Friday 37th of Lockdown: Welcome to the Dictatorship? Whatever happened to Bristol’s Democracy? Hustings for This Week’s ‘postponed’ Mayoral and City Council Elections – Swedish Prof: Reinfection With Covid-19 A Myth, Icelandic Dr: Virus Arrived Dec/Jan From UK/Switzerland – Covid-19 Pandemic the Opening Shot Of WWIII? Attack Iran To Create Surge In Oil Price & Petrodollar? Planet of the Humans film: How Environment and Green Energy Movements Were Hijacked By Capitalism – 1972 photograph of Churchill’s Chum and Top Nazi War Criminal Martin Bormann in Buenos Aires? BCfm Politics Show presented by Tony Gosling
Friday 1st May 2020
At six – discussing the big stories in Bristol, Britain and around the world
After seven – straight talking and investigative reports
BCfm’s weekly Politics Show presented by Tony Gosling with Irish Republican Labour activist Martin Summers – internet only BCfm Politics Show available Friday afternoons. We are ready to go live remotely, awaiting a BCfm Covid-19 Emergency Schedule slot from managing editor Pat Hart and the team. In the light of government and Ofcom guidance they have decided not to broadcast discussion or political shows that might put the FM licence at risk and don’t want the added burden of dealing with potential Ofcom complaints.
February 2019 Ofcom complaint result: UKLFI exposed as creation of Israeli foreign ministry – Bristol Post article: BCfm cleared after being reported to Ofcom for anti-semitic conspiracy theories
Listen live http://www.bcfmradio.com/player or http://stream.bcfmradio.com:7017/live.mp3
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Part 1 news review – Hustings for Bristol’s cancelled local elections, with Libdem candidate Mary Page, Conservative candidate Samuel Williams, Trade Union Socialist Alliance Candidate Tom Baldwin and Green candidate Sandy Hore-Ruthven. Apologies from Labour candidate Marvin Rees. – Labour party: incumbent mayor Marvin Rees (apologies)
Participants: Liberal Democrat party: Mary Page – Conservative party: Samuel Williams – Trade Union & Socialist Alliance: Tom Baldwin – Green party: Sandy Hore-Ruthven
Subjects Covered: Only mayor candidate not to join us: apologies from incumbent mayor who may have been removed next week, Labour’s Marvin Rees – Rights and wrongs of postponing Bristol’s elections for 12 months – The office of mayor, does it work and how will its future now be decided? – Covid-19 Pandemic: facts about the disease, rights and wrongs of the lock-down and physical distancing, effects on family life, the unbelievable lack of testing, death, funerals and contacts with sick loved ones in hospital and care homes, devastating economic effects of the lock-downs – The homeless in Bristol are now being put up in hotels, why had it taken a pandemic to help them off the streets and what will happen when things go back to ‘normal’? – what are candidates’ visions for a post-lock-down Bristol?
Credits: Audio-Visual Engineer: David Bosankoe – Presenter: Tony Gosling – BCfm Emergency Schedule Online Politics Show – 01 May 2020 www.thisweek.org.uk
Letter of apology from office of Bristol’s Labour mayor Marvin Rees Thu, 30 Apr 2020 10:35
Dear Tony
I am sorry but the Mayor is unavailable at that time.
He is already regularly speaking about Covid-19 on BCFM and so additional interview requests will not be prioritised.
Kind regards,
Simon Cowley – Mayor’s Office Policy Manager
Radio4All download pages
BCfm audio file – [right click to download]
Radio4All audio file – [right click to download]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p20oW3INsw
Part 2 Investigative reports: Swedish Epidemiologist Prof Johan Giesecke says no evidence of any reinfection. False Positives: Recovered Patients Who Tested Positive for COVID-19 Likely Not Reinfected. This phenomenon is likely due to the shortcomings of the coronavirus test, experts say. More than 260 COVID-19 patients in South Korea tested positive for the coronavirus after having recovered, raising alarm that the virus might be capable of “reactivating” or infecting people more than once. But infectious disease experts now say both are unlikely.
Prof. Kari Steffanson from DeCode Genetics of Iceland, ‘virus came from The Alps and Great Britain’: Prof Stefansson said that in the beginning, almost all of the cases came into Iceland from the Alps, from people who had been skiing in Austria and Italy. The authorities responded by trying to contain the spread of infection from those high risk countries. He added: “But as they were doing this, the virus was actually sneaking into the country with people from all kinds of other countries. “And the most notable there is Great Britain. So it looks like the virus had a fairly wide spread in Great Britain very, very early in this epidemic.”
Trump says China’s Wuhan virology lab is source of Covid-19 – Coronavirus: Trump stands by China lab origin theory for virus. US President Donald Trump has appeared to undercut his own intelligence agencies by suggesting he has seen evidence coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory. Earlier the US national intelligence director’s office said it was still investigating how the virus began. But the office said it had determined Covid-19 “was not manmade or genetically modified”. China has rejected the lab theory and criticised the US response to Covid-19…
Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research. Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells. An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks… The findings reinforce suspicions that bat coronaviruses capable of directly infecting humans (rather than first needing to evolve in an intermediate animal host) may be more common than previously thought, the researchers say. But other virologists question whether the information gleaned from the experiment justifies the potential risk. Although the extent of any risk is difficult to assess, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells. “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” he says…
World Economic Forum Looks to Blockchain to Restart Global Economy. The World Economic Forum believes DLT supply chain solutions can help reboot the global economy, launching a blockchain deployment kit. The World Economic Forum published a report looking at how the deployment of blockchain-based solutions can address the supply chain inefficiencies and failures that have been exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Alongside the report, the WEF has released a blockchain deployment toolkit intended to assist government and businesses in adapting their supply chains to the current economic climate and to “accelerate an economic rebound post-COVID-19.”
Former ambassador who lost his career because he refused to back torture in Uzbekistan charged AFTER Salmond trial with contempt. On Tuesday morning, a large Police van full of police pulled up onto the pavement right outside my front gate, actually while I was talking on the phone to a senior political figure about the raid on my friend. The police just sat in the van staring at my house. I contacted my lawyers who contacted the Crown Office. The police van pulled away and my lawyers contacted me back to say that the Crown Office had told them I would be charged, or officially “cited”, with Contempt of Court, but they agreed there was no need for a search of my home or to remove my devices, or for vans full of police. On Thursday two plain clothes police arrived and handed me the indictment. Shortly thereafter, an email arrived from The Times newspaper, saying that the Crown Office had “confirmed” that I had been charged with contempt of court. In the case of my friend whose house was raided, he was contacted by the Daily Record just before the raid even happened!
Planet of the Humans: How Environmental and Green Energy Movements Have Been Taken Over By Capitalists – Watch on YouTube – The promise of green energy, embraced by President Barack Obama, airline owner Richard Branson, philanthropist Michael Bloomberg, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations, and a large percentage of the public. Electric cars, solar panels, and wind turbines were to be the alternatives to a reliance on fossil fuels, but it hasn’t turned out to be that simple. An electric car is charged from an outlet powered by the local company that relies on coal and natural gas. A site for wind turbines in Vermont requires that a forest be cut down, a mountain-top removal similar to what seen in coal country. In an upsetting sequence, we see all the materials that have to be mined, transported, and processed to make solar panels. And still, both solar and wind power requires a backup system for rainy and windless days — which turn out to be power generated by burning fossil fuels. Gibbs asks: “Can machines made by industrial civilizations save industrial civilizations?” When solar and wind did not provide the answer, biomass became the energy alternative — most often the burning of wood chips made from trees and waste wood, like old railroad ties. But just because trees can be planted and harvested, does that make them a sustainable form of energy? What about the fuels used to power the machines cutting down the trees and converting them into chips?
Martin Bormann was vital to Hitler. Bormann made Hitler, and the Third Reich, rich through thinly veiled extortion schemes such as The Hitler Endowment Fund of German Industry. He also came up with the idea of charging royalties on Hitler’s image on postage stamps – and so made his Fuhrer personally wealthy. He became so close to Hitler and the running of the war that Hitler once screamed “To win this war, I need Bormann!”. More sinister was Bormann’s involvement in ensuring the progress of the final solution . Himmler had to report back to Bormann on the extermination of the Jews.Bormann, Hitler’s doctor Stumpfegger and Artur Axmann (the Head of the Hitler Youth) all left the bunker in Berlin together after Hitler’s suicide on 30th April 1945. After Axmann left them at the Lehrter Station Bormann and Stumpfegger disappeared. This led to one of the longest Nazi hunts in history.
In a week’s time a conference on fake news and conspiracies called ‘Alternative View’ 11 was due to take place in Milton Keynes (AV11). Despite the organiser Ian R. Crane being critically ill in hospital during the lockdown he and the team have reorganised it as a series of online web screenings to which conference goers can subscribe.
Radio4All download pages
BCfm audio file – [right click to download]
Radio4All audio file – [right click to download]