[Peace-discuss] Notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

I'm not sure how much time I'll have to spend on writing more notes this 
week so I'll post what I have now.

Have a good show, Carl & David.

-J






War/Economy: How much is the Forever War costing us?

https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/forever-war-in-the-last-20-years-cost-6-4-trillion-L9NxuUD1IkaKtzSdMelQDQ/

> Since 911, the cost of Forever War totals $6.4 Trillion and 801,000 
> killed including 335,000 dead civilians. For What?
> 
> Neta C. Crawford, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political 
> Science at Boston University and a co-director of the Costs of War 
> Project at Brown University calculates the Cost of 20 Years of War[1]

[1] 
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/US%20Budgetary%20Costs%20of%20Wars%20November%202019.pdf

How do we bamboozle the people into (literally and figuratively) buying 
endless war (called "Forever War")? Change the names of the wars to hide 
the total spent:

> One potential barrier for civilians to understanding the total scale
> and costs of the post-9/11 wars is the changes in the naming of the
> wars. The US military designates main war zones in Afghanistan,
> Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria as named operations. The longest war so far,
> in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has had two names: Operation Enduring
> Freedom, designated the first phase of war in Afghanistan from October
> 2001; it was designated Operation Freedom’s Sentinel on 1 January 2015.
> The war in Iraq was designated Operation Iraqi Freedom from March 2003
> to 31 August 2010, when it became Operation New Dawn. When the US began
> to fight in Syria and Iraq, the war was designated Operation Inherent 
> Resolve. For ease of understanding, the costs are not labeled here by 
> their OCO [Overseas Contingency Operations] designation, but by major
> war zone — namely Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Iraq and later Iraq and
> Syria.

Hide the funding as emergency spending:

> OCO [Overseas Contingency Operations] spending is considered emergency
> spending. Emergency appropriations for the DOD are not subject to the
> same detailed Congressional oversight and limits as regular, or “base”
> budget non-emergency appropriations, for costs that endure whether or
> not the US is at war.

Shift the expenses to exceed the budget:

> In FY 2019, the Trump Administration made the practice of shifting
> emergency OCO appropriations into the base budget overt when it
> introduced new ways of categorizing the Department of Defense spending
> related to the Overseas Contingency Operations. Some of the funding that
> was previously designated for specific military operations has now been
> moved into a category called “OCO for Enduring Theater Requirements and
> Related Missions” and another, “OCO for Base Requirements.”

[...]

> These changes are specifically and explicitly intended to get around
> Congressionally imposed limits on the base defense budget. The
> Department of Defense FY2020 request explicitly stated as much: "These
> base budget requirements are funded in the OCO budget due to limits on
> budget defense caps enacted in the Budget Control Act of 2011."

How many people have died in these wars?

> The American Conservative comments the Costs of Forever War: 335,000
> Dead Civilians and $6.4 Trillion.[1]
> 
> The amount of money spent on these wars cannot fully convey their sheer
> wastefulness. Wars are always expensive, and they usually end up being
> much more expensive than anyone anticipates at the beginning, but when
> those wars are unnecessary and useless it makes the exorbitant cost that
> much more sickening. The money and resources expended on almost twenty
> years of failed wars could have been put to any number of more
> productive uses. Instead, that vast sum has been poured down the drain.
> As it is, the U.S. has little or nothing to show for the massive
> malinvestment that it has made in fighting these wars. These wars have
> not made the U.S. more secure, they have created more enemies than they
> destroyed, and they have set fires in their respective regions that will
> take years to burn out. As staggering as the $6.4 trillion figure is, it
> doesn’t capture how ruinous these wars have been. The U.S. will continue
> to pay for these wars long after they are over in more ways than one.
> 
> A full reckoning of the costs of our wars has to include the hundreds of
> thousands dead, millions displaced, and the wreckage of multiple
> countries. These are the truly senseless losses that could have been
> avoided. The report details these costs as well:
> 
> The report, from Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at
> Brown University, also finds that more than 801,000 people have died as
> a direct result of fighting. Of those, more than 335,000 have been
> civilians. Another 21 million people have been displaced due to
> violence.
> 
> The death and destruction that our wars inflict on the people living in
> these countries are rarely mentioned in our foreign policy debates, and
> these losses are almost never taken into consideration when thinking
> about the costs of these wars. That encourages U.S. politicians and
> policymakers to take a very cavalier approach to supporting the use of
> force in other parts of the world, and it allows them to escape
> accountability for the harm that these policies cause.
> 
> For the last twenty years, there has been no limit on what the U.S.
> would spend on foreign wars, and Congress and presidents of both parties
> have reliably thrown more money at the Pentagon to sustain these
> unwinnable wars. While there might be occasional griping about “waste,
> fraud, and abuse,” there has been no serious, consistent effort to rein
> in these wars or the military budget. There has been even less interest
> in grappling with the horrific human costs of our militarized foreign
> policy. That has to change, and it starts with demanding that the U.S.
> end its failed and open-ended wars abroad.

[1] 
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-costs-of-forever-war-335000-dead-civilians-and-6-4-trillion/






Democrats/Impeachment: The Democrats want Trump to remain in office. 
Therefore the Democrats want things that help give reasons to support him 
without addressing issues of substance in Americans' lives.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/471542-poll-finds-sharp-swing-in-opposition-to-impeachment-among-independents 
--

> A new national survey finds independent voters leading a sharp swing in
> opposition to impeachment, the second major poll to produce those
> findings this week.
> 
> The latest national poll from Emerson College finds 45 percent oppose
> impeaching President Trump, against 43 percent who support it. That’s a
> 6-point swing in support from October, when 48 percent of voters
> supported impeachment and only 44 percent opposed.
> 
> More importantly, the poll shows more independents now oppose
> impeachment than support it, a significant change from Emerson's polling
> in October. The new poll found 49 percent oppose impeachment compared to
> 34 percent who support it. In October, 48 percent of independents polled
> supported impeachment, against 39 percent who opposed.
> 
> Since October, Emerson has found Trump’s job approval rating jump by 5
> points, from 43 percent to 48 percent.
> 
> This is the second poll this week to show voters are increasingly likely
> to oppose impeachment, despite wall-to-wall media coverage of the House
> hearings that have produced bombshell testimony about how Trump
> threatened to withhold financial aid to Ukraine if the country did not
> open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, a top
> contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.
> 
> A Marquette University survey of Wisconsin, a battleground state that
> Trump turned red in 2016 for the first time in decades, found 40 percent
> think the president should be impeached and removed, against 53 percent
> who do not think so.
> 
> In October, 44 percent favored impeachment and removal and 51 percent
> opposed.
> 
> Only 36 percent of independent respondents in Wisconsin support
> impeachment and removal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYwe_K9Dxio -- Jimmy Dore & co. on this 
including pointing out how the lack of black voter support for Pete 
Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren will make either of them lose in 2020:

> Jimmy Dore: So they keep saying you have to go after the center, these
> independents, the Trump voters, that's how you've gotta win, you've
> gotta go after these moderate Republicans and get them. Why Hillary
> Clinton lost was because black and brown people would not come out to
> vote for her in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. That's what
> fuckin' happened to her, okay? They would not get off the couch. People
> who voted for Barack Obama twice would not come out and vote for Hillary
> Clinton. [...B]ecause she was for TPP which took their job away, and
> they did the crime bill which put half of their fuckin' people in jail
> also. So that's a big part [of it]. So now, if we go in who do we gotta
> get? We gotta get the black and brown people to vote for the Democrat in
> Michigan and Wisconsin. Guess what? Pete Buttigieg: zero fuckin' black
> support. Zero. He has to manufacture and pretend. Elizabeth Warren: zero
> fuckin' black support, okay? So if you're running Elizabeth Warren or
> Pete Buttigieg you're gonna fuckin' lose again, especially in Wisconsin
> and Michigan. Bernie Sanders? Is the guy who's gonna win that contest.
> That's what's gonna happen, right?

And expands on this (with focus on the Democratic Party-supported 3-month 
extension of the USA PATRIOT Act) described in 
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/19/handing-trump-terrifying-authoritarian-surveillance-powers-house-democrats-include 
concluding that "any blue will do" doesn't help when the Democrats don't do 
what helps you.

jbn: It's naive to believe that the Democratic Party can be made better 
from within, or that that party is run in a small-d democratic way. Sanders 
and Gabbard have no chance to represent the DLC corporation because as 
light as their systemic critique is (moreso Sanders than Gabbard since 
Sanders' foreign policy favors war, sanctions, and coups), that's too much 
criticism for the Democratic Party elites. And both of them have already 
pledged their support to whomever wins that party's primary (something Dore 
& co. hypocritically chastise Sanders for but let Gabbard slide on). 
Remember how Sanders was cheated (and accepted being cheated) then endorsed 
his cheater in the end? And remember what the DLC corporation's lawyer 
Bruce Spiva told us in a lawsuit brought by the disaffected supporters of 
Sanders' 2016 campaign (in a lawsuit that was virtually unreported even in 
most "alternative" news media like Democracy Now)?

 From http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/042517cw2.pdf

> Bruce Spiva: [...] We're gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer,
> and we're gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are
> voluntarily deciding, we could have — and we could have voluntarily
> decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and
> smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That's not the way it was
> done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right
> [...]

In other words: political parties don't owe you democratic control over who 
represents them. The court Spiva was speaking to is way more powerful than 
any of the people supporting Sanders, Gabbard, or anyone else in the DLC 
primary. Yet Spiva knew he was right and he knew he had nothing to fear in 
speaking to a court as he did. He essentially told the court to keep its 
nose out of DLC party politics.






Democrats/Identity Politics/Russiagate: The Democrats want Trump to remain 
in office. Therefore the Democrats want things that help give reasons to 
support him without addressing issues of substance in Americans' lives.

Democratic Party sympathizer Tara McGowan boasts of doing what the 
Democrats accuse Russia doing on behalf of the Republican Party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJQkDcEqdAo -- RT's report.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-11-25/acronym-s-newsrooms-are-a-liberal-digital-spin-on-local-news 
--

> While the articles she [Tara McGowan] publishes are based on facts,
> nothing alerts readers that Courier publications aren’t actually
> traditional hometown newspapers but political instruments designed to
> get them to vote for Democrats. And although the articles are made to
> resemble ordinary news, their purpose isn’t primarily to build a
> readership for the website: It’s for the pieces to travel individually
> through social media, amplifying their influence with persuadable
> voters.
> 
> To make this happen, McGowan is doing something else small newspapers 
> don’t: she’s using her sizable war chest and digital advertising savvy 
> to pay to have her articles placed into the Facebook feeds of 
> swing-state users she’s identified as most likely to respond to them, 
> then using that feedback to find more people like them. In digital 
> advertising, this is known as “building a custom audience.” Applied to 
> politics, it’s more like finding and activating the 80,000 swing-state 
> voters Clinton was missing, who could potentially put Democrats over
> the top in next year’s election. “This is the most interesting, and 
> potentially important, thing happening on our side right now,” says one 
> unaffiliated Democratic organizer. “If it works, it will change the 
> whole ballgame of how we reach and motivate our people.”

[...]

> Instead of boosting a news article on Facebook as a one-off promotion,
> as the presidential candidates are doing, McGowan and Courier will
> continually gather data on interested readers, which Facebook—for a
> price—will use to find more of them. “Everybody who clicks on, likes, or
> shares an article,” says McGowan, “we get that data back to create a
> lookalike audience to find other people with similar attributes in the
> same area. So we continually grow our ability to find people.” What’s
> more, it’s suddenly clear that targeting voters through the guise of a
> media company could provide an important edge over other methods. Last
> week, Google imposed tight restrictions on microtargeting political ads,
> and Facebook is weighing similar measures. But because Courier Newsroom
> is a for-profit media company, McGowan says those restrictions wouldn’t
> apply.
> 
> McGowan—a former journalist herself, who worked at 60 Minutes and CBS
> News—says she sees Courier Newsroom as a continuation of that work.
> Despite her obvious political motivations, she says that her newspapers
> will supply objective, fact-based reporting no different from what
> appears in mainstream outlets. That claim will almost certainly inflame
> those on the right and left who already believe that much of what passes
> for news, especially on social media, is driven by political agendas
> intended to manipulate unwitting readers.
> 
> McGowan forcefully rejects this criticism. “A lot of people I respect
> will see this media company as an affront to journalistic integrity
> because it won’t, in their eyes, be balanced,” she says. “What I say to
> them is, Balance does not exist anymore.” In her view, there are only
> facts and lies. She cites Trump’s impeachment narrative as an
> example—and as a justification for what she’s embarked on with Courier.
> “Without new innovative models for journalism at scale,” she says,
> “we’re losing the information war to verified liars pouring millions of
> dollars into Facebook.”

RT's report quotes the Bloomberg article and adds:

> Says a 33-year-old with "Yes We Can" tattooed on her arm. But it's okay:
> she's a Democrat. If a Democrat sets up a fake news network, buys out
> people's personal information, serves them with political
> disinformation, that's fine. But only Democrats.

Recall that the Democrats used the following to explain away Hillary 
Clinton's loss in 2016:

> [Clips from the following people are shown.]
> 
> Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) in Congress: Kremlin-linked bots continue
> to stoke political divisions in the US via misinformation on social
> media.
> 
> Hillary Clinton in an interview: They're so detailed -- one about the 
> social media interference, weaponization of information by the Russians 
> and their proxies, their bots, and their trolls, and everybody else.
> 
> Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GE) in Congress: We've been paying the price from 
> Russia -- Russian bots -- to fake news. Americans heading to the polls 
> have had to grapple with the question of what is real and what is fake?
> 
> RT reporter: Yes, they will have to question what is real and what is
> fake. Democrats are literally setting up fake news websites and serving 
> Americans with fake news to sway elections. I mean the masks came off 
> last year when Democrats were caught creating fake Russian bots to set 
> up and smear a Republican candidate.
> 
> [Plays clip of "CBS Evening News" with Norah O'Donnell]
> 
> Norah O'Donnell: An explosive allegation by a government whistleblower 
> that the White House engaged in a cover-up by stashing records of the 
> President's phone call with a foreign leader in a top-secret computer.
> 
> RT reporter: Desperate times call for desperate measures. And these are
> desperate times for Democrats: no messiah, no hero candidate has come
> forward to beat Trump. So, they're getting their hands dirty doing
> everything they accused Russia of. Question is, on election day, why
> would people vote for a side whose hands are no cleaner than Trump's?







War: "Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima':
The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new 
questions about battle"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDVJM7RQ2As -- Keiser Report coverage
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html

Patrick Cockburn's latest for The Independent:

> Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the
> Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004,
> exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped
> on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
> 
> Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being
> overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging
> from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They
> said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the
> battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
> 
> Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold
> increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in
> under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher
> than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
> 
> Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one
> of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it
> is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth
> defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major
> mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks
> happened".
> 
> US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of
> Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security
> company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an
> eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using
> artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later
> admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other
> munitions.
> 
> In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire
> zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British
> officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties.
> "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance
> operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a
> small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a
> British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.
> 
> He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of
> firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his
> daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he
> cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of
> genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in
> some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against
> buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."
> 
> The survey was carried out by a team of 11 researchers in January and
> February this year who visited 711 houses in Fallujah. A questionnaire
> was filled in by householders giving details of cancers, birth outcomes
> and infant mortality. Hitherto the Iraqi government has been loath to
> respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health during
> military operations.
> 
> Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals,
> particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report
> saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists and anybody
> conducting it or answering questions would be arrested. Those organising
> the survey subsequently arranged to be accompanied by a person of
> standing in the community to allay suspicions.
> 
> The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in
> Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar
> Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer
> and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to
> be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in
> Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in
> the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the
> bomb and uranium in the fallout".
> 
> Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase
> in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain
> tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in
> leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only
> the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was
> affecting people.
> 
> Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between
> newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050
> boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18
> per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000
> females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects
> boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered
> after Hiroshima.
> 
> The US cut back on its use of firepower in Iraq from 2007 because of the
> anger it provoked among civilians. But at the same time there has been a
> decline in healthcare and sanitary conditions in Iraq since 2003. The
> impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere
> else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from
> the rest of the country long after 2004. War damage was only slowly
> repaired and people from the city were frightened to go to hospitals in
> Baghdad because of military checkpoints on the road into the capital.

A parallel you might not have expected comes from 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgfVbN8i6Q -- an RT program called 
"Watching the Hawks" which includes an RT report on unpotable water in the 
US based on a "U.S. Water Alliance" report. Among the things found in 
drinking water in US cities with unpotable water -- uranium:

> More than 2,000,000 Americans live without basic access to safe drinking
> water and sanitation.
> 
> 1.4 million lack access to indoor plumbing. 250,000 people in Puerto
> Rico. 553,000 homeless [people] in the United States. Native [American]
> households are 19 times more likely than white households to lack indoor
> plumbing. 23% of private wells tested contain arsenic, uranium,
> nitrates, and e.coli. 17% of people living in rural areas report having
> experienced issues with safe drinking water. 12% of people living in
> rural areas report issues with their sewage system.

jbn: In other words: We're exposing children here to uranium as well. 
Potable water problems create lifelong health problems and severely shorten 
lives.






Business/Economy: Maybe the restaurant associations fearful picture was not 
something to pay attention to.

https://www.axios.com/minimum-wage-job-loss-predictions-not-true-dcda5eac-996d-4539-a07e-12933eef4bca.html

> Eighteen states rang in 2019 with minimum wage increases — some that
> will ultimately rise as high as $15 an hour — and so far, opponents'
> dire predictions of job losses have not come true.
> 
> What it means: The data paint a clear picture: Higher minimum wage
> requirements haven't reduced hiring in low-wage industries or overall.
> 
> State of play: Opponents have long argued that raising the minimum wage
> will cause workers to lose their jobs and prompt fast food chains (and
> other stores) to raise prices.
> 
> But job losses and price hikes haven't been pronounced in the aftermath
> of a recent wave of city and state wage-boost laws.
> 
> And more economists are arguing that the link between minimum wage hikes
> and job losses was more hype than science.

[...]

> Cities and states around the country are taking action as the federal
> minimum wage — $7.25 an hour — "has remained unchanged for the longest
> stretch of time since its 1938 inception under the Fair Labor Standards
> Act," according to a recent paper by the New York Fed.
> 
> Cities like New York, Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco have raised
> local minimum wages, and individual companies have done so as well:
> Amazon set its minimum at $15 an hour last year.
> 
> As of July: "14 states plus the District of Columbia—home to 35% of
> Americans—have minimum wages above $10 per hour, as do numerous
> localities scattered across other states," according to the N.Y. Fed.
> 
> Laws in New York, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland,
> Massachusetts, and New Jersey will eventually increase minimum wages to
> $15 per hour.
> 
> Axios used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to compare job growth rates
> in four states with low minimum wages vs. eight states with high minimum
> wages:
> 
> Since 2016, when California became the first state to pass the $15
> minimum wage law, all 12 states have seen growth in restaurant, bar and
> hotel jobs. Three of the four states with job growth higher than the
> U.S. median have passed laws that will raise the state minimum wage to
> at least $13.50. Three of the five states with the slowest job growth
> rates did not have a state minimum wage above the federal minimum of
> $7.25 an hour. An outlier was Massachusetts, which had the slowest job
> growth in the sector and currently has the highest state minimum wage:
> $12 an hour.
> 
> The big picture: A number of peer-reviewed academic studies have found
> little to no impact on hiring as states and municipalities have raised
> the minimum wage.
> 
> Rather, such increases are likely to have increased hiring in the strong
> U.S. economy, Bill Spriggs, chief economist at labor union AFL-CIO,
> tells Axios.
> 
> Yes, but: There could still be negative long-term effects, such as
> businesses choosing to locate in states with lower minimum wage
> requirements, according to the N.Y. Fed's study.
> 
> "The danger is extrapolating too far and saying, 'We should raise wages
> to $30 an hour,'" Swonk says. "The current minimum wage increases were
> successful because they were regionally based, and not national or
> one-size-fits-all."







Business/Health: "Indonesia's food chain turns toxic as plastic waste 
exports flood in: Study of chicken egg samples reveals presence of 
dangerous chemical compounds around areas where waste is dumped"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDVJM7RQ2As -- Keiser Report coverage
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/nov/15/indonesias-food-chain-turns-toxic-as-plastic-waste-exports-flood-in 
--

> Plastic waste exports to south-east Asia have been implicated in extreme
> levels of toxins entering the human food chain in Indonesia.
> 
> A new study that sampled chicken eggs around sites in the country where
> plastic waste accumulates identified alarming levels of dioxins and
> polychlorinated biphenyls[1] long recognised as extremely injurious to
> human health.
> 
> In one location the level of dioxins in eggs collected near an
> Indonesian factory that burns plastics for fuel were similar to levels
> in eggs collected near the notorious Agent Orange hotspot in Bien Hoa,
> Vietnam, which is considered one of the most dioxin-contaminated
> locations on Earth.
> 
> The study is the first to demonstrate food chain contamination in
> south-east Asia with high levels of hazardous chemicals as a consequence
> of waste mismanagement and plastic waste imports.
> 
> The report – Plastic Waste Poisons Indonesia’s Food Chain[2] – was
> compiled by researchers from the global environmental health network
> IPEN, along with the Arnika Association and several local Indonesian
> organisations.
> 
> According to the study, an adult eating just one egg from a free-range
> chicken foraging in the vicinity of the tofu factory in Tropodo would
> exceed the European Food Safety Authority tolerable daily intake for
> chlorinated dioxins by seventy-fold.
> 
> Researchers collected and analysed free-range chicken eggs from the
> Bangun and Tropodo communities in East Java, locations that have been
> inundated with imported plastic waste since China closed its doors to
> such waste in 2018.
> 
> By contrast, Indonesia’s import volume doubled between 2017 and 2018,
> with residents in some areas burning piles of plastic waste to reduce
> the volume clogging streets and piling up around houses. In Tropodo, the
> waste is used to fuel local tofu factories.
> 
> Eggs collected in the communities were found to contain highly hazardous
> banned chemicals including dioxins, flame retardants, and the toxic
> “forever chemical”, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS).
> 
> Numerous studies have linked the chemicals found in the eggs with a host
> of health impacts. Dioxin exposure is linked to a variety of serious
> illnesses in humans, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes,
> and endometriosis. Flame retardant chemicals, short-chain chlorinated
> paraffins and polybrominated diphenyl ethers disrupt endocrine function
> and negatively affect reproductive health.
> 
> PFOS causes reproductive and immune system damage, and internal company
> documents indicate that manufacturers knew about its toxicity for
> decades, but continued making it.
> 
> “Plastic waste is a serious toxic chemical pollution problem,” said
> Yuyun Ismawati, co-founder of Nexus3, one of the Indonesian NGOs
> involved.
> 
> “Our results should ring alarm bells in every community trying to deal
> with a tsunami of plastic waste. The global north needs to stop treating
> the global south as its waste bin.”

[1] 
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/14/race-on-rid-uk-oceans-pcbs-killer-whale-lulu
[2] https://ipen.org/documents/plastic-waste-poisons-indonesia-food-chain







Labor: French vs. American reception of "black friday" with Amazon.com -- 
Americans consume, French protest abusive labor practices

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/29/black-friday-protests-across-europe-demand-amazon-start-treating-workers-humans-not

> Labor rights activists and climate campaigners across Europe used the
> occasion of Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, to call
> attention to and protest Amazon's "appalling" working conditions, paltry
> benefits, and destructive environmental practices.
> 
> "Workers are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious, and being taken
> away in ambulances," said Mick Rix, national officer with the GMB Union,
> which organized demonstrations at Amazon warehouses across the United
> Kingdom on Friday.
> 
> "Amazon has spent a fortune on fluffy adverts saying what a great place
> it is to work," Rix added. "Why not spend the money making their
> warehouses less dangerous places to work? Amazon workers want Jeff Bezos
> to know they are people—not robots."
> 
> GMB said Amazon employees at locations throughout the U.K. have reported
> being denied restroom breaks, penalized for taking sick days, and forced
> to work at a dangerous pace to meet the retail behemoth's productivity
> goals.
> 
> "GMB members report targets being so horrific they have to use plastic
> bottles to urinate in instead of going to the toilet, and pregnant women
> have been forced to stand for hours on end," the union said in a
> statement.

[...]

> In France, demonstrators held sit-ins at Amazon's Clichy headquarters to
> condemn the retail giant's contributions to the climate crisis.
> 
> "We criticize Amazon for having a destructive policy for the planet, for
> social conditions, and Black Friday allows this company to achieve
> exponential revenue," said activist Sandy Olivar Calvo.

[...]

> At an Amazon distribution center near Lyon, France, police assaulted and
> forcibly removed demonstrators who staged a sit-in to condemn the
> corporation's climate practices









Drug war: excuse for invasion & occupation? Did Rep. Gabbard's debate warn 
us of the insanity of this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_8Qtklr-AY -- Pres. Trump designates 
Mexican drug cartels as "terrorists". Who benefits? Weapons manufacturers, 
anyone who pushed for using the US military as "police" force. And, by the 
way, this is what Rep. Gabbard warned about in her latest debate with Mayor 
Pete Buttigieg when he tried to shift the goalposts from endorsing doing 
what Trump is now doing to making it look like invading Mexico was beyond 
the pale (which operations like this could very well become).

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_6qq6wGhoY -- Father Jesse and 
son Tyrel Ventura discuss this story on "Watching the Hawks".

jbn: One correction to what Jesse said here when he remarked "I can foresee 
drones used on US citizens", this has already occurred. Father & son 
Al-Awlaki, both US citizens, were assassinated weeks apart by the Obama 
administration in separate drone strikes. These were impeachable acts but 
no Congressperson in either corporate party brought articles of impeachment 
against Pres. Obama for either murder. The related killings of everyone in 
the area are also grounds for questioning the stance of anyone who supports 
the drone war (such as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard have 
expressed in separate interviews dating back to 2016).

I recently re-watched "National Bird" a documentary from 2016 about the 
drone war and I came across an interesting quote that reminded me of Rep. 
Tulsi Gabbard's support for drone war:

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard from 
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/17/intercepted-podcast-white-mirror/

> So, with these terrorist cells, for example, yes, I do still believe 
> that the right approach to take is these quick strike forces, surgical 
> strikes, in and out, very quickly, no long-term deployment, no
> long-term occupation to be able to get rid of the threat that exists and
> then get out and the very limited use of drones in those situations
> where our military is not able to get in without creating an
> unacceptable level of risk, and where you can make sure that you’re not
> causing, you know, a large amount of civilian casualties.
Gabbard is commonly referred to in the press as "anti-war" by both critics 
and supporters. Such statements routinely don't refer the audience to this 
2018 Intercept interview or to a 2019 Primo Nutmeg interview where she 
reiterated her drone war support.

Heather Linebaugh served in the United States Air Force from 2009 until 
March 2012. Her bio in The Guardian says she worked in intelligence as an 
imagery analyst and geo-spatial analyst for the drone program during the 
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two years before Rep. Gabbard said the above Heather Linebaugh said the 
following in the documentary "National Bird":

> Hearing politicians speak about drones being precision weapons, being 
> able to make 'surgical strikes', to me it's completely ridiculous, 
> completely ludicrous to even make those statements. It's as flawed as
> it can be with those people operating it from across the world. If they 
> really think they can send a bomb through a window of a compound and
> hit one militant then why are we seeing so many civilians die of
> collateral damage? I'd like to ask those politicians have they not been
> notified of that? Do they not know what's going on in their own war that
> they're controlling?
To coin a neologism, I'd call Linebaugh's remark a "prebuttal" -- a 
rebuttal that came before the statement being rebutted. Linebaugh is also 
the author of:

"I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-us-military







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR8uLC5mIeY -- Bolivian TV operator 
announced that RT Spanish will be taken off the air starting on December 2, 
2019. Bolivian TV cable provider Cotas, a private company, has not given a 
reason for the change. Ecuador has also cut off RT Spanish, and no reason 
was given there either.

> Cotas TV operator: This is a decision taken by the company's 
> administration, which tasked us with shutting down the channel's 
> broadcast.

jbn: It seems likely that this is related to the US-backed Bolivian coup. 
If Venezuela succumbs to their US-backed coup, what will happen to RT 
broadcasts there? RT is widely known to recognize Juan Guaido as a 
self-selected president or "opposition leader" instead of calling him 
Venezuela's legitimate president as the US has said they want the press to 
call Guaido.

In RT's report on Bolivian cable outlet Cotas pulling RT Spanish, RT 
interviewed Chuck Kaufman who is credited as part of the "Alliance for 
Global Justice, think tank":

> Chuck Kaufman: [The] coup government in Bolivia is struggling to
> establish itself against massive resistance and they can't afford for
> people to hear alternative voices to the news that they want, the
> message that they want to get out there. Because they have to have
> control of the message[; ...] if people have free access to information
> they're gonna see that other people in their country are suffering the
> way that they're suffering and they're going to know that the reason for
> that suffering is this military coup that this [is an] illegitimate
> government that is being imposed on them and the resistance will
> continue and grow.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50573069 -- The BBC reports that Apple 
altered its map when viewed from Russia:

> Apple has complied with Russian demands to show the annexed Crimean 
> peninsula as part of Russian territory on its apps.
> 
> Russian forces annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, drawing 
> international condemnation.
> 
> The region, which has a Russian-speaking majority, is now shown as 
> Russian territory on Apple Maps and its Weather app, when viewed from 
> Russia.
> 
> But the apps do not show it as part of any country when viewed 
> elsewhere.
> 
> The State Duma, the Russian parliament's lower house, said in a 
> statement: "Crimea and Sevastopol now appear on Apple devices as
> Russian territory."
> 
> Russia treats the naval port city of Sevastopol as a separate region.
> 
> The BBC tested several iPhones in Moscow and it appears the change 
> affects devices set up to use the Russian edition of Apple's App Store.
> 
> Apple had been in talks with Russia for several months over what the 
> State Duma described as "inaccuracy" in the way Crimea was labelled.
> 
> The tech giant originally suggested it could show Crimea as undefined 
> territory - part of neither Russia nor Ukraine.
> 
> But Vasily Piskaryov, chairman of the Duma security and anti-corruption 
> committee, said Apple had complied with the Russian constitution.
> 
> He said representatives of the company were reminded that labelling 
> Crimea as part of Ukrainian territory was a criminal offence under 
> Russian law, according to Interfax news agency.
> 
> "There is no going back," Mr Piskaryov said. "Today, with Apple, the 
> situation is closed - we have received everything we wanted." [...]

RT covered a similar situation with Google's map on 2019-03-05

https://www.rt.com/shows/news-with-rick-sanchez/453117-news-with-rick-sanchez-march/

> Google acknowledges Crimea as Russian
> 
> Google Maps suddenly shows a broken line separating Crimea from Russia 
> -- a subtle acknowledgment, much to the consternation of NATO, that 
> Crimea is indeed part of Russia and not of Ukraine. [...]

https://cdnv.rt.com/files/2019.03/5c7f2d6dfc7e93614b8b45eb.mp4 has the 
video (hooray to RT for hosting its own video rather than letting Google 
censor them, but I don't understand why they don't do this all the time for 
all of their videos).






Healthcare/economy: Do American HMOs want to run the UK's National Health 
Service? Is there a plan in place to accomplish this? Jeremy Corbyn said 
there is.

Compare what Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn say about secret US/UK talks 
about the NHS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fTffUvBFZs -- UK Prime Minister and leader 
of the Conservative Party Boris Johnson said:

> Boris Johnson: We are absolutely resolved that there will be no sale of
> the NHS, no privatisation, the NHS is not on the table in any way.
> 
> Questioner: Not drug patents?
> 
> Boris Johnson: In no way, the NHS is in no way on the table, in no
> aspect whatever and this, as I say, is continually brought up by the
> Labour Party as a diversionary tactic from the difficulties they are
> encountering particularly over the problem about leadership on
> anti-Semitism and then the great vacuity about their policy on Brexit,
> nobody knows what side Mr. Corbyn would come down on, in fact he said
> he's going to be neutral so you're left wondering what the point is of
> his doing this deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wTwu0zl1XQ -- Labour Party leader Jeremy 
Corbyn said:

> Jeremy Corbyn: If you watch the first TV debate between me and Boris 
> Johnson you'll have seen me hold up these censored, blacked-out reports
> [Corbyn held up a hardcopy of censored blacked-out reports]. Pages and
> pages of censored blacked-out reports of secret US and UK talks about 
> breaking open our NHS to US corporations and thus driving up the cost of
> medicines. What I have here [Corbyn unzipped a black case holding a 
> hardcopy of a document which he removed from the case and then held up]
> is something I can reveal to you. 451 pages of unredacted documents
> and information, all of it here [people dressed in scrubs handed out
> copies of a document to people assembled in the hall where Corbyn was 
> speaking]. His [Boris Johnson's] government released this [presumably 
> was holding the censored document], we [the Labour Party] have since
> released this [presumably holding the uncensored document] which is a
> very different version of events. Perhaps he would like to explain why
> these documents confirm the US is demanding the NHS is on the table in
> the trade talks. These uncensored documents leave Boris Johnson's
> denials in absolute tatters. Voters need to ask themselves some very
> serious questions. Is the NHS safe in Boris Johnson's hands?






Bolivia: Coup plotters were trained in US' "School of the Americas"

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/13/bolivian-coup-plotters-school-of-the-americas-fbi-police-programs/ 
-- The Grayzone's report on this.

> The United States played a key role in the military coup in Bolivia,
> and in a direct way that has scarcely been acknowledged in accounts of
> the events that forced the country’s elected president, Evo Morales, to 
> resign on November 10.
> 
> Just prior to Morales’ resignation, the commander of Bolivia’s armed 
> forces Williams Kaliman “suggested” that the president step down. A day 
> earlier, sectors of the country’s police force had rebelled.
> 
> Though Kaliman appears to have feigned loyalty to Morales over the 
> years, his true colors showed as soon as the moment of opportunity 
> arrived. He was not only an actor in the coup, he had his own history
> in Washington, where he had briefly served as the military attaché of 
> Bolivia’s embassy in the US capital.
> 
> Kaliman sat at the top of a military and police command structure that 
> has been substantially cultivated by the US through WHINSEC [Western
> Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation], the military training
> school in Fort Benning, Georgia known in the past as the School of the
> Americas. Kaliman himself attended a course called “Comando y Estado
> Mayor” at the SOA in 2003.
> 
> At least six of the key coup plotters are alumni of the infamous School 
> of the Americas, while Kaliman and another figure served in the past as 
> Bolivia’s military and police attachés in Washington.
> 
> Within the Bolivian police, top commanders who helped launch the coup 
> have passed through the APALA police exchange program. Working out of 
> Washington DC, APALA functions to build relations between U.S. 
> authorities and police officials from Latin American states. Despite
> its influence, or perhaps because of it, the program maintains little
> public presence. Its staff was impossible for this researcher to reach
> by phone.

[...]

> Leaked audio[1] reported[2] on Bolivian news website La Época, and by 
> elperiodicocr.com[3] and a range of national media outlets, reveals
> that covert coordination[4] took place between current and former
> Bolivian police, military, and opposition leaders in bringing about the
> coup.
> 
> Los audios de la conspiración del #GolpeDeEstadoEnBolivia. Por 
> @elperiodicocr https://t.co/lw2qjpqsmm pic.twitter.com/P4M4dbIw2W
> 
> — Rompeviento TV (@RompevientoTV) November 10, 2019[5]
> 
> The leaked audio recordings show that former Cochabamba mayor and
> former presidential candidate Manfred Reyes Villa played a central role
> in the plot. Reyes happens to be an alumnus of WHINSEC (formerly known
> as the School of the Americas), who currently resides in the United
> States.
> 
> The other four who are introduced or introduce themselves by name in
> the leaked audio are General Remberto Siles Vasquez (audio 12[6]);
> Colonel Julio César Maldonado Leoni (audio 8[7] and 9[8]); Colonel Oscar
> Pacello Aguirre (audio 14[9]), and Colonel Teobaldo Cardozo Guevara
> (audio 10[10]). All four of these ex-military officials attended the
> SOA.
> 
> Cardozo Guevara, in particular, boasts[11] about his connections
> amongst active officers.
> 
> The identities of these individuals are confirmed by cross-checking the 
> data of the School of Americas[12] Watch lists[13] of alumni with
> Facebook and local Bolivian news articles and the leaked audio
> recordings[14].
> 
> The School of the Americas is a notorious site of education[15] for
> Latin American coup plotters dating back to the height of the Cold War.
> Brutal regime change and reprisal operations from Haiti to Honduras have
> been carried out by SOA graduates, and some of the most bloodstained
> juntas in the region’s history have been run by the school’s alumni.
> 
> For many years, anti-war protesters have staged a protest vigil outside 
> the SOA’s headquarters at the Fort Benning military base near Columbus, 
> Georgia.

[1] 
https://erbol.com.bo/nacional/surgen-16-audios-que-vinculan-c%C3%ADvicos-exmilitares-y-eeuu-en-planes-de-agitaci%C3%B3n
[2] 
https://www.en24.news/news/2019/11/10/bolivia-audios-leaked-from-opposition-leaders-calling-for-a-coup-against-evo-morales.html
[3] 
https://elperiodicocr.com/bolivia-filtran-audios-de-lideres-opositores-llamando-a-un-golpe-de-estado-contra-evo-morales/
[4] 
https://nos24.com/2019/08/15/kaliman-pisotea-la-constitucion-militares-molestos-en-bolivia/
[5] https://twitter.com/RompevientoTV/status/1193669345261576194
[6] https://soundcloud.com/elperiodicocr/audio-12
https://soundcloud.com/elperiodicocr/audio-8-1
[7] https://soundcloud.com/elperiodicocr/audio-8-1
[8] https://soundcloud.com/elperiodicocr/audio-9
[9] https://soundcloud.com/elperiodicocr/audio-14
[10] https://soundcloud.com/elperiodicocr/audio-10
[11] https://soundcloud.com/elperiodicocr/audio-10
[12] http://www.derechos.org/soa/bo-qz.html
[13] http://www.soawlatina.org/graduados.htm
[14] 
https://elperiodicocr.com/bolivia-filtran-audios-de-lideres-opositores-llamando-a-un-golpe-de-estado-contra-evo-morales/
[15] 
https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-school-of-the-americas-is-still-exporting-death-squads/204655/





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJDXJkqhpxI -- RT is one of very few news 
outlets that cover what's going on in Bolivia as a coup and very few 
outlets that tell us about the extent of the US involvement in this coup 
(hint: this coup, like so many other Latin America coups, is fully 
US-backed). Redacted Tonight's show clip covers this and a related Jacobin 
article -- 
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/el-salvador-murders-jesuits-uca-school-of-the-americas 
-- where:

> The veteran US solidarity organization School of the Americas Watch[1]
> was formed in response to the Jesuit massacre and hosts an annual vigil
> at the gates of Fort Benning to denounce the US role in crimes across
> the hemisphere. The group estimates that over eighty-three thousand
> Latin American state security forces have been trained at the site,
> which now bears the deceptively benign title of Western Hemisphere
> Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). These graduates have
> carried out coups, massacres, assassinations, torture, disappearances,
> economic destabilization, and mass displacement. Recently, ICE
> revealed[2] that agents will train in domestic “urban warfare” at Fort
> Benning, bringing SOA’s counterinsurgency project full circle.

[1] http://www.soaw.org/fort-benning-november/
[2] 
https://www.newsweek.com/ice-fails-redact-document-reveals-location-urban-warfare-training-facility-1458732



Labor: Google fires employees who, Google claims, were in violation of 
policy but Google co-workers claim were fired for unionizing. The case for 
Google's story is not as convincing as the case described by fellow Google 
co-workers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25/google-fires-four-employees-citing-data-security-violations 
-- > Google fired four employees for what the technology giant said were
> violations of its data-security policies, escalating tension between
> management and activist workers at a company once revered for its open
> corporate culture.
> 
> Alphabet Inc.’s Google sent an email describing the decision, titled
> “Securing our data,” to all employees on Monday, according to a copy of
> the document obtained by Bloomberg News. The company confirmed the
> contents of the memo but declined to comment further.
> 
> Some Google staff have been protesting and organizing in the past two
> years over issues including the company’s work with the military, a
> censored search service in China and its handling of executives accused
> of sexual harassment.
> 
> Some supporters of the fired workers said the organizing activities led
> to their dismissals.
> 
> “With these firings, Google is ramping up its illegal retaliation,”
> according to a statement from workers who are organizing at the company.
> “This is classic union busting dressed up in tech industry jargon, and
> we won’t stand for it.”
> 
> In recent weeks, some workers have cited management moves -- such as
> implementing a tracking tool on employee’s web browsers[1] and hiring a
> consulting firm known for anti-union work -- as attempts to curb
> activism. The company has denied those charges.
> 
> One Google employee wrote on Twitter that the company was firing the
> employees to stamp out internal dissension.
> 
> Harassers get millions of dollars but queer activists are getting fired.
> Organizers are getting fired. This is a clear signal. — Timnit Gebru
> (@timnitGebru) November 25, 2019[2]
> 
> On Friday, more than 200 people demonstrated outside Google’s San
> Francisco office for a protest organized by staff. The protesters
> demanded the company reinstate two employees who had been put on
> administrative leave, Rebecca Rivers and Laurence Berland.
> 
> On Monday, Rivers tweeted that she had been terminated from her job.
> Rivers confirmed the tweet but declined to comment further.

[1] 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/google-accused-of-creating-spy-tool-to-squelch-worker-dissent
[2] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1199072773559083008

[...]

> Federal labor law restricts retaliation against employees for collective
> action. “When other employees have engaged in the conduct Google cites
> in its memo, have they been fired?” said Jeffrey Hirsch, a University of
> North Carolina law professor and former National Labor Relations Board
> attorney. “If not, Google will likely have to reinstate the employees
> and pay them back pay.“




https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/googles-next-moonshot-union-busting-7bd2784dc690 
-- > Four of our colleagues took a stand and organized for a better
> workplace. This is explicitly condoned in Google’s Code of Conduct,
> which ends: “​​​​​​​And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see
> something that you think isn’t right — speak up.”
> 
> When they did, Google retaliated against them. Today, after putting two
> of them on sudden and unexplained leave, the company fired all four in
> an attempt to crush worker organizing.
> 
> Here’s how it went down: Google hired a union-busting firm. Around the
> same time Google redrafted its policies, making it a fireable offense to
> even look at certain documents. And let’s be clear, looking at such
> documents is a big part of Google culture; the company describes it as a
> benefit in recruiting, and even encourages new hires to read docs from
> projects all across the company. Which documents were off limits after
> this policy change? The policy was unclear, even explicitly stating the
> documents didn’t have to be labeled to be off limits. No meaningful
> guidance has ever been offered on how employees could consistently
> comply with this policy. The policy change amounted to: access at your
> own risk and let executives figure out whether you should be punished
> after the fact.
> 
> We knew then, and it’s clear now: this policy change was setting up an
> excuse to retaliate against organizers, allowing the company a pretext
> for picking and choosing who to target.
> 
> Using this policy, Google did all it could to frame our colleagues as
> “leakers.” This is a lie. And Google confirmed this when pressured. As
> Laurence, one of those fired today, said during a workers’ rally in San
> Francisco on Friday November 22nd, “I asked Google’s Global
> Investigations team, am I being accused of leaking? Their answer was one
> word: ‘No.’ This isn’t about leaking.”
> 
> With these firings, Google is ramping up its illegal retaliation against
> workers engaging in protected organizing. This is classic union busting
> dressed up in tech industry jargon, and we won’t stand for it.

[...]




Freedom of speech: Nina Paley (the artist behind "Sita Sings the Blues" and 
"Seder-Masochism" among other works) launches "Neenster" 
(https://neenster.org/) where you can submit to her authority.

jbn: What is Neenster's censorship policy?

On her blog (https://blog.ninapaley.com/2019/11/30/introducing-neenster/) 
Nina Paley wrote:

> I plan to moderate Neenster like I “moderate” my fecebook wall: mostly
> by doing nothing, but occasionally blocking particularly abusive and
> annoying people according to how much they piss me off. Ideally users
> will moderate themselves by using their god-given blocking fingers.
> Remember: MUTE and/or BLOCK. It’s like brushing your teeth, but for your
> sanity.

Other speech-related restrictions on Neenster can be found on 
https://neenster.org/about (archived on https://archive.md/Xx6mq on 2019-11-30)

The lack of clarity about what will be censored makes Neenster no better 
for most users than any of the other more well-advertised social media 
sites out there. After all, despite the published terms of service you 
really don't know what the operative censorship policies are on Facebook, 
Twitter, YouTube, and the other more well-advertised services. It's not 
hard to point to something hosted on each of those services which 
contradict the ostensible rules.

Ultimately the "fediverse" (a portmanteau of "federated universe" of social 
media sites) does nothing to challenge the central problem of the 
modern-day Internet: one must comply with a number of mostly-unaccountable 
private entities to publish anything online. One's best bet at getting past 
the censors is to publish the same material with many services in the hope 
that some of the services will either be slow to censor or not coordinate 
their censorship (as was done to Alex Jones of InfoWars when he was 
simultaneously kicked off of Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Vimeo, Pinterest, 
Mailchimp, LinkedIn, PayPal, and Spotify in 2018). In practical terms, 
one's freedom of speech would be better maintained by offering an easy 
means of sharing published works even in the face of such coordinated 
censorship (perhaps via a user-maintained publishing mechanism like 
Bittorrent) instead of encouraging users to submit to one service over others.

Regarding muting and blocking responses one doesn't want others to read: to 
the extent that these functions stop others from commenting on one's posts, 
this is merely giving censor controls to service users. These functions 
also raise a privacy issue: having the service track the mute/block status 
means relying on a site one doesn't control. The site could edit the list 
without one's approval or share this list with others.

A better design is the approach used by netnews (known for Usenet groups): 
one maintains ones own file on their own computer which lists the 
characteristics of posts one does not want to read. Such posts are blocked 
only for oneself; on widely-distributed netnews groups (such as Usenet 
groups) one doesn't have the power to block others from reading those 
posts. No participating server has a perfect idea of what one wants to block.

And this gets directly into one very big (and usually unacknowledged) 
reason why people like the web -- websites are centralized. Centralized 
publishing means increased control over what others get to read.