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Help fund new Antony Loewenstein documentary on disaster capitalism

Our friend Antony Loewenstein is working on an important documentary about the pillaging of resources without respect for the people’s interests in Afghanistan, Haiti, and Papua New Guinea. He’s got a Kickstarter campaign up for the project; I’m going to donate today (because we all know this is the way journalism will be funded in years to come). Here’s Antony’s pitch:
 
I’ve spent my professional career investigating stories the mainstream media largely ignores from Palestine to Syria and Cuba to China. Uncovering the silences, revealing the lives of people the corporate press deems unimportant. Israel/Palestine has been a key focus, including my best-selling book My Israel Question and last year’s edited collection After Zionism (with Ahmed Moor). Detailing Western-backed apartheid should be a duty of all rational human beings.
 
Now, after this month’s release of my new book Profits of Doom: How Vulture Capitalism is Swallowing the World (endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Scahill, John Pilger and others) – a work that’s taken me to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and across Australia – I’m launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund an independent documentary. Working with New York based film-maker Thor Neureiter, we’re needing to raise $20,000 in one month to take us back to Afghanistan, Haiti and Papua New Guinea and shoot more footage of lives negatively affected by US foreign policy, mining interests, privatized aid and business lobbies in Washington that only care about the bottom line. And to document inspiring resistance against the odds. 
 
We’d greatly appreciate your financial support (at this link). Independent film-making and journalism takes time and effort and your assistance will make this work a reality. Spread the word and please tell your friends and family. And if you know any wealthy benefactors, send them our way. 
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Done. Hope others do too. This looks like a very worthy project.

It’s not even plain vulture capitalism–it’s government subsidized vulture capitalism. And the victims are here in USA as much as elsewhere. The keys are in the IRS code’s priorities designed to keep the lower masses not quite ready to violently take to the streets, and authorize the rich getting richer. The middle class, lower to middle, and slightly upper middle class–pay the bulk of the price. It redistributes income in a way that allows the rich to get richer, while the poor get freebies, and the middle class, all three tiers, take a bath, draining the most from the lower, then the middle-middle, and finally the upper middle class. It’s a beauty of knowing just how far the system can go in supporting the rich without any major calls for revolution.

>> This looks like a very worthy project.

It does. Unfortunately, the requirement for both a Kickstarter.com AND an Amazon.com account is, IMO, a big dis-incentive to making a contribution.

That said, I did contribute $120. :-)

RE: “Our friend Antony Loewenstein is working on an important documentary about the pillaging of resources without respect for the people’s interests in Afghanistan, Haiti, and Papua New Guinea.” ~ Weiss

FROM WIKIPEDIA [Lyall Howard]:

[EXCERPTS] Lyall Falconer Howard (1896–30 November 1955) was a World War I veteran, engineer and business owner, and the father of former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard.[1] . . .
. . . During World War I, Lyall Howard was known as a proud patriot.[3] On 16 January 1916, at age 19, he signed up to the Australian Imperial Force. . .
. . . In battle, Lyall Howard was wounded by a mustard gas attack in Passchendaele and spent 10 weeks in hospital.[1][8] The gassing caused chronic bronchitis and skin rashes which would continue to plague him after the war.[4] . . .
. . . In 1926, Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes declared that he would make “New Guinea for the returned serviceman”. He offered Australian ex-servicemen land parcels in New Guinea at very generous prices.[8] Like many other ex-servicemen, Lyall Howard took up the offer and acquired two copra plantations on Karkar Island in New Guinea valued at the time at more than £100,000 (over A$4 million in today’s currency) where 200 native labourers worked.[8]
Two Australian companies, Burns Philp and the trading house W. R. Carpenter and Co Ltd managed many of the plantations on behalf of the ex-servicemen.
The companies found that it was cheaper to pay the ex-servicemen a yearly rent to lease the land rather than purchase it themselves. The controversial but legal scheme became known as “dummying”, and was common at the time.[8]
The Howard land holdings raised the attention of the Australian Administrator of New Guinea. In 1929, the Administrator sent a cable to the Investigation Branch (now known as ASIO) in Canberra:

“Walter and Lyall Falconer Howard apply consent purchase property valued at £25,000 and £100,000 respectively. Strongly suspect dummies for Carpenter and Coy. Could Investigation Branch enquire into status and financial circumstances these men and report the result urgently?”[8]

In 1928, Commonwealth Auditor General, Sir John Latham, commissioned a report into the ‘dummying’ affair. Sir Latham concluded that, in the Howard’s case, there is “no doubt whatever that dummying exists”, but said “the offence is not so open and the pretence is better maintained” compared to other cases. With the assistance of Treasurer Ted Theodore, the Administrator pursued the Howard case for many more months, but eventually declared he was “satisfied with the bona fides of the Howards”.[8]
Sir John Middleton, a former PNG MP and son of returned Australian serviceman planter Max Middleton said:

“It’s nothing against Howard’s father because everyone was doing it”, “There was no disgrace in it. Dozens of people did it”.

Even a one-armed lift operator at Burns Philps’ office in Sydney was a big plantation owner on paper.[11] . . .

SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyall_Howard

Done. Thanks for the heads-up, Phil. This is a crucial part of what journalism will come to look like as an alternative to corporate directed MSM.