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.”

A Time-Lapse of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 (in 3 Minutes)

A Time-Lapse of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 (in 3 Minutes)

by Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed)

August 6, 2020

Hiroshima, August 7, 1945

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Spies Who Kept a Criminal US with a Nuclear Monopoly from Making More of Them

by Dave LIndorff - This Can't Be Happening

August 6, 2019

Seventy-four years ago today, the US dropped the first ever atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, a non-military target of several hundred thousand, instantly vaporizing some 70,000 people, mostly civilians, and causing the painful, slower death of another 70,000 who died of burns and radioactive damage to their bodies over the next four months. 

 

Hiroshima after the first wartime atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945 

(Imperial War Museum photo) 

Another 60,000 died later over the years of cancers caused by the bomb’s radioactive pulse and subsequent fallout.