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Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, With Friends Like These… | TomDispatch

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2019

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176569/tomgram%3A_danny_sjursen%2C_with_friends_like_these…/#more

By Danny Sjursen

Troika Fever

American foreign policy can be so retro, not to mention absurd. Despite being bogged down in more military interventions than it can reasonably handle, the Trump team recently picked a new fight — in Latin America. That’s right! Uncle Sam kicked off a sequel to the Cold War with some of our southern neighbors, while resuscitating the boogeyman of socialism. In the process, National Security Advisor John Bolton treated us all to a new phrase, no less laughable than Bush the younger’s 2002 “axis of evil” (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea). He labeled Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny.”

Alliteration no less! The only problem is that the phrase ridiculously overestimates both the degree of collaboration among those three states and the dangers they pose to their hegemonic neighbor to the north. Bottom line: in no imaginable fashion do those little tin-pot tyrannies offer either an existential or even a serious threat to the United States. Evidently, however, the phrase was meant to conjure up enough ill will and fear to justify the Trump team’s desire for sweeping regime change in Latin America. Think of it as a micro-version of Cold War 2.0…

strap yourself in for a bumpy ride. After all, the demonization of Latin American “socialists” and an ill-advised war in the Persian Gulf have already been part of our lived experience. Under the circumstances, remember your Karl Marx: history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

And add this irony to the grim farce to come: you need only look to the Middle East to see a genuine all-American troika of tyranny. I’m thinking about the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the military junta in Egypt, and the colonizing state of Israel — all countries that eschew real democracy and are working together to rain chaos on an already unstable region.

If you weren’t an American, this might already be clear to you. With that in mind, let’s try on a pair of non-American shoes and take a brief tour of a real troika of tyranny on this planet, a threesome that just happen to be President Trump’s best buddies in the Middle East.

America’s Favorite Kingdom Read the rest of this entry »

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Endless procedural abuses show Julian Assange case was never about law, by Jonathan Cook – The Unz Review

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2019

Ny finally relented on interviewing Assange in November 2016, coming to London after six years of heel-dragging. However, she barred Assange’s lawyer from being present. That was a gross irregularity that Ny was due to be questioned about in May 2017 by a Stockholm judge. Apparently rather than face those questions, Ny decided to close the investigation against Assange the very same day.

In 2008, a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch” foretold a detailed plan to discredit WikiLeaks and smear Assange personally. The “mission” was to destroy the “trust” that was WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”. This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”. Silencing and criminalising such an unpredictable source of truth-telling was the aim.” …

According to Australian diplomatic cables, Washington’s bid to get Assange is “unprecedented in scale and nature”…

http://www.unz.com/jcook/endless-procedural-abuses-show-julian-assange-case-was-never-about-law/

It is astonishing how often one still hears well-informed, otherwise reasonable people say about Julian Assange: “But he ran away from Swedish rape charges by hiding in Ecuador’s embassy in London.”

That short sentence includes at least three factual errors. In fact, to repeat it, as so many people do, you would need to have been hiding under a rock for the past decade – or, amounting to much the same thing, been relying on the corporate media for your information about Assange, including from supposedly liberal outlets such as the Guardian and the BBC.

At the weekend, a Guardian editorial – the paper’s official voice and probably the segment most scrutinised by senior staff – made just such a false claim:

Then there is the rape charge that Mr Assange faced in Sweden and which led him to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in the first place.

The fact that the Guardian, supposedly the British media’s chief defender of liberal values, can make this error-strewn statement after nearly a decade of Assange-related coverage is simply astounding. And that it can make such a statement days after the US finally admitted that it wants to lock up Assange for 175 years on bogus “espionage” charges – a hand anyone who wasn’t being wilfully blind always knew the US was preparing to play – is still more shocking.

Assange faces no charges in Sweden yet, let alone “rape charges”. As former UK ambassador Craig Murray recently explained, the Guardian has been misleading readers by falsely claiming that an attempt by a Swedish prosecutor to extradite Assange – even though the move has not received the Swedish judiciary’s approval – is the same as his arrest on rape charges. It isn’t.

Also, Assange did not seek sanctuary in the embassay to evade the Swedish investigation. No state in the world gives a non-citizen political asylum to avoid a rape trial. The asylum was granted on political grounds. Ecuador rightly accepted Assange’s concerns that the US would seek his extradition and lock him out of sight for the rest of his life.

Assange, of course, has been proven – yet again – decisively right by recent developments… Read the rest of this entry »

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Assange Indictments Hide the Context of War – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2019

https://original.antiwar.com/robert-koehler/2019/05/30/assange-indictments-hide-the-context-of-war/

by

The U.S. government protects itself, not democracy. That’s what is most apparent about its 18-count indictment of Julian Assange, not to mention the ongoing imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, for the leaking and release of State Department and military documents and videos a decade ago.

The current reporting on the indictment is mostly about Assange himself: his expulsion from the Ecuadoran embassy in London after he’d been holed up there for seven years; the sexual assault charges against him in Sweden; and, of course, his role as a “tool” of the Russians, along with his flip-flopping appeal to both the political left and right (depending on the nature of the controversy WikiLeaks is stirring up). What a story!

Almost entirely missing is anything about the leaks themselves, except vague references to them, such as this comment by John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security: “This release made our adversaries stronger and more knowledgeable, and the United States less secure.”

These words are remarkable bullshit and have resonance only to the extent that the actual leaked data is missing from the discussion, such as the infamous Apache helicopter video of 11 unarmed men (in US military parlance, “insurgents”) – including a Reuters photographer and his driver – being shot and killed from above on a street in Baghdad, and two children being injured.

The video shows the killings as they occur, with helicopter crewmen talking and laughing between bursts of machine gun fire, as though they’re playing a video game:

“Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.”

“Nice.”

We see a wounded man crawling for cover, only to be taunted from above: “Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.”

A van shows up and some men start picking up the bodies. We listen to the crewmen asking for permission to shoot – “engage” – and finally start firing at the van, in which, it turns out, two children are sitting. When that little detail becomes apparent, a crewman comments: “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids to a battle.”

And when some Bradley tanks arrive at the scene, a crewman comments, laughing: “I think a tank just drove over a body.”…

“While temporary secrecy, or at least privacy, is sometimes necessary in any endeavor, permanent secrecy – secrecy as entitlement – is nothing but dangerous.”

Assange’s indictment is his red badge of courage. We can’t depend on large institutions to stand up for democracy. The larger the institution, the more absorbed it is likely to be in its own preservation and the success of its agenda. Democracy requires people outside the circle of power, both governmental and corporate, to maintain an adversarial relationship with power and endlessly dig for its secrets. This is called journalism.

Demers, justifying the government’s indictment, paid lip service to the sacredness of journalism, explaining: “The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy, and we thank you for it. It is not and never has been the department’s policy to target them for reporting. But Julian Assange is no journalist.”

There you have it. What better proof could you ask for that he is a journalist, and that the secrets he has ripped out of hiding require serious public scrutiny?

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Rand Corporation: How to Destroy Russia – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2019

Rand Corporation

This is the future that is planned out for us by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank of the Deep State – in other words the underground centre of real power gripped by the economic, financial, and military oligarchies – which determines the strategic choices not only of the USA, but all of the Western world.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/rand-corp-how-destroy-russia/5678456

By Manlio Dinucci

Force the adversary to expand recklessly in order to unbalance him, and then destroy him. This is not the description of a judo hold, but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA. With a staff of thousands of experts, Rand presents itself as the world’s most reliable source for Intelligence and political analysis for the leaders of the United States and their allies.

The Rand Corp prides itself on having contributed to the elaboration of the long-term strategy which enabled the United States to win the Cold War, by forcing the Soviet Union to consume its own economic resources in the strategic confrontation. It is this model which was the inspiration for the new plan, Overextending and Unbalancing Russia, published by Rand [1].

According to their analysts, Russia remains a powerful adversary for the United States in certain fundamental sectors. To handle this opposition, the USA and their allies will have to pursue a joint long-term strategy which exploits Russia’s vulnerabilities. So Rand analyses the various means with which to unbalance Russia, indicating for each the probabilities of success, the benefits, the cost, and the risks for the USA.

Rand analysts estimate that Russia’s greatest vulnerability is that of its economy, due to its heavy dependency on oil and gas exports. The income from these exports can be reduced by strengthening sanctions and increasing the energy exports of the United States. The goal is to oblige Europe to diminish its importation of Russian natural gas, and replace it by liquefied natural gas transported by sea from other countries.

Another way of destabilising the Russian economy in the long run is to encourage the emigration of qualified personnel, particularly young Russians with a high level of education.

In the ideological and information sectors, it would be necessary to encourage internal contestation and at the same time, to undermine Russia’s image on the exterior, by excluding it from international forums and boycotting the international sporting events that it organises.

In the geopolitical sector, arming Ukraine would enable the USA to exploit the central point of Russia’s exterior vulnerability, but this would have to be carefully calculated in order to hold Russia under pressure without slipping into a major conflict, which it would win.

In the military sector, the USA could enjoy high benefits, with low costs and risks, by increasing the number of land-based troops from the NATO countries working in an anti-Russian function.

The USA can enjoy high probabilities of success and high benefits, with moderate risks, especially by investing mainly in strategic bombers and long-range attack missiles directed against Russia.

Leaving the INF Treaty and deploying in Europe new intermediate-range nuclear missiles pointed at Russia would lead to high probabilities of success, but would also present high risks.

By calibrating each option to gain the desired effect – conclude the Rand analysts – Russia would end up by paying the hardest price in a confrontation, but the USA would also have to invest huge resources, which would therefore no longer be available for other objectives. This is also prior warning of a coming major increase in USA/NATO military spending, to the disadvantage of social budgets.

This is the future that is planned out for us by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank of the Deep State – in other words the underground centre of real power gripped by the economic, financial, and military oligarchies – which determines the strategic choices not only of the USA, but all of the Western world.

The “options” set out by the plan are in reality no more than variants of the same war strategy, of which the price in sacrifices and risks is paid by us all.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Il Manifesto. Translated by Pete Kimberley.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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34 Ways To Stay Healthy – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 31, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/05/bill-sardi/34-ways-to-stay-healthy-that-cost-next-to-nothing/

By

  1. Sleep: Trying to get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep may be frustrating. Modern humans are going to sleep two hours later than the daylight-darkness cycle.  Prior to electric lighting, people slept for about 6 hours, awoke for about two hours, and then went back for a second sleep.  Blue light emitted from electronic devices, even smart phones, or computer monitors fouls up melatonin secretion, the sleep hormone.  Be aware.  Blue light filters are available for computer monitors and eyeglass lenses.  However, no one is mentioning that blue light filtering in the AM is counter-productive and impairs the dissipation of melatonin and could theoretically induce daytime sleepiness.  Best to get some direct sunlight early in the AM to awaken fully refreshed and alert. The focusing lens of the eyes loses about 1% of its transparency every year.  By age 80 maybe 20% of ambient or artificial light reaches the retina and this alters the light/dark cycle and affects melatonin levels.  Replacement of the cloudy natural lens with a clear plastic lens implant is recently reported to help restore the natural sleep-wake cycle.
  1. Sun: there are vitamin D pills that can make up for the lack of sunlight in winter months; but a few minutes of full-body sun exposure is superior. I say this because studies show it is vitamin D produced by direct exposure of the skin to the breast that prevents breast cancer.  I advise women to find a private place and sun for a few minutes with skin exposed.
    I supplement my diet with 25 milligrams of beta carotene so I won’t develop sun burn, or sun-induced wrinkles.  Beta carotene converts to vitamin A in the liver, but excess beta carotene is shuttled to the skin where it protects from blistering sun rays.  Same goes for high-dose lutein and astaxanthin.  (I developed a multivitamin that provides 25 mg/beta carotene + 10 mg lutein.)
  2. Water: Clean water is the foundation for any healthy human population. Water in the U.S. is chlorinated.  Chlorine is a very toxic chemical.  Yet it has eradicated typhoid, dysentery and cholera.  However, lifetime consumption of chlorinated water is associated with colon cancer.  Furthermore, tap water is also fluoridated.  This is a sedating mineral that breeds passivity.  The IQ declines the more fluoride people consume.  Various bottled waters are available that are not rich in natural fluorides.  Bottled waters are often free of  chlorine and fluoride but present a problem with their plastic bottles that contain phthalates and bisphenol A as a plasticizer.  These are gender-bending molecules.  Best to buy bottled water in glass bottles.  Fiji water is an exception (no bisphenol A). It took till 2017 for bottled water to become the most consumed beverage over coffee, tea or soda in the US.  I buy water in glass bottles. Gerolsteiner is my preferred brand due to its magnesium bicarbonate content.
  3. Sore throat: I actually have people email me to ask what they should do now that they woke up in the morning with a sore throat. They are clueless as to what to do. Home remedies have been completely forgotten.  Gargle with salt water.  The reason for its morning occurrence is likely consumption of sugary foods the night before.  The involved bacterium is Streptococcus, an acid secreting bacterium that causes dental decay by virtue of its acid erosion of tooth enamel.  Sugar indirectly causes cavities.  But let’s get back to that sore throat.  Sodium is alkaline.  It counters Strep.  So, gargle with some salt water and most sore throats vanish within minutes.  Watch out for eating candies and sugary snacks right before bedtime.  Strep loves sugar.  Sugar restriction reduces the count of Strep bacteria in the oral cavity.
  4. Teeth: dental enamel is hardened by vitamin D. Cavities develop in the winter when your dental enamel is soft due to lack of sun exposure combined with eating sweets.  You won’t hear of a single dentist who recommends vitamin D for his patients.  Water fluoridation is reported to reduce the number of decayed teeth by 35%.  But that is of modest effect.  Kids are still getting plenty of cavities over time.  Direct topical application of fluoride appears to be more effective.
    Magnesium deficiency is associated with poor dental health.  For already eroded teeth, you might think of brushing your teeth with magnesium.  One thing your dentist may not tell you (he/she is probably clueless about this) is that without magnesium, only soft enamel can be formed.  Magnesium may even heal already decayed teeth.  Liquid magnesium chloride (preferred form of mag) is available to apply to a toothbrush.

Read the rest of this entry »

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The EU, Not Brexit, Killed British Steel | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on May 30, 2019

Cap and Trade-killing industry to prop up government sponsored boondoggles.

Rent-seeking is a concept in public choice theory as well as in economics, that involves seeking to increase one’s share of existing wealth without creating new wealth. Rent-seeking results in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth-creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality,[1] and potential national decline.

Attempts at capture of regulatory agencies to gain a coercive monopoly can result in advantages for the rent seeker in a market while imposing disadvantages on their incorrupt competitors. This is one of many possible forms of rent-seeking behavior.

https://mises.org/wire/eu-not-brexit-killed-british-steel

On 22 May 2019, British Steel announced that they had become insolvent and the company entered receivership with the UK. The explanation provided for this failure is that British Steel is a victim of the UK’s decision to exit the European Union’s bureaucratic fold . On the surface, this appears to be true, as the company stated that orders from the continent have declined due to uncertainty over the exit process that the UK Parliament has dragged out over the past three years. However, if we dig deeper, we find that it was the EU, not the Brexit decision, which killed the company.

European Overregulation

If we look at the company’s latest annual report, we find that the company went from a profit of £92 million in FY ending 2017 to a £19 million loss in FY ending 2018. To douse water on the Brexit claims, the company’s revenues actually increased 11% year-over-year. The real problem was the company’s expenses bloated by a tremendous 25% over the same period. The steel production process is energy intensive, so a significant portion of this price increase is related to a sharp spike in energy prices in the UK over late 2017 to early 2018. The second major cost driver is British Steel was no longer able to delay paying for the EU’s mandatory cap-and-trade policy. Under the cap-and-trade system, companies were able to pull forward future credits to pay for current years. British Steel’s future credits ran out in 2018 and were facing a £100 million bill to cover their 2018 charges. This amount represents a full 10% of the company’s annual revenue base and was so large that the company requested the British Government to provide a loan to cover the costs as the company only has around £5 million in cash to make such a payment. A good deal of the aforementioned energy price spike is also related to the EU’s cap-and-trade regime becoming more aggressive as it moves into the 2021-2030 phase of the program .

British Steel would have become financially insolvent on 22 May 2019 even had the UK voted to remain in the EU…

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Social Media Is a Tool of the CIA. Seriously

Posted by M. C. on May 30, 2019

Google and CIA: old friends

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-is-a-tool-of-the-cia-seriously/

By Jim Edwards

You don’t need to wear a tinfoil hat to believe that the CIA is using Facebook, Twitter, Google (GOOG) and other social media to spy on people. That’s because the CIA publishes a helpful list of press releases on all the social media ventures it sponsors, via its technology investment arm In-Q-Tel.

The companies that take In-Q-Tel’s money aren’t shy about publicizing what they’re up to, either. Most recently, GeoSemble announced an update to its GeoXray product, which monitors social media chatter based on location:

This capability benefits business users who may be monitoring competition, supply chain activity or business opportunities in a county, neighborhood or border region.

For governments at the city, local and Federal levels it brings the ability to visualize activity in a given area filtered by topic, time and location.

… we can deliver whatever information is available about that place from websites, blogs, tweets and other social media automatically and accurately …

The world’s largest database on individuals
One of the main threats to privacy comes from advertisers, who want to track everything consumers do on the web and scrape their online accounts for personal information. It shouldn’t be surprising, therefore, to learn that the CIA and the worlds largest ad agency network, WPP (WPPGY), have been in bed together on a social media data-mining venture since at least January 2009. WPP currently claims to own the world’s largest database of unique individual profiles — including demographic, financial, purchase and geographic histories. WPP’s Visible Technologies unit took an investment from In-Q-Tel in fall of 2009. Visible Technologies develops tools that can scan social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

WPP also funded Omniture, a marketing ROI agency, with $25 million in January 2009. Omniture’s Visual Sciences unit has also taken In-Q-Tel money. The CIA re-upped with Visible Technologies as part of another $6 million funding round in March 2011.

Other companies that mine web data and have taken In-Q-Tel investments include:

  • Fetch Technologues: “Fetch’s customized software agents navigate websites to instantly deliver meaningful, useful and reliable data, and easily integrate with a company’s existing data management system for immediate analysis.”
  • Cleversafe: A cloud-based storage company that, as Wired notes, is “‘ideal for storing mission critical data by addressing the core principles of data confidentiality, integrity and availability.’ (Incidentally, those principles also spell out CIA).”
  • Cloudera: provides data storage software that makes it easy for governments to process and analyze vast amounts of information.


Google and CIA: old friends
Are you seeing a trend yet? Google (GOOG) has been a partner with the CIA since 2004 when the company bought Keyhole, a mapping technology business that eventually became Google Earth. In 2010, Google and In-Q-Tel made a joint investment on a company called Recorded Future, which has the Minority Report-style goal of creating a “temporal analytics engine” that scours the web and creates curves that predict where events may head.

Google is already helping the government write, and rewrite, history. Here, from its transparency report, are some stats on the amount of information it has either given to the government or wiped from the web based on requests by U.S. agencies:

  • 4,601 requests from U.S. government agencies for “user data“
  • Google complied with government requests for user data 94% of the time.
  • 1,421 requests for “content removal“
  • Google complied with content removal requests 87% of the time.
  • 15 requests were from “executive, police etc.”
  • 1 was a national security request.

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Facebook wants to send ’emotional’ robots to explore the world on tank-style tracks and scan the faces of people to ‘help users make friends’

Posted by M. C. on May 30, 2019

These would let them scan and interpret the faces and body language of people they encounter to assess their ‘likely emotional state’.

Substitute ‘psychological state’ and you have the end game. Those in control may decide, remotely, who needs re-education help.

Gun owners beware.

Think about that next time you are facial scanned at the airport, bank, Easy Pass toll booth, checkout, Skype call, Facetime…and where those scans are going.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7085789/Facebook-wants-send-emotional-robots-explore-scan-faces-help-users-make-friends.html

By Ian Randall

Facebook is considering building ’emotionally sensitive’ robots that can explore the world, identify objects and people and enable users to make friends remotely.

On-board sensors would allow the robots to spot people to engage with, judge their emotional state and listen to what they are saying, a patent filing revealed.

At the same time, the robot could display images, video and speak with people — potentially letting users meet people and make new friends remotely.

However, it is not known whether Facebook will follow through on the patent filing and make the rough robot designs a reality.

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Facebook is considering building 'emotionally sensitive' robots (pictured, in this rough sketch from the patent that the social media firm filed) that can explore the world, identify objects and people and enable users to make friends remotely

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Facebook is considering building ’emotionally sensitive’ robots (pictured, in this rough sketch from the patent that the social media firm filed) that can explore the world, identify objects and people and enable users to make friends remotely

The concept for the social robots was outlined in a European patent filed by the social media firm on May 16, 2019.

Each machine, about the height of an adult, would be equipped with cameras and other sensors.

These would let them scan and interpret the faces and body language of people they encounter to assess their ‘likely emotional state’.

Speakers and microphones would listen out for ‘sounds emitted’, allowing the robots to talk to people or pick out the sound of someone calling to them.

If integrated into Facebook’s social media platform, members could potentially used such robots as proxies for real-world exploration and interactions with people…

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Western Supremacy Is On Its Way Out – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on May 30, 2019

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/05/29/western-supremacy-is-on-its-way-out/

Paul Craig Roberts

On May 28 I wrote that “the Western world is collapsing so rapidly that I am afraid that I am going to outlive it” ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/05/24/whiteness-is-the-new-evil/ ). My article was about the rising demonization of white people that is producing a collapse in their confidence. Inculcated guilt is making whites willing to accept discrimination against them in order to elevate Arab, African, and Hispanic migrants that greedy corporations and witless political leaders have brought into the country.  The Identity Politics of the Democratic Party works to the advantage of darker skinned migrants who present themselves as the victims of the white-faced victimizer.  Just as Jews discovered the advantage of infecting gentiles with guilt, so have the Arabs, Africans, and Hispanics.

Psychological and emotional collapse is not the only form of collapse underway in the US and Western world generally.  There is also economic and social collapse, especially in the United States.  Today America’s once great manufacturing and industrial cities, such as Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Flint Michigan, Gary Indiana, have lost 20% of their populations, largely due to the offshoring of US manufacturing. (See https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Laissez-Faire-Capitalism/dp/0986036250/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2W1NDYFTJ7Q82&keywords=paul+craig+roberts+books&qid=1559153009&s=books&sprefix=Paul+Craig%2Caps%2C151&sr=1-4 )

Social collapse is evident in rising homelessness.  Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle have large homeless populations that encamp on city streets, parks, and upscale neighborhoods such as Venice Beach ( https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/las-homeless-surge-puts-hollywoods-progressive-ideals-test-1174599 ).

In Los Angeles feces and garbage in public streets have caused a plague of rats and fleas.  Dangerous sanitation conditions have caused medical authorities to predict “a major infectious disease epidemic this summer in Los Angeles” ( https://www.newswars.com/doctor-predicts-major-infectious-disease-epidemic-to-hit-los-angeles-this-summer/ ).  The flea-infested carpets in City Hall are being ripped out because of fear of a typhus outbreak brought on by rat infestation. Read the rest of this entry »

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Assange Is Reportedly Gravely Ill, And Hardly Anyone’s Talking About It – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on May 30, 2019

Did this start while Assange was in the puppet state Ecuadorian embassy? Judging from photos that is likely.

Now after being held for weeks the illness is suddenly discovered. It more likely the puppet state UK government had no choice but to send Assange to hospital after his condition became advertised.

It would be very convenient for all concerned if Julian Assange died before trial.

Maybe he encountered some plutonium reside while in the UK.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/29/assange-is-reportedly-gravely-ill-and-hardly-anyones-talking-about-it/

author: Caitlin Johnstone

Assange Is Reportedly Gravely Ill, And Hardly Anyone’s Talking About It

Julian Assange’s Swedish lawyer Per Samuelson has told the press that “Assange’s health situation on Friday was such that it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him.”

This jarring revelation has been reported by a small handful of outlets, but only as an aside in relation to Sweden refusing Samuelson’s request for a postponement of a scheduled hearing regarding Assange’s detention en absentia for a preliminary investigation of rape allegations. The fact that the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder is so ill that he can’t converse lucidly is itself far more significant than the postponement refusal, yet headlines mentioning Samuelson’s statement focus on the Swedish case, de-emphasizing the startling news from his lawyer.

As of this writing I’ve been able to find very few news outlets reporting on this at all, the most mainstream being a Reuters article with the very tame headline “Swedish court rejects delay of Assange hearing over ill-health: lawyer“. The Sydney Morning Herald also covered the story without even mentioning illness in headline, instead going with “Swedish court rejects effort to delay Assange hearing“. The much smaller alternative media outlet World Socialist Website has been the only outlet I’ve found so far which reports on Samuelson’s statement in anything resembling its proper scale, publishing a good article titled “Despite Assange’s ill-health, Swedish court rejects delay to hearing” a few hours ago.

This news has been so under-discussed and under-appreciated as of this writing that I didn’t find out about it until hours after the story broke, and I’m very plugged in to both alternative media commentary and WikiLeaks-related news. A report that Julian Assange was so sick he could barely speak all the way back on Friday and we still have no news about how he’s doing now should be hugely significant for everyone who cares about Assange, press freedom, government transparency or peace activism.

Another part of this story which has gone completely uncovered in all English-language media as of this writing is the news that Assange has actually been transferred to the hospital wing of Belmarsh prison. This was reported by the Swedish outlet Upsala Nya Tidning, a newspaper published in the same district court Assange is scheduled to call in to for his hearing. The report was also based on a statement to the press by Per Samuelson.

The article reports the following, per machine translation:

“Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s Swedish lawyer wants the arrest hearing on Monday in Uppsala to be postponed. According to the lawyer, who has now visited his client in British prison, Assange is admitted to the medical department and was unable to make a call.

…

“Last Friday, Assange’s Swedish defender, lawyer Per E Samuelson, visited his client in prison. In a letter to Uppsala District Court, the lawyer says that they met for just under two hours. According to the lawyer, Assange’s state of health at the meeting was such that ‘a normal conversation with him was not possible’. Julian Assange is said to have been taken to the prison’s ward, but there is no more detailed information about his state of health.”

This story was picked up from Upsala Nya Tidning by Danish new agency Ritzau and published in the outlet Politiken, with the title (per machine translation) “Weakened Assange hospitalized in London prison: ‘Impossible to have a normal conversation with him’”. These news outlets are to my understanding as reputable as any other mainstream western outlet, yet they remain the only publications I’ve been able to find which are reporting that Assange has been hospitalized. This is absolutely bizarre.

I’ve emailed Per Samuelson with a request to confirm the news that Assange has been hospitalized. I’ll update this article if I hear back.

For Assange’s supporters, one of the many frustrating things about his imprisonment has been the way he’s been cut off from the usual means which used to be used to inform the public about his well being. It used to be that news reports could be easily confirmed or refuted by people who had consistent access to Assange in some way by sources like the WikiLeaks Twitter account, but the people who operate that account don’t have ready access to him anymore. Now we’re seeing all sorts of rumors circulating about how Assange is faring in prison, and it gets difficult to sort out fact from fiction. It appears that it would be difficult to find a more reliable source on the state of his health than his own lawyer, however.

It has long been an established fact that Assange was in failing health while trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London; doctors who visited him published an article with the Guardian in January 2018 titled “We examined Julian Assange, and he badly needs care – but he can’t get it“. Renata Avila, an activist and author who has worked with and written about WikiLeaks, tweeted in response to the new revelations, “He needed urgent assistance after his expulsion from the Embassy. Instead, he was not allowed to receive adequate medical treatment. In the case of Emin Huseynov (1 y @ Swiss Embassy) it took at least a month of treatment to go back to normal. Imagine after 7 years! Brutal.”

We have been watching the slow-motion assassination of Julian Assange. They have been choking him to death by tactical psyops, siege tactics, and wilful neglect as surely as if they placed a noose tied around his neck, not just in Belmarsh Prison but in the embassy as well. The only difference between his execution and someone on death row is the same as the difference between covert and overt warfare, which makes sense because the intelligence, judicial and military agencies who are carrying out his death sentence operate within the same power structure which carries out war. First came the smears (propaganda), then came the siege (sanctions), and they staged their coup (dragged him out of the embassy) and now they’ve got him in their clutches and they can do what they want behind closed doors. That’s how you kill a nation while still looking like a nice guy, and that’s how they’re killing Assange.

Shout this from the rooftops. Whether this media blackout is self-imposed or perhaps the result of the malicious use of a D-notice, we have to use everything in our power to get this information into the mainstream, and get people asking questions of the press and their local members about what the Dickens is going on in Belmarsh prison right now. Assange’s life may depend on it.

UPDATE: WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson has confirmed that Assange has been transferred to the health ward of Belmarsh prison, and that his health has been steadily deteriorating since his imprisonment.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested in London ...

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