Failing the Test: Book on Putin/Abramovich "Corruption" Falters in British Libel Case

BRITISH HIGH COURT JUDGE RULES AGAINST CATHERINE BELTON, HARPERCOLLINS IN DOUBLE-BARRELED BLAST

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

  @bears_with

November 25, 2021

A High Court judge in London has ruled sharply against Catherine Belton and Rupert Murdoch’s book publisher HarperCollins dismissing their principal lines of defence against a multi-million pound case for libel by Roman Abramovich and the Russian state oil company Rosneft.

 

 

Yesterday, in two detailed examinations of Belton’s allegations of a corrupt conspiracy masterminded by President Vladimir Putin and implemented by Abramovich, Rosneft and others, Justice Amanda Tipples (lead image) dismissed the publisher’s case that Belton had been justified in reporting opinions from named or anonymous sources.  The judge’s rulings cast doubt on the credibility of Belton’s sources, requiring lawyers for the defence to show in trial next year that Belton’s reporting proves the truth of her “statements of fact”.  This sets the stage for one of the largest and most expensive court tests of truth and faking in the Anglo-American war against Russia. 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Sleydo Molly Wickham, Jackie Larkin November 25th, 2021

This Week on GR

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

 

November 25th, 2021

Welcome to Gorilla Radio. It’s Sunday, November 21, 2021 and outside the busyness of the modern world is pressing against the window panes as if nothing has happened.

 Listen. Hear.

The plagues and pestilence, conflagrations of forests and atmospheric torrents are all present, all a part of this waking dream, yet we stumble for the reason behind the rising waters, and sliding mud and rock; that remains peripheral, an unaddressed root of our unraveling. Instead, the blinkered death march progresses unabated, desperate for the abyss.

Canada’s paramilitary police attacked again land defenders of the northern interior in colonial British Columbia at the Morice River last week. The RCMP raid meant to terrorize and demoralize the people resisting TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline took hostages, arresting at least 15, including journalists. Sleydo’ Molly Wickham was among those seized. She’s described by independent news outlet, The Narwhal as “a wing chief in Cas Yikh house of the Gidimt’en clan.”

Wickham says, after warning Coastal Gaslink a 2020 eviction order would be enforced, the road to a 500-strong work camp was dug up. Police say their “enforcement operation” was necessary to protect the “health and wellness” of the isolated workers.

Similarly, Fairy Creek on southern Vancouver Island is the focus of RCMP enforcement efforts to dislodge those standing in the way of the business of rampant environmental defilement. There the public has ponied up nearly 4 million loonies to protect the private profits of the Teal Jones lumber company. In both instances, broadly defined court orders have been used by the federal police to set up “exclusion zones”, where those deemed in contravention are arrested under “contempt of court” charges.

More than a thousand arrests have been made at and around Fairy Creek in over the last year. Again, context is lacking in the reportage permitted from the zones of contention due to a combination of restricted access for alternative media, and the inherent reluctance of corporate and state news producers to challenge the status quo.

On today’s show, a look back at two instances of persistent resistance to the colonial occupation of “British Columbia”.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing 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.com