Saturday, September 19, 2020

Good Money After Bad Wars: Myth and Military Spending

What Does WWII Have To Do With Military Spending

by David Swanson - Let's Try Democracy

September 18, 2020
 

“I’m going to perform a magic trick by reading your mind,” I tell a class of students or an auditorium or video call full of people. I write something down. “Name a war that was justified,” I say. Someone says “World War Two.” I show them what I wrote: “WWII.” Magic![i]


If I insist on additional answers, they’re almost always wars even further in the past than WWII.[ii] If I ask why WWII is the answer, the response is virtually always “Hitler” or “Holocaust” or words to that effect.

TikTok a Stalking Horse for Internet Censorship

White House bans TikTok and WeChat: A major intensification of internet censorship 

by Kevin Reed - WSWS

19 September 2020

In a major escalation of the anti-China campaign ahead of the election, the Trump administration announced on Friday that it was following through on its executive orders of August 6 and banning the social media apps TikTok and WeChat from being downloaded from US app stores on Sunday.


The move is a frontal assault on the freedom of expression and an effort to consolidate control of the internet by a handful of massive corporations working in partnership with the American government. TikTok is used by millions of people every day to connect with friends and family, share ideas and communicate, and has been used to organize social protests. WeChat is a major link of communication between the United States and China.

Passing: Stephen Cohen, America's Voice of Sanity on Russia

Stephen Cohen Has Died. Remember His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold War

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

September 19, 2020

Stephen F Cohen, the renowned American scholar on Russia and leading authority on US-Russian relations, has died of lung cancer at the age of 81.

As one of the precious few western voices of sanity on the subject of Russia while everyone else has been frantically flushing their brains down the toilet, this is a real loss. I myself have cited Cohen’s expert analysis many times in my own work, and his perspective has played a formative role in my understanding of what’s really going on with the monolithic cross-partisan manufacturing of consent for increased western aggressions against Moscow.

Friday, September 18, 2020

The Little Poison That Couldn't: Is It Time to Retire Novichok?

A TALE OF TWO BOTTLES – NAVALNY POISON SLOWEST ACTING WEAPON IN ASSASSINATION HISTORY

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – this is how Charles Dickens opened his story of regime change in Paris during the French revolution. Also for Alexei Navalny (lead image) and his roommate in Tomsk on the evening of August 19, Maria Pevchikh of London.

They haven’t read the rest of Dickens’ opening. “It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.”

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, John Helmer, Joe Emersberger, Janine Bandcroft September 18, 2020

This Week on GR

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

September 18, 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, September 14th, 2020.
 

The Navalny Affair currently roiling relations between Russia and Germany would have all the elements of a cracking spy picture, if only the writers could get the story bugs out. 

As it stands, we the audience are asked to accept with credulity a plot that makes little sense, and whose third act reveal is yet to be revealed. Whether that’s just part of the mystery or because “there is no there there” remains to be seen.

John Helmer is a journalist, author, broadcaster, former political advisor to government, and principal behind the news website, Dances with Bears. Among Helmer’s many books is the political memoir, ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’, and his latest, the two-plus year chronicle of the Skripal case, ‘Skripal in Prison’. 

Listen. Hear.

His recent article, ‘GERMANS NOW CLAIM GOD POISONED NAVALNY – THAT’S THE GOD OUT OF THE MACHINE’ presents the disquieting “facts” behind the “official” Navalny narrative.

John Helmer in the first half.

And it goes without saying, Canada supports democracy in principle and in fact wherever it takes root. After all it is a democratic nation, one of the World’s oldest, and a famous champion of human rights and the “rule of law”. So, it’s difficult to reconcile Canada supporting countries whose leaders, (and would-be leaders) were not elected but seized power through violence, (or failed to do so, but not for the lack of trying).

Joe Emersberger is a Canada-based writer whose work focuses on media lies, distortion, and confabulation. His articles appear at VenezuelAnalysis, CounterPunch, and The Canary, among other places, and his recent piece, ‘Reuters (Unsurprisingly) Looks Away as Ecuador Tries to Outlaw Opposition Parties’ appears at Fair.org.

Joe Emersberger and disappearing democracy in Latin America in the second half.

And; CFUV Radio broadcaster and host of Plant Powered Radio, 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, John Helmer and finding a final act for “The Navalny Ultimatum”.

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/

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Day 10: Assange Kangaroo Hearing Continues

Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 10

by Craig Murray


September 16, 2020
The gloves were off on Tuesday as the US Government explicitly argued that all journalists are liable to prosecution under the Espionage Act (1917) for publishing classified information, citing the Rosen case

Counsel for the US government also argued that the famous Pentagon Papers supreme court judgement on the New York Times only referred to pre-publication injunction and specifically did not preclude prosecution under the Espionage Act. The US Government even surmised in court that such an Espionage Act prosecution of the New York Times may have been successful.


Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Carrying On: Lasting Words from a Departing Justice Warrior

Kevin Zeese: His Last Words for the Movement and Carrying On

by Margaret Flowers - Dissident Voice


September 15th, 2020
As I wrote last week, Kevin Zeese died unexpectedly in his sleep, likely from a heart attack, early in the morning on September 6. He had not shown signs of illness and was working until the end.

Many of you know Kevin from Popular Resistance, from his writing and podcast Clearing the FOG. He had a deep knowledge of history and the issues. He often spoke of his time working for Ralph Nader in 2004 when he wrote policy briefs as a “PhD in public policy.” Kevin understood how political power works.

Monday, September 14, 2020

Western Firefighting is a Climate Change Battle

The California wildfires, climate change and capitalism 

by Bryan Dyne - WSWS


14 September 2020
The wildfires burning through the US West Coast, the largest on record in California and poised to become the largest in the history of the United States, have already killed 33 people and threaten to displace hundreds of thousands.

Just one of these fires, the August Complex in California, has consumed more than 875,000 acres. Until yesterday afternoon, the entire city of Portland was on alert for a mass evacuation as local and state officials warned of a “mass fatality event” if the fires reached Oregon’s largest city.

Sunday, September 13, 2020

Fool Me Twice: Novichok Back with a Vengeance

The Great Novichok Poisoning Hoax 2.0

by Stephen Lendman  - ICH


September 13, 2020 
What’s going on regarding Alexey Navalny repeats the great 2018 poisoning by novichok of the Skripals in Britain hoax.

Whatever caused their illness, from which they recovered, had nothing to do with exposure to a deadly nerve agent, Russia falsely blamed for what it had nothing to do with.

Navalny Drama Resolution Revealed: "From a Trap Door: Enter Deus ex Machina"

GERMANS NOW CLAIM GOD POISONED NAVALNY – THAT’S THE GOD OUT OF THE MACHINE

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

September 13, 2020
When it comes to fabrications in warfare, it was the ancient Greeks who invented the Trojan Horse. They also invented ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός – he has come down to us from the Latin, deus ex machina, meaning the god out of the machine. He’s the culprit or the cause which resolves the inexplicable ending of a story by a device which drops out of the heavens, or rises through a trapdoor on stage.

Aristotle didn’t think much of it because it’s too plainly unbelievable. The deus ex machina, he thought, was the invention of the incompetent for an audience of simpletons.