Peru's New Crisis: Cuts, Corruption, and a Constitutional Impasse

Peru’s Constitutional Crisis Cuts Deep Due to Endemic Corruption

by TRNN

October 11, 2019

The standoff between Peru's president and its legislature has found a temporary resolution, but the corruption crisis continues and the left might be able to take advantage of the situation.

For almost a week, it was unclear who is in charge of the government of Peru. That is, last week Peru’s president, Martin Vizcarra, dissolved the Congress. However, the Congress, which is controlled by far right politician Keiko Fujimori, ignored the president’s order and voted to remove the president from office instead. The vice president was then supposed to take over, but she resigned. Ultimately, Vizcarra seems to have remained in office and has now called for new congressional elections to be held on January 26 of this year.

Gerardo Renique is professor of history at the City College at University of New York and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal NACLA. Also, he is the co-author with Deborah Poole of the book Peru: Time of Fear.

ProBrexit BritPress Push Big Green Panic Button

Britain’s Pro-Brexit Press: When in Doubt, Blame the Irish

by Ari Paul - FAIR

October 11, 2019

The deadline for Britain to come up with a deal under which it would exit from the European Union is less than a month away. 

Cartoon from the Sun (3/31/19) depicting Britain’s then–Prime Minister Theresa May as a leprechaun demanding that Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar “solve the backstop problem.”

With no agreement in sight between Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a hardline Brexiteer, and his EU counterparts, the country has been jittery, to say the least.

Justice? No Justice! Guantanamo Child Detainee Deems Review Process "Hopeless"

No Escape from Guantánamo: Former Child Prisoner Boycotts Broken Review Process, Calls It “Hopeless”

by Andy Worthington

October 10, 2019

For the 40 men still held in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, the wheels of justice have, fundamentally, ground to a halt under Donald Trump.

Former Guantánamo child prisoner Hassan bin Attash, in a photo 

included in his classified military file, released by WikiLeaks in 2011.

It’s now nearly ten years since a high-level government review process established by President Obama — the Guantánamo Review Task Force — issued its recommendations about what to do with the prisoners inherited from George W. Bush. The task force recommended that 156 men should be released, that 36 men should be prosecuted, and that 48 others should continue to be held without charge or trial — on the basis that they were regarded as “too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution” (a self-evidently dubious designation, as it accepted that there were fundamental problems with the so-called evidence used to establish these men’s guilt).

Death Stalks Congo Still: Forgotten Wars, Remembered Trauma

The Forgotten Trauma of a Forgotten War: As the World Looks Away, Death Stalks the Democratic Republic of Congo

by Nick Turse - TomDispatch

October 10, 2019

GOMA, North Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of Congo - The boy was sitting next to his father, as he so often did. He mimicked his dad in every way. He wanted to be just like him, but Muhindo Maronga Godfroid, then a 31-year-old primary school teacher and farmer, had bigger plans for his two-and-a-half-year-old son.

He would go to university one day. He would become a “big name” -- not just in their village of Kibirizi, but in North Kivu Province, maybe the entire Democratic Republic of Congo. The boy was exceedingly smart.

He was, Godfroid said, “amazing.” He could grow up to be a leader in a country in desperate need of them.

Keystone Kongress: Beating Trump At His Own Stupid Game

Trump’s Opponents Have Him Beat . . . When It Comes to Incompetence 

by David Swanson - Let's Try Democracy

October 10, 2019

If Trump were to finally shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, Nancy Pelosi and Jerrold Nadler and company would not declare it acceptable, absolutely not. But what they would do would be to open a months-long investigation into the history of the victim, what Trump had said earlier in the day, who had manufactured the gun, and — above all — what foreign government they could blame it on.

In fact, I’d be willing to wager that if Trump were to vomit on Nancy Pelosi’s head, she would open a very serious and lengthy series of investigations into whether he’d had any foreign food to eat.

Do you doubt it? Let’s examine the evidence.

To Julian Assange from NoWar2019: "Know that we support you"

Letter to Julian Assange from NoWar2019

by World BEYOND War

October 8, 2019

The fourth annual conference of World BEYOND War, which was held on October 4th and 5th in Limerick, Ireland, produced this letter, which is being delivered to Julian Assange.

We are grateful to you for the work you have done exposing criminal activities and abuses of power by militaries and governments. We believe that governments’ (monstrous and criminal) behavior should not be secret. People should know what their government is doing, and what a powerful foreign government is doing to their own countries. The actual results of the work of WikiLeaks have been hugely beneficial.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, David Swanson, Joyce Nelson, Janine Bandcroft October 10, 2019

This Week on GR

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

October 10, 2019

Wars and rumours of same abound still throughout West Asia, where last week demonstrations for a more inclusive economy in Iraq were met with extreme state violence and the emergence of "mysterious sniper teams" reportedly killing protesters and police alike.

Meanwhile, American military manoeuvres in Syria stoked fears of a renewed Turkish incursion against Kurdish forces long at war there fighting those infamous agents of transnational mayhem for hire, Islamic State.

It's clear in 2019, the New World Order promised by George H. Bush thirty years ago is but a mire of perpetual warfare.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, broadcaster, and executive director of WorldBeyondWar.org.


Listen. Hear.

Some of his many book titles include: 'War Is A Lie', 'When the World Outlawed War', and 'War No More: The Case for Abolition'. David blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org, and is also the host of Talk Nation Radio. 

David Swanson in the first half.

And; while the burning question in Canada's looming election is vital to the nation, what else might we voters still undecided on "who looks best in a canoe?" want to consider before casting our franchise into the polling pot? How about something more prosaic like the privatization of Canada's water supply and sewage management systems?

The Canada Infrastructure Bank's recent announcement it would provide "innovative funding" for just such a scheme is an issue currently left undebated by all federal parties, and entirely ignored by all in the press save, according to my second guest, the lonely alternative media site, Press Progress.

Joyce Nelson is an award-winning Canadian freelance writer, researcher, and author whose articles appear in the Watershed Sentinel and at CounterPunch.org. Some of her seven book titles include: ‘The Perfect Machine: TV in the Nuclear Age,’ ‘Sultans of Sleaze: Public Relations and the Media,’ ‘Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism’ and its newly released sequel, ‘Bypassing Dystopia: Hope-filled Challenges to Corporate Rule.’

Joyce Nelson and 'Privatizing Canada’s Water Infrastructure Should be an Election Issue' 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, David Swanson and wars past not passed, and finding peace in a World Beyond 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/

Pax Americana: A Bomb Dropped Every 12 Minutes

Guns For Hire: the US Shouldn’t Be Using the Military to Police the Globe 

by John W. Whitehead - CounterPunch

October 8, 2019 

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes…known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” — James Madison

Eventually, all military empires fall and fail by spreading themselves too thin and spending themselves to death.

It happened in Rome.

It’s happening again.

At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise.

America Love, Italian Style

Italy Should Make Friends with the U.S. Public and the World By Kicking Out the U.S. Military

by David Swanson - via Scoop

4 October 2019

In the late 1980s when I was a teenager and an exchange student in Bassano del Grappa I loved Italy for the same reasons I’ve loved it ever since, reasons that include natural and human-created and human beauty. 

I found Italians on average to be friendly, kind, generous, loving, fun-loving, humble, self-critical, and intelligent. It may have also helped a little that when I told other young people that I was from the U.S. they typically thought that was super cool. Older people told me that the United States had saved Italy from Nazism.

Iraq War's Past Not Passed

New Study Documents Depleted Uranium Impacts on Children in Iraq 

by David Swanson - Let's Try Democracy

September 20, 2019 

In the years following 2003, the U.S. military dotted Iraq with over 500 military bases, many of them close to Iraqi cities. These cities suffered the impacts of bombs, bullets, chemical and other weapons, but also the environmental damage of open burn pits on U.S. bases, abandoned tanks and trucks, and the storage of weapons on U.S. bases, including depleted uranium weapons. 

Here’s a map of some of the U.S. bases:

This map and the other illustrations below have been provided by Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, one of the authors of a forthcoming article in the journal Environmental Pollution. The article documents the results of a study undertaken in Nasiriyah near Tallil Air Base. Nasiriyah was bombed by the U.S. military in 2003 and in the early 1990s.

Denying the Polocaust

Here Come the Polocaust Deniers

by Gilad Atzmon

October 05, 2019
 

Yesterday Haaretz published a tedious, clumsily written 5000 word rant titled, “The Fake Nazi Death Camp: Wikipedia’s Longest Hoax, Exposed.”

It seems that some Israelis and Jews are very disturbed that Poles have a gas chamber narrative of their own.

“For over 15 years, false claims that thousands of Poles were gassed to death in Warsaw were presented as fact. Haaretz reveals they are just the tip of an iceberg of a widespread Holocaust distortion operation by Polish nationalists”

Trumpenstein Must Die!

Trumpenstein Must Be Destroyed!

by CJ Hopkins - OffGuardian

October 5, 2019

So here we go. Like a 1960s straight-to-drive-in Hammer Film Production, the 2020 campaign season has begun. Dig into your bucket of popcorn, pop the flap on your box of Good & Plenty, turn off your mind, and enjoy the show. From the looks of the trailer, it’s going to be a doozy. That’s right, folks, it’s the final installment of the popular Trumpenstein horror movie series, TRUMPENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED!

It will be playing, more or less around the clock, on more or less every screen in existence, until November 3, 2020 … or until Trump takes that lonely walk across the White House lawn to the Marine One chopper and flies off to Mar-a-Lago in disgrace.

Making Stealth Privatization of Canada's Water Infrastructure an Election Issue

Privatizing Canada’s Water Infrastructure Should be an Election Issue

by Joyce Nelson - Global Research

October 04, 2019

With the Canadian federal election just days away, it’s amazing that there’s been no media focus on the Liberals’ plan to privatize our municipal water and wastewater systems. 

As far as I can determine, only one alternative media site, Press Progress, has mentioned this worrisome plan, which was announced by the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) on July 15, 2019 when it agreed to provide $20 million in “innovative financing” for a public-private partnership (P3) in Mapleton, Ontario.

The Township of Mapleton is seeking a private consortium to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the municipality’s new and existing water and wastewater infrastructure for twenty years. By committing $20 million to the project, the CIB claims it “will improve the cost of project financing and attract private capital expertise while ensuring appropriate risk transfer to the private sector.”

The CIB considers this a “pilot project to demonstrate new models for structuring and financing smaller municipal water and wastewater infrastructure projects.” [1]

Mors Non Est Finis: Grasping Epstein's Still Loose Ends

Former Israeli Intel Official Claims Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell Worked for Israel

by Whitney Webb - MintPress News

October 3, 2019

A recent interview given by a former high-ranking official in Israeli military intelligence has claimed that Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual blackmail enterprise was an Israel intelligence operation run for the purpose of entrapping powerful individuals and politicians in the United States and abroad.

Since the apparent death by suicide of Jeffrey Epstein in a Manhattan prison, much has come to light about his depraved activities and methods used to sexually abuse underage girls and entrap the rich and powerful for the purposes of blackmail. Epstein’s ties to intelligence, described in-depth in a recent MintPress investigative series, have continued to receive minimal mainstream media coverage, which has essentially moved on from the Epstein scandal despite the fact that his many co-conspirators remain on the loose.

Politically Indirect: Bill Maher's Liberal Pose

The Phony Liberalism of Bill Maher

by Alan MacLeod - FAIR

October 2, 2019

Despite everything he does and says, media still call HBO host a 'liberal'

Bill Maher rose from being an “edgy,” opinionated comedian to becoming one of the most influential and recognizable faces in our media.

His political talk show, Real Time With Bill Maher, has been on HBO since 2003, spanning 17 seasons with over 500 episodes to date.

Real Time continues to be one of the most popular shows on cable TV, drawing in more than 4 million viewers per episode, according to a new New York Times interview (9/30/19), which frames him as a straight-shooting satirist on an “antihypocrisy crusade,” with Maher presenting himself as the voice of liberals across the country fed up with PC culture.

The New York Times (9/30/19) parties
with Bill Maher like it’s 1991. 

Certainly, he has a legion of dedicated, primarily Democrat-voting Baby Boomer and Generation X fans, who take seriously his every pronouncement. That is why his latest outbursts are noteworthy.

Hunger for Justice As Israel's Unconscionable Imprisonments Continue: The Case of Heba al-Labadi

Jordanian-Palestinian Woman on 9th Day Of Hunger Strike in Israeli Prison 

by Robert Inlakesh - 21WIRE

October 2, 2019

 A young Jordanian woman of Palestinian descent has been illegally detained by Israeli forces and is currently on her 9th day of a hunger strike. The Western media would have been expected to have picked this story up, but unfortunately there is deafening silence.

 

On the 20th of August, Israel detained 24 year old Heba al-Labadi, on the King Hussein Bridge, whilst on the way to attend a family wedding in the West Bank city of Nablus. Heba is a Jordanian citizen and of Palestinian descent, she was travelling with her mother at the time of her detainment.

The Israeli authorities have offered no explanation as to why Heba was detained and sentenced her to 5 months in administrative detention. Administrative detention is essentially being held without charge or trial. Israel has the ability to detain Palestinians indefinitely if it so chooses.

Reports have also surfaced, claiming that Heba, who is being kept in Petah Tikva Israeli intelligence detainment centre, has been subjected to various forms of torture. Heba’s family were also forbade access to a hired lawyer.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Robert Hunziker, Dave Lindorff, Janine Bandcroft October 3, 2019

This Week on GR

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

October 3, 2019

September 11th past marked more than the eighteenth anniversary of the day western democracy died, it also commemorated the eight and a half years passed since a tsunami slammed into Japan's Fukushima prefecture.

Today, though not as intended, Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station chugs on, still creating the byproducts if not the benefits of the atomic revolution.

Till now, most of the contaminated water used to continually cool the melted-down cores of the wrecked plant has been stored in a massive tank field, stretching as far as the eye can see. But after eight and a half years, Tokyo Electric, aka TEPCO says they're running out of storage room. Fortunately however, TEPCO's got a plan.


Listen. Hear.

Robert Hunziker is an environmental journalist whose climate clarion calls appear in numerous journals and multiple languages around the World and across the internet. He’s also appeared in a variety of electronic media to talk about global climate change, penned numerous articles on the ever-quickening polar ice melt, and written extensively about the ongoing aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. His latest article on that near-forgotten catastrophe, 'Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Crisis' appears at CounterPunch.org.

Robert Hunziker in the first half.

And; those who reveal unwelcome truths are seldom rewarded. Whether receiving the punishment of whistleblower Julian Assange, languishing yet in British solitary confinement, or threats of similar treatment made by the government of Japan should any journalist there for example have the temerity to dig up dirt on the corruption at the core of its nuclear power industry, these are indeed dangerous times for truth-tellers. Now, America has deployed another answer for troublesome pests in the press and other cage rattlers.

Dave Lindorff is a publisher, investigative journalist, and author. The former Los Angeles Daily News government bureau chief and freelance reporter now writes for and publishes the multiple Project Censored award-winning online news website, This Can’t Be Happening, where a transcript of his recent NPR interview, 'Dave Lindorff Tells about Finding Himself on the US Government’s Terrorist Watch List' appears. Lindorff's book titles include, ‘This Can’t Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy,’ ‘Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For Profit Hospital Chains,’ and ‘Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.’

Dave Lindorff and what it takes to make the US Terror Watchlist 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.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/

Making An Offer He Can't Refuse: Bidding Biden Bye, Bye

Trump and Biden Put US Regime Change Gangsterism On Display In Ukraine

by Kevin Zeese - Popular Resistance 

September 27, 2019

The corporate media is telling a false story about Joe Biden and the investigation of the gas company on whose board his son Hunter Biden sat. There was an ongoing investigation of the company and Biden threatened Ukraine with a financial crisis if the prosecutor was not fired and the investigation halted.

The sworn statement of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin (beginning in paragraph 6 of the affidavit) that claims he was forced out of office by US VP Joe Biden because Shokin was investigating the gas company. Biden threatened to disapprove a billion-dollar loan to Ukraine unless Shokin was fired. Hunter was paid $50K per month for five years for being on the board even though he had no oil and gas experience.

Link to sworn statement of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, shokin-ukraine-prosecutor-sworn-statement
 

The Trouble with Greta: Not Surrendering to Youth and Hopeful Exuberance

What to Do About All Those Infernal Accusations of Cynicism and Negativity

by Mark Petrakis - Dissident Voice

September 28th, 2019

In addition to the unprecedented giveaway of the people’s assets to multi billionaires that is outlined in the green new deal, when can I expect regime change for climate, bombing for climate, imperialist words for climate compulsory sterilization for climate, etc.

— A 9.21.19 tweet from @cordeliers

I hesitated today in posting this rather “ungloved” tweet from Club des Cordeliers… because I can see how folks are all SO worked up and feeling some infusion of “hope” in the wake of all the Greta business, but post it I did anyway. It was soon followed by a comment from someone who I know personally, and who cares for me, suggesting that “it is neither healthy nor helpful to see a boogie man around every corner and bad motives through every lens.”

I think there is something important in this well-intended warning that I would like to address, as I think it is reflective of a larger pattern of responses that I expect many of us – at least around these parts – encounter in the course of our day-to-day public communications.

Indelible Stain: Snowden's Job on Assange

Edward Snowden’s Julian Assange is an Unfamiliar Julian Assange

by Patrick Anderson - MintPress News 

September 27th, 2019

There is an unquestionable contradiction between Snowden’s opposition to Assange’s arrest and the rhetorical games he plays with Assange’s character in his memoir, Permanent Record.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks’ former editor Julian Assange have a complicated relationship. On the one hand, they share important similarities: both are perceived as dangerous enemies by the United States government, and both have been documentary subjects of filmmaker Laura Poitras. On the other hand, they clearly disagree when it comes to the means of achieving government transparency and accountability. After all, if Snowden had agreed with Assange about publishing practices, it is likely that he would have followed Chelsea Manning’s example and sent the NSA documents he collected and disclosed in 2013 to WikiLeaks.

The recent publication of Permanent Record, Snowden’s 336-page memoir, takes the Snowden-Assange dynamic to new—and problematic—heights.