[Peace-discuss] NfN notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

Here are some notes on topics to discuss for an upcoming News from Neptune. 
The unquoted commentary is mine. Have a good show guys.




"No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government 
is actually doing is worse than you imagine."

   -- William Blum (1933-2018)



Chomsky on staying in Syria: from October 2018

http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/13cf816e-8e40-41c8-bb76-d453a3261d8b -- 
original article getting passed around again in which it was reported on 
October 3, 2018 Chomsky endorsed "maintaining a presence which would deter 
an attack on the Kurdish areas":

> ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The US should stay in northern Syria to deter
> attacks against Syrian Kurds, well-known American linguist and political
> activist Noam Chomsky said in an interview with the Intercept last
> week.
> 
> “The other crucial question is the status of the Kurdish areas — Rojava.
> In my opinion, it makes sense for the United States to maintain a
> presence which would deter an attack on the Kurdish areas,” he said.
> 
> Chomsky noted that the Kurds have “succeeded in sustaining a functioning
> society with many decent elements” in Syria’s north.
> 
> “The idea that they should be subjected to an attack by their bitter
> enemies the Turks, or by the murderous Assad regime, I think is anything
> should be done to try to prevent that.”
> 
> Chomsky, described as the father of modern linguistics, is one of the
> most important thinkers of this century and shares some sympathy for the
> Kurds.
> 
> He backed a petition in 2016 condemning military operations in Kurdish
> cities and called for peace talks between Turkey and the Kurdistan
> Workers’ Party (PKK).
> 
> For instance, in an interview with Kurdistan 24 last year, he said
> Kurdistan’s independence referendum was legitimate.

Jimmy Dore discussed this article on 2018-12-22 (because people are 
pointing to it as defense for the idea that Trump is wrong to pull out of 
Syria, thus being pro-war here is being anti-Trump) and noted the 
contradictions from what people expect to hear from Chomsky -- why continue 
illegal US presence in a sovereign country? Aren't we supposed to champion 
and follow International law? -- and noted that Dore & Co. couldn't find an 
update on this from Chomsky.







Russiagate: The trouble is the tipping point: it's the beginning of the end 
wall closing in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjUvfZj-Fm0 -- Russiagate hype pushing for 
the end of Trump's presidency in a nutshell, courtesy of Super Deluxe. 
Please note the dates in the upper-right corner.

And look who's right there with the corporate media: Amy Goodman and 
Democracy Now.

Jimmy Dore's reaction in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdHtAzFNwjE 
(repeats the clip with an interruption for commentary, but the 
aforementioned clip in full is here too).

We've been told that Trump will leave office before the end of his 1st term 
due to either resignation or being forced out. This has not happened and 
there's no evidence to back what the pundits say.

This is how one could read Russiagate as well -- a long series of baseless 
assertions with nothing substantive to show for the effort after 2+ years. 
Why continue with this talk?

Russiagate serves multiple purposes: Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are 
desperate to shift the blame for her losing a rigged election, blaming 
Russia for other things is passing muster with the corporate media and 
corporate media sycophants (like Democracy Now) including:

  - invading the US electrical network via Vermont,
  - bad Star Wars movie returns,
  - the French election (before the election occurred laying the groundwork 
for a result the elites didn't like),
  - the German election (same),
  - Brexit,
  - the Catalan vote referendum,
  - the Ukrainian Civil War,
  - the spreading Yellow Vests protests

Russiagate could eventually also be used as the reason to go to war with 
Russia; another war based in lies.

There's no evidence to back up any of these claims but that doesn't stop 
Russiagate supporters from repeating these claims. All the time spent on 
Russiagate nonsense is time not spent on examining the international 
rejection of neoliberalism (this is no accident). Russiagate is clearly a 
conspiracy theory without grounding in fact.







Russiagate: Nate Silver on how little influence the alleged Russian social 
media posts could have had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SETw5GLF8mU -- Jimmy Dore's reaction on 
Nate Silver's tweets, in particular a set of 'tweets' at 
https://mobile.twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1074848968188796930 which read:

> What fraction of overall social media impressions on the 2016 election 
> were generated by Russian troll farms? 0.1%? I'm not sure what the 
> answer is, but suspect it's low, and it says something that none of the 
> reports that hype up the importance of them address that question.
> 
> For instance, this story[1] makes a big deal about a (post-election)
> Russian social media disinformation campaign on Bob Mueller based on...
> 5,000 tweets? That's **nothing**. Platform-wide, there are something
> like 500,000,000 tweets posted each day.
> 
> If you wrote out a list of the most important factors in the 2016
> election, I'm not sure that Russian social media memes would be among
> the top 100. The scale was quite small and there's not much evidence
> that they were effective.
> 
> It's far more likely that the Russians were just throwing a bunch of
> shit at the wall and seeing what stuck and that basing it on Cambridge
> Analytica data wouldn't have been meaningfully more effective than doing
> it at random.

[1] 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/business/technology/russian-disinformation-teams-targeted-robert-s-mueller-iii-says-report-prepared-for-senate/2018/12/17/0e0047f6-0230-11e9-8186-4ec26a485713_story.html


I don't want to tacitly accept the idea that it is wrong for non-US 
citizens to comment on American elections, or that publishing ads is 
somehow inappropriate or wrong. What these Russians are alleged to have 
done is indistinguishable from free speech and of incredibly minor 
importance. Complainers merely highlight what the US has done to foreign 
politicians including killing democratically-elected leaders and planting 
stooges in power.

Also, Jimmy Dore doesn't quite understand what constitutes "treason"; the 
objections Glenn Greenwald rightly has with James Risen on what treason is 
also apply to Dore (but nobody in Dore's show corrects him). See 
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/21/intercepted-podcast-russiamania-glenn-greenwald-vs-james-risen/ 
for more on Greenwald's reaction to Risen's repeated claim that Trump 
"colluding" with Russia would constitute treason. Frequent RT commentator 
Lionel also sometimes mentions on his YouTube channel that there is no such 
crime as "collusion" so this complaint is rooted in something that is not 
illegal. I'm reminded that Hillary Clinton's campaign took money from Saudi 
Arabians (no collusion there?) and Jeb Bush's campaign also took foreign money.

I understand and take Silver's point seriously: none of the social media 
posts in question amount to much -- some ads were not run at all, some ads 
ran after the election, reports come out that tell you they state more 
certainty in the headline than the article's own data can justify -- and 
the entire purchase price is clearly orders of magnitude away from being 
taken seriously. There's not enough effect to reach enough voters in enough 
states with enough electoral votes to have changed the 2016 US presidential 
election outcome. No way of framing this argument results in making a 
reasonable argument that Russians are liable for Hillary Clinton losing a 
rigged election.

There's no legitimate way around it: that election (and many other social 
actions) are about rejecting neoliberalism and rejecting neoconservatism.









Pulling out of wars: Corporate media is angry that "Mad Dog" Mattis is 
leaving. Trump wants to leave Syria, he has also asked for options to leave 
Afghanistan including complete withdrawal (according to NBC). Rachel 
Maddow, for example, is distressed over what leaving means for troops' 
spouses and loved ones if US leaves.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/white-house-has-asked-pentagon-draw-plans-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal-n950591 
-- NBC report which includes:

> The White House has asked the Pentagon to look into multiple options,
> including a complete withdrawal, the officials said.
> 
> An Afghan official told NBC News that Trump is considering a substantial
> drawdown of U.S. troops in the country.

https://twitter.com/PatTheBerner/status/1075619426857172992 -- "Pat the 
Berner" on Rachel Maddow's concern:

> Rachel Maddow is now saying that Trump pulling out of Syria is horribly
> distressing for the spouses and loved ones of the troops there. Think
> about that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAG7BCaKr9s -- RT coverage of corporate 
media complaints on US out of Syria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aD7XxM_nt0 -- "Watching the Hawks" on how 
upset the Democrats are that Trump wants out of Syria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nRLhoPQzRo -- Jimmy Dore show including 
Dore pointing out that Obama beat Hillary Clinton in part because of her 
vote for the authorization to invade Iraq in 2003. As has been said many 
times on News from Neptune, that and Obama's description of that war being 
a "dumb war" led people to believe he was the peace candidate. He wasn't, 
but he did fool people into believing that he was (including Dore who 
admits he was fooled here).








DNC corporation inside baseball: The people are for Bernie Sanders, but the 
DNC elites aren't. Also, manufactured support for Kamala Harris for POTUS 
because the elites like her and she's not doing well in polls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v95ZGyC-ZJQ -- The NYT is already smearing 
Sen. Bernie Sanders (in case he runs) by pointing out that he's not 
spending his time courting beltway insiders like Sen. Elizabeth Warren is. 
As The Jimmy Dore Show panel points out, Sanders has been spending his time 
championing the Amazon pay raise, the Disney pay protest (and the promised 
raise they won), and gets a lot of attention from the working class. But 
the NYT (sans evidence) claims Sanders is only being taken seriously by 
whites. The claim is not true, but putting that claim forth is in the 
interest of the elites whom the NYT serves. The NYT takes Warren more 
seriously because this "Wall Street scourge" told people she's "a 
capitalist" (no hint of the NYT picking up on the contradiction there -- 
how much of a "scourge" could she be to Wall St. if she's for capitalism?).

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryancbrooks/kamala-harris-2020-president-black-women-survey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCQMRvzugCA -- Clara Jeffery, chief of 
Mother Jones magazine (which has apparently switched to favoring whatever 
the Democrats tell them to favor), posted a poll of "black women to say 
who's among their top three candidates" from "She the People" (whom I've 
never heard of) and Sanders came in last at 12.1% out of 7 (Harris -- 
71.1%, Beto -- 38.3%, and Biden -- 25% are the top 3). 222 political 
operatives and other elites were polled.

By contrast 
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/18/bernie-sanders-straw-poll-2020-elections-1067867 
is a DFA straw poll of 94,000 people in which support for Bernie Sanders 
led the results.

Carl Beijer clarified the "She the People" poll in 
https://twitter.com/CarlBeijer/status/1075154081826643968 pointing out that 
Jeffery made the same revealing choice the NYT did:

> Clara Jeffery is promoting this as a poll of black women, and somehow 
> failed to mention that it is exclusively a poll of politicians, donors, 
> and operatives. [...] This is a recurring theme in Clara's politics: the
> overwhelming majority of black voters who aren't power brokers in the
> Democratic establishment don't matter.

Jimmy Dore also points out the failing "left"/"right" language often used 
to describe what's going on and rightly calls this a class war.

There's also a reminder of how the DNC corporation doesn't care about their 
voters (remember Bruce Spiva in the mostly not-reported DNC lawsuit from 
the Bernie Sanders voters?), thus disincentivizing voters from voting for 
Democratic Party candidates.

Dore also reminds people that the Democrats don't mind losing (thus 
answering a question Michael Moore asks in his ridiculous new movie "11/9") 
at 17m27s:

> Jimmy Dore: They [the Democratic Party] don't care if they keep losing.
> Just keep that in mind, okay, they don't care. They actually enjoy Trump
> being president; I know that sounds crazy to say. But it doesn't really
> screw them up too much because they don't have to do any
> self-reflecting, they don't have to cut any of their corporate ties, and
> it keeps everybody distracted from reform.

Jimmy Dore calls his shows comedy, so I might have to revise my list of 
comedy news programs that are worth considering. On television, the only 
comedy news program to watch these days is Redacted Tonight. The others are 
interchangeable corporate shows written and performed by sycophants (as 
I've written about in CounterPunch). But Dore's show looks promising 
because (so far as I've seen) you get views that are rightly critical of 
corporate media (instead of repeating it, as the TV shows repeat mostly 
whatever take CNN offers) and they feature a lot of people you don't get to 
hear from in other media (such as people posting on social media who point 
out how the corporate narrative is designed to serve big business interests).






Economy: Wealthy tech giant gentrification pushes out the poor

http://extras.mercurynews.com/lastrefuge/ -- 2 miles away from Facebook HQ, 
the working poor live in trailers after their rent skyrockets.

> Lisa Cosey-Stevens works for San Mateo County. She loves her job.
> 
> But despite steady work and little debt, she trudges back and forth to
> the office every day from a dark RV trailer, packed floor to ceiling
> with bags of clothes, pet supplies for her seven dogs, thriller novels
> and food. September 2018
> 
> Cosey-Stevens, 63, has been parked on the shoulder of Bay Road in East
> Palo Alto, just about two miles from Facebook headquarters and some of
> the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, since June. “No one knows
> how badly I want out of this,” she said during an interview in her
> trailer. “It’s depressing to live like this.”
> 
> She’s part of an unplanned and impromptu RV park, about 80 people pushed
> out of apartments and into trailers and the edge of homelessness.
> 
> The working poor are spilling into Bay Area streets for lack of safe,
> affordable shelter.
> 
> Elected leaders, police and social workers are scrambling to address
> complaints and community needs, hoping to eventually eliminate these
> pop-up [RV] neighborhoods [which are set up by and for the poor].




Economy: Wealth inequality -- 3 Americans hold as much wealth than the 
bottom 50% of Americans. Globally: 8 billionaires' combined wealth is 
greater than 50% of the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/08/bill-gates-jeff-bezos-warren-buffett-wealthier-than-poorest-half-of-us 
-- according to a 2017 report from the Institute for Policy Studies, three 
billionaires -- Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates -- have amassed 
as much wealth as the bottom half of American society.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/22/oxfam-report-in-2017-there-was-a-new-billionaire-every-2-days.html 
-- From the article:

> [A]ccording to Oxfam, a new billionaire appeared every two days in 2017,
> while 82% of the wealth being created on this planet already went to the
> top 1% and the bottom half of the global population saw no wealth gains
> at all.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176507/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_a_world_that_is_the_property_of_the_1%25/ 
-- Nomi Prins on "Wall Street, Banks, and Angry Citizens: The Inequality 
Gap on a Planet Growing More Extreme"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/If-us-land-mass-were-distributed-like-us-wealth.png 
-- if US land mass were divided like US wealth (from 2013).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Wealth_Inequality_in_America_by_politizane.webm 
-- a graphical representation of wealth inequality, the results of a poll. 
The video criticizes socialism without justification and tacitly accepts 
the notion that harder work deserves higher pay (both of which could use 
some critique). But the video uses a good means of explaining the 
difference between what a majority of those polled see as ideal wealth 
distribution, what wealth distribution the polled believe exists today, and 
what actual wealth distribution is.







Economy: UK poverty climbs and spurs investigation. The cause? 
Neoliberalism ("austerity" policy choices made since 2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5fjbU4rNQM -- part 1 of 2 video
https://therealnews.com/stories/significant-poverty-in-the-uk-triggers-investigation-by-human-rights-expert-1-2 
-- part 1 of 2 transcript

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwatIQm7VbM -- part 2 of 2 video
https://therealnews.com/stories/uk-poverty-is-the-consequence-of-ideological-policy-choices-of-the-government-2-2 
-- part 2 of 2 transcript

> Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human
> Rights, says one of the reasons he wanted to investigate UK poverty is
> because of implications for the RoW given the UK’s historic role as
> world leader in social protection policy








Economy: Neoliberalism is rejected in more places -- Quito demonstrations 
against Moreno's "Paquetazo" (austerity measures)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLso3wqcirE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o73ckphlZaQ -- both reports from teleSUR on 
Ecuadorians (teachers, students, drivers, and other everyday citizens) 
collectively rejecting Moreno's new measures to increase prices, cut 
budgets, and lay off workers.

A couple of demonstrators were interviewed in the former report:

> Cristian Naura, demonstrator: Personally, I think that this is the
> height of what we're seeing with the bundled austerity measures. With
> the price hikes, with the rise of gasoline prices, I think this is going
> to affect all of us and I think if we stay quiet we're going to be
> worse. So we need to protest; we need to say enough is enough.
> 
> Carlos Viteri, lawmaker, Citizens Revolution Movement: This event is
> organized by a number of organizations of transport and self-employed
> workers, and of course, workers unions. We're here as citizens, but also
> as assembly members to join the public in rejecting the economic measures
> of this government. The government has raised the price of fuel which
> means that the price of everything will go up in Ecuador. For example,
> basic necessities! This will affect the poor, the majority of
> Ecuadorians. On the other hand, they forgive multi-million dollar debts
> for those who have the most -- the bankers! For the multinational
> companies! Billions of dollars were forgiven for millionaires.






Economy/Health: More companies try a 10-hour/day, 4-day work week. Same 
number of hours packed into 4 days.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-world-work-fourdayweek/burnout-stress-lead-more-companies-to-try-a-four-day-work-week-idUSKBN1OG0GY 
-- Reuters claims that burnout and stress push some companies to try 
letting workers work 10-hour days 4 days/week and take every Friday off or 
come in late on Monday. Workers are also seeing the signs of being 
constantly online and available to do work.

> A recent survey of 3,000 employees in eight countries including the
> United States, Britain and Germany found that nearly half thought they
> could easily finish their tasks in five hours a day if they did not have
> interruptions, but many are exceeding 40 hours a week anyway - with the
> United States leading the way, where 49 percent said they worked
> overtime.
> 
> “There has been work creep. Because you always have the technology, you
> are always working, so people are getting burned out,” said Dan
> Schawbel, director of executive development firm Future Workplace, which
> conducted the survey with Kronos.










Healthcare: The fight against Medicare for All is underway -- Obama & 
Clinton Democrats are join lobbyists under the "Partnership for America's 
Healthcare Future" (PAHCF)

https://americashealthcarefuture.org/ -- HMO stooges website.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/10/establishment-democrats-progressive-medicare-1052215 
-- Politico coverage
https://archive.fo/Yvrb4 -- archive of Politico coverage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE6RXOwQYPI -- Reaction to this from Jimmy 
Dore.

 From Politico:
> The rift could come into full view in the opening weeks of the new
> Congress, as the party long bound by a need to defend the Affordable
> Care Act tries to embrace a new health care vision it can carry into the
> 2020 presidential campaign. House Democratic leaders already are
> emphasizing the need to align behind a more pragmatic agenda focused
> largely on shoring up Obamacare, without peering too far into the
> future.

"Pragmatic agenda" means continuing HMO-led healthcare delivery. 30 million 
people have no healthcare and more are "under insured" (they have insurance 
but can't get procedures/medicine they need because either they can't 
afford it or their HMO won't cover what's needed).

Jimmy Dore also rightly points out that the person named Shaver quoted in 
the Politico is a woman and highlights that this means:

> Jimmy Dore: So it just goes to show you that women are just as big a
> money-sucking assholes and enemies of the people as any guy could ever
> be. So there's your identity politics: there's a woman fucking over
> people right there, and just bullshitting you, and gaslighting you with
> right-wing talking points like the corporate cash-sucker that she is.

Two people involved with this article were former Clinton and Obama 
campaigners, highlighting how Republicans and Democrats work together to 
defeat something the majority of the American public has wanted for years.

The claims made in the Politico article are ridiculous and clumsy attempts 
to make Medicare for All go away. Virtually every paragraph has something 
objectionable in it, here's one example:

> Officials from several groups expressed confidence that public support
> for Medicare for All will plunge as people become more aware of the
> trade-offs it would require.

No way: Medicare for All continues to be the most desired healthcare 
delivery system whether it receives no news coverage, misleading news 
coverage, or is outright lied about with unfounded (but often repeated) 
claims Medicare for All would bring. Years of pro-HMO propaganda hasn't 
changed the overwhelming public support for Medicare for All.

Since lying PR seems to be incapable of eliminating interest in Medicare 
for All, the next major phase is to redefine what "Medicare for All" means 
by changing HR676 (this work is underway and we'll see what comes of 
it[1]); watering down what Medicare for All covers to the point where 
either corporate political parties can vote for it in Congress or the 
public stop supporting it.

[1] 
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/20/advocates-call-on-jayapal-to-release-draft-text-of-house-single-payer-bill/ 
-- Rep. Pramila Jayapal is the new lead sponsor of HR676 and she is said to 
have a draft of a new HR676 but hasn't published it for review or input. 
Russell Mokhiber warns us that this could be very bad news for us.

http://healthoverprofit.org/2018/12/18/letter-to-congresswoman-jayapal-release-the-text-of-hr-676/ 
-- is a letter to Jayapal urging releasing a draft copy before it is made 
final. The letter is signed by some names you know in the Medicare for All 
fight including Dr. Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. Here's some text from 
that letter. S 1804 is Bernie Sanders' bill.

> Some of your public statements recently have caused concern. 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. We are
> being asked to mobilize support for the new HR 676, but we cannot
> support a bill we have not seen.
I think the letter is quite called for as is Mokhiber's concern -- 
typically when legislation is kept secret that's because the authors know 
the public won't like it. Consider the time when the only text we knew of 
from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was leaked text published by 
WikiLeaks. Congress had to read the text under severe conditions aimed at 
preventing leaks (no photocopying, no note-taking, no recording of any 
kind, and one had to go to a specific room to even read the text).






Healthcare: The US is paying more for healthcare now than Medicare for All 
would cost. And even the recent Koch brother study which tries to continue 
the HMO-based status quo admits that HMO-based delivery will cost $3 
billion more than Medicare for All.

http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2018/18_12_13.mp3 -- The first 
segment with Robert Pollin on paying for Medicare for All is a must-hear.








Corporate power: Nestlé still abusing people worldwide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9aCJg8BvMo -- Mexican coffee farmers 
reject Nestlé's power. This is an ongoing story, Nestle's abuses against 
its suppliers and its customers continue.









Spin: I support what Trump proposes but I still feel I must distance myself 
from anything he says that is good.

https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1076138229127172097 -- Jeremy 
Scahill on December 21, 2018 regarding Trump announcing pulling out of Syria:

> 1. I support withdrawing US troops from all these wars, overt and
> covert. 2. Trump is an unstable authoritarian who cannot be trusted. 3.
> “Mattis was an adult” is bullshit. He’s a hawkish war criminal. 4. It’s
> very telling that the war party in DC is furious.

Why is #2 in there?

Isn't this an example of what David Green was referring to when he pointed 
out how even when Trump says something amenable people can't say they agree 
with it without also adding something to also make it clear that they don't 
like Trump?

Why didn't the commentators also do this with Obama (who, for instance, 
annually promised closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, sharply ramped up 
drone bombing, continued G.W. Bush's wars and added more of his own)?

-J