ANTI-CORPORATISM

RENEE PARSONS—The F35 was commissioned by the Pentagon in 1995 at a cost of $1.5 Trillion, becoming the most expensive weapon system in US history as well as providing significant technical challenges including a “catastrophic engine failure” with total damage estimated at $50 million, a “life threatening ejection seat malfunction” and a crash in South Carolina due to a faulty fuel tube.  The new controversial bomber jet fighter planes will be located in a dense area surrounded by public schools, a college and residential neighborhoods.

Philip Mudd, a former CIA agent and counterterrorism analyst on the network’s payroll, made the first false accusation during a Wednesday morning appearance on “New Day.” (The abject and sleazy cowards quickly withdrew the video, no longer available on YouTube.)“I think there’s an effort to protect WikiLeaks from a pedophile who lives in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London,” Mudd said, referring to the WikiLeaks founder.  WikiLeaks quickly fired back via social media, threatening a lawsuit against CNN.

ALEX LANTIER—It is difficult to understand at this point how Notre-Dame cathedral could have found itself defenseless in the face of this type of fire. The vulnerability of French cathedral spires and roofs to fire has been well known for many centuries, with the cathedrals of Reims and Chartres having suffered major fires of this type in 1481 and 1506, respectively.Notre-Dame was spared major fires not only during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but also during the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, when Parisian workers attacked the structure as they rose up against the Church, and also during the two world wars of the 20th century.Despite all the vast technological advances that humanity has made in the 21st century, it is in this century that the famous cathedral was ravaged by fire. Serious questions are posed, with budgets in France and across Europe entirely turned to austerity and tax cuts for the rich, as to whether the allocation of more money on the renovation of Notre-Dame and its fire security could have averted or at least contained a blaze that ended up devastating the entire building.

TEODROSE FIKRE—Many within the US and UK government and the broader media-political establishment have cunningly noted that Assange was free to leave anytime. Their duplicity was revealed this afternoon in London, Assange was never free to leave because he knew he would be arrested on sight the minute he left the Ecuador compound. Where is the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), where is Human Rights Watch, where are the people who cry crocodile tears for journalists who are killed by tin pot dictators as Julian Assange is being tormented and silenced by the American and British governments in real time? This entire episode is showing the world that we are being served by public serpents who pretend to care about justice when they are really accomplices of the invisible hands who are bleeding our planet.