American Bonaparte: Waterloo, or Watch the Republic Die

Trump's illegal power grab and the specter of American Bonapartism

by Andre Damon - WSWS

10 August 2020

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced a series of measures ostensibly targeting the cutoff of federal unemployment benefits that mark a new stage in his effort to abolish all constitutional restraints on the power of the president.

Trump announced a deferral of the federal payroll tax, which would defund Social Security, and the extension of federal unemployment benefits at a much lower level.

Canadian Court Deems United States "Unsafe" for Refugees

Canadian court rules Safe Third Country Agreement with US violates refugee rights

by Laurent Lafrance  - WSWS

7 August 2020

Canadian Federal Court Judge Ann-Marie McDonald recently ruled that the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) violates refugee rights and the Canadian constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The decision represents a blow to the Trudeau government, which has falsely presented itself as “pro-refugee” to provide a “progressive” cover for its reactionary policies at home and abroad.

Canada Burnishes Anti-Democracy Mettle with Bolivia Coup Support

Canada's Support for Bolivian Coup Deserves Closer Scrutiny

by Yves Engler - Ricochet

August 4, 2020

On August 12 the Canadian Latin America Alliance and Canadian Foreign Policy Institute are co-organizing a talk on Bolivia's fight to restore democracy and Canada's role. The event features former Foreign Minister of Ecuador Guillaume Long, MP Matthew Green and Bolivian journalist Ollie Vargas. Register here. 

 

If Indigenous lives really mattered to the Trudeau Liberals the Canadian government would not treat the most Indigenous country in the Americas the way it has.

A Coup in Three Parts: Bolivian Democracy Not Worth a Column of Western News Print

As Bolivian Regime Delays Elections a Third Time, Media Continue to Ignore Coup

by Bryce Greene - FAIR

August 6, 2020

In the Bolivian elections last October 20, incumbent President Evo Morales of the Movement Toward Socialism party (MAS in Spanish) won a 10-point victory over his nearest challenger, as pre-election polls predicted.

The next day, the Organization of American States issued a statement challenging the legitimacy of the elections, asserting a “hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results.” Immediately, right wingers violently took to the streets to protest the president. The OAS issued a followup statement confirming their analysis on November 10. The same day, the military forced Morales to step down. 

At the Water's Edge: Reversing the Tide of Militarism

Reversal

by Kathy Kelly - VCNV.org

August 6, 2020

With survival at stake, can weapon makers change course?

Another Mother for Peace - Lorraine Schneider, 1966

Today, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, should be a day for quiet introspection. I recall a summer morning following the U.S. 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq when the segment of the Chicago River flowing past the headquarters of the world’s second largest defense contractor, Boeing, turned the rich, red color of blood. 

Ceasing the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement

End the Canada Israel Free Trade Agreement

by Yves Engler

August 4, 2020

On Sunday a demonstration is planned in Montréal against the Canada Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA). Under the banner “Against Israel’s annexation of the Jordan Valley. No to the Canada Israel Free Trade Agreement!”, the march seeks to politicize CIFTA amidst Israel’s plan to formally annex parts of the West Bank.

The march follows an open letter released last month by over 100 Montréal artists and activists calling for the cancellation of CIFTA.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Dimitri Lascaris, Steve Poikonen, Janine Bandcroft August 6th, 2020

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com

August 6, 2020

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s continuing efforts, NOT broadcast live from CFUV Radio in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but emanating live-to-tape via skype from our home-based … studio on this date, July 29th, 2020.

Before Covid, social justice and environmental issues were top and centre here in British Columbia. Now, following four months of near monomaniacal media coverage of the global coronavirus outbreak, it’s important to remember the sun also rises, and though “the Earth remain the same forever” if we humans are to continue living upon it we must address the real single existential issue of our times, climate change. To that political end, the Green Party of Canada is the only party in this country making an honest attempt.

The Greens are in the midst of a leadership contest, the nine contenders doing their utmost to campaign in these Covid-challenged times. Dimitri Lascaris is one of those nine candidates and he’s been on the island this past week, taking his message for the future of the Greens to both current and prospective party members.

Listen Hear.

Lascaris is a lawyer, activist, and journalist whose vision for the party promises to, in his words: “Defy the powerful. Confront injustice. [and] Unite progressives.”

Dimitri Lascaris in the first half.

And; almost a year and a half after being seized from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founding publisher, Julian Assange is still in Belmarsh Prison. He’s awaiting the next phase in the protracted extradition process the United States has initiated with Britain.

Steve Poikonen is host of Slow News Day, the Patreon.com available online current events program covering “stories that you won’t find on establishment, or the majority of “lefty” or “independent” channels”. Steve’s also co-host of the #FreeAssange Vigil and organizer with Action4Assange.

Steve Poikonen and back to Washington for the World’s foremost political prisoner, Julian Assange in the second half.

And; long-time Gorilla Radio contributor and Green Vegan Grandma Youtuber, Janine Bandcroft will be there at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week.

But first, Dimitri Lascaris and emboldening Canada’s Greens.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

U.S. Lawfare Opens New Front in Assange Persecution

Assange appears in court, as lawyers warn case may be delayed by new US indictment

by Thomas Scripps  - WSWS

28 July 2020

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s case management hearing yesterday continued the travesty of legal due process to which he has been subjected for more than a decade.

The journalist and publisher is fighting extradition to the United States, where he faces politically motivated frame-up charges of espionage with a combined potential sentence of 175 years. He has not attended hearings via videolink for the last three months on the advice of doctors, due to his fragile state of health and the threat of exposure to coronavirus.

What Desecularizing Hagia Sofia Means

Hagia Sophia: Religion As Politics

by Christopher Black - NEO

July 24, 2020

Sultan Abdul Hamid II, in the face of a rising secular nationalism in the late 1800s, that culminated in the Young Turk movement, tried to restore the influence of the Ottoman Empire among Islamic nations and the Empire’s many peoples by stressing the importance of Islam and the Ottoman Caliphate, of the role of the Ottomans as the protectors of Islam and, in the modern world, a bulwark against western colonialism.

Over a hundred years after he left power, after the Empire was broken up by the western powers after the First World War, after the Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, kicked the British, French, Greeks and Italians out of Anatolia and Constantinople and established Turkey as a secular democratic state in 1923, President Erdogan has adopted the mantle of Abdul Hamid, and his claim to be the defender of Islam, as a means of shoring up his own weakening support in Turkey, and as a means of raising the prestige of Turkey among Islamic nations and the world.

Exploring Bolivia's Fight to Restore Democracy - Canada's Role

Bolivia's Fight to Restore Democracy - Canada's Role

by www.claa.ca 

 Speakers: 

Guillaume Long, former Foreign Minister of Ecuador
Matthew Green, MP for Hamilton Centre (NDP)
Ollie Vargas, Bolivian Journalist for Radio Kawsachun Coca

The Canadian Latin American Alliance and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute invites you to an online event on how and why Bolivia's first Indigenous president was overthrown, what is taking place in the country right now and the role Canada has played.

Go to www.claa.ca to register 

Skripal Poisoning Claims Another Victim: MI6 Head "Retires" Following Novichok Fiasco

MI6 CHIEF YOUNGER FOLLOWS CABINET AND NATIONAL SECURITY CHIEF SEDWILL OUT THE DOOR — SECOND SKRIPAL PLOTTER HAS BEEN OUSTED 

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

July 29. 2020 

Novichok still kills.

 

The world’s slowest acting nerve agent, sprayed on a front door handle in a dead-end street in Salisbury, England, in the early afternoon of March 4, 2018, has just resulted in the career termination of Sir Alex Younger (lead image, right), chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). 

Past As Prologue: Trading First Amendment Rights for Freedom of Movement

Banned from Protesting in the Nation’s Capital for Five Years Back in 1967

by Dave Lindorff - This Can't Be Happening

August 3, 2020

Portland isn't the first time federal judges have made accepting a ban on protest a condition for avoiding jail

As I was reading reports that judges and magistrates in the Federal District Court in Portland, OR have been handing out sentences to protesters arrested by President Trump’s Homeland Security goons that included bans on future protest in Oregon, I suddenly had a sense of deja vu.

BORTAC Strikes Back: Border Troopers Storm 'No More Deaths' in Arizona

US Border Patrol raids “No More Deaths” humanitarian aid camp in southern Arizona

by Meenakshi Jagadeesan - WSWS

3 August 2020

On Thursday, US Border Patrol (USBP) agents raided a camp set up by the migrant aid group No More Deaths (NMD) near the ranching community of Arivaca, Arizona, approximately 11 miles north of the US-Mexico border. The raid resulted in the arrest of one person and the setting up of ongoing surveillance and enforcement operations at the campsite.

 

The actions of the USBP agents have been justified by Tucson Sector Chief Roy Villareal as part of a regular law enforcement operation in a “key smuggling route for both undocumented immigrants and drug traffickers.” However, this seems to be a vindictive retaliatory action by the agency against NMD for having further exposed the expanding role of BORTAC—the shadowy, highly trained special operations force—in USBP’s policing actions.

Heritage in Minutes: The Lies Canada Sells Itself

The stunning misinformation and whitewashing of racism behind Canada's Heritage Minutes 

by Tyler Shipley - The Canada Files

July 31, 2020

A generation of Canadians was influenced by the Heritage Minutes, those little historical vignettes that began in 1995 and which are still in circulation today. While presented as neutral and apolitical, the Heritage Minutes reflected Canada’s true core: settler capitalism and white supremacy.

 

As usual, all of this is given broader context and much more detail in Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination (available in physical and electronic formats, discounts available by directly messaging this account.)

Tale of Two Trials: Assange in the Courts of Britain and Spain

It’s Not Assange Who Should Be Facing Prosecution

by Tom Coburg - The Canary

July 31, 2020

On 27 July two court hearings took place – one in the UK, the other in Spain. Both concerned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. From their proceedings, it became clear that it’s not Assange who should be facing prosecution, but the current office holder of the US presidency and his associates.

 

photo: YouTube – Channel 4 News.

At the 27 July ‘administrative hearing’ at Westminster magistrates court, Judge Vanessa Baraitser stated that the prosecution had failed to present its latest ‘superseding indictment’. That superseding indictment was first made public on 24 June, just prior to the last court hearing, though the prosecution failed to submit the document to that hearing too.

Dry Run at Revolution or Running up the Fascist Flag? Peering over the Precipice at Portland

What’s Going on in Portland

by David Rovics - CounterPunch

July 30, 2020  

I have been a resident of Portland, Oregon since 2007. So I have been hearing from more people than usual lately, all asking the same question: what’s going on in Portland? 

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

I find myself struggling to give any kind of an answer to this question. As with any substantive answer to a question, so much depends on how broad an effort we want to make in putting it into a sensible context, in terms of both time and space. So I thought I’d make a little stab at that, for what it’s worth. But to answer the two really simple questions that are, I think, what most people are looking for: is Portland under martial law? I’d say more like a little test run at this point. And is there are a revolution going on there? No, at least not yet, but time speeds up at such historical junctures, so you never know what’s around the corner.

Yemen: A Living Hell Tolerable for Its Sponsors

Yemen: A Torrent of Suffering in a Time of Siege

by Kathy Kelly - VCNV

July 29, 2020

“When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!”

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.” - Bertolt Brecht

In war-torn Yemen, the crimes pile up. Children who bear no responsibility for governance or warfare endure the punishment. In 2018, UNICEF said the war made Yemen a living hell for children. 

Lies of the August: Structural Deception

AUGUST IS THE MONTH FOR PROSPECTING – THAT’S PICK-AXING THROUGH LIES, SLUICING ILLUSIONS

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

July 31, 2020

Truth is the safest lie.

That’s an adage so old the ancient Hebrews have claimed it as one of their own, attributing it to their mythical wise man King Solomon. He was especially keen to condemn lying, especially lying women (they were Solomon’s big problem — 700 wives, 300 concubines, according to the Book of Kings). But the one about truth as the safest lie is Solomon’s most sophisticated, least obvious idea, cynical even.

America's Color Revolution Polarized to White/Black

The White Black Nationalist Color Revolution

by CJ Hopkins - Consent Factory

via OffGuardian

July 30, 2020

So, the White Black Nationalist Color Revolution (“made possible in part by GloboCap”) appears to be going extremely well. According to Foreign Policy magazine, the Trump regime is clinging to power, but it’s only a matter of time until the identitarian moderate rebels drive the Putin-backed fascists out of office and restore democracy to the Western world.

Yes, that’s right, just when it looked like the corporate-sponsored, totally organic, peaceful uprising against racism was over, and the Russo-fascist Trump regime had survived, the Global Capitalist Anarchists of Portland and other militant “Resistance” cells have launched a devastating counter-attack against assorted fascist building facades, fascist fences, and stores, and so on, and are going mano-a-mano in the streets with heavily-armed Putin-Nazi goon squads.

Protecting Vaccine Research and Sparing Corporate Profit over Public Health

Worries About Foreign ‘Hacking’ of Vaccine Research Place Corporate Profits Ahead of Public Health

by Jonathan Cho - FAIR

July 28, 2020

A recent spate of reports in US media features US officials accusing Official Enemies Russia and China of “stealing” the US’s coronavirus vaccine research data. To accuse another party of “stealing” something, of course, is to imply unjust deprivation. 

 

If my wallet is stolen, it means I no longer possess it or its contents, while someone else does. Does it make sense to describe the alleged actions of Russian and Chinese hackers as a form of “theft”? If so, what kind of “theft” is it? 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Dave Lindorff, Terry Wolfwood, Janine Bandcroft July 30th, 2020

This Week on GR

by C.L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com

July 30, 2020

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s continuing efforts, NOT broadcast live from CFUV Radio in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but emanating live-to-tape via Skype from our home-based … studios on this date, July 28th, 2020.

A mythology surrounding the dropping of the omnicidal ‘Fat Man’ and ‘Little Boy’ atomic bombs was fostered after the fact by an America eager to maintain its mantle of supreme power, while posturing as saviour and moral arbiter of the newly unmade World.

The story, still told and retold today, portrays the United States as a reluctant warrior forced into World War II, and forced to end the Pacific war quickly in order to save lives; in short, forced to destroy cities to save them. But as the shadows of Japanese civilians burned into the few walls left standing in Nagasaki and Hiroshima attest, there is a darker truth behind that fiction.

Dave Lindorff is an award-winning journalist, author, and founding member of the media collective, ThisCantBeHappening.net.

Listen. Hear.

He’s also collaborated with his son, Jed and Oscar-nominated filmmakers, Steve James and Mark Mitten on a film about the two men who may well have saved us all from thermonuclear annihilation.

Dave Lindorff in the first half.

And; against all odds here we are, the human race alive and kicking 75 years since the first atomic bombs dropped on inhabited cities promised a premature end to it all. But though we survive yet, it’s been an uneasy continued existence, when we think of it; so most of us don’t think of it most of the time.

Next week, August 6th marks the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan and as they have for so many years, Victoria’s Women in Black will mark the day with silent vigil and bearing witness to the people’s determination to end global warfare.

Terry Wolfwood is Director and co-founder of the Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation, and a writer, photographer, and long-time activist in pursuit of peace, social justice, and women’s rights.

Terry Wolfwood and standing vigil with the Women in Black for Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the second half.

And; long-time Gorilla Radio contributor and Green Vegan Grandma Youtuber, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Event Bulletin of some of the good things you can get up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Dave Lindorff on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Spies Who Kept a Criminal US with a Nuclear Monopoly from Making More of Them.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

Missing the Marx: Musk Mixes with Monetary Classic

Elon Musk discovers Das Kapital

by Joseph Kishore, Socialist Equality Party candidate for US president

WSWS

 29 July 2020

It may come as a surprise to followers of American politics that Elon Musk, the world’s seventh-richest individual, is a great student of Marxism. In between his time running Tesla, SpaceX and his other endeavors, Musk has apparently devoted himself to a significant examination of Marx’s great three-volume work, Das Kapital (Capital).

In a tweet Monday afternoon, Musk provided the conclusion of his study.
“Das Kapital in a nutshell,” he wrote, is “Gib me dat for free.”

Indeed, a brilliant insight! We can forgive Musk for the use of an informal vernacular, for he has summed up an important truth—that the profits accumulated by the capitalist class come from the fact that the value produced by workers is in excess of what they are paid in wages—that is, it is “unpaid labor.”

Coal Laurel: Canadian Pension Plan Rests on Dirty Futures

Canadian Pension Board Invests $141M in Chinese Coal Projects, Undercutting Federal Phaseout Policy

by Mitchell Beer - The Energy Mix

July 29, 2020

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is jeopardizing Canadians’ retirement savings, undercutting federal government policy, and making a mockery of one of the country’s few points of climate leadership on the world stage by investing C$141 million in Chinese coal companies, a leading pensions and climate advocate said this week.

Greg Goebel/Wikimedia Commons

“It’s completely offside with Canada’s commitments to the Powering Past Coal Alliance and its domestic goal to retire coal-fired generation,” said Adam Scott, director of Toronto-based Shift Action. 

Threat Revival: Beginning Again the Nuclear Madness

A restart of nuclear testing offers little scientific value to the US and would benefit other countries

by Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress & Miles A. Pomper - The Conversation

July 14, 2020

July 15, 2020 marks 75 years since the detonation of the first nuclear bomb. The Trinity Test, in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert, proved that the design for the Nagasaki Bomb worked and started the nuclear era.

Hundreds of nuclear weapons have been tested by the U.S. since WWII, 

but newer science has replaced the need for live detonations.

The U.S. tested nuclear bombs for decades. But at the end of the Cold War in 1992, the U.S. government imposed a moratorium on U.S. testing. This was strengthened by the Clinton administration’s decision to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Meet BORTAC: The Goon Squad Has a Name

What is BORTAC and why is it patrolling the streets of Portland?

by Genevieve Leigh  - WSWS

27 July 2020

Workers and youth in the US and around the world have watched with horror in recent days as gangs of heavily armed men, wearing generic camouflage without unit insignias or name tags, brutalized and illegally detained protesters on the streets of Portland, Oregon.

 

CBP photo - BORTAC Training 

The federal agents have used CS tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper bombs, flash bang grenades and sonic weapons that can do permanent physical damage against peaceful protesters. In the most chilling scenes, captured on video by demonstrators, the unidentified paramilitaries have seized protesters and thrown them into unmarked vans and cars for “questioning.”