Protesters in Ecuador [Credit: Twitter @KolectiVOZ]
“National strike against Ecuadorian government demands Assange’s freedom” by Andrea Lobo (WSWS)
An excerpt from the above linked-to article follows:
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While the corporate media outlets and the organizers themselves have sought to bury the issue during the strike itself, one of the few specific issues that the official call for the strike protests is the “rendition of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, to the United States, placing his life in danger.”
This refers to the withdrawal of Assange’s asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was seeking refuge from US efforts to capture him and process him under espionage charges potentially carrying the death penalty, for publishing hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and other files exposing US and NATO war crimes, mass spying and diplomatic conspiracies around the world…
The petty-bourgeois and bourgeois nationalist forces leading the demonstrations, principally Correa and his supporters, have increasingly dropped the mentions of Assange as they begin to recognize that a mass social explosion might catapult them into power and into having to reach a “Social Compromise” with US imperialism.
Nonetheless, the continued prominence of Assange’s defense in demonstrations reflects the profound social anger toward a historical watershed in the domination of imperialism over Ecuador and Latin America as a whole.
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Palestinian-Canadian journalist Khaled Barakat
“Palestinian Journalist Banned from Speaking in Germany” by Khaled Barakat (teleSUR)
An excerpt from the above linked-to article follows:
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The Palestinian-Canadian journalist, Khaled Barakat, was blocked from speaking about Palestine at a solidarity event held on June 22 in the German capital, Berlin.
Barakat had been requested to intervene in an event about Palestine where he was supposed to speak on the liberation of Palestine, the implication of this liberation for the Arab world, the Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan, among other issues. German authorities claimed his speeches could be a threat to the relations between the country and Israel.
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German authorities claimed that Barakat’s words were a threat to relations between Germany and Israel. That’s honest but so is this: ‘relations between nazi Germany and nazi Israel.’
An elderly women evacuated from Rukban complained of hunger due to extremely high food prices. Photo | Eva Bartlett
“Voices from Syria’s Rukban Refugee Camp Belie Corporate Media Reporting” by Eva Bartlett (In Gaza and beyond)
An excerpt from the above linked-to article follows:
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AD-DUMAYR, SYRIA — A little over a year ago — just after the Syrian army and its allies liberated the towns and villages around eastern Ghouta from the myriad armed jihadist groups that had waged a brutal campaign of torture and executions in the area — I interviewed a number the civilians that had endured life under jihadist rule in Douma, Kafr Batna and the Horjilleh Center for Displaced People just south of Damascus.
A common theme emerged from the testimonies of those civilians: starvation as a result of jihadist control over aid and food supplies, and the public execution of civilians.
Their testimonies echoed those of civilians in other areas of Syria formerly occupied by armed anti-government groups, from Madaya and al-Waer to eastern Aleppo and elsewhere.
Despite those testimonies and the reality on the ground, Western politicians and media alike have placed the blame for the starvation and suffering of Syrian civilians squarely on the shoulders of Russia and Syria, ignoring the culpability of terrorist groups.
In reality, terrorist groups operating within areas of Syria that they occupy have had full control over food and aid, and ample documentation shows that they have hoarded food and medicines for themselves. Even under better circumstances, terrorist groups charged hungry civilians grotesquely inflated prices for basic foods, sometimes demanding up to 8,000 Syrian pounds (US $16) for a kilogram of salt, and 3,000 pounds (US $6) for a bag of bread.
Given the Western press’ obsessive coverage of the starvation and lack of medical care endured by Syrian civilians, its silence has been deafening in the case of Rukban — a desolate refugee camp in Syria’s southeast where conditions are appalling to such an extent that civilians have been dying as a result. Coverage has been scant of the successful evacuations of nearly 15,000 of the 40,000 to 60,000 now-former residents of Rukban (numbers vary according to source) to safe havens where they are provided food, shelter and medical care.
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“Jean And His Friends: Children Maimed and Murdered Not Innocent Enough For Channel 4 News” by Vanessa Beeley (BSNEWS)
An excerpt from the above linked-to article follows:
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In 2014, a shell landed on Al-Manar School. my friend was killed and many of my friends were injured. Some had their legs severed, or their hands, they needed amputation and many things..” ~ 14 year old Jean Ibrahim.
Damascus – during June/July 2019 I met the family of George Ibrahim, especially his incredible son, 14 year-old Jean.
On April 14th 2014, Al Manar elementary school in Bab Touma was targeted by a terrorist mortar, fired from the occupied suburbs of Eastern Ghouta.
According to some reports, 61 children were injured, some hideously, limbs lacerated & severed by the missile, while they were gathered in the playground before 8am, before they went to their classrooms.
One child, Sinan Mtanious was martyred. Now 14 years old, Jean Ibrahim described seeing his friend murdered in front of him, the shrapnel passed from one side of his neck to the other killing him instantly…
There is not one area of Damascus that has not suffered bloodshed and loss.. but it will never be reported in Western media who have effectively promoted and supported the child killers that stalked, hunted and targeted civilians for more than six years.
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“The Guardian publishes, then censors Jewish open letter defending smeared pro-Corbyn Labour MP Chris Williamson” by Ben Norton (The Grayzone)
An excerpt from the above linked-to article follows:
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Britain’s leading newspaper The Guardian has censored an open letter published by prominent Jewish intellectuals, writers, and activists that defended leftist Labour Party Member of Parliament Chris Williamson from “anti-Semitism” smears.
The Guardian printed, but then quickly removed the letter without explanation.
Meanwhile, the paper has refused to retract a wholly discredited article that maligned journalist and political prisoner Julian Assange which has remained on the website for more than seven months. WikiLeaks says this piece is completely false, and has pledged to sue the newspaper over it.
The retracted open letter was a defense of Chris Williamson emphasizing that the socialist and anti-imperialist MP “has a longer record of campaigning against racism and fascism than most of his detractors,” and “stands as we do with the oppressed rather than the oppressor.”
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Photo by John Geoffrey Walker
“NDP Suppresses Palestinian Solidarity Again” Yves Engler (Canadian Dimension)
An excerpt from the above linked-to article follows:
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One side is playing for keeps. They oust elected representatives and block members from voting on efforts to challenge a brutal occupation. On the other side, members defending a morally righteous cause twist themselves in knots to avoid directly criticizing nakedly authoritarian party leaders.
Recently, the NDP national office overturned the vote of party members in Dartmouth-Cole Harbour after they elected Rana Zaman to represent the ridding in the upcoming federal election. Party ‘leaders’ excluded the Muslim woman of Pakistani heritage from running because she defended thousands of Palestinians mowed down by Israeli snipers during last year’s “Great March of Return” in the open-air Gaza prison. A prominent local activist, Zaman represented the party provincially in 2017.
In May the leadership of the Ontario NDP blocked a resolution on Palestinian rights from being debated at their biannual convention. According to party member Moe Alqasem, the resolution “was pushed to the very bottom of its list of resolutions on block 4” despite having “as many endorsements as the top resolution on that same list … The appeals committee refused to re-prioritize it on the list, a speech was given in favor of the re-prioritization and the room erupted into cheers and chants for a few minutes. The committee’s decision was next to be challenged on the main floor of the convention, but the chair ‘conveniently’ decided that we were behind on time…
Recently, the NDP hierarchy undermined former Toronto mayoral candidate Saron Gebresellassi’s bid to represent the party in Parkdale-High Park possibly because she signed an open letter calling on the NDP to withdraw from the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group…
Six months after suppressing the Palestine Resolution, NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière and party leader Jagmeet Singh participated in an unprecedented smear against one of Canada’s most effective advocates for Palestinian rights. After Dimitri Lascaris called on two Liberal MPs to denounce death threats made by B’nai B’rith supporters against a number of Liberal MPs and the Prime Minister, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs called on MPs to attack him, prompting Laverdière to call Lascaris “anti-Semitic” while Singh inferred as much.
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As Yves noted in another article, NDP is now able to also stand for Neoliberal Democratic Party. And, of course, if its neoliberal, then it isn’t democratic, since inequality is at the center of neoliberalism. But why, why, why are progressives playing around with the NDP? They might as well join the Hells Angels or Al Qaeda.
Christopher Calnan
“Tech Reporter’s Breaking Stories May Have Cost Him His Job” by Olivia Riggio (FAIR)
An excerpt from the above linked-to article follows:
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Three years after tech reporter Christopher Calnan was terminated from the Austin Business Journal, he received threats from its parent company for the same reason he was hired and praised for in the first place: his ability to cover breaking news about the powerful Austin-based Dell Technologies Inc.
“They recruited me because they were having a hard time getting any real, breaking news at all,” Calnan said. “Even in the interview, they asked me if I could break anything on the company, because Dell was the big company in Austin.”
Calnan had worked for the American City Business Journals (ACBJ)—a company that runs 43 local business news outlets across the country—for 11 years, and was recruited to the Austin Business Journal (ABJ) after three years of covering technology at ACBJ’s Boston-based Mass High-Tech…
Calnan’s issues with Advance and Dell began in 2015, when he wrote an article for ABJ about Dell CEO Michael Dell accepting an award from the environmental group Keep America Beautiful. The article pointed out that Dell had paid $75,000 to sponsor tables at the luncheon where he was presented with the award.
Calnan said during his reporting process, he reached out to Dell for comment and received no objections to the story. But after leaving the office on vacation, Calnan returned to find the story removed from ABJ’s site. He was asked to delete the accompanying tweets…
Calnan said he believes the performance review served to cover up the true reason behind his ultimate termination: corporate censorship by ABJ for fear of Dell’s wrath.
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“Consortium News website taken down by a malware attack after streaming program defending Julian Assange” by Kevin Reed (The Greanville Post)
An excerpt from the above linked-to article follows:
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Consortium News—a news website devoted to investigative journalism founded by the late Robert Parry and which has steadfastly defended WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange—was the target of a malware attack last Monday that took down the site for more than five hours.
That the site was rendered inoperable was initially reported in a Consortium News Twitter post, “Our website is completely down. Our media host said we have been attacked by malware. They actually tried to blame ‘the Russians’! Every article published since 2011 now gets a 404 Not Found. They are working on it. Problem started slowly on Friday first day of CN Live!”
A report published after the site was restored explained that the malicious attack shut down Consortium News “days after the premiere episode of the outlet’s live-streamed show, CN Live!” and “followed on the heels of the suspension of pro-Assange account Unity4J from Twitter.”
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I had watched CN’s first show online and, after trying to comment on the CN website, where I found and watched the video, I found that my comments were not getting through at all. I speculated (in a blog post) that perhaps CN had banned me. But I am not paranoid. There’s a lot of betrayal happening. The evil crowd doesn’t betray me; I expect evil from it. It’s the constant defection of relatively good people to the dark side that hurts – the cause of light and all those who would align with it. I was happy to discover, a few days after the attack, when I had a chance to try the website commenting feature again, that I had not been banned.
A Yappy Trade Barrier 