In a Time of Unjust War and Oppression America Must Ask: "What Will Rise Us?"

Beating Swords to Plowshares

by Kathy Kelly  - VCNV.org

May 30, 2020

Inscribed on a wall across from the United Nations in New York City are ancient words of incalculable yearning: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” – Isaiah 2:4

I’ve stood with activists in front of that same wall singing Down by the Riverside, a song promising we’ll lay down our swords and shields, -“and study war no more, no more.”

Covid Psychosis: A Media Infection

GORILLA RADIO TALKS BACK AT THE ALIENS FORCING YOU TO LISTEN TO LIES, BELIEVE EVIL

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

May 27, 2020

Covid-19 and corona psychosis are parallel attacks on your health, pandemic in scale for both at the moment.

Among the recognised symptoms of Covid-19 in the central nervous system, there is ageusia (loss of taste) and anosmia (loss of smell). Newly discovered, there are also symptoms affecting eyesight, such conjunctival hyperemia, chemosis, and epiphora. 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, David Swanson, Andy Worthington, Janine Bandcroft May 28th, 2020

This Week on GR

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

May 28, 2020

Welcome to Gorilla Radio’s continuing efforts, NOT broadcast live from CFUV Radio, located in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but emanating instead live-to-tape via Skype from our home-based … studios on this date, April 27th, 2020.

After, how many, months of this Corona virus aren’t we all sick of hearing about it? I know I am. So finally, this show is NOT about the Covid-19 outbreak…except it is. For those paying attention there are cracks in the media’s wall-to-wall pandemic coverage, allowing the light of truth still get in. And, what that spotlight reveals is the efforts made by the usual bad actors to leverage this emergency for their best advantage.

From big money for big business, to the erasure of rights and freedoms for the little people, corona is the new crisis bonanza. But, there are two sides to that sword. Just as the disaster capitalists and crypto fascists are doing their damnedest to make more Hell of this on Earth, others see the opportunity presented by the pause in the economic paradigm to reorder global priorities, and perhaps make of the moment a better future.

Listen. Hear.

David Swanson is a peace, justice, and political activist. The journalist, broadcaster, essayist, and executive director of World BEYOND War and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org, is too a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, and host of Talk Nation Radio. His book titles include: ‘War Is A Lie’, ‘When the World Outlawed War’, and ‘War No More: The Case for Abolition’. He blogs at WarIsACrime.org, and DavidSwanson.org, where I found his recent article, ‘The Economic Benefits of a Global Ceasefire’.

David Swanson in the first half.

And; before Covid-19 Britain’s national healthcare system, the NHS, was under attack. Vaunted as the first and best promise of a societal shift in favour of the common people following the Second World War, the NHS has suffered economic debasement by successive governments, and has been especially and habitually traduced by the conservative Tory party and its friends in the elite-dominated press. Over the last ten, terrible years of Tory rule though, the NHS has been ruthlessly savaged. Little wonder then that when the emergency did come they were ill-equipped to respond.

Andy Worthington is an English journalist, activist, author, photo-historian, filmmaker, musician, song-writer and principle of The Four Fathers band. He is too, co-founder of the ongoing Close Guantánamo campaign, and successfully completed, We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15. Worthington’s book titles include: ‘The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison’, ‘Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion’, and ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’. His articles appear at his website, AndyWorthington.co.uk, where I found his recent piece, ‘The Coronavirus Lockdown, Hidden Suffering, and Delusions of a Rosy Future’.

Andy Worthington and health, wealth, and lessons recently learnt in the second half.

And; long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, David Swanson and ceasing fire to take hold of the moment.

 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/

Seeing Connections with Cummings' Trip to the Country

Why Barnard Castle 

by Craig Murray

24 May, 2020 

Now it may be entirely a coincidence that the place to which he chose to drive for his eyesight test happened to be the site of the major factory of GlaxoSmithKline. It may be an entire coincidence that two days later, on the very day Cummings actually started work back in Downing Street he has stated was “to get vaccine deals through”, GlaxoSmithKline announced an agreement to develop the vaccine. 

One red flag to me is the number of trolls claiming GlaxoSmithKline only has a small and remote office in Barnard Castle. This is not the entire site, and in a further £96 million investment two new blocks are in construction or recently finished 

It is however plainly not crazy to ask the question. This astonishing Twitter pile-on against Clive Lewis for retweeting my piece says something very worrying, when you consider that the large majority of those piling in are supposedly part of the “opposition” and include many journalists. 

UPDATED: Dominic Cummings specifically stated now in the press briefing that he had been eager to “get back to work to get vaccine deals through, move regulations aside” and that is why he drove to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight. 

Donne with Covid: Begging the Misery of Neighbours

MAROONED AT HOME — CORONA PSYCHOSIS RESCUE IN RUSSIA

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

May 24, 2020

Pandemic or no pandemic, misery always and everywhere craves company.

After he had been running a high fever with diarrhoea and other symptoms, scribbling notes on the progression of his illness — London’s typhus plague of 1623 — John Donne not only wrote, famously, “no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” He also added that publishing his fear shouldn’t be called “a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours… for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.”