From Occupation to Colonization: India's Next Steps in Kashmir

Will India’s Occupation of Kashmir Become Colonization?

by TRNN

August 9, 2019

Prof. Junaid Ahmad says India’s revocation of Kashmir’s autonomous status not only increases tensions between India and Pakistan, but is designed to lead into a situation where India encourages colonial settlement in the region and eventual annexation, along the lines of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land

Tensions between India and Pakistan are rising to dangerously high levels once again, because of India’s decision to revoke Kashmir’s political autonomy. On Monday, the Indian government under the Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked Article 370 of India’s Constitution. That article had provided a degree of autonomy for Kashmir, which is India’s only Muslim-majority region ever since Pakistan split from India in 1948.

Junaid Ahmad is the Director of the Center for Global Dialogue and Professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the University of Lahore, Pakistan. He is also the Secretary General of the International Movement for a Just World, which is based in Kuala Lumpur.

Someone Who "Looked Like Jeffrey Epstein" Committed "Suicide" in Manhattan's Correctional Center

Jeffrey Epstein Dies Of “Suicide”

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

August 10, 2019

Disappointing everyone yet surprising no one, accused sex trafficker and alleged billionaire Jeffrey Epstein has “committed” “suicide”.

Details are muddled and conflicting, with CNN reporting that Epstein “was taken from New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center at 3:30 a.m. Saturday in cardiac arrest and died at an area hospital” and the New York Times reporting that “Mr. Epstein hung himself and his body was found this morning at roughly 7:30.”

Some reports claim that Epstein has been on suicide watch due to a prior alleged suicide attempt three weeks ago when he was found unconscious with bruising on his neck, others deny it.

If he wasn’t it’s weird because he obviously should have been, and if he was it’s weird because it failed.

Listening to Syria: Talking with SAA General Hassan Hassan

A Syrian Leader Tells His Country’s Story: An Interview with SAA General Hassan Hassan 

by Eva Bartlett - Mint Press News

August 5, 2019

Eva Bartlett sits down for an exclusive interview with the head of the Syrian Arab Army’s Political Administration, General Hassan Hassan.

For years, international headlines spotlighting Syria have claimed that the Syrian government, army, and its allies were guilty of a variety of atrocities. Yet as time has passed, many of the accusations levied at government and its allies have been shown to have been either falsified, staged (as in the case of allegations of chemical attacks in eastern Ghouta), or actually committed by the myriad terrorist groups operating in the country.

For their part, Syrian leadership has maintained from the start that the demonstrations in their country were not peaceful, from 2011 and on.

Media in the West and the Gulf vilified Syria’s leadership, featuring story after story of government-imposed violence while ignoring or whitewashing the violence of the burgeoning armed groups flooding into Syria.

"Right" Victims Only Invoked in Syria

‘Wrong victims’ of Syria war left voiceless by mainstream media, condemn West for their suffering

by Vanessa Beeley - The Wall Will Fall

24th July 2019

First published at RT.

Now that the Syrian Arab Army and allies have swept much of Syria clean of the terrorist groups introduced into the country by the US interventionist alliance, the civilian trauma is surfacing and is being processed.


Jean Ibrahim was 9 years old when
western-backed terrorist groups targeted
his school with mortars in 2014.
Photo: Vanessa Beeley

In 2005, playwright Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech sent shock waves around the ruling establishment.

During the speech, Pinter described the US strategy of “low intensity” conflict:

“Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom.”

Hiroshima Remembered: Monsters Then & Now

Warmongering Neocon ‘Free Beacon’ Glorifies Hiroshima Bombing

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

August 6, 2019

American Values, an excellent Twitter account which publishes daily information about US atrocities, has just posted a thread for the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, and I think everyone should have a look at it today.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Mark Benson, Vanessa Beeley, Janine Bandcroft August 8, 2019

This Week on GR

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

August 8th, 2019

More than a remote "somewhere, sometime" occurrence, climate change is happening now and it's happening here. While the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the global mean temperature for June, and likely July too, as the hottest ever recorded, here in BC we're experiencing a drying trend that threatens to wither the rainforest.

Our various levels of government are aware of these trends and have made declarations of concern about a "global climate crisis", but they seem lacking where the proclamation rubber meets the policy road.

Mark Benson holds a masters degree in bio-industry from Tokyo University of Agriculture, and owns and operates an ecological construction company on Pender Island.

Listen. Hear.

Mark's also a Pender resident whose dismay at the CRD's decision to drain Gardom Pond spurred him to organize the 'Save Razor Point's Water' action group.

Mark Benson in the first half.

And; the undaunted certitude with which the "international community" seizes the moral high ground before rendering to ruin nations around the world is perceived with weary dismissal in those places unencumbered by western media. "How on Earth," the people over there ask, "can they still believe the lies?" And well we might ask too.

Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist who has covered the Western wars against Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen for the better part of the last decade. The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism finalist is a recipient of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism, and her articles appear at many of the most trusted internet news sites; including Mint Press News, where her recent piece, 'Faux Humanitarian: Irwin Cotler, the White Helmets, and the Whitewashing of an Appalling Agenda' serves as excoriation of both the crimes and towering hypocrisy of our times. (And, there's a Canadian connection!)

Vanessa Beeley and the fault in our humanitarian stars in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week.

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.uvic.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/

'National Petroleum Radio': Needing No Cue to Toe Washington's Regime Change Line on Venezuela

NPR Shreds Ethics Handbook to Normalize Regime Change in Venezuela

by Lucas Koerner -  FAIR

August 5, 2019

Today, NPR needs no state coercion to toe Washington’s regime change line on Venezuela. 

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on NPR.org (8/25/17).

The Reagan administration in 1982 coerced National Public Radio (NPR) to cover more favorably the US terrorist war then being waged against Nicaragua.

As Greg Grandin writes, Otto Reich, head of the administration’s Orwellian propaganda outfit known as the Office of Public Diplomacy, informed the public network that his office had contracted “a special consultant service [to listen] to all NPR programs” on Central America. Dependent on state funding, NPR promptly buckled under pressure, reassigning reporters viewed as “too easy on the Sandinistas,” and hiring conservative pundit Linda Chavez to provide “balance.”

DNC WikiLeaks Suit Gets Bum's Rush, Exposing Party's Bare-faced Fabrications

US Federal Court Exposes Democratic Party Conspiracy Against Assange And WikiLeaks

by Eric London - WSWS.org 

August 3, 2019  

In a ruling published late Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York delivered a devastating blow to the US-led conspiracy against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

In his ruling, Judge Koeltl, a Bill Clinton nominee and former assistant special prosecutor for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, dismissed “with prejudice” a civil lawsuit filed in April 2018 by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) alleging WikiLeaks was civilly liable for conspiring with the Russian government to steal DNC emails and data and leak them to the public.

Jennifer Robinson, a leading lawyer for Assange, and other WikiLeaks attorneys welcomed the ruling as “an important win for free speech.”

CRD Moving On Gardom Pond: Locals Fight to Save North Pender Lake

CRD Plays Russian Roulette with Local Aquifer by Draining Lake

by Save Razor Point's Water Action Group 

August 3, 2019

Amidst Unprecedented Era of Drought, and Global Climate Change Crisis, CRD Chooses to Drain Precious Freshwater Lake Rather than Pay to Repair Dam.

Gardom Pond is freshwater impoverished North Pender's fourth largest lake but the CRD is amidst a project to drain it, rather than pay to repair the 40 year old earthen dam that augments the natural topography.

The lake is considered by several hydrologists, intimately familiar with the area, to be critical to the recharge of North Pender's largest aquifer, which lies directly beneath the fractured sandstone base of Gardom Pond.

Yet the CRD, having NO STUDIES in hand, claims that they do not believe wells will be affected by the draining of 82% of the lake.

[UPDATED BELOW]

Listen to Mark Benson talk to Gorilla Radio here.

 

FaceBook - https://www.facebook.com/SaveRazorPointsWater/

Website - https://savegardompond.weebly.com

Save Razor Point's Photo Gallery Page - https://savegardompond.weebly.com/gallery.html

Back to the No Future: Killing the INF Nuclear Treaty

US Withdrawal from INF Treaty Creates Greater Nuclear Instability

by TRNN

August 2, 2019

Sec. of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US is unilaterally withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which could have been re-negotiated if the US had acknowledged its own responsibility for the treaty's problems

Friday, August 2nd marks the day that the United States officially withdraws from the Intermediate-
Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, also known as the INF Treaty, in effect since 1987 when US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed it. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo justified the US withdrawal from the treaty, tweeting Friday, “On February 2nd, 2019 the US gave Russia six months to return to compliance with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Russia refused, so the treaty ends today. The US will not remain party to a treaty when others violate it. Russia bears sole responsibility.”

Geoff Wilson is a Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation where he hosts the “Nukes of Hazard” podcast. 

Ford Pleads for Nature: "Act Now, or We'll Be Shit Out of Time"

"If We Don't Protect Nature, We Can't Protect Ourselves"

by Harrison Ford - Global Climate Action Summit

#TellTheTruth #ActNow #BeyondPolitics
via ExtinctionRebellion

July 26, 2019

We are facing an emergency resulting from our toxic economic and political system. The way we relate to each other and to nature is destroying Earth’s capacity to sustain life.

Unending economic growth and profits drawn from a planet with limited resources is causing gross inequality, poverty, mass misery, and species extinction.

We are sold an illusion that consumption will bring purpose and happiness into our lives, yet this systemic consumption is threatening our very existence. It is based on unjust and unethical land use and ownership, unsustainable and increasing amounts of debt and enslavement of individuals.

Something Rotten at the Heart of United Church of Canada's Palestinian Stance

United Church should come clean on anti-Palestinian accord

by Yves Engler

August 2, 2019

Toronto church Trinity-St. Paul’s shameful suppression of a Palestinian youth cultural event highlights anti-Palestinian rot festering in the United Church of Canada. It ought to also shine a light on a little discussed anti-Palestinian accord UCC leaders signed with Israel lobby groups five decades ago.

Under pressure from B’nai B’rith and the Jewish Defence League the Trinity-St. Paul Centre for Faith, Justice and the Arts recently canceled a room booking “to celebrate the artistic and cultural contributions of Palestinians in the diaspora.”

The Palestinian Youth Movement’s spoken word event was to “showcase the winners of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship”, (pictured above) which the JDL and B’nai B’rith chose to target on the grounds the famous novelist was a spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the early 1970s.

Testing the 'Kalibr' of Iran and Russia's Defense Capabilities

Blitz Wolf Caught in Persian Gulf - Iran and Russian Stronger on Defence Than the US and UK in Offence

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

August 1, 2019

This month’s escalation of US and British threats to Iran’s oil export shipping and maritime defences in the Persian Gulf is to be matched with Russian assistance to the Iran Navy and to shore batteries of air defence missiles, as well as the 300-kilometre range Russian Kalibr missile, a US Navy ship-killer.

Moscow - The Kalibr, according to US assessments, “skims just above the sea, making it difficult to detect at a distance, before leaping up to three times the speed of sound on the terminal approach—offering a challenging target for missile-defense systems. The Kalibr can be fired not only from underwater by submarines, but also by relatively small and cheap corvettes.”

Iran, according to its experts, has its own anti-shipping missiles and drones deployed along the Iranian coastline, on the sea surface and on board submarines, concentrating at the Strait of Hormuz. What the Iranian arms may lack in speed, range and electronic capabilities, the introduction of Russian electronic counter-measures, which Russians sources say has begun, will assist by jamming or spoofing US tracking equipment.

The result has already been signalled by the British, German and French governments in their response to Trump Administration requests for a multinational naval convoy operation in the Persian Gulf, and also in response to Iranian warnings.

Justin and the Ladies: Adding a Progressive Veneer to Haitian Corruption

Justin Trudeau “feminizes” Support for Corrupt and Repressive Haitian President

by Yves Engler - Dissident Voice

August 1st, 2019

The Trudeau Liberals are attempting to “feminize” their support of an illegitimate government hated by the vast majority of Haitians. And Radio-Canada seems to have fallen for it.

After Radio-Canada published a story about nine of eighteen ministers in Jovenel Moïse’s newly proposed government being women, Haitian Canadian feminist Jennie-Laure Sully replied:

“Haitians of all social classes have been demonstrating for more than a year demanding the resignation of the president and a change in the political system. But what does Radio-Canada talk about in this country? A cosmetic measure adopted by this fraudulently elected government accused of embezzlement and human rights violations. Gender parity in such conditions is a smokescreen (“poudre aux yeux”). Radio-Canada is doing identity politics of the lowest order while ignoring Canada’s role in maintaining corruption in Haiti.”

The Cotler, Dershowitz, Epstein Nexus: Faux Humanitarianism and the Appalling Agenda It Masks

Faux Humanitarian Irwin Cotler, the White Helmets, and the Whitewashing of an Appalling Agenda 

by Vanessa Beeley - MintPress News

August 1, 2019

Cotler’s campaigns for foreign regime change or intervention almost always march in lock-step with neoconservative U.S. foreign policy. His “humanitarian” branding is but a thin veneer of hypocrisy to conceal his establishment policies — policies that almost always serve the interests of Israel.

On July 22, 2018, Israel organized and facilitated an exceptional evacuation of White Helmet operatives from southern Syria, claiming the operatives were at risk from an advancing Syrian Arab Army. A number of NATO member states backed the move, calling on Israel to bring their intelligence assets to safety.

The White Helmets have been discredited and exposed as a British-government-incubated project by a number of independent geopolitical analysts, including Scott Ritter, Philip Giraldi, John Pilger, Seymour Hersh, Eva Bartlett, Graham Porter, Rick Sterling , Cory Morningstar and many more.

This journalist’s extensive work has shown that the U.K. Intelligence-manufactured group of pseudo “humanitarians” — financed by the majority of member states within the U.S.-led interventionist alliance waging war against Syria — is nothing more than an auxiliary of the Al Qaeda generic offshoots in Syria. The White Helmet image has been professionally polished by a vast network of PR agencies, billionaire philanthropists, and media outlets aligned with their respective government objectives to overthrow the Syrian government and reduce Syria to a “failed state,” as they succeeded in doing with Libya.

Israel has a history of supporting terrorism in Syria since the start of the U.S. coalition war against the nation officially began in 2011. Israel has offered medical treatment to the various militant groups previously occupying areas of southern Syria. Stories abound of Israeli troops providing covering fire for groups dominated by Al Qaeda affiliates or rebrands as they came under attack from the Syrian Arab Army legitimately reclaiming territory lost to internationally-backed armed groups.

Gabbard v. Google: The Fight for America's Media Leash

Tulsi Gabbard vs Google Goliath

by Rick Sterling - Dissident Voice

July 31st, 2019

Tulsi Now vs Google 

The Tulsi Gabbard presidential campaign has filed a major law suit against Google. This article outlines the main points of the law suit and evidence the the social media giant Google has quietly acquired enormous influence on public perceptions and has been actively censoring alternative viewpoints.

Tulsi Now, Inc vs Google, LLC was filed on July 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The attorneys demand a jury trial and seek compensation and punitive damages of “no less than $50 million”.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Joe Foy, Dahr Jamail, Janine Bandcroft August 1, 2019

This Week on GR

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

August 1, 2019

Following a century and a half of forestry here, British Columbia's industrial-sized logging operators are struggling to find the trees needed to maintain the profits they've become accustomed to.

The result is Big Timber leaning ever more heavily on provincial decision-makers to get access to areas of the public forests once thought off-limits.

For the Spotted Owl, just one of a host of species endangered by habitat loss, the provincial government's reluctance to take a stand may make the difference between its survival or extirpation.

Listen. Hear.

Joe Foy is Co-Executive Director of the Wilderness Committee, an organization dedicated to, "preserving wildlife, defending parks, safeguarding public resources and fighting for a healthy climate." Joe leads the campaign team, and helps put together, coordinate and carry out strategies for its nature-protection campaigns.

Joe Foy in the first half.

And; while the numbers for July are not yet official, bets are that month's global mean temperature will too join June in breaking the mark as the hottest on record. According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, "global land and ocean surface temperature departure from average for June 2019 was the highest for the month of June in the 140-year NOAA global temperature dataset record."

In fact, nine of the ten hottest June's have occurred since 2010. Perhaps even more troubling though is the dearth of Antarctica's "ice extent", the smallest ever measured.

Dahr Jamail is a journalist and author who has, as staff writer at Truthout, been writing about climate change for the past decade or more. Dahr toured the island in early June with his book, 'The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption

Dahr Jamail and finding a way of life in a time of climate disruption in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist, and long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the 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 Foy and allowing the Spotted Owl's habitat be logged away.

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.uvic.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/

Wad Guano's Epic Trip to the Political Wilderness

Juan Guaidó’s Regime Change Lobby

by John McEvoy - VenezuelAnalysis

 

July 30, 2019

 

After Juan Guaidó declared himself Venezuelan president on 23 January, the opposition leader immediately sought to legitimise his parallel government by garnering international support. 

 

The US, most European states, and large parts of Latin America moved swiftly to recognise Venezuela’s new ‘interim president’ (indeed, US Vice President Mike Pence had already given Guaidó Washington’s blessing), and the opposition leader began announcing his ambassadorial positions before the month’s end.

In the time since, however, Guaidó’s international credibility has suffered a series of blows. 

 

Not Believing Everything You Think

How The Question “Who Benefits From This?” Can Change Your Life

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

July 28, 2019

“Cui bono?” is a phrase you’ll often see used on conspiracy-minded Youtube videos and discussion forums. It’s Latin for “Who benefits?”, and it refers to a perspective in legal analysis that the one who stands most to gain from a crime is often the perpetrator. It’s the “motive” part of “means, motive and opportunity“.

The term comes up in conspiracy circles a lot because motive is often the biggest plot hole in the official story promoted by the authorized narrative managers of the political/media class about a given event. The alleged Douma chemical attack last year, for example, had no discernible benefit to the Assad government whatsoever, but would have benefited the cornered Al-Qaeda affiliates in the city by provoking air strikes from the west, so there remains a lot of skepticism from those who don’t automatically believe their government and the plutocratic media when they say that Damascus was responsible.

Such skepticism is dismissively branded “conspiracy theory” by the establishment narrative managers, but it is fully justified. So it’s a useful concept for analyzing world events in a way that punches through the fog of imperial propaganda. But the question “Who benefits from this?” can, and should, be taken much further.

Canada's Intimate Connection with Ukraine's Far Right

How Canada emerged as a haven for Ukrainian Nazi collaborators

by Roger Jordan - WSWS

29 July 2019

Earlier this month, Canada hosted the third Ukraine Reform Conference, a gathering of diplomats and officials from over 100 countries aimed at bringing Kiev even more directly under the geopolitical and economic domination of the western imperialist powers.

Photo: Kyiv Post

After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the conference sidelines, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed “to stand with Ukraine against Russian interference and aggression,” and to support it in the struggle to end Russia’s “illegal annexation” of Crimea.

Trudeau’s portrayal of Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine and Eastern Europe turns reality on its head. It conceals the fact that Canada played a major supporting role in the US-orchestrated, fascist-spearheaded February 2014 coup that chased Ukraine's elected president from power and brought a far-right, pro-western regime to power in Kiev; and that the 2014 coup was the continuation of a longstanding US-led, Canadian-backed drive to expand NATO to Russia's borders and harness Ukraine to the West.