Sandra Finley

2019-03-14 B.C. Supreme Court Judge says: Water is a commercial commodity

Bottled, For-Profit Extraction, Export, Commodification 3 Responses »

Mar 232019

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“there is nothing untoward about the City, who is a seller, setting a purchase price for its commodity.”

– – BC Supreme Court Judge Barbara Young

Ouch! Maybe the Judge is timely – – at a time when we’re gearing up over Agri-Food Canada – International Trade’s program to fund and support businesses that will expand the export of water from Canada.

The Judge’s decision: Benoit v Strathcona (Regional District), 2019 BCSC 362 is at:

https://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/sc/19/03/2019BCSC0362.htm

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

CURRENT STATUS, April 1, 2019.

As I understand:

The lawyer for Area D Residents will return from holidays on April 5^th.
She believes there are reasonable grounds for appeal.
If it is decided to appeal, the appeal papers have to be submitted by April 14^th.
The lawyer for Area D has in her head a pretty good grasp of what would go in the appeal papers.

ACTIONS:

The National Office of the Council of Canadians has provided input.
Ecojustice has responded: they don’t have the capacity (April 14th deadline).
West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) is in conversation about assistance. Will know more about what’s possible after Area D’s lawyer is returned.

NEWS RELEASE from the CITY is appended.

– – – – – – – – – – – – –

On March 14, 2019 BC Judge Barbara Young said that Water is a commodity.

DEADLINE FOR APPEAL TO BE FILED: April 14^th.

I am contacting you and others, including the Council of Canadians. I don’t know who is able to help, on short notice. I will make a donation for the Appeal. Many others will, too.

The statement comes as a shock.

The petitioner is reluctant to appeal. His name is on the court papers, the front man on behalf of everyone else. It was hard for a small community to raise the $54,000 needed for the court hearing. The only good outcome: the Judge did not require the petitioner and community to pay the costs of the other side (the City of Campbell River), estimated to be around $100,000. The rural people were certain that the Law was on their side going into the Court hearing. It looks more like a crap shoot, now. Losing an appeal would mean bankruptcy.

SOURCE OF INFO: I spoke with Director Brenda Leigh from the Strathcona Regional District Board (Campbell River) on Vancouver Island, B.C.. I had called about another matter (a resolution regarding bottled water: 2019-01-28 Intro to the “Strathcona Resolution” re the export of Water ). This court case is a DIFFERENT matter. Don’t know if it’s been reported yet.

The water rates for “Area D” (rural) have gone from $.66 a cubic metre to $1.36 and are set to go to $1.56 at the next Meeting of the Board. The City has an easy majority on the Board. The water isn’t pumped to Area D, it’s by gravity feed, and so on. City residents pay $.68 a cubic metre. There’s an old agreement that governs (I think it was the rural area that agreed to share its water supply with Campbell River in the first place.) (In between the lines, the developers are shut out from the Planning Function for Area D; they want at it.)

Brenda was a force behind the court case over the water; she is well supported by her community, has been working hard for them, for 27 years as a Director. She is knowledgeable, even-handed and experienced.

From my point-of-view, she needs help on an issue of importance to all Canadians.

I will be appreciative of your thoughts on this matter.

Is it possible for Canadians to pull together on this and appeal a court decision in which it is stated that Water is a commodity and the City can charge whatever it likes to the adjacent rural people, many of whom are elders on pensions? As I understand, they were badgered to give up their local wells in the interests of the city folks, in the first place. They did so responsibly, by negotiating a contract to protect them against arbitrary price hikes. But that was then, a couple decades ago. The price was tied to what was paid by a local mill. The mill closed down. The pegged cost was lost. The price increase will drive people out of their homes. Which the developers and their collaborators on council will like just fine.

Best wishes,

Sandra

= = = = = = = = = = = =

With thanks to Linda: the press release from the City of Campbell River.

http://www.campbellriver.ca/docs/default-source/news/court-dismissed-challenge-to-city-water-rates-mar-19.pdf?sfvrsn=13056508_0

News Release

For details on this and other City of Campbell River services, events and information, please visit our website at www.campbellriver.ca

March 15, 2019

B.C. Supreme Court sides with City on water rates charged outside municipal boundary

On March 14, the BC Supreme Court issued its judgment on a petition challenging water fees charged to residents of Area D of the Strathcona Regional District.

In its ruling, the Court found that the City is authorized to enact bylaws to set fees for bulk water sold outside its boundaries, and to charge a fee that reflects the cost of delivering water to residents outside City boundaries.

Madam Justice Young stated that “there is nothing untoward about the City, who is a seller, setting a purchase price for its commodity.”

She concluded that the water fee increases imposed by the City are linked to the cost of delivering water, and that the City has no obligation to subsidize the water supply to the SRD.

“Along with dismissing the petition, the BC Supreme Court judgment confirms that the City has the authority to set water rates charged outside City boundaries and that the rates are valid and lawful ,” said Mayor Andy Adams. “The City bylaw was approved by Council as a matter of principle to offer services to neighbouring communities in a manner that is financially responsible and sustainable.”

The Mayor adds, “The City recognizes the Strathcona Regional District as a valued government partner, and with this court case is resolved, we commit to moving forward to work together on other areas of mutual interest.”

The petition was filed on July 4, 2018.

Campbell River’s water system distributes potable water for domestic, commercial and industrial use as well as fire protection via watermains running throughout the community, to local First Nations and a portion of Strathcona Regional District Area D.

###

Contact:

Ron Neufeld, Deputy City Manager

250-286-5765

2019-03-22 Yale Press Conference and “Science of Vaccine Forum” Features Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt) No Responses »

Mar 222019

Yale Press Conference and “Science of Vaccine Forum” Features Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. appeared at a press conference and forum on Tuesday to debate the topic of vaccine mandates at the Connecticut state legislature. Speaking in a legislative meeting room and by audio to an overflow room—packed with hundreds of parents, vaccine safety advocates, the media, and CT state legislators—Mr. Kennedy educated the crowd on Pharma/government corruption that has led to the unprecedented epidemics now claiming the health of over half of our nation’s children.

Surprisingly or perhaps not, the other panelists on the “Science of Vaccines” forum—three Yale professors and one pediatrician—cancelled their appearances at 11:00 p.m. the night before the event. Their absence is very telling of the actual strength and veracity of the “vaccines are safe and effective” mantra. Were they afraid of vaccine facts? If vaccines are so safe and effective, why didn’t they want to defend them? Explaining the lack of true vaccine safety testing and increasing pressure upon parents to fully vaccinate their children despite this, Mr. Kennedy observed that, “The last thing standing between a child and industry corruption is a mom.”

Watch the press conference on YouTube or Facebook.

2019-02-28 Wendy Holm: Connecting the dots—SNC-Lavalin, the Site C Dam, and continental water-sharing, Straight.com

Uncategorized No Responses »

Mar 222019

The proposed Site C Dam, southwest of Fort St. John on the Peace River in northwest B.C. Government of B.C.

Back in the day, as school kids, we studied propaganda as the hateful tool of bad governments. We are today immersed in it.

Venezuela is a tragic example: a blatantly staged coup to gain access to the largest oil deposits in the world. Another example is the Site C Dam on B.C.’s Peace River: it makes no sense no matter how you look at it, yet it forges ahead.

In both cases, half-truths and lies have been weaponized as propaganda by governments doing a practised lap dance with big capital in return for a G-string full of campaign contributions. Pathetic.

In both cases, the prize is natural-resource exploitation. In the case of Venezuela, it’s oil. In the case of Site C, it’s a much more valuable resource: water.

Water is more valuable than oil

Water has no substitutes. When you need water—for crops, for households, for industry, for fish and wildlife habitat, for tourism—nothing but water will do. Its value is limitless, and this writing has been on this wall for generations.

It was back in the mid-1950’s that the U.S. government tasked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) with ensuring that “America never runs out of water”. As the story goes, USACE mapped Canada’s water resources, with nine major engineering proposals being tabled. Every one relies on B.C.’s Columbia River to transfer northern water west of the Rockies and B.C.’s Peace River to transfer northern water east of the Rockies. Site C is the last dam to be built.

To ensure that Canada could not stand in the way of such plans, trade agreements were signed: first the FTA, then NAFTA, and soon the USMCA—that stripped Canadian sovereignty over our water resources.

Enter Site C. As a professional agrologist, I participated in the agricultural-impact assessment of the Site C Dam on B.C.’s Peace River and presented my findings as an expert witness before the federal-provincial Joint review panel as part of the Site C Dam’s environmental-impact-assessment process. As a journalist, I also explained the connection between Site C and continental water-sharing. Both were dismissed by the panel.

My frustration led to the spring 2018 release of a book I edited: Damming the Peace The Hidden Costs of the Site C Dam.

SNC-Lavalin scandal should be wake-up call

If Toronto-based journalist Joyce Nelson’s Chapter 10 contribution to that book has been the sleeper in this story, the ongoing SNC-Lavalin scandal is the wake-up call.

SNC-Lavalin is a Quebec-based global firm specializing in the development of water infrastructure. According to its website: “Our team has been designing and building…water…infrastructure for more than 100 years around the world.”

Follow the money. If the value of water is limitless, the incentives to stay in the game are huge. In February 2015, the RCMP laid fraud and corruption charges against SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. for massive fraud ($48 million) and corruption ($130 million) in its procurement of contracts in Libya.

This month, former Canadian attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould resigned from cabinet following alleged pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office to shelter SNC-Lavalin by allowing it to enter into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, a “pay the fine, don’t do the time” manoeuvre that would rescue SNCL from a 10-year ban on Canadian government work if found criminally guilty.

SNC-Lavalin has been one of the principal engineering firms behind the Site C Dam from the outset—the dam that sound economics, science, logic, communities, professionals, First Nations, scholars, international organizations (UN), and good public policy seem incapable of even slowing down.

You’ve got to ask yourself why?

These waters are beyond murky. It is time to follow the money and examine the full implications of the Site C Dam. According to a just-released report from the C.D. Howe Institute, it’s certainly not too late to say “stop“.

Sitting back and doing nothing is not an option.

We owe it to our children and grandchildren.

Onward.

2019-03- Mount Polley mine disaster escapes BC law because of government policy on private prosecutions

Corruption, Water No Responses »

Mar 222019

West Coast Environmental Law

by Erica Stahl, Staff Lawyer

On January 30th, 2018, the BC government decided to drop the private prosecution launched by Bev Sellars into the Mount Polley disaster. Through her private prosecution, Bev, a grandmother and former chief of the Xat’sull First Nation, gave the provincial government a second chance to show that BC can enforce its own environmental laws.

They let that chance slide away, and let us all down – while demonstrating fundamental problems with how the province deals with charges laid by members of the public against environmental offenders.

What happened

We all know the basics. On August 4th, 2014, the dam holding back a tailings pond at the Mount Polley mine above Quesnel Lake collapsed. Around 24 million cubic metres of mine tailings – containing toxins like arsenic, mercury, selenium, lead and copper – tore through the breach and down Hazeltine Creek into Quesnel Lake. Quesnel Lake is a source of drinking water and vital habitat for about a quarter of the province’s sockeye salmon. That toxin-infused sediment is still on the lake bottom, and the mine is still discharging wastewater directly into Quesnel Lake. Mount Polley was the biggest mining disaster in Canadian history, and it is ongoing.

The Province had three years from the date of the spill to lay charges under provincial laws such as the Mines Act and the Environmental Management Act. The BC Conservation Office opened an investigation to determine whether it could lay charges against the Mount Polley Mining Corporation (MPMC), but for reasons that are not clear, three years later, the government still didn’t have enough information to decide whether or not to lay charges. The newly minted Premier Horgan found this failure “disturbing.”

So on August 4th, 2017, the last day possible, Bev Sellars (with help from our Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund) laid her own charges – pointing out that even on the basis of the public record there were grounds to charge MPMC for violating BC’s environmental laws. In doing so, she asserted the right to hold the company accountable, but also held the door open for the Province to step in, take over the case and enforce its own laws. Bev alleged that MPMC had violated conditions of its operating permit, and provisions of the Environmental Management Act and the Mines Act.

There were three options for what could have happened next.

Option 1: The Province could have taken over the charges Bev laid and prosecuted MPMC. It is very expensive for individuals to run prosecutions, and arguably it’s the government’s job to enforce the law, so this would have been a good outcome.

Option 2: The Province could have allowed Bev to continue her private prosecution, while declining to get involved itself. This would have required Bev to do a lot of crowdfunding, but it would have been the second best option.

Option 3: The Province could take the private prosecution away from Bev and stay (drop) the charges. This is what they did.

Evaluating Bev’s case: Charge assessment standards

On January 30th, the BC Prosecution Service announced that it was going to take over Bev’s charges against MPMC and drop the case. Why? Because it determined that the charges did not meet the charge assessment standard. The “charge assessment standard” is the Prosecution Service’s policy of assessing whether pursuing criminal charges is in the public interest, and whether those charges are likely to result in a conviction.

In other words, the Crown prosecutors did not think that they could successfully prosecute MPMC under BC laws, or they did not think it was in the public interest to prosecute the company responsible for the largest mining disaster in Canadian history. Either result is disturbing.

Bev has said it best: “if prosecuting this case isn’t in the public interest, I don’t know what is.”

It is surprising that the Crown prosecutors did not think they could have succeeded in prosecuting Bev’s charges. One of the charges simply required evidence that there was a spill, and that it had released contaminants into waterways without treatment. Here is a video of this happening. If Crown prosecutors really did not believe that they could have succeeded in prosecuting the charges against MPMC, this means that BC’s laws for environmental protection are so weak that even the largest, most well-documented mining disaster in Canadian history does not violate them.

The government has repeatedly pointed out that it is contributing to the ongoing federal investigation into the Mount Polley disaster under the federal Fisheries Act, and that charges under federal laws may still be laid. Co-operating with the federal investigation is good, but it’s not enough. Why bother to have provincial laws if we don’t enforce them? And after a three-year provincial investigation into Mount Polley failed to result in charges, can we be confident that BC will ever lay public charges for environmental offences?

We need law reform that forces the mining sector to clean up its practices and that protects the environment. Much has been written about the desperate need to reform BC’s mining legislation, which has remained pretty much unchanged since the 19^th century gold rush. The BC Auditor General called for reform in 2016, and the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre has called for a full judicial inquiry to fix systemic failures in our province’s mining regulation.

West Coast supports these calls for change. But we’re going to focus here on another thing the Mount Polley disaster has thrown into sharp relief: the need to reform BC’s private prosecutions policy.

What are private prosecutions, and why do they matter?

Illuminated manuscript depicting the Court of King’s Bench, England, 1406.

A prosecution is the process of laying charges against an alleged offender and taking that case through the courts. A private prosecution occurs when a private citizen lays the charges, whether under the Criminal Code or the “quasi-criminal” provisions in provincial environmental laws (for example, violating certain provisions of the Environmental Management Act). Private prosecutions date back to England in the Middle Ages, a time when private citizens had primary responsibility for enforcing criminal law. Canadian courts have long recognized private prosecutions as a part of the laws of Canada.

Today, the federal government describes private prosecutions as a valuable constitutional safeguard. Private prosecutions are a tool that citizens can use in the event that the authorities fail to enforce the law, whether through inertia or partiality. When that happens, private prosecutions allow citizens to step in and uphold the rule of law.

In a world without private prosecutions, we would be utterly dependent on provincial and federal government prosecutors to enforce our laws. This would be a concerning scenario, especially if the prosecutions branch were underfunded and/or understaffed (as they often are). As we have written previously, BC has been growing steadily weaker on enforcement against environmental offenders since the early 1990s. And yet, private prosecutions are effectively not allowed in BC.

BC’s private prosecutions policy

For the above reasons, BC is a province that especially needs private prosecutions. But the BC government has a special policy around private prosecutions, one which in effect prohibits them from proceeding. The introduction to the policy gives you the general idea:

Generally, [BC Prosecutions] Branch policy does not permit a private prosecution to proceed. Crown Counsel will usually take conduct of the prosecution or direct a stay of proceedings after making a charge assessment decision.

While the words “generally” and “usually” imply that the Province allows at least some private prosecutions to proceed, in practice this is not the case. To our knowledge, all provincial private prosecutions in BC are stayed by the Crown. Thus, the government’s decision to stay the charges against Mount Polley Mining Corporation wasn’t an exception: it’s the rule.

Call for change

BC’s private prosecutions policy needs to change. It is deeply disturbing, as Premier Horgan said, that no charges were laid under provincial laws over the largest mining disaster in Canadian history. It is equally disturbing that when Bev stepped forward to hold MPMC accountable, the province wouldn’t allow the prosecution to proceed.

Private prosecutions safeguard important constitutional values, and a policy that effectively blocks them from proceeding undermines public confidence in the law – particularly in a province that hasn’t been enforcing its environmental laws. Obviously we think the government should be enforcing its own laws, but in the absence of strong enforcement it’s also important to have a policy that allows individuals to step in when needed. The federal government and the government of Ontario have policies that allow private prosecutions with merit to proceed; we should be looking at those policies and reforming our own, to ensure that British Columbians have the ability to hold environmental offenders to account.

Top photo: Bev Sellars and Jacinda Mack outside the Provincial Court of BC filing the provincial prosecution against MPMC.

Author:

Erica Stahl, Staff Lawyer

Strong Environmental Laws

Environmental Legal Aid

EDRF Legal Aid Fund

2019-03-13 The Ombudsman will fail. They have a problem with “Trust” but fail to identify that the problems are INHERENT in the system. “Extractive Sector Corporate Responsibility“. SNC Lavalin, and who comes next? Orwell. Jane Jacobs.

Corruption, For your selection (summary list recent postings), Orwell, Propaganda No Responses »

Mar 132019

Jul.19.25 (I moved the last paragraph to the top.)

From Jane Jacobs:

As individuals trying to be good, we aim at being both loyal and honest, for example. But in working life, these two virtues are often in conflict; that is, we must be loyal at the expense of honesty or, conversely, honest at the expense of loyalty to our organization or fellow workers. Does this mean, as is so often concluded, that we can be “good” only in our private lives and that moral behavior must bend or break when we participate in the world’s work?

No, that demoralizing notion is nonsense.

Clear rules – – if we heed them – – tell us when honesty takes precedence and when loyalty does if the two conflict. Understanding the reasons for contradictions in the two systems of morals and values throws light on many conundrums . . . (“Systems of Survival, A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics” (1992) xi)

. . . I (Jacobs) have not invented the two moral and value systems I shall expound. The human race has accomplished that feat during millennia of experience with trading and producing, on the one hand, and with organizing and managing territories, on the other hand. I have merely sorted out this material, analyzed the probable origins and continuing functional reasons for it, and identified types of functional and moral quagmires into which organizations and institutions sink when they confuse their own appropriate moral system with the other.

Intuitively, many of us already understand much of the material with which I shall deal, but often not with sufficient clarity. For one thing, many of us have taken on casts of mind so skewed toward one set of morals and values that we have little understanding of the other, and little if any appreciation of its integrity too. If you do not already recognize a bias you may have absorbed from education, experience, interests, or ambitions, perhaps you will discover it here. The precept “Know thyself” includes knowing the scales with which one weighs actions and attitudes in the great world of work outside oneself. . . .

– – – – – – – – – –

“Extractive Sector Corporate Responsibility“

My response (Sandra speaking) applies also to the SNC Lavalin scandal. (I don’t get it – – why would the Government confine “Corporate Responsibility” only to the “Extractive Sector” of Government?)

I took a bit of time to look into what you (Sheri) sent re the “Extractive Sector Corporate Responsibility . . . “ (thanks) – – RE the changeover from “counsellor” to “ombudsman”.

https://www.international.gc.ca/csr_counsellor-conseiller_rse/index.aspx?lang=eng

Please be aware that the Office reached the end of its mandate on May 18, 2018.

https://www.cimmes.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Claudia-Feldkamp-Ombudsman-May-2018.pdf

A power point presentation by the ombudsman

The elephant in the room for this “corporate responsibility” effort, which SNC Lavalin also illustrates: historically, over and over, citizens have had to rebel when Governments “partner” with the business sector of the society. People can figure it out: there is no integrity in the system.

The political class need money to run campaigns every 4 years; the business class want the easy money from resources which “the Government” is charged with being custodians of.

No surprise – the “partnership” works for the partners but not for the environment and not for the vast majority of citizens. Corruption is a characteristic of that system of governance. So is propaganda – – you need it to hold the system together. And when that doesn’t work, you need the military to hold it together. Gawd! It’s pretty simple.

I get frustrated by some CBC radio interviews on this subject and turn off the radio. The interviewees that rationalize – – “the ethics in Governance can’t be the same as the ethics of the individual” are not pushed to explain. Yes, the ethics in one realm can be (are) DIFFERENT from another (honesty versus loyalty, is the example below).

HOWEVER, it doesn’t get the perpetrators of corruption off the hook. Nor does it explain anything – – WHY the corruption is happening.

(SNC is going to be followed by scandals over the $105 billion Canadians are to pay for warships. The players will be (are already, by my guess) Lockheed Martin, and the two shipyards, plus the Government. Maybe the deal began under the Liberals, it will be passed along without comment to the Conservatives. The “maybe” is this: “the deal” originates with the military-industrial-government complex (in which the Universities also participate). The PMO, the PCO, the Ministers, the bureaucrats are just the Collaborators.)

The ethics of Business are different from the ethics of Government, which is fine and right. The ethics of the Individual are different from either. Why? Because the individual is tasked with looking after family and community. Business is tasked with “trading and producing”. Government operates in the realm of “organizing and managing territories; guardians of the resources (the common good)”.

But alas! we have gotten ourselves to a point where there is no line between Business and Government. They’ve become one and the same. The environment gets raped, the rapers are greatly rewarded. The gap between rich and poor just keeps widening. Hostility continues to grow. Individuals might eventually realize that their fantasy life is not long-term and it’s not based on anything that’s true and real; the fantasy most certainly isn’t going to be there for their children.

All you have to do is to look at countries that have resources coveted by the Corporations. The Corporations usurp the Government. Heavy duty corruption. Citizens become impoverished one way and another. They rebel. The U.S. and Canada invade with military forces and call it “food aid”. UNLESS there is sufficient capacity for alternative media to compete with the propaganda. And unless people from many countries shout “FOUL”!

The power point of the Ombudsman identifies the results of the current system: they have a real problem with “TRUST”. Once you blow trust, it is VERY difficult to re-establish. I don’t think they (Government + Business) CAN re-establish trust, not if the “partnering” doesn’t come to an end. The problems are inherent in a system of governance that marries the Corporate with the Government functions.

The Ombudsman for “Extractive Sector Corporate Responsibility“ is a propaganda front. She will not, indeed cannot, achieve the mission. When that becomes apparent there will be a re-branding, just as happened when “counsellor” didn’t deliver the goods. The programme was re-launched as “ombudsman”. Next will come . . . ? . . . some wonderful orwellian new speak from the poets in “Communications” (reminds me of StatsCan’s “re-spendable” revenue“. Ha ha! I still have a good laugh over that absurdity!

2013-07-12 Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia, documentary

Corruption No Responses »

Mar 132019

I wonder whether Gore Vidal figures in any history classes? He is brilliant, funny, and piercing. He died in 2012.

The documentary was released in 2013. You can find it on Netflix.

TRAILER: Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2014) – Gore Vidal Documentary HD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89QBjnkB63Y

BIOGRAPHY: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_Vidal

EXCERPT:

See also Gore Vidal´s “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How we got to be so hated” which provides a dozen pages listing in chart form the nearly 200 US military interventions [operations] since WWII.

QUESTION:

I cannot find, but I am pretty sure that for a time in his young adult years Vidal worked as a journalist reporting from one of the Latin American countries that was a target of U.S. imperialists. As I recall, he was astounded by the discrepancy between what was happening on the ground in the country, and what was being reported in the American media, to U.S. citizens. I don’t remember which country it was. If you know of any documentation regarding that introduction of Vidal to the reality of American foreign policy, I will appreciate receiving it. Muchas gracias.

VIDAL WITH PRESIDENT MIKHAEL GORBACHEV OF THE SOVIET UNION (RUSSIA)

Gorbachev is on the Cast List of the film – footage from meetings between the two.

– – – – – – – – – – –

Thanks to “Variety“:

Film Review: ‘Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia’

This highly entertaining documentary should attract healthy niche sales.

By Dennis Harvey

With:: Gore Vidal, David Mamet, Jay Parini, Nina Straight, Tim Robbins, Robert Scheer, Christopher Hitchens, Burr Steers, Dick Cavett, Jodie Evans, Sting, Mikhail Gorbachev, Chris Matthews, Barrett Prettyman. (English, Russian dialogue)

A fine memorial to one of 20th-century America’s most brilliant, original — and cranky — thinkers, “Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia” duly charts the late scribe’s artistic achievements and often glittering celebrity social life. But the emphasis is on his parallel persona as a harsh scold of U.S. social injustices and political corruptions, his remarks about which invariably got attention even while delivered from his longtime expatriate home in Italy. Primarily shot with Vidal’s full cooperation before his death a year ago at age 86, Nicholas Wrathall’s highly entertaining documentary — though it will also infuriate some — should attract healthy niche sales, especially to broadcasters.

Aptly introduced by one TV interviewer as “a thorn in the American establishment, of which he is by birth a charter member,” Vidal was raised in a family with high social and political connections. Rather than choosing politics, however, he sought fame as a novelist — but after his acclaimed first efforts, 1948’s “The City and the Pillar” caused such a scandal with its sympathetic treatment of homosexuality that he was blackballed from coverage for years by many outlets, including the New York Times. This forced him to turn toward Hollywood and Broadway for work; his successes there included the screenplay for “Ben-Hur” and stage hit “The Best Man.”

Marvelously indifferent to the notion of tact — yet so articulate he made mincemeat of famed verbal jousters like William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer, as recalled in some delicious clips here — Vidal made no secret of his own views on sexuality, which were pretty out-there even by later Gay Lib standards. (He announced, “Sex destroys relationships … I’m devoted to promiscuity,” while living many decades with platonic companion Howard Austin.)

But it was his willingness to engage with other issues of the day that often enraged conservatives. The Vietnam War, Nixon, the Reagan era rise of evangelical Christian power brokers, U.S. provocations against perceived enemy governments, President George W. Bush’s responses to 9/11 (“We’ve had bad presidents before but we’ve never had a goddamn fool”), and the escalating gap between the wealthy and the struggling (“This is a country of the rich, for the rich and by the rich”) all earned his memorably vivid tongue-lashings. He also critiqued what he deemed the general self-mythologizing of Americans as historically open-minded and resistant to institutional manipulation.

While much here will be familiar to fans (especially those who have read his memoirs), there are some surprises, like Vidal’s latter-day dismissal of good friend John F. Kennedy’s “disastrous” presidency; the revelation that he once shared a cottage with fellow pal Paul Newman; or the drama of his contentious estrangement from onetime protege Christopher Hitchens (who died in 2011, but is also extensively interviewed here).

Pic doesn’t delve deeply into Vidal’s career as a fiction writer, although it’s worth noting that an oeuvre that juggled such high-profile outrages as “Myra Breckenridge” with brilliantly crafted historical novels like “Lincoln” remains undervalued precisely because he was so prolific and popular. Clips from his film projects add to a lively mix that also encompasses much vintage news/talkshow footage (including a notable evisceration of an extremely uncomfortable young Jerry Brown during one of the Vidal’s two actual political campaigns), plus interviews with famous friends like Dick Cavett and Tim Robbins.

But the grounding material here is with the elderly Vidal himself, whom we first encounter ruminating atop his future burial plot, shrugging off the fear of death like any other opponent. Unfailingly witty and devastatingly insightful, he personifies that near-extinct species — the public intellectual.

Assembly is rock-solid.

2019-03-12 Court documents reveal Monsanto’s efforts to fight glyphosate’s ‘severe stigma’, CBC

Chemical poisoning, Genetically Modified, Sustainability, Take back the University 1 Response »

Mar 122019

Canadian firm hired to recruit scientists to publish studies that ultimately defended Roundup’s key ingredient

Gil Shochat, Sylvie Fournier

A review by CBC/Radio-Canada of internal Monsanto documents disclosed in the court case of Dewayne Johnson, who sued Monsanto and won $78 million US last October, showed the many efforts Monsanto took to fight a negative UN assessment of glyphosate, the active ingredient in its Roundup weed killer.

In March 2015, agrochemical giant Monsanto had a problem. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced that glyphosate, the principal ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed-killer product, was probably carcinogenic to humans.

Negative results from the IARC panel, which identifies and evaluates environmental causes of cancer in humans, could mean a potential hit to the company’s profitability. Roundup is a major profit generator for Monsanto. In 2015, Monsanto made nearly $4.76 billion US in sales and $1.9 billion in gross profits from its “agricultural productivity” sector, a large part of which was made up of Roundup sales, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A review by CBC/Radio-Canada of internal Monsanto documents disclosed in the court case of Dewayne Johnson, who sued Monsanto and won $78 million last October, showed the many efforts the company took to fight the IARC assessment.

The documents also reveal communications between Monsanto and a Canadian firm hired to recruit scientists to publish studies that ultimately defended glyphosate — some of which were secretly reviewed by Monsanto prior to publication. All those papers, as previously reported by CBC/Radio-Canada, were also used as part of Health Canada’s re-approval process of glyphosate in 2017.

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“Why do more?” to combat the IARC assessment, asks one internal Monsanto PowerPoint written by Bill Heydens, product safety assessment strategy lead, and Donna Farmer, a Monsanto toxicologist. Because there is “severe stigma” to a determination that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen, they wrote.

Internally, Monsanto talked about invalidating “the relevance of IARC.” It discussed putting together an expert panel that would publish its own analysis of existing studies, to counter IARC’s assessment. Heydens even wanted to know whether the company should ghostwrite a study in order to save money.

“An option would be” to add experts’ names on a publication, Heydens writes. “We would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names.”

Monsanto’s office is seen in Pays-Bas, Netherlands, in 2016. Monsanto hired Intertek, formerly known as Cantox of Mississauga, Ont., to set and co-ordinate four ‘independent expert panels,’ to publish five papers on glyphosate in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology. (Peter Braakmann/Getty Images)

Five studies, including a review article, were eventually written and published in 2016. Monsanto hired Intertek, formerly known as Cantox of Mississauga, Ont., to set and co-ordinate four “independent expert panels” to publish these papers in the journal, Critical Reviews in Toxicology. The 15 researchers concluded unanimously that glyphosate was not a carcinogen.

Those papers got noticed by federal regulators. In defending its decision to re-approve use of glyphosate in 2017, Health Canada cited those papers in its list of references. It re-approved glyphosate until 2032, a decision based in large part on studies written by industry.

Those Intertek papers may also have had an influence in the United States. In 2016, U.S. scientists sitting on an independent Environmental Protection Agency panel charged with reviewing the safety of the product recommended that the EPA look at “relevant papers,” including two written as part of the Intertek project.

All the authors would eventually sign a correction stating that Monsanto reviewed a preliminary and final draft of their review article that criticized the IARC assessment. They also admitted in the journal in 2018 that Monsanto provided a “regulatory history overview” that was not disclosed. The authors apologized for any “errors or omissions.”

Johnson’s lawyer Brent Wisner reacts as the verdict is read in Johnson’s case against Monsanto at the Superior Court of California in San Francisco on Aug. 10, 2018. A jury ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million, later reduced to $78 million, to the former school groundskeeper dying of cancer, saying Monsanto’s Roundup contributed to his disease. (Josh Edelson/Pool Photo via AP)

Intertek, the intermediary

Internal Monsanto emails show that the company closely followed the evolution of some of the articles and even edited passages.

On Jan. 6, 2016, company official Heydens writes to Intertek about one of the papers: “I think you and I should talk about how that chapter gets completed, as it is not exactly what I was expecting.”

Two days later, in another email Intertek sends Monsanto a draft version of another article, asking Heydens to look at changes suggested by certain authors. His response: “OK, I have gone through the entire document and indicated what I think should stay, what can go, and in a couple of spots I did a little editing.”

All five papers claimed they were written by independent experts and said that no Monsanto employees or lawyers reviewed the manuscripts prior to publication.

“The first thing that [Monsanto] did when it found out that IARC had classified it as a probable human carcinogen is they paid … money to Intertek to do a quote independent scientific review and that has been published in five … different articles,” says Brent Wisner, Johnson’s lawyer who won the $78 million lawsuit against Monsanto.

Monsanto disagrees with that court decision and is appealing it.

The scientists of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) pose in Lyon, France, in 2015. IARC is the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm that identifies and evaluates environmental causes of cancer in humans. (Court exhibit from Johnson vs. Monsanto trial)

That lawsuit led to the release of internal documents now widely referred to as the Monsanto Papers. They “were all carefully sculpted, carefully controlled and portions of it carefully written by Monsanto employees,” Wisner says.

The Monsanto Papers show that the panels did not have the level of independence that the company claimed. On its website, Monsanto said that the experts were “medical doctors, cancer experts and individuals who hold doctoral degrees … (who worked at) major universities and medical schools, at research institutions and as consultants.”

In November 2018, after Critical Reviews in Toxicology expressed concerns, the authors released clarifications in the journal saying that Monsanto did review the manuscripts in three of the five cases. They insisted that the changes were minor and that Monsanto did not influence the conclusions. Monsanto also said at the Johnson trial that the papers were not ghostwritten.

Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, has categorically denied having influenced studies on glyphosate. It also says that IARC is an outlier, and no major government regulator has found glyphosate to be carcinogenic. What’s more Bayer says that according to the latest science, there is no association between glyphosate and cancer for farmers, and it cites Health Canada’s recent findings, which affirm that glyphosate-based herbicides are safe when used as directed.

Twelve of the 15 authors had been consultants for Monsanto in the past, and two have now admitted that they were paid directly by the company.

Even the fact that it was orchestrated by industry suggests that [the studies were not] at all independent. The fact that they created these new publications or they organized the publication of things, well, that’s actually not how scholarship works either. We write our own papers, and we do our own work.

– John McLaughlan of Public Health Ontario, who also served on the IARC panel

“Even the fact that it was orchestrated by industry suggests that [the studies were not] at all independent,” says John McLaughlan, chief science officer and senior scientist at Public Health Ontario, who also served on the IARC panel. “The fact that they created these new publications or they organized the publication of things, well, that’s actually not how scholarship works either. We write our own papers, and we do our own work.”

“I would put a large flag of concern around the quality and integrity of those papers,” McLaughlin adds.

Intertek did not respond to questions from CBC/Radio-Canada.

Many canola farmers on the Prairies use the herbicide glyphosate on their crops. (Shutterstock)

Health Canada is unmoved

In January, Health Canada said that the “assertion of improper or misleading citations was disconcerting” in the Intertek panel papers. It did not alter the agency’s final decision regarding continued registration of glyphosate. Health Canada also said it had access to “numerous individual studies and raw scientific data during its assessment of glyphosate, including additional cancer and genotoxicity studies.”

As part of its final decision in January, Health Canada rejected the eight notices of objection filed by doctors, academics and medical groups that wanted an independent panel to review its re-approval decision.

Much of “the data that’s actually been reviewed has not been subject to independent peer review,” says lawyer Wisner, who wants outside experts without conflicts of interest to look at the science that Health Canada relied on. “Because of that we don’t really know … the scientific judgment calls that went into making this decision. I think that can be a real problem for public health.”

Health Canada stands by approval of ingredient in Roundup weed killer

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Health Canada refused to comment to CBC/Radio-Canada but has stated publicly that it looked at over 1,300 studies to come to its re-approval decision, including in many cases the raw data underpinning those studies.

Cantox, purchased by Intertek in 2010, worked on a major glyphosate safety analysis in 1999, which concluded ‘Roundup herbicide does not pose a health risk to humans.’ (Court exhibit from Johnson vs. Monsanto trial)

History repeating itself?

This was not the first time that Monsanto turned to Intertek to defend glyphosate. Cantox, purchased by Intertek in 2010, worked on a major glyphosate safety analysis in 1999, which concluded “Roundup herbicide does not pose a health risk to humans.” The study would go on to be cited over 500 times in the academic literature.

Once again, Monsanto’s Heydens discussed ghostwriting a paper and having outside scientists sign it.

“Recall that is how we handled Williams Kroes & Munro,” Heydens writes, referring to the influential scientific paper by Gary Williams, Robert Kroes and Ian Munro that was published in 2000.

The lead author, Williams, denied the allegation in a February email to CBC/Radio-Canada. The other two authors are deceased.

In his deposition, which was part of the Johnson trial, Monsanto’s Heydens said the changes he made were minor and for the sake of clarity.

But in another email from 2000, Lisa Drake, a senior Monsanto official, thanks several company employees for “data collection as well as writing, review and relationship building with the papers’ authors.” She suggests the paper be used “to build Roundup sales.”

About the Author

Gil Shochat

Investigative producer

Gil Shochat is an award-winning investigative producer-director with CBC/Radio-Canada. He’s worked in Canada and internationally on subjects including the coal industry, the Russian mafia, TD Bank, the global war on terror, as well as Canada’s role in the international asbestos trade.

2013-11-13 “An open letter to all the wild creatures of the earth”, Patrick Lane, Convocation Address, University of Victoria

Leadership, Sustainability, Take back the University No Responses »

Mar 122019

On November 13, 2013, the University of Victoria conferred an honorary degree (Doctor of Letters, honoris causa) on Patrick Lane. His convocation address, “An open letter to all the wild creatures of the earth,” published by the Times Colonist newspaper, has since been shared many times on other sites and through social media.

Convocation Address
University of Victoria
November 13, 2013

It is sixty-five years ago, you’re ten years old and sitting on an old, half-blind, grey horse. All you have is a saddle blanket and a rope for reins as you watch a pack of dogs rage at the foot of a Ponderosa pine. High up on a branch a cougar lies supine, one paw lazily swatting at the air. He knows the dogs will tire. They will slink away and then the cougar will climb down and go on with its life in the Blue Bush country south of Kamloops. It is a hot summer day. There is the smell of pine needles and Oregon grape and dust. It seems to you that the sun carves the dust from the face of the broken rocks, carves and lifts it into the air where it mixes with the sun. Just beyond you are three men on horses.

The men have saddles and boots and rifles and their horses shy at the clamour of the dogs. The man with the Winchester rifle is the one who owns the dog pack and he is the one who has led you out of the valley, following the dogs through the hills to the big tree where the cougar is trapped. You watch as the man with the rifle climbs down from the saddle and sets his boots among the slippery pine needles. When the man is sure of his footing he lifts the rifle, takes aim, and then…and then you shrink inside a cowl of silence as the cougar falls.

As you watch, the men raise their rifles and shoot them at the sun. You will not understand their triumph, their exultance. Not then. You are too young. It will take years for you to understand. But one day you will step up to a podium in an auditorium at a University on an island far to the west and you will talk about what those men did. You know now they shot at the sun because they wanted to bring a darkness into the world. Knowing that has changed you forever.

Today I look back at their generation. Most of them are dead. They were born into the First Great War of the last century. Most of their fathers did not come home from the slaughter. Most of their mothers were left lost and lonely. Their youth was wasted through the years of the Great Depression when they wandered the country in search of work, a bed or blanket, a friendly hand, a woman’s touch, a child’s quick cry. And then came the Second World War and more were lost. Millions upon millions of men, women, and children died in that old world. But we sometimes forget that untold numbers of creatures died with them: the sparrow and the rabbit, the salmon and the whale, the beetle and the butterfly, the deer and the wolf. And trees died too, the fir and spruce, the cedar and hemlock. Whole forests were sacrificed to the wars.

Those men bequeathed to me a devastated world. When my generation came of age in the mid-century we were ready for change. And we tried to make it happen, but the ones who wanted change were few. In the end we did what the generations before us did. We began to eat the world. We devoured the oceans and we devoured the land. We drank the lakes and the seas and we ate the mountains and plains. We ate and ate until there was almost nothing left for you or for your children to come.

The cougar that died that day back in 1949 was a question spoken into my life and I have tried to answer that question with my teaching, my poems, and my stories. Ten years after they killed the cougar I came of age. I had no education beyond high school, but I had a deep desire to become an artist, a poet. The death of the cougar stayed with me through the years of my young manhood. Then, one moonlit night in 1963, I stepped out of my little trailer perched on the side of a mountain above the North Thompson River. Below me was the saw mill where I worked as a first-aid man. Down a short path a little creek purled through the trees just beyond my door. I went there under the moon and kneeling in the moss cupped water in my hands for a drink. As I looked up I saw a cougar leaning over his paws in the thin shadows. He was six feet away, drinking from the same pool. I stared at the cougar and found myself alive in the eyes of the great cat. The cougar those men had killed when I was a boy came back to me. It was then I swore I would spend my life bearing witness to the past and the years to come.

I stand here looking out over this assembly and ask myself what I can offer you who are taking from my generation’s hands a troubled world. I am an elder now. There are times many of us old ones feel a deep regret, a profound sorrow, but our sorrow does not have to be yours. You are young and it is soon to be your time. A month ago I sat on a river estuary in the Great Bear Rain Forest north of here as a mother grizzly nursed her cubs. As the little ones suckled, the milk spilled down her chest and belly. As I watched her I thought of this day and I thought of you who not so long ago nursed at your own mother’s breast. There in the last intact rain forest on earth, the bear cubs became emblems of hope to me.

Out there are men and women only a few years older than you who are trying to remedy a broken world. I know and respect their passion. You too can change things. Just remember there are people who will try to stop you and when they do you will have to fight for your lives and the lives of the children to come.

Today you are graduating with the degrees you have worked so hard to attain. They will affect your lives forever. You are also one of the wild creatures of the earth. I want you for one moment to imagine you are a ten-year-old on a half-blind, grey horse. You are watching a cougar fall from the high limb of a Ponderosa Pine into a moil of raging dogs. The ones who have done this, the ones who have brought you here, are shooting at the sun. They are trying to bring a darkness into the world.

It’s your story now.
How do you want it to end?

2019-03-11 Glenn Greenwald: Chelsea Manning’s Refusal to Testify Against WikiLeaks Will Help Save Press Freedom. Democracy Now interview.

Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Arjen Kamphuis No Responses »

Mar 112019

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/11/glenn_greenwald_chelsea_mannings_refusal_to?autostart=true

Two very good interviews: Glenn Greenwald and Daniel Ellsberg on Democracy Now.

RECOMMEND: Go to the link – – the video is at top.

TEXT FOR BACK-UP:

Chelsea Manning has been sent back to jail after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. Manning, a U.S. Army whistleblower, had been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Virginia’s Eastern District to appear for questioning about her 2010 leak to WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of State Department and Pentagon documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We speak with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the founding editors of The Intercept.

Transcript

GREENWALD

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Music by Mangueira, Brazil’s most famous samba school. Last week, Mangueira won Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, getting a perfect score from judges for its float honoring Rio Councilwoman Marielle Franco, who was assassinated almost a year ago. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been sent back to jail after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Manning had been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Virginia’s Eastern District to appear for questioning about her 2010 leak to WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of State Department and Pentagon documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To talk more about the jailing of Manning, as well as other issues, including what’s happening in Venezuela, we turn right now to Glenn Greenwald, speaking to us from Brazil. He’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, one of the founding editors of The Intercept.

Glenn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about Chelsea Manning once again being jailed.

GLENN GREENWALD: I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody that Chelsea Manning is extraordinarily heroic. She has demonstrated that repeatedly over the last decade in all kinds of ways. But what she’s doing here is really remarkable, because the context is that the Trump administration is trying to do what the Obama administration tried to do but ultimately concluded it couldn’t do without jeopardizing press freedoms, which is to prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for what it regards as the crime of publishing top-secret or classified documents.

And the media in the United States has spent two years screaming about the threat that Trump poses to press freedoms because he says mean things about the media on Twitter or insults Wolf Blitzer and Chuck Todd, and yet here we have what is really a grave threat to press freedom: the attempt to make it a felony to publish classified material—which is what WikiLeaks did. Even the anti-press freedom Obama administration said this was a bridge too far for us.

And while most reporters are mute on this scandal, on this controversy, and while a lot of Democrats are supportive of it, because they still hate WikiLeaks so much from the 2016 election that they’re happy to see Julian Assange go to jail, even if it means standing behind the Trump administration, Chelsea Manning is not just opposing it, she’s opposing it to the point where she refuses to participate in it, even if it means, as it now does, that she’s going to be jailed for being in contempt of court for refusing to comply with a subpoena. We all owe our immense gratitude to Chelsea Manning for everything she’s done over the last decade, but even more so now.

AMY GOODMAN: I’d like to go back to 2017, when Mike Pompeo talked about Chelsea Manning in his first address as CIA director in April of last year [sic].

MIKE POMPEO: WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service and has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. It overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a nonstate, hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Pompeo when he was head of the CIA. Now, of course, he is secretary of state. Can you respond to what he has said, Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: This is the part I find so amazing. Do Democrats not realize the irony here of cheering for the most reactionary, right-wing forces in the Trump administration, who are the ones trying to imprison Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in order to criminalize journalism—namely, Mike Pompeo—and the person who actually first vowed to put WikiLeaks and Assange behind bars, which was then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has since left the Trump administration?

The Obama administration tried to create theories to say that WikiLeaks did more than just passively receive documents from Chelsea Manning and then publish them, because they knew they had to do that in order to prosecute WikiLeaks; otherwise, how do you justify prosecuting WikiLeaks for publishing classified documents, without also prosecuting The New York Times and The Guardian? The Justice Department, under Obama, searched high and low for evidence that WikiLeaks participated in Chelsea Manning’s taking of those documents. They found no evidence. She testified under oath that she acted alone, that they played no role whatsoever in her decision to do that.

And now, suddenly, seven years later, Mike Pompeo claims that they have evidence or that they believe that WikiLeaks told her to do it, and therefore they intend to prosecute WikiLeaks. And unfortunately, between the Republicans, who have long hated WikiLeaks for exposing the war crimes of the Bush administration, and Democrats, who now hate WikiLeaks because they published documents that were harmful to or reflected poorly on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, very few people are willing to stand up to this very serious attack on press freedom. And thankfully, Chelsea Manning is one of those people.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to John Bolton speaking about Chelsea Manning in the 2012 BBC film Wikileaks: The Secret Life of a Superpower. He was interviewed by Richard Bilton.

RICHARD BILTON: What do you think of Bradley Manning?

JOHN BOLTON: I think he committed treason. I think he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

RICHARD BILTON: What does that mean?

JOHN BOLTON: Well, treason is the only crime defined by our Constitution, and it says treason shall consist only of levying war against the United States or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. And he gave our enemies a lot of aid and comfort.

RICHARD BILTON: So what should happen to him?

JOHN BOLTON: Well, he should be prosecuted. And if he’s found guilty, he should be punished to the fullest extent possible.

RICHARD BILTON: And what is that?

JOHN BOLTON: Death.

RICHARD BILTON: You think he should be killed.

JOHN BOLTON: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: “You think you should be killed.” “Yes,” responded John Bolton, now the national security adviser. Of course, Bradley Manning became Chelsea Manning. She announced her transition the day she was sentenced. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: These are the sentiments that are driving the current attempt to prosecute WikiLeaks and Assange. And those are the monsters who are responsible for it.

So, I would hope that however angry someone might be at Julian Assange or WikiLeaks for whatever they think they did as part of the 2016 election to undermine Hillary Clinton by publishing truthful documents that showed the corruption of the DNC, however angry one might be at WikiLeaks for having done that, one can separate those emotions and understand that what the Trump administration has nothing to do with the 2016 election. The criminal proceedings that have led to Chelsea Manning’s jailing for the second time in the last decade are all about documents that were published, not in 2016, but in 2011 and 2012.

And it’s being done by people, like John Bolton, who believe that if you publish top-secret documents that report on the misdeeds and criminal acts of the U.S. government, you’re not only a criminal, but a traitor who deserves to be killed. You just heard that with your own ears. And so, anyone supporting the Trump administration’s efforts to put Julian Assange in prison because you’re angry about what he did in the 2016 election, you’re aligning yourself with and you’re empowering those warped, sociopathic sentiments that you just heard come out of John Bolton’s mouth.

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2. “I Know No One More Patriotic”: Daniel Ellsberg Praises Chelsea Manning After She Is Jailed Again

RECOMMEND: Watch the video:

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/11/i_know_no_one_more_patriotic

TEXT – BACK-UP:

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been sent back to jail after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Manning had been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Virginia’s Eastern District to appear for questioning about her 2010 leak to WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of State Department and Pentagon documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning was in prison from 2010 to 2017 for the leak. President Obama commuted her sentence before he left office. Chelsea Manning briefly spoke to reporters on Friday on her way into court.

CHELSEA MANNING: So, this is a contempt hearing. It’s a sealed hearing. The public isn’t allowed. The proceedings are going to happen in secret. The filings are sealed. So, can’t really talk about the specifics of what’s going on, beyond what we explained in the statement. But, you know, I’m pretty confident that we have a basis and a grounds on which to oppose this.

REPORTER: And you said in your statement you’re prepared to go to jail for this?

CHELSEA MANNING: If it comes to that, yeah. If it comes to that, you know, it comes to that. If it comest to going—you know, I might not leave here today, you know, free, so…

AMY GOODMAN: In a written statement, Chelsea Manning later said, quote, “I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.

“The grand jury’s questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous public testimony,” she wrote.

Well, on Sunday, Democracy Now! spoke with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg at his home in California.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: This is a continuation of seven-and-a-half years of torture of Chelsea Manning, in an effort to get her to contribute to incriminating WikiLeaks, so that they can bring Julian Assange or WikiLeaks to trial on charges that would not apply to The New York Times. It’s been speculated for years now that the secret charges, if they did exist—and apparently they do exist—against Julian Assange were under the same charges that I was first—the first person to be prosecuted for, back in 1971: violations of the Espionage Act, conspiracy and theft. It would be the same cases brought against me.

Unfortunately, bringing that against a journalist is even more blatantly a violation of the First Amendment, freedom of the press. And although Donald Trump has made it very plain he would love to prosecute and convict The New York Times, he doesn’t have the guts to do that, to do what he wants, fortunately, because it would be so obviously unconstitutional, that although his base would be happy with it and he would be happy with it, he would get into too much trouble constitutionally. So he wants to find charges against Julian that would be different from mine, because if he brought the same charges that he brought against me—in this case, against a journalist—it would clearly be found unconstitutional.

And so, Chelsea, having failed to give them what they wanted over seven-and-a-half years here she was incarcerated, or since, or in the grand jury—namely, false incriminating charges against WikiLeaks—they’re resorting again to torture, which does work at getting false confessions. That’s what it’s for. That’s what it mainly does. They want her to contradict her earlier sworn testimony many times, that she behaved in relation to WikiLeaks exactly as she would have to The New York Times or The Washington Post, to whom she went first, before going to WikiLeaks. And they didn’t pick up on what she was offering, so she went to WikiLeaks. But she took sole responsibility, not to spare them, but because that was the truth. And she tells the truth.

She’s a very patriotic person. I know no one more patriotic, actually, willing to risk and even give her own freedom, her own life, in order to preserve our constitutional freedoms and the Constitution. I admired her then. I admire her now. And right now she’s refusing to take part in basically a conspiracy against press freedom in this country, led by the president of the United States and the secretary of state.

AMY GOODMAN: Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, speaking on Sunday to Democracy Now! Ellsberg went on to talk about the historical significance of Chelsea Manning’s actions.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: We know the questions that were asked Chelsea in the day that she spent in the grand jury, and also were asked another witness, who did testify, David House. In both cases, they were asked only about their relations with WikiLeaks in 2010, nine years ago, long before the very controversial, and properly controversial, actions of WikiLeaks in the last year or two.

This was when WikiLeaks was putting out what Chelsea gave them, the video of “Collateral Murder,” which I urge people to look at. Now, I’m sure very few have seen that in the last nine years. What they are witnessing is a very typical, by all reporting, act of murder. And I say that as a former Marine operations officer who taught the laws of wars to battalion, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, at Camp Lejeune. And I would hope that anyone that I taught would recognize in that film that what they’re watching is a war crime, is murder. Not all killing in war is murder, but some of it is. And she revealed it.

U.S. SOLDIER 1: Clear. Clear.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: We’re engaging.

U.S. SOLDIER 1: Should have a van in the middle of the road with about 12 to 15 bodies.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Oh, yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!

DANIEL ELLSBERG: She also revealed massive, widespread torture being conducted by our Iraqi allies, with our knowledge and complicity, going on into President Obama’s term, from George W. Bush. So there’s a lot of resentment against her in the intelligence community and in the Army, in general, about the shameful things that she revealed. Also assassination squads, death squads, and corruption, in general, that we condoned in our allies, among dictators, like Ben Ali of Tunisia, who was forced out by nonviolent protest on the basis of Chelsea Manning’s revelations through Le Monde.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Ellsberg, speaking Sunday to Democracy Now! about Chelsea Manning. Ellsberg himself faced life imprisonment after leaking the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War. He was a high-level Pentagon official who obtained the papers while working at the RAND Corporation.

When we come back, we’ll speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.