Shell workers’ mandatory Trump rally, Dutch comment

This 17 August 2019 video from the USA is called Pittsburgh [Shell] plant workers just revealed they had to go to Trump’s rally or go without pay.

Translated from Stevo Akkerman, in Dutch daily Trouw today:

Royal Dutch Shell, I cannot discover anything royal about it

When thereis talk about Shell abroad, the corporation is always referred to as Royal Dutch Shell. I know that “royal” means little, witness the existence of royal paint materials, tour boats, bicycle brands and brass bands. But still: if Shell lends itself to an Orwellian election show for Donald Trump, it will feel a little bit more rotten because of the Dutch link and the royal halo than if another oil corporation would do so.

Shell forced thousands of employees last week to enthusiastically attend a Trump visit to a petrochemical plant in Pennsylvania. That is, everyone was free to stay at home, we are not talking about North Korea, where cheering for the great leader is a religious duty. In America no one is obliged to worship the president. But Shell did impose a hefty fine on refusal: whoever did not want to be applauding sheeple for Trump had to take a day off, and would therefore not receive a salary. This also canceled the bonus for overtime – a total sacrifice of around 700 dollars.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which brought this news on Saturday, also reported that the good workers had to clock in at 7 a.m. and then had to wait until after lunch for the president. There were strict rules of conduct: no protests, no shouting, no dissent. So that Trump could claim without blushing or being ashamed that this factory would never have existed without him – in reality it is a legacy from the Obama years. Trump also denounced some Democratic politicians and called on Shell workers to pressure their union leaders to support him. They don’t do that? “Vote them the hell out of office!”

Coincidentally, the president

According to a Shell spokesperson, it was an ordinary training day, except that “the guest speaker happened to be the president.” That is of course possible. Every company gets the guest speaker it deserves. And Trump is the champion of the fossil sector, the man who withdrew his country from the Paris climate agreement; they did not have to be afraid at Shell that they had accidentally brought in a critical speaker. But forgive me if I take Shell’s solemn statements about their sense of social responsibility a little less seriously after this training day.

The company’s international website states the following core values: “Honesty, integrity and respect for people.” These people also like to point out the support for “social, cultural and educational projects in the vicinity of our locations”. I do not know. For years, the company has resisted measures to prevent global warming, while in-house research in 1986 showed that “some parts of the earth may become uninhabitable.”

In the Netherlands, Shell is doing everything it can to not pay taxes. In the USA, they promote Donald Trump. It may be just me, but I cannot discover anything royal about it.

Advertisements

Fracking, a worse problem than thought

This 18 August 2019 video says about itself:

Fracking Is A Bigger Problem Than We Thought

We are going full speed ahead towards irreversible climate change. Cenk Uygur, Maz Jobrani, and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.

“As greenhouse gases go, methane gets less attention than carbon dioxide, but it is a key contributor to climate change.

Methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long as CO2 and is reabsorbed into terrestrial cycles via chemical reactions within 12 years or so. But while it’s up there, it’s much more potent, trapping heat at roughly 84 times the rate of CO2. Scientists estimate that around 25 percent of current global warming traces to methane.

When it comes to reducing CO2 emissions, the chain between cause and effect is frustratingly long and diffuse. Reduced emissions today won’t show up as reduced climate impacts for decades.

But with methane, the chain of causation is much shorter and simpler. Reduced emissions have an almost immediate climate impact. It’s a short-term climate lever, and if the countries of the world are going to hold rising temperatures to the United Nations’ target of “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial baseline, they’re going to need all the short-term climate levers they can get.

In the real world, though, the news about methane is bad and getting worse. It turns out that a mysterious recent spike in global methane levels that’s putting climate targets at risk may be coming from US oil and gas fracking. If that’s true, it’s bad news, because there’s lots more shale gas development in the pipeline and the Trump administration is busy rolling back regulations on the industry.”

Read more here.

Shell forces workers to attend Trump rally

This 18 August 2019 CNN TV video from the USA says about itself:

Union workers told to attend Trump speech or lose pay

Workers at the Pennsylvania petrochemical plant where President Donald Trump spoke were told that if they didn’t attend the event, they either had to use paid time off or receive no pay for the day.

The CNN caption to this YouTube video does not mention who owns that Monaca, Pennsylvania petrochemical plant. Which produces plastic. It is Shell oil multinational corporation. Yes, the same Shell that covered up the climate change science which Donald Trump hates so much. The same Shell which wants oil drilling in the oil spill prone Arctic environment. The same Shell which causes very damaging earthquakes with its drilling in Groningen province in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The same Shell which hires thugs in Ireland for violence against local small farmers and other opponents of its environmentally hazardous plans. The same Shell which pollutes Nigeria. The same Shell which bribed Nigerian soldiers and hired thugs for violence against Nigerian environmentalists. The same Shell which profited from George W Bush’s and Tony Blair’s Iraq war. The same Shell advising NATO on neo-colonial and potentially nuclear wars.

Workers were ordered not to protest or show any ‘resistance’ at Trump rally in Pennsylvania: here.

This 17 August 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Pittsburgh plant workers revealed they had to go to Donald Trump’s rally or go without pay

President Trump trashed union leadership at a Shell plant even after management forced its unionized workers to attend one of his hate speeches at their plant, or lose pay.

Trump visited a Shell petrochemical plant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this past Tuesday, but today the news slipped out about the coercive methods used to guarantee a larger audience for his maniacal rantings.

This 14 August 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Dozens Protest President Trump‘s Visit to Cracker Plant

Dozens of protestors and some Trump supporters gathered outside the Beaver County Courthouse on Tuesday. KDKA’s Ross Guidotti reports.

Pro-Big Oil far-right violence against pro-climate girls

This AFP photo shows 18-year-old Belgian pro-climate activist Anuna De Wever at a demonstration by striking high school students against the Belgian government’s lack of action against global warming in April 2019.

On 15 August 2018, Ms De Wever had been invited to speak at the Pukkelpop rock festival, one of many music festivals in summer in Belgium, to speak on the 20-27 Sepember global pro-climate strikes.

However, during her speech, a group of far-right men booed and heckled her, made obscene gestures, and threw alcohol at her. As witnessed by 17-year-old Tatyana Decelle of Youth for Climate Brugge. A reporter of daily Het Nieuwsblad saw neo-fascists shouting the slogan Leftist rats, fuck off! Marieke Verduyn (18 years of age) saw right-wing extremists insulting a black woman.

The far-right men had flags depicting the Flemish lion.

The official flag of Flanders depicts a lion with red claws. However, the men at the festival had flags with a black lion with black claws. Wikipedia writes about that version:

It is not an official symbol. It was, however, used by the Flemish fighting alongside Nazi and SS troops [in World War II], and is as such also known as the collaboration [with Hitler] flag. It is today used by right[-wing] movements.

Over Pukkelpop en Anuna De Wever. Net m'n dochter aan de lijn gehad, zwaar aangedaan. Nadat Ananu gespot was aan hun tent hebben jonge mannen hen wakker gehouden met doodsbedreigingen, bekogeld met flessen vol urine en partytent vernield. Ze krijgen nu bescherming van security.

— Jeroen de Preter (@JeroendePreter) August 16, 2019

In this tweet, journalist Jeroen de Preter of Belgian Knack weekly writes about what happened next at Puppelpop. Translated:

About Pukkelpop and Anuna De Wever. Now, my daughter calling on the phone, very upset. After Anuna had been spotted at their tent, young men have stopped them from sleeping with death threats, thrown bottles full of urine at them and destroyed their party tent. Security is protecting them now.

The right-wingers also tore open several other tents as they thought Anuna De Wever might sleep there.

Security later reported they had banned the extreme right version of the Flemish flag at the festival. These flags had been distributed by the racist Vlaams Belang party.

This was not the first extreme right incident at Pukkelpop. In 2018, racists had sung: ‘Cut off their hands, Congo is ours’. A cynical allusion to the bloody colonialism in Congo by King Leopold II of Belgium. The colonialists then cut off hands of Congolese people who refused to do forced labour and left them to die.

Earlier this summer, at the Dranouter music festival, men of Vlaams Belang and the Schild & Vrienden far-right paramilitarists attacked a stand of the ROSA feminist movement. They destroyed a table and left the letters Vlaams Belang plus a swastika as graffitti on a banner supporting LGBTQ rights.

The vandals also put a sticker on the banner, saying, Put an end to COMAC (the youth organisation of the leftist PVDA party).

When someone in Belgium criticized Schild & Vrienden on Twitter, the far right responded with death threats. Like on the 4chan forum, popular with neonazis committing massacres in synagogues or mosques. The critic got death threats from someone calling himself ‘the Flemish Trump‘ on 4chan. And on the forum Make Vlaenderen [Flanders] Great Again (called after the Donald Trump slogan Make America Great Again) of Schild & Vrienden.

That the extreme right attacks especially Anuna De Wever and the pro-climate movement is not so surprising.

The slogan of Vlaams Belang is Eigen volk eerst; our own, white, people first. The leftist PVDA party says: the Vlaams Belang really means: Rich people first.

Billionaire and United States president Donald Trump, their inspiration, denies climate science and promotes Big Oil.

British nezi leader Nick Griffin denies not only the Holocaust, but climate change as well.

In the Netherlands, the far-right FvD party denies climate change. They are the only party saying that the gas drilling by Shell and Exxon oil corporations in Groningen province should carry on this way, even though it causes enormous earthquake damage. Not even the right-wing pro-Big Business VVD government party agrees with that.

What does this violence by the Belgian extreme right against 18-year-old and younger girls remind me of?

In Germany, police (in which neo-nazi networks are active) treats big peaceful pro-climate demonstrations as crimes. Also in France, police attacks on peaceful pro-climate activists.

In Nigeria, Shell bribed soldiers and hired thugs for violence against environmentalists. Likewise, in Ireland, Shell hired thugs for attacking small farmers and other residents opposed to anti-environment Shell plans.

That the far right so violently attacks Anuna De Wever, like they attack 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, is a sign of weakness. They have only one ‘argument’ against climate change science: thuggish violence.

Meisjes van 16 op Twitter wat uitlachen en belachelijk maken.

Meisjes van 18 op festivals bekogelen met flessen urine.

Enkel en alleen omdat ze vol overtuiging hun mening laten horen en die mening jou niet aanstaat?

Lafheid kent vele vormen.

Onvoorstelbaar en degoutant.

— Imade Annouri (@ImadeAnnouri) August 16, 2019

Pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious death, update

This 16 August 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Epstein Autopsy Raises More Questions

The details revealed in Jeffrey Epstein’s have fueled more speculation about how he died.

Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.

“The investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein‘s death could hinge on a minute bone in his neck that in the past has shed light on whether a cause of death is a suicide or a murder.

Epstein’s autopsy reportedly showed multiple broken neck bones, the Washington Post wrote Thursday, citing anonymous sources. But the curiosity surrounds one of the broken bones: The hyoid.

Though the bone is small, it’s been critical in several high-profile cases. The reason: The hyoid can break when a person dies by hanging, particularly when a person is older. But it can also provide tell-tale clues that a person was strangled.”

Read more here.

By Matthew Taylor in the USA:

Autopsy indicates death of Jeffrey Epstein likely due to strangulation

16 August 2019

A report from an autopsy performed on multi-millionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has revealed that he suffered broken bones in his neck during his alleged suicide by hanging last week.

The Washington Post and other media have reported that the hyoid bone, which lies behind the Adam’s apple, was found broken during the examination.

The Post article quoted Jonathan L. Arden, who is president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, as stating that a broken hyoid bone is more commonly associated with death by homicidal strangulation than hanging.

The article goes on to cite studies done in both Thailand and India over the past decade on the results of suicide by hanging. The Thai study found that in only one-fourth of the twenty cases examined was there damage to the hyoid bone. The Indian study examined 264 suicides by hanging and found hyoid damage in only 16 cases, or six percent of the total.

The Indian study stated that rates of hyoid fractures in hangings depend on a variety of factors, including “age of the victim, the weight of the victim, type of suspension and height of suspension.”

The Post article also cites an incident in 2008 where the cause of death of a prisoner found dead by hanging in a Washington, DC, jail cell was determined to be a homicide, due to the discovery of a broken hyoid bone. The prisoner, Ronnie L. White, had been accused of killing a police officer. The autopsy performed on White stated that he had likely been strangled by a sheet, towel or “crux of the elbow”—a chokehold.

A broken hyoid bone due to strangulation is common enough that the New York City police cited the lack of a broken hyoid to excuse the murder by asphyxiation of Eric Garner, who was killed in 2014 when multiple NYPD officers pinned him to the ground, compressing his neck and chest, which lead to his death.

The initial report from the autopsy explodes the efforts by the media, led by the New York Times, to dismiss all questioning of the official explanation of Epstein’s death as “conspiracy theories”. Whether Epstein died from hanging or murder, there is clearly enough evidence to warrant a full criminal investigation.

The evidence of a conspiracy to have Epstein killed in one form or another is mounting. The Post article comes after other reports that screaming was heard from Epstein’s cell the morning of his death.

The warden of the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) has been transferred to a desk job, and the two guards on duty at the time of his death have been placed on administrative leave, following revelations that basic security protocols were not followed.

Among the procedures violated was the requirement that regular checks be made on Epstein every half hour. It was later revealed they had falsified logs.

Epstein had allegedly attempted suicide on July 23, after which he was placed on suicide watch. He was then removed from suicide watch on July 29 and returned to his cell in a segregated housing unit, apart from the main inmate population. A cellmate who was with Epstein was removed, leaving Epstein alone in his cell for at least 12 hours before he died.

The New York Times, however, is continuing its efforts at damage control. It buried its own report on Epstein’s autopsy in its local news section and attempted to spin the medical examiner’s findings to indicate that suicide was the most likely cause of death.

The headline of the Times article, “Autopsy Shows Bones in Jeffrey Epstein’s Neck Were Broken”, avoids drawing any conclusions, while the subhead in the online edition attempts to draw the opposite conclusion from the Post, namely that “such injuries can occur in a suicide by hanging, especially in older people like the financier, who was 66.”

The article ignores the statement by Arden and instead quotes a qualified statement from a Dr. Burton Bentley, head of a medical consulting firm in Arizona, who states that the hyoid fracture is not enough to determine a cause of death. “It’s not a hundred percent. It’s not even going to get us to ninety.”

In multiple articles published since Epstein’s death, the Times has worked to discredit any questioning of Epstein’s death while simultaneously being unable to explain any of the suspicious circumstances surrounding the incident.

Epstein was a man with connections at the very highest levels of society. A 2008 plea deal involved Epstein serving a thirteen-month sentence, with work release six days a week, in the Palm Beach county jail. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop any further investigations, granted immunity to Epstein’s unnamed co-conspirators and agreed to conceal the plea bargain from his victims until after his sentencing, a violation of federal law.

Included in the language of Epstein’s plea bargain was an acknowledgment that he had provided assistance in an unrelated case, a fact that still remains unexplained.

In 2011, when Epstein attempted to have his sex offender status removed in the state of New York, the federal prosecutor assigned to the case argued on behalf of Epstein, a bizarre occurrence noted by the presiding judge in the case where she denied Epstein’s request.

The author also recommends:

Why is the media dismissing questions about Jeffrey Epstein’s death as “conspiracy theories”? [13 August 2019]

Greenland against being bought by Donald Trump

This 16 August 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Trump Wants to Buy Greenland: Reports

President Trump has allegedly directed the White House counsel to “look into the idea” of purchasing Greenland, The Wall Street Journal reported. The president also reportedly brought up the idea at a dinner with his associates last spring, asking his guests, “What do you guys think about that? Do you think it would work?”

TRUMP MIGHT WANT TO BUY GREENLAND President Trump is reportedly interested in buying Greenland, an ice-covered island melting before the world’s eyes. According to The Wall Street Journal, sources say the president has repeatedly expressed interest in acquiring the autonomous Danish territory situated between the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. [HuffPost]

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

Greenland: we are not for sale

The Greenland Foreign Minister says that her country is not for sale. She responds to a report in the newspaper The Wall Street Journal. It wrote last night based on sources around US President Trump that he has his eyes on the huge island and wants to buy the land from Denmark.

Trump is said to have come up with the idea when he heard that Denmark transfers abmorning.a billion euros to the country every year. …

Danish politicians attacked the idea this morning. “It must be a April Fools‘ joke”, said former Prime Minister Rasmussen. “You can’t sell Greenland like you used to do with a colony”, said a Social Liberal MP. …

Rich in minerals

Greenland has the interest of superpowers such as the US, China and Russia because of its strategic location and the raw materials it has. ..

Greenland has an air force base of the United States, the Thule Air Base.

A base with a Pentagon nuclear weapons scandal history.

It is not the first time that the US Americans want to buy Greenland. The US proposed in 1946 to buy the country for $ 100 million, but that was refused.

In 1917, the USA did buy the then Danish West Indies for $ 25 million. Today, that island group in the Caribbean is known as the US Virgin Islands. The state of Alaska was also bought: in 1867 from Russia for 7.2 million dollars.

Donald Trump has said before that the wanted to make Puerto Rico his private property, renaming it ‘Puerto Trump’.

DANISH PM: GREENLAND ISN’T FOR SALE President Donald Trump confirmed that he is considering the “large real estate deal” of purchasing the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, saying that it would be “strategically interesting.” The Danish prime minister has slammed the notion, saying “Greenland isn’t for sale.” [HuffPost]

‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory in the USA

This 15 August 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

The REAL Russiagate Conspiracy

Is Russiagate the liberal QAnon?

QAnon is an extreme right conspiracy theory among supporters of Donald Trump.

Hasan Piker and Felix Biederman discuss Russiagate on Agit Prop.

The ‘Russiagate‘ conspiracy theory, promoted especially in the USA by corporate media and the right wing of the Democratic party, says that supposedly all bad things or supposedly bad things in the USA, from the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality to Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, are caused by Russia.

In reality, Clinton lost the election because:

1. The eighteenth-century electoral college system in the USA.

2. Because Republican politicians had disenfranchised millions of, eg, African American voters.

3. Because Hillary Clinton was not an attractive alternative to Trump. Because of her Wall Street links and warmongering. She herself admitted: I lost, because I am a capitalist.

While, according to many polls, Bernie Sanders, sabotaged by the Democratic party bureaucracy, would have defeated Trump.

Trump does not represent Russia. He represents roughly half of the United States billionaire class. Blaming some Russian or other Johnny Foreigner is a lazy alternative to criticizing capitalism in the USA; and to criticizing the real crimes of Trump, like climate denial, environmental destruction for Big Oil, racism, concentration camps for immigrating, warmongering, misogyny, homophobia etc. etc.

For a more extensive discussion, see here.