Wicked Little Things Under the Pillow

socialuprooting:

Coca-Cola, one of the planet’s giant corporations, is to be unceremoniously booted out of Bolivia. The announcement was made by Bolivian Minister of External Affairs, David Choquehuanca, who stated that the date chosen, December 21, coincides with the end of the cycle in the Mayan Calendar, the end of capitalism and the start of a culture of life.

Coca Cola will be expelled from Bolivia on the date that the Mayan calendar enters a new cycle - December 21. According to the Bolivian Minister of Foreign Affairs, David Choquehuanca, the decision was taken to expel Coca Cola on the date of the end of the Mayan calendar so as to create a pretext for celebrating the end of capitalism and the beginning of “the culture of life” in community-based societies. The celebration will take place at the Southern Hemisphere’s Summer Solstice on La Isla del Sol (Sun Isle) in Lake Titicaca.

“The twenty-first of December 2012 is the end of selfishness, of division. The twenty-first of December has to be the end of Coca Cola and the beginning of mocochinche (a local refreshing drink),” said the Foreign Minister at a political rally for Evo Morales. “The planets will line up after 26,000 years…it is the end of capitalism and the beginning of communitarianism,” he added.

wearefuckingangry:

It’s more than just stockpiling surveillance drones to spy on US citizens: the United States Army is attempting to procure an arsenal of riot gear in case the military must go toe-to-toe with civilians on US soil.

A solicitation for weapons posted on the official government website for federal business opportunities reveals that the US Army has been in the market for nonlethal equipment that it very well might be used in the United States. In a Web posting made earlier this summer, the Army asked for bids regarding its request for riot shields, face masks, polycarbonate batons and body armor. On July 10, they awarded the contract to A2Z Supply Corp of Stevensville, Montana, who pledged to fulfill their request at the tune of $6,589.98.

The latest inquiry from the US Army was filed only a few weeks before another call for bids was published by the Department of Homeland Security. On July 26, the DHS Office of Procurement Operations also wrote on FBO.gov that they were soliciting contractors to help equip them with riot helmets, tactic gloves, shin guards, body armor and other equipment comparable that could be used in tandem with a complex “riot control system.” According to the 2001 Executive Order that established the DHS signed by then-President George W Bush, the agency “will coordinate the executive branch’s efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States.” With an agency assigned only domestic duties asking for thousands of dollars’ worth of riot gear — and an army with more than one million soldiers seeking body army, not assault rifles — many are suggesting that the solicitation requests are readying the government for a full blown war with its own people on US soil.

Both requests were published within days of a recent Capitol Hill testimony delivered from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that included excerpts confirming that the federal government is considering deploying surveillance drones over California as means of proactively patrolling American cities under the guise of “public safety.”

Meanwhile, the city of Anaheim, California has come into the spotlight in recent days for hosting a week of consecutive protests targeted the city’s allegedly corrupt police department. Last weekend, two men were shot and killed by officers with the Anaheim PD. Peaceful demonstrations that erupted afterward spawned yet more violence being dished out by the local law enforcement, escalating tensions between civilians and cops and causing many to declare that the brutal policing is a localized attempt to install military rule over the people. Now with domestic agencies and the national Army both asking for riot gear, the unrest in Anaheim that has already spilled into other US cities could be soon matched with government opposition — and opposition well equipped.

theamericanbear:

Denny LeBoeuf, director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project:

The continuum of government killing that ends in drone strikes, a streamlined new version of the death penalty, connects the modern era of executions to its unsavory history in the United States. The question is not how far is the process of inflicting drone death from the ideal of a full trial with a panoply of rights and resources and process, but how far is it from the reality in the states that carry out executions? And how far is either from their historical origins in the United States, with its history of lynching and government complicity in lawless killings?…

States with the death penalty barely give lip service to the ideals of due process and adequate resources. The law that tolerates the execution of the probably innocent Troy Davis and the execution of the intellectually disabled Yokamon Hearn can accept the idea of killing a citizen without providing even a sleeping lawyer. The whole enterprise demonstrates Justice Kennedy’s 2008 observation in Kennedy v. Louisiana that: “[w]hen the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality.”… The use of drones and other summary executions makes that risk a reality.

abaldwin360:

Congressman Richard Hanna (R-NY) is fed up with the GOP.

Hanna singled out Michele Bachmann’s “suggestion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin be investigated to see if she has ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood” as an example of a party that has gone off…

Ancestry.com has discovered that John Punch, the first African enslaved for life in America, was the 11th great-grandfather of President Obama.

CNNnotes researchers “found the new connection to the president’s African roots through an unlikely link, that of Obama’s Caucasian mother. President Obama’s African American roots had previously been tied to his father’s Kenyan birth. But as genealogists were pouring through documents tracing Stanley Ann Dunham’s ancestors, they found a connection to the Bunch family which had recently published DNA evidence that they had roots in sub-Saharan Africa.”