Losing It: 2020 As End of History

2020: The Year We Lost the Plot

by Rob Slane - The Blogmire

 

December 14, 2020

This piece is the first in a series of five articles I will be publishing over the next couple of weeks looking at various aspects of our new Covidian State in 2020. These pieces are also due to be published on The Conservative Woman website from 27-31 December.

 

“Our Government, along with Governments around the world will shortly announce the quarantining of whole populations for a seasonal respiratory virus which leaves 99.8-99.9% of those who get it in the land of the living. 

 

“What is more, they will also announce a shutdown of the entire economy for months and then, when the epidemic has actually gone, will mandate that you cover the lower half of your face with a bit of cloth. They will do this by frightening people into compliance with a barrage of propaganda, slogans, data entirely taken out of context, and the threat of massive fines.”

John Pilger from Going Underground

John Pilger on The New Cold War With China, American Exceptionalism, Biden’s Victory, Coronavirus

by Afshin Rattansi - Going Underground (RT)

December 19, 2020

On this season finale episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary journalist and filmmaker John Pilger. He discusses the devastating impact of Coronavirus in the U.K., rising poverty and militarism, the Western logic for the new Cold War with China, the victory of Joe Biden over Donald Trump and why not much will change with Trump leaving the Presidency, the Yemen War, the survival of Venezuela despite crippling international sanctions, mainstream journalism vs real journalism and much more! 

 

FOLLOW Going Underground https://www.youtube.com/user/GoingUnd... Going Underground on Twitter http://twitter.com/Underground_RT Afshin Rattansi on Twitter http://twitter.com/AfshinRattansi PODCAST https://soundcloud.com/rttv/sets/goin...

Erasing the Reasons: How the Times (and the rest of Western media) Skews Venezuela

NYT Erases US Economic War Against Venezuela

by Bryce Greene - FAIR

 

December 19, 2020

 

The New York Times (5/12/20) describes “a difficult time for Venezuela, as the country grapples with deep economic challenges and a breakdown of its health care system”—without mentioning that US policy is designed to deepen those challenges and exacerbate that breakdown.

Last week, Venezuela held elections for the national assembly, the country’s main legislative body. Though turnout was at a historic low, President Nicolás Maduro’s United Socialist Party won a resounding victory. 

 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, John Helmer, Andy Worthington, Janine Bandcroft December 17th, 2020

This Week on GR

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

 

December 17, 2020

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s home edition, recorded on this date, December 9th, 2020.

While elections-manipulating mastermind, Vladimir Putin has fallen off the front pages in America, across the pond in Jolly Old, ‘Evil Russia’ still serves as nemesis and fictional bete noire for scriptwriters and semi-autobiographical memoirists alike. A case in point is former GCHQ honcho, Sir David Omand’s hot New Cold War release, ‘How Spies Think, Ten Lessons in Intelligence’. To hear Sir David tell it, the West is at war with disinformation artists who would have us believe: 

“…Ukraine was responsible for downing Malaysian airliner MH17 and there are fascist roots to the government in Kiev; COVID-19 was actually covert bio-warfare by the US against China; and, NATO isn’t an instrument of peace, but is planning aggression against Russia…” Imagine!

Listen. Hear.

Well, if I’m to apply the time-tested axiom, “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied…” David Omand’s non mea culpa may teach us more than his Ten Lesson’s intended.

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 titles are, ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’, the two-plus year chronicle of the Skripal case, ‘Skripal in Prison’, and his latest, ‘The Lie That Shot Down MH17’. His recent article, ‘THE ENRICHMENT OF BRITISH INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS – HOW THEY THINK THEY ALWAYS GET IT RIGHT ABOUT THE RUSSIANS, NEVER DO, BUT GROW RICH TRYING’ is a revelation of the disquieting future currently being prepared by the folks of the Intelligence Community.

John Helmer in the first half.

And; if the measure of a society is how its weakest are treated then do we deserve more than the precipitous societal decline witnessed these last decades?

As millions careen into extreme poverty and the Bastille is full to bursting, while the very few accumulate vast wealth undreamed of by either the Captains of the Gilded Age or courtiers of Versailles, the real impoverishment of our civilization is a terminal dearth of popular conscience and abandonment of the moral compass. Nowhere is that better evinced than in Guantanamo Bay, the 21st Century’s Devil’s Island.

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. 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 he is preparing 2021’s version of the annual Close Guantanamo effort.

Andy Worthington and a framework for a new president to finally Close Guantanamo 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 to bring us up to speed with some of what’s good going on in and around our town, and virtually too, in the coming week. But first, John Helmer in search of British intelligence on Russia.

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/

UK MPs Request Video Meeting with Journalist/Political Prisoner, Julian Assange

 UK lawmakers request urgent meeting with Julian Assange

by Richard Burgon MP, et al

December 16, 2020

UN Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer talked to Gorilla Radio about his fears for the health and survival of political prisoner, Julian Assange in 2019. Melzer has continually appealed to Britain for Assange's immediate release.

Listen. Hear.

 

 

War Times: All the Time War Times

It’s Almost Twenty Years Since 9/11 Can We Finally Stop Marching to Disaster?

by Rebecca Gordon - TomDispatch

 

December 17, 2020

It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing, had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless, once upon a time.) They had come to hang out with my partner Jan Adams and me. Among other things, Max wanted to get some instructions from fellow-runner Jan about taping his foot to ease the pain of plantar fasciitis. But it soon became clear that he and Bob had a bigger agenda for the evening. They were eager to recruit us for a new project. 

 

And so began War Times/Tiempo de Guerras, a free, bilingual, antiwar tabloid that, at its height, distributed 100,000 copies every six weeks to more than 700 antiwar organizations around the country. It was already clear to the four of us that night -- as it was to millions around the world -- that the terrorist attacks of September 11th would provide the pretext for a major new projection of U.S. military power globally, opening the way to a new era of “all-war-all-the-time.” War Times was a project of its moment (although the name would still be apt today, given that those wars have never ended). It would be superseded in a few years by the explosive growth of the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle. Still, it represented an early effort to fill the space where a peace movement would eventually develop. 

 

America's Global War Victims

2021’s Most Pressing Humanitarian Crises Are All Victims of US War, Regime Change

by Alan Macleod - MintPress News

 

December 16, 2020

A new report highlights 2021’s most pressing humanitarian crises and perhaps no surprise to many, victims of US wars and regime change efforts top the list. 

 

CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Karrar al-Moayyad

The International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) yearly report on the world’s most pressing humanitarian situations has just been published, with the three most disastrous cases — Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria — all the product of decades of interventionist U.S. foreign policy. 

 

Covering the EcoHealth Alliance: Keeping Knowns Unknown in the Military-Pandemic-Security Complex

Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance Has Hidden Almost $40 Million In Pentagon Funding And Militarized Pandemic Science

by Sam Husseini - Independent Science News

 

December 16, 2020

“Pandemics are like terrorist attacks: We know roughly where they originate and what’s responsible for them, but we don’t know exactly when the next one will happen. They need to be handled the same way — by identifying all possible sources and dismantling those before the next pandemic strikes.”

This statement was written in the New York Times earlier this year by Peter Daszak. Daszak is the longtime president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based non-profit whose claimed focus is pandemic prevention. But the EcoHealth Alliance, it turns out, is at the very centre of the COVID-19 pandemic in many ways. 

 

Are We Prepared to Allow Julian Assange Die in Belmarsh? UN Rapporteur on Torture Demands Publisher's Release

UN rapporteur Nils Melzer demands Assange’s immediate release after ten years’ arbitrary detention

by Oscar Grenfell - WSWS

December 13, 2020

In a statement last week, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer demanded that British authorities immediately release Julian Assange, declaring that his ongoing incarceration in London’s Belmarsh Prison “clearly lacks any legal basis.”

Melzer issued his latest call on the tenth anniversary of Assange’s confinement to various forms of arbitrary detention. This has been enforced by the British state in response to the WikiLeaks publisher’s exposure of American war crimes.

A Plea for Peace in Ethiopia's Tigray Region

A Plea for Peace in Ethiopia's Tigray Region

by Tigray community in Victoria

 

December 10, 2020

 

We are Ethiopian- Tigrayans families living in Victoria BC, writing this email to voice our pain and concern of our people in Tigray. We are asking you to be a voice to the voiceless. 

 

The War in Tigray is killing our family. We are around 20 families here in Victoria with close families in Tigray. We have been disconnected from our families and we do not know if our families are alive or dead. This stress is affecting us all.