Can We Really Remember What 9/11 Meant and Means?

Really remembering 9-11: Recalling the Hundreds of Thousands of Civilian Victims of America’s Endless ‘War on Terror’

by Dave Lindorff - This Can't Be Happening

September 14, 2019

Now that the flags are back waving from the tops of flagpoles across the country, and the maudlin paeans to the close to 3000 lives lost in the airplane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, it’s time we gave a thought to the dead who were ignored. 

Afghan children killed in a US bombing raid 

According to very conservative estimates, as reported by the “Costs of War” project of Brown University’s Watson Institute on International and Public Affairs, nearly 250,000 civilians have been killed during the a8 years since September 2001 in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in wars or attacks that were instigated by the United States.

Those are very conservative figures carefully compiled by organizations like Iraq Body Count, the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. These numbers are people known to have died in the violence of war, mostly as so-called “collateral damage,” but often deliberately, as when the US bombs a hospital, a wedding or a private housing compound in order to kill some targeted individual considered an “enemy combatant,” unconcerned about the others in the area, often women and children, who are almost certain to die or suffer serious injury as the result of a strike.

The numbers do not include the deaths that also stem from America’s post 9-11wars — things like starvation, deaths from lack of medical care, and especially deaths from diseases like typhus or dysentery caused by lack of access to clean water or adequate sanitation facilities.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Masjid Al-Iman for Kashmir, John Helmer, Janine Bandcroft September 12, 2019

This Week on GR

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

September 12, 2019

More than a month after the unilateral annexation of the officially semi-autonomous states of Kashmir and Jammu, members of the Kashmiri diaspora within India and abroad are desperate for news of their families caught behind prime minister Narendra Modi's virtual "Iron Curtain".

Last week, members of Victoria's Masjid Al-Iman mosque and their allies marched to the legislature in solidarity for Kashmiris and to demand the Canadian government investigate human rights abuses allegedly occurring throughout the state. I went down to the legislature to record the demonstration.

Victoria manifesting support for cordoned Kashmir in the first half.


Listen. Hear.

And; the western media has latched on to civic election returns throughout Russia to propel its narrative of Russian president, Vladimir Putin's waning popularity and thus influence. But as with every view of the greater world offered by the corporate and stated presses here, and especially where it comes to the West's bete noire, Russia, the truth of the matter requires more careful information sourcing than they are willing or prepared to provide audiences.

John Helmer is a journalist, former academic, government policy advisor, author, broadcaster and principal behind the news website, Dances with Bears. Some of John’s book titles include: ‘The Deadly Simple Mechanics of Society’, ‘Drugs and Minority Oppression’, (with Claudia Wright) ‘The Jackal’s Wedding – American Power, Arab Revolt’, ‘Grand Strategy for Small Countries: Case Studies in Transforming Weakness into Power,’ and his latest is the political memoir, ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’.

John Helmer and getting to know more about Russia in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of what's good to get up to in and around our town in the coming week.

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.uvic.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/

Tales of Brutality and Torture from Kashmir

Media Reports Draw Light To 'Brutal Torture' by Indian Army in Kashmir

by The Wire

 

September 10, 2019

International media organisations have released reports which shed light on security forces’ use of violence, often without any reason at all, on Kashmiris in the aftermath of Delhi’s August 5 decision to take away Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.

Relative of arrested at Central Jail, Srinagar. Photo: Mudasir Ahmad 

The reports, most recently by The Associated Press and earlier by BBC, carry accounts by residents who have allegedly come in the face of brutal torture by Indian forces. In several accounts, the victims would allegedly be administered electric shocks whenever they would fall unconscious after a round of relentless beatings. 

 

Photographs accompany the AP and BBC reports, showing harrowing bruises sustained on the legs and backs of men who allegedly came in the way of the Army and paramilitary forces’ beatings. The forces also allegedly subjected residents to degrading and humiliating punishments, destroyed their stocks of food and issued threats to the women, in addition to allegedly arresting thousands of men. 

Setting the Table for Another Greco-Turkish War

SERVILITY OR SELF-DEFENCE: CYPRUS CAN DEFEND AGAINST THE TURKS WITHOUT AMERICAN PROTECTORATE OR RUSSIAN ADVICE

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

September 10, 2019

Russia has been warning Cyprus (lead image, left) for months to beware the risks and consequences of offering its offshore oil and gas to US companies in exchange for promises of a US military protectorate against Turkish invasion. So far the American response (lead image, centre – Secretary of State Michael Pompeo) has been to require Cyprus to block Russian Navy access to its ports; expel Russian capital from its banks; and put a stop to what Washington calls pro-Russian journalism in the Greek-language press. For details of this scheme, read this.

Moscow - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denounced the Washington plan as an “artificial choice” and also a “gross violation” of Cyprus’s internal affairs. But so far the Russians have joined the Americans in accepting that what the Turks believe to be theirs is theirs, and that what the Cypriots (and Greeks) regard as theirs is negotiable.

For the first time, however, Cypriot and Greek military officers and experts have joined to plan Cypriot military tactics against Turkey’s attempt at taking over the Cyprus offshore seabed and at fresh Turkish troop landings on the island.

Singing for Assange's Freedom

UK: Roger Waters performs at rally in support of Assange in London

via Ruptly

August 2, 2019

Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters performed the song ‘Wish You Were Here’ at a rally in support of Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, outside the UK Home Office in the heart of London on Monday.

“How do we put ourselves in the position of Julian Assange in solitary confinement? Or with that kid in Syria, or Palestine, or Rohingya, blown to bits by these people in this building here [pointing at the office of British Home Secretary Priti Patel]?” asked Waters while speaking to the crowd, before performing.

A banner reading "Don't Extradite Assange" adorned the front of the stage from which Waters performed the famous song from 1995. Before Waters took to the stage, Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, spoke of his last visit to Assange in Belmarsh prison. 

“It had been a year since I’d seen him last. I hugged him and he told me this place he was in, was hell. I instantly understood what he meant,” Gabriel said. Assange, who is currently serving a 50-week jail sentence for breaching his bail conditions, will face a US extradition hearing in February.