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Showing posts from November 22, 2020

State Violence

I strongly appeal to the “International law” and “the international community” to do something about this. I always believed in your “values” and “the upholding of the peace.” I always agreed with the Western states definition of terrorism. When we and our allies do it is either an ‘accident’ or ‘fighting for freedom’. When they do it, it’s ‘terrorism’.   Top Iranian scientist assassinated  Related Five scientists in 10 years

EU-Egypt

A long tradition of complicity in crime This article is available in four languages An indispensable’ partner in the  EU ’s strategy in the Middle East and the Mediterranean 

The Execution of Covid-19

 Some laughter.

Covid Vaccines

“This is the people’s vaccine,”  said corporate critic Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program.  “Federal scientists helped invent it and taxpayers are funding its development. … It should belong to humanity .” Calling the shots

The Extreme ‘Centre’

 

Liberalism

 “ I think we can get too distracted by minor doctrinal disputes between self-proclaimed centrists and right-wingers and miss the fact that the default intellectual culture in Anglo-America is overwhelmingly right wing. It tends to take reactionary and anti-left positions and has done so for a long time. The names can change. People can switch institutional affiliations. But the defense of the establishment and the US-led liberal order and other Cold War verities such as classical liberalism, Western values, the Enlightenment, and Zionism remains their primary task. This is the legacy of the lucrative conformism noted by Alfred Kazin and Czeslaw Milosz.” The Liberal Establishment is ‘a Stranger to Self-Examination’

“War on Terror”

 Barack Obama’s Kill Lists Related

Australia

“When we murder, it is a ‘tragic accident’. When they murder, it is cause to light the Eiffel Tower in solemn remembrance and to commemorate the dead on Twitter with hashtags expressing human solidarity.  “Guilty of state-sponsored terrorism”

Vaccines

India, the EU, the US, Canada and the UK are among the countries which have reserved the most doses of the vaccine, according to the latest data. It would be insane if the vaccines were to be put under a democratic health organisation that distributes the doses worldwide according to those who need them first, i.e. the frontline workers, the aged and the vulnerables. But we live in a world of nation states, capitalist competition and profit and intellectual property. And that’s the ‘rational’ and ‘natural’ order of things.

Afghanistan

After 19 years the most powerful military power in the world and history, with the biggest annual GDP and powerful wealthy allies, has failed to defeat the Taliban, stabilise the country and ‘liberate women’. And it is leaving behind a weak government. 26,000 Afghan children killed or maimed since 2005

Global Capitalism

“This weekend, the  G20 leaders’ summit takes place  – not physically of course, but by video link.  Proudly hosted by Saudi Arabia, that bastion of democracy and civil rights, the G20 leaders are focusing on the impact on the world economy from the COVID-19 pandemic.” G20: the debt solution

France-Martinique

“ Production of chlordecone was stopped in the United States - where it was marketed as Kepone - as far back as 1975, after workers at a factory producing it in Virginia complained of uncontrollable shaking, blurred vision and sexual problems. In 1979, the World Health Organization classed the pesticide as potentially carcinogenic.   But in 1981 the French authorities authorised chlordecone for use in banana plantations in the French West Indies - and even though it was finally banned in 1990, growers lobbied for - and got - permission to carry on using stocks until 1993. It was only in 2018 - after more than 10 years of campaigning by French Caribbean politicians - that President Emmanuel Macron accepted the state's responsibility for what he called ‘an environmental scandal’. Martinique is an integral part of France, but one of the island's MPs, Serge Letchimy, says it would never have taken the state so many years to react if there had been pollution on the same scale in Bri

Britain

Ishmahil Blagrove, 21 November 2020: It’s interesting how some people nowadays avoid using ‘the ruling class’ and opt for ‘the establishment’.