“Truth Ultimately Is All We Have:” Julian Assange Appeals for Public Support

Assange explained that since he was convicted on trumped-up bail charges shortly after his arrest on April 11, he has been “isolated from all ability to prepare to defend myself, no laptop, no internet, no computer, no library so far, but even if I do get access it will be just for half an hour with everyone else once a week.”

Counter Information

By Oscar Grenfell

Global Research, May 25, 2019

World Socialist Web Site

In his first publicly-released comments to supporters since his arrest, WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange has detailed the repressive conditions he faces in Britain’s Belmarsh prison and called for a campaign against his threatened extradition to the United States.

“I am defenceless and am counting on you and others of good character to save my life,” Assange wrote, adding, “Truth ultimately is all we have.”

Assange’s comments were made in a letter addressed to independent British journalist Gordon Dimmack, who decided to make it public following last Thursday’s announcement by the US Justice Department of additional charges against Assange under the Espionage Act. The WSWS is republishing the letter, with Dimmack’s permission, in full below.

Assange explained that since he was convicted on trumped-up bail charges shortly after his arrest on April 11, he has been…

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Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

The Crisis of Science

James Corbett (2019)

Film Review

This documentary is loosely based on the 2005 paper by John Ioannidis (Why Most Published Research Findings Are False). According to Ioannidis, modern research faces four major crises: the crisis of fraud, the crisis of replication, the crisis of peer review and the crisis of publication.

The Crisis of Fraud: the number of scientists basing their findings on fraudulent data and/or methodology is clearly on the increase. This stems partly from the sad reality that corporations, which presently fund most research, tend to pay their researchers to produce favorable outcomes. However the pressure universities place on researchers to continuously publish also plays a significant role. The film features a 2008 clip of Robert F Kennedy Jr exposing emails he uncovered regarding a conspiracy between the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and vaccine manufacturers to conceal a proven link between thimerosal (a mercury-based vaccine preservative) and autism and other neurodevelopmental disoders.

The Crisis of Replication: this relates both to outright fraud and a peer review process that places more weight on statistical significance than on sample size and reproducibility. Statisticians are well aware that measuring a large number of variables in a small group inevitably produces at least one “statistically significant” correlation. In the research community, this is known as “p-hacking”* or “data dredging.”

The Crisis of Peer Review: research has become so super specialized that only a handful of scientists are qualified to perform peer review in any given field. This allows them to act as gatekeepers. Not only are they more inclined to approve work by scientists they know or work with, but they’re also less inclined to check closely for data fraud and statistical manipulation in a friend’s work.

The Crisis of Publication: the pressure to publish (three times a year at some universities) creates a robust market for scientists who produce dodgy research.

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*P-value or probability value is one important measure of statistical significance.

 

 

 

 

 

All elections are dead ends

Message from Toulouse Yellow Vests.

The Slow Burning Fuse

The Gilet Jaunes have come to understand  the truth about elections

All elections are dead ends, as the movement has known from the beginning: we have avoided all the pitfalls that have been set for us (co-optation by the government, appointment of representatives, manipulation by parties or unions, division between good and bad “Gilets jaunes”, etc.). We will never fall again into the election trap that […] only serves to establish the power of those who have a party apparatus, an enormous social and financial capital, relays in the media, etc. and certainly not to serve the interests of “those who are nothing”.

Because the State serves the economy, not the other way round! It is the armed wing that protects the interests of those who make their fortune by trading our means of subsistence (food, shelter, clothing, transportation, health care, education). It is in the pay of multinational companies…

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NEW BOOK! “Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age”

From the back cover:

“Today most of our money is created, not by governments, but by banks when they make loans. This book takes the reader step by step through the sausage factory of modern money creation, explores improvements made possible by advances in digital technology, and proposes upgrades that could transform our outmoded nineteenth century system into one that is democratic, sustainable, and serves the needs of the twenty-first century.”

WEB OF DEBT BLOG

My new book, nearly 3 years in the making, is finally in print. It’s called “Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age” and is published by the Democracy Collaborative. As our democracy hangs in the balance, I hope this book allows many more people to understand why having control over the money supply is central to the idea of democracy, and what we can do to wrest that control from big private banks and put it squarely in the hands of the people.

From the back cover:

Today most of our money is created, not by governments, but by banks when they make loans. This book takes the reader step by step through the sausage factory of modern money creation, explores improvements made possible by advances in digital technology, and proposes upgrades that could transform our outmoded nineteenth century system into one that is democratic…

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Italian Workers Refuse To Load Saudi Weapons Ship In Protest Over Yemen Atrocities

At least 6,872 people are believed to have died in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which began in 2015. A further 10,768 civilians have been wounded. Most of the casualties were killed or injured in Saudi-led airstrikes, prompting international condemnation. The war has also left much of the surviving population on the brink of famine.

Nwo Report

Italian unions have refused to load cargo ontoa Saudi ship carrying weapons in protest against the Kingdoms aggression against Yemen.

Union workers said they would not be complicit in what was happening.

Some protesters and human rights activists gathered at the port city of Genoa carrying banners that said “No to war.”

The Bahri-Yanbu ship had been loaded with weapons in Antwerp, Belgium earlier this month, but was successfully blocked from picking up additional arms at the French port of Le Havre following a similar protest.

The Independent reports: Unions in the northern Italian city initially lobbied to have the vessel banned, but their efforts failed and the Bahri-Yanbu docked there earlier this week.

It was met by protesters. One carried a sign which read “no to war”.

Union workers then refused to load the generators.

“We will not be complicit in what is happening in Yemen,” the group’s leaders said…

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NBC: Rotting Trash in LA Attracting Rats as Typhus Epidemic Looms

 

 

Los Angeles is quickly becoming America’s biggest disaster-zone, with rat-infested piles of trash fueling concerns about a new typhus epidemic.

According to a report by NBC Los Angeles, the city’s most notorious trash pile, located between downtown LA’s Fashion and Produce districts, continues to be a magnet for rats after it was cleaned up a few months ago.

Rat-infested piles of rotting garbage left uncollected by the city of Los Angeles, even after promises to clean it up, are fueling concerns about a new epidemic after last year’s record number of flea-borne typhus cases.

Information Liberation reports: Tucker Carlson has been chronicling the homeless epidemic in America over the past week […]

 

via NBC: Rotting Trash in LA Attracting Rats as Typhus Epidemic Looms — Nwo Report

Costa Rica Set to Become First Plastic-Free, Carbon-Free Country by 2021

Costa Rica is positioning itself to be the first country in the world to be totally free of single-use plastics and fossil fuels by 2021.

At his inauguration earlier this year, President Carlos Alvarado Quesada announced his initiative to ban fossil fuels and become the world’s first decarbonized society:

“Decarbonization is the great task of our generation and Costa Rica must be one of the first countries in the world to accomplish it, if not the first.”

While it may sound like a pipe dream, the country is already almost there.

Almost 99% of Costa Rica’s energy already comes renewable sources, such as rivers, volcanoes, geothermal, wind and solar power.

In 2017, the country ran on 100% renewable energy for 300 days straight.

Now, the government is focused on switching to all electric cars using incentives to make them as cheap as cars that run in gas.

“When we reach 200 years of independent life we will take Costa Rica forward and celebrate… that we’ve removed gasoline and diesel from our transportation,” the president said in his inauguration speech.

Along with coal and petroleum, the country aims to make single-use plastics a thing of the past.

Last year, the government announced its plan to eradicate all single-use plastics by 2021.

From then on, plastic has to be replaced by alternatives that are 100% recyclable or biodegradable and not petroleum-based.

Costa Rica has the technical and financial support of the United Nations Development Program to help accomplish the goal.

Economist Mónica Araya, a Costa Rican sustainability expert and director of Costa Rica Limpia,  goes into more detail in a Democracy Now interview.

via Costa Rica Set to Become First Plastic-Free, Carbon-Free Country by 2021 — Return to Now