[Peace-discuss] Notes

Fri Jun 14 03:44:35 UTC 2019

Some additional notes to spur discussion on News from Neptune and AWARE on 
the Air. Have a great show guys.

> There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it will
> never, ever, ever be fixed. Don't look for it, be happy with what you
> got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talkin'
> about the real owners now. The real owners, the big wealthy business
> interests that control things and make all the important decisions.
> Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the
> idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You
> have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the
> important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long
> since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses,
> the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own
> all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news
> and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend
> billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they
> want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and
> less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: they
> don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They
> don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical
> thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s
> against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are
> smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly
> they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin'
> years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want
> obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to
> run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively
> accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the
> longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing
> pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re
> coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement
> money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends
> on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it
> all from you sooner or later cause they own this fuckin' place. It’s a
> big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in The Big Club. By the
> way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all
> day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you
> over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to
> think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged
> and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest
> hard-working people: White collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what
> color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these
> are people of modest means. Continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who
> don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They
> don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all. At all.
> At all. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what
> the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain
> willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being
> jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country
> know the truth. It’s called the American Dream cause you have to be
> asleep to believe it.
-- George Carlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dBZDSSky0

Justice delayed is justice denied: Grenfell edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUC0hh-KX78
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a_By0XV_RU -- UK government figures reveal 
that almost 60,000 people still live in dangerous tower blocks. This means 
that the UK government knows others face what could be harmful or lethal 
risk because the tower block construction uses construction material which 
is known to be substandard. Grenfell had cladding made from material 
including arsenic which, when burned, produced toxic smoke and helped kill 
some of the 72 people who died in the June 14, 2017 fire. Over 70 people 
were injured and 223 escaped the building.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy5dSD_3QSQ -- "Grenfell inquiry is taking 
too long" says North Kensington resident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OMnCfIwPe8 -- Grenfell survivors sue US 
companies for faulty building materials, filing their suits before the UK 
commission is finished because if they don't file before the statute of 
limitations runs out, they lose their chance to file at all.

Justice delayed is justice denied: Vietnam edition

https://cdnv.rt.com/files/2019.06/5cfd26b1dda4c8570b8b459d.mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w17n5O6jno -- Sophie Shevardnadze's 
interview with Phan Thị Kim Phúc, famous for being the 9-year-old girl 
shown running naked down a road after a South Vietnam Air Force napalm 
attack suffering from chemical burns with large portions of her skin missing.

https://www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/461476-vietnam-war-napalm-girl/ -- 
Transcript of above interview

> Kim Phúc: I was 9 years old when that picture was taken, in 1972.
> Avidly, I remember everything on that day. As children, we were allowed
> to play in the temple near the bomb shelter. And I remember on June 8,
> after lunch, we got to play around. And suddenly the soldiers yelled to
> the children asked us to run out of that temple. So I remember, I was
> one of them, of the children. I got in the front of the temple. Then, I
> saw the airplane go towards me, so loud and so close. And I just stood
> right there, on highway One, because I got to the highway One. And so, I
> remember, as a child, I just stood right there, and then I saw
> everything. I saw the four bombs landing like that. Then, I heard the
> noise, bup-bup, bup-bup! Like that, and then, suddenly, the fire was
> everywhere around me, and my clothes were burned off by the fire. And I
> saw the fire was over my left arm, and then, like that, and I used my
> right hand, I web it up. Then... I still remember my thought at that
> moment: “Oh my goodness, I got burned, so I would be ugly, and people
> would see me in a different way!” But at that moment, I was so scared
> and  terrified. I didn't see anybody at that moment. Then, I stopped
> thinking about everything, just ran out of that fire, and then I saw my
> brothers, and my cousin, and some of the soldiers right there. Then we
> kept running and running. I remember I ran for a while, until I felt so
> tired that I couldn’t run anymore. Then I stopped and cried out: “Too
> hot, too hot!” And I remember, one of the soldiers tried to help me, he
> gave me some water to drink, and he tried to help me. He poured water
> over me. Then I lost consciousness. I didn't remember anything else,
> that moment.

Censorship: More website and VPN blacklisting, this time from China.

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/07/china-bans-the-intercept-and-other-news-sites-in-censorship-black-friday/ 
-- Keep in mind that whatever technical measures the Chinese and Russian 
governments can get away with are viewed as goals by other ostensibly more 
freedom-loving governments like the US. Judging by what US and UK 
legislators are pushing for with social media organizations in the ongoing 
hearings, the US and UK governments are eager to see how effective various 
Internet blocks are (including outlawing VPNs, jailing VPN operators, and 
setting up firewalls that block access to certain sites).

Here's the Intercept about a recent Chinese block:

> The Chinese government appears to have launched a major new internet
> crackdown, blocking the country’s citizens from accessing The
> Intercept’s website and those of at least seven other Western news
> organizations.
> 
> On Friday, people in China began reporting that they could not access
> the websites of The Intercept, The Guardian, the Washington Post,
> HuffPost, NBC News, the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, and
> Breitbart News.
> 
> It is unclear exactly when the censorship came into effect or the
> reasons for it. But Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen
> Square massacre, and Chinese authorities have reportedly increased
> levels of online censorship to coincide with the event.
> 
> Charlie Smith, co-founder of GreatFire.org, an organization that
> monitors Chinese government internet censorship, said that the apparent
> crackdown on Western news sites represented a significant new
> development and described it as a “censorship Black Friday.”
> 
> “This frenzied activity could indicate that the authorities are
> accelerating their push to sever the link between Chinese citizens and
> any news source that falls outside of the influence of The Party,” said
> Smith, referencing the ruling Communist Party regime.
> 
> For years, China has blocked several Western news organizations after
> they have published stories that reflect negatively on the government.
> The New York Times, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and Reuters have
> all previously been censored, rendering their websites inaccessible in
> the country.
> 
> China operates an internet censorship system known as the Great
> Firewall, which uses filtering equipment to stop people in the country
> from accessing content published on banned websites that are operated
> outside China’s borders.
> 
> It is possible to circumvent the censorship using tools such as a
> virtual private network, or VPN. However, use of technology that
> bypasses the Great Firewall is banned — and people in the country who
> sell access to these services have been jailed.

Censorship: YouTube is catching undesirable press for its unclear 
definition and application of its policies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUFRXs4ls2w -- RT's CrossTalk discussion on 
this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIKnsw6Xo8Y -- Jimmy Dore show on Vox 
reporter Carlos Maza complaining that YouTube isn't censoring the correct 
people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWzK81bxgbE -- Jimmy Dore featuring Glenn 
Greenwald's reaction to Maza's call for censorship.

In other words, Maza is down with censorship so long as his political 
opponents are silenced. Therein lies a major problem with censorship: 
there's no way to be sure that one's own speech or that the "correct" ideas 
will be shut down/deplatformed/silenced/shadowbanned/etc.

- Shutting down an account means disallowing the users with that account's 
credentials to login to the service with that account. Sometimes this 
includes making all posts by that user to vanish from the system.

- Deplatforming a person means to remove opportunities for that person to 
speak and be heard (such as canceling local artist Nina Paley's latest 
movie "Seder-Masochism" and denying her a chance to speak and take 
questions from the viewers).

- Shadowbanning means allowing a user on a service to post without telling 
that user that their subscribers (followers, etc.) aren't being notified of 
their new posts.

The censorship isn't easily understood as being just against one particular 
set of political views. It seems that not only are those in favor of Pres. 
Trump finding it hard to get their messages published on YouTube, but so 
too are anti-police abuse news reporters and commentators, anti-war news 
and comments, and anyone else who speaks outside a narrow allowable range 
of debate.

Assange: US reportedly officially asks for extradition to US

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GzPdVe6OyM -- Honoring such extradition 
risks 175 years in prison, a life sentence. This RT report is a good 
summary of the facts of the matter to date and the risk for all journalists 
worldwide as the US pursues its extraterritorial prosecution for something 
that has long been known to be legal in the US -- publishing illicitly 
obtained documents. Since the US knows it can't get anywhere with this line 
of argument, the US indictment alleges that Assange materially assisted 
Manning with obtaining the Iraq & Afghan war logs. But there's no new 
evidence on this, nothing that would suggest this to be the case. Also, 
there's no reason to believe that Manning (an intelligence analyst assigned 
to an Army unit at the time) needed anyone's help because Manning already 
had access to classified documents.

Getting physical custody by way of Sweden remains a plan B for the US -- in 
case extradition from the UK to the US fails, Sweden's slow-walked 
so-called "preliminary investigation" into sexual misconduct allegations 
could result in Sweden requesting extradition. If such an extradition 
request were made and honored, the US could get Assange in Sweden. The UK 
has the power to deny Sweden extradition on the basis that Sweden is going 
to hand him over to the US, but the UK might not choose to use this power.

Assange remains a publisher who is an Australian citizen (formerly also an 
Ecuadorian citizen), WikiLeaks remains not an American publishing 
organization, and thus the US' prosecution of Assange remains 
extraterritorial ultimately based in doing something American publishers 
are ostensibly allowed to do (what the Washington Post was allowed to do 
with the Pentagon Papers) -- reveal US war crimes via illicitly obtained 
documents provided by third parties.

https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/news/press-releases-and-statements/mi5-%E2%80%9Cunlawfully%E2%80%9D-handled-bulk-surveillance-data-liberty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2UaOdRNd5s -- RT's report

UK civil liberties group "Liberty" has filed suit against MI5 (UK's 
domestic counter-intelligence and security service) and during discovery 
found that

> The British security service MI5 has been unlawfully retaining innocent
> people’s data for years.
> 
> It also failed to give senior judges accurate information about repeated
> breaches of its duty to delete bulk surveillance data, and has been
> criticised for mishandling sensitive legally privileged material.

The data appears to be data collected about UK citizens via indiscriminate 
surveillance mechanisms (widely known as "mass surveillance") meaning data 
is collected even if that data describes something not tied to any current 
investigation. Some of the data involved was highly sensitive and stored in 
ways that granted access to hundreds of people who should not have had 
access to that data.

[...]

> So serious was the breach that, when first notified, IPCO – [the The
> Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office --] the body responsible for
> overseeing government surveillance practices – sent a team of inspectors
> to MI5 for a week-long investigation.
> 
> In a statement quietly released by Home Secretary Sajid Javid, it was 
> confirmed that MI5 had breached the IPA in their handling and retention 
> of data belonging to the public. According to the statement, IPCO 
> concluded those risks were “serious and required immediate mitigation”. 
> Home Secretary Sajid Javid has said that he will now launch an 
> independent review of this incident.

Thanks to Liberty's work, we now know that:

Investigatory Powers Commissioner, Lord Justice Fulford, concluded that 
what MI5 did was "undoubtedly unlawful".

MI5 knew for 3 years that what they were doing was illegal before informing 
the IPCO.

Liberty also wrote:
> Warrants for bulk surveillance were issued by senior judges (known as
> Judicial Commissioners) on the understanding that MI5’s data handling
> obligations under the IPA were being met - when they were not. The
> Commissioner has pointed out that warrants would not have been issued if
> breaches were known.  The Commissioner states that “it is impossible to
> sensibly reconcile the explanation of the handling of arrangements the
> Judicial Commissioners were given in briefings…with what MI5 knew over a
> protracted period of time was happening."

On Corbyn facing bogus claims of antisemitism and Pompeo's claim that 
Corbyn must be stopped because he challenges militarism

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/06/trump-jeremy-corbyn-pompeo-coup-labour-antisemitism 

David Broder wrote:
> “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist
> due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too
> important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”
> 
> Henry Kissinger pronounced these words at a June 1970 meeting of the
> CIA’s 40 Committee, which spent up to $6.5 million trying to turn that
> fall’s Chilean election against socialist Salvador Allende. It didn’t
> work, and Allende won anyway, so the CIA began working to remove him
> through strikes, internal subversion and ultimately, military force.
> 
> The United Kingdom isn’t about to suffer a coup. But it seems that the
> week after Donald Trump made his state visit to London, our countries’
> “special relationship” doesn’t include much respect for British
> democracy. When Trump picked out Boris Johnson as his favored candidate
> to succeed Theresa May, at least he’d been asked to do it. In fact, the
> Tory leadership candidates were positively queuing up to seek the
> Donald’s support, as they tried to appeal to their party’s hard-right
> base.
> 
> But this weekend Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went much further. In
> private remarks recorded by the Washington Post[1], he insisted that the
> irresponsibility of the British voters couldn’t be allowed to bring
> Jeremy Corbyn into office: the issues are just too important. Corbyn’s
> record of opposition to US militarism as well as his challenge to the
> power of the wealthiest Brits just aren’t acceptable to Washington.

[1] 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pompeo-pledges-not-to-wait-for-britains-elections-to-push-back-against-corbyn-and-anti-semitism/2019/06/07/dfeaa180-9c27-4495-9322-3d16b7d1541a_story.html

Venezuelan coup is failing because opposition supporters are in it for 
their own interests and aren't uniting behind our coup says Mike Pompeo

https://on.rt.com/9vuk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw67uMl4GZo

> The effort to cobble together a united front against Maduro is not a
> thing of "these past months," according to Pompeo. It has been ongoing
> since he became CIA director, just after Donald Trump's swearing-in as
> president.
> 
> "Since the day I became CIA director, that was something that was at the
> center of what President Donald Trump was trying to do," he said.
> 
> The task "has proven devilishly difficult" though, as everybody in the
> opposition camp is after their own interests and wants to fight over the
> spoils rather than focus on the common cause of a coup.
> 
> "The moment Maduro leaves, everybody's going to raise their hands and
> [say], "Take me, I'm the next president of Venezuela.' It would be
> forty-plus people who believe they're the rightful heir to Maduro,"
> Pompeo reportedly said in the audio.
> 
> In an attempt to force Washington's various stooges to team up, Pompeo
> sought to enlist help from religious organizations.
> 
> "We were trying to support various religious... institutions to get the
> opposition to come together," he said.
> 
> Pompeo blamed the disarray among the opposition for the failure of the
> April 30 coup attempt by a group of soldiers, which fizzled out within
> 24 hours.

Foreign policy doesn't help explain anything does it?

https://www.blackagendareport.com/black-lives-matter-founder-launches-huge-project-shrink-black-lives 
-- Black Agenda Report.com's Glen Ford on the scam of NYT's recent poll of 
Black political opinion which leaves out foreign policy in order to help 
the Democratic Party look like that party is focused on issues of 
importance to Black voters.

> Alicia Garza, of Black Lives Matter fame, last week introduced her
> latest project in the pages of the New York Times: a survey of “more
> than 31,000 black people from all 50 states” to determine, as the
> headline announced, “What Black People Want.” The Black Census
> Project“is the largest independent survey of black people ever conducted
> in the United States,” wrote Garza.  A collaboration of Garza’s Black
> Futures Lab, Color of Change, Dēmos, and Socioanalítica Research, the
> project “trained more than 100 black organizers and worked with some 30
> grass-roots organizations” to elicit Black people’s views on a range of
> domestic subjects – but asked not a single question related to war and
> peace.
> 
> Garza & Co. have thus performed a kind of lobotomy on the Black polity
> in the United States, excising from public policy discussion Black
> Americans’ views on the nation’s endless military and economic wars
> against people of color around the world. Garza’s team appears to have
> operated on the premise that Black people have no opinion on the death
> of millions and the destruction of whole societies, crimes that are
> committed in their name by the U.S. government. As if Black Americans
> don’t see the connection between ever-expanding war budgets and
> constantly shrinking domestic social spending. The project is structured
> as if African Americans are provincial boobs who don’t give a damn about
> foreign affairs or the intersection of U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

[...]

> The survey is a hustle to make Garza, Color of Change and their (already
> deeply-connected) financial backers bigger players in the Democratic
> Party – without challenging lawless U.S. empire, “the greatest purveyor
> of violence in the world, today,” as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated
> more than half a century ago, and as Malcolm X hammered home till his
> dying breath.
> 
> Garza knows what she’s doing. The Movement for Black Lives platform,
> titled “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power,
> Freedom and Justice," is quite radical in its demands to end the
> (domestic) war on Black people, and on reparations, disinvestment of
> oppressive government and economic institutions, economic justice,
> community control, and decriminalizing Black political activity. It puts
> forward no demands on U.S. foreign policy, but instead offers an
> apology: “While the movement's platform largely focuses on the
> implementation of domestic policies that will advance black communities
> in America, the movement also recognizes that patriarchy, exploitative
> capitalism, militarism, and white supremacy know no borders.”
> 
> But Garza knows the borders of what is acceptable to the corporate
> Democratic Party, and adheres to the limits imposed by the fat cats –
> who are also among her donors. This is sometimes called political
> “capture” of dissidents by the ruling class. However, the term “capture”
> hardly fits when the prey is begging to be caught.

Elections: American meddling in foreign elections is still in vogue

https://news.yahoo.com/german-stars-lead-call-shun-far-goerliwood-113129343.html
https://today.rtl.lu/news/world/a/1359376.html
https://www.breitbart.com/news/german-stars-lead-call-to-shun-far-right-in-goerliwood/ 
-- AfP's report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT_3ftLYZHE -- RT's report (which features 
insightful interviews with people on the street and not just a corporate 
viewpoint)

Goerlitz, a German town which escaped being bombed in WWII, has many older 
buildings and generally retains an older look which Hollywood film 
producers find useful for their productions (examples include Wes 
Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" from 2014 and Quentin Tarantino's 
"Inglourious Basterds" from 2009 which were both shot in and around 
Goerlitz). Goerlitz will soon hold a mayoral election. The 
anti-establishment candidate, Sebastian Wippel from the AfD (Alternative 
for Germany/Deutschland) party, has the current lead in first-round 
elections over Octavian Ursu from the establishment CPD (Christian 
Democratic) party (36.4% for Wippel versus 30.3% for Ursu). The second 
round vote will occur on June 16. Green Party candidate Franziska Schubert, 
37, came in third place with 27.9%.

The Associated Free Press wrote:
> Goerlitz, Germany's most eastern town, has seen a mass exodus -- like
> many others in the former East -- as people sought higher wages in
> western regions.

This seems consistent with reactions against neoliberal economic policies 
around the world.

In response, some movie stars will release a joint statement to be 
published on Monday which is said to include:

> Don't give in to hate and hostility, conflict and exclusion.
> 
> Please vote wisely... Don't betray your convictions the moment someone 
> claims to be able to solve problems for you.

Shortly after Trump was duly elected as US president, those who backed the 
Hillary Clinton campaign (which certainly includes many inside the American 
entertainment industry) claimed that Russians had somehow put Trump in 
office. The claim was that Russian meddled in the 2016 US election merely 
by commenting on that election (however distantly) via social media 
(chiefly Facebook and Twitter). This disproven claim kicked off over 2 
years of repeated allegations of "Russian interference" in US elections. 
Similar allegations were started elsewhere and always just before an 
election (only to be shot down soon after).

Going back further, the US is widely known to have sent in the CIA to 
interfere with elections around the world, including assassinating 
democratically elected leaders the US Permanent Government (Deep State) 
does not approve.

Why should Goerlitz citizens seriously consider what outsiders say 
(particularly those connected with the American entertainment industry) 
when they hear the aforementioned statement? How are those words not 
"Hollywood interference" in Goerlitz elections? Isn't this just another 
clear indication of election hypocrisy following in a long line of such 
hypocrisies?

Brazil: Leaked documents indicate unfair prosecution against Lula

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/12/secret_files_show_how_brazils_elites 
-- Democracy Now interview with Glenn Greenwald and transcript.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gUKBFskQUI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NluOgOwlg8A -- RT's reports. Brazilian 
prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol and Intercept's Rafael Moro Martins are 
interviewed.

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-lula-operation-car-wash-sergio-moro/
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-car-wash-prosecutors-workers-party-lula/
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-archive-operation-car-wash/ -- 
Intercept articles on leaked documents about Brazil's operation "Car Wash":

> These stories are based on a massive archive of previously undisclosed
> materials — including private chats, audio recordings, videos, photos,
> court proceedings, and other documentation — provided to us by an
> anonymous source. They reveal serious wrongdoing, unethical behavior,
> and systematic deceit about which the public, both in Brazil and
> internationally, has the right to know.

A powerful judge (Judge Sergio Moro) and a prosecutor appear to have:

> led to the imprisonment of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva 
> last year. Lula’s conviction by [Judge Sergio Moro], once it was
> quickly affirmed by an appellate court, rendered him [Lula] ineligible
> to run for president at a time when all polls showed that Lula — who was
> twice elected president by large margins in 2002 and in 2006 before
> being term-limited out of office in 2010 with an 87 percent approval
> rating — was the frontrunner in the 2018 presidential race. Lula’s
> exclusion from the election, based on Moro’s finding of guilt, was a key
> episode that paved the way for Bolsonaro’s election victory.
> 
> Perhaps most remarkably, after Bolsonaro won the presidency, he created
> a new position of unprecedented authority, referred to by Brazilians as
> “super justice minister,” to oversee an agency with consolidated powers
> over law enforcement, surveillance, and investigation previously 
> interspersed among multiple ministries. Bolsonaro created that position
> for the benefit of the very judge who found Lula guilty, Sergio Moro, 
> and it is the position Moro now occupies. In other words, Moro now 
> wields immense police and surveillance powers in Brazil — courtesy of a
> president who was elected only after Moro, while he was as judge, 
> rendered Bolsonaro’s key adversary ineligible to run against him.

Brazil's Supreme Court is investigating this.

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/11/brazil-lula-ro-khanna-operation-car-wash/ 
-- US Rep. Ro Khanna is also calling for an investigation into Brazil's 
prosecution of Lula.

RT interviewed The Intercept's Rafael Moro Martins about their own 
publications based on the leaked documents:

> Rafael Moro Martins: We are continuing our work on the case. As we said,
> these are just our first reports. We have a lot of information; we have
> analyzed, I think, only 1% of the conversations. We will publish
> materials from these messages.

Brexit fallout continues: Half of Brits have no public trust in Boris 
Johnson or Michael Gove.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9rD41K05Ho -- RT's report which echoes 
what came before the US 2016 presidential election in which two very 
disliked candidates (Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump) ran and the public 
largely didn't know about Green and Libertarian party candidates. In the 
2016 US presidential election, most registered voters chose to not vote for 
US president at all. Despite massive favorable coverage in the media 
(whether saying outright that the host liked her for president or merely 
failing to report on her politics), Mrs. Clinton apparently failed to 
convince these voters to come out to the polls to vote for her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtxXSviKnJ4 -- meanwhile, Boris Johnson and 
Rory Stewart lead in the polls to be best Prime Minister.

Economy: It's all about class...and debt

https://www.wsj.com/video/best-moments-from-the-commencement-speeches-of-2019/4F48A380-A086-4700-91FF-8EE809E687AF.html 
-- Wall St. Journal's "Highlights from the Commencement Speeches of 2019"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqSo3eKfRsc -- Jimmy Dore reaction

What do billionaires have to teach the recent college graduates of 2019?

> Media entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey: So, take a deep breath with me right
> now. [Takes a deep breath] And repeat this: Everything is always working
> out for me. [The crowd remains silent.] I wanna hear it: Everything is
> always working out for me. [The crowd remains silent.] That's my mantra.
> Make it yours. Everything is always working out for me. Because it is
> and it has and it will continue to be as you forge and discover your own
> path.

> Apple CEO Tim Cook: As you go out into the world, don't waste time on
> problems that have been solved. Don't get hung up on what other people
> say is practical. Instead, steer your ship into the choppy seas. Look
> for the rough spots. The problems that seem too big. The complexities
> that other people are content to work around. It's in those places that
> you will find your purpose. It's there that you can make your greatest
> contribution.

One "rough spot", one "problem that seems too big" is paying off one's own 
college loan debt. Another is asking why students in one of the wealthiest 
countries in the world have college loan debt in the first place. Or why so 
many young people are economically forced to live with their parents again 
(an occurrence so common now it has a term -- "boomerang".

According to Pew Research (from 
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/05/its-becoming-more-common-for-young-adults-to-live-at-home-and-for-longer-stretches/ 
)

> As of 2016, 15% of 25- to 35-year-old Millennials were living in their
> parents’ home. This is 5 percentage points higher than the share of
> Generation Xers who lived in their parents’ home in 2000 when they were
> the same age (10%), and nearly double the share of the Silent Generation
> who lived at home in 1964 (8%).

According to Forbes magazine (from 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/02/25/student-loan-debt-statistics-2019/ 
)

> Student loan debt in 2019 is the highest ever.
> 
> The latest student loan debt statistics for 2019 show how serious the
> student loan debt crisis has become for borrowers across all
> demographics and age groups. There are more than 44 million borrowers
> who collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student loan debt in the U.S.
> alone. Student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt
> category - behind only mortgage debt - and higher than both credit cards
> and auto loans. Borrowers in the Class of 2017, on average, owe $28,650,
> according to the Institute for College Access and Success.

So perhaps one will need more than merely repeating a mantra to oneself 
like "everything is always working out for [them]". "Steering [one's] ship 
into the choppy seas" apparently doesn't pay the rent.

Not one of the clips from Wall St. Journal's commencement speech summaries 
(dating back years) features anyone saying that young people should become 
activists pushing to reduce the war budget by 50%. Not one of the 
invariably wealthy politicians, entertainers, and industrialists who give 
these vapid speeches recommends that the citizenry agitate to reallocate 
federal money to pay off all current college loan debt, liberate future 
students from college loan debt, and end homelessness -- all of which could 
be paid for by reallocating a few trillion dollars away from killing people 
around the world. I don't think that's an accident.

Law: A recent case points to a problem with the term "intellectual 
property" and why one should never use that term except to criticize use of 
that term. Also, can the state do whatever they want?

https://www.chron.com/business/article/UH-can-be-sued-for-using-photo-judge-rules-12992526.php

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Texas-court-says-photographer-has-no-recourse-13973674.php 
-- 

> [Houston photographer Jim Olive, who] has made a career out of getting
> difficult and dangerous aerial shots from open helicopters, sued the
> University of Houston two years ago with a novel argument that using one
> of his photographs without compensation or permission was an unlawful
> "taking" under the Texas Constitution, which prohibits government
> agencies from taking private property without adequate compensation.
> 
> Olive tried the approach after the University of Houston rejected his
> claim that the public university should pay for a photo it used without
> permission in web and print publications, contending the university has
> sovereign immunity, a well-established legal principle that protects a
> state from getting sued.
> 
> Olive was elated his constitutional takings case was allowed to proceed
> last year, but this week he was trying to make sense of what happened.
> He has never been paid for the picture by the University of Houston, now
> he can't recover damages and he was ordered by the appeals court to pay
> the legal fees of the University of Houston, which Olive said he had no
> idea how he was going to do.
> 
> "It just doesn't seem fair to me," he said.
> 
> The bigger issue for the creative community, he said, is that the
> decision means that public institutions in Texas -- including public
> hospitals, universities and government agencies -- don't have to pay for
> photographs and other creative content.
> 
> "With this, they can just run rampant over copyright and take
> intellectual property with impunity," said Olive.

It's strange that Jim Olive didn't pursue this as a straightforward 
copyright infringement case but instead chose this "novel argument" (as the 
Houston Chronicle put it in their article) of calling the University's 
behavior an "unlawful 'taking' under the Texas Constitution". Did this 
argument come from thinking about the phrase "intellectual property" and 
conflating physical property with information? It makes sense that if one 
sues for the wrong thing, one risks losing their case.

But if the court "contend[ed that] the university has sovereign immunity, a 
well-established legal principle that protects a state from getting sued" 
(again, as the Houston Chronicle wrote), how far does that power go?

Unfortunately the available descriptions of the case in these articles 
raise more questions than they answer but so-called "intellectual property" 
doesn't comport with physical property (such as land). The Free Software 
Foundation has written about the problems with the phrase "intellectual 
property":

 From https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty

> Publishers and lawyers like to describe copyright as “intellectual
> property”—a term also applied to patents, trademarks, and other more
> obscure areas of law. These laws have so little in common, and differ so
> much, that it is ill-advised to generalize about them. It is best to
> talk specifically about “copyright,” or about “patents,” or about
> “trademarks.”
> 
> The term “intellectual property” carries a hidden assumption—that the
> way to think about all these disparate issues is based on an analogy
> with physical objects, and our conception of them as physical property.
> 
> When it comes to copying, this analogy disregards the crucial difference
> between material objects and information: information can be copied and
> shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be.
> 
> To avoid spreading unnecessary bias and confusion, it is best to adopt a
> firm policy not to speak or even think in terms of “intellectual
> property”.[1]
> 
> The hypocrisy of calling these powers “rights” is starting to make the
> World “Intellectual Property” Organization embarrassed.[2]

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
[2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/wipo-PublicAwarenessOfCopyright-2002.html

Presumably if the University of Houston had taken ownership of Olive's 
land, Olive might have been paid.

It's also interesting to consider who benefits from the state arrogating 
this "sovereign immunity" power to itself: not University of Houston 
students seeking gratis textbooks (which apparently that University may 
copy and distribute at no charge without paying a copyright holder) and not 
prisoners or Houstonians who want a full library of works of all kinds 
(most of which are under copyright).

-J