England's Disgrace: Assange Show Trial Reveals Demise of Britain's Rule of Law

The working class must demand an end to the show trial of Julian Assange

by Thomas Scripps - WSWS

8 September 2020

The first day of Julian Assange’s resumed extradition hearing, held in London’s Old Bailey, saw a country that boasts of being one of the oldest democracies in the world sink to the level of a tinpot dictatorship.

Assange and minders in court appearance September 7, 2020

Artist's rendering: Julia Quenzler

Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has exposed war crimes, torture, state surveillance and the diplomatic conspiracies of the US and other imperialist powers. But he was delivered to the court from his cell in a maximum-security prison in an unmarked van, after being imprisoned in conditions worse than those accused of murder. In the cells under the Old Bailey, he was able to see his lawyers in person for the first time in six months and given his first look at the final written submissions in his own case.

Novichok Redux: Germany's 'Skripal' Moment

BRAIN POISONING BY RUSSIAN NERVE AGENT – ALEXEI NAVALNY INFECTS GERMAN CHANCELLERY

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

September 7, 2020

There is only one certainty (zweifelsfreie Nachweis) in the case of Alexei Navalny and the traces (Spuren) which have been found in his skin, urine and blood, and in a water bottle, by the German Army’s chemical warfare laboratory in Munich.

This certainty is that, in order to believe the German and other government interpretations which have been given of the evidence to date, you have to be suffering from a severe case of brain washing. The lighter the spectrometric mass or weight of the reported Novichok spuren, the heavier the measurable wash on the brain required to believe they are evidence of a Russian state crime.

The Crucifixion of Julian Assange: A Supine Gallery Content to Damn Journalism's "Judas"

Media Freedom? Show me the MSM Journalist Opposing the Torture of Assange

by Craig Murray

September 7, 2020

Today, the corporate media that cried “Media freedom” when Extinction Rebellion blocked the billionaire owned propaganda presses, is silent as Julian Assange’s Calvary for bringing real truth unfiltered to the public moves on to its next station; the macabre Gothic architecture of the Old Bailey.

The Tories appeared remarkably tolerant in the days when Extinction Rebellion were causing general disruption to the public. But to threaten the interests of billionaire paymasters is something against which the entire political class will unite. 

A Nightmare for the Whole Family: The Evil Root of Monopoly

Monopoly: Root of All Evil

by David Swanson  - Let's Try Democracy

September 7, 2020

The Monopoly game originally had an anti-monopoly, pro-cooperation (not corporation, COOPeration!) version. Somebody should revive it, along with the understanding of the game as a warning of horrific evils, not just arcane Wall Street issues, and not just an opportunity to inculcate greed or generate fun family arguments.

“Horrific evils”? Can I be serious? I’m afraid so. Pick up a copy of Thom Hartmann’s The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream. 

Presente! Kevin Zeese

Activist Kevin Zeese Passes Away

by Telesur English

September 6, 2020
 

U.S. lawyer, advocate, writer, activist-organizer and comrade, Kevin Zeese, passed away on Sunday morning.

The dedicated, long-time organizer is being remembered for his important 

work on the frontlines of countless struggles for justice. 

(photo - Ted Majdosz Twitter)

Zeese, alongside his partner Margaret Flowers, was the Co-director of Popular Resistance, an online resource providing news and information, which brings together movements for peace and economic, racial and environmental justice.

The Journalists Paving the Way to Assange Gulag Exile

For years, journalists cheered Assange’s abuse. Now they’ve paved his path to a US gulag 2 

by Jonathan Cook

September 2, 2020

Court hearings in Britain over the US administration’s extradition case against Julian Assange begin in earnest next week. The decade-long saga that brought us to this point should appall anyone who cares about our increasingly fragile freedoms.

A journalist and publisher has been deprived of his liberty for 10 years. According to UN experts, he has been arbitrarily detained and tortured for much of that time through intense physical confinement and endless psychological pressure. 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Sara Birrell, Jonathan Latham, Janine Bandcroft September 3, 2020

This Week on GR

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

September 3, 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 26th, 2020.

In Orwell’s classic dystopic Nineteen Eighty-four, The Party declares “War is peace…” and so the people are at peace, perpetually.

Orwell didn’t consider his final book fiction; he would have titled it, it’s said, Nineteen Forty-eight, the year of its intended release, but the publishers felt it would work better to set the clocks forward some. Now, and since the end of the Great Good World War, we’ve known nothing but peace in the Orwellian sense; but our real World “peace” is maintained by a subtlety missed by the great author.

‘Humanitarian Sanctions’ are often the first shots fired in the modern way of war; and, it’s undeniably the case that “Truth” is their first victim. 

Listen. Hear.

Sara Birrell is a writer, student, and self-described “rank-and-file” union member. The avowed anti-capitalist, Saskatchewan settler’s essays can be found at Briarpatch Magazine, Sask Dispatch, Passage, Media Co-op, and the Carillon among other places. Her recent article, ‘Canadian Sanctions Are Liberal Warfare’ appears at The Canada Files website.

Sara Birrell in the first half.

And; nearly nine months into the most disruptive if not destructive pandemic known to history how is it we still do not definitively know where Covid-19 came from; after tens of thousands of television hours and millions of words printed, why must we still ask this most fundamental question?

Dr. Jonathan Latham holds a Masters degree in Crop Genetics, a PhD in Virology and is, along with Dr. Allison Wilson, co-author of a trilogy of articles seeking to both discover the origins of Covid-19 and forewarn the public of the dangers posed by the kind of research they posit is at the root of this and other modern pandemics.

Jonathan Latham and proposing an origin for SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 Pandemic 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 going on in and around our town in the coming week.

But first Sara Birrell and Sanctions: Canada’s World war.

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/

Colombia's Dirty War on Black Lives

Decades Later, America’s Meddling in Colombia is Still Costing Lives

by Alan MacLeod - MintPress News

August 28, 2020

From the drug war to Plan Colombia to support for right-wing paramilitary groups, decades of US interference in Colombia has caused so much instability that to this day, the country is still reeling from it.

On a warm Tuesday morning earlier this month in Llano Verde, an eastern suburb of the city of Cali, five Afro-Colombian children decided to leave their homes to take advantage of the fine weather to spend some time outside. They would never return. Only a few hours later, they were found dead; their bodies burned, cut to pieces with machetes and riddled with bullets, dumped in public for all to see.

Regime Change #1: Mother of All CIA Coups

Coup 53 recounts the role of British intelligence in overthrowing Mosaddegh government in Iran

by Jean Shaoul  - WSWS

3 September 2020

Coup 53 is an engrossing documentary about British and American skulduggery in Iran in the 1950s, which was aimed at protecting their lucrative oil and geostrategic interests in the region and preventing the Soviet Union from gaining influence.

Co-written, produced and directed by Iranian-born Taghi Amirani, the documentary is co-written and edited by Walter Murch, renowned for his work on such films as The Godfather, The Conversation, Julia, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Starving Protest: Police Take a New Tack in Kenosha

Kenosha: Officers In Unmarked Vehicles Arrest Activists Trying To Serve Free Food

by Kenny Stancil - Commondreams 

August 30, 2020

When traveling from out of state with an AR-15 is not treated as a crime, but “filling up gas cans for your food truck” leads to immediate arrest.

Soon after their Wednesday arrival in Kenosha, Wisconsin, eight volunteers from Seattle-based Riot Kitchen who planned to distribute free food to protesters were arrested by law enforcement officials who emerged from unmarked cars, the Seattle Times reported.

Lemming Lines for a 21st Century "Over the Top" Moment

Confess to Covid: just short of witch burning

by T.P. Wilkinson - Dissident Voice

August 30th, 2020

Despite the lamentations and orders from Geneva or the local capitals of Capital, I refuse to believe that COVID-19 or the putative pathogens are a principal challenge to humanity — except for those using these viruses for policing and/or culling the population.

 English propaganda poster, 1915 

(Wikipedia Commons)

Instead I find we are in a situation not unlike that which led to the notorious Non-Aggression Pact concluded between the German Empire under NSDAP rule and the USSR. 

Assange Travesty Trial Resumes September 7

Assange Travesty Continues  

by Craig Murray

August 30, 2020

The travesty that is Julian Assange’s extradition hearing resumes fully on 7 September at the Old Bailey. I shall be abandoning my own legal team and going down to London to cover it again in full, for an expected three weeks. 

How this is going to work at the Old Bailey, I do not know. Covid restrictions presumably mean that the numbers in the public gallery will be tiny. As of now, there is no arrangement for Julian’s friends and family in place. It looks like 4am queuing is in prospect.

Canada's Ultra Right-Wing Bogie Man

Canada’s Conservatives choose Erin O’Toole as leader in further shift right

by Roger Jordan and Keith Jones - WSWS

29 August 2020

Canada’s Conservatives, the official opposition in the federal parliament, chose Erin O’Toole to be the party’s next leader in a postal ballot of the membership, whose results were released early Monday morning.

A 12-year Canadian Armed Forces’ veteran, corporate lawyer, and junior minister in the Harper Conservative government for 10 months in 2015, O’Toole won the Conservative leadership by presenting himself as the best defender of Harper’s legacy of austerity, reaction, and militarism, and by courting the party’s large social conservative faction.

Collision of Future Combatants? Russia/U.S. Troop Syria Contretemps

Syria: What Actually Happened In Collision Between US And Russian Forces

by Morgan Artyukhina - Sputnik News 

August 28, 2020

An official from the US National Security Council acknowledged on Wednesday that a day prior there had been a vehicle collision between Russian and American forces in eastern Syria.

Photo: Sputnik. 

On Tuesday, four US service members were reported injured with concussion-like symptoms in an incident involving Russian forces. However, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Ullyot said on Wednesday that the injuries were the fault of the Russians, and that the US service members withdrew to deescalate – a far different story than that told by video footage of the event.

Alle Polizisten Sind Bastarde? Germany's Law und Order Moment

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder: Police violence on the rise in Germany

by Max Linhof and Jan Ritter - WSWS

28 August 2020

A growing number of police operations have occurred over recent weeks involving the use of ruthless force. Mobile phone videos taken by passersby reveal that police officers not only display extreme aggressiveness and brutality towards their targets, but also towards those seeking to document police violence.

Three months after the murder of George Floyd in the United States, which has been followed in that country by sustained police violence, similar scenes have been playing out on the streets of major German cities. German police (Credit: Max Pixel) 

Gaza as Proxy Battlefield for Gantz v. Netanyahu

Netanyahu vs Gantz: Gaza Escalation as Reflection of Israel’s Political Rivalry

by Ramzy Baroud - MEMO

August 25, 2020

Only recently, the Palestinian group, Hamas, and Israel seemed close to reaching a prisoner exchange agreement, where Hamas would release several Israeli soldiers held in Gaza while Israel would set free an unspecified number of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons.

Instead of the much-anticipated announcement of some kind of a deal, on August 10, Israeli bombs began falling on the besieged Strip and incendiary balloons, originating in Gaza, made their way to the Israeli side of the fence.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Joshua Wright, Tim Takaro, Janine Bandcroft August 27th, 2020

This Week on GR

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

August 27, 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 19th, 2020.

The magnificent coastal rainforests greeting the English explorers have since then been almost eradicated. On the island named for the captain of one of those early ships it’s estimated less than 3% of the forest giants George Vancouver would have marveled at remain. But, there is no number greater than zero small enough to stay the hand of timber interests that continue to practice “clearcut” logging, and still pursue as single-mindedly as Melville’s Ahab, the biggest and best of what’s left.

Resistance is growing again in the woods though, along the San Juan river, where Teal Jones Group, the self-described “largest privately owned timber harvesting and primary lumber product manufacturing company in British Columbia” has begun carving roads towards the pristine Fairy Creek watershed. Joshua Wright is a spokesperson for the blockade.

Listen. Hear.

Joshua Wright in the first half.

And; Before Covid-19 swallowed the World we worried about banal issues like the climate crisis and survival of terrestrial life on a way too rapidly changing planet. But even if the environmental problems of our creation are no joke, our elected officials seem unable to take the situation seriously; some apparently wanting to accelerate the process. Clearly, we have to try harder.

Right now, not far outside New Westminster, near Hume Park, along the Brunette River, twenty metres above the ground is a tree-sit. Activists there are barring the way of the infamous TransMountain Pipeline Expansion project by occupying the trees that stand in the way of the final leg of the TMX pipeline’s route to terminus in Burnaby.

Dr. Tim Takaro is a scientist-physician, health researcher, educator, and Associate Dean of Research at Simon Fraser University. Takaro has dedicated his career to studying the human health impacts of climate change, and the more difficult task of communicating to those in control of environmental policy the dire and imminent consequence of failure to alter our societal course. Tim was the first to occupy the trees along the Brunette, and says of the TMX, “In addition to the direct health risks of the project, I am considering the future of my children, their children and future generations around the world.”

Dr. Tim Takaro on environmental intersectionality and obstructing passage of the TransMountain pipeline 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 with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things you can get up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Joshua Wright and getting in the path of Teal Jones to save the Fairy Creek watershed.

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/

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?