Dorothea Lange ‘We’re bound for Kingfisher (OK wheat) and Lubbock (TX cotton). We’ll be in California yet. 1938
The BBC turns on Andrew?
• ABC Stopped Jeffrey Epstein Report ‘Amid Palace Threats’ (BBC)
Leaked footage shows a US TV anchor complaining that editors “quashed” a story about paedophile Jeffrey Epstein due to pressure from the Royal Family. ABC’s Amy Robach is seen in the clip griping that her interview with an alleged victim of Epstein and Prince Andrew never made it to air. “The Palace found out,” she says, “and threatened us a million different ways.” An ABC news executive said there was “zero truth” to the assertion. Epstein, a wealthy and well-connected financier, was found dead in a jail cell in August while awaiting trial for sex crimes. His death was ruled a suicide by investigators. In the video, Ms Robach vents frustration that her 2015 interview with Virginia Giuffre – formerly Virginia Roberts – was never broadcast.
The clip was leaked on Tuesday by Project Veritas, a group that seeks to expose perceived liberal bias in the mainstream media. Ms Giuffre, 35, alleges she was abused by Epstein and was ordered to have sex with powerful men including Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. In court documents she said she was forced to have sex with the British royal on three separate occasions while she was under the legal age of consent. Prince Andrew has denied having “any form of sexual contact or relationship” with Ms Giuffre. In 2015, a judge ruled that the allegations made by Ms Giuffre regarding Prince Andrew were “immaterial and impertinent” and ordered them to be removed from a claim against Epstein.
“I’ve had this story for three years. I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts,” says Robach, speaking to someone off-camera. “We would not put it on the air. First of all, I was told, ‘who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.’ “Then the Palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways. “We were so afraid that we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will. “That also quashed the story,” the host of ABC’s 20/20 programme added. Robach also says that the interview included allegations against former US President Bill Clinton. “We had everything,” she continues. “I tried for three years to get it on, to no avail. “And now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations and I freaking had all of it.”
“They’re fine airing the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, or [President Donald] Trump, or anybody else, but when it comes to Bill Clinton and some of these folks who are mentioned by Amy in this hot mic tape, they say they just didn’t have enough corroboration..”
• MSM Execs Part Of ‘Network Of People’ That Covered For Epstein – O’Keefe (RT)
ABC and other mainstream media outlets refused to cover accusations against sex predator Jeffrey Epstein because “a network of people” that includes their executives were implicated, James O’Keefe of Project Veritas told RT. The Disney-owned network has doubled down on its insistence that anchor Amy Robach’s story on Epstein three years ago lacked “enough corroboration” and thus wasn’t aired. This was after Project Veritas released a “hot mic” video of Robach slamming the decision to quash the story. The conservative filmmaker told RT on Tuesday that he believes ABC’s refusal to budge from that explanation backs up Robach’s claim that “a network of people” – including the executives running her channel – are “covering up for this” because they are somehow “implicated.”
Robach had interviewed Epstein’s alleged sex slave Virginia Roberts Giuffre and other victims and claimed to have pictures and other proof to back up her story. The never-aired exposé was such a bombshell that it provoked intimidating calls from “the [UK royal] palace, which threatened [ABC] a million different ways,” and Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz – and the media establishment, O’Keeffe said, is very susceptible to such threats. Mainstream media’s decisions to suppress major stories like Epstein or the allegations of sexual assault against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein have contributed to a wholesale abandonment of trust in the media by the American people, O’Keeffe continued.
“It’s quite telling that this insider leaked this tape to Project Veritas and not the Washington Post, New York Times, CBS or CNN, because they seem to want to protect the people that were working with Jeffrey Epstein,” he added. They’re fine airing the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, or [President Donald] Trump, or anybody else, but when it comes to Bill Clinton and some of these folks who are mentioned by Amy in this hot mic tape, they say they just didn’t have enough corroboration,” O’Keefe said, recalling that Robach had specifically mentioned that “we had [Bill] Clinton.”
Nearly 3,000,000 views in 9 hours #EpsteinCoverup
Will @CNN @MSNBC @CBSNews @NBCNews cover tonight? pic.twitter.com/fPvJc3s1Li
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 5, 2019
The advantages of silencing Assange: people can claim anything at all that would support any claim at all no matter how absurd. Assange and Wikileaks have denied any link to Stone, and he himself has too. But it no longer matters with Julian locked up in solitary. And now they use Stone’s empty braggadocio in an actual trial?!
Literally nothing in this report from NPR is true. But who cares anymore?
• Roger Stone, Trump Friend And Alleged Tie To WikiLeaks, Faces Trial (NPR)
Stone and some of his associates may have been links in a chain that connected Trump in New York City with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London, who at the time had confined himself in the Ecuadorian Embassy there. Assange, in turn, was in contact with Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, which had stolen a trove of embarrassing material from political targets in the United States. WikiLeaks released many of those emails and other documents with disruptive effects on political life in the U.S. — and enjoyed public encouragement by Trump and his campaign. What Mueller’s investigation revealed was how much Trump and aides worked to get more.
The campaign built into its plans the expectation that there would be more damaging revelations about Hillary Clinton, and Trump’s campaign bosses also sought contact with some people connected with the interference over the course of the election season. Charging documents in Stone’s case describe a message from one of Stone’s contacts depicting the person in a photo taken outside the Ecuadorian Embassy — implying that he’d visited Assange — and other messages in which Stone and associates discuss the prospect of more “dumps” from WikiLeaks.
Solomon rules.
• Amid 2016 Election, State Dept Saw Burisma As Joe Biden’s Issue (Solomon)
In recent interviews, Joe Biden has distanced himself from his son’s work at a Ukrainian gas company that was under investigation during the Obama years, with the former vice president suggesting he didn’t even know Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings. There is plenty of evidence that conflicts with the former vice president’s account, including Hunter Biden’s own story that he discussed the company once with his famous father. There also was a December 2015 New York Times story that raised the question of whether Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma posed a conflict of interest for the vice president, especially when Joe Biden was leading the fight against Ukrainian corruption while Hunter Biden’s firm was under investigation by Ukrainian prosecutors.
But whatever the Biden family recollections, the Obama State Department clearly saw the Burisma Holdings investigation in the midst of the 2016 presidential election as a Joe Biden issue. Memos newly released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Southeastern Legal Foundation on my behalf detail how State officials in June 2016 worked to prepare the new U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to handle a question about “Burisma and Hunter Biden.” In multiple drafts of a question-and-answer memo prepared for Yovanovitch’s Senate confirmation hearing, the department’s Ukraine experts urged the incoming ambassador to stick to a simple answer. “Do you have any comment on Hunter Biden, the Vice President’s son, serving on the board of Burisma, a major Ukrainian Gas Company?,” the draft Q&A asked.
The recommended answer for Yovanovitch: “For questions on Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma, I would refer you to Vice President Biden’s office.” The Q&A is consistent with other information flowing out of State. As I reported yesterday, when a Burisma representative contacted State in February 2016 to ask for the department’s help in quashing the corruption allegations, Hunter Biden’s role on the company’s board was prominently cited. And a senior State Department official who testified recently in the impeachment proceedings reportedly told lawmakers he tried to warn the vice president’s office that Burisma posed a conflict for Joe Biden but was turned aside. There are no laws that would have prevented Hunter Biden from joining Burisma, even as his father oversaw Ukraine policy for the President Obama..
400 pages means hours and hours of testimony, but he ‘forgot’ to mention the one thing he knew very well was key to it all? And now, after talking to “the right” people, he suddenly remembers? I’d give Sondland an F- on credibility.
• Sondland Reverses Himself On Ukraine (Pol.)
In his revised testimony, released Tuesday by House impeachment investigators, Sondland said that during a Sept. 1 meeting in Warsaw, Poland, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky raised his concerns to Vice President Mike Pence about the suspension of military aid. Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, added that he later told Andriy Yermak, a top Ukrainian national security adviser, the aid would be contingent on Trump’s desired investigations. “After that large meeting, I now recall speaking individually with Mr. Yermak, where I said that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland wrote in his addendum, which was released alongside a nearly 400-page transcript of his testimony.
Sondland revealed the exchange in supplemental testimony he submitted to House impeachment investigators on Monday, saying he had failed to recall the episode when he testified in person last month. Sondland, who had a direct line to Trump and was a major donor to his 2016 presidential campaign, had previously indicated he was unaware of any effort to connect military aid to Trump’s demand for politically motivated investigations. Sondland was eager to maintain that public posture, even with other U.S. officials working on Ukraine policy. Eight days after privately telling Yermak that military aid was contingent on Trump’s desired investigations, Sondland wrote in a text message to William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, that Trump had been “crystal clear” that there was no quid pro quo involving military aid and publicly announced investigations.
It’s all over now, baby blue.
• Ryanair Grounds Three Boeing 737s After Cracks Found (G.)
At least three Ryanair Boeing 737s have been grounded due to cracks between the wing and fuselage but this was not disclosed to the public, the Guardian can reveal. The budget Irish airline is the latest to be affected by faults in the “pickle fork” structure, which has sparked an urgent grounding of 50 planes globally since 3 October. While other airlines, such as Australia’s Qantas and America’s Southwest, have disclosed the number of their planes affected by the cracks, Ryanair – which operates the largest fleet of 737s in Europe – has previously refused to confirm how many of its planes have been affected. Last Thursday, the airline told the Irish Times it “does not expect” the global pickle fork issue would “have any impact upon our operations or fleet availability”.
The Guardian can now reveal three of their planes have been affected by the issue. It is understood that experts do not regard the presence of the cracks as a safety issue as long as appropriate checks are carried out. The grounded planes have the registration numbers EI-DCL, EI-DAL and EI-DCJ. All three are more than 15 years old. Flight tracking site Flight Aware shows that DCL and DAL are both currently in a known plane repair site, the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California. The third plane, DCJ, is in storage at Stansted airport in London. A copy of internal Ryanair engineering logs, seen by the Guardian, lists all three as having “pickle fork cracks”. “AOG [aircraft on ground] – R/H pickle fork crack – on repair in VCV [Victorville],” the logs for DAL read.
Boeing’s response and defense: “safety, quality and integrity are at the core of Boeing’s values”. Maybe try another line next time.
• Boeing Whistleblower Raises Doubts Over 787 Oxygen System (BBC)
A Boeing whistleblower has claimed that passengers on its 787 Dreamliner could be left without oxygen if the cabin were to suffer a sudden decompression. John Barnett says tests suggest up to a quarter of the oxygen systems could be faulty and might not work when needed. He also claimed faulty parts were deliberately fitted to planes on the production line at one Boeing factory. Boeing denies his accusations and says all its aircraft are built to the highest levels of safety and quality. The firm has come under intense scrutiny in the wake of two catastrophic accidents involving another one of its planes, the 737 Max.
Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he was employed as a quality manager at Boeing’s factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. This plant is one of two that are involved in building the 787 Dreamliner, a state-of-the-art modern airliner used widely on long-haul routes around the world. Despite early teething problems following its entry into service the aircraft has proved a hit with airlines, and a useful source of profits for the company. But according to Mr Barnett, 57, the rush to get new aircraft off the production line meant that the assembly process was rushed and safety was compromised. The company denies this and insists that “safety, quality and integrity are at the core of Boeing’s values”.
In 2016, he tells the BBC, he uncovered problems with emergency oxygen systems. These are supposed to keep passengers and crew alive if the cabin pressurisation fails for any reason at altitude. Breathing masks are meant to drop down from the ceiling, which then supply oxygen from a gas cylinder. Without such systems, the occupants of a plane would rapidly be incapacitated. At 35,000ft, (10,600m) they would be unconscious in less than a minute. At 40,000ft, it could happen within 20 seconds. Brain damage and even death could follow.
Best news ever for the climate movement.
• The Recession In The Auto Industry Is Tanking The Global Economy (ZH)
The global economy continues to grind to a halt and the culprit has never been clearer: the auto industry. For the better part of almost 2 years now, we have been reporting monthly on marked slowdowns in key auto markets like China, North America and Europe. Now, the slowdown in this massive industry is what’s helping spur an overall global economic slowdown, according to FT. The reaches of the auto market go deep, with long supply chains and large consumption of raw materials, textiles, chemicals and electronics. The industry is home to millions of jobs and last year, the sector shrank for the first time since the global financial crisis. The IMF is estimating that this fall in output accounted for more than 25% of the slowdown in the global economy between 2017 and 2018.
The sector may also be responsible for up to 33% of the slowdown in global trade growth over the same period, the IMF said. Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, deputy director of the IMF’s research department said: “The car sector has been weighing heavily on manufacturing activity and growth.” And the fund’s forecast of a small lift in global trade in 2020 is dependent on a recovery in the auto sector. Conversely, the fund’s analysis also notes the potential further damage that could occur if the auto sector becomes the focus of the ongoing U.S./China trade war.
But who pays? And in what currency?
• China Signs Nearly 200 Deals For New Silk Road Projects (RT)
China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as “One Belt, One Road,” has already attracted nearly 170 participants, Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced, vowing to further develop the project. “To date, China has signed 197 documents on Belt and Road cooperation with 137 countries and 30 international organizations,” he said in the opening speech at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai on Tuesday. The development of the initiative, which is aimed at boosting trade connections across the world and linking China with other countries, is a central part of plans to open up the Chinese market, according to Xi.
Other proposed measures include boosting investment and imports, lowering tariffs, developing free-trade zones, improving business environment as well as deepening bilateral and multilateral cooperation. “Standing at a new historical starting point, China will open its door only wider to the world,” Xi stated, calling for other countries to “stand firm against protectionism and unilateralism.” The ambitious BRI, launched in September 2013 by President Xi, could cost Beijing up to $1.3 trillion by 2027, according to Morgan Stanley’s estimates.
