[Peace-discuss] Notes

[J.B. Nicholson]

Here are some notes to consider for an upcoming News from Neptune or AWARE 
on the Air.

Have a good show, guys.



WikiLeaks/Assange: US government is eager to get people to be silent about 
WikiLeaks and Assange.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW3jKKHJL_8 -- Swedish programmer and 
Internet activist Ola Bini was arrested in Ecuador, where he worked for the 
"Digital Autonomy Center", on privacy and cryptographic software. Now he's 
being held on charges of espionage. All that's known now is that Bini was a 
friend of Assange, and Bini was arrested at the Quito airport on April 11 
when boarding a plane to Japan where he was going to practice martial arts 
(which he had done since 2007). Bini was not a part of WikiLeaks. It's said 
that Bini carried with him at least 30 data storage devices, but we don't 
know what was on them. Ecuadorian Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo 
alleges that Bini was involved in a plot with two Russians (who are alleged 
to be "hackers") and the former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño who granted 
Assange asylum in 2012.

Patiño is quoted as saying (likely through a translator):
> The interior minister said the Swedish man that was arrested yesterday
> worked with me. I have never met him. Worse travelled with him. Nor do I
> know Russian hackers. The only Russians I know are: President Putin, the
> foreign minister Lavrov and the Russian ambassador.

Wikipedia's article on Bini adds:
> Ecuador requested an Interpol Red Notice for Patiño, who fled the
> country after prosecutors attempted to charge him for encouraging
> protestors to block roads and enter public institutions the previous
> year.

Merely being connected to WikiLeaks is dangerous. Both Chelsea Manning and 
now Ola Bini are being held (separately) for WikiLeaks-related reasons.

It's not clear that Bini was arrested for any substantive reason. As Vijay 
Prashad put it in Counterpunch on April 17 writing about Assange:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/17/to-ola-bini-a-political-prisoner-caught-up-in-the-assange-debacle/
> [T]here was no reason for your detention and your interrogation. The
> officials in Ecuador did not charge you, nor did they offer a coherent
> public statement about your detention. Everything sunk into the well of
> rumors, which came rushing out of the shadows of the Ecuadorian state.
> Nothing was confirmed, little was credible, but the flood continued.

It's possible that the US is undertaking a wider pressure campaign that 
goes beyond Manning (because as the US indictment makes clear the US has no 
additional evidence against Assange than what they had when the Obama 
administration refused to prosecute Assange citing the "New York Times 
problem" as a rationale for non-prosecution -- how to prosecute Assange 
without giving cause to hold the editors of the New York Times liable for 
the same reason?).




Spying: The NSA says they're doing less spying. Do you believe them? You 
shouldn't. They've been lying to us whenever they can.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/nsa-surveillance-spike/ -- The NSA says 
that they're collecting fewer records on Americans:

> The data, published Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National
> Intelligence (ODNI), revealed a 28% rise in the number of targeted
> search terms used to query massive databases of collected Americans’
> communications.
> 
> Some 9,637 warrantless search queries of the contents of Americans’
> calls, text messages, emails and other communications were conducted by
> the NSA during 2018, up from 7,512 searches on the year prior, the
> report said.
> 
> The figures also don’t take into account queries made by the FBI or the
> Drug Enforcement Administration, which also has access to the database,
> nor do they say exactly how many Americans had their information
> collected.
> 
> [...]
> 
> The report also noted a 27% increase in the number of foreigners whose
> communications were targeted by the NSA during the year. In total, an
> estimated 164,770 foreign individuals or groups were targeted with
> search terms used by the NSA to monitor their communications, up from
> 129,080 on the year prior.
> 
> It’s the largest year-over-year leap in foreign surveillance to date.
> 
> The report also said the NSA collected at most 434.2 million phone
> records on Americans, down from 534.3 million records on the year
> earlier. The government said the figures likely had duplicates.





Labor/Exploitation: In Japan, more so than other countries, overwork is lethal.

An Australian program called "The Feed" has an episode titled "Sex in 
Japan: Dying for Company" about Japan's low birth rate and the relationship 
to overwork -- working more hours than any human can tolerate. This show 
says Japan's below replacement-level birth rate is down to an overworked 
working class (which now includes women as well as so-called "salarymen") 
who have no time to do anything but work and get what little sleep they can 
afford to get before returning to work. The pressure to keep long working 
hours is behind the highest suicide rate among modernized countries -- 
higher than the US, UK, or Australia's suicide rate. Hence, the episode 
title is a reference to 'a company' for whom one works, not the company of 
one's friends.

As the reporters explain it:
> Japan is on the brink of a population crisis - it's in decline and its
> young people are to blame. They're not having sex. They're not getting
> into romantic relationships. And they're not getting married. 60 percent
> of women and 70 percent of men aged 18-34 identify as single. While this
> could be dismissed as a possible trend of young people in Japan
> rejecting traditional relationships, they're not hooking up either.
> Around 44 per cent of unmarried women and 42 per cent of unmarried men
> have reported in a government census that they are virgins. In just 2017
> alone, Japan saw a 403,000 population decline. For a country of 127
> million people, declines like this could be catastrophic if the trend
> isn't reversed.

It's an interesting show because it doesn't explain Japan's low birth-rate 
phenomenon exclusively on the lack of Japanese young people's sex lives, 
nor does the show entirely make it seem as though Japanese men have no 
experience with women who aren't prostitutes.

We're also told about the Japanese economy post-2010 when Lehman Brothers 
fell apart:

Yuki Chizui [you-KEY CHEE-zoo-ee], sushi chef at Japan's only women-run 
sushi bar, Nadeschico [na-des-CHEE-ko] Sushi:

> Interviewer: Take me back to 2010 when you started this place, as I
> understand it, it was a reaction to the recession?
> 
> Chizui: In 2010, following the Lehman Brothers collapse, Japan was in
> sort of an economic downturn. At that time, women were the first to be
> laid off. That was where it all started.

There are very long hours for what is called a "salaryman" -- 
traditionally, a man with a steady office job -- Ai Aiyama [aye i-YA-ma], 
dating instructor, tells us that:

> Working past midnight is normal in a lot of industries. Really, if this
> continues problems like declining birth-rates will get worse.

26-year-old Taiyo [tie-YOH] Hashimoto is a so-called "salaryman" and puts 
work before dating:

> Hashimoto: I'm supposed to finish work at 7 p.m. But I work overtime
> basically every day. I catch the last train home. [...] The hardest
> thing about going out with the bosses is that you must drink all they
> offer. When I go out with a boss who drinks a lot I have to keep pace
> with him which is hard on me. He has a drink. So do I. He asks for
> another. So do I. That's the proper behavior. That's what you're
> expected to do. [...] Men go to brothels or massage parlors, fueled by
> after-work drinks with their colleagues. That sort of thing is common
> among Japanese men.

In regards to what the Japanese government calls "womenomics" (encouraging 
women to join the workforce):

> Hashimoto: Since the Lehman Brothers collapse, in Japan many people
> don't have stable incomes. That trend is continuing. So women who are
> willing to work provide income stability.

Overworking employees has had a considerable toll on the Japanese. Labor 
activist, Makoto Iwahashi [ma-KO-toe ee-wa-HA-shee], handles calls from 
workers talking about their jobs. He explains:

> Makoto Iwahashi: The thing is, this culture of overwork has been here
> for decades. But at that time, permanent workers who in working very,
> very long hours, they were offered promotions and they were offered high
> salaries. But right now there's no prospect of them having kids or
> having a family because their salaries are [not] going to go up. And
> among the young, more than 50% of them are becoming temporary workers.
> So they don't know what they're gonna be doing a month from now. So, the
> environment of working conditions is completely changing right now.
> [...] We get a lot of calls complaining about overwork. And we have
> another issue -- so-called "black companies": what they're doing is
> treating workers as disposable. So they're hiring 200 people in one
> year, and 200 people quit in one year. And they're hiring another 200
> people.

The show says 190 people last year "officially died or attempted suicide 
from overwork. In fact Japan has one of the highest rates of suicide in the 
developed world. Higher than the US, [UK, or Australia].". What drives this 
behavior? Psychiatrist Jiro Ito [HERO EE-toe] explains:

> Jiro Ito: If they're forced to work overtime and feel like quitting
> their job, they worry that they may be treated as some sort of loser, or
> that they won't find another job. They can't see their future. So they
> put up with it. Before they know it, they're suicidal. [...] People
> can't confide to someone in the real world that they have a hard time
> and need help. Instead, they can only resort to their smartphones in
> their hands to pour out their feelings of desperation.

Ito's non-profit organization "OVA" tries to catch people who express 
interest in suicide by looking at search queries. Ito claims that the 
phrase "I want to die" was being searched 130,000/month. Now, it's almost 
double that.

24-year-old Matsuri Takahasi [mat-SOO-ree ta-ka-HA-shee], former employee 
of Japan's largest ad agency Dentsu, committed suicide due to overwork and 
mistreatment (harassment) 3 years ago. Months before her death she put in 
100 hours of overtime per month; she was suffering with only 10 hours sleep 
per week as she struggled to keep up with a workload twice what it normally 
was due to her staff being halved. Japanese courts ruled her death was due 
to overwork (called "kuroshi" [ku-ROH-shee]) and fined Dentsu 500,000 yen 
(about $4,500). No managers were found liable. 8 months passed between the 
time she graduated from university to killing herself in the company 
dormitory. She left notes on social media indicating she was planning to 
kill herself. She tweeted:

> It's 4 o'clock. My body is trembling...I just can't do this. I'm gonna
> die. I'm so tired. [...] My boss told me I have no femininity... "Don't
> come to work with that messy hair and those bloodshot eyes!" [...] Every
> night I can't sleep because I'm terrified of tomorrow arriving. Perhaps
> death is a much happier option.

Takahasi sent her mother, Yukimi [you-KEY-me], a message at her work:

> Thank you, Mum, for everything you've done for me. Please don't blame
> yourself. Everything about my life and work is hard. Goodbye.

Takahashi's death was the third time this happened at the same 
organization, Dentsu. The head of Dentsu stepped down and there was a token 
fine but this is a systemic problem not one that can be solved by just 
Dentsu. In June, the government set a legal limit on overtime work of 100 
extra hours per month, but that's 20 hours more than what the government 
says will put one at risk of kuroshi.

> Iwahashi: It's just ridiculous -- the government is saying that you have
> a chance to die but you can work 'til this limit. And there is no law
> that the company has to follow on keeping [track of] the number of
> actual hours that a worker works. So they can just forge timesheets.
> They can just not record anything. [...] A lot of companies and
> businesses are donating huge amounts of money to the government and the
> ruling party.


Labor/Exploitation: Nestle is still abusing workers, and so is Starbucks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNzkKQ_xBF8 -- Starbucks and Nestle both 
approved a coffee farm uses slave-like employment practices. Brazilian 
labor inspectors found that several employees at Cedro II coffee farm's 
labor practices were unacceptable and 8 months after the slave labor was 
discovered, both Nestle and Starbucks continued to buy coffee from the 
farm. After the Brazilian government added the farm to their "dirty list" 
of employers, Nestle and Starbucks said they'd stop getting coffee from the 
farm.




Trusting the Democrats: Have they earned that trust? Do Democrats want to 
win in 2020 or are they implicitly campaigning for Trump?

Joe Biden -- darling 2020 presidential candidate and former Vice President

https://twitter.com/jacobinmag/status/1121974279602569217 -- Jacobin 
magazine quoting Biden on defending the billionaires and the 1%:

> “I’m not Bernie Sanders,” Joe Biden said at the Brookings Institution.
> “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble. The
> folks at the top are not bad guys... wealthy Americans are just as
> patriotic as poor folks.” Well, glad we got that cleared up.
Jimmy Dore's reaction:

https://twitter.com/jimmy_dore/status/1122994747314823168

> Obviously the people responsible for the trouble we’re in are the people
> with no money & zero power. Is he running for president or for new host
> on @FoxNews ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qv94KpI9Y4 -- Jimmy Dore's reaction video.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1ukGmVFr4k -- Joe Biden on what America 
needs to return to:

> ABC News interviewer: The President has a motto: "Make America Great
> Again". Do you have one?
> 
> Joe Biden: Make America Moral Again. Make America return to the essence
> of who we are, the dignity of the country, the dignity in people
> changing our people with dignity.

Even if we overlook the gaff and consider that Biden wants to make the US 
more moral, is he the person to do this job?

In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UfJtaKXUw you can hear him say:

> Joe Biden: First of all, I actually like Dick Cheney, for real. I get on
> with him. I think he's a decent man.

Jimmy Dore played this clip to his audience and commented:
> Jimmy Dore: Dick Cheney who lied us into an illegal war, killed a
> million people, ordered a torture program to cover it up, and then
> shamed anybody who asked fuckin' questions about it.

Comic Dave Anthony also added:
> He shot his friend in the face and made his friend apologize.

What empathy does Biden offer to young people who are poor (perhaps because 
they're deep in college loan debt)?

In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdmeV0GJ-oE you can hear Biden say:

> The younger generation now tells me how tough things are. Give me a 
> break. [audience laughs] No, no, I have no empathy for it. Give me a
> break. Because here’s the deal guys, we decided we were gonna change the
> world. And we did. We did. We finished the civil rights movement in the
> first stage. The women’s movement came to be. So my message is, get
> involved. There’s no place to hide. You can go and you can make all the
> money in the world, but you can't build a wall high enough to keep the
> pollution out. You can't live where—you can't not be diminished when
> your sister can't marry the man or woman, or the woman she loves. You
> can't—when you have a good friend being profiled, you can't escape this
> stuff. And so, there's an old expression my philosophy professor would
> always use from Plato, 'The penalty people face for not being involved
> in politics is being governed by people worse than themselves.' It's
> wide open. Go out and change it.

Corporate media vice.com apparently couldn't ignore this one, posting an 
article about it 
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbpxx8/biden-trashes-millennials-in-his-quest-to-become-even-less-likable 
with headline "Biden Trashes Millennials in His Quest to Become Even Less 
Likable". One of their comments in their line-by-line rebuttal of Biden's 
elitism:

> A January 2017 analysis[1] of Federal Reserve data found that
> millennials, who are better educated than baby boomers, have a median
> household income of $40,581, meaning they earn 20 percent less than
> boomers did when they were our age. We're crippled with student debt to
> the point where home ownership[2] is a pipe dream.

[1] 
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/01/13/millennials-falling-behind-boomer-parents/96530338/
[2] 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-17/student-debt-is-hurting-millennial-homeownership






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZqVB2Xsvc0 -- Sema Hernandez is running 
for Texas state senate. Jimmy Dore interviews her and it's clear from his 
previous shows and this one that the two have a fundamental disagreement: 
Dore doesn't trust the Democrats and Hernandez believes the Democrats can & 
should be improved from within.

Dore's case is compelling -- Bernie Sanders was cheated out of a fair shot 
at winning the Democratic Party primary in 2016, and he followed that up by 
endorsing the candidate that coordinated the cheating (Hillary Clinton). 
According to Dore, Sanders has already agreed to endorse Joe Biden if Biden 
wins the party primary for the 2020 presidential race. Tulsi Gabbard 
continues to get very little press, and where she gets mentioned at all in 
corporate media it's usually to misframe her campaign (calling her an 
apologist for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad because she went on a 
fact-finding trip), or if they interview her we see that she counters their 
pro-war perspective and doesn't get further coverage. Corporate media 
ignores her 2018 Intercept interview in which she backed drone war and 
echoed some pro-war propaganda (such as Quick strike forces”, “surgical 
strikes”, “in and out, very quickly”, and “no long-term deployment, no 
long-term occupation”) usually said to make war seem more precise than it 
is (see my article 
https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/02/13/is-tulsi-gabbard-really-anti-war-no-shes-pro-drone-and-for-surgical-strikes/ 
for details). I suspect that corporate media ignores this interview because 
challenging her in this way might come off as though corporate media is 
anti-war (progressive, majoritarian, and populist) when they're actually 
fervently pro-war (elitist or 1%). Rep. Gabbard recently reiterated 
comparable language in a recent interview with Primo Nutmeg 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBE9J-Tw5xE in which she didn't clearly and 
forthrightly denounce drone war.

Domestically things look bad for the Democrats as well because the party is 
so corrupt: In California (the largest "blue" state), the Democrats have 
had to hold a new election in one district after cheating was discovered 
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWi6HS9Wfgw) and progressives are cheated 
in another district (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQkOzl0aQv0).

Black Agenda Report has many articles on how the Democratic Party elites 
offer no candidate worth voting for if you're interested in: ending wars, 
passing a reasonable Medicare for All bill into law, reallocating at least 
half of the euphemistically named "defense" budget to help poor Americans, 
guaranteeing things all Americans need including potable water, voting 
rights, a living-wage job, and a home (not a Cabrini Green-style 
warehouse). BAR 
(https://www.blackagendareport.com/black-voters-are-bidens-polling-balloon-we-need-bust-it) 
posts their take on Joe Biden entering the race and virtually instantly 
getting half of his support from black voters which BAR calls "a clear 
hangover from the Obama era". BAR pointed out that "Corporate Democrats 
Would Rather Lose to Trump Than Violate [A] Pact With [the] Rich" 
(https://www.blackagendareport.com/corporate-democrats-would-rather-lose-trump-violate-pact-rich), 
a point Jimmy Dore has made repeatedly on his show as well. Sadly, BAR 
hasn't examined either of Gabbard's aforementioned interviews in which she 
echoes pro-war language.




Venezuela: VP Pence said the Navy will carry out a 5-month humanitarian 
mission to Venezuelan refugees. Pence also threatened increased sanction 
pressure if the US doesn't see more support for Guaidó. Can the Navy be 
trusted?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s06BifZtoP8 -- US will offer sanctions 
relief for those who break rank with Maduro, keep and increase pressure for 
other Venezuelans.

With the Venezuelan coup attempts (and ongoing failures), continued 
sanctions (which are war on the poor), and continued threat of "all options 
are on the table" which is code for military invasion, how can anyone take 
American government pledges of help seriously?






Healthcare: There are two current Medicare for All bills. One of them is 
better than the other.

https://thedeductible.com/2019/04/23/rep-jayapal-and-sen-sanders-have-introduced-medicare-for-all-bills-one-is-a-lot-better-than-the-other/ 
-- Rep. Pramila Jayapal's HR 1384 and Sen. Bernie Sanders S 1129 are both 
Medicare for All bills but according to author Kip Sullivan (member of the 
Health Care for All Minnesota Advisory Board and of the Minnesota chapter 
of Physicians for a National Health Program), S1129 (Sanders' bill) is worse.

A few quotes from the article:
> The cost-containment section in Representative Jayapal’s bill will cut
> health care costs substantially without slashing the incomes of doctors
> and hospitals. Senator Sanders’ bill cannot do that.

and:
> S 1129 authorizes a new form of insurance company called the 
> “accountable care organization” (ACO). S 1129 fails to authorize budgets
> for hospitals. Representative Jayapal’s bill, on the other hand,
> explicitly repeals the federal law authorizing ACOs, and it authorizes
> budgets for individual hospitals.

Why is keeping the ACOs around bad?

> Replacing 1,000 insurance companies with with 1,000, or more likely
> several thousand, ACOs cannot reduce administrative costs substantially
> or at all. [4] Under such a system, ACOs would generate almost the same
> overhead costs insurance companies generate now (15 to 20 percent of
> premium payments), and hospitals and clinics would incur roughly the
> same administrative costs billing multiple payers (i.e, the 1,000-plus
> ACOs).

and:
> The only significant differences between ACOs and HMOs are (1) ACO
> “enrollees” are assigned to ACOs (usually without their knowledge)
> whereas HMO enrollees choose to enroll, and (2) HMOs bear all insurance
> risk while ACOs split the risk of loss or savings with another insurer
> (in Medicare’s case, risk is shared with the Medicare program). [5] Both
> of these differences are being eroded. Many ACOs are saying they should
> be allowed to enroll people so they can restrict enrollee use of
> out-of-ACO providers, and some influential ACO proponents are proposing
> that ACOs be paid premiums so they can absorb total losses and keep
> total profits.
> 
> One other important similarity between ACOs and HMOs: ACOs have failed
> to cut Medicare’s costs, just as the CBO predicted. [6]

and:
> I mentioned above that an American single-payer system could reduce
> total spending by 10 to 15 percent just by eliminating excess
> administrative costs. A large portion of that savings would come in the
> form of reduced administrative costs for hospitals (the rest comes from
> reduced administrative costs in the insurer and physician sectors).
> Hospitals enjoy lower overhead costs in single-payer systems for two
> reasons. First, they are paid with annual budgets, not on a per-patient
> or per-procedure basis, which means they don’t have to keep track of
> very pill and x-ray for every patient. Second, for the covered services,
> they deal with only one payer, not hundreds, each with their own hoops
> to jump through.
> 
> Unlike Representative Jayapal’s bill, Senator Sanders’ bill does not
> authorize hospital budgets. There is a reason for that: It is not
> possible to set premiums for 1,000 or 2,000 ACOs, which consist of
> hospital-clinic chains with an insurance company or department plopped
> on top of it, and at the same time set budgets for each of the nation’s
> 5,500 hospitals. One has to choose one or the other: Premium payments
> for ACOs, or budgets for hospitals. Sanders chose ACOs. Jayapal chose
> hospital budgets.
> 
> But by sacrificing hospital budgets in order to make room for ACOs,
> Sanders guaranteed his bill cannot reduce hospital administrative costs
> much or at all. Research indicates US hospitals spend 25 percent of
> their revenues on administration, thanks to the complexity of our
> multiple-payer system, while hospitals in single-payer systems that use
> hospital budgets devote half as much to administrative costs.

So Sanders' plan ends up keeping a significant amount of the cost of the 
current system intact. This, I think, is consistent with the politics he 
showed after it was well-known his campaign was being cheated in 2016: he 
endorsed the cheater's campaign -- he endorsed Hillary Clinton. His fealty 
to the system that is will undermine the interests of those who want to 
replace the extant system with something better.



Bad press: US government trying to combat bad press with "being more social"

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/441480-inside-the-secret-world-of-the-cias-social-media-team 
-- The CIA invited reporters in to cover their effort to make their job 
seem less harmful and more playful and lightly irreverent instead of 
discussing how the CIA upends democratically-elected governments, kills, 
tortures, and covertly jails people who don't toe the line.

This article is interesting because if this were a Russian organization 
seeking to achieve the same ends, the phrase "troll farm" would undoubtedly 
be littered throughout. And because it is another example of how not all 
press is good press: consider that if the CIA were content to be talked 
about as they are, they'd feel no pressure to talk about themselves at all. 
Instead we're told lightly delightful distractions such as:

> “Any tweet if you look at them, they always relate back to
> intelligence,” Amanda says when asked what she’d tell critics of the
> lighthearted, often tongue-in-cheek posts.
> 
> “For instance, we always wanted to do something for ‘Talk Like a Pirate
> Day,’ ” the 37-year-old Colorado native laments. “But we just don’t have
> anything that we could find that would relate to it. As much as we try
> to be part of the public conversation when the conversation is
> happening, it always has to relate back to our mission and something
> we’re doing.”

and advertising for the CIA:

> “A perk of working for CIA is world travel,” the tweet told its
> approximately 2.6 million followers. “Apparently that sometimes extends
> to other realms… ‘Little birds,’ be on the lookout for a former deputy
> director of ours wandering through #Westeros in tonight’s episode of
> #GameofThrones.”

The article tells us Gina Haspel now runs the CIA:

> The headline-making social media accounts — since debuting last week,
> the Instagram one has gained 124,000 followers — can also be an
> effective recruitment tool for the CIA, which is run by Director Gina
> Haspel. Whether it’s reaching people, who might not otherwise think of
> the CIA, when they see well wishes to “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek
> following his announcement of a cancer diagnosis, or setting movie fans
> straight that Americans who work at the CIA are called “officers” not
> “agents,” the agency is getting its name and mission out there.

But the article doesn't share Haspel's well-known nickname "Bloody Gina" or 
how she came to be called this -- she is also widely-known to be associated 
with running torture centers in secret prisons around the world known as 
'black sites'. There's good reason to believe she authorized torture, yet 
she recently became CIA Director in part on an identity politics campaign 
(vote for Haspel because she's a woman).

So while:

> Nearly every tweet, the team says, begins with a story that goes up on
> the CIA website, which goes through a series of approvals and
> classification reviews before it ever sees the light of day.

we are also told:

> [...] the voice of the CIA is “conversational,” according to Candice,
> who’s been at the agency for 14 years and works in the public
> communications branch. “There’s personality there. We try to be
> intelligent,” she says.
> 
> “I would almost say there’s a little bit of whimsy to it,” Barrett
> adds. “It’s not like overly scripted.”

Some of the CIA's employees' last names were not published in the article 
for "security reasons" which were also unnamed.

For all of the hamfisted attempts at being delightfully jaunty, I wouldn't 
consider it a good thing for the CIA to have wished me well were I 
suffering from cancer like Alex Trebek is now. I don't know of any CIA 
plans against Trebek per se, but generally speaking it's the CIA's job to 
deal in murder and misfortune in people the CIA aims to covertly kill. This 
includes leaders of governments the CIA is charged with upending. For 
example, in March 1960, President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to upend 
the Castro government. To accomplish this Eisenhower gave the CIA $13 
million and permission to ally with the Mafia because the Mafia didn't like 
that Castro had closed down their Cuban brothel and casino businesses.



People in power mishandling public relations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA1KSE4OrOY -- Facebook chief Mark 
Zuckerberg failing to land a joke about how Facebook doesn't care about its 
users privacy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sVYQo_UktY -- Hillary Clinton was asked to 
give advice to 2020 US presidential candidates based on her experience in 
2016. Her response: "Don't get on the wrong side of Vladimir Putin, that 
would be the first [point of advice]."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUq7ZWTzNxM -- Joe Biden can't handle tough 
questions about Venezuela (he's pro-coup), Iraq (he was pro-invasion and 
later admitted he was wrong when his admission posed no threat to continued 
Iraq occupation).





Economics: How can we afford UBI? Perhaps we draw money from "defense" 
budget to pay for it?

http://www.world-psi.org/sites/default/files/documents/research/en_ubi_full_report_2019.pdf 
-- a study claiming there is no evidence showing that UBI could be sustained.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/06/universal-basic-income-public-realm-poverty-inequality 
-- New Economics Foundation's Anna Coote reiterating how UBI just can't work:

> Money spent on cash payments cannot be invested elsewhere. The more
> generous the payments, the wider the range of recipients, the longer the
> scheme continues, the less money will be left to build the structures
> and systems that are needed to realise UBI’s progressive goals.

It's not clear that Coote's take on this isn't just a "think tank" ad 
posing as an article, or that (if we take Coote's insistence more 
seriously) that people wouldn't spend money on all sorts of local 
businesses. Isn't that investment? Right now the US is spending trillions 
on killing people. Who benefits from those investments?






Censorship: Google removes Iran's Press TV from Google, YouTube, and Google 
platforms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgwWkwOac-Y -- Press TV was reporting 
what's really going on with Venezuela. Now Google is making that reporting 
harder to find by pulling Press TV from Google's platforms.



Censorship: Is RT inadvertently playing into the hand of their critics by 
publishing fake news?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZZscnGodwk -- RT's "In Question" posted a 
segment with title "Journalist exposes YouTube child porn crisis".

A bit of background: on YouTube one can find Matt Watson's video where he 
claims that YouTube commenters are pointing one another to images of 
children either naked or engaged in sexual acts ("child porn"). But 
Watson's claim doesn't contain evidence to back up his claim -- the videos 
he indirectly points to show children in bathing suits goofing around near 
pools (just as one expects children to do). Posts on these videos sometimes 
include comments with time indexes (either explicitly or in code to avoid 
YouTube censorship) but the comment clearly takes the image out of context. 
There's no nudity or sexual activity shown in the video. Watson's video got 
some attention some weeks ago which apparently reached YouTube.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that YouTube would:

> no longer [allow] comments on videos that are featuring young minors and
> older minors that are engaged in risky behavior

It's not clear what exactly constitutes "risky behavior.". Later YouTube added:

> A small number of creators will be able to keep comments enabled on
> these types of videos. These channels will be required to actively
> moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and
> demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior.
RT's recent story (linked above) is an interview with Caitlin McFall from 
The Daily Caller who wrote 
https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/05/youtube-pedophile-community/. McFall 
claimed "something far more sinister is skating by YouTube’s algorithms: 
advertisements for child pornography".

But then "In Question" host, Manila Chan, and McFall both agree: this isn't 
child pornography.

2m05s:
> Manila Chan: So, it's obviously falling through loopholes here--
> 
> Caitlin McFall: [affirmatively] Um-hmm.
> 
> Manila Chan: --where it's not technically child pornography but it's
> still obviously very creepy stuff that's being posted.
> 
> Caitlin McFall: [affirmatively] Um-hmm.
> 
> Manila Chan: So based on your research, the FBI has now actively gotten
> involved, they're looking into it. But if the children in these videos
> aren't technically nude, like what you said, how much can law
> enforcement really do? I mean, is it really illegal what they're doing?
> 
> Caitlin McFall: In this case, with the videos that are being posted on
> YouTube, no those videos are not technically illegal. That is up to the
> platform to say 'Hey, we don't want stuff like this posted on our
> website or on our platform.'. But, as far as the FBI goes, it was the
> watermark that led us to the other websites.
Which gets to how this apparently baseless claim has gained a new life: now 
the claim is that YouTube accepts advertising from those who link to child 
pornography websites. It's not clear if this claim is true either -- 
neither McFall's Daily Caller report nor her RT interview links to any 
evidence backing up her claim.

Which brings me to RT's shame here: why is RT dealing in fake news?

The interviewer and interviewee both claimed what we were dealing with were 
advertisements for child pornography. Yet none were shown.

Chan & McFall both admit in the RT piece that nothing shown on YouTube is 
child pornography; they use the word "technically" -- "technically child 
pornography" -- to try and retain the salacious accusatory stigma without 
having to provide evidence of their claim before falling back on something 
that amounts to nothing -- "very creepy stuff".

So now we have evidenceless claims that fall apart on announcement. Why did 
RT do this interview at all? Why not run this as what it appears to be: 
someone leveraging the fact that YouTube is not hosting anything illegal, 
and one person's speech can strike others as "very creepy stuff" but that's 
the price we pay for free speech (to the limited degree we find free speech 
on YouTube, which has no obligation to ensure posters' freedom of speech is 
respected).

Later in the RT segment, McFall said "NN Pay" is "the illegitimate version 
[of PayPal] which is affiliated with over 2,400 child pornography websites 
that we could find so far". But if NN Pay takes internationally recognized 
credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) like PayPal does, how 
illegitimate could NN Pay be? And if NN Pay is so widely connected to "over 
2,400 child pornography websites" wouldn't that transaction become a 
single-point-of-failure and thus easily exploited by the FBI: couldn't the 
FBI put pressure on Visa and Mastercard to stop allowing NN Pay to accept 
their cards? Could the FBI stop major card issuers in the US from accepting 
charges from NN Pay? These questions are not asked.

RT is victim to the US government's claims of being propaganda or fake 
news. We saw the US government's shameful report the Obama administration 
published shortly before Obama left office. The claims continued throughout 
the Russiagate debacle and continue today. RT should not feed the fire by 
providing the evidence its political opponents seek by publishing 
non-stories without exposing how they are non-stories.





Privacy/surveillance: The FBI is earning an ugly reputation for themselves 
in these investigations and related charges -- in 2015 the FBI seized a tor 
hidden website known as "Playpen" which distributed sexually explicit 
images of children. Apparently when the government took over the site, they 
added code which they knew would exploit tor by revealing the real IP 
address of a website visitor. The ACLU obtained documents that revealed the 
FBI kept running Playpen and had permission to run 23 other such websites. 
The FBI used what they called a "network investigative technique" to 
trigger a tor exploit that would reveal the tor user's real IP address. In 
March (2019), the DOJ dropped charges against Jay Michaud, one of nearly 
200 cases where the DOJ alleges a defendant was involved in accessing one 
such website. Why drop the charges? Because the DOJ currently doesn't want 
to reveal the details of their "network investigative technique" (tor 
exploit which reveals a tor user's real IP address). As federal prosecutor 
Annette Hayes put it in a court filing:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3482329-Michaud-motion-to-dismiss.html#document/p2/a341591
> The government must now choose between disclosure of classified
> information and dismissal of its indictment. Disclosure is not currently
> an option. Dismissal without prejudice leaves open the possibility that
> the government could bring new charges should there come a time within
> the statute of limitations when and the government be in a position to
> provide the requested discovery.

It appears that the government wants to retain the stigma against the 
accused, not provide information that would allow the accused to mount a 
defense, and bring charges again later (dismissal without prejudice) before 
the statute of limitations runs out should the government choose to reveal 
their tor exploit. And this is all being done based on material the 
government distributed.

Ars Technica reports:

> Last year, US District Judge Robert Bryan ordered[1] the government to
> hand over the NIT's source code in Michaud. Since that May 2016
> order[2], the government has classified the source code itself[3],
> thwarting efforts for criminal discovery in more than 100
> Playpen-related cases that remain pending.

[1] 
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/judge-says-suspect-has-right-to-review-code-that-fbi-has-right-to-keep-secret/
[2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259005-19716914580.html
[3] 
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2901457-Response-in-Opposition-in-Darby.html#document/p22/a304432

> Last year, Christopher Soghoian[1], a security and privacy expert
> formerly with the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke before the
> annual Chaos Communication Congress about Michaud and related cases.
> Soghoian wasn’t just acting as a pundit: he served as an expert witness
> during earlier hearings in Michaud[2]. Soghoian, who is currently
> serving as a technology fellow in Congress, has often raised many
> concerns about such surveillance.
> 
> "My concern with the economics of hacking is that if the government
> hacks enough people, hacking not only becomes an attractive way of
> surveilling but it becomes the cheapest way to spy on people," he said
> in December 2016.
> 
> "My concern is that when they hack enough people, surveillance becomes
> so cheap—hacking becomes cheaper than even a single hour of law
> enforcement overtime that this will become the tool of first resort," he
> continued. "Hacking will be the first tool in the toolkit that they
> reach for, before they go undercover. Before they try and convince
> someone the old-fashioned way. My concern is that hacking is making
> spying far too cheap."

[1] http://www.dubfire.net/
[2] 
https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8136-stopping_law_enforcement_hacking#video&t=1563

-J