Kashmir & Jammu: Journalists Targets of Indian Authorities' Media Blackout

Stopped, Beaten, Prevented From Working: Everyday Troubles of the J&K Journalist

by Mudasir Ahmad - The Wire

September 18, 2019

Journalists, already among those whose work suffers the most in any siege, have now been facing the most resistance to their work.

Shahid Khan - Photo: The Wire

Srinagar - Shahid Khan shudders as he recalls the September 7 incident when he was beaten up by a group of policemen while covering Muharram processions in the Rainawari locality of Srinagar.

“I was among six photojournalists covering the event. Suddenly the escort of a senior police officer arrived at the spot and started beating us,” said Khan who works with the Jammu-based daily, Reporter North. 

“I was thrashed by a policeman who used his cane for at least five minutes. He kept telling me ‘why do you go out to shoot events, you create problems for us’,” said Khan.

“They kept beating me and didn’t listen to a single word.”

Shielding the Messenger: Cory Morningstar & the Machine Behind Greta Thunberg

In Defense of Cory Morningstar & “Manufacturing for Consent”

by Hiroyuki Hamada - OffGuardian

September 20, 2019

Good investigative journalism doesn’t only reveal hidden mechanisms of our time; it also exposes those who refuse to confront the mechanisms.

Remember when the late Bruce Dixon courageously and cogently called Bernie Sanders “a sheep dog candidate”? Remember when Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley and others truly stood with Syrian people in opposing the western intervention? I do.

Those who could not face the reality came up with all sorts of profanities and ill conceived theories to demonize the messengers.

Cory Morningstar has been a dedicated environmental activist with a sound track record, who has closely worked with various NGOs. 

Hiroyuki Hamada is an artist. Exhibiting widely
in gallery and non-commercial settings alike

Exemplifying America's Moral and Intellectual Wasteland: Reuters & Jack Ryan

Reuters Can’t Find US Critics to Question Amazon’s Anti-Venezuela Propaganda 

by Joe Emersberger - FAIR

September 18, 2019

A line from the trailer for Jack Ryan, an Amazon TV drama whose second season streams on November 1, is: “A nuclear Venezuela…. You will not hear about it on the news, ’cause we’ll already be dead.”

The trailer implies that Venezuela is going through the “greatest humanitarian crisis in history” because it buys weapons from “the Russians.” Of course.

“It would fit a pattern,” says the Jack Ryan character, a CIA operative played by John Krasinski, who’s better known as Jim Halpert, the likeable paper salesman in The Office.

My favorite reaction to the premise of this upcoming Jack Ryan season came from US historian Gary Alexander:

"No matter how cynical you might be about propagandistic American media, you are not prepared for how much watching this trailer is like snorting 100% pure John Bolton."

A Fightback Resource Guide for BC Communities Facing Government Enforced Mass Destruction of Forested Watersheds, Old Growth & Rainforests

Mass Destruction of Forested Watersheds, Old Growth & Rainforests Means Loss of Four Pillars of Life, Community Resilience and the Greatest Tool for Climate Regulation

by Kootenay Watershed Protectors

September 10th, 2019

PRESS RELEASE - EXPANDED TO ARTICLE & RESOURCE FOR WATERSHED COMMUNITIES ACROSS BC 

Mass Destruction of Forested Watersheds - Is Putting Life At Risk

Sep 10,2019

Pursuing justice for the protection of communities, life and life support systems and the case of Argenta Johnson's Landing Watershed slated for clear-cut and what locals are doing about it.

Spain's Press Freedoms in Precipitous Decline

Spain has experienced an unprecedented decline in press freedom, says PDLI

by Jane Whyatt and Frederic Krull - ECPMF

September 19, 2019

Hooded demonstrators have attacked TV journalists covering the Catalonia national day demonstrations which attracted more than 500,000 people in support of independence for the autonomous region.

The Spanish journalists’ unions Agrupación de Periodistas de CCOO (FSC-CCOO) and Federación de Sindicatos de Periodistas (FeSP) condemned these acts.

Their statement rejects,

"All types of behaviours that seek to coerce, harass, intimidate and condition the work of journalists, violating the fundamental right to freedom of expression and the right of citizens to receive free and truthful information."

      Yolanda Qintada. Photo: Dani Gago
         License CC_BY_SA 

Catalonia is not the only flashpoint. Spain’s current political stalemate is matched by paralysis in the state of press freedom. There is a Gag Law, criminal defamation, lack of access to information, as well as online harassment of reporters and little protection for whistleblowers. These aspects are all causing problems.

As noted in the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom’s (ECPMF) submission to the United Nations Human Rights Periodic Review on Spain, this situation creates a chilling effect.

ECPMF’s partner organisation in Madrid, Plateforma en Defensa de Libertad de Información (PDLI), is concerned. In a frank interview with ECPMF, the PDLI Co-ordinator Yolanda Quintada (pictured) admits that conditions for press freedom have not improved in recent years – in fact she believes they have never been worse.

Saving Julian

"Please save my life": Julian Assange in prison

by Annissa Warsame  - ECPMF

13.09.2019

Cell Number 37, ‘Britain’s Guantanamo Bay’ – a single occupancy cell, furnished sparsely with a plastic chair, metal bed and steel toilet. For over 150 days this has been Julian Assange’s residence, whether he likes it or not. And a judge has ruled today, he is to remain there even after his jail sentence is over.

Swiftly after his asylum status was stripped by the Ecuadorian government, the British authorities sentenced Assange to fifty weeks in prison, for violating his bail.

The maximum sentence being fifty-two weeks and the typical sentence being none and a fine.

With his arrest, Assange was moved to HMP Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in South London. Belmarsh during the early millennium was known as ‘Britain’s Guantanamo Bay’ for its foreign detainees, held without trial.

When you visit the prison, you are immediately struck by its fortress-like exterior. With its water-stained concrete perimeter walls, enumerable CCTV cameras and floodlights.

             Professor Nils Melzer

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Kootenay Watershed Protectors, Nils Melzer, Janine Bandcroft Sept. 19, 2019

This Week on GR

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

September 19th, 2019

It's clear those in this province concerned about local environment have no-one in government federally, provincially, and more often than not at the civic level, to turn to; when corporate and citizen interests clash, here money always wins. This seemingly unalterable law of British Columbia's political nature has inspired some of the polity to fight back, one endangered wildlife habitat, threatened forest stand, and imperiled watershed at a time.

The Argenta/Johnson's Landing is an irreplaceable piece of the West Kootenay ecological puzzle threatened with utter destruction by the business as usual extractivist economic prerogative.

It is, as environmental activist and 'Camp Caribou' defender Brock Snyder says, "yet another in a long line of forested watersheds slated for destruction in BC, [...] putting life at risk."

Listen. Hear.

Environmental Scientist, grandmother, and activist, Mona Southron reminds, we clever humans are, "now at a point where we can create massive destruction of living systems and unrivaled suffering, or [...] the restoration of a thriving world worth living in..."

Brock Snyder, Mona Southron, and economist, activist, and World traveler, Jessica Dawn-Ogden, principals of the citizen-led Kootenay Watershed Protectors, on standing to protect what cannot be sacrificed in the first half.

And; next week imprisoned journalist and publisher, Julian Assange was set at last for release from London's notorious Belmarsh Prison, his time for "breach of bail" served, but last week district judge Vanessa Baraitser quashed any hope of that, saying, "You have been produced today because your sentence of imprisonment is about to come to an end. When that happens your remand status changes from a serving prisoner to a person facing extradition."

And with that, Julian Assange stands to face years of detention while the wheels of judicial process grind slowly on.

Nils Melzer is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Melzer visited Assange in May and subsequently issued a public call for Assange's immediate release, along with stinging rebukes of both his current jailors in Britain and those in America who would be next if their extradition petition is granted.

Nils Melzer and the continued call for Julian Assange's release 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 to bring us up to speed with some of what's good to be gotten up 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/

Breaking Assange; Psychologist Outlines 'The Psychology of Getting Julian Assange'

Clinical psychologist Lissa Johnson: They are trying to break Assange “physically and psychologically”

by Oscar Grenfell - WSWS

28 August 2019

Australian clinical psychologist Lissa Johnson has been an outspoken defender of Julian Assange, writing extensively on the grave implications of his persecution for democratic rights and freedom of speech.

Johnson explained to the WSWS that she “writes about the psychology of politics and social issues.” She has a background in media studies and sociology, and a PhD in the psychology of manipulating reality-perception.

Earlier this year, Johnson wrote an extensive five-part investigative series titled “The Psychology of Getting Julian Assange,” published on the New Matilda website. Johnson provided the following responses to a series of questions from the World Socialist Web Site earlier this week.

Free Finally The World's Most Important Political Prisoner

The World’s Most Important Political Prisoner

by Craig Murray

September 15, 2019

We are now just one week away from the end of Julian Assange’s uniquely lengthy imprisonment for bail violation. He will receive parole from the rest of that sentence, but will continue to be imprisoned on remand awaiting his hearing on extradition to the USA – a process which could last several years.

At that point, all the excuses for Assange’s imprisonment which so-called leftists and liberals in the UK have hidden behind will evaporate. There are no charges and no active investigation in Sweden, where the “evidence” disintegrated at the first whiff of critical scrutiny. He is no longer imprisoned for “jumping bail”.

The sole reason for his incarceration will be the publishing of the Afghan and Iraq war logs leaked by Chelsea Manning, with their evidence of wrongdoing and multiple war crimes.

A Plea to Intercede: Assange Implores UN Special Rapporteur "Please, Save My Life!"

Julian Assange asks UN special rapporteur to ‘Please save my life’

by Personal Liberty News Desk 

September 16, 2019

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, resides in cell No. 37 in “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay.” His cell is a single-occupancy cell, “furnished” with a plastic chair, a metal bed and steel toilet. It’s been Assange’s residence for more than 150 days. Last week a British judge ruled he’s to remain there even after he jail sentence is over.

The crime for which Assange is being punished is a bail violation. He’s been sentenced to 40 weeks in prison. The maximum sentence for the crime in Britain is 52 weeks. Typically, British bail violators get no time and a small fine.

Assange, scheduled to be extradited to the U.S. for telling the truth, may not live until the end of his sentence, according to Professor Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

According to the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, Assange’s lawyers convinced Melzer to investigate the conditions Assange is living under after preventing “credible evidence” of “ill-treatment.”

Can We Really Remember What 9/11 Meant and Means?

Really remembering 9-11: Recalling the Hundreds of Thousands of Civilian Victims of America’s Endless ‘War on Terror’

by Dave Lindorff - This Can't Be Happening

September 14, 2019

Now that the flags are back waving from the tops of flagpoles across the country, and the maudlin paeans to the close to 3000 lives lost in the airplane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, it’s time we gave a thought to the dead who were ignored. 

Afghan children killed in a US bombing raid 

According to very conservative estimates, as reported by the “Costs of War” project of Brown University’s Watson Institute on International and Public Affairs, nearly 250,000 civilians have been killed during the a8 years since September 2001 in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in wars or attacks that were instigated by the United States.

Those are very conservative figures carefully compiled by organizations like Iraq Body Count, the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. These numbers are people known to have died in the violence of war, mostly as so-called “collateral damage,” but often deliberately, as when the US bombs a hospital, a wedding or a private housing compound in order to kill some targeted individual considered an “enemy combatant,” unconcerned about the others in the area, often women and children, who are almost certain to die or suffer serious injury as the result of a strike.

The numbers do not include the deaths that also stem from America’s post 9-11wars — things like starvation, deaths from lack of medical care, and especially deaths from diseases like typhus or dysentery caused by lack of access to clean water or adequate sanitation facilities.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Masjid Al-Iman for Kashmir, John Helmer, Janine Bandcroft September 12, 2019

This Week on GR

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

September 12, 2019

More than a month after the unilateral annexation of the officially semi-autonomous states of Kashmir and Jammu, members of the Kashmiri diaspora within India and abroad are desperate for news of their families caught behind prime minister Narendra Modi's virtual "Iron Curtain".

Last week, members of Victoria's Masjid Al-Iman mosque and their allies marched to the legislature in solidarity for Kashmiris and to demand the Canadian government investigate human rights abuses allegedly occurring throughout the state. I went down to the legislature to record the demonstration.

Victoria manifesting support for cordoned Kashmir in the first half.


Listen. Hear.

And; the western media has latched on to civic election returns throughout Russia to propel its narrative of Russian president, Vladimir Putin's waning popularity and thus influence. But as with every view of the greater world offered by the corporate and stated presses here, and especially where it comes to the West's bete noire, Russia, the truth of the matter requires more careful information sourcing than they are willing or prepared to provide audiences.

John Helmer is a journalist, former academic, government policy advisor, author, broadcaster and principal behind the news website, Dances with Bears. Some of John’s book titles include: ‘The Deadly Simple Mechanics of Society’, ‘Drugs and Minority Oppression’, (with Claudia Wright) ‘The Jackal’s Wedding – American Power, Arab Revolt’, ‘Grand Strategy for Small Countries: Case Studies in Transforming Weakness into Power,’ and his latest is the political memoir, ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’.

John Helmer and getting to know more about Russia 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 to bring us up to speed with some of what's good to get 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/

Tales of Brutality and Torture from Kashmir

Media Reports Draw Light To 'Brutal Torture' by Indian Army in Kashmir

by The Wire

 

September 10, 2019

International media organisations have released reports which shed light on security forces’ use of violence, often without any reason at all, on Kashmiris in the aftermath of Delhi’s August 5 decision to take away Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.

Relative of arrested at Central Jail, Srinagar. Photo: Mudasir Ahmad 

The reports, most recently by The Associated Press and earlier by BBC, carry accounts by residents who have allegedly come in the face of brutal torture by Indian forces. In several accounts, the victims would allegedly be administered electric shocks whenever they would fall unconscious after a round of relentless beatings. 

 

Photographs accompany the AP and BBC reports, showing harrowing bruises sustained on the legs and backs of men who allegedly came in the way of the Army and paramilitary forces’ beatings. The forces also allegedly subjected residents to degrading and humiliating punishments, destroyed their stocks of food and issued threats to the women, in addition to allegedly arresting thousands of men. 

Setting the Table for Another Greco-Turkish War

SERVILITY OR SELF-DEFENCE: CYPRUS CAN DEFEND AGAINST THE TURKS WITHOUT AMERICAN PROTECTORATE OR RUSSIAN ADVICE

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

September 10, 2019

Russia has been warning Cyprus (lead image, left) for months to beware the risks and consequences of offering its offshore oil and gas to US companies in exchange for promises of a US military protectorate against Turkish invasion. So far the American response (lead image, centre – Secretary of State Michael Pompeo) has been to require Cyprus to block Russian Navy access to its ports; expel Russian capital from its banks; and put a stop to what Washington calls pro-Russian journalism in the Greek-language press. For details of this scheme, read this.

Moscow - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denounced the Washington plan as an “artificial choice” and also a “gross violation” of Cyprus’s internal affairs. But so far the Russians have joined the Americans in accepting that what the Turks believe to be theirs is theirs, and that what the Cypriots (and Greeks) regard as theirs is negotiable.

For the first time, however, Cypriot and Greek military officers and experts have joined to plan Cypriot military tactics against Turkey’s attempt at taking over the Cyprus offshore seabed and at fresh Turkish troop landings on the island.

Singing for Assange's Freedom

UK: Roger Waters performs at rally in support of Assange in London

via Ruptly

August 2, 2019

Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters performed the song ‘Wish You Were Here’ at a rally in support of Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, outside the UK Home Office in the heart of London on Monday.

“How do we put ourselves in the position of Julian Assange in solitary confinement? Or with that kid in Syria, or Palestine, or Rohingya, blown to bits by these people in this building here [pointing at the office of British Home Secretary Priti Patel]?” asked Waters while speaking to the crowd, before performing.

A banner reading "Don't Extradite Assange" adorned the front of the stage from which Waters performed the famous song from 1995. Before Waters took to the stage, Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, spoke of his last visit to Assange in Belmarsh prison. 

“It had been a year since I’d seen him last. I hugged him and he told me this place he was in, was hell. I instantly understood what he meant,” Gabriel said. Assange, who is currently serving a 50-week jail sentence for breaching his bail conditions, will face a US extradition hearing in February.

Germany Moves on Glyphosate: Life Without Insects No Life At All

Because 'A World Without Insects Is Not Worth Living In,' Germany Announces Plan to Ban Glyphosate

"What we need is more humming and buzzing."

by Andrea Germanos - Common Dreams

September 4, 2019

The German government announced Wednesday it had agreed on a plan to phase out the use of glyphosate—the key chemical in the weedkiller Roundup—with a total ban set to begin by the end of 2023.

"Way to go, Germany!" tweeted the U.S.-based advocacy group Organic Consumers Association.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet agreed to the plan Wednesday. The proposal, reported Bloomberg, also says that the "government intends to oppose any request for the E.U. to renew the license to produce the weedkiller, according to a release by the environment ministry."

Kashmir Comes Home: Throughout India, Oppression, Dispossession, Greed, and Violence

“Everywhere is Kashmir”: Unraveling Weaponized, Corporatized Hindustan in India’s Northeast 

by Sarang Narasimhaiah - CounterPunch

 
September 6, 2019

“In India today,” said an Indigenous activist I recently interviewed in the northeastern Indian state of Jharkhand, “everywhere is Kashmir.”

Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0

At first glance, this statement seems overblown, perhaps even outrageous. No other part of India is as much of a consolidated internal colony as Kashmir. For that matter, Palestine is one of the only other parts of the world that can match or exceed Kashmir’s horrific past and renewed present of curfews, communication blackouts, transportation blockades, forced disappearances, and military and paramilitary brutality and bloodshed. (India’s ever-closer collaboration with Israel gives these parallels a particularly timely and unsettling significance.) In so many ways, nowhere is Kashmir but Kashmir itself.

And yet, the seeds of Kashmir’s never-ending misery are bearing poisonous fruit all across India. Animated by the interlocking forces of neoliberal capitalism and Hindu nationalism, the Indian state’s insatiable appetite for natural resources, ironclad commitment to elite-led economic growth, and gleeful deployment of grassroots fascist thugs and police, military, and paramilitary forces have fueled a mounting avalanche of tragedies across the country.

Together, these priorities and capacities have caused an ongoing parade of stomach-churning mob lynchings; the harassment, imprisonment, and even assassinations of dissenters like Gladson Dungdung, Stan Swamy, and Gauri Lankesh; and the gagging, obstruction, and expulsion of civil society organizations like the Lawyers Collective and the Navsarjan Trust.

More Than Just a Child Prostitution and Political Blackmail Operation: Deeper Nightmares of the Epstein Network

How the CIA, Mossad and “the Epstein Network” are Exploiting Mass Shootings to Create an Orwellian Nightmare

by Whitney Webb - MintPress News

September 6, 2019

Following another catastrophic mass shooting or crisis event, Orwellian “solutions” are set to be foisted on a frightened American public by the very network connected, not only to Jeffrey Epstein, but to a litany of crimes and a frightening history of plans to crush internal dissent in the United States.

Following the arrest and subsequent death in prison of alleged child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, a little-known Israeli tech company began to receive increased publicity, but for all the wrong reasons.

Not long after Epstein’s arrest, and his relationships and finances came under scrutiny, it was revealed that the Israeli company Carbyne911 had received substantial funding from Jeffrey Epstein as well as Epstein’s close associate and former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist and prominent Trump backer Peter Thiel.

[For complete article, please see original at MintPress News.]

Victoria Rallies with Saturday Kashmir March

Kashmir March

by Masjid Al-Iman

September 6, 2019

Listen. Hear.

Silence of the Twitters: Lambing Daniel McAdams

Meditations on Twitter's Silencing of Daniel McAdams

by Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist

September 5, 2019

Daniel McAdams, the Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, was banned from Twitter last week. Officially, it was because he used the word “retarded” to describe the odious establishment propagandist Sean Hannity after noting the hilarious fact that the Fox News host had been wearing a CIA lapel pin while “challenging the deep state”.

Unofficially, it was because McAdams has been operating for years at the apex of one of the most effective antiwar movements in the United States.

An article from Liberty Conservative News about McAdams’ encounter with the business end of the Twitter censorship hammer reports that the outspoken foreign policy critic received a notification that his account “has been suspended and will not be restored because it was found to be violating Twitter’s Terms of Service, specifically the Twitter Rules against hateful conduct.”