Wow.

Recently released documents have revealed that when questioned about this at the time, Secretary of Defense John McNamara replied that “President Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.”

This was the only time in American history that a rescue mission has ever been called off during an ongoing attack — and this attack lasted for longer than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had. Sortie after sortie of Israeli fighter planes pounded the largely defenseless ship and eventually even some Israeli torpedo boats joined into the fun — yet Johnson called back the cavalry.

Honour the troops. Right.

The subsequent cover-up of this event was carried out at the highest levels of the US government. They originally considered trying to blame it on Egypt anyway, but when that became unfeasible Israel finally admitted responsibility and made a ridiculous assertion that they had mistaken the Liberty for an Egyptian ship. ‘Inquiries’ [i.e. officially designated cover-ups] by both the Americans and the Israelis confirmed this [of course] but there are mountains of contradictory evidence and everyone that was directly involved — including virtually all of the survivors of the attack — either say this contention is complete bullshite or they refuse to say anything about it at all as there has been systemic harassment of Liberty survivors coming from every quarter — everyone from the Department of Defense to the American Legion — and thus there is widespread reluctance to speak of the incident in most quarters.

The following link will take you to an article about this from a Libertarian website called the American Free Press:

http://americanfreepress.net/?p=10642

A word about the American Free Press: While their editorial pages will make your head explode — and while they are definitely anti-Semitic in spite of their protestations to the contrary — I actually subscribed to the print edition of the American Free Press for many years and I now regularly visit their website because I have found over the years that not only is their factual reporting second to none but they are also constantly coming up with things that no one else has. The American Free Press is absolutely the go-to source for information about the Bilderbergers, for instance. They have a reporter whose name I have forgotten but he has actually infiltrated the annual Bilderberger confab twice now and was able to actually report from the inside.

Another for instance: Most of you probably heard about the four Jews that were shot down in the Brussels Jewish Museum recently. This was spun as a hate attack and within hours Benjamin Netanyahu was all over the European airwaves denouncing this shooting as yet another example of growing anti-Semitism in Europe. Everyone seemed to accept this analysis at face value.

How many of you know that the conclusion of the investigating police agencies was that at least two of the people shot at the museum were Israeli intelligence agents working directly out of Netanyahu’s office and that this had been a professional hit? (After the shooting the perpetrator had calmly walked away and he was never caught.)

http://americanfreepress.net/?p=17955

As far as I can tell, readers of the American Free Press are the only ones who know about this.

However, if right wing analysis freaks you out, then here is a leftist view of the USS Liberty incident from Counter Punch:

Israeli messages intercepted on June 8, 1967, leave no doubt that sinking the USS Liberty was the mission assigned to the attacking Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats as the Six-Day War raged in the Middle East. Let me repeat: There is no doubt — none — that the mission of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was to destroy the USS Liberty and kill its entire crew.

Here, for example, is the text of an intercepted Israeli conversation, just one of many pieces of hard, unambiguous evidence that the Israeli attack was not a mistake:

Israeli pilot to ground control: “This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?”

Ground control: “Yes, follow orders.” …

Israeli pilot: “But, sir, it’s an American ship — I can see the flag!”

Ground control: “Never mind; hit it!”

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and before that Chief of Naval Operations) Thomas Moorer, helped lead an independent, blue-ribbon commission to investigate what happened to the Liberty.

The following are among the commission’s findings made public in October 2003:

-That the attack, by a U.S. ally, was a “deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill its entire crew”

-That the attack included the machine-gunning of stretcher-bearers and life rafts

-That “the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of the [ship] … never before in naval history has a rescue mission been cancelled when an American ship was under attack”

-That surviving crew members were later threatened with “court-martial, imprisonment, or worse” if they talked to anyone about what had happened to them; and were “abandoned by their own government.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/09/leaving-the-crew-of-the-uss-liberty-behind/

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Here is a link to an article about the USS Liberty by Ray McGovern, who spoke in Olympia recently:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/06/02/navy-vet-honored-foiled-israeli-attack/

Here is a link to an aggregation website with links to a major portion of all the articles ever written about the attack on the USS Liberty:

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ussliberty.html

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It’s time to get to work…
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The Thunderbolt Calendar
Week of July 31st thru August 6th 2014
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1) FYI Section:

1A) Update from Mike at the OMJP

The Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace [OMJP] works on a variety of social and environmental issues. They meet every Wednesday at 6 o’clock at the POWER office, next to Rainy Day Records on the corner of 5th and Franklin.

Here is a message from Mike:

Ecosystem-based management is a global problem, not just in WA State. I think the problem at its root is over-population and resource depletion. I think we can buffer the crash that is coming by working for ecosystem-based management very aggressively. At some point it will become apparent to a majority of folks that a great extinction event is underway and that our species is not in charge of the event, we are only driving the extinction through our species’ single-minded ingenuity and commitment to growth.

So, a couple of point:

OMJP is sponsoring an extinction event at Traditions on Wed Aug 13th. We were unable to schedule for a Friday the 13th extinction event. It’s a potluck. We will show some video, maybe run a podcast and host an open discussion. I hope that many of you will attend. Not sure if we will have speakers or not. If you want to sign up to speak or be on a panel, let Marylea and/or me know. I think the event title is: Hey, we are going extinct! Let’s eat first and enjoy each other’s company.

• Community Rights South Sound is putting together a public forum on creating a CRO dedicated to the health of Puget Sound/Salish Sea for Saturday, September 13th at noon (location tba) with a followup work meeting at Traditions on Wednesday Sept 22nd at 7 pm.

A couple of things I firmly believe:

1. If positive change is coming, we are going to have to bring it ourselves. The state/fed/UN are not going to bring it from the top down, Positive change is primarily available from the bottom up.
2. If our change process requires that we raise a lot of money, the process is doomed to fail. The money-driven system is a stacked deck. We have to overcome money with good ideas, commitment and energy. We cannot match the money system and we should not try. The money that we need to do what we have to do will be found, but we don’t need to develop a budget and start fund-raising, we have to start by working on good ideas, commitment and energy. If we succeed to any degree, we do it through good ideas, commitment and energy.
3. We don’t need to raise public awareness or convince lots of folks through education before we start working on change from the bottom up. We don’t have time for that process, we have more important work to do. Global climate disaster, resource wars, droughts, famine, etc will do the public awareness work for us. Every day more people know that something catastrophic is happening. We need to focus on creating the change, the infrastructure, the public policy that buffers disaster. As people come to believe that a catastrophe is underway, they will recognize and appreciate an activity that buffers/reduces the catastrophe. There are lots of groups and individuals doing the public outreach, there are not enough groups and individuals working on actual adaptation and buffering, ecosystem restoration. I want to work on that stuff.

What I hope is that a local group will push the envelope through community rights vehicle to argue forcefully for ecosystem-based management. Win, lose or draw, most of the folks reading this email know that the ecosystem is going to have the last word and growth/economic stability – based management of ecosystems will fail. The solution, such as it is, lies elsewhere.

I am a writer and organizer. I am not a speaker, so I hope that some of you will see your place in this work as speakers and step up.

Get in touch, let’s talk about what it takes to get ecosystem-based management in place. I would love to go extinct as an individual after we have daylighted creeks and restored estuary environment, rather than before. Time is short, I am getting old, cranky and impatient. Let’s make this happen.

Mike

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1B) Update from West Central Park Project

They are showing movies at both the Artesian Well and at the People’s Park! Yippee!

From Alicia:

Hello Gang!

Well another exciting week at the Park, with last Monday’s movie bringing in a record crowd of around 100 neighbors for the movie Back to the Future. This coming Monday’s movie will be The Princess Bride with Daniel Gaster’s food truck till 1 am. The open mike will be going on from 7-9 and then the movie will start around 9:30. Bring your blankets and lawn chairs and get ready to snuggle in for a real old fashioned neighborhood cinema.

The Park Board earmarked 200 dollars for each of the movies that were shown at the Park, and reached the limit of what the Project could afford for now. If there is an interest in the community to continue the movies, a movie fund could be started. Each movie’s public viewing rights average around $200, with the electricity and equipment negligible. Let us know if there is interest in revving up a tax deductible movie fund that is separate from the Park’s operating fund from which movies could be shown.

We will be having a busy work party this Sunday from 10-1 with Daniel’s Permaculture workshop, and all the regular maintenance, we will also be adding some new features to the Park like a community bulletin board. Many requests have been made to advertise events around town, at the Park. We have found a way to do that, in a cork board behind our wooden tree will be installed this Sunday. Bring on the flyers!

See you around the Park and as always let us know when you have constructive questions or suggestions. We welcome the input!
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2) Hearing on Shoreline Development Plan
Thursday July 31st at 6 PM @ Olympia Center, 222 Columbia St NW

This is important!!!

The land developers and their lackey ‘liberals’ on the city council are trying to gut the Comprehensive Plan again.

This is like some never ending nightmare or something.

Evidently there are a couple of ex-mayors that are going to school the current city council and mayor about what’s what, so this should actually be interesting…

Come testify as to how YOU would like to see the shoreline developed or the developers will turn it into a gentrified yuppie commercial hell…

From Chris:

Some of the concerns with the SMP is that it does not address sea level rise- flooding plus the mayor has taken soil liqification out of the report. Even though this is exactly what happened to much of downtown & along the west side of Capitol Lake during the Nisqually Quake of 2000. The reason they are not addressing these very valid concerns is that it discourage developers. Huh?? How is this a good idea??

From the Department of Ecology:

Open house and public hearing

Attend Ecology’s open house and public hearing to learn more about Olympia’s shoreline program and provide written comments. You may also provide verbal testimony during the public hearing.

Date: Thursday, July 31, 2014
Time: 6:00 p.m. Open House
7:00 p.m. Public Hearing
Location: The Olympia Center
222 Columbia Street NW
Olympia, Washington 98501
(360) 753-8380
Location map: http://binged.it/1lcxirB

The hearing location complies with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. Please contact the regional planner listed below if you need additional accommodation.
Submit written comments and questions to:

Regional Planner: Chrissy Bailey
Mailing address: Washington Department of Ecology
Southwest Regional Office
PO Box 47775
Olympia, Washington 98504-7775
Street address: 300 Desmond Drive
Lacey, Washington 98503
Email: chrissy.bailey@ecy.wa.gov

Direct line: (360) 407-0290

Comments must be received no later than September 8, 2014 at 5 p.m

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/sea/shorelines/smp/mycomments/olympia.html .
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3) National Night Out Against Crime
6 PM Tuesday August 5th thru 8 PM Wednesday August 6th at Artesian Well, NW Corner of 5th and Jefferson

This sounds like some Chamber of Commerce type event, but actually PiPE is organizing the local action.

From Rosalinda:

Join us the Artesian Well for an evening of community building and lots of info and give-a-ways related to the prevention of sexual violence and [to the] support services available through PiPE!

https://www.facebook.com/events/319910158172700/
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4) Update from Gaza
Wednesday August 6th at 7 PM @ Traditions Café, 300 5th Ave SW

Come get updated on the situation in Gaza.

From the OMJP:

Update from Gaza: Get accurate new information at 7:00 pm at Traditions Café, 5th& Water SW, downtown Olympia. The Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace (OMJP –www.omjp.net) organized tonight’s forum featuring Dr. Ron Smith, who spent the first part of June in Gaza and. Smith studies, teaches and writes on the subject. See info about the worldwide protests against the government of Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza Mondoweiss at http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/worldwide-protest-israeli.html
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5) Movies in the Park Meaningful Movie Series: “Addiction Unwoven”
Thursday August 7th at 8 PM @ Sylvester Park, Corner of Legion Way and Capitol Way

This is a series of ‘meaningful movies’ playing every Thursday evening through August.

From the 21st Century Park Coalition:

Addiction Unwoven
Thursday August 7th at 8 PM @ Sylvester Park

Addiction — is it a choice or a disease? Presented by Dr. Kevin McCauley

Free and Open to the Public!

Music and conversation starts at 8 PM, movie starts at dusk (9-ish)
Bring your lawn chairs and refreshments — These are non-smoking events

For information call: 360-556-2541
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6) Bonus Tip of the Week:

Be careful when playing with fire.

Peace.

Dana

The Thunderbolt 072414 The Sincerest Form of Flattery

The Thunderbolt

News — Commentary — Calendar of Activist Events — Dumb Jokes

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1) FYI Section:
1A) Comment Period for Port of Olympia Over July 31st
1B) West Central Park Update
1C) Deadline for Submissions to Oly FOR Newsletter July 29th
2) Day of Action on Gaza
3) Renegade Movie Night at the Well
4) Community Rights Ordinance Meeting
5) Really Really Free Market
6) Third Annual Occupy Gathering in Sacramento
7) Bonus Tip of the Week
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The Sincerest Form of Flattery
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Icons

Hey Kids!

I think no other iconographic image so encapsulates our unique American Disease than the videos of people draped in American flags and their angry squished red faces looking like caricatures of ugly hatred spewing profanity hatred and vitriol at a busload of traumatized and terrified children who had just experienced an ordeal that none of those yelling people could even begin to comprehend.

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The Most Sincere Form of Flattery

Under Adolph Hitler, the Nazis meted out group punishments, conducted mass-arrests, engaged in the mass-murder of women and children, brutally oppressed racial minourities, seized property, and operated concentration camps.

In their latest attack on Gaza, the Israelis are intentionally targeting hospitals, mosques, private homes, and apartment blocks. They even murdered four children right in front of a bunch of western reporters.

All of this is being paid for with your tax dollars.

Palestinians are not the only targets: In Haifa, two-hundred protesting Israeli anti-war activists were viciously attacked by an organized gang consisting of thousands of rabid right-wing Israelis that had arrived by bus in for the occasion. They were screaming, “Death to Arabs! Death to leftists!”

There were numerous injuries amongst the anti-war protesters and two women are still in the hospital.

The Israeli police just stood by and allowed this attack to happen.

They say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

Why do the Zionists — of all people — feel such a need to flatter the Nazis?

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Zionist apologists often point out that Israel is in a very unfriendly neighborhood. True. Maybe they should have stolen a country in someone else’s neighborhood or somewhere they might have been a little more welcomed.

Many Americans don’t realize it, but it is an interesting and little known fact that many other locales besides Palestine were seriously discussed as possible locations for the new Jewish homeland. I had read once that there was a big push to make Alaska the selected locale.

Can you imagine what the Zionists would have done with Alaska? Especially since they wouldn’t have been required to spend such a major portion of their budget oppressing Palestinians…

Anyway, since I didn’t remember where I read that and since I like to second-source things like that anyway, my investigation led me to that secret crypt of esoteric and informific information — Wikipedia!

And of course I quickly found an entry on the subject of “proposed alternative homelands for the Jewish people”:

• Jewish Autonomous Oblast was a region created by the Soviet Union in the Russian Far East. It has been in existence from 1934 to the present.
• Salonika in the Ottoman Empire was populated mainly by Sephardim with Judeo-Spanish as the main language. After its incorporation to the Kingdom of Greece, it remained very Jewish until the arrival of Greek refugees from Anatolia in the 1920s.
• Albania – In 1935, British Zionist journalist Leo Elton traveled to Albania, apparently at his own initiative, to see if it would be possible to establish a Jewish national entity there. It seems the only surviving trace of his voyage is his report 10 years later to Hebrew University’s first president, Judah Leib Magnes. The document rests in the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People at the university’s Givat Ram campus in Jerusalem. Elton’s journey was spurred on by the increasing persecution of German Jews two years into the Nazi regime and Britain’s refusal to increase the quotas on Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine. Elton writes that he first read of the idea in British newspapers reporting that the Albanian government welcomed Jewish immigration [1].
• The Kimberley Plan was a failed plan by the Freeland League, led by Isaac Nachman Steinberg, to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe in the Kimberley region in Australia before and during the Holocaust.[19]
• In 1941 Lord Moyne suggested to David Ben-Gurion that Jewish refugees could be resettled in East Prussia after Germany was defeated and the area’s German inhabitants were expelled. Ben-Gurion responded that “the only way to get Jews to go [to East Prussia] would be with machine guns.”[20]
• Qırmızı Qəsəbə – The town is the primary settlement of Azerbaijan’s population of Mountain Jews, who make up the population of approximately 4,000.
• Vietnam – Vietnamese government officials in 2005, told Israeli officials of a plan discussed between Ho Chi Minh and Moshe Dayan to invite Jews to live in the country. No documentation of the offer and discussion has yet been made available. There is currently a small expatriate community of Jews in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, intermarrying with Vietnamese, with the first Bar Mitzvah in Vietnam held in 2004, in Hanoi.[23]
• Sitka, Alaska – a plan for Jews to settle the Sitka area in Alaska, the Slattery Report, was proposed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes in 1939 but turned down.:[21]

According to Ickes’s diaries, President Roosevelt wanted to move 10,000 settlers to Alaska each year for five years, but only 10 percent would be Jewish “to avoid the undoubted criticism” the program would receive if it brought too many Jews into the country. With Ickes’s support, Interior Undersecretary Harold Slattery wrote a formal proposal titled “The Problem of Alaskan Development,” which became known as the Slattery Report. It emphasized economic-development benefits rather than humanitarian relief: The Jewish refugees, Ickes reasoned, would “open up opportunities in the industrial and professional fields now closed to the Jews in Germany.”[22]

[All emphasis added by The Thunderbolt.]

An alternate history of the proposal where Jews do settle in Sitka is the subject of author Michael Chabon’s novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_Jewish_state

—

It’s time to get to work…
_______________________________________
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The Thunderbolt Calendar
Week of July 24th thru July 30th 2014
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1) FYI Section:

1A) Comment Period for Port of Olympia Over July 31st

The Port Oly did not give us much time to submit comments about their proposed SEPA policy and I think it is important that we persuade the Port to take global warming and sea level rise seriously. It is ironic, but not satisfying to consider that the Port’s marine terminal economic focus is the same one that guarantees the melting of glaciers, ice caps and disastrous rise in sea level.

For those of of who have been working on the Port since the PMR days, this is an important moment. We effectively stopped the movement of military material through the Port and that cargo is not likely to return, but the Port has still not done the about-face required to move from being a small hub in the globalization calamity to becoming an economic commons for a sustainable local economy. Exporting raw logs and importing fracking proppants is theft from young people, their children, and our grandchildren. The economic focus of the marine terminal is a crime against nature. It is not enough to protest against what we don’t want, we have to build what we do want. The Port is a perfect local example of a commons that has been hijacked by short-sighted economic interests. We need to take the Port back from the petrochemical industry and the timber barons. The Ports belong to us. They are the commons and they need our protection and involvement.

Please read the attached SEPA policy and take a few minutes to submit comments and requests to sepa@portolympia.com by July 31st.

Appendix A to Resolution 2014
–
__
SEPA and Climate Change
PART ONE: SEPA and Climate Change

SEPA requires lead agencies to consider the environmental consequences of proposals that are not
exempt from SEPA analysis. Climate is one element of the environment that SEPA requires agencies to evaluate prior to making a decision on a proposal. WAC 197-11-444(1)(b)(iii).

As a lead agency and project proponent, the Port will consider greenhouse gas emissions and the effect of climate change on proposed actions as a component of Port environmental review.
Consistent with Department of Ecology guidance, the Port will consider two different climate change
impacts when evaluating proposals:

1. New greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the proposal; and
2. The effects of climate change on the proposal’s new infrastructure. These effects may include
(but not be limited to):

a.Sea level rise;
b. Changes in water availability; and
c. More extreme precipitation events and flooding.

Could it be more clear that the import of fracking proppants and the export of raw logs from the Port of Oly is out of step with the SEPA requirements?

Read Monica’s email below for more contact information.

The Port of Olympia is ground zero for environmental protection in South Sound. Think globally and act locally. The struggle over the Port’s economic activity and focus is important and urgent. The Port could be a cornerstone in creating and supporting a vibrant, sustainable local economy. Or it can continue to be a tool of large trans-national economic interests.

This is in our hands. Let’s do this for our children and grandchildren. We have it in our hands to begin the world anew.

Mike

*****************************************

1B) West Central Park Update

West Central Park got their 501c3!

From Alicia:

Well Gang!

We got some excellent news last week. The IRS has after 4 months of review of our application, has granted us tax exempt status under section 501c3 of the Internal Revenue Code! The West Central Park has also been deemed a public charity able to accept any form of contribution, bequest, devise, transfer or gifts that will be tax deductible. The IRS backdated our new 501c3 to June of 2013 when the project began. All financial activity during the whole past year will considered in this new light. YEEHAW!

In other news, the movie nights are going very well with our attendance around 50 for the Iron Giant and 60 for the Karate Kid. Tonight, Back to the Future 1 will be playing and on July 28th, we will be showing the Princess Bride! All of the movies start around dusk so bring your blankies or lawn chairs and snuggle in for a fun evening of community theater. Daniel Gaster’s food truck will be there at every movie night until after the movie so bring a little movie mad money for trying out some of the excellent “Hot Box” creations that he serves.

Our Permaculture Workshop Series brought to you by Daniel Cherniske will be continuing next weekend on Saturday, July 26th from 12-1:30 and on Sunday the 27th from 10-12 for the hands on part of the workshop. This workshop is a great way to get introduced to the holistic picture of permaculture from the micro to the macro. Daniel’s extensive knowledge provide invaluable wisdom for the permaculture beginner or novice. The workshop is free with donations accepted. Please contact Daniel at danielcherniske108@gmail.com to find out more.

The work party last week was excellent and we got a lot accomplished in terms of our regular park maintenance. Next week will be business as usual in the park next Sunday, from 10-1. Come on out with your gloves and a smile and we’ll provide the rest.

Finally don’t forget about our upcoming Arts and Music Splash! on August 16th from 11 -5. We still have openings for artists and musicians! Artists may pay $15 for a 10 by 10 tent and an 8 foot table to exhibit or sell their handiwork, or simply pay $5 to exhibit one work in the Gallery Tent. Musicians will be featured by playing a half hour set, and being able to sell any merchandise they may have at the Music Merch Tent. If you or any artists or musicians that you know want to register for this event contact Alicia (msaliciaelliott@gmail.com) or Tucker (t-petertil@juno.com).

See you around the Park!

*****************************************

1C) Deadline for Submissions to Oly FOR Newsletter July 29th

If you want your event promoted in Oly FOR’s newsletter, the deadline quickly approacheth!

From Oly FOR:

The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s newsletter publicizes news, announcements, calendar items, etc., related broadly to peace, social justice, nonviolence, the environment, economic justice, human rights, and related issues. I will mail hundreds of people our AUGUST-SEPTEMBER newsletter on August 5, so local people will receive it on about August 6 or 7.

Please send your announcements and calendar items BY TUESDAY JULY 29 or very soon after.

The vast majority of events we publicize will occur in the greater Olympia and Thurston County area, but we also publicize a few very special ones in nearby counties, Seattle and elsewhere. Because we are a 501(c)3 organization, we cannot publicize any partisan political activities.

I’ll check several of the local websites that offer many calendar items (e.g., TC Pro-Net, Interfaith Works, and Traditions Fair Trade & Café, but please provide any newer or more complete information than what you have posted there, and please notify me of additional activities.

Some events occur on a regular basis, but I want to make sure the information I have been using is still valid and accurate, so please notify me to confirm date, time, place, and the contact information for the key person.

Please send brief information to me as soon as possible – preferably by Saturday July 19 – so I can include them in our newsletter calendar. (Sooner is better!)

You can reply to this e-mail address (glen@olympiafor.org) or phone me at (360) 491-9093.

If you don’t receive our newsletter but would like to, please contact me at glen@olympiafor.org. You may choose to receive the print version and/or a .pdf version. Also, you can see our current and recent newsletters at http://www.olympiafor.org.

Thanks!

I dream of a world where chickens can cross roads without having their motives questioned.

Glen Anderson (360) 491-9093 glen@olywa.net

_______________________________________

2) Day of Action on Gaza
Thursday July 24th from 7 AM to 5 PM @ Various Locations in Olympia

This is the start of a series of actions from the Rachel Corrie Foundation to protest the Israeli apartheid state.

From RCF:

Banner Drop:
7-9 AM – In the first of the day’s events, the Rachel Corrie Foundation will display a banner from the overpass across Capitol Way challenging U.S. support for the assault on Gaza.

Gaza Solidarity Theatrical Display:
11 AM-2 PM – Heritage Park, 330 5th Ave SW, across from Traditions Fair Trade – At a theatrical “die-in” volunteers will gather to lay in the grass, representing individuals who have been killed during recent violence. Join us as a participant or stop by to learn more about the current situation in Gaza and what has brought us to this point.

Petition Delivery to members of Congress:
4-5 PM – Congressman Denny Heck’s Thurston and Mason County Office, 420 College St SE, in Lacey (3rd floor of Lacey City Hall). Join community members to deliver a petition to Congressman Heck. We will demand action for a ceasefire, an end to the siege of Gaza, and accountability for Washington State tax dollars used to provide arms and support Israel’s occupation and recent assault on Gaza. Meet at 4:00 PM outside of the office.

Help to end our complicity in Operation Protective Edge.

https://www.facebook.com/events/659242280810659/
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3) Renegade Movie Night at the Well
Friday July 25th at 9 PM @ the Artesian Well, Corner of Jefferson and 4th Ave

The name says it all.

From Rita:

The first renegade movie night was a success so come join us for another night. We will be watching “Snow Piercer”

They have named it the “Artesian Commons,” but we know that commons are free and open spaces, spaces determined by the people who are connected to them not by the government and not by money.

RESIST GENTRIFICATION AT THE WELL AND ELSEWHERE
FREE SNACKS
NO COPS
NO SNITCHES

https://www.facebook.com/events/311686825665127/
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4) Community Rights Ordinance Meeting
Saturday July 26th at Noon @ MIXX 96 Meeting Room, Corner of Washington and State Streets

This is a meeting to organize a Community Rights Ordinance in Olympia.

From Janet:

Sat July 26: Meeting to plan to strengthen democracy by passing a Community Rights Ordinance (CRO): Several kinds of organizing and work are underway now. Several CROs that have passed elsewhere are posted at http://www.celdf.org/resources-ordinances 12:00 noon at Mixx-96 meeting room at SW corner of State & Washington, downtown. Info: Janet Jordan janetjordan@fastmail.fm and South Sound Community Rights (http://cr-southsound.org More info: http://www.celdf.org and http://www.readthedirt.org
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5) Really Really Free Market
Sunday July 27th from 1 PM to 4 PM @ Sylvester Park, Legion Way and Capitol Way

It’s poking capitalism with a stick! Take what you want! Bring what you don’t want!

From RRFM:

Free music, food, comedy. We’ll be setting up the Really free market, a free gift economy in action, in which you bring things you’d like to give away and take what you want.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1421471708116750/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular
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6) Third Annual Occupy Gathering in Sacramento
Thursday July 31st thru Sunday August 3rd in Sacramento, CA

Occupy is still active. Come plug in with the survivors in Sacramento.

From Occupy:

#For Immediate Release
July 23, 2014
Contact Us: natgat2014@interoccupy.net

We gather again!

For the third year, the Occupy movement invites all to gather together to review the year, share knowledge and skills, celebrate successes and analyze disappointments, and prepare for another year of fighting for the better world that we all know is possible.

From Philadelphia in 2012 to Kalamazoo last summer, and this year in Sacramento (July 31 through August 3), Occupy has been heading west, bringing its hopeful, resistant message. We are the 99%—so we say, but are we really?

On July 30, the day before the gathering, independent yet connected, there is an anti-racism training customized for the movement by the Catalyst Project: Antiracism Training for Collective Liberation. The training is designed primarily for white folks, who often think that they are unaffected by white privilege, that they are beyond the bigotry of past generations—we may be surprised at the unacknowledged baggage that we carry, and we are sure to look at the world from a wider perspective after spending time together examining things we rarely take the time to consider. Special thanks to Delphine Brody for honoring the undone business of Occupy National Gathering 2013, which never quite pulled off a similar suggested training. Space for that is limited, so e-mail us to sign up—but the gathering itself will be held primarily on the grounds of Capitol Park: north side Thursday and Sunday, west side on Friday, so there is plenty of room for all!

The easiest way to get all the information, or to contribute in kind, monetary or in person help, is on the NatGat2014 Hub on InterOccupy; we are also on Twitter and celly: @NatGat2014. Already confirmed are a panel discussion on Environmental Justice, focusing on nuclear, water, and big oil, with a Native American perspective: speakers include Chief Caleen Sisk and Moke Sisha, as well as Faye Kennedy, John Kraintz, and Jan Rein; music by Fresh Juice Party; a memorial for Occupyers lost this year, including Monique Robinson; activist Darryl Cherney presenting the film Who Bombed Judi Ban?; workshops by Alternatives to Violence; and much more.

Nancy Mancias will reprise her role from “NatGat2012”, the first Occupy National Gathering in Philadelphia, and again co-facilitate the FemGA on Friday evening—a general assembly facilitated from a feminist perspective. There will be a giant puppet hands workshop by Sacramento’s own William Spirit, and a Debtors’ Assembly led by Daniel Hong from Occupy Portland, who organized the I-5 Caravan from the Cascades. In these days of government overreach, there is also a Know Your Rights presentation by Claire White of the National Lawyers’ Guild.

For those who cannot attend in person, look for livestreaming—we have 3 confirmed streamers coming, including Patti Beers and Clark Sullivan, who will be leading teach-ins for those who want to livestream their own events. Punk Boy, the Los Angeles livestreamer whose radio show recently included three Occupy National Gathering organizers, will also be coming to the gathering. There is also the possibility of a few sessions from remote locations: Mark Taylor-Canfield, from Seattle, on Press Freedom In the United States, and Jan Spencer, from Eugene, Oregon, on Suburban Permaculture—the dream of the ’50s and ’60s has become the nightmare of the ’00s, but with planning we can reclaim the land and create healthier, sustainable options. Coming from East Oakland, California, is Pancho Ramos-Stierle, speaking on Guerrilla Gardening, Occupy the Farm, and Disobeying with Great Love.

The Occupy National Gathering begins with a sunrise blessing by William Underbaggage of the Inigendous Nations Network. There will be times for skillshares, teach-ins, and topical discussions, created by Occupyers — a favorite of the first two gatherings; open space for spontaneous discussion, artwork and activism; and speaker’s corners including poetry and the spoken word. A custom workshop will be held Friday afternoon: Say It Loud! by the San Francisco Mime Troupe (performing in Sacramento’s Southside Park on Saturday and Sunday of Occupy National Gathering Week). Saturday night has time to Step Up, Step Back: Occupy facilitators will actively encourage those who have not done public speaking before to find their voice and practice what they’ve learned from the Mime Troupe.

From the Overpass Light Brigades to the closing GA, there will be lots happening in Sacramento from July 31 through August 3—we are going back to our roots; we know that the world is watching: This Occupation Is Not Leaving! Come join us!

NatGat2014 Schedule

_______________________________________

7) Bonus Tip of the Week:

Flatter good people.

Peace.

Dana

The Thunderbolt 071714 Amazon Over America

 

 

The Thunderbolt

 

News — Commentary — Calendar of Activist Events — Dumb Jokes

 

_______________________________________

_______________________________________     

 

1) FYI Section:

1A) CREDO Net Neutrality FCC Comment Page

1B) Backbone Campaign ‘Localize This’ Action Camp Coming in August

2) Candlelit Vigil for Palestine

3) Chalk it Out Olympia: Solidarity with the LV Sunset Five

4) Bonus Tip of the Week

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

 

Amazon Over America

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

 

Major Advance in Women’s Rights

 

Hey Kids!

 

In a striking advance in equality for women, according to Marissa Alexander the incarceration rates for women increased by 600% between 2008 and 2010.

 

**********************************

 

Right vs. Wrong

 

In another example of right-wing activists acting with impunity while left-wing activists are brutally oppressed, whenever people block a bus that is taking immigrants away for deportation, arrests are invariably made, the road is opened, and the bus gets through.

 

When right-wingers block a bus from bringing immigrants in, the bus turns around and no one is arrested.

 

**********************************

 

No Comment Part One

 

While I don’t hesitate to express personal views in the Thunderbolt, I far prefer simply stating facts and allowing them to speak for themselves.

 

Israel is claiming that Hamas is the aggressor in the latest round of fighting. Israel has one of the largest and most advanced armies in the world. The Palestinians have rocks and a few crappy rockets that can’t hit anything. It is not like this is some kind of fair fight or anything — and in the latest round there have been 172 Palestinians killed while not one Israeli has been killed — yet Hamas is the ‘aggressor’.

 

And besides all that, Israel is the one that is doing the occupying around here.

 

My favourite sold-out piece of putrid feces — John Kerry — said that Israel has a right to defend itself. Evidently the Palestinians do not have the same right even though it is their frigging country and even though several hundred Palestinian children have been killed for every Israeli child that has been killed.

 

Israel claims their air strikes are narrowly targeted to avoid civilian casualties. Of the 172 Palestinian deaths (as of Tuesday, July 15^th) 140 were civilians including 30 children and 18 members of one family alone. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says the targets of the Israeli bombing campaign have included charities, parks, sports clubs and a mosque. The United Nations Humanitarian Affairs Office estimates thousands have been displaced in Gaza. Almost a thousand homes have been destroyed.

 

Now Egypt has proposed a cease fire. The current Egyptian regimé is a sworn enemy of Hamas. The Egyptians came up with this cease fire without bothering to even consult Hamas and the conditions of the cease fire are completely unacceptable to Hamas’ stated conditions for such a cease fire — but Israel can now say, “Look, we are ready to accept this cease fire but Hamas isn’t! This proves that Hamas are the aggressors!

 

And Fox News will certainly report it in this manner.

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/14/israel_targets_civilians_the_casualties_speak

 

—

 

As for the fact that Hamas offered a cease fire on the second day of the current conflict if Israel would release the Palestinians they had seized, I figure that Fox News will completely ignore that fact now just as they completely ignored it then.

 

As long as the Palestinians just sit waiting for something to happen, then nothing happens except continued brutal oppression and the continued theft of their land. The only time anything happens in Palestine is when the Palestinians rise up…

 

**********************************

 

No Comment Part Two

 

Matt Taibbi has documented that Goldman $achs was the head conspirator in the largest criminal fraud in human history (i.e. the Great American Bubble Scam of 2007).

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405

 

Goldman $achs first put Barack Obama into the Senate.

 

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2006&cid=N00009638

 

Then Goldman $achs put Barack Obama into the White House.

 

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638

 

Here is a partial list of Goldman $achs apparatchiks that either has or who now occupy positions on Obama’s White House team:

 

Lael Brainard: Brainard is the United States Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in the administration of Obama

 

Gregory Craig: Former White House Counsel, Recently hired by Goldman Sachs

 

Thomas Donilon: Deputy National Security Adviser(despite having a career that is mostly involved with domestic politics). Donilon was a lawyer at O’Melveny and Myers and made almost $4 million representing meltdown clients including Penny Pritzker (of Chicago) and Goldman.

 

William C. Dudley : president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, partner and managing director at Goldman, Sachs and was the firm’s chief U.S. economist for a decade

 

Douglas Elmendorf: Obama Director of the Congressional Budget Office in January 2009, replaced Furman as Director of the Hamilton Project (Note that the Hamilton Project was funded by Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs) 

 

Rahm Emanuel: Obama Chief of staff, on the payroll of Goldman Sachs, receiving $3,000 per month from the firm to “introduce us to people,” in the words of one Goldman partner at the time.

 

Dianna Farrell: Obama Administration: Deputy Director, National Economic Council, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Financial Analyst

 

Stephen Friedman: Obama Administration: Chairman, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Board Member (Chairman, 1990-94; Director, 2005

 

Michael Frohman: Robert Rubin’s Chief of Staff while Rubin served as Secretary of the Treasury and an Obama “head hunter” according to “Rubin Protégés Change Their Tune as They Join Obama’s Team” in the New York Times.

 

Anne Fudge: appointed Fudge to Obama budget deficit reduction committee. Fudge has been the PR craftsman for some of America’s largest corporations. She sits, according to the Washington Post, as a Trustee of the Brookings Institution within which the Hamilton Project is embedded.

 

Jason Furman: directed economic policy for the Obama Presidential Campaign, served as the second Director of the Hamilton Project after Peter Orszag’s departure for the Obama administration

 

Mark Gallogly: Sits on the Hamilton Project’s advisory council. He is also, according to Wikipedia, currently a member of Obama’s President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

 

Timothy Geithner: Secretary of the Treasury, a former managing director of Goldman Sachs

 

Gary Gensler: Obama Administration: Commissioner, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Partner and Co-head of Finance

 

Michael Greenstone: the 4th Director of the Hamilton Project. Just as attorney Craig went from advising Obama to defending Goldman Sachs against the SEC complaint, Greenstone has used the revolving door to go from went an economic adviser position to Obama to one of the Goldman Sachs outlets, in this case its think tank embedded in the Brookings Institution and funded by Goldman and Robert Rubin. All 3 previous Directors of the Hamilton Project work in the Obama administration.

 

Robert Hormats: Obama Administration: Undersecretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, State Department Former Goldman Sachs Title: Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs Group

 

Neel Kashkari: served under Treasury Secretary Paulson and was kept on by Obama after his inauguration for a limited period to work on TARP oversight, former Vice President of Goldman Sachs in San Francisco where he where he led Goldman’s Information Technology Security Investment Banking practice.

 

Karen Kornbluh: (sometimes called “Obama’s brain”) Obama Ambassador to the OECD, was Deputy Chief of Staff to Mr. Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin

 

Jacob (AKA “Jack”) Lew: the United States Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. According to Wikipedia, Lew sits on the Brookings-Rubin funded Hamilton Project Advisory Board. He also served with Robert Rubin in Bill Clinton’s cabinet as Director of OMB.

 

David Lipton: now at Obama’s National Economic Council and the National Security Council. Lipton -worked with Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, on the US response to the Asian financial crisis of the 1990’s. MergeFoundations reports that Lipton worked closely with Robert Rubin:

 

Emil Michael: White House Fellow, former investment banker with Goldman Sachs

 

Eric Mindich: Former chief strategy officer of New York- based Goldman Sachs, started Eton Park in 2004 with $3.5 billion, at the time one of the biggest hedge-fund launches ever. …..Hank Paulson Tipped Off The Goldman-Led “Plunge Protection Team” About Fannie Bankruptcy 7 Weeks In Advance (2007):  Goldman operative Eric Mindich in the hierarchy of the Asset Managers’ committee of the President’s Working Group on Capital Markets, better known of course as the PPT (in 2009)

 

Philip Murphy: Obama Administration: Ambassador to Germany, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Head of Goldman Sachs, Frankfurt

 

Barack Obama: Obama owes his career to Goldman Sachs which was not only his biggest financial contributor when he ran for the presidency but also his biggest contributor when he ran for the Senate

 

Peter Orszag, Obama Budget Director, founding director of the Hamilton Project, funded by Goldman Sachs and Robert Rubin. Wikipedia indicates that Robert Rubin, Goldman’s ex-head, was one of Orszag’s mentors.

 

Mark Patterson: Obama Administration: Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Lobbyist 2005-2008; Vice President for Government Relations

 

Mark Peterson: Chief of staff to Timothy Geithner,    Goldman Sachs vice president and lobbyist

 

Steve Ratner: the shady billionaire financier who Obama appointed as his “car czar” and who resigned after it was revealed that his company, the Quadrangle Group, was apparently involved in “pay to play” for a billion dollars or so of New York State pension funds, and was under possible indictment by the New York AG and the SEC, also sits on the Advisory Council of the Goldman funded Hamilton Project

 

Robert Reischauer: a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission from 2000-2009 and was its vice chair from 2001-2008. He too sits on the Hamilton Project’s advisory board.

 

Alice Rivlin: Obama named Alice Rivlin to his so called deficit reduction commission.

 

James Rubin: Son of Robert Rubin. Served as a headhunter for Obama per the New York Times article, “Rubin Proteges Change Their Tune as They Join Obama’s Team”

 

Gene Sperling: advisor to Timothy Geithner on bailouts, Sperling paid by Goldman Sachs for one year of consulting work.

 

Adam Storch: Obama Managing Executive of the Security and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement Vice President in the Goldman Sachs Business Intelligence Group

 

Larry Summers:  Obama chief economic adviser and head of the National Economic Counsel, Worked under Robert Rubin at Goldman Sachs

 

John Thain: Obama Administration: Advisor to Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geitner, Former Goldman Sachs Title: President and Chief Operating Officer (1999-2003)

 

http://www.nachumlist.com/goldmansachsobama.htm

 

—

 

And here are some other notable niches that are occupied by Goldman $achs people:

 

Mark Carney: Current Title: Governor, Bank of Canada, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Managing Director Goldman Sachs Canada until 2003

 

Mario Draghi: Current Title: Governor of the Bank of Italy (2006- ), Former Goldman Sachs Title: European Deputy Chairman/Partner until 2006

 

Edward Liddy: Current Title: AIG CEO, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Board Member (Chairman, 1990-94; Director, 2005-)

 

Duncan Niederauer: Current Title: Chair/CEO NYSE, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Managing Director – 2007

 

Romano Prodi: Current Title: Prime Minister of Italy (1996-1998 and 2006-2008) and President of the European Commission (1999-2004), Former Goldman Sachs Title: Paid adviser/consultant 1990 – 1993

 

Massimo Tononi: Current Title: Italian Deputy Treasury Chief (2006-2008), Former Goldman Sachs Title: Partner 2004 – 2006

 

Malcolm Turnbull: Current Title: Federal Leader, Liberal Party, Australia, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Partner (1998-2001)

 

David Watson: Current Title: Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Chief European economist

—

 

And in case you think Goldman $achs is partisan, here is a list of Goldman $achs people that were in George Bush’s White House (note the number of people that served both presidents):

 

Joshua Bolten: Bush II Administration: White House Chief of Staff (2006 – 2009), Former Goldman Sachs Title: Executive Director, Legal & Government Affairs (1994-99)

 

William C Dudley: NY Federal Reserve: Current President/CEO, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Partner and managing director – 2007

 

Edward C. Forst: Bush II Administration: Advisor on setting up TARP to Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson 2008 Former Goldman Sachs Title: Co-head of Goldman’s investment management business

 

Stephen Friedman: NY Federal Reserve: Former Chairman of the Board – 2009, former Goldman Sachs Title: Board Member (Chairman, 1990-94; Director, 2005-)

 

Gary Gensler: Bush II Administration: Undersecretary, Treasury (1999-2001) and Assistant Secretary, Treasury (1997-1999), Former Goldman Sachs Title: Partner and Co-head of Finance

 

Reuben Jeffery III: Bush II Administration: Undersecretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, State Department (2007 –2009) Former Goldman Sachs Title: Managing Partner Paris until 2002 Security Investment Banking Practice

 

Dan Jester: Bush II Administration: Advisor on setting up TARP to Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson 2008, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Deputy CFO

 

Neel Kashkari: Bush II Administration: Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability, Treasury (2008 – 2009) Former Goldman Sachs Title: Vice President, San Francisco; led Information Technology Security Investment Banking Practice

 

Eric Mindich: Former chief strategy officer of New York- based Goldman Sachs, started Eton Park in 2004 with $3.5 billion

 

Henry Paulson: Bush II Administration: Secretary, Treasury 2006 – 2009, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Chairman and CEO (1998-2006)

 

Robert Rubin: Bush II Administration: Secretary, Treasury 1995-1999, Former Goldman Sachs Title: Vice Chairman (1987-90)

 

Robert Steel: Bush II Administration: Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, Treasury, (2006 – 2008) Former Goldman Sachs Title: Vice Chairman – 2004

 

Steve Shafran: Bush II Administration: Advisor on setting up TARP to Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson 2008 Former Goldman Sachs Title: Private equity business in Asia until 2000

 

Kendrick R. Wilson III: Bush II Administration: Advisor on setting up TARP to Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson 2008 Former Goldman Sachs Title: Chairman of Goldman’s financial institutions groups

 

Robert Zoellick: Bush II Administration: United States Trade Representative (2001-2005), Deputy Secretary of State (2005-2006), World Bank President (2007 – ), Former Goldman Sachs Title: Vice Chairman, International (2006-07)

 

**********************************

 

A Second Look at First Look

 

I reported recently that Glen Greenwald had left the Guardian because they were trying to censor him and that he has subsequently started his own online magazine called The Intercept, which is published on a new news aggregation website called First Look.

 

First Look is owned by Pierre Omidyar, who is the founder of E Bay and — even more problematic — he also owns Pay Pal.

 

I didn’t say anything at the time but I found this to be really weird; I had cut off Pay Pal when Pay Pal cut off funding for Wikileaks — and the last time I tried to purchase something on E Bay the only two payment options provided were using either credit or Pay Pal. Since I don’t do either, I informed E Bay that I would no longer be able to do business with them unless I could charge it directly to my debit card or unless they started using an online payment service other than Pay Pal.

 

I tend to trust Glen Greenwald and I had never done any research on Mr. Omidyar at the time and knew very little about him so I didn’t say anything about Glen working for a publication owned by Mr. Omidyar even though Mr. Omidyar’s involvement totally freaked me out. However, I couldn’t see Mr. Greenwald leaving the Guardian because of censorship for a new and untested format unless he had rock-solid guarantees from Mr. Omidyar that there would be no censorship of Mr. Greenwald’s publications.

 

Well, Amy Goodman interviewed Julian Assange on Democracy Now last Wednesday [July 9] and evidently my concerns are shared by Mr. Assange — and according to Mr. Assange, First Look is indeed censoring itself due to Mr. Omidyar’s influence.

 

From Julian Assange:

 

I have a lot of respect for Glenn. Glenn has defended WikiLeaks from the attack by the U.S. grand jury over a long period of time. And he’s been very brave in the Edward Snowden publications, and, you know, quite forthright. He left The Guardian, in part because of that reason, because The Guardian was censoring the material that he was trying to publish. But he entered into First Look. And unfortunately, First Look is not just Glenn. First Look is actually the big power. All the money and organization comes from Pierre Omidyar. And Pierre Omidyar is one of the founders — is the founder of E Bay and owns PayPal and goes to the White House several times each year, has extensive connections with Soros, and can broadly be described as an extreme liberal centrist. So, he has quite a different view about what journalism entails. For example, he [Pierre Omidyar] has said this year, and also in 2009, that if someone gave him a leak from a commercial organization, not from the government, then he would feel it was his duty to tell the police.[Emphasis added by the Thunderbolt] So that’s a very different type of journalism standard that comes from Pierre Omidyar. And unfortunately, some of that, or perhaps a significant amount of it, has gone into First Look and created some constraints there.

 

And that was seen most — seen most disturbingly when First Look knew from the Edward Snowden documents that all of Afghanistan was having its telephone calls recorded. The National Security Agency had corruptly installed mass surveillance inside Afghan telcos, saying to the Afghan government that they were doing — installing this monitoring just going after drug dealers, not mass surveillance but targeted surveillance after Afghan opium dealers, and in fact they were recording the phone calls of every single Afghan. And that’s as great an assault to sovereignty as you can imagine, other than completely militarily occupying a country, to record the intimate phone calls of every single Afghan citizen. And Afghanistan, as a country, and its people have the right to choose their own destiny, knowing what is actually happening to them. And First Look decided that they would censor the fact that Afghanistan was having all its telephone calls recorded.

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/9/julian_assange_on_aiding_snowden_tiff

 

—

 

I guess we need to wait and do a look-see on this one.

 

This piece was excerpted from Part 2 of two interviews that Amy conducted with Julian on a wide range of subjects. The first part aired on Tuesday [July 8]. The whole interview is fascinating and enlightening and I highly recommend viewing it or reading it.

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/9/wikileaks_julian_assange_responds_to_hillary

 

**********************************

 

Amazon Over America!

 

You wouldn’t know it from the news coverage (or lack of same) but some truly astonishing information was revealed this week.

 

This concerns Jeff Bezos. In the August 18^th 2013 edition of the Thunderbolt I published a major piece on Mr. Bezos and for purposes of establishing context for this newest news from the Land of Bezos I am going to republish that piece now for those of you who might have missed or skipped it:

 

For some reason everyone has warm fuzzy feeling s for Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. This is especially true with the hometown crowd here in Washington State. Mr. Bezos brings lots of economic activity to our state and he likes gay people, so he must be a good guy. They have these feelings even though Jeff Bezos actually is exactly the kind of sociopathic cut-throat slime-ball that is destroying our world.

 

As to Mr. Bezos’ business policies: Mr. Bezos conducts his business by driving everyone else out of business. While Jeff Bezos is one of the richest men in the world, Amazon.com itself has never made a profit because their business model is to sell products at a loss until everyone else in the field is driven out of business.

 

Take book sales: Until Mr. Bezos came along small retailers were rampant all over the country. These people were almost unanimously in the book-selling business not to make a fortune but because they loved books. Mr. Bezos drove nearly all of them out of business by selling books for below cost and with no sales tax. Mr. Bezos came along and saw a business filled with people rather than machines and took over with his no-holds-barred cut-throat cost cutting efficiency measures and now has a near monopoly on book sales.

 

Now, only ‘name’ authors have an outlet for their material. Unknowns or unusuals or cutting edgers need not apply.

 

He did exactly the same thing with music sales.

 

As to Mr. Bezos’ business policies: Mr. Bezos was the one who made the decision to pull the plug on the Wikileaks website thus marginalizing and crippling our best source for information about crimes in government. Mr. Bezos just inked a $600 million deal with the CIA for cloud computing. Mr. Bezos was the leading funder of the anti-income tax movement that defeated our last initiative to establish an income tax here in Washington — and in fact, Mr. Bezos has never met a tax that he can’t avoid. Amazon is supposed to collect sales tax on everything they sell. They never have and they continue to not do so. Mr. Bezos originally wanted to found Amazon on an Indian reservation because he thought he would be immune to local taxes but he finally settled on Washington because there is no income tax. Our president spoke the praises of Amazon recently at an Amazon warehouse in Tennessee even though Amazon has yet to pay a single penny in taxes to the State of Tennessee.

 

Evidently Mr. Bezos is perfectly copacetic with letting other people pay for the infrastructure that made it possible for Mr. Bezos to accumulate and maintain his fortune.

 

Now, in a highly alarming move, Mr. Bezos has purchased the Washington Post.

 

Mr. Bezos has never had anything to do with journalism or media before.

 

It is hilarious to watch all the talking heads conjecturing as to whether Bezos might be just the palliative that the Post needs to rise from the economic ashes and become profitable again.

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/7/how_the_washington_posts_new_owner

 

The unquestioned assumption amongst the talking heads on the Corporate Propaganda Machine is that Bezos bought the Post to make money.

 

An interesting question is this: Are they ignorant, are they stupid, or are they conscious collaborators?

 

Believe me; I can just about guarantee you that Jeff Bezos did not buy the Washington Post to make money. The Washington Post is worth approximately 10% of what it was worth in the late 90’s and investors have been bailing like rats off a sinking ship.

 

So why would someone like Jeff Bezos purchase an economic dinosaur?

 

How about this: While the Post is not economically viable it still carries a great deal of political clout.

 

It seems pretty obvious to me that Mr. Bezos bought the Post not to make money directly from the Post but to have a propaganda outlet for his right-wing business policies — and thus gaining the ability to use the Post to make much more money by leveraging the Post’s influence to buy more laws and tax breaks for himself.

 

This is why Rupert Murdoch was happy to lose tens of millions of dollars per year on Fox News for the first five years of its existence. This is why Sun Myung Moon is more than happy to lose bundles of cash on the Post’s cross-town rival the Washington Times ever since the Times has been in existence.

 

Buying the Post cost Mr. Bezos less than 1% of his personal fortune. I’m pretty sure he’ll be happy to lose money on the Post.

 

But Amazon creates lots of jobs! Just ask Barack Obama, who just gave a speech at an Amazon warehouse praising Mr. Bezos for all the jobs that Amazon is creating!

 

Right. Democracy Now recently aired an interview with Mac McClelland who went undercover and got one of those famous minimum-wage jobs in one of Mr. Bezos’ Amazon warehouses. Here is her description:

 

I stopped by a warehouse that one of my ex-girlfriends from college was running and my friend, who is a really nice person, was being sort of a monster. I was there for 20 minutes, and she was firing people for going to the bathroom and for talking to each other even though they were continuing to work while they did it. Those were the orders that she had from up top, and she just — if she wanted to keep her job, she had to enforce them.

 

So, basically, [when Ms. McClelland obtained a job at an Amazon warehouse for her story] from the moment I arrived in town, even before I got to the warehouse, I stopped by the local Chamber of Commerce, and they told me, “Don’t start crying, and don’t take anything that happens to you personally, because it’s a very ugly scene in there. And there are lots and lots of people who would be willing to take your job because the economy is so bad, so basically put up with whatever they throw at you and, you know, leave your dignity at the door.”

 

And so, that’s what I did, and that’s what everybody else there did every day.

 

I was what is called a picker, which is the person who actually retrieves the items that you order online. And these are hundreds of thousands of square feet, these warehouses, just absolutely enormous. And you have a little scanner that tells you where in the warehouse you have to go. There’s a map on you ID badge. And it tells you how many seconds they want you to take to get there. So, you know, a Barbie will pop up, and you have 20 seconds to traverse this ground, and you run to where the place is on the shelving, and you’re, you know, picking through items as fast as you can, and you grab the Barbie, and you scan it, and you put it in a tote. And then your next thing pops up, and you have 15 more seconds. And that is just relentless. We had minimum 10-hour shifts when I was there. And there’s people walking around telling you how close you are to making your numbers, or not making your numbers in a lot of cases. And so, someone comes up to you every couple hours and says, “You’re making 70 percent of your goals. You’re doing a bad job. You’re going to have to pick it up.” And so you’re counseled sort of incessantly on your pace. And so you run back and forth to the lunch room. You have to go through metal detectors. You have to wait in line to go to the bathroom, eat some food really fast, and run back to your station. And that’s it, just over and over and over again.

 

During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who [were] dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn’t quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

 

The people who had to load trucks were standing in these tractor-trailer containers, just baking in the parking lots under the sun for hours and hours at a day. They had like a couple little fans blowing on them. They won’t air-condition the warehouses because it’s too expensive. They don’t heat the warehouses because it’s too expensive.

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/7/i_was_a_warehouse_wage_slave

 

So, the good news is that — in confirmation of one of the few factually accurate statements that our president has made lately — Amazon is hiring!

 

The bad news is that you will be treated and paid like a slave.

 

Hey, Barack, since you think that these McJobs are so wonderful then I just thought of a way that you can personally demonstrate your enthusiasm! You can have your daughter Natasha work a summer job in one of Mr. Bezos’ 100^○+ warehouses!

 

And never fear! You can rest assured that if she passes out from heat exhaustion then the good Mr. Bezos will have an ambulance standing by!

 

(Actually Mr. Bezos was forced against his will to have ambulances standing by outside his warehouses as a concession to avoid more humane — but more expensive — methods being forced upon him in order to avoid having his employees dropping like flies during summer months.)

 

Hey, it’s good enough for us, eh? Think of the public relations opportunities of having Natasha photographed lying on a stretcher next to all the other happy Amazon employees who just passed out and thus lost their jobs!

 

Yes indeed, Kids, folks like the good Mr. Bezos are certainly cashing in on the financial crisis that folks like Mr. Bezos created, let me tell you!

 

As the workers are being hauled away in ambulances — there are others literally lined up at the warehouse door waiting to take their place…

 

—

 

Jeff Bezos! Bringing us the economy of the future!

 

You can read all about it in the Washington Post!

 

—

 

Now for the new news: Bezos has revealed that Amazon has a secret laboratory in Seattle where he claims that over the last few months Amazon has worked through and developed an eighth generation of drones that can carry five pound packages through the sky at 50 miles per hour.

 

He is asking permission of the FAA to unleash them.

 

The most amazing thing about the coverage of this event is that it is barely there, and what is there seems to be accepting this as some sort of novelty or joke or something. Ironically, the most extensive coverage I could find was in the local Seattle weekly the Stranger.

 

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/07/10/amazon-asks-faa-for-permission-to-test-drone-delivery-program-in-seattle

 

And here is NPR’s coverage:

 

http://kuow.org/post/amazon-send-drones-and-lobbyists

 

There was recently a Seattle woman who spotted a tiny drone hovering just outside her bedroom window as she was changing.

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/peeping-tom-drone-photos-property-people-owner-article-1.1843058technology-privacy-surveillance-102233.html

 

Ms. Surveillance State herself, Senator Diane Feinstein of California, spotted a drone inches from her face just outside her window.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/senator-dianne-feinstein-encounter-with-drone-technology-privacy-surveillance-102233.html

 

A woman in Sydney Australia recently found a drone hovering just outside her kitchen window. The police explained that it was a “real estate agent drone”.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/a-sydney-woman-caught-a-real-estate-agents-drone-hovering-outside-her-kitchen-window-2014-7

 

A ‘real estate agent drone’? Just what we needed…

 

Now the mad scientist Jeff Bezos announces that he has been developing several generations of drones in a secret undercover laboratory in Seattle — and he is now ready to unleash his swarm of drones into our skies…

 

…all of this coming shortly after inking his $600 million contract with the CIA?

 

Really? Does that completely creep out anyone besides me?

 

This seems like the plot of a very bad B-grade movie — except it is for real.

 

**********************************

 

Strategic Planning

 

The reason the surveillance state exists is not because the government cares about what granny gave her grandson for his birthday — it exists because people who know they are under surveillance are much more timid and much more compliant.

 

And make no mistake: The Googles and the Facebooks don’t give one doodly of the slightest squat about your privacy. When the government spy program was still secret, Google and Facebook were enthusiastically cooperating with the NSA far beyond legal requirements because there were many benefits and no costs. Do not ‘friend’ Facebook. Now that Edward Snowden has exposed the surveillance state, though, Google and Facebook are freaked; foreign companies can now compete for America business by saying, “You should use us because we won’t turn your information over to the NSA”.

 

Yeah? That sounds real good to me, actually…

 

Suddenly, Google and Facebook are all concerned about your privacy.

 

The government also doesn’t care one iota about your privacy either — or opinion polls or public sentiment, for that matter —   but they very seriously care about what Google and Facebook think.

 

I strongly suggest that everyone include this fact in future strategic planning.

 

—

 

It’s time to get to work…

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

 

The Thunderbolt Calendar

Week of July 17^th thru July 23^rd 2014

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

 

1) FYI Section:

 

1A) CREDO Net Neutrality FCC Comment Page

 

CREDO kicks ass and they have a webpage where you can very easily comment to the FCC about net neutrality.

 

On Tuesday, so many people commented that the web site crashed.

 

Please do this.

 

http://act.credoaction.com/sign/fcc_nn_comments_2014?akid=11167.4761354.qFeDJW&nosig=1&rd=1&t=1

 

*****************************************

 

1B) Backbone Campaign ‘Localize This’ Action Camp Coming in August

 

The Backbone Campaign ‘Localize This’ Action Camp will be happening this year from August 5^th thru August 12^th. This is probably the premier activist training class in the world. Learn tactics, strategies, and hang out with a bunch of magic people out on Vashon Island for a week.

 

There are grants available and they have crowd-funding sources available also.

                                                                                                

Check out the Backbone Campaign!

 

http://www.backbonecampaign.org/LocalizeThisNW

_______________________________________

 

2) Candlelit Vigil for Palestine

Thursday July 17^th at 8:30 pm @ Rafah Mural, NE Corner of State and Capitol Way

 

Come protest atrocity.

 

From Jayne:

 

Many of us are mourning the violence in Gaza. Let’s meet on the sidewalk in front of the Olympia-Rafah mural at State and Capitol to be together and to raise awareness of the ongoing violence in Palestine & Israel.

 

Bring: candles, flowers, and signs. I’ll have a big-ish sign with the current death toll.

 

**Please ensure that signs are not racist or anti-Semitic**

 

For ideas about how to talk about Palestine and Israel without acting anti-Semitic, consider reading April Rosenblum’s short pamphlet “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” athttp://www.scribd.com/doc/81712788/The-Past-Didn-t-Go-Anywhere-April-Rosenblum.

 

Suggest more ideas for this event in the comments?

 

For more about the Olympia-Rafah mural, check out their website:

 

http://olympiarafahmural.org/

 

Local Mural Supporting Organizations with Leaves on ORSMP: Stonewall Youth- Olympia, Washington, GRuB, COFFEE STRONG, Parents Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation, Works N. Progress, Kowa Lpfm Olympia, SafePlace Olympia, Cispes Olympia, Bridges NotWalls, MEXA de Evergreen, Media Island International, Books to Prisoners: Olympia, Tstsca Thurston-Santo Tomas, Fertile Ground Community Center and Guesthouse, Olympia BDS

 

This event is happening tomorrow at 8:30. Hope to see you there and work on developing solidarity events with mural participants and others!

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/677881645613888/

_______________________________________

 

3) Chalk it Out Olympia: Solidarity with the LV Sunset Five

Friday July 18^th at 5 pm @ Olympia City Hall, 601 4^th Ave E

 

Come protest police intimidation.

 

From Sierra:

 

Solidarity with the LV Sunset Five

 

Join us on July 18th and say “chalk washes off, injustice never will.”

 

July 18th will be the one year anniversary since the event that brought the unwarranted charges against the Sunset 5 for “graffiti” and “Conspiracy to place graffiti” with children’s washable sidewalk chalk. Even though the charges for this act which was not a crime were dropped, it caused many people to become afraid to exercise their right to freedom of speech. The sunset 5 were out their letting people know that it isn’t right the police murder people and get away with it. They charged the activists because they wanted to cover up their crimes and silence the dissent. The Sunset five will not be silenced. We want people everywhere to not be afraid to let people in their community know about the crimes that the police commit in this completely peaceful manner of protest that uses a children’s toy. Nationally we want the police to know that chalk is protected and that even if it is made illegal we will do it anyway.

 

In Olympia we will be chalking our dissent of the Olympia Police Department and city council. They have a lot of insidious anti-homeless ordinances and disgusting gentrification schemes that the community has a lot to say about.

 

Come out and show solidarity and tell the OPD and Oly City Council how you really feel!

 

Take back the streets! Get chalk on your hands and feets!

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/774613895903302/

_______________________________________

 

4) Bonus Tip of the Week:

 

Diss a drone today!

 

 

Dana

 

 

The Thunderbolt 071014 Brainy Conjecture

The Thunderbolt

 

News — Commentary — Calendar of Activist Events — Dumb Jokes

 

_______________________________________

_______________________________________     

 

1) FYI Section:

1A) Net Neutrality Comment Period Ending Soon

1B) Web Browser that Instantly Reveals Campaign Contributors

2) Gaza Needs Your Voice: Emergency Vigil for Palestine

3) Green Party Monthly Meeting

4) Olympia FOR 100^th Anniversary Outdoor Pizza Party

5) TC Pro Net Annual Progressive Town Hall Picnic

6) Stand Up Economist Yoram Bauman

7) Confronting the Climate Crisis

8) Bonus Tip of the Week

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

 

Brainy Conjecture

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

 

Facts You Will Not See in Any History Book

 

Hey Kids!

 

Did you know that both World Wars I and II were fought over oil? Franz Ferdinand was a pretext: World War I started for many reasons, but the central reason was that the British were totally freaked about a German plan to construct a ‘Berlin to Baghdad’ railway to transport Middle Eastern oil to Germany — and German soldiers to Baghdad, if necessary.

 

After World War I ended, Iraq was the single biggest spoil of that war.

 

John D. Rockefeller was the one who originally established relations with the Saudi royal family.

 

Last week I mentioned that prior to the American invasion Iraq had several top-notch universities. These are remnants of a program wherein John D. Rockefeller established numerous universities throughout the Middle East. He considered this to be the second most important investment that Standard Oil could make. These universities were specifically designed to win local hearts and minds and they did just that; after the oppressive British colonial system of direct political control, the Americans instead controlled certain locals who did their dirty work for them. Thus, while the Americans were still calling the shots it appeared as if they were allowing locals to run the show — and the locals loved America for many decades for this very reason.

 

Educating an élite class amongst the locals was necessary to implementing such a system of ‘indirect control’.

 

The Rockefellers and the Bushes have a decades-long rivalry, by the way; Cheney and Rumsfeld made a major effort to prevent Nelson Rockefeller from becoming vice-president under Gerald Ford, for instance. Barack Obama is a Rockefeller man. He was groomed for power by the Trilateral Commission — a Rockefeller institution — and that is why the Iraqi oil is now controlled by the central government in Iraq rather than by Exxon Mobil — so the Bushes lost by the Iraq Occupation in more ways than one.

 

**********************************

 

Brainy Conjecture

 

I’ve been here before but I’m going here again…

 

Intelligence is a weird thing. There are completely different kinds of intelligence that operate from completely different parts of the brain. How all of these different parts are wired together — or in some cases how they are not wired together — is what makes you into who you are — and into who you are not.

 

Most people have a more-or-less balance of all the different kinds of intelligence while some have lots of some kinds and little if any of other kinds. A ‘genius’ is usually someone who has heavy gauge wiring to a certain part of his/her brain — but it is often at the cost of another part.

 

At the extreme you have the ‘savants’, such as the 12 year-old kid who was one of the best piano players in the world but couldn’t dress himself.

 

When someone is exceptionally ‘intelligent’, then what kind of intelligence are we speaking of? Even exceptionally intelligent people can have major blind spots — and in fact this seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

 

For instance: My favourite author I have ever read is hands-down no-one-else-even-comes-within-a-light-year-no-bout-a-doubt-it Tom Robbins, author of such works of epic insanity as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and my personal favourite Skinny Legs and All. No other author — even Joseph Heller — has so mastered the Profound Revelatory Joke as the one and only Grand Master of the Profound Dirty Joke Tom Robbins.

 

However: My mother had a brother who was a Mensa-level genius and who scored off-the-charts on all standard intelligence tests — yet Tom Robbins was the equivalent of gibberish to him. Upon questioning him about this, he first pointed out the complete idiocy (in his mind) of a female protagonist whose most notable characteristic was that she had giant thumbs. He just couldn’t get past that. I slowly understood that — as impressive as my uncle’s brain was — his circuits for both irony and metaphor were either constricted or missing altogether. Since blistering ironic metaphor is about the only language that Tom Robbins ever speaks — then my uncle just didn’t get it.

 

He also completely failed to get me, but unlike Tom Robbins he liked me anyway.

 

Considering that he also had a habit of killing people that he didn’t like — literally — then this was probably a good thing. He asked me once if I was worried about the fact that he was a mass murderer. I told him that I figured that if he was going to kill anyone that it probably wouldn’t be me, so that no, I wasn’t all that worried about it.

 

Then there are other factors that are not usually considered as ‘intelligence’: Emotion, for instance, is a form of intelligence. Again I point to a savant to highlight this: There was a child who could figure out insanely complex mathematical equations in his head — but that was absolutely ALL that he EVER did. He NEVER showed ANY emotion whatsoever because the circuitry simply did not exist in his brain. He was literally incapable of love, joy, hatred, or any other complex emotion. I have read that being a mother to such a child is a particularly cruel hell; can you imagine raising a child and NEVER receiving any emotional feedback of any kind whatsoever?

 

‘Vibes’ are another form of intelligence. Last week I mentioned my childhood friend Eddie Adams, whose older brothers were members of an outlaw motorcycle gang. Eddie and I were purchasing drugs once and it was completely obvious to me from the very first vibe that the guy selling the drugs was up to no good and was certainly about to rip us off. When the guy said that we had to front our money I waited for Eddie to tell him where he could stick it.

 

Instead, Eddie gave the guy our money. As soon as he left I ripped into Eddie and, especially since Eddie Adams was definitely the Dominant Male in our herd, and since I normally said little if anything at all in those days much less intense critiques of something that Eddie had done — then Eddie was not only surprised by my outburst but he was also surprised because, it soon became obvious to me, he was incapable of ‘vibing’ people. He just hadn’t seen it coming.

 

A few years later I was with a girlfriend named Kim when we visited the home of another couple. The vibe was very intense between the other couple. While we were there the male half of the other couple had blared ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ by Led Zeppelin at full volume whilst he glared at his female half. To me, this was a dominating oppressive atmosphere that I was not enjoying at all.

 

Eddie Adams wasn’t the brightest light bulb in the house — but Kim was. She had been a straight-A student and a valedictorian. When I expressed my relief at escaping that situation, Kim was shocked. Surprised, I questioned her and learned that Kim had completely failed to notice the ‘vibe’. When Eddie failed to see the rip-off coming I had just figured that I was smarter than he was (and to be honest, that was a pretty low bar) but I knew that Kim was a lot smarter than I was, so that indicated that the ability to ‘vibe’ people wasn’t connected to intelligence — or at least to that kind of intelligence.

 

I have also learned over the years that there are some disadvantages to being hyper-sensitive to vibes: I have a hard time being around people experiencing emotional distress, for instance, and I absolutely cannot be around people who are mentally as I find mental illness to be contagious.

 

Then there is the factor of how you use your intelligence; is your intelligence channeled into narrow streams, for instance, or are you capable of thinking outside the box?

 

Part of my training during my brief collision with the United States Army consisted of running a two-mile course through the woods at night while a bunch of Special Forces dudes were trying to ‘capture’ you. My strategy was obvious to me as soon as I understood the exercise: Thus, upon signal that the chase had begun, I immediately found the first bush that was big enough to hide me and I crawled under it. I lay there for about ten minutes listening to people being ‘captured’ all around me. Then I lay there for another half-hour as I listened to the action move down the course away from me. Then I lay there until there had been total silence for a long time.

 

Then I casually strolled through the two mile course without incident. I didn’t see anyone until I walked into the destination camp and checked in. It had been a really nice night for a walk.

 

This was back in the days of the draft and a lot of my fellow soldiers were highly intelligent — yet in listening to them speaking later, the strategy that had instantly fallen into my head and that had seemed so obvious to me had not crossed a single one of their minds. A couple of them even said, “Wow, why didn’t I think of that?”

 

Why indeed?

 

—

 

There is a lot of research going into brains these days. There are a lot of truly wondrous possibilities in such research — along with formidable dangers. As with all complex systems — and the human brain is the most complex system in the known universe — everything is all tied together and altering one part also changes everything else. Eliminating undesirable brain-wiring circuitry can have unpredictable and undesired consequences in other parts of the brain.

 

However, with exceptionally problematic behaviours, perhaps the risks would be acceptable to sufferers?

 

For instance: Virtually all violent criminals were abused as children. Their reaction to this abuse is actually completely predictable and even ‘normal’ — if highly problematic. What if it were possible to subtly alter their brain-wiring jobs to eliminate just certain problematic neural paths?

 

Child molesters are particularly sad cases because they literally cannot help their sexual proclivities anymore than the practitioners of any other sexual proclivity can — yet child molesters absolutely cannot be allowed to operate freely in our society.

 

What if sexual proclivities could be rewired?

 

The profound dangers are obvious. A lot of this research is being done by for-profit entities rather than for reasons of pure science, and a lot of those guys are likely to use whatever they learn in nefarious ways rather than for the betterment of humanity.

 

For instance: They could rewire a brain to incite ultra-violence. They could eliminate the conscience and morality circuits in soldiers so they can be true sociopathic killers. Or what if someone came to power and decreed that music was evil and mandated that the musical circuits in everyone’s brains must be destroyed? (And yes, there is a special ‘music section’ of your brain. It closely interacts with the ‘mathematics section’.)

 

Yes, yin and yang seem to be becoming much yinner and yanger these days.

 

May you live in interesting times.

 

—

 

It’s time to get to work…

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The Thunderbolt Calendar

Week of July 10^th thru July 16^th 2014

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1) FYI Section:

 

1A) Net Neutrality Comment Period Ending Soon

 

This is vital. If you haven’t already given support for net neutrality to the FCC then DO IT NOW. It doesn’t take long and this is NOT just another online petition; this is to comment directly to the FCC about upcoming FCC rules on net neutrality.

 

This is from Democracy for America:

 

The Federal Communications Commission is taking public comment on their proposal that would destroy Net Neutrality and allow the big telecoms to charge extra for carrying content. The first public comment period ends on July 15.

 

These public comments matter. The FCC is listening to what the public has to say, and a strong public outcry could force the FCC to abandon this flawed plan.  More than 100,000 people have submitted public comments, overwhelmingly in opposition to the FCC’s telecom-friendly plan.

 

Today, I’m joining them. I just submitted my own public comment to the FCC opposing their two-tier proposal and urging them to adopt new rules that would protect a free and open Internet. I recorded my comments on video (and I’m submitting them in writing) to help spread the word and encourage others to submit their own public comment.

 

Will you watch my video public comment and submit your own comment in support of a free and open Internet before the FCC’s July 15 deadline?

 

The FCC’s focus should be on pursuing regulations that strengthen Net Neutrality, rather than help the big corporations undermine it.

 

In my public comment, I call on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to embrace what progressives are calling “reclassification.” The FCC has the legal authority to reclassify the Internet as a telecommunications service, allowing them to require that all data on the Internet be carried at the same price without discrimination.

 

Reclassification doesn’t require Congress to act. It just requires the FCC to do the right thing.  If enough of us weigh in with public comments for reclassification and against a fast lane on the Internet for those who can pay, we can save Net Neutrality.

 

Now is the time to make your voice heard. Click here to watch my video public comment and submit your own comment to the FCC. DEADLINE: July 15.

 

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1B) Web Browser that Instantly Reveals Campaign Contributors

 

When it comes to politicians, some are red, some are blue — but ALL are green.

 

I’ve been encouraging everyone to go to Open Secrets as your first stop in any research into any politician.

 

http://www.opensecrets.org/

 

Well someone has taken this a step further: In association with Open Secrets, all you have to do now is install this app and then you can hover over any politician on any webpage and a pop-up will give you an instant breakdown of who pays for them. You can also click a link directly to Open Secrets if you want more detailed information.

 

Check it out.

 

http://allaregreen.us/

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2) Gaza Needs Your Voice: Emergency Vigil for Palestine

Friday at 4:30 pm at Percival Landing, Corner of 5^th and Water Streets

 

The Israeli apartheid police state is really getting old.

 

From Nanners:

 

We will be joining the weekly Fellowship of Reconciliation Vigil on the corner of 4th and Water calling for an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, attacks on Palestinians and our government’s unconditional support of Israel. Please invite everyone you know.

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1506438536254926/

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3) Green Party Monthly Meeting

Saturday July 12^th at Noon @ MIXX Meeting Room, Corner of State and Washington Streets

 

Ditch the sold-out Democrats and come plug in with the Greens!

 

From Janet:

 

 

Hi Group — our regular scheduled meeting date is this Saturday, July 12, at 12:00 noon at MIX96, corner of State and Washington.  I will be returning home from Portland that day so I will probably be a few minutes late.  If you want, we could aim for 12:15 rather than 12:00.

 

I sent our draft of the Orca Ordinance to Cindy Beckett, a watershed steward, and got this helpful reply (below). The reply suggests several avenues of further research we could take to make our proposed ordinance stronger: 

• an office of EPA which can offer advice on citizen action;  and
• the pathway by which CWA directives are supposed to be enforced (and are not enforced, but might be with help from our ordinance).    

Planning for this research to happen would be number one on our agenda.  

 

Another question:  Will city council welcome giving every citizen standing to enforce local laws? It would make for more action, for sure — would that make their job of governance harder or easier?  Can we make some plans for finding out how city council might feel about it?

 

We can also update ourselves on how other counties in Washington are doing with their ordinances.  There was a lot of progress earlier in the spring and the Codays are keeping up with it.  The Codays can’t be present at this meeting but I’ll get a report from them and pass it on.

 

At 1:00 there is a festival for FOR at Fertile Ground.  We can go over as a group when we finish our plotting.  

 

See you on Saturday!

 

Janet

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4) Olympia FOR 100^th Anniversary Outdoor Pizza Party

Saturday July 12^th from 6 to 9 pm @ Fertile Grounds Guesthouse, 311 9^th Ave SE

 

It’s Oly FOR’s 100^th birthday! Come celebrate!

 

From Oly FOR:

 

Olympia FOR’s Outdoor Pizza Party

Celebrates FOR’s 100^th Anniversary

 

Gather with friends old and new for a delightful summer evening gathering to celebrate the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s 100^th Anniversary with home-made pizza hot out of the outdoor cob oven, garden-fresh salads, other tasty treats, cool beverages, stimulating conversations, and more!

 

The festivity will run from 6:00 to 9:00 pm outside at the Fertile Ground Guest House, 311-9th Ave SE (across the street behind the Olympia library).

 

This is also an enjoyable fundraiser for the Olympia FOR, so we will gratefully accept donations of $10 to sky’s-the-limit, to help the Olympia FOR carry on our work for peace, social justice, human rights, the environment and climate, and a nonviolent way of being.

Info about this event: Chris Carson (360) 943-2375. Info about Olympia FOR: (360) 491-9093

 

info@olympiafor.orgwww.olympiafor.org

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5) TC Pro Net Annual Progressive Town Hall Picnic

Sunday July 13^th at 1 pm @ Thurston County Fairgrounds, 3054 Carpenter Rd

 

It’s the annual get together for local liberals!

 

From TC Pro Net:

 

You are cordially invited to TC Pro-Net’s 10th Annual Progressive Town Hall Picnic! Along with a delicious potluck picnic and candidate meet-and-greet, we’re proud to have keynote speaker Yoram Bauman joining us!  Here’s a little bit about Yoram:

 

Yoram Bauman makes a living as “the world’s first and only stand-up economist”, but he is also a PhD environmental economist who is part of the CarbonWA.org effort to bring a revenue-neutral carbon tax to Washington State. Yoram is the co-author of the two-volume Cartoon Introduction to Economics, the forthcoming Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change, and the 1998 book Tax Shift, which was written with Alan Durning of Sightline Institute and helped inspire the revenue-neutral carbon tax in British Columbia. Yoram lives in Seattle and has a BA in mathematics from Reed College and a PhD in economics from the University of Washington. In 2011 he spent 5 months in Beijing as a visiting scholar at the University of International Business and Economics. His website is www.standupeconomist.com.

 

Yoram brought down the house at this year’s Thurston Democrats Kennedy Dinner. He’s a not-to-be-missed speaker with an amazing message. And he’s laugh-your-head-off funny, too!

 

Picnic Details

When: Sunday, July 13, 1pm

Where: Thurston County Fairgrounds, 3054 Carpenter Rd

 

Contact us at info@tcpronet.org to RSVP, lend a helping hand, and to indicate what yummy dish you are bringing. As always, a $10 per person donation is appreciated to cover event costs. You can donate prior to the event (which helps us out a bunch!) by clicking here.

 

Thanks, and we’ll see you on July 13!

 

-Danielle, Nick, Barb, Kendra, and Shabina

The TC Pro-Net Team

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6) Stand Up Economist Yoram Bauman

Monday July 14^th at 5 pm @ 3240 Centerwood Ct SE (Private Home)

 

This guy is supposed to be very funny and very informative.

 

From Zena:

 

Please join the Carnegie Group to hear Yoram Bauman, the “Stand Up Economist”.

 

July 14,  Monday 5:15-6:30 (or 7) PM.

 

Yoram is the leader of CarbonWA, a group working for a carbon tax in Washington State.

 

The meeting will be held at the home of Zena Hartung & Dennis Rosvall, 3240 Centerwood Ct SE, Olympia, WA 98501.

 

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All are welcome, potluck appetizers and drinks

 

Posted by: Zena Hartungmailto:zhartung@gmail.com

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7) Confronting the Climate Crisis

Wednesday July 16^th at 6:30 pm @ Olympia Center, 222 Columbia St NW

 

This is part of Oly FOR.

 

From Oly FOR:

 

Confronting the Climate Crisis
Date:	Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Time:	6:30PM – 8:30PM
Short Description:	Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s vigorous group is active in four separate campaigns to address the climate crisis.
Location:	Olympia Center 222 Columbia Street NW Olympia, WA
Contact Information:	Bourtai or Ted at 352-6327 climate@olympiafor.org

 

We have five working groups. This year, we are active in four separate campaigns:

 

1) make Washington State the first state in the nation to divest from fossil fuels (the Divestment Working Group); 

 

2) persuade the Port of Olympia to stop importing fracking proppants destined for the Bakken Oil shale industry (the entire group);

 

3) start a housing efficiency demonstration project using no obligation public funding and on-bill utility payments (the Positive Visions Working Group);

 

4) persuade Governor Inslee to declare a moratorium on all fossil fuel infrastructure permits (the entire group).

 

Click on the “Climate Crisis” link for lots of information

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8) Bonus Tip of the Week:

 

Exercise your brain today.

 

 

Dana

 

 

 

The Thunderbolt 070314 Most Evil Person Award

The Thunderbolt

 

News — Commentary — Calendar of Activist Events — Dumb Jokes

 

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1) FYI Section

1A) Call To Action: Proppants Contract Service Agreement Expiring Soon — No Word on New One

1B) Move to Amend Northwest Social Forum in Portland in September

2) KOWA Live Show: Summer Shimmer with No Body, Trout Stream, Mega Bog (SEA), Sheer Agony (Montréal)

3) Media Island Benefit Brunch: The Thunderbolt

4) Let’s Break the US Blockade on Cuba with Pastors for Peace

5) POWER Outage: Rural Outreach Program

6) West Central Park Movie Night

7) Memorial for the 47 People who Died at Lac Megantic in the Oil Train Explosion

8) KOWA Live Show: QRC + MISSOULA + SUMMER = Robin Cutler (OLY), Pancakes (Missoula), Freaky Pup & Artistic Crisis (Bellingham)

9) Bonus Tip of the Week

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Most Evil Person in History Award

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“We are molded, our minds are governed, our tastes are formed, and our ideas are suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

 

                        —Edward Bernays

 

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Corporations are People Too!

 

Hey Kids!

 

The Supreme Court just ruled that corporations have the same right to be reactionary misogynists as regular people do. Hobby Lobby can now refuse to provide birth control for their employees. This means that their ‘religious rights’ trump the human rights of their employees. They now have the right to force their religious beliefs down their employees’ throats.

 

America. What a place!

 

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Disgusting Media Tactic of the Week

 

Welcome to the brand newest Thunderbolt Feature: The Disgusting Media Tactic of the Week!

 

Yes, Kids, the Media Machine has revealed their official Meme for the Iraq disaster!

 

Get this! This is so disgusting yet so typical!

 

According to the Media Machine the fault for the Iraq Disaster is…

 

(fanfare, drum roll, cymbal crash)…

 

Everything that has gone wrong is completely the Iraqis’ own fault!

 

—

 

Wow. Pause.

 

—

 

Yes, Kids, the Wise Benevolent American Machine came marching into Iraq with blazing rockets and cluster bombs so we could bring freedom to these poor benighted primitives who didn’t know how to take care of themselves — but alas, Kids! They are just too corrupt and too internecine to accept our counsel! They are just too corrupt and too filled with sectarian violence and ancient hatreds to be able to follow the enlightened path of the American Way!

 

—

 

Note: After World War I the western powers all got together and split up the Ottoman Empire amongst themselves and drew borders that served their own interests with absolutely no concern whatsoever for the interests of the people who actually lived there. Throughout the Middle East, Africa, and southwest Asia, families and tribes and sects and economic interests suddenly found themselves separated by artificially created lines on some European map.

 

Iraq was one of these artificially created countries. That is why the different parts of Iraq are so different from each other. That is why minourity Sunnis were ruling over majority Shias and that is why the Kurds got split up into three different countries, none of which was theirs.

 

Ever since then, the treasures of Iraq have been flowing largely unimpeded into the coffers of various Cayman Island bank accounts that do not belong to Iraqis. For decades now Middle Easterners have watched helpless as their countries were looted by western interests. Anytime anyone raised questions about these practices they were bombed or shot or tortured or whatever by whatever proxy the westerners had hired to do their local dirty work.

 

With notable exceptions, Sunni and Shia have lived together in peace for centuries. Before the Americans brought democracy to Iraq, with notable exceptions they lived together in peace in Iraq. Saddam pulled some sectarian nastiness (with American blessings and American weapons) but amongst everyday people on the street in everyday Iraq, Sunnis and Shias lived together and even intermarried without much comment. When political shenanigans begin, though, then whatever power Machine is trying to pull something will exaggerate and emphasize such differences. When the Iraq Iran War began (with the United States financing and arming both sides) then that was when Saddam went after the Shias and the Kurds; if western interests are involved in any manner (as is usually the case) then the Machine takes control by spreading chaos and violent anarchy because whoever has the guns and money in such a milieu is the one who wins. They do this by setting the locals onto each other’s throats so that they will ignore their true enemy that is sitting in complete safety thousands of miles away in some Wall Street boardroom.

 

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Super Secret Sting Rays

 

President Obama is pressuring local police departments to conceal the fact that they now have a powerful technological tool called a ‘sting ray’ that will intercept all cell phone calls in a given area. When the Sarasota, Florida Police Department told the ACLU that they had records of their sting-rays that they would share, Obama sent US marshals to seize the records from the police so the ACLU couldn’t get their hands on them.

 

Especially in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling concerning the requirement to obtain a search warrant before searching someone’s cell phone, then this is problematic for several reasons and on several levels.

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/26/as_supreme_court_says_police_need

 

I think that Obama is entirely too fond of secrets.

 

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Nomination: The Thunderbolt Most Evil Person of All Time Award

 

An interesting mind-exercise is to comb our history and try to determine which single human has caused the most evil and which human has caused the most good.

 

Ironically, I think that Jesus Christ could make a credible claim to both titles.

 

Unfortunately, many more names come much more easily to mind when considering the ‘evil’ side of the ledger than when considering the ‘good’ side even though in my personal experience good people vastly outnumber evil people. It is just that evil people’s footprint is so often so large that they receive a highly disproportionate level of attention. Hitler, Stalin, Justin Bieber — evil personified does not lack personages fully capable of adequately performing said personification.

 

Here’s a name that probably doesn’t immediately jump to most people’s list, though, even though it is a name that I maintain could probably challenge nearly anyone: Edward Louis Bernays.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

 

Edward Bernays is the quotee that I quote at the beginning of this weeks’ Thunderbolt and Mr. Bernays is exactly the man that he himself describes in the quote, i.e. the man we have never heard of who manipulates our minds, tastes, and ideas. Mr. Bernays literally wrote the book on propaganda. It is called Propaganda. Mr. Bernays called propaganda the “executive branch of the secret government”.

 

Mr. Bernays is so non-famous that Microsoft Word just placed a red squiggle under his name to indicate a perceived misspelling. This non-fame is in spite of the fact that Mr. Bernays is credited by many with being the progenitor of the modern Public Relations Machine. That sounds pretty innocuous until you consider the uses to which public relations is being used these days — and those uses were exactly what Mr. Bernays had in mind as he originated them. Mr. Bernays was an ideological plutocrat. His understanding was that the masses needed to be closely controlled because they were incapable of controlling themselves. He constantly referred to us as the “bewildered herd” engaging in “group thought”. I don’t know how he knew all of this since as far as I know common people have never been allowed to just run their own affairs without a bunch of plutocrats’ feet on their necks, but I don’t think factual accuracy was very high on Mr. Bernays’ list of priorities. He was, in fact, an enthusiastic promoter of propaganda designed to further the advantages of the élite few, who ran the world by right of their superiority, and while the truth was optimal when appropriate, a lie was completely appropriate when the truth wasn’t appropriate.

 

Like so many of his other assertions, though, the superiority of this ‘élite’ has never been empirically demonstrated. While the Europeans have for several centuries now indeed been able to kick everyone else’s ass due to superior weaponry and to superior ruthlessness, many wouldn’t consider the ability to kill large numbers of people in an incredibly ruthless manner to be indicative of a superior race of beings.

 

Anyway, Mr. Bernays’ work was aimed at convincing people to need things rather than to simply want them…

 

…but that was only one part of a much larger strategy, for during this process Mr. Bernays not only sought to link their unconscious desires to the consumption of mass produced goods but — in turn — these desires could then be used to control the masses by keeping them distracted on frivolous BS so that they wouldn’t care about or question whatever nastiness the Machine was up to at any given time.

 

This concept was actually practiced by the Romans. They called it “Bread and Circus”. As long as the people are fed and entertained, they won’t care about what you do in the shadows.

 

For someone you probably never heard of, Mr. Bernays’ actual real world accomplishments were truly extraordinary.

 

You may remember that I have mentioned several times now in the Thunderbolt that the Machine spent big bucks right after World War I on studies of how to manipulate public perception?

 

Mr. Bernays was the bottom-liner of many if not most of these studies.

 

Mr. Bernays was, in fact, the first man to actually apply scientific methodology to the manipulation of public perceptions.

 

Mr. Bernays first earned his props by convincing the American public to support an American intervention into World War I. This was a hard sell; Woodrow Wilson had just won reelection on the slogan that “He kept us out of the war” and the public had absolutely no desire to get caught up in Europe’s insanity and they fully expected Wilson to continue keeping us out of the war. Wilson, though, had fully intended to become fully involved the whole time and as soon as he was reelected he hired Edward Bernays to help sell the war to the public — and in an astonishingly short period of time Mr. Bernays — almost single handedly — completely turned the public’s perception of the war around.

 

I have written recently upon how World War I was ten times more significant that World War II and that the disaster represented by World War I and the numerous disasters that resulted from World War I are completely unappreciated by the modern American public. World War I ushered in the birth of the modern War Machine, the modern Propaganda Machine, and the modern Security State. By the time that the United States belatedly jumped into the fray, the war was pretty much at a stalemate, everyone was sick of it, and it would likely have ended soon in a negotiated settlement — but the entry of the United States completely changed the entire dynamic. The war blew up again and went on for several years longer than necessary because of the American involvement, and thus, for Edward Bernays’ involvement in involving the United States in World War I alone, I believe that he deserves a special place in Hell — but this was just the first of numerous successful campaigns by Mr. Bernays in a very long and very prolific and very horrific career…

 

To sell World War I, Mr. Bernays proposed the idea that the intervention was needed in order to bring democracy to Europe. He proposed this over and over again all over everywhere all the time. Repeatedly. This contention was almost complete obvious in-your-face hogwash — but the public bought it hook, line, and sinker.

 

The spectacular success of his campaign blew even Mr. Bernays’ own mind. He knew that he was on to something big here.

 

The World War I campaign was what convinced Mr. Bernays that people must be appealed to through emotion rather than through logic or facts. Mr. Bernays was an enthusiastic student of his uncle Sigmund Freud, and he forever after became an enthusiastic promoter of “regimenting the masses without their knowing it” by manipulating their subconscious desires.

 

After World War I, Mr. Bernays went to work merging psychology and other social sciences with the art of propaganda. He went from advising the government to advising private enterprise. Among Mr. Bernays’ clients were Procter & Gamble, CBS, the United Fruit Company, the American Tobacco Company, General Electric, and Dodge Motors. Mr. Bernays was even the single most effective promoter for the fluoridation of public water systems.

 

Here is a partial list of Mr. Bernays’ accomplishments: He spearheaded a highly successful push to get women to start smoking cigarettes in the 1920’s. He labeled it as a women’s rights issue. He labeled cigarettes as “torches of freedom”.

 

He was also the man who convinced many industries that the news, not advertising, was the best medium to carry their message to an unsuspecting public.

 

Mr. Bernays was responsible for the public’s belief that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb when actually it was invented by a man that no one has ever heard of named Joseph Swan.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan

 

Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels used Mr. Bernays’ book Crystallizing Public Opinion whilst implementing the Holocaust.

 

Mr. Bernays wrote in his 1933 auto-biography about how horrified he was to learn of this; evidently the mere thought that his ideas on how to subvert democracy with lies could lead to ‘evil’ consequences had never even crossed his mind.

 

Mr. Bernays also taught that people who are in fear will blindly accept authority and thus must be kept ever fearful — and in that spirit Mr. Bernays became one of the architects of the Cold War. Mr. Bernays exacerbated the public’s fear of ‘communism’ in order to spur them into action rather than trying to assuage them with the actual fact that communism had never actually posed much if any threat to the United States. One of the first sinister applications of the anti-communist tactic came in 1954 when Mr. Bernays convinced the American public to accept an American backed coup against the popular and democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala by convincing them that Mr. Arbenz was a communist.

 

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=188306.0;wap2

 

This was done for the benefit of Mr. Bernays’ client, the United Fruit Company — now known as Chiquita Brand — because Mr. Arbenz was trying to force United Fruit to treat Guatemalan workers in a humane manner rather than brutally exploiting them in slave-like conditions.

 

The new military dictatorship not only abandoned Mr. Arbenz’ policies on United Fruit, but they instead began assisting United Fruit in brutally exploiting their workers in slave-like conditions.

 

The United Fruit Company’s ruthless domination of Central America throughout the mid-to-late-20^th Century (with the regular help of the United States military) was responsible for the invention of the term ‘banana republic’ when describing corrupt Third World governments; during this period United Fruit was almost invariably the Corrupter in Chief in all these countries.

 

Mr. Bernays taught that the first reaction of most people when something happens is to follow their herd instinct, said instinct being to seek some sort of leader to tell them what they should think about this new thing. He taught that while individuals have minds, the herd has only ‘impulses’ and Mr. Bernays took full advantage of this tendency. Mr. Bernays knew that you could manipulate people into acting irrationally by appealing to their emotions and taking advantage of their need for a ‘herd leader’.

 

On the commercial level, Mr. Bernays was the master of converting ‘wants’ into ‘needs’. He was a genius at taking frivolous or irrelevant things and converting them into powerful symbols for something else. Mr. Bernays taught that you must establish an emotional connection between the consumer and the product. Rather than purchasing a car because you needed a car for transportation, Mr. Bernays convinced people to purchase a Dodge because purchasing a Dodge would make them feel better. Purchasing a Dodge conferred status. Purchasing a Dodge conferred sexual appeal.

 

Rather than manufacturers begging customers to purchase their product, under Mr. Bernays’ tutelage customers were soon begging manufacturers to sell them their product.

 

For instance, when Mr. Bernays took on the pork industry as a client, he convinced the American public to start eating bacon and eggs not because they tasted good or because they were cheap or because they were nutritious or anything practical; instead, Mr. Bernays convinced a bunch of doctors to tell people how great bacon and eggs were. American doctors were nearly demigods to the American public at the time, and that was all it took. Bacon and eggs soon became the all-American breakfast.

 

The tobacco industry later used this very same trick. When I was a child there were doctors on TV telling people how healthy it was to smoke cigarettes. Some doctors even recommended certain brands.

 

Mr. Bernays labeled his scientific technique of opinion-molding as the “engineering of consent”.

 

—

 

Guy Evans does a most excellent 16-part series he calls Deconstructing Edward Bernays’ Propaganda that goes into depth on this subject if you want to know more about Edward Bernays. Mr. Evans produces a most-excellent podcast called Smells Like Human Spirit in which he covers a very wide range of subjects and covers all of them very well, thank you.

 

http://smellslikehumanspirit.com/podcasts/edward-bernays-propaganda-1

 

—

 

Now, as to nominating Mr. Bernays for the Thunderbolt Most Evil Human of All Time Award…

 

…that could be problematic.

 

In reading Mr. Bernays’ book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, I ran into exactly the same paradox as when I read Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler; like Mr. Hitler, Mr. Bernays was a genius and he knew he was a genius and he was utterly convinced that he was helping to save humanity from itself. Mr. Bernays was convinced that the ‘herd human’ was completely irrational and that the herd human always needed the guiding hand provided by superior élites.

 

Like Hitler, Bernays was convinced that he was the saviour of humanity, and I think that both men honestly believed this.

 

Is Mr. Bernays ‘evil’ if his motivation was pure? Are we going to condemn him for manipulating people’s perceptions? If so then you’re going to have to condemn me too, because I also have studied these same studies and I regularly employ many the very same tricks and tactics in my attempts to sway people toward certain points of view. (I view this as capturing the enemy’s weapons and using them against him.) I am convinced that I am doing this for the good of humanity — but that leads right back to Mr. Bernays — and to Mr. Hitler for that matter. It was clear from reading Mein Kampf that Hitler was also convinced of that very same thing even though he and I are on the complete opposite sides of this particular fence.

 

As for determining which of us is ‘right’ or which of us is ‘wrong’, the fact is that Mr. Bernays was much more educated than I am and from reading his book I know that he was also a lot smarter than I am. All of the same things can also be said about Mr. Hitler except possibly about him being more educated than I am as Hitler didn’t have much formal education.

 

As for the underlying assumptions of the right and the left, i.e. the right-wing view that people are evil overall and need to be constrained vs. the left-wing view that people are good overall and that we can get along just fine if we are allowed to…

 

I suspect there is some projection going on amongst the right-wingers here. I suspect that their contention may actually be true — within the social circles where they tend to dwell.

 

It is not true, though, in the social circles where I tend to dwell and I think that my circles are a lot bigger than their circles.

 

As for all that education and intelligence possessed by Mr. Bernays, I will end this bit with this observation: People should never confuse knowledge with wisdom.

 

Knowledge just knows things.

 

Wisdom knows what to do with those things.

 

Wisdom without knowledge often works just fine.

 

Knowledge without wisdom can be the most dangerous thing in the world.

 

It’s time to get to work…

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The Thunderbolt Calendar

Week of July 3^rd thru July 9^th 2014

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1) FYI Section:

 

1A) Call To Action: Proppants Contract Service Agreement Expiring Soon — No Word on New One

 

–   15-Day Campaign   –

 

End Porppants Contract – Service Agreement

Expires July 14, 2014

 

All Thurston County Environmental Activists:

 

Countdown – 15 days left to create a Strategic Plan for Local Proppant Contract & Service Agreement with direct action events, meetings, fact finding, fact gathering, etc. for open dialogue and discussions on how we are to proceed. Call to Action is needed.

With the rise of the oil energy, natural gas industrial complexes, Thurston County groups of environmentalists & others should not miss this opportunity to mobilize within this remaining 15 days to take action. To do otherwise is a missed opportunity for another two more years of a new contract. To not stop this contract and its service agreement would be a travesty.   Due note that two Port Commissioners, Sue Dunn and George Barner, both claim to know nothing of this current Service Agreement end date July 14, 2014.

 

Call to Action – Join a 15-Day Campaign to End the Current Service Agreement between Port of Olympia and Rainbow Ceramics. Call to action to mobilize against the Port of Olympia and Rainbow Ceramics Service Agreement.

 

Call to Action – All activists and their groups, such as, environmentalists , environmental healthcare activists Nisqually, Squazin Island Peoples & all of Native American tribes in Washington state, Washington Idle No More, 350.org, Backbone, Ruckus Society, food justice, farmers, climate change, health freedom movement, vegan, vegetarians, organic consumers, farm land trusts, land trusts, SPSCC & TESC student groups, staff and facilities, South Sound Sustainability- Food Summit, SPEECH – Green Pages, Thurston County Community Rights Ordinance – Action Team, Initial Communities, Transitional Community, Media Island International, Fellowship for Reconciliation – Climate Crises Group & five Sub-committees, etc. to build on our local opposition to the transportation of proppant chemicals in the production of fracking–crude oil.

 

            Would you or your group like to promote Action Planning with various Direct Action events on this issue?   Contact Carole W. at 360-352-5361          no email

 

 

File Name: 2014 – Port of Olympia – All Thurston County Environmental Activists   7-14.doc

 

Port of Olympia

915 Washington St. NE

Olympia, WA 98501

Phone:360.528.8000

Fax:360.528.8090

 

Port of Olympia – 2014 Meeting Schedule, go to:

Two Commission meetings per month are held in the evening and one meeting per month is held during regular business hours.  All meetings are open to the public.

http://wa-portofolympia.civicplus.com/index.aspx?nid=301

 

Public Records, go to:  http://wa-portofolympia.civicplus.com/index.aspx?NID=108

 

Port of Olympia, meeting dates & times, locations and other information, go to:

            http://wa-portofolympia.civicplus.com/index.aspx?NID=89

            http://wa-portofolympia.civicplus.com/forms.aspx?fid=56

            Last PoO meeting URL link:         

http://wa-portofolympia.civicplus.com/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/2338

 

 

Staff Name Title Email Phone Galligan, Ed Executive Director Email 360.528.8001 Bensley, Jessie Executive and Commission Coordinator Email 360.528.8014 Foglia-Jones, Jennie Marketing & Community Relations, FTZ Administrator Email 360.528.8005 Reid, Mike Senior Manager Business Development Email 360.528.8076 Sevier, Jeri Human Resources and Administrative Manager Email 360.528.8003 White, Kathleen Communications and Public Affairs Manager Email 360.528.8012
Staff
Name	Title	Email	Phone
Jorgenson, Michele	Property Manager	Email	360.528.8071
Mattox, Clarita	Real Estate Operations Manager	Email	360.528.8070
Reid, Mike	Senior Manager Business Development	Email	360.528.8076

 

 

http://wa-portofolympia.civicplus.com/forms.aspx?fid=56

 

George L. Barner, Jr.             360-704-0093   or 360-357-8334        No active email

Sue Gunn                                360-584-4572                                      No active email

Bill McGregor                         360-491-6350                                      No active email

Fact Finding & Fact Gathering tasks:

Client or Personal Service Contracts are Public Service Contracts. For more information, go to:

 

http://wa-portofolympia.civicplus.com/index.aspx?NID=254

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?Cite=39

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=39.04.190

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?Cite=43

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?Cite=53

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=53.19

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=53.19.080

 

Would you or your group like to promote Action Planning with various Direct Action events on this issue? Contact Carole W. at 360-352-5361            no email

 

*****************************************

 

1B) Move to Amend Northwest Social Forum in Portland in September

 

M2A is having a Northwest Social Forum in Portland in September. This is for amending the Constitution to deny corporate personhood.

 

From M2A:

 

All of us at Move To Amend are excited to announce that registration is now formally open for the Pacific Northwest Social Forum (PNWSF) that will take place Sept 26-28 at the First Unitarian Church, 1034 SW 13th Ave. in Portland, Oregon.

 

The homepage is here: http://pnwsf.org

 

Registration is here: http://pnwsf.org/content/register-now

 

This movement building process is associated with the U.S. Social Forum which convened over 10,000 social change agents in Atlanta, GA in 2007 and almost 15,000 in Detroit, MI in 2010.

 

Many members, supporters and leaders of Move To Amend attended and facilitated workshops at each of these, and Move To Amend even facilitated a Peoples Movement Assembly in Detroit.

 

The experience was so positive and powerful that we have committed organizational resources and staff time to helping to organize the third U.S. Social Forum, which will take place in 2015. The PNWSF is part of that movement.

 

The PNWSF is *not* a conference. It is a convergence of people’s movements whose primary work and struggles take place in CA, OR, WA, British Columbia, MT, ID and UT. The purpose is to build solidarity and unified action toward social, economic and environmental justice across the entire Pacific Northwest.

 

At the PNWSF, Move To Amend will facilitate a People’s Movement Assembly (PMA) on “Democracy and the US Constitution.” There will also be PMAs on Indigenous People’s concerns and issues, climate justice, food sovereignty, housing, education and more.

 

All of these are designed to help us collectively create and propose a Pacific NW People’s Agenda for Action – a document that will guide us in our work for peace, justice, democracy, liberty and ecology.

 

We will learn about each other’s struggles and connect to each other’s campaigns with the goal of mutual support, building toward a powerful movement for social justice in the Pacific NW.

 

We will reach across fronts of struggle to find where we have common goals and where we can build unity, capacity and effectiveness to end the violent systems of oppression all around us and build systems that will meet the needs of all people and sustain the ecosystems of our
region and the planet.

 

We are excited that we will be kicking off with a concert/performance by Mic Crenshaw on Fri. Check out http://pnwsf.org/content/mic-crenshaw-do-performance

 

Please forward this announcement to your own lists.

 

Onward to the world we deserve,

 

Laura Bonham, Daniel Lee, David Cobb, Egberto Willies, George Friday, Jerome Scott, Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, Edgar Franks, Richard Monje Move to Amend National Leadership Team

_______________________________________

 

2) KOWA Live Show: Summer Shimmer with No Body, Trout Stream, Mega Bog (SEA), Sheer Agony (Montréal)

Thursday July 3^rd at 7 pm @ KOWA Studio, Behind Media Island, 816 Adams St SE

 

It’s a live show broadcasting over the airwaves of our beloved radical community radio station KOWA, 106.5 fm or streaming at www.kowalp.org !

 

From KOWA:

 

SUMMER SHIMMER with No Body, Trout Stream, Mega Bog (SEA), Sheer Agony (Montreal)

 

Some killer buds are on tour from Seattle and Montreal and we want to give them a warm, shimmering Olympia welcome on a beautiful Thursday night! The show will be broadcast live on 106.5 in Olympia and streaming online at http://www.kowalp.org/– but all the real magic will be in the shared heat of the bright studio, so come on over!

 

Thursday, July 3rd, 2014

at Media Island/106.5 KOWA Studios (816 Adams St SE)

snacks and laughs at 7pm, music sharp at 8pm

bring $3-5 bucks for the touring buds

 

Local hottie tamales no bodyandTrout Streamwill melt the cone and the cream off the walls of this summer-time candy store.

 

Mega Bogis Erin Birgy (former Oly) and crew, propelling powerful mystical howlings from the ballroom of an ancient Scottish mansion glowing of chrome and chrysalis. really.

https://megabog.bandcamp.com/

 

Sheer Agonyare on tour from Montreal, the city where if you are under 30 and not in the streets half your life, you’re 6-ft under full-time and professionally. how’s that afterlife working out for ya?

http://sheeragony.bandcamp.com/

 

No Body (OLY, continuously evolving, ever impressing)

https://www.facebook.com/nobodywest

http://www.no-body.us/

 

Trout Stream (OLY, ’96 Olympia with sprinkles of ’69 Berkeley)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Trout-Stream/606151822793903

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/248496698683063/

_______________________________________

 

3) Media Island Benefit Brunch: The Thunderbolt

Sunday July 6^th from 11 am to 2 pm @ Media Island, 816 Adams St SE

 

Yes, this month Media Island’s Benefit Brunch will be benefitting — the Thunderbolt! My computer is going squirrelly and I need a new one to continue!

 

Good food, good people, and good causes! Please attend and please spread the word!

 

From MI:

 

On the first Sunday of every monthMedia Island Internationalteams up with another social justice organization and organizes a benefit brunch. July’s brunch will benefit Media Island and the Thunderbolt, a local radical newsletter and radio program. Come enjoy good food, meet good people, and support two good causes.

Check out the online version ofThe Thunderbolthere:

https://dana98501.wordpress.com/

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/333654663448857/?context=create&source=49

_______________________________________

 

4) Let’s Break the US Blockade on Cuba with Pastors for Peace

Sunday July 6^th at 1 pm @ Peace Arch Provincial Park, White Rock BC

 

I don’t usually promote out of town actions but this is being organized by locals and this is an important issue.

 

From Rick:

 

PASTORS FOR PEACE CARAVAN TO CUBA

U.S./CANADA BORDER CROSSING

LET’S BREAK THE U.S. BLOCKADE ON CUBA!

 

Picnic and Rally

SUNDAY JULY 6, 2014

Peace Arch Park – U.S./Canada Border

White Rock, BC / Blaine, WA

1pm

 

JOIN THE 2014 PASTORS FOR PEACE CARAVAN TO CUBA!

LET’S BREAK THE U.S. BLOCKADE ON CUBA!

 

The Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba is a U.S.-based Cuba solidarity project that each summer brings humanitarian aid and U.S. citizens to Cuba to challenge the U.S. Blockade and travel ban against Cuba.

 

Cuba solidarity organization across Canada have supported the Caravan since the beginning over two decades ago. Cuba solidarity activists and Caravan supporters from across British Columbia and Washington State will once again join the Caravan by supporting the border crossing at Peace Arch Park. We will be bringing humanitarian aid and Caravan participants across the U.S/Canada border on route to Cuba!

 

The Peace Arch border crossing has been the scene of several important recent victories against the U.S. Blockade on Cuba. Notably, the 2012 border crossing became an international event when U.S. border officials repeatedly attempted to deny our humanitarian aid from crossing the border. However, by launching an emergency media campaign, legal challenge and extended demonstration on both sides of the border we forced them to allow the aid through. We need a strong presence at the border to ensure our humanitarian aid will cross again!

 

Rain or Shine!

 

The event will include a potluck lunch (please bring a dish to share if you can!)

 

For carpooling to and from the border from Vancouver please phone:

778-882-5223 or 604-719-6947

 

Event co-organized by:

Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba (VCSC)

Member of the Canadian Network on Cuba (CNC)

Web:http://www.vancubasolidarity.com/

Email: vancubasolidarity at gmail.com

Phone: 778-882-5223

Youtube: www.youtube.com/vancubasolidarity

Twitter: @VanCuba_VCSC

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vancouver-Communities-in-Solidarity-with-Cuba-VCSC/228094570576786

 

&

 

BC Aid Network for Cuba (BCANC)

778-889-7664 | bcanc.cubaid at gmail.com

http://bcanc.blogspot.com/ – http://www.bcanc.org/

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

WHAT IS THE PASTORS FOR PEACE CARAVAN TO CUBA? This summer for the 25th time, the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba will challenge the United States government’s economic and travel blockade on Cuba, that has been imposed on the Cuban people for over 50 years.

 

The Caravan will travel through up to 100 cities in the U.S. and Canada, raising awareness about the U.S. blockade and gathering humanitarian aid to take to Cuba. After two weeks of travelling through the U.S. there is a blockade busting border crossing into Mexico. Caravanistas will then travel through Mexico and depart for nine days in Cuba, participating in a variety of educational and cultural events.

 

Over the past 25 Caravans thousands of participants and over 30,000 tons of humanitarian aid have been brought to Cuba, building a ‘people-to-people’ foreign policy based on mutual respect, solidarity and friendship between the people of the U.S., Canada and Cuba.

 

For more information or to join the Pastors for Peace Caravan please visit:

http://www.pastorsforpeace.org/

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

_______________________________________

 

5) POWER Outage: Rural Outreach Program

Monday July 7^th at 5:30 pm @ Darby’s Café, 211 5^th Ave SE

 

It’s POWER’s monthly POWER Outage, this month featuring a presentation about POWER’s Rural Outreach Project.

 

From POWER:

 

July POWER Outage: Presentation of our Rural Outreach Project

 

	Monday, July 7 at 5:30pm – 8:00pm
	Darby’s Cafe 211 5th Ave SE, Olympia, Washington 98501

 

Come to Darby’s on 7/7 and hear about the Rural Outreach Project POWER staff has been working on for the past two months!

 

In April POWER was awarded a grant after submitting a proposal to the Thurston County HOME Consortium, funding two months of outreach in south rural county in the towns of Yelm, Rochester, Tenino, and Rainier.

 

During this outreach we talked with social service recipients and providers about access to services and what is needed in their community.

 

Our Rural County Assessment report is due to the Consortium on June 30th. We will be presenting our findings to them on June 14th. We are taking this opportunity to practice our presentation by sharing our research and report with the community. 

 

The evening will start with a potluck at 5:30. Bring a dish if you can, and share dinner with us. Childcare will be provided by the Olympia Child Care Collective at the POWER office, 309 5^th Avenue SE, next door to Rainy Day Records.

 

Questions?  Need transportation reimbursement?  Contact us at:

 

360-352-9716 toll free 866-343-9716

monica@mamapower.org

www.mamapower.org 

 

Find us on Facebook.

 

POWER is an organization of low-income parents and allies advocating for a strong social safety net while working toward a world where children and care giving are truly valued, and the devastation of poverty has been eradicated.

 

Mark your calendars for POWER’s upcoming events:

 

Saturday, July 26th – POWER Sidewalk Sale and Square Dance!  We want your junk!

 

August 4th – POWER Outage – Cookout and swimming!

 

August 23rd – POWER Secret Café!

_______________________________________

 

6) West Central Park Movie Night

Monday July 7^th from Noon to Midnight @ West Central Park, Corner of Harrison and Division

 

Movie night at the People’s Park!

 

From Alicia:

 

The West Central Park is excited to announce our Monday Movie Madness series kickoff on July 7th from 12 until midnight. Local food carts and farmers will keep visitors fed and happy, and games such as bocce, checker, chess and more will be available to borrow all day. An open mike for all to come and jam together, will run from 4 until movie time. Come gather for community connection on these beautiful July Olympia days. Food and games start at noon, open mike at 4 and movie at dusk. See you on July 7th when our feature film will be The Iron Giant! Find out the rest of the summer movie schedule at : aparkforus.org/event-calender/

 

_______________________________________

 

7) Memorial for the 47 People who Died at Lac Megantic in the Oil Train Explosion

Tuesday July 8^th at 7 pm @ Traditions Café, 300 5^th Ave SW

 

The train that killed these 47 people is the same kind of train they want to start running through western Washington.

 

From Mary Lea:

 

Memorial for the 47 people who died at Lac Megantic in the oil train explosion

 

MARK YOUR CALENDARS

♥We will have a memorial for the 47 people who died at Lac Megantic in the oil train explosion. Zoltan Grossman will lead the discussion.

 

♥We will also be showing some of the most effective parts of Years of Living Dangerously.

 

PLEASE NOTE:→ From 5:30 to 6:30pm we will demonstrate in Heritage Park across the street from Traditions.

 

For more information, contact Mary Abramson,mehath1@aol.com

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/682262751844844/

_______________________________________

 

8) KOWA Live Show: QRC + MISSOULA + SUMMER = Robin Cutler (OLY), Pancakes (Missoula), Freaky Pup & Artistic Crisis (Bellingham)

Wednesday July 9^th at 8 pm @ KOWA Studio, Behind Media Island, 816 Adams St SE

 

It’s a live show broadcasting over the airwaves of our beloved radical community radio station KOWA, 106.5 fm or streaming at www.kowalp.org !

 

From KOWA:

 

QRC + MISSOULA + SUMMER = Robin Cutler (OLY), Pancakes (Missoula), Freaky Pup & Artistic Crisis (Bellingham)

 

we are all really excited about this show as our friends A Band Called Pancakes(feat. Mikki of Missoula’s Needlecraft) are in town right at the same time as Queer Rock Camp. this is not any sort of official QRC show but some really awesome friends from Bellingham are in town for QRC and are super-stoked to play this show, alongside one of our favorite songwriters in Olympia, Robin Cutler. So come on over for a warm night of emerging talent and powerful songcrafters! The show will be broadcast on 106.5 KOWA-FM and streaming online at http://www.kowalp.org/for those who can’t make it to our comfy studios!

 

Saturday, June 9th at 8pm

at our KOWA Community Studios (816 Adams St SE)

bring a few bucks for the touring friends!

 

Pancakes (“electronic, ambient babe rock” from Missoula!)

http://youlovepancakes.bandcamp.com/

***this is the latest project from Mikki of Needlecraft, Fagrag and Knot Knocked Up***

 

Freaky Pup (B’ham dreamy/danc’y self-care synth pop, Jammys from Rat Riot!)

http://freakypup.bandcamp.com/

http://masarecords.bandcamp.com/album/barbie-apocalypse

 

Artistic Crisis (B’ham pop folk punk, 1/2 of Missoula’s The Scribblers)

http://artisticcrisis.bandcamp.com/

http://thescribblers.bandcamp.com/

 

Robin Cutler (Olympia songcrafter, formally B’ham)

http://bicyclerecords.com/store/bicycle-records/no-more-danger-robin-cutler-2/

http://masarecords.bandcamp.com/album/green-to-grey

 

https://www.facebook.com/events/306793966154252/

_______________________________________

 

9) Bonus Tip of the Week:

 

Expose some propaganda today.

 

 

Dana