2019-05-25 Input to Govt, Bill C-69 will exempt Small Modular Reactors and other nuclear/uranium reactors from impact assessment.

 Corruption, Nuclear  No Responses »
Jul 202019
 

May 25, 2019

 

FROM:  Sandra Finley

TO:  Govt of Canada,  Impact Assessment Regulations,  Consultation on the proposed Project List

Bill C-69 will exempt Small Modular Reactors and other nuclear/uranium reactors from impact assessment.

 

The elephant in the room is CORRUPTION.   You have to deal with it.

 

It did not make sense that the Liberal Govt would throw weight behind nuclear energy as a response to climate change (2018).    If you know the cross-Canada history in the last decade of the nuclear/uranium industry, no political party would champion nuclear.

When things don’t make sense, try “follow the money”.  Cameco, nuclear/uranium)

From 2013 to 2014 Key Executive Compensation rose by 43% (from $10 million to $15 million), at a time when their share value had been in uninterrupted decline since February, 2011.   . . .

Today’s (2018) share value is down by 80% over its June 2007 high.

And the CRA is after it:  through off-shoring  The uranium producer estimates it has avoided declaring $4.9-billion in Canadian income, saving it $1.4-billion in taxes, over the last 10 years.

 

WHY?  would  Bill C-69 want to exempt Small Modular Reactors and other nuclear/uranium reactors from impact assessment?  

 

It’s explained in an email I sent to Minister McKenna, posted on my blog (http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=20712  ).   Please go to the posting for the first part of the email.

 

SECOND HALF OF THE EMAIL (the corruption):    

When a population fights a reactor because it will enslave them to very expensive electricity, at the cost of investing in alternatives, and

then turns around to fight the transportation of (the industry’s estimate in 2009, more now) 20,000 truckloads of accumulated high level radioactive waste, you may, as I did, come to view the nuclear industry as a Ponzi scheme.  Someone gets left holding the bag, at the end.   “Someone” is the good old, not-yet-angry-enough citizen.

It’s pretty simple:   a business needs a revenue stream to cover its costs.  The industry has old reactors in Ontario;  billions of dollars are being spent to extend their lives.   Costs go onto electricity bills.

The last “new” reactor began construction in July 1985,  more than three decades ago.

No new reactors means no new revenue streams to replace the old ones.

BUT,  simultaneously, the industry has (by its own estimates in 2009, more now) upwards of $24 billion for the cost of building a Repository for its accumulated waste.  That estimate does not include the cost of transporting all the waste to the site. (Some years ago, the industry was required to start putting money into a fund to address those eventual costs.  It has so far collected a small portion of the necessary money.)

There’s the Ponzi:

Without new reactors they don’t have a replacement revenue stream.  So, dwindling cash in-flow.  Large out-flows.  How are they going to pay the cost of accumulated waste disposal, an estimated $30 billion dollars?   What are the existing debt-loads?  There are contaminated sites to be cleaned up, at large expense.  There isn’t one insurance company willing to sell insurance to them.    A new reactor requires capital investment.  But investors don’t line up when the potential for returns looks lousy.

No new reactors?  . . . in a Ponzi, the last guy to buy in (Ontario?) ends up footing the bill.   Most of the other provinces have said. “It’s not going to be us.”

UNLESS  . . .  unless the industry has access to the public purse to foot the bills, they’re hooped.  Seems to me.

The Liberals appear to be gambling that they can use spin doctors and count on ignorant voters.  I don’t think we are that gullible.

(The first part of the letter to Minister McKenna (at (http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=20712  ) has

  • the record, by province, of “It’s not going to be us.”  And
  • sources for the following “Big push” by the Govt )

So WHY the big push, by the Trudeau Government, to commit Canada to nuclear reactors and to have other countries adopt them as a (false) answer to climate change?   . . .   follow the money.

When I read the words of Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr’s parliamentary secretary,

we have ensured that nuclear energy will have its place,

I went to Cameco’s website.  (If you don’t know Cameco, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameco.)

Who are the current Executive and Board members?    https://www.cameco.com/about/board-of-directors 

 No longer:  Nancy Hopkins, Saskatoon corporate lawyer (with McKercher, the “Liberal” law firm)  who had been on the Cameco Board since 1992, had Cameco shares and options worth $1,001,871 in 2008;  $1,843,273 in 2009.

The fight over the North Sask River reactor was in 2009.  As mentioned, the reactor was defeated.  Not good news for Cameco’s share value.

The Fukishima nuclear reactor disaster was in March 2011, seven years ago.  Cameco shares fell, but had been falling.  The high was in mid-June, 2007,  $59.46 per share.  The next high, mid-Feb 2011, $41.34.   Down to $18.41 by the end of 2011;  no recovery – – trading around $12.00  in mid-March, 2018.   Today’s share value is down by 80% over its June 2007 high.

If Nancy did not unload her shares, the value of her portfolio investment in Cameco has plummeted.  The same is true for other Executive members of Cameco.  But investment in Cameco shares is only part of the money.

What does the compensation look like for Cameco Executives?  What’s at stake for them, or for the aspiring executives to succeed them, if the industry can’t bring new reactors on-stream?  It will be compensation + perks + share value + intangibles of being on the Board (influence, connections).

 

(Ref, chart from:  http://quote.morningstar.ca/Quicktakes/Insiders/ExecutiveCompensation.aspx?t=CCJ) 

 

Key Executive Compensation

     2012

10,234,004

     2013

10,497,424

     2014

15,062,235

      2015

14,617,837

      2016

14,446,905

 

Timothy S. Gitzel/President and Chief Executive Officer 4,772,534 4,720,325 5,099,097 5,917,347 5,924,134

 

Grant E. Isaac/Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer 1,818,511 1,760,075 2,791,418 2,076,531 2,558,113

 

Robert Steane/Senior Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer 2,396,780 2,223,135 2,591,850 3,370,965 2,624,740

 

Alice Wong/Senior Vice-President and Chief Corporate Officer 1,246,179 1,172,529 2,198,320 1,552,552 1,679,768

 

Sean Quinn/Senior Vice-President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary – 621,360 2,381,550 1,700,442 1,660,150

 

These people are in the 1%, having been given access to a public resource, once owned by a Crown Corporation.   From 2013 to 2014 Key Executive Compensation rose by 43% (from $10 million to $15 million), at a time when their share value had been in uninterrupted decline since February, 2011.   And just after the CRA – – –

Grant Isaac was into his fourth year with Cameco (Chief Financial Officer), Nancy Hopkins, corporate lawyer, her 21st year on the Board, when the CRA went after Cameco, over offshore shell companies:

The uranium producer estimates it has avoided declaring $4.9-billion in Canadian income, saving it $1.4-billion in taxes, over the last 10 years.

2013-05-01   Cameco’s $800-million tax battle, Globe & Mail  

(Update:  2017-08-17 Cameco wins PROCEDURAL victory in offshore ‘transfer pricing’ tax battle, (not the end of the case)  Financial Post)

 

Citizens were pretty pissed.  We pay taxes, they don’t.  That’s not all.  Intolerable conflicts-of-interest:

Nancy served as a Director on the Board of Governors of the University of Saskatchewan from 2005-2013, serving as the Chair of the Board in the last three years. Nancy also sat on the Board of Cameco Corporation (CCO on the TSX; CCJ on the NYSE) for 24 years, and, in that time, chaired the Compensation Committee, the Audit Committee, and the Governance Committee. (https://www.mcdougallgauley.com/people/nancy-hopkins/)

During Nancy’s time as Chair of the University Board of Governors, the Provincial Government of Brad Wall transferred (2011) between $30 and $47 million to the University EAR-MARKED for the nuclear industry.  (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sask-spending-30m-on-nuclear-research-centre-1.987996 ).  Nancy did not protect University autonomy by insisting that public funding of the University has to be “no strings attached”.  Further:

Grant Isaac was Dean of the Edwards School of Business at the U of S.   In July, 2009, Cameco Corp hired him; in 2011 he became Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer.   In January 2013, Grant was appointed by the Government to the Board of Governors of the University.

(I met with Grant when he was still Dean of the Business School, to understand whether what is taught in Economics classes is still the same as it was when I was a student there, (1967-71).   Grossly deficient economic indicators, GDP, the ability of corporations to offload costs to the public to pay, etc..   The answer was “yes”.   Grant put it this way:   “If there was a way to change it, it would have been done by now.”   So, no problem teaching junk to students.   That was in 2008 when the faculty was still on strike (http://www.cupe1975.ca/index_archive_071106.html ).  Grant went to Cameco in summer 2009.  Would he have been selected if he had been active in seeking changes to a flawed economic system that is taking the planet to the brink?

(INSERT, UPDATE:  OTHER universities ARE doing something:   2018-03-21     Hallelujah! GDAE Textbooks for Economics Courses (Tufts University))

There are no laws in Saskatchewan to prohibit corporate (or union) donations to political parties.

 

In  2009, the President of the University, Peter McKinnon, was hosted at Cameco’s fly-in fishing lodge,  Yalowega Lake, in northern Saskatchewan.   The Lodge has its own gourmet chef.   https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/follow-the-yellowcake-road.

McKinnon (who was dean of the Law School, before becoming President of the U) attacked those who challenged Nancy Hopkins’ conflict-of-interest (heavily invested in Cameco, Chair of the U Board of Governors, involved in decisions re allocation of university priorities and Government funding for the nuclear industry).  He angrily declared that there was no conflict-of-interest.

So,  WHO ELSE is on the Board?  And does it have any bearing on my question:

WHY the big push, by the Trudeau Government, to commit Canada to nuclear reactors?  It doesn’t make sense – – the level of resistance right across the country is high, and known.   The last “new” reactor began construction 30+ years ago.   To go into international negotiations and try to foist nuclear energy on other countries, when your own citizens won’t tolerate it, only undermines the integrity of Canadian business.    What’s up?

 

Anne McLellan?   She was brought onto the Cameco Board in 2006.  You may recall Anne – – for years, the only federal Liberal elected in the West (Edmonton).   Served 4 terms.  She was Federal Minister of Justice, of Health, of Natural Resources, Deputy Prime Minister, , ,  under Paul Martin and Jean Chretien.

A Liberal of influence.  Was awarded an Order of Canada.   After politics she went on corporate boards.   She earns more than a million dollars a year from her board work.  I assume there’s a reason why she was called to the Board of Cameco.

 

On February 11, 2016, as Natural Resources Minister, Carr purchased seven tickets to a NHL game featuring the Winnipeg Jets versus the Boston Bruins. His guests included the energy ministers . . . .

Carr represents the riding of Winnipeg South Centre,   https://www.ourcommons.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members/Jim-Carr(89059).

Kim Rudd, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources, Jim Carr, from Cobourg, represents the Ontario riding of  Northumberland—Peterborough South. 

Her speech to the Canadian Nuclear Association on February 22, 2018:

. . .meeting again in Copenhagen in May and we have ensured that nuclear energy will have its place in a broad, high-level discussion on a global transition to a low-carbon economy,”

Jerri Rudd,  “spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada”,  “Nuclear energy is an important part of Canada’s current clean energy basket and will continue to play a key role in achieving the country’s low-carbon future.”

who is she?  see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerri_Southcott    

 

Anyhow, there you go.   When I followed the money, on the thing that didn’t make sense to me – – if I know the list of provinces that have fought against nuclear and won – – the extent of the dedicated “no to nuclear“  (for good sound economic reasons – – as a tax-payer and consumer, I’m getting screwed), surely the Liberal Party knows the same.   I conclude it is not the interests of Canadians that are being served.   Yet again.   Corruption trumps.

For your consideration, Minister McKenna.

For your sake, for the sake of  Tax-payers’ wallets, for the sake of democracy and integrity, I wish it was otherwise.

Best regards,  Sandra Finley

= = = = = =

 

Bill C-69 will exempt Small Modular Reactors and other nuclear/uranium reactors from impact assessment.   For whose benefit?

 

The elephant in the room is CORRUPTION.   You have to deal with it. 

 

= = = = = =

ALSO A PART OF “CORRUPTION”.  

Real-life examples of the propaganda you will receive from the industry.    From a presentation by the industry to the American National Academy of Science (NAS), in Saskatoon. The state of Virginia was under petition to lift its 30-year moratorium on uranium/nuclear.  The NAS came to Saskatchewan to collect information on first-hand experience with uranium/nuclear.

 

I sent the documentation of the propaganda, in support of what Grand Chief Patrick Madahbee was saying.

2018-04-23 Nuclear: In support of Grand Chief Patrick Madahbee, email to CBC (The Current).    http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=20981

= = = = = =

Corruption is a serious issue in Canada.   There are million-dollar salaries and perks to keep in place.  Some MP’s are very well rewarded upon retirement, for Good Service to Industry.  Bill C-69, no Impact Assessment for nuclear?  Ya gotta be kidding.
Submitted, with hope of a vote for the Public Interest.
Sandra Finley
(contact info)

2019-01 1919 A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike By Graphic History Collective and David Lester

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Peace or Violence  No Responses »
Jun 082019
 

NOTE:   There is a good interview of David Lester and another member of the Collective,  CBC Radio  (https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-43-north-by-northwest) (June 8th).   (wait for it to be posted.)

 

BOOK LAUNCH  for “1919”, part of the celebrations, Miners Memorial Weekend

Cumberland B.C. Museum & Archives

Sunday, June 23,  11:00 AM

https://www.facebook.com/events/405553010273333/

= = = = = =  = = = = = =

(Scroll down to the companion comic book “Direct Action Gets the Goods“)

– – – – – – –

1919

Paperback /

In May and June 1919, more than 30,000 workers walked off the job in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They struck for a variety of reasons—higher wages, collective bargaining rights, and more power for working people. The strikers made national and international headlines, and they inspired workers to mount sympathy strikes in many other Canadian cities. Although the strike lasted for six weeks, it ultimately ended in defeat. The strike was violently crushed by police, in collusion with state officials and Winnipeg’s business elites.

One hundred years later, the Winnipeg General Strike remains one of the most significant events in Canadian history. This comic book revisits the strike to introduce new generations to its many lessons, including the power of class struggle and solidarity and the brutal tactics that governments and bosses use to crush workers’ movements. The Winnipeg General Strike is a stark reminder that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common, and the state is not afraid to bloody its hands to protect the interests of capital. In response, working people must rely on each other and work together to create a new, more just world in the shell of the old.

  • Paperback / softback, 120 pages
  • ISBN 9781771134200
  • Published January 2019

= = = = = = = =

Direct Action Gets the Goods
  • Paperback / softback
    $14.95

Art has always played a significant role in the history of the labour movement. Songs, stories, poems, pamphlets, and comics, have inspired workers to take action against greedy bosses and helped shape ideas of a more equal world. They also help fan the flames of discontent. Radical social change doesn’t come without radical art. It would be impossible to think about labour unrest without its iconic songs like “Solidarity Forever” or its cartoons like Ernest Riebe’s creation, Mr. Block.

In this vein, The Graphic History Collective has created an illustrated chronicle of the strike—the organized withdrawal of labour power—in Canada. For centuries, workers in Canada—Indigenous and non-Indigenous, union and non-union, men and women—have used the strike as a powerful tool, not just for better wages, but also for growing working-class power. This lively comic book will inspire new generations to learn more about labour and working-class history and the power of solidarity.

  • Paperback / softback, 64 pages
  • ISBN 9781771134170
  • Published January 2019

2019-05-23 ‘Frightening’: Charges Against Julian Assange Alarm Press Advocates, from NY Times

 Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Arjen Kamphuis  No Responses »
May 242019
 

By Michael M. Grynbaum and Marc Tracy

 

Journalists and press freedom groups reacted with alarm on Thursday after the Trump administration announced new charges against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader, for publishing classified information, in a case that legal experts say takes direct aim at previously sacrosanct protections for the news media.

In indicting Mr. Assange for obtaining, accepting and disseminating classified materials, the Department of Justice opened a new front in its campaign against illegal leaks. While past cases involved government employees who provided material to journalists, the Assange indictment could amount to the pursuit of a publisher for making that material available to the public.

“It’s not criminal to encourage someone to leak classified information to you as a journalist — that’s called news gathering, and there are First Amendment protections for news gathering,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer who frequently represents media organizations like CNN. “The ramifications of this are so potentially dangerous and serious for the ability of journalists to gather and disseminate information that the American people have a right to know.”

Federal prosecutors under President Trump have drawn criticism for extending a crackdown on leakers that had ramped up during President Barack Obama’s administration. The indictment of Mr. Assange — which related to WikiLeaks’ publication of secret documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst — struck some experts as a grave escalation.

“It is one thing to charge a government official who has sworn an oath not to disclose classified information,” said Matthew Miller, who served as the Justice Department’s chief spokesman under Mr. Obama’s attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr. “It’s another thing to charge someone outside the government who published information or solicited information, which is something that reporters do all the time.”

The charges against Mr. Assange are likely to face a challenge on First Amendment grounds. And journalists’ use of illegally obtained materials has been upheld in Supreme Court cases. But Mr. Miller said prosecutors had now skated to the edge of criminalizing journalistic practices.

“The Espionage Act doesn’t make any distinction between journalists and nonjournalists,” Mr. Miller said, referring to the law that Mr. Assange is accused of violating. “If you can charge Julian Assange under the law with publishing classified information, there is nothing under the law that prevents the Justice Department from charging a journalist.”

A deeply divisive figure, Mr. Assange is in some ways an unlikely martyr for press freedoms. A crusader for radical transparency, he is faulted by many American liberals for releasing hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee at the height of the 2016 presidential race.

“The calculation by the Department of Justice is that here’s someone who people don’t like,” Mr. Boutrous said. “There’s a real element of picking the weakest of the herd, or the most unpopular figure, to try to blunt the outcry.”

Justice Department officials on Thursday cited Mr. Assange’s mixed reputation as they tried to reject the notion that they were interfering with the free press.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader, after his arrest in London last month. New federal charges against him are likely to be challenged on First Amendment grounds.CreditHannah McKay/Reuters

 

“The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy, and we thank you for it,” John Demers, the head of the department’s National Security Division, said at a briefing with reporters. “It is not, and has never been, the department’s policy to target them for reporting.”

“Julian Assange is no journalist,” Mr. Demers added.

Still, press advocates were quick to condemn the Justice Department on Thursday. The American Civil Liberties Union called the indictment “a direct assault on the First Amendment.” The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press described it as “a dire threat.”

Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, said in a statement: “Obtaining and publishing information that the government would prefer to keep secret is vital to journalism and democracy. The new indictment is a deeply troubling step toward giving the government greater control over what Americans are allowed to know.”

Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard lawyer who has been a recent ally of Mr. Trump, said the case against Mr. Assange was “really the first time since the Pentagon Papers that the government has gone after publishers.”

“We all think there’s a difference between The New York Times and Assange from a practical point of view, but from a constitutional point of view, it’s hard to find that difference,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “They’re both publishing classified, stolen material.”

“This is analogous to if The New York Times and The Washington Post had been prosecuted after publishing the Pentagon Papers,” Mr. Dershowitz added, referring to the top-secret report on Vietnam whose publication in 1971 was upheld by the Supreme Court. “It’s a very, very frightening development.”

But Asha Rangappa, a lawyer and former F.B.I. counterintelligence agent, said she believed that the Justice Department had made a crucial distinction between Mr. Assange’s activity and the work of traditional journalists.

“He wasn’t simply a passive recipient of classified information; he actively participated in the breaking of the law,” Ms. Rangappa said. She added that Mr. Assange’s efforts to help his source, Ms. Manning, illegally obtain documents amounted to “aiding and abetting the criminal act itself.”

“That is a meaningful distinction from a bona fide news organization that truly has a public interest goal,” Ms. Rangappa said.

Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and misconduct by the C.I.A., among other revelations, wrote in an email that the move against Mr. Assange was troubling.

“Today Assange,” Mr. Hersh wrote. “Tomorrow, perhaps, The New York Times and other media that published so much of the important news and information Assange provided.”

Katie Benner contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘That’s Called News Gathering’: Charges Alarm Advocates of Press Freedom.

2019-04-15 Water export: Congratulations! The “Strathcona resolution” passed at the AVICC Convention!

 Merville (Strathcona, Campbell River, Comox)  No Responses »
Apr 152019
 

Background info:    2019-01-28   Intro to the “Strathcona Resolution” re Water Export, with list of related postings

From: Bruce & Nicole
Sent: April 15, 2019
Subject: Strathcona Regional District resolution
Importance: High

Hi.  I thought you might enjoy some good news, since you are fighting the same issues.

 

For those of you who have been following, you will know that the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) resolution asking the provincial government to stop approving licences for bottling and commercial sale of groundwater was being presented at the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities (AVICC) convention this weekend.

 

I am really pleased to report that the resolution was passed unanimously!!!  That means that the 53 member communities of the AVICC unanimously support the ask of that resolution, and ultimately the protection of groundwater.

 

The next step will be for the SRD and the AVICC to submit and present the resolution to the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) convention in September, and if it is successful there, it will be presented to the BC Government for action.

 

This is a huge victory!!!  Many thanks to SRD Director Brenda Leigh for championing this resolution.  This is very gratifying, after working with Director Leigh since September, and lobbying each and every member community of the AVICC for their support of this resolution.

 

Bruce Gibbons

Merville Water Guardians

 

2019-04-04 Amazing! a milestone for nature protection and a fine hour for citizen law-making! Bavaria acts on “Save the Bees”. The Guardian

 Chemical poisoning, March Against Bayer-Monsanto  No Responses »
Apr 042019
 

The Guardian published this under the title:   Bavarian ‘save the bees’ success raises green hopes in Germany

Green party hopes to make hay in elections after state adopts well-backed petition

in Berlin

A ‘save the bees’ demonstration in Munich in February
A ‘save the bees’ demonstration in Munich in February. Photograph: Sachelle Babbar/Zuma/Rex/Shutterstock

Environmentalists in Germany are celebrating a decision by Bavaria to adopt a series of measures to “save the bees” that may revolutionise farming practice across the country.

“This is a milestone for nature protection and a fine hour for citizen law-making in Bavaria,” said Ludwig Hartmann, of the Green party, one of the initiators of a petition that prompted the move. “This is a reason to be joyful, but also an incentive to jointly advance further important projects for the protection of our environment and the climate.”

The petition’s adoption into law won praise from campaigners across Europe who said they aimed to copy it. The petition received support from 1.75 million Bavarians – more than a fifth of the state electorate – and was thought to be the biggest ever of its kind.

The state government had a deadline within which to enact the petition’s demands or start negotiating with its organisers to come up with mutually acceptable alternatives that could have been put to voters in a follow-up referendum. Bavaria’s premier, Markus Söder, said he would adopt the measures in full, tweaking only a few aspects as recommended by the petition’s authors.

Other German states are now planning to hold their own public votes, including Brandenburg and North Rhine Westphalia, the country’s most populous state.

The petition called for 20% of agricultural land in Bavaria to meet organic standards by 2025, and 30% by 2030, for 10% of green spaces to be turned into wildflower meadows, and for land and streams to be more stringently protected from pesticides and fertilisers. Bavaria has the most farmed land of any German state.

Söder has stressed the need to bring Bavarians together after protests from farmers, many of whom said they were being unfairly painted as indifferent to environmental concerns.

The farmers’ main criticism related to calls for a ban on ploughing green spaces from the middle of March, which was widely said to be unrealistic because parts of Bavaria often are still covered in snow at this time.

Söder’s Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party of Angela Merkel’s CDU, has been accused by some of its supporters of being too passive in its adoption of the law.

The Greens hope to make hay in the European parliament elections in May and have been polling at about 20% for months. The EU’s agricultural policy faces reform and the Greens hope to expand their influence to promote ecological measures.

A German study published in 2017 found the abundance of flying insects had fallen by three-quarters in 25 years. A separate study published in February concluded that the world’s insects were on a path to extinction within a few decades.

Germany’s environmental ministry is taking the subject seriously, working on its own programme for insect protection, due to be completed by the summer. It will include nationwide targets to reduce light pollution as well as initiatives to increase the number of protected areas.

Fridays for Future rallies, spearheaded by the Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg, have been particularly popular in Germany, even receiving the cautious backing of Merkel. A rally on 21 June is expected to attract record numbers.

2018- GMO’s. “Modified”, the film. Where to see it.

 March Against Bayer-Monsanto, Take back the University  No Responses »
Mar 312019
 

The trailer is excellent.

WHERE TO SEE THE FILM?

https://www.modifiedthefilm.com/see-the-film

– – – – – –  – – –

Many thanks to Cindy who writes:

A small group has been able to convince the National Farmers Union (NFU) to allow us to make a brief presentation and offer a petition to sign at their national convention.

The film called “Modified,” speaks to the aggressive agenda being promoted by GMO corporations and their partners in the agriculture chemical industry.  See the link to the trailer:

https://youtu.be/p7MifQG8deM

https://www.modifiedthefilm.com/

We are very concerned about how the Agribiz sector has been operating at the University of Saskatchewan (e.g. Peter Phillips and Stuart Smyth).

There is a court challenge to U of S in the FOI (Freedom of Information) case now before Court of Queen’s Bench.

 

Courage Foundation, documentation for its nomination of Julian Assange, Nomination for the 2019 Galizia prize for Journalists, Whistleblowers & Defenders of the Right to Information

 Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Arjen Kamphuis  No Responses »
Mar 252019
 

The Courage Foundation nominates Julian Assange for the

2019 Galizia Prize for Journalists, Whistleblowers & Defenders of the Right to Information.

Julian Assange merits this award on the following grounds:

  1. Based on need

Julian Assange is the only publisher and journalist in the EU formally found to be arbitrarily detained by the UN Human Rights System, which has repeatedly called for his release, most recently on 21 December 2018. He is in dire circumstances, faces imminent termination of his asylum, extradition and life in a US prison for publishing the truth about US wars, and has been gagged and isolated since March 28, 2018. He has been kept in the UK from his young family in France for eight years (where he lived before being arbitrarily detained in the UK), has not seen the sun for almost seven years, and has been found by the United Nations to be subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.

If given to Julian Assange, this award will immediately act as a force to push against his gagging and isolation and help him to resist US determination to extradite him from the UK for publishing the truth.

As Daphne Caruana Galizia herself wrote:

“If America could burn Julian Assange at the stake, it would do so. That is the real sadness of what this situation has revealed: that when it comes down to shutting up those who inconvenience us, we’re all brothers and sisters under the skin. It is just a matter of degree. China jails Liu Xiaobo and the United States tries to do the same to Julian Assange.”

The political persecution of Julian Assange resulted in his formal recognition as a refugee under the 1951 Refugee Convention in 2012, but he has been prevented from enjoying his asylum status because the UK has unlawfully kept him in a situation of arbitrary detention, according two formal findings by the United Nations.

Mounting US pressure and a new government in Ecuador mean that he is at imminent risk of losing his internationally protected status. The Trump administration has sharply intensified its efforts to silence WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have confirmed that secret charges have been brought against Julian Assange over his publications on the US government. This week, Chelsea Manning announced she would refuse to cooperate with US authorities which have called her to testify before the WikiLeaks Grand Jury, and she is likely once again be imprisoned as a result. This development introduces a dangerous situation: it introduces the extraordinary precedent of a source being compelled to testify against a journalist for publishing true information about the government.

News broke in January that Ecuador colluded this year with the US government to have the US officials interrogate nearly a dozen Ecuadorian diplomats in London about Julian Assange. Meanwhile, all the diplomats at the Embassy have been replaced and his asylum has transformed into a highly surveilled form of imprisonment.

The New York Times has reported that Ecuador’s new President proposed to the US immediately on taking office an exchange in which Ecuador would hand over Julian Assange to secure US debt relief. Ecuador secured $4.2 billion in US backed IMF debt relief on 21 February. Medical practitioners who have seen Julian Assange during this time have denounced his deteriorating health situation and called for him to be able to access appropriate health facilities.

The increased intensity of the persecution against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange has prompted numerous members of the human rights community to denounce the actions being taken against him. Dinah PoKempner, Legal Counsel of Human Rights Watch, tweeted in April that

“Whether it agrees or not with what Julian Assange says, Ecuador’s denying him access to the Internet as well as to visitors is incompatible with its grant of asylum.  His refuge in the embassy looks more and more like solitary confinement.”

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire, who Ecuador prevented from visiting Assange, stated that

“I know of no other country where an asylee is held with no sunlight, no exercise, no visitors, no computer, no phone calls, yet all this is happening in the heart of London in the Ecuadorian Embassy, to an innocent man, Julian Assange, now in his 8th year of illegal and arbitrary detention by the United Kingdom Government”.

There is consensus in the international human rights community that the US extradition of Julian Assange should be opposed. The future of the free press hangs in the balance while the UK’s role in trapping Mr. Assange, without charge, over the past nine years, while ignoring UN findings and repeated calls for his release, augurs badly for Mr. Assange’s ability to win a future extradition battle in the UK.

In the context of Ecuador’s shifting geopolitical alliances and improper cooperation with the US government’s prosecution of its asylee, an independent recognition of his persecuted status through this award will make a material difference to Julian Assange’s legal and political ability to resist his extradition to the US. 

 

  1. Based on consequences for whistleblowers and freedom of the press in Europe (and the US)

Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States would carry serious consequences for press freedom in Europe generally, given the extraterritorial dimension of the US prosecution. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that Julian Assange can be prosecuted because he is not protected by the US Constitution, given that he is a foreigner whose work occurred outside US territory. The publications over which the US seeks to prosecute Mr. Assange (allegedly provided by Chelsea Manning) were published from Europe, in collaboration with European media organisations, while Julian Assange was in Europe.

The US seeks to apply its laws to European journalists and publishers and at the same time strip them of all US constitutional protections, effectively turning Europe into a legal “Guantanamo bay”, where US criminal law is asserted, but US rights are withheld. If the US succeeds in prosecuting Julian Assange, a non-US publisher and journalist, for revealing information the US says is secret, this would open the flood gates to an extremely dangerous precedent: his co-publishers at Der Spiegel, Le Monde, La Repubblica, Espresso, the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent and Channel 4, among others, all risk extradition to the US, and it will have a chilling effect on the press and national security reporting.

When news broke of Assange’s indictment in November 2018, the Director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, observed that it is

“[d]eeply troubling if the Trump administration, which has shown little regard for media freedom, would charge Assange for receiving from a government official and publishing classified information–exactly what journalists do all the time.” 

The New York Times has stated:

“An indictment centering on the publication of information of public interest… would create a precedent with profound implications for press freedoms”.

James Goodale, who was the lawyer representing the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, put it succinctly:

“the prosecution of Assange goes a step further. He’s not a source, he is a publisher who received information from sources. The danger to journalists can’t be overstated.”

David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, has stated:

“Prosecuting Assange would be dangerously problematic from the perspective of press freedom… and should be strongly opposed.”

 

  1. Based on the importance of Julian Assange’s contribution to protecting whistleblowers

Julian Assange applied his skills as an investigative journalist and cryptographer to protect journalistic sources, by inventing secure online dropboxes to anonymise sources. Even if one views his contribution to whistleblower protection from this prism alone, Julian Assange has done more to protect whistleblowers than any other individual person. But this effort to protect whistleblowers also permeates Mr. Assange’s work with WikiLeaks.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden stated on WikiLeaks:

“They are absolutely fearless in putting principles above politics… their efforts to build a transnational culture of transparency and source protection are extraordinary – they run towards the risks everyone else runs away from – and in a time when government control of information can be ruthless, I think that represents a vital example of how to preserve old freedoms in a new age”. 

Julian Assange himself advocated for two decades for the institutional recognition of the persecution faced by journalists and their sources, and has argued that this recognition makes a material difference to the fate of the persecuted. By contrast, silencing and imprisonment deters others who are weighing up whether to take the courageous step to blow the whistle. Julian Assange has played a pivotal role in protecting whistleblowers and promoting free access to information by being the founding member of the Courage Foundation (he resigned in 2015 due to his circumstances). He also played a crucial role in the establishment of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Icelandic Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, personally drafting model legislation to protect whistleblowers in journalists. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have also advised on policies to protect sources and whistleblowers, including through submissions to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Speech (see below).

Julian Assange directed the 2013 rescue of whistleblower Edward Snowden from US extradition from Hong Kong, managed his successful asylum process and deployed and funded WikiLeaks’ Investigations Editor Sarah Harrison to personally guide Snowden through the entire process. Harrison’s courage was recognised through the award of the SPD’s International Willy Brandt prize ‘For Special Political Courage’ in 2015.

 

  1. Based on the importance of Julian Assange’s contribution to journalism 

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have won numerous major journalism prizes, including Australia’s highest journalistic honour (equivalent to the Pulitzer), the Walkley prize for “The Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism”, The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (UK), the Index on Censorship and The Economist’s New Media Award, the Amnesty International New Media Award, and has been nominated for the UN Mandela Prize (2015) and the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize (nominated by Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire). Wikileaks journalists, including Julian Assange, are long standing members of their respective national journalist unions and WikiLeaks has been repeatedly found by courts to be a media organization.

The WikiLeaks model, which preserves the integrity of the original archive, has ushered in a golden era of in-depth journalistic investigations. WikiLeaks receives censored and restricted documents anonymously after Julian Assange invented the first anonymous secure online submission system for documents from journalistic sources. For years it was the only such system of its kind, but secure anonymous dropboxes are now seen as essential for many major news and human rights organisations.

WikiLeaks publications have been cited in tens of thousands of articles and academic papers and have been used in numerous court cases promoting human rights and human rights defenders. For example, documents published by WikiLeaks were successfully used this month in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the UK’s illegal depopulation of the Chagos Islands, which where cleared to make way for a giant US military base at the largest Island, Diego Garcia. The Islanders have been fighting for decades for recognition.

Julian Assange pioneered large international collaborations to secure maximum spread and contextual analysis of large whistleblower leaks. For “Cablegate”, WikiLeaks entered into partnerships with 110 different media organisations and continues to establish partnerships in its publications. This model has since been replicated in other international media collaborations with significant successes, such as the Panama Papers.

 

  1. Based on the importance of Julian Assange’s contribution to access to information

The WikiLeaks model, which preserves the integrity of the original archive, has also broken new ground the preservation of subjugated history. For example, documents published by Julian Assange have been used by petitioners to prove that they were subjected to extraordinary rendition by the CIA from Macedonia before the European Court of Human Rights (German citizen El-Masri v Macedonia; Assange’s publications were cited six times in the successful judgement), to free persons falsely accused of terrorism in Pakistan, as well as before the International Court of Justice in the recent Advisory Opinion in relation to the Chagos Islands case. The UK Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that Assange’s publications of US diplomatic cables are admissable as evidence in UK courts.

His contribution to bringing serious wrongdoing to light and empowering human rights victims has led to Julian Assange being recognised as a Human Rights Defender. On 21 December 2018, UN Special Rapporter for the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, Michel Forst, called for his immediate release: “It is time that Mr. Assange, who has already paid a high price for peacefully exercising his rights to freedom of opinion, expression and information, and to promote the right to truth in the public interest, recovers his freedom.“

Julian Assange’s work in exposing war crimes and the cost of war has earned his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in consecutive years. In February 2019, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire announced that she had nominated him for this year’s Peace Prize.

 

  1. Examples of Julian Assange’s work

Julian Assange has published over 10 million documents with a perfect verification record. One of his first major releases was the a copy of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp’s 2003 Standard Operating Procedures for the US Army. WikiLeaks soon released allegations of illegality by the Swiss Bank Julius Baer, Sarah Palin’s Yahoo emails, the secret bibles of Scientology and the membership list of the far-right British National Party. In 2010, WikiLeaks came to global attention by publishing tens of thousands of classified documents from the United States, from the US Army’s suppressed video evidence of helicopter gunners in ‘Collateral Murder’ who killed a Reuters photojournalist and his driver, to the Afghan War Diaries and the Iraq War Logs, which documented more than 100,000 occupation related civilian killings, to “Cablegate”, the State Department diplomatic cables. This was followed in 2011 by the “Gitmo Files” – documents on 767 of the 779 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

WikiLeaks has published the “Global Intelligence Files” (5 million emails from intelligence contractor Stratfor), “Spy Files: Russia”, two million files from Syrian political elites, the “Saudi Cables” (hundreds of thousands of files from the Saudi Foreign Ministry) as well the key draft leaks and analysis of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade (TPP) and the Trade in Service Agreement (TISA). In 2016, WikiLeaks published over 57,000 documents from Turkey’s Minister of Energy, who is President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law, revealing extensive corruption and leading to WikiLeaks being officially banned in Turkey. WikiLeaks publications have revealed extensive information on the the disasterous war on Libya and proof of US knowledge of Saudi and Quatari govenrment backing of ISIS and Al Nusra in Syria. One of WikiLeaks most recent investigations, in collaboration with major European media, revealed a corrupt arms deal between French state-owned company and the United Arab Emirates.

In the European context, Julian Assange notably revealed that the US’s National Security Agency and the CIA targeted:

  • German Chancellor Angela Merkel
  • French Presidents Hollande, Sarkozy, and Chirac, as well as French cabinet ministers and the French Ambassador to the United States.
  • the French Finance Minister and US orders of the interception of every French company contract or negotiation valued at more than $200 million
  • communications of Foreign Minister Steinmeier, in the context of moves to end extraordinary rendition flights through Germany
  • the phones of EU trade officials and economists in Brussels
  • a private climate change strategy meeting between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin
  • the Swiss phone of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Chief of Staff for long term interception
  • the Director of the Rules Division of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
  • the long-term interception of top French, Belgian and Austrian EU economic officials
  • a meeting between then French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Merkel and Berlusconi

He also published original US intercepts from French senior officials concerning:

  • the global financial crisis
  • the Greek debt crisis
  • the leadership and future of the European Union
  • the relationship between the Hollande administration and the German government of Angela Merkel
  • French efforts to determine the make-up of the executive staff of the United Nations
  • French involvement in the conflict in Palestine
  • French officials’ communications concerning US spying on France.

 

Selected Books and Articles by Julian Assange

Washington Post, ‘WikiLeaks has the same mission as The Post and the Times‘  by Julian Assange, 11 April 2017

WikiLeaks, ‘Assange Statement on the Eve of the US Election‘ 8 October 2016

‘The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to the US Empire‘, Verso, 2016

‘Introduction –  The Wikileaks Files: The World According to the US Empire‘ by Julian Assange’, Verso, 26 August 2015

Libération, ‘WikiLeaks: les toits des ambassades américaines ont des oreilles, la preuve‘ Par Pierre Alonso, Jean-Marc Manach et Julian Assange, 3 Juillet 2015

‘Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Exopression’s study on the protection of sources and whistleblowers’,  by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, 22 June 2015

‘When Google Met WikiLeaks’, OR Books, 2014

Newsweek, ‘Google is not what it seems‘, by Julian Assange, 23 October 2014

New York Times, ‘The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ by Julian Assange, 1 June 2013

‘Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet‘, OR Books, 2012

WikiLeaks, ‘Assange Statement on the First Day of Manning Trial‘, 3 June 2013

 

  1. Conclusion

Edward Snowden stated on WikiLeaks’ contribution to journalism:

“Their mere existence has stiffened the spines of institutions in many countries, because editors know if they shy away from an important but controversial story, they could be scooped by the global alternative to the national press.”

Julian Assange’s undisputed role in transforming the informational space  over the past ten years has made him a primary target of information warfare, intelligence actions and US prosecution.

The United Nations stated in December:

“It is time that Mr. Assange, who has already paid a high price for peacefully exercising his rights to freedom of opinion, expression and information, and to promote the right to truth in the public interest, recovers his freedom”

Julian Assange has already paid too high price for his work. Without substantial European institutional recognition of the severity of his persecution he is highly likely to be extradited to the United States given the increasingly close nature of the US-UK relationship and the accelerating diminution of respect for legal rights and due process in both of these two states.

This is the last year that Julian Assange is eligible for the award, given the UK’s imminent exit from the European Union, which exposes him to additional uncertainty and jeopardy.  The Courage Foundation urges the jury to give this year’s award to Julian Assange, which will armour him against a difficult battle ahead against the forces that seek to silence him, and with him, all that this award stands for.

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

RELATED:

2010-04-15 “Be nice to America or we’ll bring democracy to your country” animated cartoon

 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  

Film Critic
Gore Vidal Review
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.

2019-02-26 Terry Hicks, father of former Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks, speaks on the defence of Julian Assange & Australian teachers pass workplace motion endorsing Free Assange rallies

 Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Arjen Kamphuis  No Responses »
Feb 262019
 
Two articles pasted together:
– – – – – –  – –
God!  This is good!  Well stated, Terry Hicks.  Thank-you.

Terry Hicks, the father of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks, has endorsed the SEP rallies on March 3 in Sydney, at the Martin Place Amphitheatre at 2pm, and on March 10 in Melbourne, at the Victorian State Library at 1pm, demanding the freedom of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

Hicks campaigned tirelessly for his son David’s release from Guantanamo Bay, where he was incarcerated by US authorities for five years on false terrorism allegations. In the face of mass opposition over the illegal treatment of the Australian citizen, the Howard Liberal-National coalition government in 2007, just before the federal election that year, made a deal with Washington to repatriate Hicks to Australia, but only if he pled guilty to “providing material support to terrorism.”

Four years ago, in February 2015, a US Military Commission Review Board overturned the “terrorism” conviction against David Hicks. It was further proof that the US-led “war on terror” and its associated crimes, which included illegal detention, torture and kangaroo courts, were based on lies.

                                                 ***

Statement of Terry Hicks on the Sydney and Melbourne rallies demanding freedom for WikiLeaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange
Terry Hicks

People everywhere must demand that the Australian government act to secure the safety and freedom of Julian Assange still inside the Ecuador embassy in London. He has been confined to the embassy for nearly seven years because Australian governments of every political stripe have hung him out to dry. They refuse to speak out in his defence or take any action to secure his freedom.

Assange has not committed any crime but is being punished because he is a serious and courageous journalist who has dared to reveal the political crimes and back-room deals that the US and other governments, including Australia, want hidden from their citizens. They are determined to prevent their dirty secrets being brought into the open.

We’re led to believe that the government will protect Australian passport holders, but I soon learned, when my son David was falsely imprisoned on bogus charges of terrorism in Guantanamo, that an Australian passport has virtually no value. Australian governments will only act if they are forced to or if they think there’s political mileage in it for them.

If Julian was a famous sportsperson and the government thought they could use him to promote their own international image, they would be bending over backwards to secure his release. But because they can’t use him this way and they follow whatever the US demands, they refuse to act.

When our family began the battle to secure David’s return to Australia we were loners and had no idea of what we could do. The media were hounding us and jumping up and down denouncing David. They said he was guilty, even before he was hauled before the so-called military court system in Guantanamo. It was difficult but we kept explaining that the military courts and the allegations against David were a load of rubbish.

You might get support from high profile people, but the fight to gain Julian’s freedom depends on ordinary people speaking out. You will win them if you explain the basic issues at stake, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press and democratic rights, and you’ll be respected for your determination and your honesty.

Always remember that the story constantly alters for those who lie, but if you’re telling the truth then nothing changes, and the real story will eventually come out.

The Australian people have got to take a stand in defence of Julian Assange and understand that when they take up the struggle for his freedom, they are fighting to defend their own democratic rights.

= = = = =  =

With thanks to the World Socialist Web Site, for both these articles.

= = = = = = =

 

Australian teachers pass workplace motion endorsing Free Assange rallies
By our reporters
26 February 2019

The following motion was passed at a meeting on February 25 at Footscray City College in Melbourne. It was moved by a member of the Committee For Public Education (CFPE), which is actively promoting and campaigning for the demonstrations called by the Socialist Equality Party to demand the freedom of Julian Assange, including via its Facebook page. A leading member of the CFPE will be one of the speakers at the March 10 rally in Melbourne.

The WSWS and SEP (Australia) urge other workers to call for meetings at their workplace to discuss similar motions of endorsement.

That this sub-branch meeting of the Australian Education Union at Footscray City College endorses the campaign to free Julian Assange and supports rallies organised by the Socialist Equality Party to be held in Sydney at Martin Place Amphitheatre, March 3 at 2:00 p.m. and in Melbourne at the Victorian State Library on March 10 at 1:00 p.m.

Assange is being targeted for his leading role in WikiLeaks’ exposures of US-led war crimes, diplomatic intrigues, corporate and government corruption. We insist that the Morrison government extend to Assange the rights that should be available to him as an Australian citizen and secure his return to Australia with guarantees against indictment and extradition to the US.

2019-02-21 Venezuela: US/Canadian Attempted Coup Not About Democracy – Paul Jay (Pt1/2) (Real News Network)

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?  No Responses »
Feb 242019
 

https://therealnews.com/stories/venezuela-us-canadian-attempted-coup-not-about-democracy-paul-jay-pt1-2

Corporate media hides that the crisis in Venezuela is a class struggle, and whatever its faults, the Bolivarian revolution is a struggle for equality and democracy

(Text is below.  But please go to the URL to view the video.  /Sandra)

NOTE:  compliments of Wikipedia.

The Bolivarian Revolution is named after Simón Bolívar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule.

(Today)  According to Hugo Chávez and other supporters, the Bolivarian Revolution seeks to build an inter-American coalition to implement Bolivarianism, nationalism and a state-led economy.

On his 57th birthday, while announcing that he was being treated for cancer, Chávez announced that he had changed the slogan of the Bolivarian Revolution from “Motherland, socialism, or death” to “Motherland and socialism. We will live, and we will come out victorious“.[4]

Just so you know why the U.S. and other Powers of Exploitation love the words “Bolivarian”,  Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa (former president of Ecuador). and God forbid!  SOCIALISM!   /Sandra

Story Transcript

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Hi, I’m Jacqueline Luqman. Welcome to The Real News Network.

Are we getting the real story about Venezuela from corporate media? We’re going to talk about this today with our guest, Paul Jay, who is the Editor in Chief of The Real News Network. And we’re going to ask you some really, really pointed questions, I think, about the history of Venezuela, the role of the media, and why it matters that we’re not getting the whole story. So thanks for joining me today.

PAUL JAY: Thank you.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: What we’re hearing in corporate media about Venezuela is a very specific narrative about Nicolas Maduro being a bad guy, socialism being evil, socialism in particular being the reason the Venezuelan society is collapsing, particularly the economy. Is that the truth?

PAUL JAY: And that’s supposed to explain why socialism couldn’t work in the United States, because of what’s happening in Venezuela.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Mhmm.

PAUL JAY: Well, over the years, right from the time of when Chavez was first elected as president, at least from 2002 on, around the coup and afterwards, there was barely a report in the corporate media in the United States that didn’t use–every time they had to write the words “Hugo Chavez,” they would have to put the words “brutal dictator” in front of it, at least “dictator” if not “brutal dictator.” And of course, the same thing goes for Maduro. Now, Chavez won election after election after election. I can’t remember, it’s eight or nine elections, monitored elections, elections which the Carter Center, Jimmy Carter’s Center which does election monitoring and observing, said were free and fair and so on.

And I actually personally was on an observer mission in an election in 2004. And I went to forty polling stations and I interviewed the opposition person in every polling station. I said, “Is this thing fair, has there been any infractions?” Forty polling stations in Caracas, every single one of the opposition observers said everything was fair and done correctly. And in fact, in that particular election, the opposition actually won. It was on a reparo vote, a vote having a referendum to recall the president, and they wound up losing the actual election to recall Chavez. But election after election. But still, it’s “dictator Hugo Chavez,” “brutal dictator.” Now, when’s the last time you saw Mohammad bin Salman, the king of Saudi Arabia, a fascist who never got elected to anything, when’s the last time you saw “dictator MBS,” “dictator Mohammad bin Salman?”

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: And we absolutely know that he not only orchestrates the murder of American journalists, but he orchestrates the murder of people in his own country.

PAUL JAY: People are getting beheaded for blog posts they don’t like. So it reeks with hypocrisy. And it becomes the standard inside corporate media and journalists start to internalize the language which the State Department hammers and hammers. Because if you don’t say “dictator Hugo Chavez,” someone’s eyebrow in your newsroom might go up and say, “Oh, you’ve got some sympathy for this?” It’s a continuation of the Cold War. It’s a continuation of the kind of scare-mongering in newsrooms after 9/11, that “you don’t come into line, you’re with the terrorists, you have some kind of agenda.” And so, the reality of Venezuela is so far from what’s been presented on corporate media.

Now, the other big distortion of corporate media’s coverage of Venezuela–now what I’m about to say applies to the United States equally, but let’s say Venezuela–is there’s a class war going on in Venezuela. The elites of Venezuela were raiding the publicly owned oil company. This is just before Chavez. They used to sell products to the public oil company ten, twenty, thirty times what the products were worth. And this is the way they soaked and siphoned off the oil revenues. And of course, the oil companies themselves, the royalties they were paid to the Venezuelan state were extremely low. The inequality was gross and vulgar and inflation was high before Chavez. All this idea of “Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America,” well maybe it was, but which Venezuelans were benefiting from being the richest country in Latin America? Well, obviously the top tier elites, because the barrios, the slums, were massive, unemployment was massive.

So without looking at the rise of Chavez, and the current situation, without looking at it as an attempt by the people’s movement to transform the situation, and they called this the Bolivarian revolution, to take on the elites, if you don’t look at it in that context, you can’t understand it. Like this idea of there’s no democracy in Venezuela and there hasn’t been, not only is it election after election, but let’s talk about what the heck is democracy? Democracy is a form of state, it’s a form of government. What is a state? What is a government? Laws and a coercive mechanism, army, police, to enforce those laws. And those laws have class content, a structure of laws that defended the elites’ ability to bilk the public oil company and maintain that kind of power. Just like you have in Baltimore, a structure of laws that maintains chronic poverty and a low wage workforce that the police enforce those laws.

This idea of democracy in the abstract, it doesn’t exist. What exists is a framework which people that can get control of the government, the section of capital that controls the government, uses that control to make money, to get richer, and to maintain their power. So Chavez represented a people’s movement that challenged that. So of course, the elites all over Latin America and the Americans and a lot of elites, including the Canadian, hated that idea. Because Latin America is supposed to be a place you can just go and plunder. Canadian oil companies can go and get gold mines and the Americans can control oil and markets and so on. So this Chavez, this Bolivarian Revolution, was a challenge to all of that. So they’ve been against it from the beginning, and clearly not because United States care about democratic rights.

Elliott Abrams has been running this Venezuelan policy back in 2002. Anyone can believe Elliott Abrams, the guy who was promoting the invasion of Iraq, who backed the vicious underground covert activities in Latin America, this guy cares about democracy? John Bolton cares about democracy? It’s beyond belief that corporate media, even as bad as they are, doesn’t see through this kind of crap. So the content of the Bolivarian Revolution was a challenge to the elites. They did it within the electoral process and using that kind of form. And I think one of the great lessons of the Venezuelan revolution is that the people’s movement can use these elections, you can win these elections. Chavez came to power with an election, won all these elections very fairly. The problems, the internal problems of Venezuela, the weaknesses of the revolution are there, and how they dealt with the economy, the way some of the reforms were implemented. But revolutions are messy things. And nobody had some grand scheme of a perfect scenario about how to challenge the elites, how to transform the Venezuelan politics and economy. They had to kind of make it up as they went along. When you actually look at the measures that Chavez was proposing in terms of healthcare, education and so on.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Education, housing.

PAUL JAY: Yeah. These are reforms that you would find in any kind of country with a kind of social democratic government. I don’t know of anything that Chavez proposed that was much different than you might find in Scandinavia or something.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: So there was nothing that Chavez proposed that would have been so extreme that would have shocked the conscience of a nation, which is the narrative that we’re getting now about Maduro and how socialism in Venezuela is this big evil thing. But you’re saying it really wasn’t anything extreme, as in, let’s say, eliminating the free market.

PAUL JAY: Well, I would argue maybe they should have gone further.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Really?

PAUL JAY: Yeah. I think that Chavez allowed the elites in Venezuela, in some ways, to maintain maybe too much of their power. The idea that there was no free media is B.S. I’ve been down there many times, and newspapers were very anti-Chavez, television channels were very anti-Chavez. And they were allowed. I’m not saying they should have been suppressed. If you’re going to have this kind of democratic forum, you need to play by those rules.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: But there was a press and there was the allowing of opposition in the public.

PAUL JAY: Still is, still is. I think you ought to separate this thing into kind of buckets or categories. One, you need to understand that this Bolivarian Revolution, Chavez and then Maduro, it arose out of a process of the People’s Movement confronting the elites to have a more equal distribution of the wealth from the oil revenues and to create more democratic forums, people’s councils, all kinds of grassroots democracy was being developed. So that’s one thing. Second thing is, from very early on, including an overt coup in 2002 backed by the U.S. with Elliott Abrams involved, an attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government. So the external pressure, the attempt to undermine and weaken the Chavez government and the Maduro government. A constant battle they had to fight, and with very strong Venezuelan elites who had a lot of money and were quite powerful, the Venezuelan elites, in sections of the society the elites were able to get on their side. So that’s another thing.

Third thing, I think–and it’s easy to sit here and say, but they made some serious errors in how the economy was developed. The sanctions played a very powerful role in undermining the economy. On the other hand, there probably were measures that could have been taken earlier on, during the Chavez years and during this Maduro presidency, that would’ve made Venezuela more resistant to the effect of these sanctions. I mean, one of the reasons the Americans are really piling it on now is because of the weakness of the Venezuelan economy. It makes them vulnerable. And so, because they see the vulnerability, they are trying to tip the balance and see if they can’t bring the government down.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Right. But it’s a vulnerability that the United States is–I wouldn’t say one hundred percent responsible for, but like you said, is significantly responsible for.

PAUL JAY: Significantly.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: We’ve manipulated, we’ve created a situation for our government and private sector, and those sections of capital, to manipulate at this very moment in time.

PAUL JAY: I mean, the role of the external pressure, the role of sanctions, it’s a very important factor. But if we’re going to learn the lessons, and this is especially for Venezuelans, but even for us to learn the lessons of Venezuela, we shouldn’t be afraid to discuss the weaknesses and what the problems were. But whatever the weaknesses were, any revolutionary process is going to be messy. There’s no scheme, there’s no playbook. How do you transform these kinds of modern capitalist countries, and especially one that is so dependent on oil, how do you transform that into a socialist, more progressive, a fairer society and all that? There’s no playbook for that. So as many problems as there were and are, mistakes were made, how could it be otherwise?

All that being said, from the point of view of people living in United States or Canada or other countries, our number one concern at this moment of time, is there going to be international law or not? The Venezuelan problems are Venezuelan people’s problems to sort out.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Precisely.

PAUL JAY: I remember an interesting conversation. I used to produce this show in Canada, CounterSpin. And this is in the lead up to the Iraq War, 2003 I guess, or late 2002, and it was a debate show. And Lewis Lapham, who used to be editor of Harper’s Magazine, was a guest and we had an Iraqi who was in favor of U.S. intervention and arguing for it. And he was arguing Saddam Hussein is such a terrible dictator and so on, which he was. And Lapham says, “I’m really sorry that you’re living under a dictatorship, but that’s your problem. Our problem is we want, we need international law.” Because without international law, if the United States or any big power can simply march in any place it wants and change the government, then the world is in chaos. Then we’re back into the pre-World War II days that could lead to another world war.

So as people hear “international law matters–” now yeah, it gets violated all the time. And the Iraq War was a great violation, of which there were no consequences on Bush and such. And Obama should have prosecuted Bush and Cheney for war crimes. He did not.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: He did not, to the great consternation of the progressive left in this country.

PAUL JAY: But that being said, we need to stand up and say, “international law,” this kind of international law against wars of aggression and interference. It came out of the lessons of World War II. It came out of the Nuremberg trials. It came out of the creation of the United Nations when people said, “We can’t have this kind of global slaughter again.” And that’s got to be our absolute, first interest. And number two, to believe that these people that can play footsie with Saudi Arabia, or frankly with Israel’s occupation of Palestine, or all kinds of similar types of reactionary governments and call them defenders of democracy somehow–

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: That’s hypocritical, and that’s putting it lightly. Actually, it’s much worse than hypocritical, it’s criminal. But what you raised about international law brought to mind the issue that we hear so much in the United States about our narrative, about how we’re not a perfect union, how we’re still learning from our mistakes. Like you said, there is no playbook, there is no manual on how to do democracy. And very often, when this country’s government makes enormous errors in the execution of our own laws, we can always find a way to excuse our less than perfect union and fall back on, “Well there’s no playbook, we’re a young country, we’re working toward a more perfect union.” But it seems that we don’t allow that very same trial and error for other governments. Instead, we go to the imperialist playbook, the capitalist playbook, the elite’s playbook.

And so, in the American media, not only is the history of the Venezuelan’s struggle for self-determination left out, but the fact that this is a class war, that this is, in Venezuela, a war between the working people taking control of their country and being at the forefront of their self-determination, and the elites. The same struggle we are having in this country. But I think we’re new to it.

Thank you so much for joining us today, for talking about the history of Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution, and the media’s role, corporate media and independent media’s role in telling the whole story. Paul Jay, thanks a lot.

 

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