PressTV Published on Mar 29, 2019
A plane carrying the first batch of humanitarian aid from China arrived at Simon Bolivar International Airport in the northern Venezuelan city of Maiquetia on Friday.
via Venezuela: China Delivers First Batch of Humanitarian Aid — Socio-Economics History Blog
By Matt Agorist
Activistpost.com
In yet another major move from the great folks over at the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and 9/11 victim family members Robert McIlvaine and Barbara Krukowski-Rastelli, a joint federal lawsuit has been filed to assess any evidence the FBI may have known about that contributed to the destruction of the towers on 9/11 which they may have kept from Congress.
The complaint cites the failure of the FBI and its 9/11 Review Commission to assess key 9/11-related evidence that the FBI can be shown to have had, or been aware of, regarding:
According to the press release on Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, this is evidence relevant to the 9/11 Review Commission’s and the FBI’s compliance with the mandate from Congress, which should have been assessed by the FBI and the 9/11 Review Commission and reported to Congress. The complaint also cites the destruction by the FBI of evidence related to the “High Fivers.” Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth has joined in bringing the counts that involve the evidence of the World Trade Center’s explosive demolition and evidence related to the “High Fivers,” while the other plaintiffs are party to all counts.
As TFTP previously reported, a monumental step forward in the relentless pursuit of 9/11 truth took place last December when a United States Attorney agreed to comply with federal law requiring submission to a Special Grand Jury of evidence that explosives were used to bring down the World Trade Centers. Then, earlier this month, the group behind the submission, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, announced the filing of a “petition supplement” naming persons who may have information related to the use of said explosives.
According to Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the 33-page document contains 15 different categories of persons who may have information material to the investigation, including contractors and security companies that had access to the WTC Towers before 9/11, persons and entities who benefited financially from the WTC demolitions, and persons arrested after being observed celebrating the WTC attacks [. . .]
via Bombshell Lawsuit Claims FBI Knowingly Hid Evidence from Congress of Explosives Used on 9/11
Interfax: Cuba, Venezuela May Host Russian Bombers
Venezuela, China, Russia and Cuba are deployed in an exercise on the border with Colombia
Venezuela Agreed To Let Russia Set Up A Bomber Outpost On This Caribbean Island: Reports
CARACAS – The Russian Defense Ministry has sent An-124 military transport aircraft, IL-62M jet airliner and more than 100 troops to Caracas, against the backdrop of growing tensions between Venezuela and the United States.
Citing its sources, the Defence Blog reported that Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces Col. Gen. Vasily Tonkoshkurov also arrived with the Russian troops.
Reports suggest the cargo plane arrived in Venezuela from Moscow through Syria.
[. . .]
As the tree of overdiagnosis has grown, efforts have been made to trim the branches. Initiatives such as Preventing Overdiagnosis, Too Much Medicine, Slow Medicine aim to increase our understanding of how it manifests itself. Efforts such as Choosing Wisely are underway to affect policy and change patient expectations and to change well-entrenched medical practices.
Abstract
Overdiagnosis and overtreatment are common, harmful to patients, and expensive. Doctors and patients tend to overestimate the benefit and underestimate harm of interventions. Choosing Wisely is a medically led campaign focusing on engaging doctors and patients in decisions about potentially unnecessary medical tests, treatments, and procedures. It started in the US in 2012 and has now been taken up in 22 countries worldwide, including the UK.
Read the full text on The BMJ, 2018.
The government shutdown ended almost two months ago. Its financial toll on contractors lingers like a bad hangover.
It will take Lila Johnson months to rebound from the financial hit she endured earlier this year, going for weeks without pay during the federal government shutdown.
A contracted custodian who has worked for the past 21 years at the Department of Agriculture, Johnson still has not been reimbursed for her lost income, and her rage at President Donald Trump — who forced the shutdown in a bit to procure funding for his border wall — continues to grow. “It was just ridiculous for him to act the way he did as a leader,” Johnson told ThinkProgress.
“He punished the people, held us hostage because of something that he promised his voters. He promised his voters that he was going to build the wall. He’s the one who promised Mexico was going to pay for the wall,” she said.
“And when he couldn’t get his way, he was like, ‘I’m going to shut everything down.’ And that is not leadership of running the United States.”
A great-grandmother in her seventies, Johnson cleans bathrooms four hours per night, five days a week. Two months ago, for 35 days — the longest U.S. government shutdown in history — she went without pay.
The hit on her income has left Johnson in a financially precarious position, scraping, scrimping, struggling more than ever to get by. She is holding out now for her tax refund. “Maybe that will pull me up more than I am now,” she said.
While 800,000 federal workers were either furloughed or forced to work without pay, Trump held a nation captive over his border wall, the construction plans for which read like scribbles from his dream journal: it is to be a “powerful wall,” perhaps a “steel barrier,” or maybe, actually, a “smart wall” utilizing drones and sensors.
Needless to say, the wall has not arrived, in any form. Nor, for federal contractors like Johnson, has back pay. Although federal employees were eligible for and ultimately received back pay, the federal contractors who were also affected by the shutdown have not. (Since they are privately hired, estimates about just how many federal contractors there are range pretty widely, with some estimates putting the number nationwide at more than a million.)
The government pays third-party companies for contractor work, which means contractors don’t get paid unless their services are actually used.
Last month, Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) introduced a bill to ensure back pay for federal contract workers: the Fair Compensation for Low-Wage Contractor Employees Act, which “aims to help low-wage federal contractor employees—including janitorial, food, and security services workers—who were furloughed or forced to accept reduced work hours as a result of the recent government shutdown.”
Since it was engineered for low-wage workers, the bill had its limits: payments would be capped at $965 per worker per week. But Trump refused to sign a spending package that included back pay for contractors.
“It’s not fair for the American people to live the way they’re living because [Trump] is selfish,” Johnson said. “He only thinks about what he wants. That’s the mind of a child, to me. That’s not leadership.”
“There is an important piece of unfinished business from the past government shutdown that we still need to resolve: providing back pay for the employees of federal contractors who lost over one month’s pay,” Smith said in a statement to ThinkProgress.
“These thousands of Americans work shoulder to shoulder with federal employees for all of us — many as security guards, cafeteria workers, and people who clean office buildings—and they must be made whole. Several of my Republican colleagues and the entire Democratic caucus supports this effort, so we should be able to find a solution.”
During the shutdown, stories about these contractors — who overwhelmingly are immigrants and people of color — made headlines. There was a Smithsonian museum security guard whose car was repossessed, another who rationed her children’s asthma medicine, still others applying for food stamps and fearing eviction. The shutdown’s financial toll on contractors lingers like a hangover the country can’t shake.
In a statement, Jaime Contreras, a vice president at 32BJ SEIU, the guild which represents over 600 federally-contracted workers, said the union “will not rest until federal agencies pay the men and women who clean and secure federal buildings the back pay they deserve and need for bills they still can’t afford to pay.”
These workers “live paycheck to paycheck and faced eviction, power shut off and hunger among many hardships during the Trump shutdown,” Contreras said [. . .]
via Low-wage federal workers still want their shutdown pay, please – Mar 20, 2019, 2:12 pm — Just Sayin’
By William CRADDICK | Disobedient Media | March 15, 2019
Just a few days after NBC News and National Public Radio (NPR) launched propaganda attempts to undermine the peace process between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the United Nations has waded into the fray with a new attempt to build a case for retaining sanctions that have proven to be a sticking point between the negotiation teams.
Much like previous reports, the United Nation’s Panel of Experts (PoE) on North Korea utilized misleadingly interpreted satellite footage provided by private firms who have contractual connections to the CIA and Pentagon. The panel’s findings will ultimately be used to support policies that are aimed at playing on North Korean fears and make them more likely to withdraw or engage in counterproductive behavior.
I. Continued Misleading Interpretation Of Satellite Footage
The PoE’s claimed that the DPRK has been using an “underwater pipeline” at an oil terminal in Nampo, North Korea to offload fuel it receives by sanctioned methods. Much like with previous attempts to “prove” North Korean behavior with satellite imagery that did not actually show evidence of claimed activity the UN’s contentions are similarly based on shaky grounds.
A second photo run by NKNews.org from private defense contractor Planet Labs purports to also show the “underwater pipeline.” NK News claimed that the underwater pipeline had been used since 2018 solely based on the fact that ships moved in and out of the area, which is obviously designated for mooring.
There are a number of problems with both the photos provided by the Panel of Experts and the Planet Labs image published by NK News. These issues are outlined below.
Additional markings on the UN PoE’s images discuss the storage capacity and location of the oil terminal in Nampo but provide no evidence of an “underwater pipeline.” Even more damning, the image provided to NK News by Planet Labs shows a very clear shadow running down its center. This indicates that either two photographs were laid on top of each other and copied, or the original image was creased to hide some detail that would have otherwise been visible.
The use of an underwater pipeline is not the standard method by which ships refuel. Previous reports discussing sanctions evasion display photographs showing how ships will commonly lash together before exchanging gasoline above the water line. When ships to take on fuel from land, they will pull up along a dock. These kinds of details might be obvious to anyone with a degree of maritime knowledge but not a layman.
II. Satellite Footage Of Nampo Docks Is Sourced From Intelligence Contractors
Much like with previous attempts to undermine the Korean peace process, the UN PoE has sourced their imagery from private contractors who primarily work with the CIA and Pentagon. The PoE’s satellite footage is attributed to DigitalGlobe. As Disobedient Media has previously reported, DigitalGlobe is an American vendor of satellite imagery founded by a scientist who worked on the US military’s Star Wars ICBM defense program under President Ronald Reagan. DigitalGlobe began its existence in Oakland, CA and was seeded with money from Silicon Valley sources and corporations in North America, Europe and Japan. Headquartered in Westminster CO, DigitalGlobe works extensively with defense and intelligence programs. In 2016, it was revealed that DigitalGlobe was working with CIA chipmaker NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services to create an AI-run satellite surveillance network known as Spacenet.
DigitalGlobe is a subsidiary of Maxar Technologies, a private conglomerate which boasts contracts with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Some subsidiaries of Maxar derive as much as 90% of their annual revenue from government contracts with the Department of Defense and U.S. Special Operations Command.
Planet Labs, whose imagery was cited in NK News reports of the UN PoE’s findings, is a private satellite imaging corporation based in San Francisco, CA that allows customers with the money to pay an opportunity to gain access to next generation surveillance capabilities. In February 2016, Federal technology news source Nextgov noted a statement from former CIA Information Operations Center director and senior cyber adviser Sue Gordon that Planet Labs, DigitalGlobe and Google subsidiary Skybox Imaging were all working with the NGA to provide location intelligence. Planet Labs’ own website also lists press releases detailing past contracts for subscription access to high resolution imagery with the NGA.
The pervasive involvement of companies providing satellite footage with the CIA in particular is deeply inappropriate. On March 13, 2019 Spanish paper El País reported that the CIA had been implicated in a shockingly violent attack on the North Korean embassy in Spain during the week before the Hanoi Summit. The attack was speculated to be an attempt to gain intelligence on former ambassador to Spain Kim Hyok Chol, who had been appointed by Kim Jong Un to spearhead negotiation efforts with their American counterparts. The involvement of such contractors in a UN panel responsible for overseeing sanctions put into place against North Korea suggests the very real possibility that the entire process is designed to undermine any hope of a denuclearization agreement.
III. The UN PoE Touts Sanctions At A Highly Inappropriate Time
The UN’s decision to continue to tout sanctions in the aftermath of the Hanoi Summit can only be interpreted as an attempt by internationalists and American neoconservatives to scuttle President Donald Trump’s attempts to seek denuclearization for the DPRK. Hugh Griffiths, a British national heading the Panel of Experts, was widely quoted by the media as being of the opinion that Chairman Kim Jong Un had only come to Hanoi to try and relieve the pressure of created by sanctions. It apparently did not bother the international and American press that Mr. Griffiths’ mandate does not include giving his opinion about unrelated peace talks.
Griffiths finds himself in agreement with a number of GOP neoconservative hardliners such as former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley who stress the importance of sanctions with the ostensible goal of cutting off revenue to the DPRK. Some such as John Bolton have openly called for an increase in sanctions in clear opposition to President Trump’s clearly stated desire to seek further dialogue. North Korea has explicitly mentioned the actions and comments of Bolton as endangering the health of negotiations while continuing to maintain that personal relations between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump were “still good and the chemistry is mysteriously wonderful.”
While the stated objective of sanctions is to deprive North Korea of revenue that can be used to finance purchases related to its nuclear program, it is undeniable that they contribute majorly to economic hardship and starvation for the civilian population of the DPRK. In 2018, UNICEF noted that sanctions create severe issues with the delivery of humanitarian aid and put the lives of tens of thousands of children in danger alone. While North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons was certainly what landed them in the situation they currently find themselves in, it is the callous disregard of human welfare by the United Nations, internationalist and certain American interests which causes an increase in such needless suffering.
Considering that nations such as Japan have recently moved to suspend efforts to condemn and punish the DPRK for their rights abuses in light of progress made during the negotiation process, the UN’s move to shift the spotlight back onto sanctions is incredibly poorly-timed. The same can be said for US agencies such as the Department of State who have interfered with talks by openly welcoming the Panel of Expert’s report.
IV. Media And The UN Ignore Actual Evidence Of Sanctions Evasion
Despite all the efforts of international media, the UN and other factions to foment conflict between the DPRK and United States they been curiously unable to identify real evidence of parties who are trying to smuggle goods in and out of North Korea to dodge sanctions.
With a search of just a few minutes on Google Earth along the Chinese-North Korean border, Disobedient Media was able to identify pathways being used by smugglers to move goods in avoidance of sanctions near Kusong-Dong, North Korea. The ease with which this verifiable information could be found shows just how inept and uninterested monitoring bodies and international media organizations are in finding actual evidence of any potential sanctions violations. The failure of these institutions suggests that their efforts are made solely with propaganda in mind.
The current drive to highlight supposed bad faith behaviors by the DPRK has absolutely nothing to do with promoting peace or encouraging North Korea to abandon their nuclear arsenal which is as dangerous to them as it is any of their enemies. The increase with which such disingenuous reports have been promulgated since the Hanoi Summit shows the increasing desperation with which certain factions are seeking to maintain hostilities which create a benefit for some but which are ultimately dangerous to the entire world. It seems that there is no low to which such parties will not stoop in order to prevent peace from being realized.
Perhaps the United Nations should spend more time focusing on preventing their officials and peacekeepers from committing a plethora of sex crimes while on the job.
via UN Works with Intelligence Contractors to Destabilize North Korea Dialogue
The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, headed a planning day Friday for the Civic-Military Exercises Ana Karina Rote 2019 to take place over the weekend throughout the national territory with the aim of shielding the country’s hydroelectric system amid possible new external attacks.
“The military operation Ana Karina Rote this Saturday and Sunday throughout the country is to consolidate the electric victory free from fascist and imperialist attacks on the electrical system,” said the head of state from the Miraflores Palace in the company of the military high command of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB).
The president’s message was addressed to all governors, mayors, and the military chiefs of the different regions of the country as well as movements of organized popular power that will participate in the deployment to ensure the operation of the strategic facilities of the National Electric System (SEN) and the systems of distribution of drinking water.
President Maduro explained that the exercises should serve to optimize the response capacity to possible aggression and put into practice national defense plans.
He instructed the creation of Commandos for the Defense of Basic Services, Special Peace Groups, which will integrate a new structure of the FANB together with the popular power from this weekend.
“We will deepen the civic-military union in all neighborhoods, towns, communities. I want to go deep… for territorial defense in the streets, neighborhoods and avenues of Venezuela,” he explained.
On Friday, the Venezuelan leader reiterated the involvement of the United States government in the cyber attack against the Ardas automated system of the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Power Plant, which caused a five-day national blackout.
via Venezuela Organizes Civic-Military Exercises in Defense of Electric Grid
RT | March 13, 2019
California parents are demanding an elementary school remove their on-campus cell tower after four students and three teachers were diagnosed with cancer in just three years.
Some students at the Weston Elementary School in Ripon, San Joaquin County, California have been pulled from attending the school over the spike in cancer cases, reports the Sacramento Bee.
On Monday evening about 200 angered parents attended a Ripon school board meeting to demand action. The kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school has about 400 students.
The Ripon Unified School District said tests carried out on the cell tower showed it is working normally and within safety standards, but the board are talking with the telecommunications company about moving the tower.
Four students have been diagnosed with cancer since the controversy first erupted in 2016. Monica Ferrulli, a parent of one of the students who was treated for brain cancer in 2017, claimed the RUSD is in “denial” and citing an obsolete American Cancer Society study to justify the tower’s placement.
“We had a doctor tell us that it’s 100 percent environmental, the kind of tumor that he has,” said Ferrulli to CBS Sacramento, and added that an inspection of the tower arranged by parents showed much higher readings than the RUSD-hired engineers found in 2018.
The school district, who reportedly receives $2,000 per month for the tower, has said while they empathize with families, they have no out clause in their 25-year lease contract with Spirit – the company that owns the tower – meaning both the school district and Spirit will have to mutually agree on a relocation [. . .]
via Parents blame elementary school’s cell tower after 4th student gets cancer
The RAND Corporation, who carried out the simulation, claimed US land, sea and air forces would be reduced to rubble in the outlandish scenario. Nonprofit research organization RAND Corporation reported the war-game showed US armed forces facing substantial losses, despite repeated attempts to overcome both Russia and China’s military muscle. RAND analyst David Ochmanek said: “In our games when we fight Russia and China, the US gets its a** handed to it.
“We lose a lot of people.
“We lose a lot of equipment.
“We usually fail to achieve our objective of preventing aggression by the adversary.”
The simulations showed the US see major setbacks in all five battlefield domains.
US stealth fighters were often wiped out while still on the runway.
Former deputy secretary of defence and an experienced war-gamer Robert Work said: “F-35 rules the sky when it’s in the sky, it gets killed on the ground in large numbers.”
Other scenarios showed that US warships were sunk and US bases reduced to rubble.
The aircraft carrier Liaoning of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy leaves a shipyard (Image: GETTY)
The US was seen to not have enough anti-air and missile defence capabilities to strike back in the event of a high-end conflict.
Both aircraft carriers and US Air Force bases were often targeted by long-range precision-guided missiles, and the US Army’s tank brigades were pummeled by cruise missiles, drones and helicopters, officials stated.
Mr Ochmanek said: ”Things that rely on sophisticated base infrastructure like runways and fuel tanks are going to have a hard time.”
When it comes to cyber warfare, Mr Ochmanek indicated that US satellites and wireless networks could become ineffective if Chinese military forces were to employ “system destruction warfare”.
via “The US gets its ass handed to it” In RAND Corp Analysis of War w/China and Russia
By Tsvetana Paraskova | Oilprice.com | March 8, 2019
Russian exports of oil and oil products to the United States surged in the last week of February to their highest level since 2011, with Russia taking advantage of the Venezuelan collapse, Russian news outlet RBC reports, quoting investment bank Caracas Capital Markets as saying in a note to clients.
At least nine tankers delivered 3.19 million barrels of oil and oil products of Russian origin to U.S. ports in the week February 23 to March 1, according to Caracas Capital Markets, which specializes in Venezuela. These 3.19 million barrels is the largest volume of Russian oil deliveries “we have seen since 2011,” Russ Dallen, Caracas Capital Markets Managing Partner, wrote in the note, as carried by RBC.
Most of the Russian oil deliveries were naphtha and fuel oil, and tankers from Novorossiysk and St Petersburg, among others, shipped the oil products to U.S. ports, Caracas Capital said, citing the U.S. database of shipping documents.
The rise in Russian oil shipments to the U.S. is the result of the U.S. markets adapting to the loss of Venezuelan oil, RBC quoted the bank as saying.
Ironically, Russia—the staunchest supporter of Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Venezuela—is benefiting in the U.S. oil market from the U.S. sanctions on Maduro’s government, on the state oil firm PDVSA, and on the Venezuelan oil industry.
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s crude oil exports to the U.S. are dropping.
U.S. crude oil imports from Venezuela slumped to just 83,000 bpd in the week to March 1, compared to 208,000 bpd in the previous week, according to EIA’s preliminary data on crude oil imports by top 10 countries of origin, ranked based on 2017 data.
The U.S. sanctions on Venezuela are also prohibiting U.S. exports of naphtha to the Latin American country which uses the product to dilute its heavy crude. But Russia’s Rosneft is said to be coming to the rescue with shipments of heavy naphtha to Venezuela expected in the next few weeks, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, citing shipping reports and a source with knowledge of the plans.
via Russia’s Oil Product Exports To U.S. Surge Amid Sanctions On Venezuela
The Most Revolutionary Act 