Cancel Culture

Check out the statement  from Ahmet Üzümcü, who presided over the Douma cover-up until it was taken over by his successor, current OPCW DG Fernando Arias, has multiple holes and ies.  Article in Question: The Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria and the Need for Unity Against Them https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/2021/04/29/the-use-of-chemical-weapons-in-syria-and-the-need-for-unity-against-them/amp/?__twitter_impression=true Üzümcü claims that the OPCW team in Syria "determined the use of chlorine." He omits a small detail: the actual team found zero evidence of chlorine gas use, but had their findings censored and were then replaced by a "team" that didn't set foot in Syria.  Trying to suggest a Syrian cover-up -- rather than the documented cover-up under his watch -- Üzümcü claims that the Douma team deployed "after some delay by the Syrian authorities."  He should consult the OPCW's own final report, which attributes the ...

Nearly half a millennium ago Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince described three options for how a conquering power might treat states that it defeated in war but that “have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom: … the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you.” [1] Machiavelli preferred the first option, citing Rome’s destruction of Carthage. That is what the United States did to Iraq and Libya after 2001. But in today’s New Cold War the mode of destruction is largely economic, via trade and financial sanctions such as the United States has imposed on China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and other designated adversaries. The idea is to deny them key inputs, above all in essential technology and information processing, raw materials, and access to bank and financial connections, such as U...

"While the US poses as a champion for Southeast Asia - it is clear that its efforts are unwelcome and viewed instead as a source of instability - not a path toward resolution. It is almost certain that it is Washington the Malaysian foreign minister was referring to when he mentioned "other powers." Just as the US nominated itself as protector of European "energy security" in its bid to obstruct the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline - the US has inserted itself into relatively routine maritime disputes in the South China Sea - not to "stand with" the nations of the region, but to serve as an excuse to impose its "primacy" over them.  The nations of Southeast Asia count China among their largest trade partners, sources of tourism, and for several - a key military and infrastructure partner. The prospect of a regionally destabilizing conflict originating over long-standing disputes in the South China Sea benefits no one actuall...

"In a national televised address last night, Prime Minister Modi delivered much the same message as his finance minister. Only far from wanting to “address” the concerns of the Indian people, he effectively told them to live with the threat of mass death and continue to fend for themselves in the face of an unprecedented socio-economic crisis." "Rewording the capitalist mantra that “the cure must not be worse than the disease,” Modi declared that India must be “saved” not from the pandemic, but from a lockdown aimed at halting the virus’s advance and saving lives! “In today’s situation, we have to save the country from lockdown,” Modi declared." Source Link: At corporate India’s behest, Modi government lets pandemic run rampant https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/21/inco-a21.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws

Lee Merritt is a civil rights attorney representing the families of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery. He is running for Attorney General of Texas with an agenda of changing police culture. Lee Merritt Q: The Washington Post has tracked fatal shootings committed by police officers for the past five years, and has found the rate to consistently hover around 1,000 per year. They noted, “The quantity of rare events in huge populations tends to remain stable absent major societal changes, such as a fundamental shift in police culture.” What sort of shifts in police culture do you think would help address the rate of fatal shootings?  A: American police forces represent the deadliest police culture in the industrialized world. No nation kills and incarcerates more of its citizens per capita than the United States. This is a result of a militarized and racist police culture that has its inception in  America’s unique chattle slave trade. American policing entities came into...

"There is absolutely no commercial reason for the media to be dedicating so much time and space to the Prince’s death. ITV, which needs eyeballs on its programmes to generate income from advertising, saw a 60 per cent drop in viewing figures after it decided to broadcast endless forelock-tugging. Audiences presumably deserted to Netflix and Youtube, where the mood of mourning was not being enforced. Many viewers, particularly younger ones, have no interest in the fact that a very old man just died, even if he did have lots of titles. Like ITV, the BBC simply ignored the wishes of its audiences, commandeering all of its many channels to manufacture and enforce the national mood of grief. That even went so far as placing banners on the CBBC channel for children encouraging them to forgo their cartoons and switch to the other channels paying endless, contrived tributes to Philip. The resulting outpouring of anger was so great, the BBC was forced to open a dedi...

In the week when the  UK's five extremist right-wing media billionaires won their battle to waste our time, money and political capital on a EU referendum, I thought it a good time to post the great letter by Simon Sweeney in the Guardian, which he kindly allowed me to reproduce in my book, "The Prostitute State - How Britain's Democracy has Been Bought": "What did the EU ever do for us?  Not much, apart from: providing 57% of our trade; structural funding to areas hit by industrial decline; clean beaches and rivers; cleaner air; lead free petrol; restrictions on landfill dumping; a recycling culture; cheaper mobile charges; cheaper air travel; improved consumer protection and food labelling; a ban on growth hormones and other harmful food additives; better product safety;  single market competition bringing quality improvements and better industrial performance; break up of monopolies; Europe-wide patent and copyright protection; no paperwork or cust...

"Exactly if and when the increasing antagonism between United States and China will boil over into full-on conflict remains anybody’s guess. But for now, one thing is as clear as the aqua-blue waters that lap up on the shores of China’s man-made islands in the South China Sea: Beijing’s naval fleet is larger than that of the U.S. Navy. Citing the Office of Naval Intelligence, a Congressional Research Service report from March notes that the People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN, was slated to have 360 battle force ships by the end of 2020, dwarfing the U.S. fleet of 297 ships. Such numbers are hard to pinpoint because the PLAN doesn’t release public reports on its future shipbuilding efforts like the U.S. Navy does. But according to the CRS, China is on pace to have 425 battle force ships by 2030. Sheer size and numbers carry a quality all their own, and a numerical advantage would be of benefit in a small battlespace like the Taiwan Strait, some China watchers say. S...

The number has set a new record for complaints in British television history. Prince Philip had a long history of racist  language stretching back nearly 40 years.  He visited China in 1986 and described Beijing as "ghastly." He also told British some students there: "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed".  He also told a student who was trekking through Papua New Guinea in 1988: "You managed not to get eaten then?" Then in 2002 on a visit to Australia, in Queensland he asked an aboriginal leader: "Do you still throw spears at each other? ". He even  told the president of Nigeria that he looked like he was "ready for bed," because he was dressed in the african traditional robes. In the days of "upstairs downstairs" the elite class, that lived upstairs, believed that, those who lived downstairs, their servants, actually loved them and were happy with their lot. The truth was the very opposite. ...

About two years ago, during my master's education, an argument cropped up in ethnic/gender class about Muslim women's dressing and, by extension, their lack of agency. I saw my colleagues (primarily trained in the West) arguing that how Muslim women dress is a sign of oppression. Mind you, my colleagues are not alone in this thinking. Lots of people who observe Muslim women reach the same conclusion. They do not understand why while Muslim men are allowed to choose to cover their heads or not, including wearing western attires, Muslim women are denied the same opportunities. Some further pointed out that if it were true that Muslim women themselves chose to dress the way they do, then women who refuse to follow the same dress codes wouldn't be reporting that they encounter severe sanctions. In that sense, they were arguing that how Muslim women dress is not simply a matter of choice. Being a minority in those spaces, just like Muslim women, and understanding tha...

WESTERN HYPOCRISY. "In order to give credibility to their care about "democracy", "human rights, or "self-determination" needs in Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, or Tibet, many Western humanitarians try to validate their supposed concerns by backing themselves with universal support based on their own Western beliefs system and set of values. By acting in this manner, such Western humanitarians calling for the independence of, let's say, Tibet, are no more than very biased and wicked agents of sinophobia, sycophants of their supposed cultural superiority, despite the fact they end out contradicting their logic and their actions when positing the Spratly Islands or the Paracel Islands are not Chinese due to distance (as if Aruba was nearby the Netherlands or the French Polynesia islands were located in the Mediterranean Sea)."   "What does all this mean? Easy. Although absurd their claims for the independence of Chinese provinces and ...

Brilliant, "The world needs a human rights defender but not the US" An article published by the China Society for Human Rights Studies on Friday lashed out at the US for severe humanitarian disasters caused by its aggressive wars against foreign countries since the end of World War II, stripping Washington of the human rights highland as the Biden administration tries to wield weapons of "human rights violations" to crack down on China. The report was deemed by observers as China's "proactive move" to put US human rights atrocities under the spotlight, after the latter has long used such an issue as an excuse to interfere in China's domestic affairs. Together with the tense meeting between China's senior diplomats and US senior officials in Alaska last month, where Chinese officials dressed down US officials over human rights topics, the report sends a strong signal to Washington that it is unqualified to lecture China about human r...

 04/19/2020  Israeli media revealed to the world the inconvenient truth for the United States about the outbreak of coronavirus in China. Moreover, the journalists and officials who provided them with confidential information clearly did not understand that they were thereby substituting their American allies. According to The Times of Israel, the Central Intelligence Agency in November warned the White House about the threat of an outbreak of an unknown science coronavirus in Wuhan. The Trump administration simply dismissed this information without giving it much importance. However, the protocol is respected in any case, so Washington passed the intelligence information received to its NATO allies and Israel. The latter also did not believe in the seriousness of the threat, for which they later paid. The most curious in this story is the inconsistency of dates, which Israeli journalists may not have noticed. The CIA allegedly warned of an epidemic in mid-November...

Have you ever seen a mainstream news report containing the phrase "the French regime"? How about  "the British regime" or "the Australian regime"? If these phrases look a bit odd, it's because you've never seen them written down before. Ostensibly the word  simply means  "a form of government" or "a government in power", but it's generally understood that it's got a kind of negative connotation to it just because of the way it tends to be used. In theory its meaning is closer to "a bad or authoritarian government", and in practice by the western media it means "a government which disobeys the dictates of Washington". Just look at some recent examples of the way that word has been used in headlines by the mass media: " Amb. Michael McFaul: Putin’s treatment of Navalny proves ‘this is a  regime  that is in decay’ " by MSNBC on April 8. " Appeasing Cuba’s  Regime  Didn’t Work ", by  T...

The US has a well-establish history of biological warfare, from smallpox blankets in order to genocide Native Americans, to anthrax and cholera dropped and sprayed on North Korea, to the acquisition of experiments and staff of Japan's notorious Unit 731, much like how it acquired staff and knowledge for the Manhattan Project from the Nazis.  "Russia has every reason to believe that US-controlled biological laboratories that appear around the world work to develop biological weapons, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper.  “Let me pay your attention to the fact that US-controlled biological laboratories appear here and there in the world on a permanent basis. Strangely enough, they appear mainly near Russian and Chinese borders,” Patrushev said answering a question about the origin of the coronavirus. "They assure everyone that those are research centers where the Americans help local scientists develop ...

"The acts of sexual violence by U.S. servicemen are likely to be even more extensive than research has so far uncovered, according to the group, called Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence. “We need to uncover how much pain has been caused to people because of the military stationed here,” said Suzuyo Takazato, 80, co-chair of the group. It has published a chronology titled, “Postwar U.S. Military Crimes Against Women in Okinawa.” The booklet (currently available in Japanese and English), which was six pages when it was first published in 1996, is now 26 pages long since the most recent publication in 2016. It serves as a poignant history of the suffering women have endured as a sacrifice for Japan’s security in Okinawa, which bears the brunt of hosting U.S. military bases in the country. Takazato and her group have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg, she says, adding, “Countless women are living in pain, suffering, and fear who have not been able to tell an...