Georges Seurat Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” 1884
Excellent by Suzie. Who fears for her life and freedom for writing it. She has been living in exile in Moscow.
All of WIkiLeaks has been hit by sex smears. Which destroyed all of their reputations, businesses, etc.
• Freeing Julian Assange: Part One (Suzie Dawson)
Julian Assange controlled policy, process, publishing and protected sources. He established satellite organisations and was the managing director of the WikiLeaks empire. Jacob Appelbaum went on stages around the world, speaking to hundreds of thousands of people about the value and importance of utilising and supporting WikiLeaks. He was a major conduit to the tech crowd and a constant presence at developer, privacy and journalism conferences. Trevor Fitzgibbon liaised with media bigwigs, musicians and celebrities, recruiting them to the cause and utilising them to enhance WikiLeaks public profile. He managed media relationships, engineered and pushed proactive narratives.
These three men relentlessly championed WikiLeaks. These three men built the original campaign to save Chelsea Manning. These three men helped to save Edward Snowden. These three men all had their public reputations destroyed. You don’t have to look hard on social media or the web to see how often Julian Assange is described as a serial rapist. Nor to discover that Jacob Appelbaum is described as a serial rapist too. And Trevor Fitzgibbon? Yup, also called a serial rapist. What is the likelihood of all three public figures representing the key pillars of WikiLeaks, conveniently being serial rapists? In retrospect, it defies logic. In aggregate, the subterfuge is so obvious as to be ludicrous. But when the CIA is targeting you there’s always more in store. One rapist, two rapists, three rapists, four.
When celebrated Icelandic journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson was appointed Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks in October 2018, the announcement was lauded across the aisles. The accolades would be short-lived however, as within a week of his accepting the mantle, he was being smeared as “a hostile and abusive person toward women“, and a “violent drunk with a history of being physically and emotionally abusive of women”. The wording of the smear article is as limp as the accusations – “An air of allegations… He may now face allegations… unable to independently confirm the veracity of these allegations…” No victims came forward. No charges were filed. No investigation launched. They just threw their mud at the new head of the WikiLeaks publishing pillar and hoped it would stick, as it had with the others.
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“In its statement, WikiLeaks warned: “While the case would collapse in the US due to the prosecution’s reliance on testimony by Thordarson and Monsegur, who are not credible witnesses, the United States can conceal their witnesses’ identities during UK extradition proceedings in order to boost their chances of winning.” It continued: “This will make it impossible for Assange to challenge the credibility of the witnesses during UK extradition proceedings, which will commence on 14 June.”
• WikiLeaks Warns US Preparing More Charges Against Assange (Wsws)
The US Justice Department is preparing even more charges against journalist and publisher Julian Assange, WikiLeaks warned Thursday. The charges, WikiLeaks said, would be based on the testimony of Sigurdur Thordarson, an FBI informant previously convicted of fraud, who recently travelled to the United States to answer questions aimed at preparing a new indictment. The news came the same day as fresh warnings about the deterioration of Assange’s health. Assange’s father, John Shipton, was scheduled to visit his son in Belmarsh Prison but was turned away and told Assange was seeing a doctor for an apparently urgent visit. “My visit was double-booked, it has been cancelled,” he told Australia’s Herald Sun. “[The doctor’s visit] must be at short notice because a double booking occurred.”
Earlier this week, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer warned that Julian Assange could die in prison if his persecution is not stopped immediately. When ABC reporter Philip Williams asked Melzer, “If your calls are ignored, do you fear that he could actually die in prison?” he replied, “Absolutely, yes. That’s a fear that I think is very real.” The Trump administration has until June 14 to present its full request to Britain for Assange’s extradition. The current indictment includes 18 charges, over Assange’s role in the exposure of US war crimes and global diplomatic conspiracies, carrying a maximum sentence of 175 years’ imprisonment. WikiLeaks’ press release, however, stated that the US is likely preparing a superseding indictment. It would include the already unveiled charges, along with new counts against Assange.
WikiLeaks’ press release, however, stated that the US is likely preparing a superseding indictment. It would include the already unveiled charges, along with new counts against Assange. WikiLeaks noted: “Dutch public broadcaster NOS reported that Sigurdur Thordarson was flown to the United States last week where he was ‘comprehensively interrogated,’ in preparation for the filing of a new superseding indictment against Julian Assange by the end of next week.” [..] The FBI informant has no credibility. He has a lengthy record of involvement in illegal spying and state provocations, along with a criminal record encompassing convictions for embezzlement, fraud and sex crimes against minors. Thordarson could not be considered a reliable or honest witness in any prosecution that upheld the right to due process for the accused.
[..] Within a year of his involvement, Thordarson was suspected by WikiLeaks of stealing from the organisation. He was subsequently convicted in Iceland in 2014 of 18 theft-related charges[..] In August 2011, Thordarson claims that he contacted the US embassy in Reykjavik, offering to assist in the “ongoing criminal investigation in the United States” against Assange. He was rapidly picked up as an informant by the FBI. By his own admission, Thordarson met with FBI agents multiple times in Reykjavik between 2011 and 2012. During that period, US authorities flew him to Denmark three times and to the US on one occasion, for secret meetings about WikiLeaks. Thordarson provided the FBI with eight hard drives of material he claimed was from WikiLeaks. He received thousands of dollars from the US government.
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“Legitimate journalists are again being caught in the wash of internet cleanups..”
I like Taibbi, but not this. Talking about “Legitimate Journalists” is far too slippery a slope. What makes a journalist legitimate? Being employed by MSM? Is Assange a journalist? (the term invites that discussion). Moreover, he invites YouTube and Facebook to censor people, but only the “illegitimates”. Only the legal system can decide that, not social media.
• YouTube, Facebook Purges Are More Extensive Than You Think (Taibbi)
If you turned on cable news this week, or read our own coverage in Rolling Stone, you might have heard about YouTube’s decision to demonetize well-known conservative commentator Steven Crowder. Crowder’s offense involved calling Vox journalist Carlos Maza a “lispy queer” and a “gay Vox sprite,” leading, says Maza, to further harassment. Much press commentary either cheered YouTube’s move or called it belated. Simultaneously, YouTube announced it would ban whole genres of videos that fell under a hate/conspiracy label. From a Yahoo news summary:
“YouTube announced Wednesday it would ban videos promoting or glorifying racism and discrimination as well as those denying well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.” “Channels that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies will be suspended under our YouTube Partner Program.” Many greeted these stories with a shrug. If blue-state audiences even know who Steven Crowder is, they think he’s a jerk. And what could be wrong with removing videos “denying well-documented violent events”?
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“The top 1% of U.S. households are holding a record $303.9 billion of cash, a quantum leap from the under $15 billion they held just before the financial crisis.”
• Too Much Money -And Too Few Places To Invest It- (Axios)
A truly bizarre trend is having an impact on the economy — wealthy people and corporations have so much money they literally don’t know what to do with it. Why it matters: At a time when growing income inequality is fueling voter discontent and underpinning an array of social movements, the top 1% of earners and big companies are holding record levels of unused cash. The big picture: U.S. companies raked in a record $2.3 trillion in corporate profits last year, while the country’s total wealth increased by $6 trillion to $98.2 trillion (40% of which went to those with wealth over $100,000). So, where is all the money going?
The IMF notes large companies around the world are overwhelmingly and uniformly choosing not to reinvest much of it into their businesses. They’re hoarding it in cash and buying back stock. “There are only 2 things that money can do — sit on a balance sheet unused, where it’s just earned income earning an interest rate of zero,” ICI chief economist Sean Collins points out. “Or it makes sense to release it to share buybacks or dividends.” • Companies could pay their workers more, but “that would be terrible for the stock market,” says Neil Shearing, chief economist at Capital Economics — half-jokingly. • Companies made a record $1.1 trillion in stock buybacks in 2018 and are on track to surpass that number this year.
But they still have record cash holdings of close to $3 trillion. Wealthy households and individuals are pouring money into asset managers, betting on companies that lose $1 billion a year, bonds from little-known Middle Eastern republics, and giving hot Silicon Valley start-ups more venture capital than they can handle. And private equity has seen so much cashflow that firms have $2 trillion of unused capital. But even that hasn’t been enough to account for all the new money. The top 1% of U.S. households are holding a record $303.9 billion of cash, a quantum leap from the under $15 billion they held just before the financial crisis.
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Trolling.
• Putin Says UK’s Next Prime Minister Should ‘Forget About’ Skripal Attack (Ind.)
Britain’s next prime minister should “forget about” the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in Salisbury, Vladimir Putin has said. The Russian president said he hoped whoever succeeded Theresa May would see what he described as the bigger picture and move on from the Skripal attack. “When all’s said and done we need to turn this page connected with spies and assassination attempts,” Mr Putin said on the sidelines of an economic forum in St Petersburg. He described Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to MI6, as London’s spy. “He’s your agent not ours. That means you spied against us and it’s hard for me to say what happened with him subsequently. We need to forget about all this in the final analysis,” he said.
[..] Mr Putin recalled his own experience working first for the Soviet Union’s KGB spy service and then Russia’s FSB security service. “Global issues linked with common national interests in the economic, social and security spheres are more important than games played by intelligence services,” he said. ”I’m talking to you as an expert, believe me. We need to cast off this fluff and get down to business.” [..] Mr Putin also issued a stern warning about the danger of a new arms race, accusing the United States on shunning talks on extending the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty, which is set to expire in 2021. He said while Russia had repeatedly signalled its intention to begin discussions on extending the pact, Washington had been unresponsive. “We have said 100 times already that we are ready, but no one is talking to us,” he claimed.
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“..consider instead the vista of a reduced population working in the fields and pastures to bring enough food out of the long-abused land to live through the next winter.”
• Going Where, Exactly? (Kunstler)
Societies are self-organizing, emergent phenomena. They respond to the circumstances that reality presents, and they take us in unexpected directions. The general expectation in the USA since the Second World War has been for ever-increasing material comfort provided by an inexhaustible techno-industrial cornucopia, kind of a cosmic goodie machine. Well, we’d better adjust our thinking to the fact that the horn-of-plenty is shockingly out of goodies, and that no amount of financial hocus-pocus is going to refill it. Valiant attempts to redistribute the already-existing wealth are liable to prove disappointing, especially when the paper and digital representations of that wealth in “money” turn out to be figments — promises to pay that will never be kept because they can’t be kept.
So, instead of fantasizing about free PhD programs for everybody, and free insulin for the multitudes, consider instead the vista of a reduced population working in the fields and pastures to bring enough food out of the long-abused land to live through the next winter. Consider a world in which, if we are lucky, the electricity runs for a few hours a day, but possibly not at all. Imagine a world in which men and women actually function in different divisions of labor and different social spaces because they must, to keep the human project going. Imagine a world in which the ideas in your head about that world actually have to comport with the way the way that world really works — and the severe penalty for failing to recognize that. That’s the more likely world we’re heading into. It won’t put an end to dreams of utopias and cosmic rewards, but it will be a sobering moment in history.
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AFP of course can’t write this without referring to Trump.
• Orwell’s Classic ‘1984’ Turns 70 Amid Enduring Interest (AFP)
Seventy years after its publication, George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel “1984” continues to fascinate readers, in particular youngsters growing up in a social media-dominated age of increasing angst. “Some students are very shocked by it, and remain shocked by it,” said Michael Callanan, an English teacher and director of the Orwell Youth Prize, which supports political expression amongst young people. “It is part of the paradox of a book being 70-years-old,” he added. “I think they were taken aback by how fresh and how true to our lives today it strangely is.” Written in 1948, and published the following year, “1984” depicted a chilling future world in which a totalitarian state controls people’s thoughts and actions, suppressing any dissent.
This rigidly-controlled society features a so-called “ministry of truth” that distorts reality, with the ever-watchful eyes of “Big Brother” keeping tabs on citizens’ behaviour. The novel introduced other terms that have endured in the lexicon, including “double-think”, which means “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them”, according to Orwell. For Jean Seaton, director of the Orwell Foundation, which promotes the work of the writer who died in 1950 aged 46, and administers various awards, his masterpiece was “very prescient”. She noted the book’s description of “two minutes hate” – in which citizens watch a daily film inciting them to hate enemies of the state – as comparable to online hate-mobs today.
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Sinking further.
• Boeing Delayed Fix Of Defective 737 MAX Warning Light For Three Years (R.)
Boeing Co learned that a cockpit warning light on its 737 MAX jetliner was defective in 2017 but decided to defer fixing it until 2020, U.S. lawmakers said on Friday. The defective warning light alerts pilots when two sensors that measure the angle between the airflow and the wing disagree. Faulty “angle of attack” data is suspected of playing a role in two deadly crashes involving Boeing’s best-selling 737 MAX in Indonesia in October and in Ethiopia in March. Those crashes, which killed 346 people, have triggered investigations by aviation regulators and U.S. lawmakers and left Chicago-based Boeing facing one of the biggest crises in its more than 100-year history.
Boeing decided in November 2017 to defer a software update to correct the so-called AOA Disagree alert defect until 2020, three years after discovering the flaw, U.S. Congressmen Peter DeFazio and Rick Larsen said in a press release on Friday. Boeing only accelerated this schedule after the Lion Air accident in Indonesia, they added. Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe said by email that a company safety review found the absence of the AOA Disagree alert did not adversely impact airplane safety or operation. “Based on the safety review, the update was scheduled for the MAX 10 entry into service in 2020,” Johndroe said. “We fell short in the implementation of the AoA Disagree alert and are taking steps to address these issues so they do not occur again.”
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Just don’t think they’re friends.
• Russia-China: a Strategic Alliance for the 21st Century (SCF) /span>
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed China’s Xi Jinping to Moscow this week for a three-day state visit. It wasn’t just the personal warmth between the two leaders that was on display. They have met on nearly 30 occasions over the past six years. President Xi referred to Putin as his closest international ally and friend. More importantly, the two nations are solidifying a strategic alliance that could define the shape of geopolitics for the 21st Century. Putin and Xi, who also attended the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum this week, signed a raft of bilateral commercial agreements which will propel Eurasian development and indeed global development.
Of particular significance is the continued drive by Moscow and Beijing to conduct international trade in national currencies, obviating the US dollar as a payment means. This is a crucial step in countering the desired “hegemonic control” of the global financial system by Washington. Time and again, Washington has abused its privileged position of printing or withholding dollars in order to further its own agenda of dominating other nations. That abuse has to stop, and it will stop as Russia and China pave the way to a new, fairer mechanism of international finance and trade. The vision of cooperation and partnership outlined by Putin and Xi is one based on mutual respect and peaceful prosperity.
Not just for those two nations but for all others who participate in the multilateral vision that they promulgate. In that way, the alliance being consolidated by Russia and China is one that offers renewed hope in a progressive and peaceful future for the planet. This positive vision is especially welcome at a time when the US under President Donald Trump is unleashing a barrage of tensions and potential conflicts from its bid to assert global dominance. The US is wielding sanctions and threats at numerous nations, including Russia and China, as well as even towards its own supposed allies in Europe, all in a desperate attempt to assert a hegemonic unipolar ambition.
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“twenty-two percent of the earth’s landmass was altered by humans just between 1992 and 2015..”
“More than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in the past three decades..”
• Our Dying World (CP)
[..] “twenty-two percent of the earth’s landmass was altered by humans just between 1992 and 2015. Ninety-six percent of the world’s animals, by weight, are now humans and their livestock,” writes Wallace-Wells. He describes “the forces that unleashed climate change – namely ‘the unchecked wisdom of the market’” to conclude that “neoliberalism is the God that failed on climate change.” Indeed those who hope that salvation from the human-induced climate catastrophe will come from our neoliberal leaders are deluding themselves and wasting time.
For those who consider our ravaged climate the work of centuries, this book will be a shock. “More than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in the past three decades,” Wallace-Wells writes. The climate catastrophe is predominantely the creation of the World War II generation, the boomers and their children. And if we don’t wean ourselves quickly from oil and gas, from our meat-intensive diet, and if we don’t stop pouring concrete, large parts of the earth will become uninhabitable. In fact, the UN projects “200 million climate refugees by 2050.” At the high end, Wallace-Wells quotes “a billion or more vulnerable people with little choice but to fight or flee.” You think the Syrian war produced a refugee crisis for Europe (a war, by the way, largely fuelled by climate-change induced drought)? Or that Central American drought has propelled unsustainable numbers of migrants to the U. S.? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
If business continues as usual, by century’s end, we humans will have the distinction of having produced eight degrees of warming. (Currently we’ve produced one degree of warming.) People “at the equator and in the tropics would not be able to move around outside without dying…whole regions will become unlivable…as soon as the end of this century.” Train tracks will buckle and roads will melt. Another way of stating matters is “twenty-five Holocausts and the worst case outcome puts us on the brink of extinction.” And this disaster has just started.
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Because Greece needs money.
• Why Replace Dolphins With Oil Drilling? (G.)
Before the giants of oil and gas joined the litany of threats facing Greek sperm whales, the plight of the world’s largest-toothed animal was little known. Like the Hellenic trench, which was discovered only two decades ago and is the habitat most associated with the species, the mammals were once the preserve of dedicated oceanographers. Now international eco-warriors, bent on stopping oil companies drilling for underwater reserves, are determined to put both the region and its unique species on the map. At stake is an unusually endangered zone. One of the world’s most significant marine mammal areas, it is home not only to the sperm whale, Greece’s chief predator, but fin whales, Cuvier’s beaked whales, fast-vanishing common dolphins, Mediterranean monk seals and loggerhead sea turtles.
All face mortal danger if, as planned, exploration for hydrocarbons is conducted off the country’s western coast. With worries mounting, WWF Greece and Greenpeace recently went to Athens’ highest administrative court, the council of state, in the hope of getting two oil company concessions annulled in waters off western and south-western Crete. The organisations cited inadequate environmental monitoring, both post- and pre-exploration. The move follows publication of an unprecedented declaration by 100 of the world’s leading scientists, conservation and ecological groups. The prospective drilling was described in a two-page statement as the death knell for iconic sea mammals already facing manmade threats ranging from ship strikes and plastic pollutants to radar noise from military naval exercises.
“Despite its global import, cetaceans in the Hellenic trench are already facing a series of direct and severe threats,” the signatories opined, calling on leftist prime minister Alexis Tsipras to cancel the offshore activity. “Oil and gas exploration and exploitation as an additional great threat … would become an important blow to their chances of survival.” Greece, they said, should instead follow “the bold political and investment decisions” of other EU member states by embracing renewable energy rather than hydrocarbons, one of the biggest drivers of climate change.
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But the domain name goes to Bezos.
• The White Man Is Our Finishing Off Our Planet And We Want To Defend It (CD)
Satellite images reviewed by the Brazilian government show massive deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, a grim reminder of the devastation wrought by the country’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro. According to Reuters, 285 square miles of forest was cleared in May, the highest one month total in a decade. The information comes from Brazilian space research institute INPE’s DETER alert system. “If this upward curve continues, we could have a bad year for the Amazon forest,” said INPE satellite monitoring head Claudio Almeida. The Amazon deforestation is just part of a global problem, said youth activist Greta Thunberg. “Disastrous deforestation like this must come to an end,” Thunberg said. “And not just in the Amazon… We are literally sawing off the branch we all live on.”
[..] The Bolsonaro administration in January announced its plans to open the Amazon for resource exploitation—a move that came before the new presidency was even a month old. At the time, Bolsonaro’s chief of strategic affairs Maynard Santa Rosa referred to the Amazon as an “unproductive, desertlike” area that would benefit from development. In April, as Common Dreams reported, indigenous activists in Brazil sounded the alarm over the Bolsonaro government’s attack on the rainforest and made a non-violent demonstration at the country’s capital city of Brasilia. “The white man is our finishing off our planet and we want to defend it,” Alessandra Munduruku, a representative of the Munduruku tribe from the northern state of Pará, said during that protest.
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