Saturday, October 10, 2020

Monsters and Other Legal Fictions: Assange Case Illustrates Death of British Justice

A horror story in two parts: Part I: Will England Send Assange-the-Messenger to America’s Dungeons?

by Ron Ridenour - This Can't Be Happening

October 9, 2020

Most people might be excused for not knowing it, because the story is mainly ignored, or is shamelessly misreported in the corporate media when it does get any attention. A courageous Australian journalist, abandoned by his own country, is being railroaded by a British court towards extradition to the US where he could face life in prison in solitary confinement for the “crime of espionage”—exposing US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What Julian Assange and his organization Wikileaks have revealed for the whole world to see is the systematic devastation of peoples, of lands, and perennial military pollution of planet earth. The main perpetrator is the most powerful and self-declared “greatest democratic nation” in the world, the United States of America—accompanied by its European and Commonwealth vassal states, plus proxy allies in the Middle East and Zionist Israel.

Waiting for Evil to Fade: Final Dispatch from the Assange Hearing

Where Is My Final Assange Report?

by Craig Murray

October 9, 2020 

Numerous people have contacted me in various ways to ask where is my promised report on the final day of the Assange hearing, to complete the account?

Assange - Billy Bob Bain, CounterPunch
 

Having left the bubble, my courage keeps failing me to return to the evil and write up the last day. I know that sounds either pathetic or precious. I know the mainstream journalists who revel in portraying me as mentally unstable will delight to mock. But this last few days I can’t even bring myself to look at my notes. I feel physically ill when I try.

Thursday, October 08, 2020

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Canada and the War Racket

Tax dollars promote Canadian arms exports

by Yves Engler

October 7, 2020

Is it appropriate for the Canadian government to promote arms exports? And why, with its love of scandal does the dominant media not question this use of taxpayers’ dollars?

In recent days there’s been significant attention devoted to Canadian arms exports. A report by the UN’s Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen, which criticized Canadian weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, was widely covered. There has also been coverage of Streit Group’s sale of crowd control vehicles to Belarus and Ontario-based L3Harris WESCAM’s sale of sensors and laser targeting technology to the Turkish military, which have apparently been used in a number of conflicts including the ongoing war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

 

Wednesday, October 07, 2020

Burying Assange: How Media Aid Injustice

‘None Of It Reported’: How Corporate Media Buried The Assange Trial

by Media Lens 

October 7, 2020

One of the most imposing features of state-corporate propaganda is its incessant, repetitive nature. Over and over again, the ‘mainstream’ media have to convince the public that ‘our’ government prioritises the health, welfare and livelihoods of the general population, rather than the private interests of an elite stratum of society that owns and runs all the major institutions, banks, corporations and media.

We are constantly bombarded by government ministers and their media lackeys telling us that ‘our’ armed forces require huge resources, at public expense, to maintain the country’s ‘peace’ and ‘security’. We do not hear so much about the realpolitik of invading, bombing or otherwise ‘intervening’ in other countries with military force, diplomatic muscle, and bribes of trade and aid deals to carve up natural resources and markets for the benefit of a few.

Trump Tells Labor Pool "Sink or Swim" (Until After the Election)

Trump breaks off talks on pandemic stimulus bill

by Barry Grey - WSWS

October 7, 2020

One day after his return to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he received millions of dollars’ worth of medical care for his COVID-19 infection at taxpayer expense, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he was breaking off talks on a new stimulus bill until after the November election.

 

In a series of tweets, he wrote: “Nancy Pelosi is asking for $2.4 Trillion Dollars to bail out poorly run, high crime, Democrat States, money that is in no way related to COVID-19. We made a very generous offer of $1.6 Trillion Dollars and, as usual, she is not negotiating in good faith. 

Shine Off the Star: Israel Lobby Losing Its Cache

 Israel lobby will face blowback, eventually

by Yves Engler

October 2, 2020

How much is too much? When will Israeli nationalists in North America completely discredit themselves by overusing their power to crush those defending Palestinians?

The ruthlessness of the Israel lobby is remarkable. Recently they’ve convinced Zoom to cancel a university sponsored talk, a prominent law program to rescind a job offer, a public broadcaster to apologize for using the word Palestine and companies to stop delivering for a restaurant. 

 

Elementary, My Dear Occam: German Navalny Evidence Fails the Sniff Test

URINE, BLOOD, & HEARSAY – OPCW REPORT GIVES THE GERMAN GAME AWAY, REVEALS NO NOVICHOK WEAPON, NO NAVALNY CRIME

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

October 6, 2020 

A report issued by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), dated on  October 6, has failed to identify the poison weapon which Alexei Navalny and his supporters claim was used to attack him in a Tomsk hotel on August 20.

Instead, the OPCW claims to have found “biomarkers” of Navalny’s metabolic disorder which may have been caused by an unidentified chemical poison. According to a leading British organophosphate chemist, these “biomarkers” may not have been caused by a crime. 

 

Tuesday, October 06, 2020

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Stefanie Brendl, Ken Boon, Janine Bandcroft October 8th, 2020

This Week on GR

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

October 8, 2020

Welcome again 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, October 2nd, 2020.

 

Millions of marine animals will perish for the development of a vaccine for Covid-19. Though millions already die annually through medical and commercial “harvest”, the hyper-activity, or ‘Warp Speed’ race to come up with a treatment for the global pandemic poses an added extinction threat to the ocean’s already over-targeted species. None moreso perhaps than sharks, whose bodies contain a compound commonly used in vaccines.

Stefanie Brendl is a shark advocate and activist, filmmaker, social entrepreneur, and founder and Executive Director of Shark Allies, an organization dedicated to protecting the critically endangered apex marine predator. The Shark Allies’ campaign against shark finning featured in the 2014 documentary film, Extinction Soup, exposing that disastrous international trade.  

 

Listen. Hear.

Stefanie Brendl in the first half.

And; the government of British Columbia was warned before re-energizing the long-moribund Site C dam plan it was a Frankenstein in the making. Indeed, the tales of horror to come should that Great White Elephant be roused rang across generations, but hubris and arrogance ruled the day. BC Liberal Premier, Christy Clark promised her legacy project would be realized come Hell and high water. And so it was begun.

Ken Boon is a Peace Valley farmer and president of the Peace Valley Landowners Association. Ken and his family have lived at the heart of the resistance to Site C from the beginning, and have remained long enough to see some of their worst fears realized.

Ken Boon and John Horgan’s bottomless Site C money binny in the second half.

And; CFUV 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, Stefanie Brendl and the unnecessary price nature pays for humanity’s good.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: https://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/

Monday, October 05, 2020

Our Modern Thirty Years War

Foreword to 30 Years of War, the German edition of David North’s A Quarter Century of War

by Johannes Stern - WSWS

October 5, 2020

The German edition of A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony (1990-2016) will be published by Mehring Verlag on December 1. The German edition, which includes additional material dealing with more recent developments, is titled 30 Years of War.

 

The relevance and urgency of this volume emerge from its title. After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger.