[Peace-discuss] NfN notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

Carl & David: Here are a few topics for you to consider discussing. Here's 
to your filling the tubes[1] with some much needed clarity.


[1] "A series of tubes":

> [..The] Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's 
> not a big truck. It's a series of tubes! [...] Tangled-up tubes! [...]
> Wide enormous tubes!
-- Sen. Ted Stevens
    June 28, 2006
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes

DJ Ted Stevens remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtOoQFa5ug8

By the way, from calling emails "an Internet" to not understanding the 
advance packetization offers, Stevens' explanation of how the Internet 
works was enormously incorrect. But it is still referred to humorously.





Assange/WikiLeaks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1GwNPVtfqw -- UK police will be forced to 
reveal Washington and London concerning WikiLeaks via an Italian 
journalists (and WikiLeaks partner) successful appeal of a freedom of 
information request of the London police. Stefania Mauritzi successfully 
appealed a freedom of information request concerning correspondence with 
the US Justice Dept. Mauritzi claimed that any data concerning WikiLeaks 
journalists should be published. The police refused claiming Mauritzi had 
no right to request information on other people. A British tribunal 
disagreed on the condition that there is written consent.

This information could help illustrate what role British government played 
in the criminal investigation and indictment of Julian Assange.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcScAizrHQI -- German politicians visited 
Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, reportedly to check on his health. 
There's no report from them yet about his status.





Coverage by the Media: Russiagate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa3DvIDQu2w -- Newly-leaked information 
(the veracity of which has yet to be determined) claims that the UK 
"Integrity Initiative" (II), part of the UK's "Institute for Statecraft" 
charity, is actually a taxpayer-funded rapid-response unit providing 
Russophobic propaganda. The II claims to be "revealing and combating 
propaganda and disinformation" from Russia.

According to the documents, the II gets £2 million from the UK Foreign 
Office and pays:

Ben Nimmo, a fellow at the Atlantic Council and former NATO press officer, 
£2,500/month.

Chris Scheurweghs, former head of NATO integrated data service, £2,280/month.

Bruce Jones, carried out policy assessments for NATO secretary general's 
office, £600 for an article.

Julian Lindley-French, Atlantic Council strategic advisory group member and 
co-lead of GLOBSEC NATO adaptation initiative, £285 for a blog.

Liz Wahl, former RT America anchor who resigned on-air and author of "An 
insider's view on Russia's RT" which compared the network to ISIS:

> [...] the culture of hate, extremism, and paranoia that Russian media
> propagates is troubling. As seen with the rise of ISIS and other
> extremist groups, an ideology of hatred does not have to be mainstream
> to be dangerous [...]

Wahl received what RT described as "a three-figure sum" for her work with II.

MP Chris Williamson has called for an investigation into II and "similar 
efforts being funded by our government". The UK media largely ignore the II 
(perhaps because the II is doing the Russiagate maintenance job the UK 
corporate media would otherwise do).

Related: 
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks 
-- meanwhile, the US is doing what the corporate media, corporate media 
sycophants (I'm looking at you Democracy Now), and (largely) the Democratic 
party are getting worked up over, and has been doing since 2011?

Does this mean the Democrat and Republican parties are spending billions of 
dollars too much on "media buys" (what we're told is the most expensive 
part of any American political election campaign) because they could 
effectively steer an election for a mere hundred thousand dollars on social 
media ads?

It's free speech and right and proper when the US interferes in other 
people's elections. But it's horrible and wrong "election interference" 
when other countries establish groups to post ads that might cause some US 
voter to change their mind?

No. It's a continuing and dangerous distraction from examining class 
politics, objecting to neoliberalism and neoconservatism, and a convenient 
scapegoat for Hillary Clinton who has twice lost the race for US President, 
both times to relative political upstarts. Losing once she could handle 
without this establishment participation in diverting blame, but twice? No 
way. She needed an excuse to convince people she didn't lose a rigged 
election and she's not to blame.

Thanks to David Green for pointing to 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dfNkaozUus which is Jimmy Dore show on 
explaining the latest Russiagate NYT article. This is an exceptionally good 
condensation of Russiagate problems and why (as Dore says) people turn to 
YouTube to get their news -- it's because previously thought of as 
'mainstream' news is getting things dangerously wrong: the deceptions and 
distractions have piled up and these organizations (such as the New York 
Times) have built a legacy of getting their most important stories horribly 
wrong -- the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for instance, has a 
series of such stories).

I also cite the same for Democracy Now which was doing great work during 
that same time. During the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, DN quoted 
the NYT lies and immediately followed up with evidence-based debunking from 
the IAEA (Hans Blix's group that was in Iraq doing inspection work) which 
clearly laid out that the whole 'Iraqi WMD' narrative was wrong. DN also 
proudly featured "unembedded" journalists to report while the so-called 
"embedded" journalists were providing military-vetted stories based on 
going wherever their military handlers took them (these stenographers were 
'embedded' with the military).

But nowadays DN has clearly bought into Russiagate distractions and 
attendant lies, occasionally dipping into identity politics distortions as 
well. Identity politics gives us no room to understand that it's possible 
to have a diverse Congress which continues the war machine. Such an 
arrangement is a PR move which continues to inherently robs us of the money 
we all need to live decent morally upright lives. Identity politics 
functions as designed: a distraction from class examination. The issue 
isn't whether we should have a Congress with more non-heterosexuals, 
non-whites, or anyone who doesn't identify as a man. We need to know what 
each Congressional candidate stands for, where they get their campaign 
money, and what their political history is (including their voting record). 
These issues require doing research which identity politics is designed to 
distract us from: focus on skin color, sex/gender, or sexual orientation 
instead of policies that matter.

DN also echoes the Russiagate stories with no accompanying analysis coming 
from the show's hosts (no Russiagate equivalents to the IAEA-sourced 
headline addenda and interjections of years past, for example). 
Occasionally a guest might speak to what a distraction or distortion a 
Russiagate story is, but the show makes it clear that that view comes from 
that guest, and not the show. You won't hear views critical of Russiagate 
stories during the headlines segment or in the voice of anyone who works 
for the program. I wonder if DN's funding has provoked a change in DN's 
reportage, and the choice to let guests say what they will is a way to 
attempt to please those who view media more critically while conditionally 
donating money to DN based on not making the Democratic Party look bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF4mX1NIPYQ -- MSNBC claims it's exposing a 
Russian "cruise missile" of fake news. But their record for accuracy and 
reasonable conclusions is horrible (such as Rachel Maddow's stories).





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKtLDvqiID8 -- Michael Isikoff is now 
trying to back away from his own allegations that helped get Russiagate 
started based on the infamous "Steele Dossier" (Isikoff's article "U.S. 
intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin" at 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-s-intel-officials-probe-ties-between-trump-adviser-and-kremlin-175046002.html 
from September 23, 2016, is still online). Isikoff said:

> When you actually get into the details of the Steele Dossier, the
> specific allegations, we have not seen the evidence to support them,
> and, in fact, there's good grounds to think that some of the more
> sensational allegations will never be proven and are likely false.

Trump's tweet quoted Isikoff's attempt to back away from his own reportage 
and thanked Isikoff "for honesty" adding:

> What this means is that the FISA WARRANTS and the whole Russian Witch
> Hunt is a Fraud and a Hoax which should be ended immediately. Also, it
> was paid for by Crooked Hillary & DNC

Isikoff also told The Daily Caller

> All the signs to me are, Mueller is reaching his end game, and we may
> see less than what many people want him to find.

But Isikoff maintains that Russia was somehow still instrumental in getting 
Trump elected even if parts of the Steele Dossier have no basis in fact.

I say the problem, of course, is there's no reason to believe the 
Russia-did-it aspect of any of this either particularly 2+ years on and in 
light of what the investigations have turned up so far: some Russians spent 
some thousands of dollars on social media ads (some of which went unseen) 
which might have changed people's minds about how to vote. That's 
indistinguishable from free speech, no matter if it was "divisive" or 
published at the behest of Russian nationals or a Russian state-funded 
propaganda unit (akin to II, see above, or any US state-backed propaganda 
outlet like Voice of America). A far more reasonable explanation is that 
people were still deceived into thinking the only two candidates to 
consider were Clinton and Trump, and Clinton represented neoliberalism and 
neoconservatism which serve chiefly elite's interests, while Trump gave 
sharp critiques instead (anti-NAFTA, anti-Iraq war, for example; some of 
the only talk we've heard like that from a major party candidate in 
decades). Poor people (which make up an increasing percentage of the US 
voters since the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is shrinking 
due to neoliberalism) looked at their own economy and decided that Hillary 
Clinton failed to convince them to vote for her. So they either didn't vote 
for US President or some voted for Trump. It was Clinton's election to lose 
and she was such a poor candidate she lost a rigged election. Russiagate 
claims aim to be a distraction from that reality so we don't discuss class 
issues (Trump being duly elected, Brexit, now the spreading Yellow Vest 
protests).







Spying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDq4Jf96Fdo -- FBI spying on 
environmentalists on the baseless claim that the targets of this spying are 
planning "terrorist" ends. The warrantless US electronic spying 
infrastructure we've long been warned about continues apace despite the 
Church hearings, various leakers, and hard evidence of what US government 
offices actually do (see the Snowden NSA slides from internal NSA discussions).







Israel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7t07EoHWbo -- legislation map of US states 
that force state workers to sign an agreement saying they won't join or 
support BDS movements or risk losing their jobs. Illinois is among the 
states that have adopted such legislation. This tells you about Israel's 
desperation and shows you that BDS is having an effect and is powerful. 
Chris Hedges is interviewed.

https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/israel-texas-anti-bds-law/ -- "A Texas 
Elementary School Speech Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now 
Mandatory in Many States — so She Lost Her Job" by Glenn Greenwald about US 
citizen Bahia Amawi.







Venezuela

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tKvqj3U3O0 -- Hyperinflation drives an 
interest in cryptocurrency. This report claims 82% of Venezuelan population 
live in poverty. The US sanctions aren't helping, with Trump threatening "a 
military option" and saying "[Venezuela] is a regime that could be toppled 
very quickly by the military if the military decides to do that". This 
suggests that the smart guess is on Venezuela to pick up more objections to 
neoliberalism and connections to various anti-neoliberalism work around the 
world. Gregory Wilpert is interviewed.

But cryptocurrencies fluctuate wildly and could lose support entirely, 
leaving most users with something of no value in exchange for the 
government-backed money they put in. There's no organization one can count 
on backing a digital currency in a way that would withstand a lack of 
support for the digital currency. Also, it seems that although one digital 
currency ("Dash") claims its service "that works just like physical cash".

The reporter in the piece visited a Papa John's pizza place in Venezuela 
and asked about paying with Dash which was advertised but the teller said 
that the Dash system requires the store to have "a smartphone to scan a 
code that the customer receives on their smartphone to complete the 
transaction. But the manager took the smartphone.". The service does not 
seem to be popular: Over the weekend they have the device to handle the 
transactions and "sometimes we get 4 people in one day". Two other Papa 
John's restaurants also failed to actually let the reporter use the digital 
currency. A Subway sandwich restaurant also featured an ad for the same 
digital currency but there was no real support for this currency -- no 
ability to do transactions. Wilpert rightly points out that 
cryptocurrencies need economic stability to work and the Venezuelan economy 
is not stable now, the price of oil (on which their entire economy is 
based) is falling so nobody will invest in cryptocurrency now.





Syria

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW-GtiZeeYM -- Trump says he wants to 
withdraw from Syria. RT says US power in Middle East isn't going anywhere 
for good reason.

In 2017 Trump increased troop deployment by 33%.
2,000 troops are said to be "coming home" and RT reports troops have begun 
to return.

Will this make a difference?

US troops are deployed in 7 middle eastern countries:

Israel: A facility and Mediterranean fleet
Qatar: 10,000 troops and an airbase
Bahrain: 8,000 troops, Navy central command, 5th fleet
Kuwait: 17,500 troops, Navy bases, Air Force bases
UAE: 4,700 troops, Navy bases, Air Force bases
Iraq: 5,000 troops
Oman: 200 troops
Jordan: 1,500 troops (and all are within attack distance of Syria)




How much does non-compliance cost us? A lot. How much does non-compliance 
threaten power?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_tSZdXGAGU -- Redacted Tonight on recent 
stories of objectors who use the power of their labor to effect change. 
Some of the examples are:

https://taskandpurpose.com/neo-nazi-marine-commie-cadet/ -- Army 2nd Lt. 
Spenser Rapone versus Lance Cpl. Vasillos Pistolis:

> On Monday, Task & Purpose reported that Army 2nd Lt. Spenser Rapone was 
> slapped with an other-than-honorable discharge (and potentially
> $300,000 in West Point tuition repayments) after a photo went viral
> last September of him as a West Point cadet with the words “Communism
> Will Win” written in his cover. Rapone became a target of ire from 
> conservative activists and even lawmakers; he saluted Fort Drum with a 
> middle finger as he left on June 19.
> 
> That same day, the Marine Corps announced that Lance Cpl. Vasillios 
> Pistolis was found guilty at a summary court-martial and hit with 28 
> days confinement, a reduction in rank, and pay forfeiture — yet he will 
> remain a Marine upon his release. Pistolis’ crime? Attacking a
> protester while marching alongside white supremacists as a member of the
> neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division during last year’s “Unite the Right” rally
> in Charlottesville.
According to retired Col. Don Christensen, a former Air Force chief 
prosecutor and president of the legal advocacy group Protect Our Defenders:

> The main difference between the two service members, Christensen said, 
> is a question of violence. Indeed, Pistolis bragged about assaulting a 
> woman, an act captured by photographers; but Rapone’s crimes — flashing 
> a Che Guevera shirt and sneaking a secret lefty message into his 
> combination cover — doesn’t rise from the level of speech to “activity” 
> in the eyes of the UCMJ.
> 
> “Holding political views is one thing. Acting on them in the way that 
> the other guy did is another,” Christensen said. “You can’t be a 
> communist without calling for the violent overthrow of the American 
> government, which makes me think he’s more communist-leaning than an 
> actual communist.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/19/christmas-crisis-kill-dinner-work-abattoir-industry-psychological-physical-damage 
-- People don’t want to work in abattoirs any more. The industry is linked 
to psychological and physical damage.

> A report in the trade magazine Farmers Weekly has revealed that staff 
> shortages at slaughterhouses are threatening Christmas sales[1]. Some 
> 10,000 positions are unfilled at major abattoirs, meaning supermarkets 
> will “seriously struggle” to fulfil their seasonal orders. Of course 
> some of that shortfall is because of Brexit; crucially, however, the 
> report explains that for most potential applicants, the industry’s low 
> pay is not the problem but that “people simply do not want to do this 
> work any more”.
[1] 
https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/markets-and-trends/meat-prices/abattoir-staff-shortages-threaten-christmas-price-rises


Google employees object and quit to protest Google's role in killing

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/google-employees-quit-to-protest-companys-role-in-killing-machines 
-- 12 Google employees resigned in protest and 4,000 signed an internal 
petition opposing a partnership with the Dept. of Defense.

Also:

> Following initial reports that some at Google were peeved by the 
> company’s partnership with the Pentagon, the Tech Workers Coalition 
> started a petition asking a number of tech companies, including Google, 
> Amazon, and IBM, to abandon their work with the D.O.D. “We can no
> longer ignore our industry’s and our technologies’ harmful biases,
> large-scale breaches of trust, and lack of ethical safeguards,” the
> petition reads. “These are life-and-death stakes.” In an open letter on
> Monday, more than 90 academics in computer science, ethics, and
> artificial intelligence urged Google to drop Project Maven, and members
> of Tech Solidarity and the Tech Workers Coalition are working to build 
> coalitions among tech’s white- and blue-collar employees.
Project Maven classifies images captured by drones.




RT's "The Unknown Wars" series are live

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DSCZHiIxrY -- Congo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MihOieMXgzM -- Somalia

and it looks like they'll publish more. These are short pieces focusing on 
wars that continue with virtually no corporate media coverage (and sadly 
too little coverage from the self-described "alternative" media compelling 
me to ask to what are they an alternative?).






War: Yemen

Yemeni dead are at least 6X higher than reported: 10,000 often cited but 
60,223 died in violence since January 2016 (not including those who died 
through starvation, malnutrition, or illness including cholera)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/14/the-yemeni-dead-six-times-higher-than-previously-reported/ 
-- Patrick Cockburn's article
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioSmYCiPBDU -- RT story on lazy media 
reaction to this revelation.

> The number of people killed by the violence in Yemen has for the first 
> time risen above 3,000 dead in a single month, bringing the total
> number of fatalities to over 60,000 since the start of 2016. The figure
> is six times greater than the out-of-date figure of 10,000 dead often
> cited in the media and by politicians.
> 
> “We have recorded 3,068 people killed in November, bringing the total 
> number of Yemenis who have died in the violence to 60,223 since January 
> 2016,” says Andrea Carboni, a researcher on Yemen for the Armed
> Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), formerly based at
> Sussex University, that studies conflicts and seeks to establish the
> real casualty level.
> 
> The figures do not include the Yemenis who have died through starvation 
> or malnutrition – the country is on the brink of famine, according to 
> the UN – or from illnesses caused by the war such as cholera.
> 
> This number of Yemenis dying in the war has been played down by the 
> Saudi and UAE-led coalition, which has active military support from the 
> US, UK and France, and has an interest in minimising the human cost of 
> the conflict. The coalition has been trying since March 2015 to 
> reinstate in power Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, whose government had been 
> overthrown by the rebel Houthi movement in late 2014.





Google

https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-search-engine-2/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x6L28tCTJ4 -- Reportage claiming Google 
has ended its project to provide a censored search engine that meets with 
Chinese government approval (project "Dragonfly").

But corporate history suggests this work isn't over. The PR for this has 
been quite bad but the pursuit of profit suggests this is either being 
restructured with a smaller more quiet group of developers, or is being put 
on hold until the news dies down and then will likely be resumed.

Project Dragonfly started with a Chinese language website -- 265.com -- 
which sent a copy of search queries to Baidu (a popular Chinese search 
engine) and another copy to Google. Google would then get to learn what 
users looked for and use that information to develop a service that would 
never return hits that censors disapproved of.

Who were the censors? Presumably the Chinese government, but this could 
change at any time and without user notice.

> The engineers used the data they pulled from 265.com to learn about the
> kinds of things that people located in mainland China routinely search
> for in Mandarin. This helped them to build a prototype of Dragonfly. The
> engineers used the sample queries from 265.com, for instance, to review
> lists of websites Chinese people would see if they typed the same word
> or phrase into Google. They then used a tool they called “BeaconTower”
> to check whether any websites in the Google search results would be
> blocked by China’s internet censorship system, known as the Great
> Firewall. Through this process, the engineers compiled a list of
> thousands of banned websites, which they integrated into the Dragonfly
> search platform so that it would purge links to websites prohibited in
> China, such as those of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and British
> news broadcaster BBC.







Half of America hasn't recovered from the recession

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/half-of-america-hasnt-recovered-from-the-recession/
https://archive.fo/sKkPP -- The cbsnews.com article is the source of the 
archived copy (I post the archive.fo URL in case CBS News changes what they 
say later, it's handy to be able to go back and compare changes).

> A decade after the financial crisis, the U.S. economy seems to be firing
> on all cylinders, with unemployment at a 50-year low and growth hitting
> its stride.

The headline and story are worth noting, as is the fact that a corporate 
news outlet talks about this at all. But this quote from the article is 
simply not true. Government measures of employment are notoriously 
manipulated to exclude people who are not currently working and have 
stopped looking for work. This helps the government by lowering the 
unemployed figure.






Worldwide debt hits record high of $184 trillion -- $86,000/person.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-13/debt-worldwide-hits-record-184-trillion-or-86-000-per-person 
-- wage slavery indeed.

> Global debt hit a record $184 trillion last year, equivalent to more
> than $86,000 per person -- more than double the average per-capita
> income.
> 
> Borrowing is led by the U.S., China, and Japan, the three biggest
> economies, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday, highlighting
> potential risks to global expansion given that their share of debt
> exceeds that of output. Overall, the amount of worldwide public and
> private debt is equal to about 225 percent of gross domestic product.

It's not clear from the article how we're affected by this, but my 
understanding is that austerity measures are imposed on people following 
enormous debt particularly when the IMF gets involved. IMF loan repayment 
terms come with severe austerity policy that basically amount to 
immiseration -- making a population miserable as a whole.





Protests: Yellow Vests

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w5ulMrmlz8 -- protests spreading to 
Brussels, US, and now Israel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw0QbUu6rxM -- Yellow Vests protests in 
France demand Macron's resignation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxrTGhLijmU -- a map of other protests (not 
just Yellow Vests) across Europe: France, Spain, UK, Belgium, Italy, 
Hungary, Czech Republic, Greece,and Norway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JHPT2yJMcQ -- French government promises 
police bonuses but some police unions are wary and some police have already 
joined the Yellow Vests.



https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/20/throw-them-all-out-the-yellow-vests-uprising-in-france/ 
-- Philippe Marlière on "“Throw Them All Out!” The Yellow Vests Uprising in 
France"

Marlière argues the Yellow Vests don't trust (and won't support) 
representative democracy because it has screwed them so far. Also, the 
Yellow Vests are more clear in their objections than some (even on RT) 
acknowledge.

> The yellow vests have voiced several, more or less clear and coherent
> political demands (fairer taxation, salaries, state of the public
> services, more democracy and more order, less immigration, etc.) but
> more than anything they express a radical critique against the system of
> political representation.
> 
> First and foremost in their watchwords and slogans: “The people are
> sovereign !”, “Macron, we are not your sheep”, “I accuse this system
> that makes the rich fatter and the poor hungrier”, “Elected officials,
> you are accountable”. Even though the most scathing criticism is
> directed at the president of the republic, it is the entire political
> personnel that is targeted by the mocking, unflattering and sometimes
> even hatefilled comments.
> 
> Therefore, talking about a left or right take-over of the movement seems
> to me to be missing the point. Occasionally and locally, militant
> political activists have tried to organize the yellow vests and
> influence their mode of actions. But these actions, which certainly
> shouldn’t be underestimated, cannot hide the more important and original
> trend of the movement: the radical mistrust towards representation and
> political institutions.







Coverage by the Media: Anti-SLAPP keeps the lies running

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/20/what-the-new-york-times-has-in-common-with-the-national-enquirer/ 
-- Ted Rall on "What the New York Times Has in Common with the National 
Enquirer"

"SLAPP" is an acronym which means "strategic litigation against public 
participation" and was an effective means for a monied party to silence an 
opponent until the opponent gives up their criticism or opposition. Such 
lawsuits were made illegal in jurisdictions on the grounds that they ran 
against freedom of speech. But anti-SLAPP statutes are a means for the 
powerful to reverse that trend.

> Let’s say a newspaper prints an article that destroys your reputation:
> for example, you’re a teacher and the piece says you sexually assaulted
> students. Now let’s say that you’re innocent. Not only that, you can
> prove you’re innocent. So you sue the paper for defamation or libel.
> 
> In the old days, your lawsuit would head to discovery and then to trial
> where a jury of your peers would weigh the evidence. If 12 men and women
> good and true agreed that the paper had lied about you and hurt your
> reputation, they might award you damages to make up for lost wages and
> other financial harm. After all, even a verdict in your favor probably
> wouldn’t cause a school district to be willing to hire you.
> 
> Now we have anti-SLAPP. If you live in a state with one of these
> pretzel-logic statutes, the odds of getting justice are very low. It
> doesn’t matter how brazen the lie about you was or how much it hurt you
> or your livelihood. Even if you can prove the paper knew what they said
> about you wasn’t true when they decided to print it, an anti-SLAPP
> motion will probably stop you dead in your tracks—assuming you can find
> a lawyer willing to represent you in a state with an anti-SLAPP law in
> the first place. As a defamation law expert in California told me,
> “Defamation law is effectively dead. There is no redress.”
> 
> Here’s how it works. First you sue. Then the paper that slimed you files
> an anti-SLAPP motion. Discovery—subpoenaing each other’s documents,
> deposing witnesses on both sides—halts before it begins. So you can’t
> collect evidence. Years pass. Legal bills mount. Without access to
> documents and witnesses you have to convince a judge—not a jury—that
> your case doesn’t involve “privileged communications”—whatever that
> is—and that you’ll probably prevail before a jury. Of course, the judge
> doesn’t know that. Odds are you’ll never see that jury. Here’s the best
> part: after the judge tosses your case, you—the victim!—have to pay the
> legal fees of the publication that tried to ruin you.
> 
> Because they violate the centuries-old right to trial by jury, two state
> Supreme Courts—in Washington and Minnesota—have gotten rid of their
> anti-SLAPP statutes, ruling them unconstitutional. But there’s still a
> long way to go before sanity prevails; if anything, the momentum is for
> more states to legalize defamation with anti-SLAPP laws.





Coverage by the Media: Corbyn smears distract away from complaints against 
neoliberalism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grqsha3xe70 -- "Moderate Rebels" on 
distractive smears about Jeremy Corbyn published by the Daily Mail, the 
BBC, and the Telegraph:

 From 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3674831/The-sheer-incompetence-paranoid-Labour-leadership-Jeremy-Corbyn-sits-silently-munching-noodles.html

> Jeremy Corbyn's 'paranoid' team waste hours discussing internal Labour
> plots to oust him while the leader sits silently munching noodles or a
> granola bar, former aides have revealed.
> 
> These are just some examples of the 'sheer incompetence' of the Labour
> leader's top team that were laid bare by three sources who spent time in
> Mr Corbyn's office.
> 
> The leadership team were so paranoid that they even discussed sending in
> a 'mole' to spy on Mr Corbyn's own shadow cabinet ministers, according
> to the former staffers.
> 
> Friendly questions are planted in the audience during Q&As after
> speeches so Mr Corbyn appears popular and well-prepared.
> 
> And Mr Corbyn was also accused of taking part in a 'deliberate sabotage'
> of Labour's campaign to keep Britain in the EU, which will intensify
> pressure on the Labour leader to resign, with scores of MPs blaming his
> lacklustre performance for last month's Brexit vote.

 From https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-41036937

> A year ago, Mr Corbyn was filmed sitting on the floor of a train he said
> was "ram-packed".
> 
> Virgin Trains then released CCTV images and footage it said showed the
> Labour leader walking past empty seats.
> 
> In the newly-released CCTV, people can be seen sitting on the floor
> between the carriages.
> 
> It was released by pro-Corbyn filmmaker Yannis Mendez, whose original
> film of the Labour leader sitting on the floor sparked the debate.

 From 
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/12104166/Jeremy-Corbyn-wont-name-his-cat-and-instead-simply-calls-it-the-cat.html

> Jeremy Corbyn has revealed he won't name his black and white cat and 
> instead simply calls it 'the cat' in Spanish.
> 
> The Labour leader says he calls his pet ‘El Gato’ and that it answers
> to the tune of ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree’, which Mr 
> Corbyn whistles to encourage it back in the house.
> 
> Speaking to the Independent on Sunday, he said: “It’s a black and white 
> cat. I always call it ‘El Gato’, which is just Spanish for cat.
> 
> “When I see the cat I say, ‘Buenos dias, El Gato’. Actually, cats don’t
> know their name, cats know voices.
> 
> "What he does respond to when I ask him to come in, is the tune of ‘Tie
> a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree’. I whistle to it. I can’t sing,
> you see.”

 From https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gj5y8/chairman-mao-corbyn-bike-475

> We Called Some Bike Shops to See if They Sell Jeremy Corbyn's 'Mao-Style
> Bicycle'
> 
> A journalist accused the UK Labour Party leader of riding the bicycle of
> a communist dictator—so we tried to work out if a "Mao-bike" is really
> something that exists in the world.





Healthcare: Weakening HR676 to be more like Bernie Sanders' S1804?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/20/advocates-call-on-jayapal-to-release-draft-text-of-house-single-payer-bill/ 
-- Russell Mokhiber on "Advocates Call on Jayapal to Release Draft Text of 
House Single Payer Bill".

Rep. Pramila Jayapal is taking over the HR676 ("Medicare for All") bill 
from Rep. John Conyers. HR676, had some teeth and the support of the 
physicians who support universalizing our extant single-payer healthcare 
delivery system, Medicare.

How do we know Conyers' HR676 had teeth? The Democrats never tried to put 
it up for a vote, even when that party controlled Congress and the 
Presidency under Obama.

Now Jayapal is under fire for not releasing her draft of the new HR676. 
There's justifiable fear that she'll weaken HR676 to be more like Sen. 
Bernie Sanders' S1804:

> “Some of your public statements recently have caused concern,” the
> single payer advocates wrote in a letter to Jayapal. “In particular,
> statements about your desire to align the text with the Senate bill, S
> 1804, which is inferior to HR 676. Indeed, the Senate Bill is so
> deficient that many in the single payer movement cannot support it
> unless it is significantly revised. We want the House Bill to remain
> strong and fully supported by the entire single payer movement as the
> gold standard that the Senate must measure up to.”
> 
> “We urge you to release a draft copy of the new legislation before the
> end of the year so people can have input before it is made final,” they
> wrote. “We are being asked to mobilize support for the new HR 676, but
> we cannot support a bill we have not seen.”
> 
> “We understand that you are rewriting HR 676 before you introduce it in
> 2019. It is important to us that HR 676 not be weakened in this process,
> but be made stronger. We ask that you release a draft of the text of the
> revised HR 676 so that longtime single payer advocates can read it and
> share our views with you before the bill is introduced.”
> 
> “Transparency matters greatly to us as does getting the policy right. HR
> 676 must be strong from the outset so that as it goes through the
> legislative process, we can be sure the final bill will solve the
> healthcare crisis in the United States.”
> 
> “We know you have met with representatives of some groups. Opening up
> the process will ensure that the best information on expanded and
> improved Medicare for all is contained in the bill. And, it will ensure
> that the whole single payer movement is in support of the bill.”

This is very likely the way Medicare for All will happen under the 
Democrats: they'll weaken the terms to the point where the Democrats' HMO 
campaign funders allow the weakened bill to come to the floor for a vote.

-J