Sections
crisis index
Introduction
1. Summary
2. Crisis
Files
A. Selections from
October 11, 2017
Introduction:
This is a Nederlog of
Wednesday, October
11,
2017.
1. Summary
This is a crisis
log but it is a bit different from how it was the last four years:
I have been writing about the crisis since September 1, 2008 (in Dutch) and about
the enormous dangers of surveillance (by secret services and
by many rich commercial entities) since June 10, 2013, and I will
continue with it.
On the
moment and since nearly two years (!!!!) I have
problems with the company that is
supposed to take care that my site is visible [1]
and with my health, but I am still writing a Nederlog every day and
will continue.
2. Crisis Files
These
are five crisis files that are all well worth reading:
A.
Selections from October 11, 2017
1.
Mr. Trump Nails Shut the Coffin on Climate
Relief
2. Julian Assange on Roger Stone & Accusations
About WikiLeaks and Trump
Campaign Ties to
Russia
3. Julian Assange Marks 5.5 Years Inside Ecuador-
ean Embassy as UK & US
Refuse to Confirm
Arrest Warrant
4. Russia-gate Jumps
the Shark
5. Obama: Too Cool
for Trump’s Crises
The
items 1 - 5 are today's selections from the 35 sites that I look at
every morning. The indented text under each link is quoted from the
link that starts the item. Unindented text is by me:
1. Mr. Trump Nails Shut the Coffin on
Climate Relief
This article is by The Editorial Board on The New York Times.
It starts as follows:
The Trump administration formally proposed on
Tuesday to roll back yet another of President Barack Obama’s
efforts to position the United States as a global leader in the fight
against climate change.
(...)
All this is infuriating on several levels.
It repeated the same false narrative that congressional
Republicans have been peddling for years and that Mr. Trump’s minions
are peddling now — that environmental regulations are job killers, that
restraining greenhouse gas emissions will damage the economy, that the
way forward lies in digging more coal and punching more holes in the
ground in the search for oil.
It reaffirmed the administration’s blind loyalty to dirtier
energy sources, ignoring the pleas of corporate leaders who know that
economic momentum and new investment lie with cleaner sources of
energy, and fear that without innovation their costs will rise and
their competitive edge over foreign countries will be lost.
It repudiated the rock-solid scientific
consensus that without swift action the consequences of climate change
— widespread species extinction, more devastating droughts, more
Harveys and Irmas and wildfires like those now raging
in Northern California — will become more likely.
It offered, on a human level, more empty
promises to the frightened miners who keep showing up to hear Mr.
Pruitt say that coal is coming back, when any comeback is unlikely not
because of regulation but because of powerful market forces favoring
natural gas and renewables.
Yes
indeed. There is more in the article, that is recommended.
2. Julian
Assange on Roger Stone & Accusations About WikiLeaks and Trump
Campaign Ties to Russia
This article is by Amy
Goodman on Democracy Now! It starts with the following introduction:
Microsoft has
joined Facebook in saying it is investigating whether Russian
operatives paid for “inappropriate” pro-Trump ads on its Bing search
engine and other platforms. Social media giant Facebook has said a
Russian company placed thousands of ads on their network at a cost of
more than $100,000, including some that targeted states crucial to
Trump’s victory. Last week, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said
it reached the conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election. Meanwhile, CIA
Director Mike Pompeo has blasted Wikileaks as a hostile intelligence
service that is often abetted by state actors like Russia, and Trump
adviser Roger Stone declined to confirm to the House Intelligence
Committee that he was directly in contact with WikiLeaks about damaging
information on then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. We get
response from Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of
WikiLeaks.
In fact, there are three
articles on yesterday's Democracy Now! with Julian Assange.
JULIAN
ASSANGE: Well, I think
there’s a very good article
recently
published in The
Nation which goes through all of that, and it’s shown to be nearly
all fiction. The parts that you can actually determine, where you can
compare with internally contradictory statements or other things, shows
that it’s nearly all fiction. Whether there’s any truth to it, I don’t
know. We haven’t researched that.
Yeah, I would say that I
think it’s very concerning to see this neo-McCarthyist hysteria, very,
very dangerous in geopolitical terms. And, of course, it’s an attempt
to, you know, to unite the Democratic Party. CIA
structures it together in—and the media, in their assault against the
Trump regime.
Yes indeed. I think that
is nearly all correct, although I do not know about the CIA.
But the rest is quite correct to the best of my knowledge.
Here is some more about Roger Stone
(<-Wikipedia), but with far wider application:
AMY
GOODMAN: What do you
mean?
JULIAN
ASSANGE: He [Stone -
MM] doesn’t have anything to worry about because there is no back
channel. There was never a back channel. I’ve said it at the time. He’s
produced no evidence of it. We have complained about it. He’s simply
trolling the absolute—you know, they want to be trolled. They don’t
care. They don’t care what the truth is at all. All they want is some
little propaganda point that they can use to somehow satisfy their
ridiculous fantasies about taking down Trump in relation to Russia. And
if Roger Stone is going to help with that, they will give him a massive
platform. And that’s exactly what they’ve done.
Yes indeed. Here is the
point of wide application once again:
(...) they want to
be trolled. They don’t care. They don’t care what the truth is at all.
All they want is some little propaganda point that they can use to
somehow satisfy their ridiculous fantasies (...)
Quite so. There
is considerably more in this interview, that is recommended.
3. Julian
Assange Marks 5.5 Years Inside Ecuadorean Embassy as UK & US Refuse
to Confirm Arrest Warrant
This article is by
Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! It starts with the following introduction:
As we speak with
WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange, he shares an
update on when he may be able to leave the Ecuadorean Embassy in
London, where he has sought refuge and political asylum for more than
five years. Earlier this year, Swedish prosecutors have dropped an
investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by Assange, which
he denies and calls a pretext for his ultimate extradition to the
United States to face prosecution under the Espionage Act.
Quite so. Then again,
Julian Assange is still far from safe. Here is part of the
reason:
AMY
GOODMAN: (..) We’re
talking to Julian Assange, who has taken refuge, got political asylum
in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, for the last five-and-a-half years
has lived in this tiny embassy in London. Julian, talk about the status
of your case. In fact, you were holed up there so that you wouldn’t be
extradited to Sweden, fearing then you would be extradited to the
United States. But Sweden has dropped its case against you.
JULIAN
ASSANGE: Yeah, of
course. It never had a case. I was never charged. It was a, quote,
“preliminary investigation,” which had been reopened, which had already
been closed. So, yeah, but the United States continues its grand jury
formally. It’s expanded it now to include our CIA publications. And
CIA—Trump’s CIA Director Pompeo and
the DOJ has been, at least in their
statements—and we know from some internal matters—pursuing that
aggressively.
And here is
the rest of the reason: Assange is kept locked up because both
Great Britain and the USA refuse to confirm or deny whether there
are sealed extradition orders against him:
AMY
GOODMAN: Why do they
want you here in the United States? And what role is Britain playing
right now? I mean, they don’t have to respond. There is not a known
arrest warrant for you.
JULIAN
ASSANGE: Well, the U.K.
says they refuse to confirm or deny whether they have already received
a sealed extradition order. And the U.S. says that they refuse to
confirm or deny whether they have already issued one.
As the last
quotation from this interview, I quote Assange on the difference
between the CIA and Wikileaks (and indeed any other more or less
fair media organization):
AMY
GOODMAN: Mike Pompeo, CIA director, his first major address as CIA director, takes on WikiLeaks and you, Julian.
Your response?
JULIAN
ASSANGE: Well, it’s a
bit flattering, isn’t it? I mean, he’s saying that, essentially, that
we’re a nonstate intelligence agency. Those are his words, which, of
course, is completely absurd. Look, the media, media organizations,
cultivate sources, protect their identities, if they’re doing their job
well, and publish their material. The Central Intelligence Agency
collects information for a different reason—to exploit it for
interstate power, its own power—and then doesn’t publish it. So, the
intentionality in obtaining information is to publish it, in the case
of a media organization, and then it is published, hopefully. It is,
with WikiLeaks. And the intelligence agencies collect information with
a different intentionality, and they don’t publish. So, it’s—yeah, it’s
absurd.
Yes, quite so.
Again there is considerably more in the article, that is recommended.
4. Russia-gate
Jumps the Shark
This
article is by Robert
Parry (<-Wikipedia) on Consortiumnews. It starts as follows:
A key distinction between propaganda and journalism is that
manipulative propaganda relies on exaggeration and deceit while honest
journalism provides context and perspective. But what happens when the
major news outlets of the world’s superpower become simply conveyor
belts for warmongering propaganda?
Yes
indeed. Then again, all propaganda is manipulative, for
a reasonable definition of 'propaganda' (unlike the lies from the very
well-paid propagandists that claim to be involved in what they
are pleased to call 'public relations' [2]) is this:
Propaganda: Slanted, biased, prejudiced or
partial presentation of something that is meant to produce a state of
belief that is not proportional to the evidence.
Most points of view
people get exposed to are kinds of propaganda, whether political,
religious or economical. And indeed, the last kind of propaganda, also
known as advertising,
is the most expensive and well-paid kind of writing or filming there
is, and the sort of information
most people are most exposed to.
Advertisement
and public
relations are also kinds of propaganda, intended to
mislead a public into buying
products or believing institutions, political parties or
governments.
Of course, the commercial spreaders or lies that are public relations companies deny this,
but then their craft is the art of lying,
using the techniques of conmanship.
And here is more by
Robert Parry:
That is a question
that the American people now face as The New York Times, The Washington
Post, CNN and virtually the entire mainstream media hype ridiculously
minor allegations about Russia’s “meddling” in American politics into
front-page hysteria.
For instance, on Tuesday,
the major news outlets were filled with the latest lurid chapter of
Russia-gate, how Google, the Internet’s dominant search engine, had
detected suspected “Russia-linked” accounts that bought several
thousand dollars worth of ads.
The Washington Post ran this
item as front-page news (...)
Note what they ran as
front page news: Some - claimed (!) "“Russia- linked” accounts" have "bought
several thousand dollars worth of ads".
I say! Here is some background by Parry:
A journalist –
rather than a propagandist – would immediately follow these figures
with some context, i.e., that Google’s
net digital ad sales revenue is about $70 billion annually. In
other words, these tiny ad buys – with some alleged connection to
Russia, a nation of 144 million people and not all Vladimir Putin’s
“operatives” – are infinitesimal when put into any rational perspective.
Precisely - and that is not
speaking about any of the many lies, propaganda, and bullshit the
government of the USA
spreads around.
There is considerably more that I leave to your interests. The article
ends as follows:
Of course, the big
difference between Iraq in 2003 and Russia in 2017 is that as
catastrophic as the Iraq invasion was, it pales against the potential
for thermo-nuclear war that could lie at the end of this latest
hysteria.
I quite agree. And this is a
recommended article.
5. Obama:
Too Cool for Trump’s Crises
This article is by Ralph Nader on Common Dreams and originally on
Nader's site. It has the following subtitle:
Say the right
thing and the people won’t mind so much when your words don’t match
your deeds.
It starts as follows:
Back in the nineteen
seventies, there was a best-seller, widely read in the business
community, called Winning through Intimidation. Barack Obama should
pick up a copy, because that is what Donald Trump may be doing to him.
Obama stays mostly silent as the belligerent Trump rolls back or
destroys the legacies of Obama’s eight years in office. The mere
thought of tangling with the Trumpster’s foul, prevaricatory, sneering
tweets offends Obama’s own sense of civil discourse between politicians.
Given the present crises,
this revulsion is just another form of self-indulgence by the former,
self-described community organizer, Senator and President.
In fact, I think Nader
is too kind to Obama.
But
I have to admit that I too was frauded by Obama in 2008 - see here - although one major reason that
I could be frauded by him was that I only got fast internet
in 2009 (after writing the above) and until then I had a telephone
modem, that made surfing quite expensive for me, while it also was
quite slow.
Then again, I have been
critical of Obama since the summer of 2009, and at present I think he
was just another Clinton or another Blair: Frauds who are
interested in political power, because this enables them to get very
rich themselves, and who can make it to political
power because
they are very good and very slick liars.
Here is more by Nader:
Mr. Obama could, for
example, work to strengthen civic groups and help substantially to
create new organizations to address urgent needs (such as averting
wars); he could back opposition to Trump’s destructive policies that
are running America into the ground while shielding Wall Street and the
dictatorial corporate supremacists whose toadies Trump has put into
high government positions.
Obama is a big draw and can
raise hundreds of millions of dollars faster than most
This seems to be all
correct. But Obama doesn't do these things. Instead, Obama tries to
get rich:
Instead, Obama,
besides raising funds for his presidential library (about $1 billion),
is getting press primarily for being paid $400,000 or more per speech
before Wall Street and other big business audiences.
This is precisely
like Bill Clinton (who meanwhile seems to have gathered around $120
million, together with his wife).
Here is more on Obama:
There is plenty to
be said in the U.S. that is both new and significant by Obama. However,
apart from a few words here and there on bigotry and immigration, Obama
has preferred to bounce between high-priced lecture gigs and wealthy
watering holes where he is a guest of the super-rich, and to work on
his book, for which he is receiving over $30 million. Michelle Obama is
receiving many millions of dollars for her book and has also been
attending celebrity-filled gatherings.
Again precisely like
the Clintons. Here is the last bit that I'll quote from this article,
from near its end:
In his best-selling 2006
book, The Audacity of Hope, then Senator Obama admitted: “I found
myself spending time with people of means—law firm partners and
investment bankers, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists. As a
rule, they were smart, interesting people. But they reflected, almost
uniformly, the perspectives of their class: the top 1 percent of the
income scale.”
And
becoming a senator, Obama got access to the 1%, while after becoming a
president he could reward the criminal US bankers, as he did and did
again and again, calculating that they would make him rich after being
president, and he was right: They did.
This is a recommended article, although my faith in Obama is
probably lower than Nader's, simply because I have no faith
whatsoever in him, that is, except for the fact that I firmly
believe that Obama's present project is to get rich by speaking to
the criminal bankers he helped so much, for a mere $400,000 a
speech.
Obama will
very probably succeed in this as well.
------------------------------
Notes
[1] I have now been saying since the
end of 2015 that
xs4all.nl is systematically
ruining my site by NOT updating it within a few seconds,
as it did between 1996 and 2015, but by updating it between
two to seven days later, that is, if I am lucky.
They have
claimed that my site was wrongly named in html: A lie.
They have claimed that my operating system was out of date: A lie.
And they
just don't care for my site, my interests, my values or my
ideas. They have behaved now for 1 1/2 years as if they are the
eagerly willing instruments of the US's secret services, which I will
from now on suppose they are (for truth is dead in Holland).
The only
two reasons I remain with xs4all is that my site has been
there since 1996, and I have no reasons whatsoever to suppose that any
other Dutch provider is any better (!!).
[2] As to "public
relations", which is itself
a propaganda
term, a strongly recommended series is "The
Century of the Self" by Adam Curtis. This
is a four-part series, and especially part 1, that is mainly
about the
founder of propaganda Edward Bernays
is strongly recommended by me. (It can be found on Youtube.)
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