Keeping Calm and Standing Ready: Police Preparedness Before Skripal's "Attack"

HOW THE BRITISH POLICE PREPARED FOR THE ATTACK ON SERGEI AND YULIA SKRIPAL, FOUR DAYS IN ADVANCE

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

April 28, 2020

Armed British police, plus ambulance and medical crews, drone and helicopter pilots, firefighters, and the head doctor of the Salisbury District Hospital’s emergency department were preparing for the attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal just four days before Russian military assassins arrived from Moscow allegedly carrying a lethal chemical weapon in a perfume bottle.

Not counting the Skripals and the Russians, the British forces numbered at least two hundred. They were mobilized through the afternoon and night of February 27 until the morning of February 28, in the centre of Swindon, Wiltshire; that is a city 70 kilometres (40 miles) north of Salisbury, also in Wiltshire. The Skripals collapsed at 4:15 in the afternoon of March 4, in the centre of Salisbury. 

Lamenting the Pausing of Oil: Media Buries Lead on Covid's Economic Corollaries

As Covid-19 Forces Emission Reductions, Media Offer Oil Industry Elegies 

by Dorothee Benz - FAIR

April 29, 2020

Last week on April 22 the world marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Air pollution in the world’s major cities was down dramatically; for the first time in decades, the Himalayan Mountains could be seen from 100 miles away. The canals in Venice were so clear you could see the fish swimming in them, and lions were sleeping on the roads in South Africa. All of these developments, and others like them, were the consequences of a global reduction in fossil-fuel emissions. 

Alas, none of this is the result of popular political pressure to finally bring fossil-fuel capitalism to heel. It is, rather, a byproduct of the economic shutdowns and travel restrictions that have been put in place by most nations in order to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Continued Border Lockdown Could Mean Starvation for Afghans

Afghanistan, COVID-19 Can Mean Starvation

by Voices for Creative Nonviolence - United Kingdom

20th April 2020

As Kabul enters a third week of strictly-enforced lock down, what do the restrictions mean for those living below the poverty line?

Border closures, export restrictions among Afghanistan’s neighbours 

have put pressure on domestic food supplies. - New Humanitarian

The first item on everyone’s minds is food. Some fear that, as flour prices rise, the small, local bakeries will close. ‘It is better to die of the coronavirus rather than die of poverty,’ says Mohammada Jan, a shoemaker in Kabul. Jan Ali, a labourer, laments, ‘Hunger will kill us before we are killed by the coronavirus. We are stuck between two deaths.’

Mauvais Plan: Macron's Police Response to Food Worries Raises Tensions

Police in Seine-Saint-Denis suburbs of Paris prepare for food riots

by Anthony Torres  - WSWS

27 April 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing the class gulf separating workers from the financial aristocracy, which refuses to ensure decent health and food conditions for masses of people.

As imperialist governments shower financial markets with trillions of euros (or dollars), the World Food Program foresees that the number of people facing starvation this year could double to 265 million. Food riots have erupted in Africa and Latin America, from Cape Town to Caracas, and could break out in some of the world’s wealthiest cities.

A Star (Chamber) Is Born: Dutch MH17 Trial to Accept Secret Prosecutorial Testimony

BLIND JUSTICE, DUMB LAWYERS IN THE MH17 TRIAL — NEW DUTCH COURT RULING ALLOWS SECRET WITNESS TESTIMONY FOR THE PROSECUTION

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

April 26, 2020

A new ruling by three Dutch judges in the trial of Russia for having shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 will allow the Ukrainian secret service, the SBU, to present fabricated witness evidence without investigation or cross-examination by defence lawyers representing one of the four military officers accused of launching a BUK anti-aircraft missile at MH17. On July 17, 2014, the aircraft was destroyed above eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

The two Dutch defence lawyers, Sabine ten Doesschate (lead image, centre) and Boudewijn van Eijck (right), have attempted to keep the court proceeding secret since mid-March when they were asked to clarify if they had filed a challenge to the use of secret witness statements in the trial, which began hearings in public on March 9.

Liberating Finally the World from War

War Abolition and Italian Liberation Day

by David Swanson - World BEYOND War

April 26, 2020

David Swanson was to speak at a conference in Florence, Italy, on April 25, 2020. The conference became a video instead. Below is the video and text of Swanson’s portion. As soon as we receive the video or text of the whole, in Italian or English, we will post it at worldbeyondwar.org. The video aired on April 25 on PandoraTV and on ByoBlu. Details on the full conference are here.

Sadly, Giulietto Chiesa, director of Pandora TV, died a few hours after attending this conference on live-streaming. Giulietto’s last public participation was his presenting the portion of the conference that concerned Julian Assange and his father John Shipton’s interview.

Swanson’s remarks transcribed below.

Watching the Sun Set on Another Empire

From 9/11 to 2008 and COVID-19: Signs and Wonders of a Collapsing Global (Dis)order

by Maximilian C. Forte - ZeroAnthropology

April 27, 2020

Corona—meaning: a crown. Travelling around the world, as if at full gallop. Firing off arrows into the air: vectors (the arrowheads: the infected) travelling via airplanes (the arrows). But is it the first stage of the apocalypse for which we have been trained to wait? If so, then I missed the three thunderous trumpet blasts that shook the walls. 

Is this the pestilence that weakens everyone before they are assaulted by war and then famine and death? 

Part 1 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series lasting from April 26 through April 30. 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Joe Emersberger, Kathy Kelly, Janine Bandcroft April 30, 2020

This Week on GR

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

April 30, 2020

Welcome to Gorilla Radio, continuing to broadcast, not live from the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but live-to-tape via Skype, for the foreseeable...

There has been much written on the World after Covid in the vein of how this unprecedented cessation of the economy for millions could prove to be the pause in business as usual desperately required; our opportunity to assess the many, many ways our current consumerist culture is destroying individual people, human and animal communities, and wrecking the planetary environment every living thing depends on.

It is, as some say, the "silver lining" of this dark situation.

Listen. Hear.

While all that may well be true, there are others using this moment to press fast forward on all the most egregious sins of our societal paradigm, taking advantage of the distraction and disarray.

Just one such case is the promotion of regime change in Venezuela. Long a project for Washington and its satraps, the Trump administration has used the global medical emergency to drive another nail into the heart of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Joe Emersberger is a Canada-based writer whose work appears at FAIR.org, VenezuelAnalysis, and The Canary and is primarily focused on media lies, distortion, and confabulation. His recent article, 'Media Struggle to Defend Washington's Cruelty Toward Venezuela and Iran as Corona Virus Spreads' appears at Fair.org.

Joe Emersberger in the first half.

And; with workaday pursuits like bus driving, hospital cleaning, picking up garbage, and delivering pizzas being hailed as heroic, is the idea of heroism losing its cache?

If Wikpedia is to be believed, a hero is one who, "in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength..." and in the current atmosphere, perhaps the mundane is now elevated, but there's another kind of courage, strength, and ingenuity of purpose not less heroic, if less easily defined.

Kathy Kelly is a long-time peace and justice activist, essayist, author, and recipient of numerous awards for her peace service, including multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace prize.

She is a founder of Voices in the Wilderness and Voices for Creative Nonviolence, co-authored the book, ‘Prisoners on Purpose: a Peacemakers Guide to Jails and Prison,’ and wrote, ‘Other Lands Have Dreams: from Baghdad to Pekin Prison.’ Her recent article, 'He’s Got Eight Numbers, Just Like Everybody Else' chronicles the struggle of Father Steven Kelly, entering his third year of imprisonment in America for resisting the relentless progress towards the ultimate holocaust, nuclear annihilation.

Kathy Kelly and Fr. Steve Kelly, a hero not just like everybody else in the second half.

And; long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with this week's 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, Joe Emersberger and life in a time of siege, sanction, and plague.

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/

Shadenfreude for Fools: Celebrating Our Enemy's Misfortune

Hilarious Kim Jong Un Jokes, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

April 26, 2020

Ha ha ha let’s all laugh about rumors that Kim Jong Un might be dead because he runs a crazy backwards regime where the media are a propaganda arm of the state and the public is oppressed and surveilled and people are imprisoned for exposing the truth about the government.

“I sure hope those North Koreans get to have democracy someday like we have here. Lemme log off this search engine algorithmically stacked toward billionaire CIA-tied media and ponder whether I want Donald Trump or Joe Biden to continue the wars and oligarchic exploitation.”

Silence of the Salisbury Hospital Lambs: Who Saw What, and Who Has the Courage to Speak About the Fate of the Skripals?

HOW MANY WITNESSES ARE THERE OF SERGEI AND YULIA SKRIPAL AT THE SALISBURY HOSPITAL IN MARCH 2018 WHEN THEY WERE UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF THESE MEDICAL STAFF?

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

April 23, 2020

One nurse and two doctors have testified that they were in charge of the medical treatment of Sergei and Yulia Skripal when they were admitted to Salisbury District Hospital in the early evening of March 4, 2018. Sarah Clark (lead image, left) was the senior sister in charge of the shift at the Radnor Ward’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Duncan Murray (centre) was the doctor in charge of the unit. Stephen Jukes (right) was one of several doctors assigned to the ICU; he was the one responsible for the Skripals.

If the Skripals were to exercise their legal right to apply to the British High Court for review of the terms of their confinement in secret and in isolation – or if their Russian next of kin in Yaroslavl, or the Russian Embassy in London applied to the court on their behalf — Clark, Murray and Jukes would be summonsed to testify to what they witnessed at the hospital two years ago. What they would say under cross-examination and in fear of committing perjury would not be the same thing they have already said publicly.

Maintaining Outraged Indignation in an Era of Radically Diminished Expectations

Now Do You See How Evil They Are? 

by David Swanson - CounterPunch

 
 April 24, 2020

The Lieutenant Governor of Texas is happy to sacrifice the lives of old people for “the economy.” A Congressman from Indiana doesn’t discriminate; he’s willing to let anybody lose their life to maintain what he calls their “way of life.” How they can have a way of life without a life becomes clear when he explains that by “way of life” he means the economy. The President of the United States is afraid that the cure of isolating ourselves is worse than the disease, even though the latter is deadly for some who get it. Trump also tries claiming, though nobody believes him, that protecting ourselves from a deadly disease will result in more deaths, not fewer.

Trump, Biden, Obama Inauguration 2016, (photo: MEHR News)

This is how U.S. politicians have talked from the very beginning of the United States and prior to it about human beings outside the United States, about Native Americans, about enslaved people, about minority groups and immigrants. Yet, many have been able to avoid recognizing the evil. Now do you get it?

Mobilizing Military Response for Canadian Care Home Covid Crisis

Canadian government sends military into care homes as it pushes for a premature return to work

by Roger Jordan and Keith Jones  - WSWS

25 April 2020

Canada’s two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, have requested that the military be mobilized to help deal with the catastrophic conditions in longterm care facilities. Quebec has requested 1,000 troops, in addition to the 150 Canadian Armed Forces personnel already deployed there. Ontario is asking for the military’s support at five especially hard-hit care homes.

The appeals for military intervention are being made even as the Quebec and Ontario governments, their counterparts across the country, and Canada’s corporate elite are mounting an increasingly aggressive campaign for a premature return to work and the “reopening” of nonessential services and businesses.

The Corporate Monopolists Media NEVER Tell You About

Corporate Media Deny Their Own Existence, Despite Driving Biden’s Primary Victory

by Joshua Cho - FAIR

April 24, 2020

If someone were to tell you that major and influential business sectors like the fossil fuel and health insurance industries simply don’t exist, or imply that major corporations like ExxonMobil and Cigna don’t try to manipulate public opinion and advance a political agenda in order to protect and maximize their profits, you might find it hard to contain your laughter.

New York Times (2/26/20) depiction of Joe Biden addressing reporters 

(photo: Brittainy Newman).

But looking at corporate media’s coverage of corporate media, one gets the sense that anyone who dares to suggest that media corporations like Comcast-owned MSNBC, AT&T-owned CNN or News Corp–owned Fox News have their own commercial interests—which incentivize them to push pro-corporate politics—are kooky “conspiracy theorists.”

Playing Chicken with Public Health: The Horrors of Poultry Production

Tyson poultry workers in Tennessee speak out on terrible health and safety conditions

by Zac Thornton - WSWS

24 April 2020

Two Tyson meatpacking plants in Tennessee have seen large numbers of workers infected with COVID-19. At the Tyson Shelbyville poultry plant in south-central Tennessee there have been 79 reported cases out of a workforce of 1,000. One hundred twenty cases are reported at the Goodlettsville beef plant north of Nashville that employs 1,600.

Both plants are still in operation, although the Shelbyville plant is set to close over the weekend for cleaning.

Brainless in Canberra: Malcolm Turnbull's Misremembered Adventures in Siberia

Malcolm Turnbull's Russia Story: Ex-Prime Minister of Australia Tries New Comeback with Old Brain

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

April 21, 2020

Malcolm Turnbull is the most intelligent man ever to become Australian prime minister, and to have left office more stupid than he began. Among the governments south of the Equator, this is without precedent. Since Turnbull served as head of government for only three years, 2015 to 2018, when he was 61 to 64 years of age, he has set the medical record for non-traumatic early-onset senescence in the cerebrum; that’s the part of the brain responsible for learning. He didn’t; he can’t. 

This week Turnbull has published a book of selections from his life aimed at refreshing his credentials to retake the political power he lost to rivals. His display of the symptoms that caused him to lose it is undiminished.

Now We're Talking About Money: Financial Benefits of a Global Ceasefire

The Economic Benefits of a Global Ceasefire

by David Swanson - Let's Try Democracy

April 14, 2020

There doesn’t seem to be any dispute with the findings of various studies, that investing public dollars in most other things (education, green energy, infrastructure, healthcare, etc.), or not taxing the money from working people in the first place, produces more jobs than military spending. 

In a generally wonderful new book by Clifford Conner called The Tragedy of American Science, the author claims that if a government produces more jobs through non-military spending, private capital will produce fewer jobs, more than eliminating the benefit. Only military spending, he claims, produces jobs nobody else would produce, because military spending – like Great Depression-era jobs digging and then re-filling ditches – produces nothing useful.

Crisis? Which Crisis! No Returning to Normalcy of the Abnormal

COVID-19 and the Wasting Disease of Normalcy

by Brian Terrell - Voices for Creative Nonviolence

April 17, 2020

The pandemic has brought home what the threats of global destruction by climate change and nuclear war should have long ago—that the promises of normalcy will never deliver in the end. 

Daniel Berrigan, Cornell University circa 1970 Ithaca, New York

(Photo: PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images)

“But what of the price of peace?” asked Jesuit priest and war resister Daniel Berrigan, writing from federal prison in 1969, doing time for his part in the destruction of draft records. 

After Year Zero: Dutch Manifesto on the Post-Covid World Order

Dutch manifesto: Five proposals for a better world after the pandemic 

via Climate & Capitalism

April 20, 2020

170 Dutch academics sign manifesto for sustainable, equal and diverse societies based on international solidarity  

The following statement, signed by 170 academics from eight universities in the Netherlands, has been widely reported in the Dutch press, becoming a focus for discussion on how to avoid repeating past mistakes when in planning for the future.

Happy B.Day Willie!

Horrible Histories William Shakespeare Song

Into the Breach: Canada Lifts Arms Embargo on Saudi Arabia

Canada Resumes Selling Arms To Saudi Warmongers

by TRNN

April 22, 2020

Now in the midst of a crisis, Canada will lift its embargo and sell armored vehicles to the Saudi military, which is engaged in brutal repression inside the country and the ongoing war in Yemen.

Is this worth the lives of the victims of Saudi security forces which will use these weapons in the war in Yemen and in repression within Saudi Arabia itself? Well, joining us today we have Yves Engler. Yves is a Canadian commentator, also an author. His most recent book is The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy, and previously he published The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, and Canada in Haiti: Waging War on a Poor Majority.