They are Killing Us Gently: Victims in the Search for Justice...

UPS Joins Media Chorus In Thanking Police For Murder of Frank Ordonez
In a clear example of a US establishment shielding police from brutality, UPS released a bizarre statement thanking police for killing their driver, while CNN and NBC obscured officers from any wrongdoing.

by Alan Macleod: 7-year-old UPS driver Frank Ordonez was killed as police officers riddled his vehicle with bullets Friday. A pair of suspected robbers had hijacked his truck as he drove through Broward County in Southeastern Florida. Ordonez was an unwilling participant in a long and dangerous chase, as police followed the truck speeding through red lights, finally stopping when they hit heavy, rush hour traffic.

19 police officers opened fire on the truck from all angles with bystanders all around, making no attempt to negotiate the situation. Unsurprisingly, the suspects, Ordonez and another unnamed nearby commuter, 70-year-old union representative Richard Cutshaw, were killed.

UPS, Ordonez ‘s employer, immediately released a statement claiming that they were “deeply saddened” to learn their employee was a victim of a “senseless act of violence.” But the postal giant went further, thanking the police for their actions in killing Ordonez and three others. “We appreciate law enforcement’s service and will cooperate with the authorities as they continue the investigation,” the communiqué, which has since been deleted from Twitter, read.

The enormous delivery company, which employs around 400,000 people in the United States alone and announced total revenues of nearly $72 billion last year, has not offered any financial help to the victim’s family, including the two young daughters he leaves behind who started a GoFundMe to help cover the funeral expenses.

https://twitter.com/geneviemerino/status/1203477696220745728

In contrast, Ordonez’s union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, an organization with over 1.3 million members, issued an announcement that he was “murdered while delivering packages,” offering their solidarity to his family.

Ordonez’s family is also quite clear whom they blame for his untimely death. His stepfather Joe Merino, a former UPS employee himself, decried “the negligence, the irresponsibility, the lack of life, the lack of concern…the disregard for the life of the victim” the police showed.

 “They murdered him,” he concluded, claiming that police turned the area into “the wild, wild west” and a “war zone” by spraying a highly congested public area with bullets. “How can this happen in today’s day and age?” Merino asked.

His sister Genny Merino took to Twitter to vent her anger at Florida police; “Today I lost my brother, because of the fucking negligence and stupidity of the police. Instead of negotiating with a hostage situation they just shot everyone. (Including my brother) please retweet this so everyone can be aware how stupid these cops are” she stated. At the time of reporting the message had 200,000 retweets.

Media whitewashes police violence

Media have been careful to obscure the police’s actions in its coverage of Ordonez’s killing.

NBC News, for example, ran the headline “Chase, shootout involving hijacked UPS truck in Florida lead to 4 deaths” which does not even mention the perpetrator (the police) and is full of statements from law enforcement, presenting them as a positive, even heroic force in the event.

Meanwhile, CNN’s story read “The UPS employee who died after his truck was hijacked was covering the route for another driver, brother says” which insinuates the robbers killed Ordonez themselves and does not discuss any police involvement until halfway through the article.

This framing of events is consistent with a broader pattern of whitewashing police violence. “Officer involved shooting” is a ubiquitous phrase in corporate media to describe a police killing or murder. Outlets like CNN and NBC also obscure the perpetrators’ identity by using the passive voice and by referring to events like the Broward County shooting as an “altercation” or an “incident,” making sure to include plenty of quotes from police spokespeople.

Another common tactic is to smear the victim. One CNN guest described Michael Brown, shot by a police officer in 2014, as a “thug” who “set upon” his killer. Freddie Gray, meanwhile, who died of spinal injuries after being brutalized by the Baltimore police department, was denigrated by CNN as “the son of an illiterate heroin addict.”

In contrast, the police are “regularly shielded from accountability for excessive use of force within the United States,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who allege that they enjoy “impunity” for killings.



Being shot by police is one of the leading causes of death for Americans of Ordonez’s age, and particularly men of color, like he was. Despite this, the ACLU notes that in the ten years between 2005 and 2015 only 54 officers were even charged after killing civilians. And when trials did take place, the police are consistently held to a less stringent legal standard for the use of firearms and for killing others, making convictions exceptionally rare.

Another example of police impunity is on domestic violence issues. Multiple studies have shown that at least 40 percent of police officers have beaten their spouses, although the number is likely considerably higher. The National Center for Women and Policing note that fellow law enforcement officers consistently conspire to cover up the crimes of their fellow cops.

Police themselves are well aware of their impunity. After Eric Garner was killed by police officers in New York City, a police officer-owned clothing brand began selling shirts that read “Breathe Easy, Don’t Break the Law”: a reference Garner’s infamous final words: “I can’t breathe.” Therefore it appears unlikely that Ordonez’s family will receive an acceptable answer as to why he was killed while just trying to do his job.

Selling What's in Your Veins to Cover for the Basic Needs is a Booming Industries in EE UU

 
Harvesting the Blood of America’s Poor: The Latest Stage of Capitalism

Blood has become big business in the United States and there is no shortage of corporations ready to exploit America’s most vulnerable populations in order to get a piece of the pie.

by Alan Macleod: For much of the world, donating blood is purely an act of solidarity; a civic duty that the healthy perform to aid others in need. The idea of being paid for such an action would be considered bizarre. But in the United States, it is big business. Indeed, in today’s wretched economy, where around 130 million Americans admit an inability to pay for basic needs like food, housing or healthcare, buying and selling blood is of the few booming industries America has left.

The number of collection centers in the United States has more than doubled since 2005 and blood now makes up well over 2 percent of total U.S. exports by value. To put that in perspective, Americans’ blood is now worth more than all exported corn or soy products that cover vast areas of the country’s heartland. The U.S. supplies fully 70 percent of the world’s plasma, mainly because most other countries have banned the practice on ethical and medical grounds. Exports increased by over 13 percent, to $28.6 billion, between 2016 and 2017, and the plasma market is projected to “grow radiantly,” according to one industry report. The majority goes to wealthy European countries; Germany, for example, buys 15 percent of all U.S. blood exports. China and Japan are also key customers.

It is primarily the plasma– a golden liquid that transports proteins and red and white blood cells around the body– that makes it so sought after. Donated blood is crucial in treating medical conditions such as anemia and cancer and is commonly required to perform surgeries. Pregnant women also frequently need transfusions to treat blood loss during childbirth. Like all maturing industries, a few enormous bloodthirsty companies, such as Grifols and CSL, have come to dominate the American market.

But in order to generate such enormous profits, these vampiric corporations consciously target the poorest and most desperate Americans. One study found that the majority of donors in Cleveland generate more than a third of their income from “donating” blood. The money they receive, notes Professor Kathryn Edin of Princeton University, is literally “the lifeblood of the $2 a day poor.” Professor H. Luke Schaefer of the University of Michigan, Edin’s co-author of $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, told MintPress News:

    The massive increase in blood plasma sales is a result of an inadequate and in many places non-existent cash safety net, combined with an unstable labor market. Our experience is people need the money, that’s the primary reason people show up at plasma centers.”

Almost half of America is broke, and 58 percent of the country is living paycheck to paycheck, with savings of less than $1000. 37 million Americans go to bed hungry, including one-sixth of New Yorkers and almost half of South Bronx residents. And over half a million sleep on the streets on any given night, with many millions more in vehicles or relying on friends or family. It is in this context that millions in the red have turned to selling blood to make ends meet. In a very real sense then, these corporations are harvesting the blood of the poor, literally sucking the life out of them.

MintPress News spoke to a number of Americans who consistently donated plasma. Some of them did not want to be fully identified. But none were under any illusions about the system and how they were being exploited.

“The centers are never in a good part of town, always somewhere they can get a never ending supply of poor people desperate for that hundred bucks a week,” noted Andrew Watkins, who sold his blood in Pittsburgh, PA for around 18 months.

     The people who show up are a mix of disabled, working poor, homeless, single parents, and college students. With the exception of the college students who are looking for booze money, this is probably the easiest and most reliable income they have. Your job may fire you at any time when you’re on this level of society, but you always have blood. And selling your blood doesn’t count as a job or income when it comes to determining disability benefits, food stamps, or unemployment eligibility so it’s a source of money for the people who have absolutely nothing else.”

Rachel from Wisconsin, who donated hundreds of times over a seven-year period, also commented on the obvious socio-economic makeup of donors.

    We were poor, all of us in there you could easily tell that we were on the lower ends of the income bracket. They incentivize you with bonuses and the more you donate in a month the more you’ll get paid, recruiting friends bonuses, holiday bonuses, etc.”


What Is the Blood of a Poor Person Worth? 

Keita Currier from Washington, D.C., noted how she and her husband had little choice but to continue visiting clinics in Maryland for years but resented their payment methods.

     They’re predatory, the price set for your plasma is based on a whim. For example, one place I donated the first five times you get $75, then you get 20, 20, 30, 50, 25. It’s random, it doesn’t matter, but they know you are desperate and if you don’t do your $30 donation you won’t get your 50 next time. Apparently, the plasma is worth something in the hundreds, so it is not surprising that you’re screwed over.”

Zombifying America’s poor

Respondents all agreed that they were indeed being exploited, but in more ways than one. Desperate Americans are allowed to donate twice per week (104 times per year). But losing that much plasma could have serious health consequences, most of which have not been studied Professor Schaefer warns, stressing that more research is necessary. Around 70 percent of donors experience health complications. Donors have a lower protein count in their blood, putting them at greater risk of infections and liver and kidney disorders. Many regulars suffer from near-permanent fatigue and are borderline anemic. All this for an average of $30 per visit. Rachel described the terrible Catch-22 many of the working poor find themselves in:

     I got turned away twice – once for being too dehydrated and once for being anemic. Being poor created a shitty paradox where I couldn’t eat, and because I couldn’t eat my iron levels weren’t high enough to allow me to donate. That was a week of a pay cut, money I desperately needed for rent and bills and meds.”

A common method of cheating in endurance sports is to inject extra blood into your system before a race, giving you a huge performance boost. But extracting it has the opposite effect, making you sluggish and tired for days. Thus, this debilitating practice is zombifying America’s poor.

The process of giving blood is not a pleasurable one. Currier noted that after constantly donating, “the bruising gets terrible…Sometimes they can’t find the vain ‘n’ shit or they insert it wrong and they have to adjust the needle underneath your skin” she said, claiming that just thinking about it freaks her out, and revealed that her husband had to temporarily stop donating as his bosses thought he was on heroin due to the track marks on his arms.

Watkins agreed. “You could always tell how long someone had been doing the job by that needle,” he recalls. “Once they’d been there a year or so, they’d have stabbed literally thousands of people and could just tap your elbow once and slide the needle into the vein with no problems. New guys would miss the vein, punch through the vein, or try to hunt for it with the needle tip, which would leave terrible bruises.”

There is also little thought for the comfort of the patients. As Watkins explained, the thermostats are always turned down to around 50-60ºF for the plasma’s sake. Once the amber-colored plasma has been extracted, your cooled blood is re-injected in a painful process that feels as if ice is being inserted into the body. “Combined with the already cold air temperatures, this was maddening,” he notes.

Thus, America’s zombie poor are left almost permanently mentally drained like heroin addicts, and with similarly bruised and punctured arms, except they are being paid for the inconvenience. But perhaps the worst thing about the experience, according to those interviewed, is the dehumanization of the process.

Donors are publicly weighed to make sure they are heavy enough. Obese people are worth more to the bloodthirsty companies as they can safely extract more plasma from them each session (while paying out the same compensation). “They definitely turn you into a product in a very literal sense,” Watkins says; “It’s deeply exploitative and a symptom of just how far gone capitalism is.”

Many centers are enormous, with multiple rows of dozens of machines working in an attempt to appease the insatiable appetite of the vampiric corporation. And there is, according to Watkins, no lack of human “victims” willing to be treated like animals in battery farms, in exchange for a few dollars: “It was an assembly line to extract liquid gold from human mines,” he notes.

Currier also highlighted the treatment of the staff and the cost-cutting measures of clinics in Maryland she visited would enact:

     Usually the places are hugely understaffed which means they frequently don’t change gloves, the people are overworked, and at the minimum you’re staying there for 2-3 hours which means you have to plan a whole day around this shit only to get 20 bucks in your pocket to make it through the next few days. It’s depressing, disheartening and frankly embarrassing to have to hustle like this. I feel like shit after I donate.” 

 Exploitation reaches new levels

But the exploitation of humans has reached new levels in clinics on the U.S.-Mexico border. Every week, thousands of Mexicans enter the U.S. on temporary visas to sell their blood to for-profit pharmaceutical corporations. The practice is banned on health grounds in Mexico but is completely legal north of the border. According to ProPublica, there are at least 43 blood donation centers along the border that prey primarily on Mexican nationals in a legally ambiguous practice.

According to a Swiss documentary on the subject, there are precious few checks on the cleanliness of the blood these companies accept, with some donors interviewed admitting they were drug addicts. But all is sacrificed in the pursuit of dazzling profits, something donors were well aware of. Rachel from Wisconsin admitted,

     I did it for the money, I think we all do it for the money, but it’s not really something you out and out say because there’s a veneer of “helping the sick” slathered over it. But I caught glimpses of what kind of industry it was on occasion through innocuous questioning. The amount of plasma drawn from one person per donation was worth upwards of $600, I never really got a clear answer on that.

Andrew from Pennsylvania agreed, noting wryly,

     I know my plasma was worth thousands of dollars per donation [to others], because I’ve seen what a hospital in my city charged a hemophiliac for platelets, so the pittance that they pay is ridiculous, but there is only one buyer making offers at the human level. If you’re poor and out of other options, you’ll take $40 however you can get it. Any port in a storm.”

Michael, a social worker from Georgia who sold his blood for extra cash, was deeply scornful of the entire situation. “I’ve known quite a number of people who rely on money made by selling plasma. A lot of times it’s to cover childcare or prescriptions or something along those lines,” he said. “It’s absolutely deplorable to leverage literal blood money from people who have so few options.”

Big pharma is particularly interested in the blood of the young. One billboard campaign from Grifols intentionally targeted working-class students. “Need books? No worries. Donate Plasma” reads the headline. Teenager blood is in high demand in, of all places, Silicon Valley, where anti-aging technologies are the latest trend. One company, Ambrosia, charges $8,000 per treatment to aging tech executives, infusing them with the blood of the young, turning these individuals into bloodsuckers in more ways than one. Despite the fact that there is no clinical evidence that the practice has any beneficial effects, business is booming. One committed customer is PayPal co-founder turned Trump surrogate Peter Thiel, who is reportedly spending vast sums of money on funding anti-aging startups. Thiel claims that we have been conned by “the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual” and believes that his own immortality may be just around the corner, a notion that has deeply concerned academics and commentators alike.

The new and booming blood market is the perfect embodiment of the late capitalist dystopia modern America has become. The dehumanizing process of harvesting the blood of the poor to fund the quixotic immortality dreams of the super-wealthy turns the former into walking, living zombies and the latter into vampires, feasting on the blood of the young; a true American horror story worthy of Stephen King or H.P. Lovecraft. As Rachel from Wisconsin said:

It really is an industry where ‘squeezing blood from stones’ is about as literal as you can get.”

Freeland, the "defender" of human rights, is another laughable mirage manufactured by the media.

 Chrystia Freeland: Trudeau's heir apparent
Is Freeland's CV 'beyond reproach' as the Canadian media has claimed?

Andrew Mitrovicaby Andrew Mitrovica: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hurt.

So he has gone into hiding to tend to his electoral wounds. Justin Trudeau kept his job. But for how long? He knows Liberals are allergic to minority governments he now leads. He will likely get one more chance to win a majority. If Trudeau doesn't, he may have to take a walk in the snow and quit like his father once famously did or risk the humiliation of being pushed out.

When Trudeau inevitably departs - voluntarily or involuntary - his successor will already have been anointed, if Canada's corporate media could cast the deciding vote. The gooey love affair between Chrystia Freeland and her many fawning suitors in the fourth estate has been on cringe-worthy display since the journalist turned politician.

The former foreign minister has exploited that almost unconditional affection to heighten her profile nationally with a determined view to one day be called prime minister.     

Freeland's designs to assume the prime minister's office eventually became more apparent when Trudeau recently tapped his duteous foreign minister as deputy prime minister and de facto heir to the throne he now occupies - although in a diminished state.

Freeland's long-established status as the "chosen one" was plain after her ascension in November to, in effect, Trudeau's right-hand woman.

Here is a small sample of Freeland's veneration in the establishment press in the weeks since her promotion. The "indispensable" prime minister-in-waiting has been described as being "famous for her people skills," while enjoying the "magic touch" and a CV "beyond reproach".

These sweet baubles are proof that so many Canadian journalists are willing to abandon any pretence of exercising the critical faculties they are alleged to possess, preferring instead to engage in predictable and embarrassing hagiography.

These media-manufactured confections are also a reminder of how these same scribes once anointed Trudeau a saint who, in words and deeds, emerged as the refreshing antithesis of Donald Trump on the international scene.

That saccharine-laced fantasy evaporated after Trudeau was found to have broken the law to achieve his parochial political aims and to have indulged in donning racist blackface time and again well into adulthood.

Like Trudeau, Freeland is adept at self-promotion. And, like her patron, Freeland has never passed on the opportunity to promote her effervescent brand when a microphone or camera obliges.

Hence, the happy picture of Freeland as the savvy diplomat and deft tactician has taken root, with little, if any, dissent.

  Unrepentant - Canada Genocide

Even a cursory examination of Freeland's public record is enough not only to torpedo that myth, but to establish that Trudeau's heir shares his self-serving, malleable principles at home and abroad. 

As far as I can tell, Freeland's defining foreign policy "achievement" - celebrated by her credulous fans inside and outside the press - was lassoing a mercurial Trump into signing, along with Mexico, a renegotiated North American Free Trade deal.

Alas, the trade pact comes with a big, political caveat. The deal may not be ratified any time soon by a US Congress too preoccupied with impeachment.

Still, just how did the savvy Freeland tame the presidential beast? In large measure, by not uttering so much as a syllable of censure while Trump lauded tiki torch-wielding neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia as "very fine people" and remaining mute when the US president referred to Haiti and an assortment of African nations as "sh**hole countries". 

Powerful As God - The Goverment and Children's Aid Societies of Ontario

To her cheerleaders, Freeland's silent complicity in the face of such blatant bigotry and stunning ignorance is a diplomatic virtue to be applauded and, if need be, conveniently forgotten, rather than denounced.

No matter. According to one starry-eyed columnist, the other "signature" issue that also helped stamp Freeland's tenure as foreign minister was her "personal initiative" to cobble together a coalition "to promote democracy in Venezuela and stanch its epic flow of refugees."

Democracy, huh? And here I thought - foolishly, I gather - that Freeland, working hand-in-glove with that shining avatar of Alexis de Tocqueville-like liberalism, Brazil's president, Jair Bolosonaro, had tried, unsuccessfully, to engineer a coup d'etat in Venezuela and instal an agreeable, Washington-approved puppet.

In this avowedly anti-democratic geopolitical endeavour, Freeland found common cause - again - with a far-right president who traffics in lunatic conspiracy theories, including one in which actor Leonardo DiCaprio stands accused of paying for the forest fires ravaging Brazil's rainforest.

In counting incoherent conspiracy-mongering charlatans like Bolosonaro and Trump as amigos she can do business with, Freeland has forfeited any claim at being considered a "progressive".

As for her vaunted "people skills", a veteran and well-placed Canadian diplomat confirms that Freeland alienated staff at Global Affairs Canada headquarters in Ottawa because of her habitual absences and indecisiveness.

The cockeyed decision to have Freeland retain the Canada-US file - Canada's dominant bilateral relationship - means there are two foreign ministers at the helm, wresting over the nation's waning global stature.

In any event, perhaps the most glaring deception abetted by Freeland's amnesiac allies is the claim her feminist and human rights credentials are, like her resume, "beyond reproach".

I recall when, not so long ago, Freeland abandoned her cabinet colleague, Jody Wilson-Raybould, while Trudeau and his office orchestrated a campaign to smear, demote and ultimately roust a principled justice minister from her job.

What was Wilson-Raybould's fatal transgression? She asserted her constitutionally-protected independence and defended the rule of law in the face of unrelenting pressure from Trudeau and his unelected acolytes to have her intervene to make the criminal prosecution of a powerful Quebec-based engineering firm disappear.

In a naked act of sycophancy, Freeland - the self-proclaimed feminist - supported her boss and his ejection of Wilson-Raybould and another female cabinet minister who sided with the former justice minister from caucus, while casting doubt implicitly on her detailed (and subsequently corroborated) version of events.

"Of course, I support the prime minister 100 percent," Freeland told a radio interviewer. "I believe that she [Wilson-Raybould] spoke as she said she wanted to do - her truth. Having said that, I am very clearly of the view that the prime minister would never apply improper pressure."

Despite a damning verdict by Canada's Ethics Commissioner that Trudeau had "used various means to exert influence over Ms Wilson-Raybould", Freeland chose, unsurprisingly, political expediency over principle. "I, personally, have full confidence in the prime minister," she said.

Chrystia Freeland is no Gloria Steinem. Indeed, I suspect her "hero" would, at a minimum, be chagrined by Freeland's sorry appeasement and desertion of her cabinet sisters.

Freeland, the human rights "champion", is another risible, media-manufactured mirage.

Are human rights champions content to say and do nothing while scores of Palestinians, including women and girls, are summarily murdered by Israeli snipers for peacefully opposing their apartheid-like occupation on what remains of Palestinian soil?

That is a rhetorical question.

In Freeland's calculus, the executions of Palestinians might just as well have occurred on another planet, all victims of some unknown, alien entity.

But, on May 14, 2018, the tally of assassinated Palestinians was so egregious that Freeland was grudgingly compelled to emerge from her self-induced coma to pen a 45-word tweet - yes, a tweet – in which she said she was concerned and saddened "by deaths injuries that occurred today over past weeks." True to form, she did not identify the perpetrators.

Freeland's confederates are willfully blind or busy rewriting this squalid history while they plant a halo over their rising star's head.

 Je me souviens. I remember. Yo recuerdo

The Queen & The Kamloops Kidnapping 1964