[Peace-discuss] Notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

Notes for discussion topics on AOTA and NFN. Have a great show guys.



Surveillance: Surveillance balloons as the Pentagon tests airborne mass 
surveillance.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest 
-- Guardian: "Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US"

Add balloons to the vehicles by which we will be increasingly surveilled.

> The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six
> midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents[1]
> filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal.
>
> Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural
> South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of
> Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central
> Illinois.
>
> Travelling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the
> balloons are intended to “provide a persistent surveillance system to
> locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats”,
> according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation,
> an aerospace and defence company.
>
> The balloons are carrying hi-tech radars designed to simultaneously
> track many individual vehicles day or night, through any kind of
> weather. The tests, which have not previously been reported, received an
> FCC license to operate from mid-July until September, following similar
> flights licensed last year.
>
> Arthur Holland Michel, the co-director of the Center for the Study of
> the Drone at Bard College in New York, said, “What this new technology
> proposes is to watch everything at once. Sometimes it’s referred to as
> ‘combat TiVo’ because when an event happens somewhere in the surveilled
> area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred,
> and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came
> from.”

[1] https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=233815&x=.






Russiagate: More people saying that the DNC email disclosure to WikiLeaks 
before the 2016 US presidential election was an inside job -- a leak not a 
"hack" (obtained over the Internet as Hillary Clinton and so many 
Russiagate supporters say sans evidence).

https://www.blackagendareport.com/russiagate-fanatic-michael-isikoffs-curious-project 
-- San Francisco bay area independent journalist Ann Garrison's article on 
a 20 minute discussion between Seymour Hersch and Ed Butowsky which was 
recorded and posted to YouTube in 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VaQcglmZvY . Ed Butowsky is suing a number 
of parties:

 From the complaint at 
http://lawflog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019.07.15-Amended-complaint-stamped.pdf 
:

> Michael Gottlieb, Meryl Governski, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, Brad
> Bauman, The Pastorum Group, Leonard A. Gail, Eli J. Kay-Oliphant,
> Suyash Agrawal, Massey & Gail LLP, Gregory Y. Porter, Michael L. Murphy,
> Bailey & Glasser LLP, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., Anderson Cooper,
> Gary Tuchman, Oliver Darcy, Tom Kludt, The New York Times Company, Alan
> Feuer, Vox Media, Inc., and Jane Coaston

Butowsky claims that the negative press about Seth Rich's involvement (al 
'Seth Rich is not involved, Russia did it!') hurt Butowsky's business. 
Butowsky's lawyer is Ty Clevenger who has written about this case on his 
blog at http://lawflog.com/?p=2210 .

Very few news outlets are carrying any word of this lawsuit (as I've 
written before). RT is still one of the best sources for straight talk on 
this issue (and a number of other issues):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGac4K4KuPo -- RT's report on Butowsky's 
lawsuit.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/russiagate-fanatic-michael-isikoffs-curious-project 
-- Black Agenda Report article which also talks about a project 
Russiagate-supporter Michael Isikoff started trying to distract people from 
paying attention to any news which says Seth Rich had anything to do with 
the DNC emails, or that those emails were leaked and not illicitly obtained 
by Russians via the Internet.

Garrison transcribed and summarized some part of that conversation between 
Hersh and Butowsky:

> Seymour Hersh: I'll tell you what I know. What I know comes off an FBI
> report. Don’t ask me how. You can figure out I’ve been around long
> enough. This is according to the FBI report. What they find is he [Rich]
> makes con[tact]. First of all, you have to know, you have to know some
> basic facts. One of the basic facts, is there’s no DNC or Podesta email
> that exists beyond May 22nd, May 21st, 22nd, the last emails from either
> one of those groups. And so what the report says is that sometime in
> late spring—we're talking about June, you know, summer and June 21st,
> late spring would be after, I presume . . . I don't know. I just say
> late spring, early summer, he [Rich] makes contact with Wikileaks.
> That's in his computer and he makes contact. They [FBI investigators]
> found what he had done. He had submitted a series of documents, of
> emails, some juicy emails from the DNC. He offered a sample, an
> extensive sample—y’know I'm sure dozens of email—and said, “I want
> money.”
>
> Later Wikileaks did get the password. He had a Dropbox, a protected
> Dropbox, which isn’t hard to do. I mean you don't have to be a wizard, IT
> wizard. Y’know he was certainly not a dumb kid, and they got access to
> the Dropbox. He [Rich] also, and this is also in the FBI report, he’d
> also let people know with whom he was dealing, and I don’t know how he
> dealt—I’ll tell you about Wikileaks in a second. I don’t know how he
> dealt with Wikileaks—the mechanism. But he also, the word was passed,
> according to the FBI report, “I also shared this box with a couple of
> friends, so if anything happens to me, you’re not, it’s not going to
> solve your [their?] problem.” OK? I don’t know what that means, I don’t
> know what he was … anyway, but Wikileaks got access and before he was
> killed.
>
> Ed Butowsky: But what you’re saying is that he uploaded stuff into the
> Wikileaks dropbox and they pulled it down and that’s where the Podesta
> and DNC emails came from.
>
> SH: It doesn’t preclude Russians also hacking them! I just don’t think
> that. Y’know it’s always Occam's Razor. Wikileaks got ‘em.
>
> EB: Yeah, I know. I understand. But I wanta stay focused on one thing
> just for a moment. You saw the FBI report?
>
> SH: No. I have somebody on the inside. Y’know I’ve been around a long
> time and I write a lot of stuff. I have somebody on the inside who will
> go and read a file for me. And I know this person is unbelievably
> accurate and careful. He’s a very high-level guy and he’ll do a favor.
>
> EB: And is there any way we can get our hands on the report?
>
> Hersh responded that he could not risk exposing his high-level FBI
> source by sharing a document even if he could get one. He then asked
> Butowsky to tell him what he knew:
>
> SH: My pen is down. I’m not quoting you about anything. I know that.
> What do you know?
>
> EB: I know that Julian Assange told a friend of mine who met with him
> that he got the emails from Seth Rich.
>
> SH: Whoa!
>
> EB:  And they’re very personal friends.
>
> Hersh said that he had been working on the story since August 2016
> because he foresaw that Russia would be blamed for the email leaks.
>
> SH: I’ve been doing this story since the late summer because I smelled
> it, I smelled it in August. OK? That the fallback was going to be
> Russia.

What's odd is that nowhere in Garrison's (otherwise interesting) article do 
you find any mention of Craig Murray, former British ambassador to 
Uzbekistan (2002-2004). There is reason to believe Murray played a pivotal 
role in explaining how the DNC emails got from the DNC leaker to WikiLeaks.

John Kiriakou (former CIA agent, the only man who went to prison for the US 
government torture program because he revealed that program) spoke with 
Redacted Tonight's Lee Camp in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrVWeA2QmWk. 
Kiriakou said that Murray was the courier for the leaked DNC emails, 
physically obtaining a USB key containing those emails from Seth Rich on 
the night of the 2016 Sam Adams award ceremony and later conveying those 
emails to WikiLeaks. Consider this exchange between Kiriakou and Camp 
during a discussion of the Robert Muller report and Muller's investigation 
into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

[starting at 3m55s into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrVWeA2QmWk ]
> Lee Camp: And this is one of the many holes in the Muller report, which
> still found no collusion, but they [the FBI] didn't even talk to Julian
> Assange.
>
> John Kiriakou: They never even /asked/ to talk to Julian Assange.
>
> Lee Camp: It's amazing.
>
> John Kiriakou: And I'll tell you who else they didn't talk to was
> Ambassador Craig Murray. Craig's the former ambassador to Uzbekistan. He
> came here [to the US] right around that time in 2016 to participate in a
> Sam Adams award ceremony. Sam Adams is a group of retired CIA, NSA,
> other intelligence officers and we were giving an award. Well, Craig
> loves to go out drinking after these award ceremonies. That night he
> didn't. That night he said he had an important meeting. As it turned out
> his important meeting was to meet someone who he's never named who gave
> him a thumb drive with all of the information on it -- all of the DNC
> emails--
>
> Lee Camp: Wow.
>
> John Kiriakou: --which he then took to WikiLeaks.
>
> Lee Camp: Wow.
>
> John Kiriakou: So if he has come out to confess that it was not a hack,
> not a Russian hack, 'I physically carried the documents to WikiLeaks',
> why did the FBI never want to interview him?
>
> Lee Camp: That's incredible, I didn't even know that detail. But
> there's been a lot of other evidence brought forward that this was not a
> hack, it was a leak. It was from the inside.
>
> John Kiriakou: It was; Bill Binney, the former Technical Director at
> the NSA has said repeatedly -- including in the Oval Office -- that the
> rate of speed with the information was uploaded shows -- proves -- that
> it could not possibly have been done remotely. It had to have been done
> on-site on a thumb drive.
>
> Lee Camp: Yeah, but that upends the whole 'Russia did it' idea so we
> can't have that.

If this is correct, Hersh's story and Kiriakou's story are compatible: 
Hersh describes Rich getting WikiLeaks' attention and arranging to be paid 
by WikiLeaks. This part happens electronically, using "some juicy emails 
from the DNC" (as Hersh said to Butowsky) so Rich can prove his legitimacy 
to WikiLeaks. Neither conversation above makes it clear how WikiLeaks got 
the passphrase to decrypt this initial set of emails.

If (as Hersh said) Seth Rich "let people know with whom he was dealing" 
this could also help explain how the DNC knew it was Rich was conveying DNC 
emails to WikiLeaks. This helps explain how someone at the DNC knew whom to 
kill either to prevent the release of those emails, or whom to punish for 
having released copies of emails.

Once the deal between Rich and WikiLeaks is made, Rich now has to provide 
the full copy of the DNC emails to WikiLeaks. No computer network is needed 
for this -- Seth Rich used his IT skill and server access to copy the 
emails to a USB thumb drive. Rich arranged to meet Murray on the night of 
the 2016 Sam Adams ceremony, Rich gave Murray that thumb drive which had 
the DNC emails, and Murray later conveyed those emails to WikiLeaks 
(possibly also done in person by simply handing a WikiLeaks representative 
the same USB drive).

So, contrary to Butowsky's claim that Hersh's version of events "doesn’t 
preclude Russians also hacking them [the DNC emails]", it pretty much does, 
particularly for someone who observes Occam's Razor -- the simplest 
explanation is usually the correct explanation. Russian involvement 
requires a different set of explanations than an insider leaking the DNC 
emails to WikiLeaks and being murdered for his leak. Russian involvement 
over the Internet (as Russiagate-supporters claim) has been debunked by 
Bill Binney and his group in experiments transferring data over the 
Internet. That group couldn't come anywhere close to transferring the 
amount of data needed in the timespan that matches information gleaned from 
the email data (see Abby Martin's interview of Bill Binney in 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjHs-E2e2V4 for more on this[1]). But the 
transfer speed matches a USB data copy quite well.

In the Hersh conversation:

> Ed Butowsky: I know that Julian Assange told a friend of mine who met
> with him that he got the emails from Seth Rich.
>
> Seymour Hersh: Whoa!
>
> Ed Butowsky: And they’re very personal friends.

This "very personal friend" could have been Craig Murray, the man Kiriakou 
said was the courier of the USB key containing the DNC emails.

[1] 20m34s into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjHs-E2e2V4 Abby Martin 
talks with Bill Binney about how we know the DNC emails were leaked from 
the inside and not obtained remotely over the Internet:

> Abby Martin: Let's move on to the allegations of Russian hacking into
> Podesta's email account in the DNC. Can you first go over the evidence
> that Muller claims to have that proves that it's Russia?
>
> Bill Binney: Well you see, I really don't know of any evidence that
> Mueller has because he's never made it public. So, the only evidence I
> have is what's made public. And from that it went into the Rosenstein
> indictment, you know the Guccifer 2 and the DC Leaks data. And they
> talked about that as the evidence for the indictments and so on. You
> know they claimed that Guccifer 2 is a Russian, but the timestamps that
> we have on the programming inside the data that was published by
> Guccifer 2 shows timestamps that are consistently inside the United
> States. But that's not the real issue, the real issue was with the data
> itself and how quickly it was downloaded, it was incompatible with a
> transfer across the net to anywhere or any distance. If it went beyond
> the high-speed line that you had dedicated to you, then it slowed down.
>
> Abby Martin: Explain that in laymen's terms -- why you think this was
> an inside leak as opposed to a hack?
>
> Bill Binney: Okay, well, the fastest download speed we had was a 49.1
> megabyte rate. Which meant that the hacker was taking the data out at
> that rate across the network, where ever they were. You know they could
> be local, they could be anywhere. Well, we said okay, what is the
> capacity of the lines going across to Europe? And at that point
> everything failed -- you couldn't get it across that fast. But you
> could to a thumb drive or something local. Some of our people disagreed
> with that, they said they thought it could. So we said, okay we'll try
> it. So we've got hacker friends in Europe trying to -- and a friend in
> the US to put up a gigabyte of data and say 'Here, try to pull it
> across, see how fast you can get it.'. And the fastest they could get
> was from a data center in New Jersey to the UK in London. And that was
> 12.0 megabytes per second -- less than one-fourth the necessary capacity
> to transmit the data alone.
>
> Abby Martin: Well, what about the timestamps: do you think that Russia
> could have been throwing off analysts by planting false timestamps?
>
> Bill Binney: First off, to understand the massive surveillance that is
> involved: everything is captured by NSA. So, NSA should have some of
> that evidence somewhere. And they have failed to come forward, even the
> ICA -- the Intelligence Community Assessment -- that Russia "hacked
> it", you know? NSA had "moderate confidence".
>
> Abby Martin: Right, what does that mean?
>
> Bill Binney: That means we have no evidence.
>
> Abby Martin: Because the other intelligence agencies said they had
> confidence but the NSA said they had "moderate confidence".
>
> Bill Binney: You see, they aren't relevant. When it comes to
> communication, NSA is the only one that matters. The rest of them
> don't.
>
> Abby Martin: And did they explain what the "moderate confidence" that
> they had meant?
>
> Bill Binney: No. I mean, to me, that's language for 'I have no
> evidence.'.
>
> Abby Martin: I wanted to get this out of the way because it's always
> interested me because you claim that British diplomat Craig Murray
> corroborates this--
>
> Bill Binney: Yep.
>
> Abby Martin: --he claims that he handed over a drive to someone.
>
> Bill Binney: Well, he talked to somebody who was involved in
> transferring the data, yeah.
>
> Abby Martin: So he, himself, talked to someone.
>
> Bill Binney: But even from the forensic evidence based on the WikiLeaks
> exposure of data that they published there were multiple ways that they
> got it.
>
> Abby Martin: Then who else has corroborated your findings?
>
> Bill Binney: A number of technical people, people in the Veteran
> Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and others around the world, by
> the way.



Russiagate: Craig Murray explains Russiagate lies by examining DNC's logic 
in their lawsuit.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/08/in-the-world-of-truth-and-fact-russiagate-is-dead-in-the-world-of-the-political-establishment-it-is-still-the-new-42/

The DNC started a lawsuit against Russia, WikiLeaks, Donald Trump Jr, Jared 
Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Julian Assange. This means the DNC "Russia did 
it" claims must be scrutinized by a court as part of the normal procedure 
for determining if the case should proceed.

Craig Murray (who likely knows precisely how the DNC emails got from the 
DNC to WikiLeaks because it was likely he who carried them there on the USB 
thumb drive Seth Rich gave him on the night of the 2016 Sam Adams Ceremony) 
writes:

> Douglas Adams famously suggested that the answer to life, the universe 
> and everything is 42. In the world of the political elite, the answer
> is Russiagate. What has caused the electorate to turn on the political 
> elite, to defeat Hillary and to rush to Brexit? Why, the evil Russians, 
> of course, are behind it all.
> 
> It was the Russians who hacked the DNC and published Hillary’s emails, 
> thus causing her to lose the election because… the Russians, dammit,
> who cares what was in the emails? It was the Russians. It is the
> Russians who are behind Wikileaks, and Julian Assange is a Putin agent
> (as is that evil Craig Murray). It was the Russians who swayed the 
> 1,300,000,000 dollar Presidential election campaign result with 100,000 
> dollars worth of Facebook advertising. It was the evil Russians who
> once did a dodgy trade deal with Aaron Banks then did something
> improbable with Cambridge Analytica that hypnotised people en masse via
> Facebook into supporting Brexit.
> 
> All of this is known to be true by every Blairite, every Clintonite, by 
> the BBC, by CNN, by the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington 
> Post. “The Russians did it” is the article of faith for the political 
> elite who cannot understand why the electorate rejected the
> triangulated “consensus” the elite constructed and sold to us, where the
> filthy rich get ever richer and the rest of us have falling incomes, low
> employment rights and scanty welfare benefits. You don’t like that
> system? You have been hypnotised and misled by evil Russian trolls and
> hackers.
> 
> Except virtually none of this is true. Mueller’s inability to defend[1]
> in person his deeply flawed report took a certain amount of steam out
> of the blame Russia campaign. But what should have killed off
> “Russiagate” forever is the judgement of Judge John G Koeltl of the
> Federal District Court of New York.
> 
> In a lawsuit brought by the Democratic National Committee against
> Russia and against Wikileaks, and against inter alia Donald Trump Jr,
> Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and Julian Assange, for the first time the
> claims of collusion between Trump and Russia were subjected to actual
> scrutiny in a court of law. And Judge Koeltl concluded that, quite
> simply, the claims made as the basis of Russiagate are insufficient to
> even warrant a hearing.
> 
> The judgement is 81 pages long, but if you want to understand the truth 
> about the entire “Russiagate” spin it is well worth reading it in full.
[1] 
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/454823-democrats-express-private-disappointment-with-mueller-testimony
[2] 
https://www.scribd.com/document/420269577/DNC-lawsuit-ORDER-Granting-Motion-to-Dismiss-073019





Russiagate: Skripal case falls apart some more, UK Counterterrorism Chief 
says there's not enough evidence to build a case against Moscow.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/07/salisbury-attack-metropolitan-police-examine-role-vladimir-putin-russia 
-- Guardian report repeating government allegations (sans evidence).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDV74Wb84s4 -- The Russian embassy in the 
UK has accused the British government of manipulating public opinion after 
news of Scotland Yard conducting an investigation into the Skripal poisoning.

On March 4, 2018, 67-year-old Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter 
Yulia (both Russian citizens, Sergei is also a British citizen with dual 
citizenship), who was visiting him from Moscow, were poisoned with what the 
UK claims is a Novichok nerve agent. There has been no confirmed proof of 
this. On March 15, 2018 they were in a critical condition at Salisbury 
District Hospital. Yulia was said to be "conscious and talking" and out of 
critical condition on March 29, 2018. Sergei was no longer in a critical 
state on April 6, and released on May 18.

On March 12, 2018, Prime Minister Theresa May identified the substance used 
in the attack as a Russian-developed Novichok nerve agent. She demanded an 
explanation from the Russian government. Two days later, May said that 
Russia was responsible for the incident and announced the expulsion of 23 
Russian diplomats in retaliation. But there has never been any outside 
confirmation of the substance used, and it's not clear where the substance 
came from. There are many so-called "Novichok" (Russian for 'newcomer') 
substances, all have been published publicly for years. The substance said 
to be involved is very strong (a tiny amount would kill many grown men) and 
has a short potency once exposed to air. One requires a chemical lab to 
manufacture the substance at all. Logically, although this is rarely 
discussed in corporate media, that suggests someone at the UK's Porton Down 
lab (one of the UK's most secretive and controversial military research 
facilities) may have been involved in creating the substance used in the 
attacks as this lab is very near Salisbury where the Skripals were found 
slumped over on a park bench post-attack.

The Skripals were (allegedly coincidentally) first found by a military 
nurse and her daughter, though news about this wasn't released until many 
weeks after the initial news that the Skripals and Detective Sergeant Nick 
Bailey (who attended to the Skripals, presumably after being called by the 
military nurse and her daughter) were poisoned. The UK government purchased 
Skripal's UK home and everything in it, and destroyed Skripal's pets, 
leaving no opportunity for a third party to do an independent investigation 
as to how the Skripals were poisoned in the first place. The Skripals have 
been kept incommunicado since they were poisoned.

On June 30, 2018 another chemical substance attack befell two others in 
Amesbury: Dawn Sturgess (who died on July 8 and may have been a heroin 
abuser according to one RT report, which is relevant because that may have 
played a role in her dying), and her partner Charlie Rowley. Sturgess and 
Rowley were admitted to Salisbury District Hospital. Rowley awoke on July 10.

Two Russian nationals "Alexander Petrov" (alleged alias of Dr. Alexander 
Mishkin) and "Ruslan Boshirov" (alleged alias of Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga) 
are said to be involved in this, but again no clear evidence connects them 
to these events. A third GRU officer present in the UK during the time 
Sergey and Yulia Skripal fell into a coma has been identified as Denis 
Vyacheslavovich Sergeev, but again no evidence released so far clearly ties 
him to these events either.

UK media insists that Vladimir Putin himself ordered this attack, again 
despite any evidence to back up such a claim. It's not clear how Russia or 
Putin would benefit from making such a choice. Seymour Hersh, whom 
investigative reporter John Pilger has called "Probably the greatest 
investigative reporter in the world", told Afshin Rattansi (host of RT's 
"Going Underground") that the Russian mafia is more likely to be involved 
in the Skripal attack than the Russian government.

 From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJgTiP6WBss

> Seymour Hersh: Those two [Mishkin & Chepiga] were helping the British 
> intelligence services with information about the Russian mafia. That's 
> what they were doing here [in the UK]. In other words, the people that 
> were high on the list of people who would want to hurt him [Sergey 
> Skripal] would be the Russian mafia. Russians, but not the Russian 
> government.
> 
> Afshin Rattansi, RT host: Do you mean the Skripals?
> 
> Seymour Hersh: Yeah, I mean that was the understanding. There was also >
> some reporting out of Europe about that that's been pretty much 
> widespread.





Russiagate: Guardian wrongly accuses Sputnik of editing a photo of two 
bearded, smiling men walking away from the Notre Dame cathedral as it 
burned (possibly smearing the men and Russia to fuel anti-Muslim 
sentiment). The Guardian

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201908061076478237-the-guardian-apologises-to-sputnik-for-fake-news-accusations-over-notre-dame-fire-photo/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD3f-PBwqZk -- The Guardian apologized to 
Sputnik France after wrongly accusing Sputnik of doctoring a photo and 
claiming "Muslims celebrated the destruction of Notre Dame". The Guardian 
zoomed into the picture of one of the men's cheeks and claimed "If you zoom 
into the picture you'll see obvious editing on this man's cheek" but there 
was no such obviousness because there was no such editing.

The men (who were actually only two local architecture students who went to 
see the fire for themselves) weren't grinning because they were glad to see 
Notre Dame burn, they were grinning because one of the men had 
inadvertently walked into some cordoning tape instead of walking under the 
tape.

Pulitzer prize-winning Politifact (a so-called "fact checker" whose service 
is used as the basis for justifying censorship on some social media 
outlets) was among the first to claim that Sputnik had edited the photo, 
claiming "experts" called the photo's authenticity into question. 
Politifact also claimed:

> [This photo] has been used to support claims that the cathedral fire was
> a terrorist attack and fuelled anti-Muslim rhetoric.

https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2019/apr/16/viral-image/photo-muslims-laughing-front-notre-dame/ 
-- Politifact corrected their statement on May 28.

The Guardian's "Fake or Real" Instagram series piled on in the same vein. 
The Guardian just released their apology.





War: Get ready for more war with Iran (remember that sanctions are war) as 
sanctions ramp up and provoking Iran by getting Britain to seize an oil tanker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GZFI0GR018 -- Afshin Rattansi interviews 
Aaron Maté on the chance that a regime change war is being ramped up for 
right now, the connection to Israel, and the difference between Iran's 
relatively small military spending versus the great threat Iran is said (by 
the US and US allies) to pose.






War/economy: Venezuelan sanctions (sanctions are war) are being done "for 
the good of the Venezuelan people"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ20MSFXX_8 -- Aaron Maté from "Push Back 
with Aaron Maté" on how:

> Aaron Maté: [...] if [the US] can't use force, it makes people suffer.
> They tried the same thing in Iraq under Clinton in the '90s, they're
> trying the same thing now in Iran, they've tried the same thing to
> Nicaragua going back many decades. And this is what the savage mentality
> of Washington that tries to destroy any country that is defiant leads
> to. And it's striking to see that, for all the talk we hear about a
> 'resistance' to Donald Trump, the response amongst Democrats is either
> this silence or even support. Some of the biggest so-called 'resistance
> figures' -- Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff -- all of them have
> actually supported the Trump administration's efforts to impose its will
> on Venezuela through murderous sanctions.

Consider what others have said about how crippling sanctions really are:

> Alfred de Zayas, former UN Human Rights Council Secretary: Sanctions
> kill... Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with
> medieval sieges of towns.
Cuban harm from sanctions:
> U.S. State Dept. memo from 1960: Every possible means should be
> undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba...denying money
> and supples to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about
> hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.
It's worth mentioning that even under these sanctions, Cuba's universal 
housing and universal healthcare programs put the shame to the US' 
healthcare cost and outcome, and the US has no universal housing program to 
speak of.

And of course, there's always what Madeleine Albright said to "60 Minutes" 
about the Iraqi sanctions imposed under her watch:

> Lesley Stahl, interviewer: We have heard that half a million children
> have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you
> know, is the price worth it?
> 
> Madeleine Albright: We think the price is worth it.
Albright would later go on to support Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for 
Mrs. Clinton's strongly neoliberal and neoconservative record (a proven 
record of belligerency around the world) and because Mrs. Clinton is a 
woman (Albright repeated her often-used catchphrase "There's a special 
place in hell for women who don't help each other" in support of Clinton's 
New Hampshire primary).




Health: "Report: ‘No Evidence That Fracking Can Operate Without Threatening 
Public Health’"

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/08/05/report-fracking-threatening-public-health 
-- "More than 1,500 scientific studies on the health and climate impacts of 
fracking prove its dangerous effect on communities, wildlife and nature."

> In June the nonprofits Physicians for Social Responsibility and
> Concerned Health Professionals of New York released the sixth edition of
> a compendium that summarizes more than 1,700 scientific reports,
> peer-reviewed studies and investigative journalism reports about the
> threats to the climate and public health from fracking.
> 
> The research has been piling up for years, and the verdict is clear, the
> authors conclude: Fracking isn’t safe, and heaps of regulations won’t
> help (not that they’re coming, anyway).
> 
> “Across a wide range of parameters, from air and water pollution to
> radioactivity to social disruption to greenhouse gas emissions, the data
> continue to reveal a plethora of recurring problems and harms that
> cannot be sufficiently averted through regulatory frameworks,” write the
> eight public health professionals, mostly doctors and scientists, who
> compiled the compendium. “There is no evidence that fracking can operate
> without threatening public health directly and without imperiling
> climate stability upon which public health depends.”
> 
> The research collected and summarized is wide-ranging and includes the
> harms not just from drilling and fracking, but the long tail of the
> process, including compressor stations and pipelines, silica sand
> mining, natural-gas storage, natural-gas power plants, and the
> manufacturing and transport of liquefied natural gas.
> 
> Dr. Sandra Steingraber, a biologist, author and distinguished scholar in
> residence at Ithaca College, is one of the compendium’s co-authors. She
> helped lead an independent investigation into the scientific research on
> the health risks from fracking that was a precursor to the current
> compendium. Those efforts drove public engagement on the issue and
> eventually led to a ban on fracking in her home state of New York in
> 2014.
> 
> She says this latest collection of research reveals some significant and
> noteworthy trends.
> 
> “There’s really definitive evidence now that methane leaks at every
> stage of the fracking process” from drilling to storage, she says. And
> that’s contributing to a surge in methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in
> the atmosphere.
> 
> But methane isn’t just a climate danger. It’s also a contributor to
> smog, otherwise known as ground-level ozone, which is linked to strokes,
> heart attacks, asthma and preterm births.
> 
> “Methane is a source of air pollution that’s deadly — and that’s become
> clearer and clearer,” says Steingraber.

-J