[Peace-discuss] Anti-neoliberalism notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

Some items to consider for News from Neptune.


Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Pn9wAsisU -- Trump attacks Bernie Sanders 
as socialist but then: signs the 2018 Farm bill[1] where food stamps 
account for much of the cost of the bill (per 
https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/trump-signs-2018-farm-bill), 
launches a $1.5T infrastructure bill (per 
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-unveila-1point5-trillion-infrestructure-plan/4249532.html).

This makes supporters of so-called "global free trade" nervous (per 
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/trump-tariffs-free-trade/) 
and calls Trump "our socialist president" (per 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-could-teach-ocasio-cortez-a-thing-or-two-about-socialism/2018/07/27/f4672a2e-9102-11e8-bcd5-9d911c784c38_story.html)

Sen. Ron Johnson, Republican:

> This is becoming more and more like a Soviet type of economy here:
> Commissars deciding who's going to be granted waivers, commissars in the
> administration figuring out how they're going to sprinkle around
> benefits.

[1] By the way, part of this bill will legalize hemp as an industrial crop 
for the US...again. Apparently when the elites want hemp for ropes or other 
industrial purposes hemp cultivation is legal in the US like it was during 
WW2 (see the 1942 US government film "Hemp for Victory" -- 
https://archive.org/details/Hemp_for_victory_1942_FIXED). But this change 
comes after 80 years of hemp cultivation illegality for no good reason.




Some lessons in how to report things from "trusted media"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56-6rp4nzmE -- RT's "journalism crash 
course" showing a few principles from the media we're told to trust:

- "Always fact check" like Forbes didn't in "Are Lemons A Sign Of Upward 
Mobility Around The World?" 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizzysaxe/2019/02/14/want-to-find-a-rich-person-in-russia-look-for-the-lemons/ 
by Lizzy Saxe. Any web search tells you the average price of lemons in 
Russia is $0.30/lemon. But Forbes repeated a claim from Harold Edwards, 
president and CEO of Limoneira, described as "a gigantic, fascinating 
company that has been growing lemons and other citrus fruits in California 
since 1893":

Forbes quoted Edwards saying:

> ...Wealthy Russians really like to incorporate lemons into their
> lifestyle. It communicates to people that they have means to be able to
> afford them. They call it the bling of produce.

but this quote doesn't appear in this Saxe article now. Instead I see an 
unbacked claim that:

> Harold [Edwards] noticed that "Russians consume a lot more lemons per
> capita than many other parts of the world. I was wondering, is that
> because they're big tea drinkers? Why are they using so many lemons?"

and the rationale (still unbacked with figures or pointers to other data) 
is that:

> As Limoneira started to dig into this, the team found that lemons that 
> were perceived to be higher quality - California has a certain caché - 
> were being purchased far more than lemons in general: "We then started 
> to see similar things in parts of Southeast Asia. I thought it was just 
> because there were a lot more restaurants that were cropping up, a lot 
> more retail shopping opportunities, more disposable income. I thought 
> that was driving all this demand, and certainly, that is part of it.
> But it's also become an aspirational item... as more people are starting
> to have money in these burgeoning middle-class economies, you're
> starting to see a lot more consumption from them because they can."

So Forbes appears to have shifted the attempt at making something look good 
by association from Edwards' company to the state of California.

This Saxe article now bears a paragraph which reads:

> This article was updated on 2/17/19 to more accurately reflect social
> status in Russia.

RT pointed this out and said "So you won't have to backtrack".

- (quoting RT) "Do your homework" before going live unlike Bari Weiss, 
staff editor from the New York Times, who didn't do her homework before her 
recent interview with Joe Rogan (tv game show host, comic, and former star 
of "Newsradio"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T77uFdw9HJA -- Joe Rogan episode with Bari 
Weiss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS-sxJFn6O0 -- Jimmy Dore show on this 
episode pointing out how she can get away with talking points she doesn't 
understand but never gets questioned on because the US-friendly media 
agrees with the talking points.

Here's the telling excerpt from Joe Rogan's show:

> Bari Weiss: So who's in [the Democratic Party running for US president]
> right now? We have Kamala, Kristen Gillibrand
> 
> Joe Rogan: Tulsi Gabbard.
> 
> Bari Weiss: Ho ho ho -- monstrous. She's an Assad toady.
> 
> Joe Rogan: What does that mean? What does "toady" mean?
> 
> Bari Weiss: She is a -- I think that I used that word correctly. Jamie
> [an off-camera show assistant] can you check what toady means? I think
> it means what I think it means.
> 
> Joe Rogan: She's an Assad sycophant, is that what you're saying?
> 
> Bari Weiss: Yeah, that's pro--[the first syllable of "proven"] known about her.
> 
> Joe Rogan: Like, what did she say that qualifies her?
> 
> Bari Weiss: We have to look -- I don't remember the details.
> 
> Joe Rogan: We probably should say that before we say that about her. We
> should probably read it, rather.
> 
> Bari Weiss: Well, I have read it.

- (As RT puts it) "No quotation marks = Plagiarism" unlike what the New 
York Times' ex-editor Jill Abramson was accused of. Abramson went on CNN's 
"Reliable Sources" and talked about this with host Brian Stelter after 
seeing examples of her work versus the sources she (clearly) copied from 
without attribution in her book "Merchants of Truth" (oh, the irony):

> Brian Stelter: Wouldn't these examples meet the Times' definition of
> plagiarism? [...]
> 
> Jill Abramson: It would meet the the Times' definition of things that
> should be promptly corrected. [...] And sometimes, you know, a quote
> isn't attributed.



Labor: More teachers strikes are starting and ending quickly (with 
virtually zero news coverage) because management is afraid of encouraging 
others to strike

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2019/02/22/oakland-teacher-strike-enters-second-day-negotiations-resume/
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2019/02/24/oakland-teachers-strike-talks-break-down-sunday-third-day-of-picketing-planned-monday/ 
-- East Bay Times coverage of the Oakland, CA teachers strike

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooe1TG_a7GA -- Jimmy Dore Show talks about 
a teachers strike in West Virginia which lasted no more than a week, and an 
Oakland, CA strike which started January 18 and continues now.

https://socialistworker.org/2019/01/18/oakland-teachers-wont-wait-for-a-strike-deadline 
starts:

> EDUCATORS FROM five Oakland high schools and one middle schools are
> planning a one-day wildcat strike today to demand that a city swimming
> in tech money provide the funding and salaries that its schools and
> teachers deserve.
> 
> The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is offering teachers an
> insulting 5 percent raise over five years — in a region where the cost
> of living has risen 14 percent in the past five years.
> 
> The Oakland Education Association (OEA) is demanding a 12 percent
> increase over three years. Like the United Teachers Los Angeles members
> currently on strike down the coast, Oakland educators are also fighting
> for smaller class sizes and hiring more nurses, psychologists and
> counselors.

These teachers strikes seem to want the same things:

- roughly 12% pay raises over years,
- class size reductions (in Los Angeles county there's no upper-bound on 
class size),
- and more support services for students.

and the teachers are winning these strikes, which prompted this segment of 
conversation on the Jimmy Dore show:

> Jimmy Dore: The teachers have been winning every one of these strikes. I
> can't believe that every teachers union doesn't go on strike
> immediately. Right?
> 
> Ron Placone: If this was amplified more I think they would.






A new Medicare for All bill: Rep. Pramila Jayapal's (D-WA) HR1384

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1384 -- where one 
can find the bill once it is published.

Right now there's more said about the bill than we can learn from reading 
the bill. So some of what follows (despite having been announced) is 
speculative:

- HR1384 currently has 106 cosponsors. But remember that HR676 had a lot of 
cosponsors while the Democrats never brought it to the floor for a vote 
even when the Democrats had a majority in the House, a majority in the 
Senate, and Democratic Party Pres. Obama was in the White House. Even then 
some Democrats (such as former Senator Al Franken) never cosponsored what 
was known as HR676 at that time. Apparently they chose to use that power to 
bring the US "ObamaCare" ("RomneyCare" by another name) -- an HMO-written 
plan in which Americans would be forced to buy into an HMO-run plan or pay 
a penalty. Thus the number of cosponsors doesn't really tell us anything.

- Then-HR676 was very highly regarded then. Physicians for a National 
Healthcare Program (PNHP.org) are strongly pro-universal single-payer 
advocates who rightly argued for HR676. It's unclear why Sen. Bernie 
Sanders didn't make a Senate bill that was a copy of the text of HR676 with 
a Senate bill number, or why HR1384 needed to be written at all. People now 
pushing for HR1384 are notably quiet on why HR1384 had to be written.

- As I write this, the text of HR1384 is unavailable (check 
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1384/text for the 
latest). That page returns "As of 02/28/2019 text has not been received for 
H.R.1384". We're told that this bill's text is over 100 pages, far longer 
than HR676 was.

- 
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/27/medicare-for-all-bill-congress-pramila-jayapal/ 
a recent Intercept article by Ryan Grim, is basically an ad for HR1384 and 
doesn't give answers as to why HR676 needed to be scrapped, why Sanders' 
Medicare for All plan exists, and why we needed HR1384. There's also no 
mention of what the Democrats did with their Congressional power when HR676 
was available to be brought to the floor for a vote.

- HR1384 will take 2 years to fully take effect: within one year of 
passage, everyone under 19 or over 55 will be automatically enrolled. 
Everyone else can buy into this plan or stay with their current HMO. Within 
2 years, everyone else will be automatically enrolled. But it's not clear 
why this is structured in this way. Every day some American isn't 
automatically enrolled is a day the HMOs can push them to not support the 
plan. Sanders' Medicare for All plan enrolls citizens in stages across 4 
years. When Medicare came into being the US was able to enroll millions 
without the aid of computers.



Obama media deals are coming together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j39zCIT11HQ -- Following a deal they made 
last year, the Obamas are working with Netflix for an undisclosed sum (RT 
repeats unattributed estimate of over $100 million). Their "mission: to 
empower new and diverse voices" which investigative journalist Ben Swann 
says is more likely to be "new voices saying the same thing" as what was 
said before. Susan Rice also joined Netflix's board last year.

> They simply want to find the next voice to say the same thing that's
> been said. The problem again is this: we have a media culture in the
> United States that does not really look for diversity of voices; if
> you're that expecting to come out of this, you're going to be sorely
> disappointed. There's not going to be diversity in terms of messaging or
> voices, [...] when they use that term they simply mean more minorities
> and more people who are pushing their world view.

That sounds like what I'd expect as well: the scam of diversity will 
translate to more blacks, women, Latinos, etc. saying things that reinforce 
neoconservative and neoliberal thought -- more people echoing the need to 
invade Venezuela on the pretense that Maduro is a 'bad man', for instance. 
What you won't hear are more people pushing to get out of the US's many 
wars and occupations, a call for a national jobs program funded by cutting 
the military budget at least in half, and so on.

This will end up adding to the evidence that the change in US President is 
far more minor than it is played up to be: Trump is a weak president who 
will carry out Obama-style invasion/occupation war policy including keeping 
with Obama's "not looking back but looking forward" non-aggression pact 
with previous administrations which insulates members of the G.W. Bush 
administration from being tried and possibly imprisoned for invading Iraq 
in 2003, for instance).




Yemen: Countries bombing Yemen now pledge to donate aid to Yemen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1-vWYj4Jjc -- RT reports: "$2.6B of aid 
coming into Yemen during a special 1-day conference. More than half of the 
donations come from the US, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates -- 
countries which put Yemeni in the dire position they're in now."

Pledges (yet to be paid):

SA: $500 million
UAE: $250 million
USA: (over time) $750 million

Michael Maloof puts it bluntly:

> They're buying people off. There was supposed to be a conference in
> Sweden to have a cease-fire. Nothing was agreed to. The war goes on.
> Saudis are continuing to bomb civilian areas in spite of showing this
> outward sign -- by the way, that money is only a commitment; they
> haven't paid anything.



Nina Paley open letter to the University of Illinois on her deplatforming 
at Ebertfest, Arcadia, and consequences at the University of Illinois

http://blog.ninapaley.com/2019/02/28/open-letter-to-the-university-of-illinois/ 
-- Nina Paley's open letter

https://www.uillinois.edu/about/guiding_principles -- University of 
Illinois' "Guiding Principles"





Censorship: Project Veritas shows Facebook has "deboosting" tools which 
they use against pages that don't echo a liberal line

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoOrr_W2fC4 -- Facebook confirms 
"deboosting" but calls Project Veritas' investigative journalism a stunt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPOc-AWneRc -- James O'Keefe asking 
Facebook employees questions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYSmFI9GAAs -- Facebook insider speaks out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMtbba2fD4M -- Facebook will "classify 
posts as 'hate speech', limiting live streams from Facebook, and 
suppressing the reach of posts" says this report. A whistleblower spoke 
with Project Veritas about this.

You might remember Project Veritas' undercover camera work which exposed 
Twitter employees bragging about the ways in which they can restrict an 
account holder from being read -- outright banning them from the site, 
"shadowbanning" the user's posts so the user doesn't realize their posts 
aren't triggering update notifications in followers feeds (thus reducing 
the odds the posts will be read), and downranking the posts in searches.

Project Veritas also showed videos of CNN employees explaining how they 
were in the tank for Hillary Clinton and CNN anchor Van Jones saying 
Russiagate was a "nothing burger" (the allegations that the Trump campaign 
colluded with Russians and this collusion somehow put Trump in the White 
House had no substance to back them up) (see 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qSPA9WRJec).

In this instance, Project Veritas interviewed a whistleblower who worked on 
allegations of copyright and trademark infringement and says she also 
noticed "other things were going on on accounts".

She alleges that pages including "conservative" content are being 
"deboosted" -- followers were not being notified of updates to pages with 
conservative views expressed. This is the same as what Twitter called 
"shadowbanning". In some cases content from a user's Facebook pages were 
removed without letting users know about the censorship. She said that this 
was particular to conservatives:

> First I was wondering whether this was something that -- I had a couple
> working theories -- I was like maybe this is an independent versus
> mainstream thing. Maybe independent figures on the left are experiencing
> the same kind of deboosting. But I didn't see that. I looked at The
> Young Turks' page, I looked at Colin Kaepernick's page, none of them had
> received the same deboost.
And Facebook is tagging pages with terms it doesn't like as "hate speech" 
and "offensive". But only for conservative pages; the effect is quite 
one-sided for now. And this whistleblower is not the first to allege this 
is going on. Facebook also confirmed she was fired for working with Project 
Veritas, so we're sure she was a former Facebook employee as she claimed.

Recall also that Alphabet and Google's CEO Eric Schmidt famously told an 
audience that Google had plans to "derank" RT's entries in the search 
engine. This means that searches which would normally return RT-related 
pages high in the listing (making them more likely to be seen on the first 
page of search results) would begin listing those entries lower down the 
list, possibly only showing up after a user went to another page of entries 
thus making them less likely to be selected.

RT also points out that this censoring behavior is directly opposed to what 
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised Congress he didn't want to do.

But the truth remains that publishing through any third-party service 
grants that party power over one's freedom to speak and be heard. So in the 
short term we need to encourage people to stop hosting their publications 
with only one service and instead to host with multiple services 
simultaneously; this will reduce the censorial power any one service has 
over one's speech. Also, we need multiple Internet services everywhere 
including state-owned services all sharing the same community-owned 
networks. And we need Internet services as a right, not a privilege only 
available to those who can afford it from the marketplace. The market is 
not interested in guaranteeing one's freedom of speech and they have no 
obligation to do so, no matter how many people want to call Facebook, 
Twitter, et al a public marketplace of ideas.

Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSt0jEC9pEM -- British 
anti-Islamic activist Tommy Robinson has been banned from Facebook and 
Instagram claiming:

> When ideas and opinions cross the line and amount to hate speech that 
> may create an environment of intimidation and exclusion for certain 
> groups in society -- in some cases with potentially dangerous offline 
> implications -- we take action. Tommy Robinson's Facebook page has
> repeatedly broken these standards, posting material that uses
> dehumanizing language and calls for violence targeted at Muslims. He has
> also behaved in ways that violate our policies around organized hate.
But don't think this means military contractors Facebook/Instagram pages, 
propagandistic media outlets (like Washington Post which recently got 
caught misleading about Richard Branson's Venezuela concert), or any 
politician who espouses neoconservative or neoliberal views (such as 
Hillary Clinton) will lose their Facebook/Instagram content.

Related: 
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-facebook-war-on-hate-speech 
-- Vanity Fair's all too kind article on Facebook's Monika Bickert, a 
former federal prosecutor and Harvard Law School graduate, who has "real 
power to dictate free-speech norms for the entire world" but is faced with 
a dilemma on how to censor posts containing "men are scum" without 
"allow[ing] more attacks on the basis of gender":

> When Facebook mass-deletes “men are scum,” it’s not thanks to top-down
> bias at the company, or some rogue men’s-rights Facebooker taking his
> stand against misandry. Nor is it a boneheaded “enforcement error”
> caused by one of Facebook’s 15,000 human content moderators around the
> world. The posts get removed because of one of Monika Bickert’s
> well-intentioned, though possibly doomed, policies.

Nowhere will you find any definition of the term "hate speech" (though the 
term is used many times throughout the article) or any thought given to 
whether Facebook should censor in the first place. We're supposed to pity 
poor Facebook for taking on this "well-intentioned" policy.




Big media outlets merge again: AT&T buys Time-Warner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e17LQMY0dpE -- interview with Media Studies 
Professor Robin Anderson.






Media: How to watch the media -- don't buy into their newsreaders' tears, 
outrage, and other emotional outbursts. Wait for the facts to come in first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIdHyF-Zssw -- RT's Caleb Maupin reminds us 
to look past the newsreaders own reactions to stories and wait for the 
facts to come in before gauging how to respond.

Recently actor Justin "Jussie" Smollett faked an attack on himself in order 
to manufacture sympathy and negotiate increased payment on his TV show 
"Empire". Smollett tried to tie the alleged attack to racism, homophobia 
(Smollett is gay), and Pres. Trump. At the time of the initial news, there 
was considerable outrage from commentators and newsreaders.

But the media has a bad track record of evaluating such events instead 
choosing to grandstand and virtue signal instead of reporting the facts of 
the case:

- Rachel Maddow choked up when reading about child migrants being put into 
Texas shelters blaming the policy on Pres. Trump. The narrative fit the 
media's immediate need: look like Pres. Trump is uniquely horrible and 
needs to be opposed. It turns out that a similar policy existed under Pres. 
Obama. A famous picture also circulated online around the same time showed 
a migrant child in a cage, alleging to be a fair representation of how 
Trump treated child migrants. It turns out that the photo was taken during 
the Obama administration.

- Omran, a young boy from Aleppo, was shown with dust and blood on his face 
sitting (alive) and the media were eager to use the image for Syrian war 
propaganda. CNN's host of a segment (labeled "Crisis in Syria") was 
typical; she said (choked up throughout):

> What strikes me is we shed tears, but there are no tears here. He 
> doesn't cry once. That little boy is in total shock. He's stunned. This
> is Omran. He's alive. We wanted you to know.
It turns out that Omran, a minor, was photographed before he was given 
first aid. His father was upset at him being used in this way. CNN didn't 
interview him after he was cleaned up or ask his father for permission to 
use the child's image.

Lara Logan was CBS News Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent from 2006-2018. 
She was on the Mike Drop podcast and had this to say about media manipulation:

> How do you know you're being lied to? How do you know you're being
> manipulated? How do you know there's something not right with the
> coverage? When they simplify it all and there's no gray. We seem to be
> doing, today, is substituting the law and the courts for trial by
> media.







Economy: What does austerity do? How did the US get Pres. Trump? And what 
does debt cancellation have to do with this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSvcB55R8jM -- Jimmy Dore interview with 
Michael Hudson, author of "...and forgive them their debts" on how Wall 
Street gave us Trump, and how austerity is the opposite of what poor people 
need. (36m04s)

Highly recommended viewing as this is quite informative as to how we 
arrived at where we are and what's coming up.







Russiagate: Still no evidence of conspiracy theory alleging collusion 
between Trump campaign and Russians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUZAs52tpVA -- RT's report on how much of a 
non-story the Cohen testimony is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbtDt9abaX0 -- Aaron Maté with Cenk Uygur

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hgWSrvXxzs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1itMF_BYeU -- Jimmy Dore show with Aaron 
Maté on Russiagate: Michael Cohen says he has no evidence of collusion, 
rightly points out that it's not his job to debunk Buzzfeed (which Mueller 
did when he told the country not to expect much from his ongoing 
investigation).

So we've got Mueller debunking Russiagate, Cohen debunking Russiagate, and 
that would seem to mean it's safe to say there was never anything to 
Russiagate.

And there's absolutely no evidence that WikiLeaks told Roger Stone anything 
on the phone. WikiLeaks also says they never had a phone conversation with 
Stone, but this could be easily disproven by phone records if anyone cared 
to do the proper journalistic legwork of looking it up.

Cohen said this advanced knowledge of the DNC emails he describes between 
Roger Stone, Donald Trump, and him in the room listening to the 
speakerphone all happened on the 18th or 19th of July 2016. But anything 
Stone says he had ahead of time from WikiLeaks was provably public 
knowledge: there's footage of Assange on ITV.com on June 12, 2016 saying:

> We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,
> that is correct.
there is also a tweet from WikiLeaks posted July 7, 2016 at 7:52PM:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/751202198101626882

> Have more than 1,000,000 followers? Want early access to our pending
> Hillary Clinton publications? DM @WikiLeaks
or their post from July 22, 2016 at 10:33AM:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/756501723305414656

> Did you know our pending DNC release contains 5,245 emails about Trump
> 2,893 about Hillary Clinton & 2,235 on Bernie Sanders? #feelthebern
and WikiLeaks recently reminding us that (posted February 27, 2016):

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1100820252450082818

> STATEMENT on Michael Cohen testimony to Congress: WikiLeaks publisher
> Julian Assange has never had a telephone call with Roger Stone.
> WikiLeaks publicly teased its pending publications on Hillary Clinton
> and published > 30k of her emails on 16 March 2016.
> https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/

Thomas Massie (R-KY) asked "Did you know this was public knowledge in 
June?" but that didn't stop corporate media and corporate-friendly media 
from pushing Russiagate further.

So this is yet another Congressional bit of theatre without substance, just 
like the rest of Russiagate.

But does that mean Russiagate will die?

Aaron Maté points out on the Jimmy Dore show:

> Aaron Maté: It's a great example of how the conspiracy theory works and
> Matt Taibbi was prescient because if you watch CNN today, if you read
> the headlines they say, you know, Trump was told in advance of the
> WikiLeaks emails. They omit, exactly as you're saying, they omit the
> fact that these emails were already publicly announced by WikiLeaks.
> They just don't mention it. And that is how this conspiracy theory about
> Trump and Russia worked for over two years -- they just leave out
> anything that is countervailing. And to get it you have to go to places
> like Jimmy Dore, or follow the right people on Twitter. But if you watch
> the corporate media --
> 
> Jimmy Dore: Even the non-corporate media [carries the Russiagate
> narrative]
> 
> Aaron Maté: Even the non-corporate media, yeah, it's true.
> 
> Jimmy Dore: Even the non-corporate media pushes this exact narrative.
> 
> Aaron Maté: It's true. Anybody -- there is an incentive to peddling this
> conspiracy theory because it's been decided it's the way we're resisting
> Trump. And it benefits too many powerful people who -- happen to decide
> that it benefits their agenda for different reasons. But the point is,
> it's propaganda. And it works like this, it works by omission. By
> leaving out the countervailing facts that undermine the entire premise.
Who benefits and how?

Russiagate is still so valuable to multiple parties: Russian sanctions need 
justification somehow, Hillary Clinton needs a way to explain her second 
loss (and to a political novice at that -- I doubt many people knew who 
Barack Obama was when he was Illinois' junior senator), Buzzfeed (which 
stands by its story) is going to need an explanation for continuing to 
publish lies, rumors of war with Russia helps grease payments to war 
profiteers.

One of the broadcasters uncritically pushing Russiagate -- Democracy Now. 
Here's what DN had to say in

In 
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/2/28/headlines/michael_cohen_tells_congress_trump_committed_multiple_criminal_acts 
DN called Cohen's testimony "Michael Cohen’s historic testimony". But it's 
really not historic because there's no substance to the testimony.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/2/28/a_criminal_in_the_oval_office

> AMY GOODMAN: Later in the hearing, Republican Congressmember Thomas
> Massie of Kentucky questioned Michael Cohen.
> ---start of clip of testimony---
> REP. THOMAS MASSIE: You said—and this is also in your testimony—in the
> days before the Democratic convention, you became privy to a
> conversation that some of Hillary Clinton emails would be leaked. Is
> that correct?
> 
> MICHAEL COHEN: Correct.
> 
> REP. THOMAS MASSIE: OK. Was that in—you said late July. Do you know the
> exact day?
> 
> MICHAEL COHEN: I believe it was either the 18th or the 19th, and I would
> guess that it would be on the 19th.
> 
> REP. THOMAS MASSIE: But it was definitely July?
> 
> MICHAEL COHEN: I believe so, yes.
> 
> REP. THOMAS MASSIE: Do you know that was public knowledge in June? This
> was Mr. Assange. And I’d like to submit this—unanimous consent to submit
> this for the record.
> 
> REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Without objection, so ordered.
> 
> REP. THOMAS MASSIE: Mr. Assange reported to the media on June 12th that
> those emails would be leaked. So, I’m not saying you have fake news; I’m
> saying you have old news, and there’s really not much to that.
> ---end of clip of testimony---
> AMY GOODMAN: Marcy Wheeler, he’s saying that a lot of people knew, that
> Julian Assange had said it publicly.
> 
> MARCY WHEELER: Julian Assange said publicly that he had material on
> Hillary Clinton. What Julian Assange never said publicly is “I’m going
> to drop it at the beginning of the DNC.” And so, what is interesting
> about Cohen’s story—and, to be clear, it’s unlikely that he really did
> speak directly with Julian Assange. We know from a bunch of Stone’s
> other claims that when he claimed to be speaking directly with Assange,
> he instead was speaking with a cutout, like Jerome Corsi or like Randy
> Credico.
> 
> But what it appears happened is that Stone informed Trump precisely when
> the emails were going to be dropped. And that, as far as I know, is not
> something that has been made public before, and is particularly
> interesting because if the call happened on July 19th, Stone was meeting
> with Nigel Farage at the RNC that day, and he’s one of the people that
> it was clear Mueller seemed interested in finding out whether was a
> go-between between people in the U.K. who knew about the emails and
> Roger Stone. So, it is new information. It’s consistent with Roger
> Stone’s indictment, although it means, in the indictment, Mueller is
> referring to the president himself as a senior campaign official. It’s
> more specific than we had ever known before.

But this is more of Marcy Wheeler trying to manufacture a case for 
Russiagate that isn't there:

- It's not particularly relevant if Assange told anyone outside WikiLeaks 
when the DNC emails would begin to be published or if that date coincided 
with the Hillary DNC rally.

- Wheeler insists something "interesting" occurred "if the call happened on 
July 19th" but the DNC emails had been talked about publicly prior to that.

None of this is contradicted by Amy Goodman. Goodman has been dutifully 
reporting Russiagate lies without clarification or contradiction, as I have 
pointed out in previous editions of my notes.

Wheeler has been making a lot of claims about Russiagate for quite some 
time (including in The Real News interviews with Aaron Maté) -- all 
complicated theories backed with anonymous sources and no references to 
published facts. This is no different: "Stone informed Trump precisely when 
the [DNC] emails were going to be dropped" is evidenceless assertion. There 
is no new information here and nothing "more specific than we had ever 
known before".





Propaganda to lay the groundwork for invasion/occupation: Venezuela edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk7gkZiXWbA -- Jimmy Dore show discusses 
Jorge Ramos' propagandistic piece for Univision showing Venezuelans eating 
out of garbage truck as if this fairly represents what's going to 
Venezuelans, later tacitly admitting to selling out for regime change war. 
No mention of US sanctions against Venezuela either. This piece includes 
Aaron Maté as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny5KFTLyiRw -- How propaganda works with 
analysis on Venezuelan coup, fake Red Cross in Venezuela lighting USAID 
truck on fire and blaming their opponents, and more. This includes Aaron 
Maté as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhaTFe5X9EM -- Jimmy Dore show with Aaron 
Maté debunking CNN's pro-coup propaganda. The Maduro government has 
problems and Venezuelans have their differences with that administration, 
but calling Maduro a dictator is just propaganda.





Venezuelan invasion coming soon says Russian Security Council Secretary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw_ghxacAqE -- Russia's security council 
warns of Venezuelan invasion aimed at toppling Pres. Maduro. US troop 
movements -- special ops in Puerto Rico, army in Colombia -- are precursors 
to military invasion:

Nikolai Patrushev, secretary, Russian Security Council as quoted by RT:

> Other facts clearly indicate that the Pentagon is strengthening its
> troops in the region to oust legally elected President Maduro. The
> Venezuelan people understand this well. Hence, their reaction, their
> refusal to accept the goods from the aggressor country and support their
> president.






Canadian police are tracking "negative behavior" in a "risk" database

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzdp5v/police-in-canada-are-tracking-peoples-negative-behavior-in-a-risk-database 
-- 

> Police, social services, and health workers in Canada are using shared
> databases to track the behavior of vulnerable people -- including minors
> and people experiencing homelessness -- with little oversight and often
> without consent. Documents obtained by Motherboard from Ontario's
> Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services (MCSCS) through
> an access to information request show that at least two provinces --
> Ontario and Saskatchewan -- maintain a "Risk-driven Tracking Database"
> that is used to amass highly sensitive information about people's lives.
> Information in the database includes whether a person uses drugs, has
> been the victim of an assault, or lives in a "negative neighborhood."
> 
> The Risk-driven Tracking Database (RTD) is part of a collaborative
> approach to policing called the Hub model that partners cops, school
> staff, social workers, health care workers, and the provincial
> government. Information about people believed to be "at risk" of
> becoming criminals or victims of harm is shared between civilian
> agencies and police and is added to the database when a person is being
> evaluated for a rapid intervention intended to lower their risk levels.
> Interventions can range from a door knock and a chat to forced
> hospitalization or arrest. Data from the RTD is analyzed to identify
> trends -- for example, a spike in drug use in a particular area -- with
> the goal of producing planning data to deploy resources effectively, and
> create "community profiles" that could accelerate interventions under
> the Hub model, according to a 2015 Public Safety Canada report.

The database claims to be "de-identified" by removing people's names and 
birthdates but this is not confirmed and this practice is deceptively 
effective. It's very difficult to successfully remove enough data from a 
database and truly hide who is being described in the data (a process 
called "anonymization" or making data about people anonymous).

In 2006 AOL published its users search queries, ostensibly to help other 
search engine developers understand what people look for and help develop 
better search software. AOL anonymized the data by removing IP addresses 
and usernames and then assigning fake IDs to the queries. But reporters 
Michael Barbro and Tom Zeller successfully identified 62-year-old widow 
Thelma Arnold (given fake ID 417729) from Lilburn, Georgia. The reporters 
examined clues in her searches and learned she had been looking up medical 
information for her friends (see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak and 
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html for more).

User 927 from the same AOL dataset also provoked interest -- this user's 
bizarre search history (including "human mold", "testicle festivals", 
"tormented/dying elmo", and "j. edgar hoover") inspired a play (called 
"User 927" written by Katharine Clark Grey in Philadelphia) and some memes.

In 2015 we learned that researchers at MIT and Université catholique de 
Louvain had analyzed data on 1.5 million cellphone users over 15 months and 
found that one only needs 4 points of reference to uniquely identify 95% of 
cellphone users.[1]

 From https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/how-hard-it-de-anonymize-cellphone-data

> In other words, to extract the complete location information for a
> single person from an “anonymized” data set of more than a million
> people, all you would need to do is place him or her within a couple of
> hundred yards of a cellphone transmitter, sometime over the course of an
> hour, four times in one year. A few Twitter posts would probably provide
> all the information you needed, if they contained specific information
> about the person’s whereabouts.

Hence you are better off not giving people or organizations data to analyze 
in the first place, rather than relying on them to anonymize data they 
choose to publish.


[1] Perhaps now you will understand why these devices are more honestly 
called "trackers" -- that's what they chiefly do, not make/take phone calls.








Pushing for poor-quality jobs, gentrification: Influential people push for 
Amazon to reconsider New York

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/nyregion/amazon-hq2-nyc.html
https://www.cnet.com/news/new-york-city-makes-its-pitch-again-for-amazons-hq2 
-- Amazon said they wouldn't go to New York for their second headquarter 
location ("HQ2") but "the CEOs of Mastercard, Warby Parker, Goldman Sachs, 
Tishman Speyer and Jetblue, among others" are asking for Amazon to 
reconsider that and come to New York after all and soon will publish an 
open letter to this effect in the New York Times.

-J