China’s Virus Response Has Been ‘Breathtaking’ 31 January 2020

31 January 2020 — Asia Times

Chinese President Xi Jinping is leading a scientific ‘People’s War’ against the coronavirus

President Xi Jinping formally told WHO head Tedros Ghebreyesus, at their meeting in Beijing earlier this week, that the coronavirus epidemic “is a devil and we cannot allow the devil to hide.”

Ghebreyesus for his part could not but praise Beijing for its extremely swift, coordinated response strategy – which includes fast identification of the genome sequence. Chinese scientists have already handed over to Russian counterparts the virus genome, with snap tests able to identify it in a human body within two hours. A Russia-China vaccine is under development.

Continue reading

People Keep Starving to Death in Tory Britain

31 January 2020 — Novara Media

And they call it democracy

@harriepw

Errol Graham was just four and a half stone when his emaciated body was found by bailiffs. The 57 year old had starved to death in a flat with no electricity or gas supply.

The only food in his cupboards were two tins of fish, four years out of date. His benefits had been stopped by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) only months before. As a vulnerable claimant with a long history of severe mental illness, he should have been protected. Instead, he was left to die.

Continue reading

France at a Crossroads

24 January 2020 — The Bullet

Richard Greeman

The nationwide general strike in France, now entering its record seventh week, seems to be approaching its crisis point. Despite savage police repression, about a million people are in the streets protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed neoliberal “reform” of France’s retirement system, established at the end of World War II and considered one of the best in the world. At bottom, what is at stake is a whole vision of what kind of society people want to live in – one based on cold market calculation or one based on human solidarity – and neither side shows any sign of willingness to compromise.

Continue reading

Cuba is Testing Products Against Cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease

30 January 2020 — Internationalist 360º

Alan Macleod

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/AP_18327510293530_edited.jpg

The Cuban government has announced that it is testing new medical products against a range of chronic illnesses, including cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The Caribbean country has become a hotspot for pharmaceutical research, having already developed techniques that eliminate the transmission of HIV and syphilis between mothers and children. It was not revealed which types of cancer government scientists are testing against, but they have already developed a lung cancer vaccine, skin cancer medicine and new, minimally invasive techniques in esophageal cancer surgery.

Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom

26 January 2020 — Defend Wikileaks

Randy Credico’s ongoing series of interviews on the approaching extradition trial of Julian Assange in London, featuring regular updates from the Courage Foundation

Episode 1: Coleen Rowley & Anthony Papa

In this first podcast, hear compelling clips from William Kunstler and John Pilger on extra-judicial and arbitrary detention as well as interviews with Nathan Fuller, director of the Courage Foundation which supports whistle blowers and runs Julian’s public defense campaign, Coleen Rowley, retired FBI Special Agent and whistle blower, expert on criminal procedure constitutional law, and Anthony Papa, artist/activist and the author of 15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom, and This Side of Freedom: Life after Clemency.

Continue reading

Monsanto/Bayer News Links 30 January 2020

30 January 2020 — The New Dark Age

There may be some duplication due to cross-posting and may be updated throughout the day, so please check back

EPA Reapproves Glyphosate, Claims Pesticide Poses No Human Health Threat
https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/01/30/epa-reapproves-glyphosate-claims-pesticide-poses-no-human-health-threat?cd-origin=rss

Kellogg’s will phase out pre-harvest glyphosate use
https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/19298-kellogg-s-will-phase-out-pre-harvest-glyphosate-use

Continue reading

Iran News Links 29- 30 January 2020

30 January 2020 — The New Dark Age

There may be some duplication due to cross-posting and may be updated throughout the day, so please check back

Do All Countries have the Right to Fight Terrorism?
https://journal-neo.org/2020/01/30/do-all-countries-have-the-right-to-fight-terrorism/

NIAC Action Statement on Passage of Legislation Prohibiting Unauthorized War with Iran
https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/01/30/niac-action-statement-passage-legislation-prohibiting-unauthorized-war-iran?cd-origin=rss

Continue reading

Palestine News Links 1-30 January 2020

30 January 2020 — The New Dark Age

There may be some duplication due to cross-posting and may be updated throughout the day, so please check back

How is Washington “Liberating” Free Countries
https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/01/how-is-washington-liberating-free-countries/

Iraq-Raping Neocon Upset That People Keep Bringing Up The Iraq Thing
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2020/01/30/iraq-raping-neocon-upset-that-people-keep-bringing-up-the-iraq-thing/

Continue reading

IRR News (15 – 29 January 2020)

30 January 2020 — Institute of Race Relations weekly digest – Against Racism, for Social Justice

Remembering the liberation of Auschwitz and the impact of the Holocaust reminds us of the breadth of fascism’s victims – Jews, Roma and Sinti, lesbian and gays, Communists, the physically and mentally disabled, political and religious opponents. It provides us with a real lesson in the meaning of a powerful slogan like ‘Never Again’. For if fascism represents a fundamental attack on human dignity, we all need to come together to build unity in action around the forces that nurture its all-embracing violence.

UK Came & Went, Leaving Europe in a Mess

30 January 2020 — Consortium News

As Great Britain returns to the uncertainties of the open sea, it leaves behind a European Union that is bureaucratically governed to serve the interests of financial capital, writes Diana Johnstone

By Diana Johnstone in Paris
Special to Consortium News

Whew.  Finally, at last, the United Kingdom is formally leaving the European Union on Jan. 31.  Here in Paris, the champions of French withdrawal from the EU are celebrating. They see Brexit as the harbinger of a future “Frexit,” a French departure from undemocratic governance, and the beginning of the end of a failed project to unify Europe around the demands of neoliberal capitalism.

Continue reading

I Will Hold You in My Arms a Day After the War: The Fifth Newsletter (2020)

30 January 2020 — Tri-Continental

Santu MofokengSantu Mofokeng, Eyes Wide Shut, Motouleng Cave, Clarens – Free State, 2004.

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On Monday, 27 January, the South African photographer Santu Mofokeng slipped away. His camera had been a familiar presence in the anti-apartheid struggle; after years of photographing police violence and popular resistance, he tired of making ‘images bespeaking gloom, monotony, anguish, struggle, [and] oppression’, he wrote in 1993. It was then that Santu turned his camera on the life of the black working class. ‘Perhaps I was looking for something that refuses to be photographed,’ he said. ‘I was only chasing shadows, perhaps’. Those who search for the future chase shadows.

Continue reading

Trump’s Mideast “Steal of the Century”. Breaking Palestine: Selected Articles

29 January 2020 — Global Research

Done Deal: How the “Peace Process” Sold Out the Palestinians

By David Hearst, January 29, 2020

In November 2016, fresh off his electoral win, US President-elect Donald Trump boasted of his intention to end the Israel-Palestine conflict by striking what he called the “ultimate deal”. Calling it “the war that never ends,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal: “As a deal maker, I’d like to do … the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.” Read more…

Continue reading

Iran News Links 28-29 January 2020

29 January 2020 • 18:00 — The New Dark Age

There may be some duplication due to cross-posting and may be updated throughout the day, so please check back

U.S. Demands Iraq Either Join U.S. War Against Iran or Be Destroyed
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2020/01/28/u-s-demands-iraq-either-join-u-s-war-against-iran-or-be-destroyed/

Today’s Links 29 January 2020
http://mikewhitneysgraspingatstraws.blogspot.com/2020/01/todays-links_29.html

Continue reading

Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ will not bring peace – that was the plan for the US and Israel

29 January 2020 — Jonathan Cook

The proposal deliberately includes a host of unrealisable preconditions before what remains of Palestine can be recognised

The National – 29 January 2020

Much of Donald Trump’s long-trailed “deal of the century” came as no surprise. Over the past 18 months, Israeli officials had leaked many of its details.

The so-called “Vision for Peace” unveiled on Tuesday simply confirmed that the US government has publicly adopted the long-running consensus in Israel: that it is entitled to keep permanently the swaths of territory it seized illegally over the past half-century that deny the Palestinians any hope of a state.

Continue reading

China’s New Coronavirus: An Examination of the Facts 29 January 2020

25 January 2020 — Global Research

The Western mass media have discussed the new corona virus that began in the city of Wuhan in Central China but, apart from repetitive small details and the inevitable China-bashing, not much light has been shed on the circumstances. My initial commentary here is composed from a medley of nearly 100 Western news reports, primarily ABC, CBS, CNN, AFP, and from some Chinese media. Officially called the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), the contagion is a respiratory illness, a new type of viral pneumonia, in the same family of infections as SARS and MERS.  

Continue reading

Trump’s “win-win” plan hands everything to Israel

29 January 2020 — The Electronic Intifada

Omar Karmi

A man walks past a mural depicting US president Donald Trump with a footprint across his face

Graffiti in Gaza shows what Palestinians have come to think of US President Donald Trump’s peacemaking. Mahmoud Issa SIPA USA

After much anticipation and with great ceremony, on Tuesday US President Donald Trump presented his plan for Middle East peace.

It’s “a great plan,” Trump had already said a few days ago, though he may just have been humoring his son-in-law Jared Kushner, its chief architect.

On Tuesday, he called the plan “win-win,” though to whom the second win goes is hard to say.

Continue reading