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Images of the Day:
Blacks are now shooting back at the police in Dallas, Texas. This development is sad, tragic, but predictable. People will accept a fixed number of bullets then they decide to fight back. As long as government, from Washington to every small town in America, serves the interests of the corporations and the privileged wealthy elite, sooner or later the people will rise up in resistance. As long as Obama, Congress, the Courts, and the local city governments use the police to violently suppress the poor, sooner or later the poor will fight back. All of this is tragically predictable. The shit is going down in front of Bank of America. — couldn’t make up this stuff. — Mark Mason
As detailed in my recent article “The War on Weed is Winding Down,” the health benefits of cannabis are now well established. It is a cheap, natural alternative effective for a broad range of conditions, and the non-psychoactive form known as hemp has thousands of industrial uses. At one time, cannabis was one of the world’s most important crops. There have been no recorded deaths from cannabis overdose in the US, compared to about 30,000 deaths annually from alcohol abuse (not counting auto accidents), and 100,000 deaths annually from prescription drugs taken as directed. Yet cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance (“a deadly dangerous drug with no medical use and high potential for abuse”), illegal to be sold or grown in the US. — Ellen Brown, Monsanto, Bayer, and the Push for Corporate Cannabis
We have reached the point where Puerto Rico simply has no more money to pay the loan sharks. To top it off, because it is a colony, it is not allowed to declare bankruptcy like a state or even a city could, like Detroit has done. Like Greece, it does not have its own currency. It is not clear what the outcome of the debt crisis will be. Will it be like Greece, forced to take out even more loans with interest to pay previous loans and accumulated interest while forced to implement even more austerity? — Screwed by vulture funds, Puerto Rico is the Washington’s ‘Greece’
Videos of the Day:
U.S.
Why Dallas Happened: Is the Dallas police shooting a false flag affair in behalf of gun control? Is it the result of a war veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder? Is the shooting the beginning of retribution for thousands of wanton police murders of US citizens in the 21st century? Or is there some other explanation? We will never know. The perpetrator is dead. The authorities will tell us whatever suits the purposes of authority. By Paul Craig Roberts
How the Iraq War Was Sold: The war on Iraq won’t be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as “weapons of mass destruction” and “rogue state” were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience: us. by Jeffrey St. Clair
Are We Entering an Era of Postmodern Serfdom?: Over the last few years, a growing numbers of authors have convincingly argued that America’s social order is in a deepening crisis. Among these studies are: Louis Uchtelle, The Disposable American (2007); Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, (2008); Don Peck, Pinched (2011); Donald Barlett and James Steele, The Betrayal of the American Dream (2012); D. W. Gibson, Not Working (2012); and Barbara Garson, Down the Up Escalator (2013). by David Rosen
Paul Craig Roberts: Are You Planning Your Retirement? Forget About It. You Won’t Survive To Experience It. At the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Conference, President Putin excoriated Western Journalists for endlessly repeating Washington’s lies that are driving the world to nuclear war. He asked Washington’s bought-and-paid-for-whores, the scum who comprise the Western news media: “How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction toward nuclear war?”
Environment:
Are Oil Trains Just Too Heavy? No Regulations, No Weigh To Know: The cause of the most recent bomb train derailment and fire in Mosier, OR has been determined to be lag bolts that had sheared off resulting in the derailment. This once again raises concerns that the unit trains of oil are putting too much stress on the tracks due to their excessive weight and length. There is precedent for this issue according to rail consultant and former industry official Steven Ditmeyer. In the early 1990s, there was a similar problem with some double stacked container cars being too heavy for the infrastructure — because of overloaded containers — resulting in sheared rail spikes. By Justin Mikulka
Energy News:
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
US police act as occupying army in black communities — Ex-congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney’s, statement: Well, these incidents have been happening since the founding of the U.S. It’s not unusual to have the authorities actually attacking the black community and, particularly, black men. Remember, the U.S. was founded on genocide of indigenous people and the human trafficking through the African slave-trade, of African people. So, this is not anything new. What is new, however, is that with the proliferation of personal technology we are now able to capture this police brutality and these police murders on film. And that is what is new. So, people now can actually see in their living-rooms young, unarmed, black men being shot down, being mowed down by people who are charged and sworn in their oath to protect and serve the community. 
It was illegal force and violence, or terrorism, by the police and Ku Klux Klan along with the restoration of former slave owners’ property rights by the Democratic Party and non-radical Republicans that laid the basis for the overthrow of Black Reconstruction after the Civil War and the institutionalization of legal segregation, Jim Crow. Blacks were and are indiscriminately lynched and framed up to enforce this segregation. From that time to the present, the Black community has been a virtual police state. Police violence has been and is a necessary institution of the ruling class of the United States to enforce the ongoing resegregation and gentrification of society and to intimidate the Black minority and other oppressed and exploited minorities in this country from revolting against the racist polices of the government. — Roland Sheppard, The Historic Role of Police Brutality in the Black Community and African American Oppression
Economy:
Screwed by vulture funds, Puerto Rico is the Washington’s ‘Greece’: Most of the debt is owed to US hedge funds, mutual funds or other investment accounts. Also known as “vulture funds”, these institutions buy up debt owed by the Puerto Rican government and public enterprises at very low prices because investors know they are almost worthless. They then demand repayment at full value. By Barry Sheppard
Health, Education, and Welfare:
Legality if a Matter of Power — Not Justice
‘Law and Order’ 
Quotes of the Day:
Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m: The man once regarded as the world’s most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was ‘largely’ about oil. By Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters
Ongoing/Big Energy Disasters: 
From NYC, Ferguson To Baltimore, American Police Are Trained In Apartheid Israel: Journalist Rania Khalek tells MintPress that whether it’s Baltimore or Palestine, “systems of oppression are working together to oppress people.” By Kit O’Connell
Labor:
World:
From Churchill to Blair: How British Leaders Have Destroyed Iraq for Over a Century: After seven years, the Chilcot report has delivered a damning verdict on Tony Blair’s role in the war on Iraq, but British Prime Ministers playing a destructive role in Iraq is a centuries old practice. by Garikai Chengu
The Carnage in Dhaka: the World is Paying the Consequences for America’s Disastrous Policies by Arshad Mahmud
Vulture Capitalism Prey Upon Puerto Rico