The Boys Are Back (shooters): Kenosha Burns Following Another Brutal Police Attack

Wisconsin Governor deploys National Guard to Kenosha after protests break out in wake of brutal police shooting

by Jacob Crosse - WSWS

25 August 2020

Protests erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin Sunday night after a still unidentified Kenosha police officer shot an unarmed African-American father of three, 29-year-old Jacob Blake, in the back seven times at point-blank range. Blake was attempting to enter his vehicle where his children, aged three, five and eight, were seated in the back.

The video, which has been viewed millions of times across multiple social media platforms in less than 24 hours, uncorked a geyser of social anger in Kenosha and across the country as protesters took to the streets in opposition to unending police brutality.

People of the Caves: Closing the Earth Around Palestine

‘People of the Cave’: Palestinians Take their Fight for Justice to the Mountains

by Ramzy Baroud - Palestine Chronicle

August 19, 2020

Palestinians are not going anywhere. This is the gist of seven decades of Palestinian struggle against Zionist colonialism. The proof? The story of Ahmed Amarneh.

Ahmed Amaranth (L) and his family face Israeli eviction. 

(Photo: via Twitter)

Amarneh, a 30-year-old civil engineer from the northern West Bank village of Farasin, lives with his family in a cave. For many years, the Amarneh family has attempted to build a proper home, but their request has been denied by the Israeli military every time.

The Frankenstein Hypothesis: Just Where Did Covid Come From?

The Case Is Building That COVID-19 Had a Lab Origin

by Jonathan Latham, PhD/Allison Wilson, PhD - Independent Science News

June 2, 2020

If the public has learned a lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic it is that science does not generate certainty. Do homemade face masks work? What is the death rate of COVID-19? How accurate are the tests? How many people have no symptoms? And so on. Practically the lone undisputed assertion made so far is that all the nearest known genetic relatives of its cause, the Sars-CoV-2 virus, are found in horseshoe bats (Zhou et al., 2020). Therefore, the likely viral reservoir was a bat.

Shi Zheng-Li releases a bat

However, most of these ancestor-like bat coronaviruses cannot infect humans (Ge et al., 2013). In consequence, from its beginning, a key question hanging over the pandemic has been: How did a bat RNA virus evolve into a human pathogen that is both virulent and deadly?

Losing Canada: Trudeau's Failed UNSC Ambitions Highlight Broader Policy Missteps

‘Palestine is Still the Issue’: UN Vote Exposes, Isolates Canada

by Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo  - RamzyBaroud.net

August 15, 2020

The notion that ‘Canada is better’, especially when compared with US foreign policy, has persisted for many years. Recent events at the United Nations have, however, exposed the true nature of Canada’s global position, particularly in the matter of its blind and unconditional support for Israel.

On June 17, Canada lost its second bid for the coveted UN Security Council seat, which, had it won, would have allowed Ottawa the opportunity to become a world leader, pushing its own agenda – and those of its allies – on the global stage.

Voting CIA in November

The CIA Democrats in the 2020 elections

by Patrick Martin  - WSWS

20 August 2020

In the course of the 2018 elections, a large group of former military-intelligence operatives entered capitalist politics as candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 50 congressional seats—nearly half the seats where the Democrats were targeting Republican incumbents or open seats created by Republican retirements.

Some 30 of these candidates won primary contests and became the Democratic candidates in the November 2018 election, and 11 of them won the general election, more than one-quarter of the 40 previously Republican-held seats captured by the Democrats as they took control of the House of Representatives.

Reuters et al Blind-Eying Ecuador's Disappeared Democracy

Reuters (Unsurprisingly) Looks Away as Ecuador Tries to Outlaw Opposition Parties 

by Joe Emersberger - FAIR

August 17, 2020

Reuters routinely buries information that would badly damage the reputation of US allies in the Americas. Whether those allies are bureaucrats from the Organization of American States and the dictatorship they helped install in Bolivia (FAIR.org, 12/17/19), violent protesters in Nicaragua (FAIR.org, 8/23/18) or Venezuelan politicians who support lethal US sanctions on their own country (FAIR.org, 6/14/19), the London-based news service can be counted on to cover for them.

In the case of Ecuador, a servile US ally since President Lenín Moreno took office in 2017, Reuters has ignored efforts to prevent Moreno’s strongest opponents from participating in the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for 2021. 

Foreign minister Jorge Arreaza on Canada’s Interference in Venezuela

Venezuelan Foreign minister Jorge Arreaza on Canada’s Interference in Venezuela

by ForeignPolicy.ca

August 18, 2020

Join us for an historic event with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza

*With special guest Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd.

The Foreign Minister of a country of 30 million that has had diplomatic relations with Canada for seven decades will present on Ottawa's efforts to overthrow his government in a talk entitled "Canadian Interference in Venezuela."

Squads Flying to the Defense of Fairy Creek Headwaters Forest

Fairy Creek Headwaters Protection Camp Update

via Reuben Garbanzo - Rain4estFlyingSquad

Week August 10-15, 2020

On Monday, 5:30 am, a Stone Pacific road crew subcontracting to Teal Jones, was turned away by a group of grassroots, direct-action forest activists from communities around the island who set up a citizens' blockade, peacefully occupying the steep side of a mountain high above the San Juan valley, to prevent a road development from breaching the height of land into the headwaters of the unlogged Fairy creek old-growth forest watershed, the last entirely unlogged tributary in the entire San Juan river system, Pacheedaht territory. 

This area is in the electoral riding of Premier John Horgan, who has remained silent all week about the stand-off unfolding in his own backyard and created by four years of NDP inaction on the crisis in the woods.

For Whose Century Is the Bell Tolling? Ask Not, Donald

Whose Century Is It? Don’t Ask Donald Trump

by Dilip Hiro - TomDispatch

August 18, 2020 

For the Trump administration’s senior officials, it’s been open season on bashing China. If you need an example, think of the president’s blame game about “the invisible Chinese virus” as it spreads wildly across the U.S.

When it comes to China, in fact, the ever more virulent criticism never seems to stop.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Dimitri Lascaris, Yves Engler, Janine Bandcroft August 20, 2020

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - GorillaRadio.com

August 20, 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, August 11th, 2020.

The Old World Order is busted and Canada's foreign policy is gonna need to adapt quick to a whole New Order of things. Or so Canada's self-styled "national paper" the Globe and Mail informs. But what's a middle nation to do?

Caught between behemoths baring their teeth in a fight for what looks like the last piece of the pie, at whose feet shall we prostrate in waiting to snatch up first the best crumbs fallen from the planetary dinner table?

It's a stark choice in a darkening World, according to the Globe, who helpfully whittle down our options to a Manichean menu choice between China and our more familiar supper partner, America. But can we pick our own foreign policy plate, without starving in the choosing?

Listen. Hear.

Dimitri Lascaris is a Montreal-based lawyer, journalist, past Real News Network correspondent, and political activist. He's also one of nine aspirants spending their Summer campaigning for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada. Dimitri is on the stump in BC again this week, as the October leadership convention looms ever nearer.

Dimitri Lascaris in the first half.

And; Bolivians reacted to news their September 6th general election is off by taking to the streets and declaring a General Strike. It's a dangerous move considering interim caretaker president, Janine Anez has shown little hesitation, or contrition, loosing the military and police to lethal effect on perceived enemies of her nine-month old coup regime. But then Anez can afford to be unrepentant because no-one is holding her accountable.

Yves Engler is a Montréal-based activist, essayist, and author whose articles appear at Ricochet, The Palestine Chronicle, and at his site, YvesEngler.com among other places. 

Yves Engler and 'Canada's Support for Bolivian Coup Deserves Closer Scrutiny' in the second half. 

And; CFUV 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 to do in and around our town in the coming week.

But first, Dimitri Lascaris and finding finally a truly Canadian foreign policy.

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/

Changing of the Guard at TMX Tree-sit

NEW TREE PROTECTOR ASCENDS TO THE TREE TOPS to stop the cutting of these trees to make way for a bitumen pipeline we don't need!!!

by #STOPTMX #StopTrudeauPipeline #MotherEarth

August 12, 2020

Public health physician is replaced by Science YouTuber in anti-TMX tree-top camp

 Dr. Tim Takaro descends from tree perch after 10 days, but his vigil continues with popular science communicator Kurtis Baute ascending in his place

Saving Old Growth on Vancouver Island: Fairy Creek Blockade Establishes Second Front

Grassroots Forest Defenders Establish 2nd Blockade to Protect Fairy Creek Old Growth 

by Fairy Creek Blockade/Coastal Trail Collective

August 17, 2020

One Week into a Blockade on the Western Approaches to the Unlogged Valley, Forest Defenders are now Blocking a 2nd Logging Road on its Eastern Flank, to Prevent Imminent Logging in the Last Intact Watershed of the San Juan River System

Grassroots forest defenders from across Vancouver Island have successfully prevented Teal Jones Group from blasting logging roads into the unlogged headwaters of the Fairy Creek watershed for the past week.

You Tubed: Plugging the Leakers

Discussion of Wikileaks or any “Hacked Information” Banned Under New YouTube Rules

by Alan MacLeod - MintPress News

August 14, 2020

YouTube’s decision to ban discussion of hacked information on its platform is unlikely to improve election integrity in the US, it will, however, continue to tilt the balance in favor of established corporate-funded outlets like Fox News and CNN.

Social media giant YouTube announced yesterday a host of new measures it says are aimed at preventing any interference in the upcoming presidential elections. Chief among the list it wrote on its blog, is “removing content that contains hacked information, the disclosure of which may interfere with democratic processes, such as elections and censuses.” 

When Lab Mice Attack: Engineering Bio-Disasters

Engineered COVID-19-Infected Mouse Bites Researcher Amid ‘Explosion’ Of Risky Coronavirus Research

by Jonathan Latham, PhD - Independent Science News

August 13, 2020

University researchers genetically engineer a human pandemic virus. They inject the new virus into a laboratory mouse. The infected mouse then bites a researcher…..It is a plot worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster about risky coronavirus research.

But according to newly obtained minutes of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) of the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, these exact events need not be imagined. They occurred for real between April 1st and May 6th this year.

Picking Kamhilla: Democratic Party Retrenches Right

The selection of Kamala Harris and the degradation of American politics

by Joseph Kishore—SEP candidate for US president  - WSWS

13 August 2020

With the selection of Kamala Harris to be the running mate of Joe Biden, the framework of the 2020 elections has been set. As was to be expected, the Democrats have chosen the most right-wing candidates to run the most right-wing campaign possible. There is a certain inevitability to the choice of Harris.

In July of last year, the World Socialist Web Site—based on a survey of who would be the worst, most reactionary and at the same time most suitable choice for second spot on the Democratic Party ticket—predicted that Harris would most likely be named the vice presidential candidate if she failed to win the nomination. 

Bye, Bye Pension Plan! Trump Circles Social Security/Medicare

Alert! Social Security and Medicare are in Critical Danger: Trump launches attack on key programs for the elderly 

by Dave Lindorff - This Can't Be Happening

August 10, 2020

Watch out! Uncle Donald is coming for your and all your relatives’ Social Security and your Medicare!

Street protests will be needed to save Social Security and Medicare 

from its attackers — Trump and complicit Democrats alike 

(photo by sagesnow licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The all-out attack on Social Security and Medicare, those two remaining standing edifices of the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, has begun in earnest with President Trump’s latest executive order calling for the postponement, until year’s end, of the payroll taxes by employees and employers that finance those critically important social programs.

Aftermath: Day of the Generals Dawns Again in Benighted Lebanon

The Politics of War: What is Israel’s Endgame in Lebanon and Syria?

by Ramzy Baroud

August 12, 2020

 On August 4, hours before a massive explosion rocked the Lebanese capital, Beirut, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued an ominous warning to Lebanon.

Israeli soldiers stationed at the border with Lebanon. (Photo: via Social Media)

“We hit a cell and now we hit the dispatchers. I suggest to all of them, including Hezbollah, to consider this,” Netanyahu said during an official tour of a military facility in central Israel.

Building on Shaking Foundations:"Fracking Mess" Compound Site C "Geotechnical Problems"

A Big Fracking Mess: As Site C dam construction bogs down in geotechnical problems, thousands of earthquakes triggered by fracking operations occur nearby 

by Ben Parfitt - CCPA

August 12, 2020

Earthquakes triggered by natural gas industry fracking operations near BC Hydro’s troubled Site C dam construction project are far greater in number than previously thought, raising troubling questions about whether they are adding to the already formidable geotechnical challenges at the site.

Not only are more earthquakes occurring in proximity to the costliest public infrastructure project in British Columbia’s history, but many of the fracking-induced tremors—including one that shook the ground so hard two years ago at Site C that workers were ordered to evacuate—are occurring in a fault-riddled zone to the south of the dam that geoscientists have warned can become quickly unstable during fracking operations.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Christopher Black, David Rovics August 13th, 2020

This Week on GR

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

August 13, 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, August 5th, 2020.

Twenty months in to her Vancouver house arrest, Huawei CFO, (and daughter of the Chinese corporate leviathan's founder) Meng Wanzhou entered a new court filing in B.C.'s Supreme Court. In late July Meng's legal team charged that, among other things the proceedings against their client had quote, "been poisoned" and "can no longer be reasonably regarded as fair...".

Meng has already lost one appeal to throw out the extradition petition filed by the United States in B.C. courts, and the case has predictably proven a particularly prickly political sticking point in Canada-China relations.

Christopher Black is a Toronto-based criminal lawyer specializing in international war crimes cases. He’s also an executive member of the Canadian Peace Congress.

Listen. Hear.

Black’s articles on international law, politics, and World events appear at New Eastern Outlook among other places. And, his timely novel, 'Beneath the Clouds' “a story of how people, acting collectively, can defeat tyranny” is newly out.

Christopher Black in the first half.

And; federal troops entered Portland nearly two months in to daily police brutality demonstrations there. The American president decided to deploy the "Minneapolis" treatment to the uppity city; or as Attorney General, Bill Barr calls it, the "Occupy Model". And Trump promises, more (Democrat Party-administered) cities are slated to receive the same.

Itinerant musician and now covid-caged broadcaster, David Rovics is in Portland, where his relatively mild-mannered home city has suddenly become the center of Civil War 2.020. As he can't tour, David is doing the next best thing, raising Hell on the internet, and helping foment a Renters strike at home.

David Rovics and resisting the tearing down of community in Portland in the second half.

And; CFUV broadcaster and host of Plant Based Radio, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of what’s good to do in and around our town in the coming week. But first Christopher Black and the international tug-of-war testing Canada's "Rule of Law" credentials.

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/

American Bonaparte: Waterloo, or Watch the Republic Die

Trump's illegal power grab and the specter of American Bonapartism

by Andre Damon - WSWS

10 August 2020

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump announced a series of measures ostensibly targeting the cutoff of federal unemployment benefits that mark a new stage in his effort to abolish all constitutional restraints on the power of the president.

Trump announced a deferral of the federal payroll tax, which would defund Social Security, and the extension of federal unemployment benefits at a much lower level.