A Very Brazilian Coup

by Conn Hallinan - CounterPunch

June 3, 2016

On one level, the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff seems like vintage commedia dell’arte. For instance, the lower house speaker who brought the charges, Eduardo Cunha, had to step down because he has $16 million stashed in secret Swiss and U.S. bank accounts.

The man who replaced Cunha, Waldir Maranhao, is implicated in the corruption scandal around the huge state-owned oil company, Petrobras. The former vice-president and now interim president, Michel Temer, has been convicted of election fraud, and has also been caught up in the Petrobras investigation. So is Senate president Renan Calheiros, who’s also dodging tax evasion charges.

In fact, over half the legislature is currently under investigation for corruption of some kind. But there’s nothing comedic about what the fall of Rousseff and her left-leaning Workers Party will mean for the 35 million Brazilians who’ve been lifted out of poverty over the past decade, or for the 40 million newly minted members of the middle class — that’s one-fifth of Brazil’s 200 million people. 

This Week on GR

by C.L. Cook - GorillaRadio.com

June 1, 2016

Listen. Hear.

Last week, reports emerged revealing Hydro has launched lawsuits aimed at its detractors; lawsuits it swears are not SLAPPs, the infamous Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation legislated against in many more enlightened jurisdictions across North America. It's a statement of which last-century journalist, the legendary Claud Cockburn, may well have observed: 

"Never believe anything until it has been officially denied."

Ken Boon is a Peace Valley farmer standing to lose his livelihood should Site C be built. He's also the president of the Peace Valley Landowners Association, and one of the six cited by the Crown corporation in its suit for, “intentional interference with economic relations by unlawful means.” What that interruptus means for Boon, and future protest in the province, is something the BC Civil Liberties Association says is of “grave concern” to it.

Ken Boon in the first half.

And; Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine too, the NATO crusade has lots to brag about, if smashing countries to remnant pieces is their measure for success. That these "victories" were all for the betterment of the people whose lives have been shattered doesn't goes without saying - we're informed of the humaneness of NATO's necessary slaughters with such regularity some are beginning to wonder if they don't profess their goodliness too much.

Mark Taliano is a Canadian writer, researcher, and activist who, after a career instructing the youth of the nation, has turned his attention to educating the rest of us. His articles can be found at Global Research, American Herald Tribune, IntrepidReport, and at Pacific Free Press, among other places. His latest article, 'US-NATO’s Fake “Humanitarian” “War on Terrorism”, Defiant Syria' is further indictment of the West's systemic warfare cloaked in the robes of peace.

Mark Taliano and fake humanitarians waging real wars in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher emeritus and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us from the field at the bottom of the hour to bring us news of some of the good things going on in and around our city in the coming week. But first, Ken Boon and Hydro SLAPPs back at the Site C resistance.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Wednesday, 1-2pm 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/

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The Sodom and Gomorrah of the Great White North

by Captain Paul Watson - Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Earlier this week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau scolded Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May for suggesting that the tragic fires in Alberta were connected to climate change.

It appears that the Prime Minister likes to speak about climate change in the abstract but does not want to address the reality of the actual consequences of climate change.

Prime Minister Trudeau suggested that Elizabeth May’s statements were “inappropriate.”

Well he sure as hell is going to view my position as very inappropriate but there are some things about Fort McMurray and Alberta that simply need to be said.

US-NATO’s Fake “Humanitarian” “War on Terrorism”, Defiant Syria

by Mark Taliano - Global Research

May 31, 2016

There’s really no excuse for supporting the NATO/terror position. We’ve seen the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, now Syria, all built on lies, all beneath the guise of “humanitarian interventions”.

Since people with any sense of historical memory can not legitimately plead ignorance, supporters of the terrorist invasion of Syria fall into the category of “fake humanitarians”. They aren’t “progressive” or “left” when they support the criminal violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Canadian peace activist Ken Stone, recently returned from Syria, expresses similar sentiments in his newly released book, Defiant Syria: Dispatches from the Second Tour of Peace to Syria. He explains,

The point for me is to ask why otherwise intelligent people can fall for such shit (referring to a 2015 New Internationalist magazine article: “The forgotten revolution of Syria”), and not once but repeatedly. It’s not as if Syria is the very first government targeted for regime change by the USA. It’s not that people are unaware of the fact that the first casualty of war is the truth … there is never a shortage of “leftists” in the West who can be either bought or convinced through incredible naivété, warped political outlook, or Eurocentric arrogance, that the motives of Empire are good.

Israel’s Future is Terrifying: Moshe Ya’alon and Israel’s Disconcerting ‘Morality’

by Ramzy Baroud  - PalestineChronicle.com

May 31, 2016

Israeli society is constantly swerving to the Right and, by doing so, the country’s entire political paradigm is redefined regularly.

Israel is now ‘ruled by the most extreme rightwing government in its history’ has grown from being an informed assessment to a dull cliché over the course of only a few years. In fact, that exact line was used in May 2015, when rightwing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, formed his thin majority government of like-minded right-wingers, religious zealots and ultra-nationalists.

Former Defense Minister, Ya’alon,  an example

of "professionalism and morality?"

My Father’s Victory in the Pacific

by Greg Palast

May 30, 2016 

In 1995, in Chicago, veterans of Silver Post No. 282 celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their victory over Japan, marching around a catering hall wearing their old service caps, pins, ribbons and medals.

New Analysis – B.C. Ranks Worst in Canada for Unsecured Environmental Liability of Mine Sites

by MiningWatch Canada

May 30, 2016

There is a gap of at least half a billion dollars — and possibly over one billion — in unreported environmental liability that BC taxpayers may be on the hook for.

Ottawa - MiningWatch Canada today published a new analysis showing that British Columbia (BC) has the largest unsecured environmental liability for mine site clean-up costs when compared to the two other main mining jurisdictions in Canada: Ontario and Quebec.

BC’s total unsecured liability amounts to $1.5 billion, compared to $1.4 billion for Ontario and $1.2 billion for Quebec (see Table 1 in analysis, using provincial figures).

British Columbia's Mount Polley Mine: 2014

Biggest tailings spill in history

“This means that British Columbians are disproportionally more on the hook for cleaning up the mess left behind by the mining industry,” says Ugo Lapointe, Canadian program coordinator for MiningWatch Canada.

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I, Daniel Blake

by Craig Murray

26 May, 2016 

That is entirely in the context of Ken Loach’s Cannes Palme d’Or winning film I, Daniel Blake.

The film itself will now get a much greater cinema distribution than it might otherwise have anticipated.

I think it is worth highlighting some excellent points made at the winners’ press conference: 

Press Releases from William Lakes Indian Band Office Occupation

by Warrior Publications

May 26, 2016

On Tuesday morning, members of the Secwepemc Nation evicted the Chief and Band Council of Williams Lake/Sugar Cane Indian Reserve from the Williams Lake/Sugar Cane Band Office and have continued to non-violently occupy the office since.

The RCMP, aiming their guns at the unarmed Secwepemc occupiers, immediately surrounded the building and arrested April Thomas, a Secwepemc woman who just returned from presenting the plight of the Secwepemc Nation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva and is known in the community for her opposition to the elected band council system.

NFL’s War Against Science and Reason

by Robert Parry  - Consortium News

May 25, 2016


Perhaps it’s because I just watched the movie, “Concussion,” which tells the story of the National Football League’s haughty denial of the science proving football-related brain damage – and the NFL’s abuse of the truth-tellers – but I still can’t understand why so many people side with Commissioner Roger Goodell in the absurd “Deflategate” case against Tom Brady.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell

Surely, the NFL’s four-game suspension of the New England Patriots quarterback on the charge of tampering with the air pressure of footballs is not as serious as the NFL covering up the dangers from concussions (reminiscent of how the cigarette industry long denied links between smoking and cancer), but the Brady case is a microcosm of how power works and how checks and balances, including the major news media, fail. 

Eerie Silence About a New World War

by John Pilger  - Consortium News

May 27, 2016

Returning to the United States in an election year, I am struck by the silence. I have covered four presidential campaigns, starting with 1968; I was with Robert Kennedy when he was shot and I saw his assassin, preparing to kill him. It was a baptism in the American way, along with the salivating violence of the Chicago police at the Democratic Party’s rigged convention. The great counter revolution had begun.

Mushroom cloud from atomic bomb dropped
on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.

The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King Jr., had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America’s victims in faraway places.

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