[Peace-discuss] NfN notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

A few notes on recent developments. Have a good show guys.




Economy: America’s Middle Class is Vanishing. Nearly Half of Workers Earn 
Less than $30,000

https://howmuch.net/articles/how-much-americans-make-in-wages






Someday we'll be able to sing "Russiagate is falling down...falling 
down...falling down..." but not today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNNhXjTk0Aw -- CrossTalk on "Psyop"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFfm8b3kLt4 -- Afshin Rattansi on Integrity 
Initiative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBX1rBHqXF8 -- Integrity Initiative had an 
operative in the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ak8aXHeeok -- Max Blumenthal (of 
https://grayzoneproject.com/) is interviewed on the latest regarding the 
"Integrity Initiative" (a British taxpayer-funded effort). All of the 
following comes from Max Blumenthal and Mark Ames' reports in this piece 
and on the grayzoneproject.com site.

It turns out that the Integrity Initiative:

  - operates secretly from a building not listed as their address
  - covertly funded -- over 2 million pounds -- from the British Foreign & 
Commonwealth Office which oversees the main foreign intelligence operations 
of the UK government
  - meddles in foreign elections: has spies that have worked on the Bernie 
Sanders campaign
  - smears Jeremy Corbyn and the UK Labour Party
  - operates similarly to what was described in "Operation Mockingbird" 
which was revealed in the 1970s in the Church Commission to be the CIA 
paying hundreds of US journalists during the Cold War

More is revealed by grayzoneproject.com on the "Institute for Statecraft" 
whose email servers were broken into and emails were obtained and released. 
This is how outsiders came to learn of the Integrity Initiative.

The main goals of the Integrity Initiative:

1. Get the west (particularly US & UK) on a permanent war footing against 
Russia. Treat anything (including RT's broadcasts) as an act of war.

2. Smear anyone who gets in their way and that "typically includes major 
figures on the left like the opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who has 
been smeared by this British government operation".

Liz Wahl, former RT on-air anchor, resigned from her RT show on-air on 
March 5, 2014. Wahl was "paid by [the Integrity Initiative] to produce 
attacks on RT". At least one of her stories has been identified to have 
been paid for in this way.

Ben Nimmo, who reports on "Russian bots", turns out to be a consultant for 
the Integrity Initiative.

A Seattle conference between the Integrity Initiative and the journalists 
they collude with (and pay) happened. At this meeting they coordinated 
their messages: permanent war, conflict with Russia, "and smear the crap 
out of anyone who gets in your way".

On the US side there's also the State Department's "Global Engagement 
Center". Blumenthal said:

> [The State Department's Global Engagement Center] is the domestic 
> propaganda arm of the US Government. It was created under Obama. Under 
> Trump it became direct at Russian disinformation. And it refuses to say 
> whether it's targeting American citizens but what I'm saying, Rick 
> [Sanchez, RT show host], is there's a war for the minds of American
> media consumers and there is a war on their minds and it's not just
> being fought through the media. There are tentacles going into the media
> from military intelligence cutouts and we wouldn't know this unless
> these communications had been hacked and leaked.
Read the following for more details:

https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/08/new-documents-reveal-a-covert-british-military-intelligence-smear-machine-meddling-in-american-politics/ 


https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/12/17/inside-the-temple-of-covert-propaganda-the-integrity-initiative-and-the-uks-scandalous-information-war/









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiwY2ILldMY -- New York Times published 
report which claimed "Manafort Accused of Sharing Trump Polling Data With 
Russian Associate" and 1 day later admits they got the story wrong (but 
didn't bother to change the headline):

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/us/politics/manafort-trump-campaign-data-kilimnik.html

> The document provided the clearest evidence to date that the Trump
> campaign may have tried to coordinate with Russians during the 2016
> presidential race.
The NYT's report was based on an anonymous source and it turns out was 
completely wrong. One day after publishing the story the Times had to 
correct the story:

> A previous version of this article misidentified the people to whom Paul
> Manafort wanted a Russian associate to send polling data. Mr. Manafort
> wanted the data sent to two Ukrainian oligarchs, Serhiy Lyovochkin and
> Rinat Akhmetov, not to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to
> the Kremlin.

The Washington Post continued to report on this story 
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/09/one-more-russian-contact-heres-why-it-matters/) 
without any note of the Times' correction.

Don't forget the entire Assange/Manafort narrative is shot through with 
problems. Glenn Greenwald has written a couple of articles about this and 
in his latest -- 
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/02/five-weeks-after-the-guardians-viral-blockbuster-assangemanafort-scoop-no-evidence-has-emerged-just-stonewalling/ 
-- he asks some critical questions which have yet to be answered:

> How could it be that Manafort, of all people, snuck into one of the most
> monitored, surveilled, videoed, and photographed buildings on the planet
> on three separate occasions without any of that ostensibly “smoking gun”
> visual evidence having emerged, including in The Guardian’s own story?
> 
> Why would The Guardian publish a story of this magnitude without first
> requiring that its Ecuadoran intelligence sources provide them with such
> photographic or video evidence to publish it or at least review prior to
> publication?
> 
> How could it be that Manafort’s name never appeared in any of the
> embassy entrance logs even though, as The Guardian itself admitted,
> “visitors normally register with embassy security guards and show their
> passports”?
> 
> What was the bizarre, sensationalistic reference to “Russians” that The
> Guardian included in its article but never bothered to explain
> (“separate internal document written by Ecuador’s Senain intelligence
> agency and seen by The Guardian lists ‘Paul Manaford [sic]’ as one of
> several well-known guests. It also mentions ‘Russians'”).
and he reminds us that

> None of this is an aberration. Quite the contrary, it has become par for
> the Trump-Russia course. One major story after the next falls apart, and
> there is no accountability, reckoning, or transparency (neither CNN nor
> MSNBC, for instance, have to date bothered to explain how they both
> “independently confirmed” the totally false story that Donald Trump, Jr.
> was offered advanced access to the WikiLeaks email archive, all based on
> false claims about the date of an email to him from a random member of
> the public).
> 
> Nor is it atypical for The Guardian when it comes to its institutionally
> blinding contempt for Assange: During the election, the paper was forced
> to retract its viral report from political reporter Ben Jacobs, who
> decided to assert, without any whiff of basis, that Assange has a “long
> had a close relationship with the Putin regime.”
> 
> The U.S media has become very adept at outrage rituals whenever they are
> denounced as “fake news.” They should spend some time trying to become
> as skilled in figuring out why such attacks resonate for so many.










https://archive.fo/3szkm
https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trust-in-media-down.php -- The Columbia 
Journalism Review reports:

> The results of a new Knight Foundation and Gallup poll released on
> Tuesday won’t come as a huge surprise to most journalists: Trust in the
> media is down. Again.
> 
> A majority of those who were surveyed said they had lost trust in the
> media in recent years, and more than 30 percent of those who identified
> themselves as being on the conservative end of the spectrum said they
> had not only lost faith in the media, but they “expect that change to be
> permanent.” According to a separate Gallup poll from earlier this year
> that tracked trust in major institutions, newspapers and television news
> were among the lowest, exceeded only by Congress.

The poll report is at 
https://www.knightfoundation.org/reports/indicators-of-news-media-trust .








https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAtEC7sOfew
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/07/nbc-and-msnbc-blamed-russia-for-using-sophisticated-microwaves-to-cause-brain-injuries-in-u-s-diplomats-in-cuba-the-culprits-were-likely-crickets/ 
-- US reflexively blames Russia for "attacking Cuba" with "sophisticated 
microwaves" and causing "brain injuries". The source of the odd noise was 
likely crickets.

> NBC claimed that U.S. intelligence agencies had intercepted
> communications between Russian officials where they acknowledged their
> guilt for this attack, those same agencies insisted to the New Yorker
> “that they still had no evidence of Russian complicity.” Did any of that
> make MSNBC or NBC go re-visit their story and tell their viewers of this
> rather significant doubt raised by the New Yorker? Do you even need to
> ask?
> 
> Instead, NBC and MSNBC used hours of airtime and numerous pages to
> spread highly inflammatory claims across their numerous media platforms,
> all blaming Russia for an extremely serious attack on the U.S. – all
> because their CIA masters told them to do it. This is what NBC and MSNBC
> are, their function and mission:
> 
> An @NBCNews exclusive: After more than a year of mystery, Russia is the
> main suspect in the sonic attacks that sickened 26 U.S. diplomats and
> intelligence officials in Cuba. @MitchellReports has the latest.
> pic.twitter.com/NEI9PJ9CpD
> 
> — TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 11, 2018
> 
> And, needless to say, journalists from other mainstream outlets accepted
> these claims on blind faith, as exemplified by this Daily Beast
> reporter:
> 
> Wow >> U.S. has signals intelligence linking the sonic attacks on
> Americans in Cuba and China to *Russia* https://t.co/FbNla0vu9W
> 
> — Andrew Desiderio (@desiderioDC) September 11, 2018
> 
> One U.S. Senator used the NBC report to urge that Russia be classified
> as a “terrorist” state:
> 
> Following NBC report about sonic attacks, @SenCoryGardner renews calls
> for declaring Russia a state sponsor of terror https://t.co/wrnubfecom
> 
> — Niels Lesniewski (@nielslesniewski) September 11, 2018

But researchers publish 
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/04/510834 which starts:

> Recording of "sonic attacks" on U.S. diplomats in Cuba spectrally 
> matches the echoing call of a Caribbean cricket
> 
> Beginning in late 2016, diplomats posted to the United States embassy in
> Cuba began to experience unexplained health problems including ear pain,
> tinnitus, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties which reportedly began
> after they heard strange noises in their homes or hotel rooms. In
> response, the U.S. government dramatically reduced the number of
> diplomats posted at the U.S. embassy in Havana. U.S. officials initially
> believed a sonic attack might be responsible for their ailments. The
> sound linked to these attacks, which has been described as a
> high-pitched beam of sound, was recorded by U.S. personnel in Cuba and
> released by the Associated Press (AP). Because these recordings are the
> only available non-medical evidence of the sonic attacks, much attention
> has focused on identifying health problems and the origin of the
> acoustic signal. As shown here, the calling song of the Indies
> short-tailed cricket (Anurogryllus celerinictus) matches, in nuanced
> detail, the AP recording in duration, pulse repetition rate, power
> spectrum, pulse rate stability, and oscillations per pulse. The AP
> recording also exhibits frequency decay in individual pulses, a distinct
> acoustic signature of cricket sound production. While the temporal pulse
> structure in the recording is unlike any natural insect source, when the
> cricket call is played on a loudspeaker and recorded indoors, the
> interaction of reflected sound pulses yields a sound virtually
> indistinguishable from the AP sample. This provides strong evidence that
> an echoing cricket call, rather than a sonic attack or other
> technological device, is responsible for the sound in the released
> recording. Although the causes of the health problems reported by
> embassy personnel are beyond the scope of this paper, our findings
> highlight the need for more rigorous research into the source of these
> ailments, including the potential psychogenic effects, as well as
> possible physiological explanations unrelated to sonic attacks.

This follows a pattern of one of the two types of Russiagate stories out there:

Type 1: Stories that are just plain false. For example, Russians didn't 
take over the US power grid via a power station in Vermont.

Type 2: Stories that are wildly exaggerated to create an unjustified panic: 
Some Russians are said to have bought social media ads before the 2016 US 
presidential election. Some of those ads didn't run at all. Some ads didn't 
run until after the election. Some ads didn't seem to address the election 
in any way. The total amount of money spent on the ads is some thousands of 
dollars; orders of magnitude less money than what is needed to convey any 
message to American voters. And even for those ads that did run and did 
address the election, and didn't endorse Clinton, so what? Freedom of 
speech as a principle tells us it's okay for people (even Russians) to want 
Trump to win.

The real reasons for Trump's victory are rooted in Democrats not being 
motivated to vote for Hillary Clinton (many Democrats who voted for Obama 
did not vote for US President at all in 2016). That's Hillary Clinton's 
fault and is easily understood by looking at her neoliberalism (her support 
for economic policies that widen the gap between the wealthy and poor) and 
her neoconservatism (her support for more war). Mix in some amenable 
statements from Trump (criticizing NAFTA, criticizing the Iraq War, 
mentioning Medicare for All as a possibility) and apparently we see a 
repeat of what we learned when Mrs. Clinton lost to another political 
novice named Barack Obama whom most Americans had never heard of when he 
was the junior Illinois state senator. 2016 was Clinton's election to lose 
and she lost it.

Getting back to the problem with a lot of western media: At what point does 
western media and state-owned corporate sycophants (BBC and CBC, to name a 
couple), and the so-called "alternative" Democracy Now become so distrusted 
for their reflexive Russiagate support that we are forced to conclude 
they're dangerous jokes?

Supporting Russiagate is pushing for war with Russia, distracting attention 
away from issues that matter, and apparently resulting in an overall loss 
of trust in an institution people need in order to make informed decisions.









https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/12/25/senate-report-on-russian-interference-was-written-by-disinformation-warriors-behind-alabama-false-flag-operation/ 
-- Senate Report on Russian Interference Was Written By Disinformation 
Warriors Behind Alabama ‘False Flag Operation’

> Hailed by Congress and the media as defenders of democracy, high-tech
> Russiagate hustlers Jonathon Morgan and Ryan Fox have been exposed for
> waging “an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation” to swing the 2017 Alabama
> senate race.






War reporting: DoD stops releasing details on strikes in war against ISIS.

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/09/syria-isis-airstrikes-us-military/ --

> The Defense Department has quietly halted its practice of issuing
> detailed “strike releases,” periodic reports that provided information
> about bombings targeting Islamic State fighters, buildings, and
> equipment in Iraq and Syria.
> 
> The change comes as the U.S. military has ramped up its bombing
> offensive against ISIS in eastern Syria following President Donald
> Trump’s surprise announcement of a troop withdrawal last month. While
> many of the U.S.-led coalition’s actions against ISIS were shrouded in
> secrecy, the strike releases, which the military has been issuing since
> the start of the campaign against ISIS in 2014, were valuable tools for
> watchdogs that work to corroborate reports of civilian casualties.
> 
> “The only claim I’ve seen publicly made is that with ISIS almost beat,
> there’s less need for detailed releases,” said Chris Woods, the founder
> of Airwars, a London-based nonprofit that monitors and assesses civilian
> harm from bombing campaigns in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. “Yet both strikes
> and civilian harm are at their highest levels since Raqqa. Reducing
> transparency is entirely counterproductive in our view.”
> 
> In a note appended to the top of its January 4 strike release, the
> Defense Department announced that strike releases would be cut from
> weekly to biweekly. The subtext of the announcement is that even with
> biweekly releases, transparency about the bombings, including the dates
> of specific strikes and the buildings or groups targeted, has become the
> latest collateral damage.

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX6eBqTUz6U -- Trump wants less 
transparency on wars:

President Trump said:

> What kind of stuff is this? We're fighting wars and they're filing
> reports and releasing it to the public. Now the public means the enemy.
> The enemy reads those reports, they study every line of it. [...] They
> should be private reports and be locked up and if a member of Congress
> wants to see it he can go in and read it.



Afghanistan war spending: The SIGAR reviewed how money is spent in 
Afghanistan and (surprise!) there's wasteful spending:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-brand-new-us-military-headquarters-in-afghanistan-and-nobody-to-use-it/2013/07/09/2bb73728-e8cd-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_story.html
https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/boondoggle -- From Pro Publica:

> [T]he U.S. military built a lavish headquarters in Afghanistan that
> wasn’t needed, wasn’t wanted and wasn’t ever used—at a cost to American
> taxpayers of at least $25 million.
> 
> From start to finish, this 64,000-square-foot mistake could easily have
> been avoided. Not one, not two, but three generals tried to kill it. And
> they were overruled, not because they were wrong, but seemingly because
> no one wanted to cancel a project Congress had already given them money
> to build.
> 
> In the process, the story of “64K” reveals a larger truth: Once wartime
> spending gets rolling there’s almost no stopping it. In Afghanistan, the
> reconstruction effort alone has cost $109 billion, with questionable
> results.
> 
> The 64K project was meant for troops due to flood the country during the
> temporary surge in 2010. But even under the most optimistic estimates,
> the project wouldn’t be completed until six months after those troops
> would start going home.
> 
> Along the way, the state-of-the-art building, plopped in Afghanistan’s
> Helmand province, nearly doubled in cost and became a running joke among
> Marines. The Pentagon could have halted construction at many points—64K
> made it through five military reviews over two years—but didn’t, saying
> it wanted the building just in case U.S. troops ended up staying. (They
> didn’t.)

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dea-s-86m-spy-plane-for-combating-afghanistan-drug-trade-left-sitting-in-delaware-hanger-a6962561.html 


> DEA’s $86m spy plane for combating Afghanistan drug trade left sitting 
> in Delaware hanger
> 
> An $86m spy plane kitted out by the US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA)
> for the skies above Afghanistan has instead been sitting in a hangar in
> Delaware, it has emerged.
> 
> The DEA bought the ATR 42-500 plane for less than $10m in 2008, to help
> combat the Afghan drug trade, which is thought to contribute to funding
> terrorism. But the agency then spent almost $65m on modifications and
> surveillance equipment, as well as building a customised hangar to house
> the aircraft in Kabul.
> 
> However, a report published this week by the Inspector General’s Office
> of the US Justice Department found that the plane “remains inoperable,
> resting on jacks, and has never actually flown in Afghanistan.”
> 
> The DEA’s activities in Afghanistan were wound down last year, and now
> the plane is unlikely ever to fly there. It was grounded in Delaware
> after failing a Federal Aviation Administration inspection in 2014. A
> DEA official told investigators the plane would eventually be used for
> anti-drug trade efforts in Latin American and the Caribbean.

The cost of these two efforts alone could have paid for the expected costs 
of giving healthcare to the poorest New York City residents (see story below).






Palestinian support is source of job loss for Marc Lamont Hill, award loss 
for Angela Davis

https://on.rt.com/9m2j
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxTY0LABCiI -- RT's report on Angela Davis 
being stripped of an award from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute for 
her support of BDS ('Boycott Divest Sanction' Israel businesses ). Also 
includes how Marc Lamont Hill was recently fired from CNN and smeared for 
his support of the same.

 From https://on.rt.com/9m2j

> The scandal started innocuously enough in October, when the Alabama
> institute gave the former Black Panther and American communist party
> figurehead its biggest annual accolade, calling her “one of the most
> globally recognized champions of human rights, giving voice to those who
> are powerless to speak."
> 
> There was no immediate pushback, and a “homecoming” for Birmingham-born
> Davis, who is professor emeritus at the University of California, was
> scheduled for next month.
> 
> As the date neared, organized dissent began to be heard. Online
> publication Southern Jewish Life wrote a 1,200-word editorial in
> December saying “there might be some indigestion at the [award-ceremony]
> dinner over this year’s honoree,” and detailing her consistent support
> of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which “isolates
> Israel.”
> 
> On January 2, the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center wrote a letter
> directly to the civil rights institute, expressing “concern and
> disappointment” at Davis being honored, while local celebrity, retired
> four-star Marine General Charles Krulak, an outspoken friend of Israel,
> also issued a public statement condemning Davis, through a member of the
> local Jewish community.
> 
> On January 4, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute caved in, and issued
> a vague statement in which it said it had conducted a “closer
> examination” of Davis’ pronouncements, and concluded that she “does not
> meet all the criteria on which the award is based.”

The criteria is unpublished. Angela Davis responded to the award cancellation:

> Although the BCRI refused my requests to reveal the substantive reasons
> for this action, I later learned that my long-term support of justice
> for Palestine was at issue...
[...]

> I support Palestinian political prisoners just as I support current
> political prisoners in the Basque Country, in Catalunya, in India, and
> in other parts of the world. I have indeed expressed opposition to
> policies and practices of the state of Israel, as I express similar
> opposition to U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and
> to other discriminatory U.S. policies.

Marc Lamont Hill was a former CNN contributor who was fired for saying this 
on the record and in a recording:

> We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to
> commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and
> international action that will give us what justice requires. And that
> is a free Palestine. From the river to the sea.
In regards to Davis' award being rescinded, Marc Lamont Hill tweeted in 
https://twitter.com/marclamonthill/status/1082243739228270593

> This is shameful. I stand with my dear sister and friend Angela Davis.




https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/09/new-york-city-care-comprehensive-health-care-plan-concerns/2522924002/
https://abc7ny.com/politics/mayor-de-blasio-announces-health-care-for-all-nyc-residents/5034167/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gJCqYCUMds -- NYC mayor Bill de Blasio 
promises to cover all city residents despite citizenship or ability to pay.

Bill de Blasio said:

> For those who can afford something they'll pay on a sliding scale. For
> those who can't afford anything care will be for free.
 From 
https://abc7ny.com/politics/mayor-de-blasio-announces-health-care-for-all-nyc-residents/5034167/

> NYC Care, will ensure health care for the estimated 600,000 people
> without health insurance in the city.
> 
> The mayor said he believes too many city residents turn to hospital
> emergency rooms for health care. Instead, NYC Care is intended to
> connect these New Yorkers with primary-care doctors, specialty care,
> mental health services and prescription drugs.
> 
> Health care will be guaranteed to all residents, regardless of someone's
> ability to pay or immigration status.
> 
> The plan calls for strengthening the city's public health insurance
> option, MetroPlus, and guaranteeing anyone ineligible for insurance --
> including undocumented New Yorkers -- has direct access to NYC Health +
> Hospitals' physicians, pharmacies and mental health and substance abuse
> services. MetroPlus currently insures more than 500,000 low-income New
> Yorkers.

All 5 boroughs will be covered by 2021 and the program ("NYC Care") is 
expected to cost $100M per year.

-J