10,000 Years in 200 Seconds: Supercomputing Arrives Early

Google announces a new breakthrough for quantum computing

by Bryan Dyne - WSWS

26 October 2019

Researchers at Google AI Quantum have announced a successful experiment in which for the first time a quantum computer has performed a task that ordinary computers based on integrated circuits are incapable of doing in a reasonable amount of time. This technical milestone paves the way for far-reaching advances in physics, chemistry, astronomy, materials science, machine learning and a host of other fields.

The results were produced using Google’s quantum computer, dubbed Sycamore. It is the product of a collaboration between 75 scientists led by Frank Arute at Google, NASA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and more than a dozen other facilities in Germany and the United States. They compared how fast their machine and the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Summit, could produce a random number from a specially designed circuit one million times.

The experiment was then repeated multiple times on increasingly complex algorithms until they could show that while a quantum computer generated a result, a classical computer could not. During their final experiment, Sycamore produced its one million random numbers in 200 seconds. Summit was estimated to need 10,000 years to perform the same calculations.

American Pacifists Face Long Sentences for Anti-Nuke Demonstration

Trident Is the Crime

by Kathy Kelly - VCNV.org

October 25, 2019

On October 24, following a three-day trial in Brunswick, GA, seven Catholic Workers who acted to disarm a nuclear submarine base were convicted on three felony counts and one misdemeanor. The defendants face 20 years in prison, yet they emerged from their trial seeming quite ready for next steps in their ongoing witness. 

Steve Kelly, a Jesuit priest who has already spent ten years in prison for protesting nuclear weapons, returned, in shackles, to the local jail. Because of an outstanding warrant, Steve has been locked up for over eighteen months, since the day of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 action.

On that day, April 4, 2018, the group had entered a U.S. Navy Submarine base which is a home port for the Trident nuclear missile fleet. Just one of those nuclear missiles, if launched, would cause 1,825 times more damage than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Plowshares activists aimed to expose illegal and immoral weapons that threaten all life on earth.

"Flabbergasted and Horrified": Waters on Assange Kangaroo Extradition Court

Pink Floyd Co-Founder Roger Waters: The US and UK are Trying to KILL Julian Assange!

by Going Underground - RT

October 26, 2019

On this episode of Going Underground, legendary former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters discusses Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s latest extradition hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court and why it makes him ashamed to be English, why he believes the UK and US are attempting to kill Julian, why the extradition case shouldn’t even be happening and is a mockery of British justice.

[And], the mass protests in Chile against the neoliberal US-backed President Sebastián Piñera and how the military crackdown is reminiscent of the Pinochet era. Finally we speak to Priscillia Ludosky, one of the founders of France’s Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement on the French police’s use of flash-ball riot control guns against protesters, the massive amount of injuries recorded among the Gilets Jaunes protesters, the European Commission’s role in fermenting the anger in France and more!

An "Incandescent" Bias: John Pilger on Assange Hearing

John Pilger - Julian Assange Could Barely Speak in Court!

by Going Underground - RT

October 23, 2019

We speak to legendary journalist and filmmaker John Pilger on Julian Assange’s latest extradition hearing this Monday, which he attended. He discusses how Julian appeared at the trial, the bias of the judge against Julian Assange, the lack of mainstream media coverage of Julian’s persecution, his health and conditions in Belmarsh prison, CIA spying on Julian Assange and more!

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Trying Julian Assange to Death

As a Frail and Confused Julian Assange Appears in Court, It’s Time For the U.K. to Stop His Proposed Extradition to the U.S. 

by Andy Worthington - Close Guantanamo

October 24, 2019

A court sketch, by Julia Quenzler, of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in court on Monday October 21, 2019, looking noticeably older than before he was imprisoned in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison in south east London in April.

On Monday, at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, looked frail and, at times, appeared confused as his lawyers sought a delay to a hearing regarding his proposed extradition to the U.S. to face dubious — and potentially punitive — espionage charges relating to WikiLeaks’ work as a publisher of classified U.S. government information; in particular, "Collateral Murder," a “classified U.S. military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff,” war logs from the Afghan and Iraq wars, a vast number of U.S. diplomatic cables from around the world, and, in 2011, classified military files relating to Guantánamo, on which I worked as media partner, along with the Washington Post, McClatchy, the Daily Telegraph and others.

Assange and the UK Kangaroo Court

Julian Assange’s court hearing in London: Britain stages a lawless show-trial

by Oscar Grenfell - WSWS

24 October 2019

Julian Assange’s hearing in London’s Westminster Magistrates Court on Monday was a despicable show trial. Any pretence that this was somehow a legal proceeding, aiming to enforce the law and respect the rights of the accused, has been abandoned.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange [AP Photo/Matt Dunham]

Assange, who defied the most powerful governments by revealing to the world’s people war crimes and corruption, appeared gaunt and tormented by what a leading UN expert has described as torture.

Craig Murray, a former British diplomat and current human rights activist, wrote that he was “shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight.”

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Pablo Ouziel, John Helmer, Janine Bandcroft October 24, 2019

This Week on GR

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

October 24, 2019

Barcelona has seen street protests, police violence, and property damage for more than a week and half, since the sentencing of separatist leaders to lengthy prison terms for their part in the 2017 unsanctioned Catalonia independence referendum.

Thousands have nightly filled the streets, while an estimated 2 million came out in protest in Barcelona to demonstrate against the court's heavy-handed rulings. Hong Kong-style disruption tactics have spread too to Barcelona's El Prat airport, while last Friday a general strike paralyzed the heart of Spain's richest region.

All this comes as Madrid's failed federal government readies for a November election; the second this year.


Listen. Hear.

Dr. Pablo Ouziel is Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria’s Political Science Department and Centre for Global Studies. He’s also a native of Barcelona whose Fellowship project at UVic is, ‘Democracy Here and Now: The Exemplary Case of Spain’.

Pablo Ouziel from Barcelona in the first half.

And; two weeks into Turkey's Syria incursion another mass exodus of civilians from Syria has rendered tens of thousands homeless. It has also forced a veritable blitz of diplomatic efforts from West Asia to Sochi, Russia. Earlier this week, American vice-president, Mike Pence met with Turkish president, Recep Erdogan to negotiate a cessation of hostilities. Tuesday, Erdogan and Russian president, Vladimir Putin agreed a deal that would divide policing of the territory of concern to Turkey, actually halting its military offensive; for now.

John Helmer is a journalist, author, broadcaster, former political advisor to governments, and principal behind the news website, Dances with Bears. Some of Helmer's book titles include: ‘The Deadly Simple Mechanics of Society’, ‘The Jackal’s Wedding – American Power, Arab Revolt’, (co-authored with Claudia Wright) and his latest is the political memoir, ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’. His latest article at Dances with Bears is, 'THE SULTAN BLINKED, THE TSAR AGREED TO CLOSE HIS EYES – THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE EXPANDS BY 118 KILOMETRES OF SYRIA'

John Helmer and Russia's hand in the Grand Syria Game 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. But first, Pablo Ouziel and Catalonia's lengthening winter of discontent.

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/

Shifting Alliances: Germany, America, Russia, and Turkey Spar Over Syria's Fate

Germany, US threaten war amid Russia-Turkey summit on Syria

by Alex Lantier - WSWS

23 October 2019

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan flew to the Russian resort of Sochi for a summit yesterday with President Vladimir Putin on the war in Syria, Berlin and Washington issued bloodcurdling threats of all-out war in the Middle East.

In Washington, where a bitter debate is unfolding over Trump’s Middle East policy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened war with Turkey, a NATO ally and major regional military power. Asked for his reaction to the Turkish military offensive against the Kurds, Pompeo replied:

“We prefer peace to war. But in the event that kinetic action or military action is needed, you should know that President Trump is fully prepared to undertake that action.”

The most aggressive proposal, however, came from Berlin, where Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called for a massive European Union (EU) force to occupy northern Syria, supposedly working in coordination with Russia and Turkey.

“My proposal is that we would set up an internationally controlled safe zone, involving Turkey and Russia,” she said. 

“I believe that would be a strong political and diplomatic response of the European powers in NATO.”

Erdogan Pinches a Quarter Loaf: Russia Dictates Terms of Turkish Territorial Enclave in Syria

THE SULTAN BLINKED, THE TSAR AGREED TO CLOSE HIS EYES – THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE EXPANDS BY 118 KILOMETRES OF SYRIA

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

October 23, 2019

After one of the longest, bitterest negotiations ever held between President Vladimir Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov forced the Turks into an agreement for a Turkish military enclave inside Syrian territory between Tal Abiad and Ras Al-Ain (Sari Kani). That is less than one-quarter of the Syrian territory Erdogan was demanding at the start of the Sochi talks.

Moscow - The western towns of Manbij and Kobani will remain Syrian, guaranteed by Russian arms and denied to Operation Peace Spring, as the Turks are calling their invasion since October 9.

The Turkish advance eastwards along the Syrian Highway M4 to the Iraqi border has been stopped. The Syrian Army will reoccupy the eastern zone to the Yarubiya crossing, with Russian military police on the ground; that also means the Russian Air Force in the air.

The practical result is that Russia accepts that the Turkish capture of Tal Abiad and Ras-Al-Ain since October 9 will not be reversed. This territory will thus be added to the Turkish hold on Afrin and Idlib in Syria’s northwest.

Shoigu told reporters there was no discussion of how long the Turkish forces will occupy these areas. This is a major Russian concession to the Turkish demand for permanent military occupation and partition of Syria.