Day: February 13, 2020

Black Agenda Report 13 February 2020

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13 February 2020 — Black Agenda Report

Free All Political Prisoners –- Including Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning 

Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
Julian Assange and his protégés have made common cause with Black
revolutionaries in their zeal to lay bare the dictatorial nature of the
omni-pervasive national security state and the sheer, racist barbarity
of the U.S. imperial project.

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Coronavirus – Statistical Change Causes Confusion While The New Case Count Continues To Decline

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13.February 2020 — Moon of Alabama

“This looks to be a bad, heightened cold — I think that’s a rational way of thinking about it,” – Matthew Frieman, a virologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The battle against the infections with the novel coronavirus in China continues. China is doing its best to win it.

The declining trend of the number of newly suspected and newly confirmed cases per day is now obvious to everyone.

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IRR News (29 January – 12 February 2020)

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13 February 2020 — Institute of Race Relations

Institute of Race Relations weekly digest – Against Racism, for Social Justice

On Tuesday, a charter-deportation flight to Jamaica carried passengers who had lived in the UK since early childhood – against a recommendation of the unpublished (but leaked) ‘Windrush: Lessons Learned’ review. Protesters against the deportation flight shut down Whitehall and over 170 MPs wrote asking the minister to reconsider the failure to publish the review or to follow its recommendations, indicating the government’s unconcern for both past and present victims of the Windrush scandal. Boris Johnson poured scorn on protestors as ‘the Westminster bubble’ and indicated his intention to re-examine the process of judicial review.

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Major Uprisings in Haiti Appear New, but Reflect Centuries of Haitian Resistance to Oppression

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1 January 2020 — Internationalist 360°

A-APRP

Mass Anti-Government Protests

Mass protests have been taking place in the small Caribbean country of Haiti for several months now.  Those protests are so intense that they threaten to bring the country to a complete standstill.  The Haitian government’s response to the protests have resulted in dozens of deaths and massive destruction throughout various parts of Haiti, particularly throughout the capitol city of Port-au-Prince.  The current protests have been taking place since August of this year.  The masses of Africans in Haiti, infuriated by the government’s increases in fuel prices, have been engaging in open revolt against the government.  The capitalist media is reporting that the basis of the protests are demands that Haitian President Jovenel Moise resign from office, but the underlining reasons for the unrest go much deeper than that.

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The kidnapping of Haiti By John Pilger

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28 January 2010 — John Pilger

[A timely reminder with this excellent essay by John Pilger from 2010. WB]

The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in a US naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.

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‘Burned At The Stake’ – The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Demolishes The Fake Claims Targeting Julian Assange

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13 February 2020 — Media Lens

On the face of it, the task seems almost hopeless. As Tolstoy wrote:

‘The power of the government is maintained by public opinion, and with this power the government, by means of its organs – its officials, law courts, schools, churches, even the press – can always maintain the public opinion which they need.’ (Leo Tolstoy, ‘Writings on Non-Violence and Civil Disobedience,’ New Society Publishers, 1987, p.111)

Last December, we witnessed the awesome capacity of state-corporate power to manipulate public opinion and undermine a democratic election with a ruthless propaganda campaign smearing Jeremy Corbyn, a passionate anti-racist. The campaign depicted Corbyn, not just as an anti-semite, but as someone who might ‘reopen Auschwitz’. The truth wasn’t just distorted, it was reversed.

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Prevent and Countering Violent Extremism usher in ‘whole society’ surveillance

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12 February 2020 — Open Democracy

Questions on Countering Violent Extremism cannot be confined to isolated issues, when this is the language through which states speak themselves today.

Azfar Shafi
Black-headed gull on top of a closed circuit television camera in front of The Shard and Tower Bridge in London, UK.

Black-headed gull on top of a closed circuit television camera in front of The Shard and Tower Bridge in London, UK. / Alex Milan Tracy/PA. All rights reserved.

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I Am Tired of Holding Other Worlds in My Fist: The Seventh Newsletter (2020)

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13 February 2020 — Tri-Continental

Raúl MartínezRaúl Martínez, Rosas y Estrellas (Roses and Stars), 1972.

Dear Friends,

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

In November 2019, the Bolivian army – with a nudge from the shadows – told its President Evo Morales Ayma to resign. Morales would eventually go to Mexico and then seek asylum in Argentina. Jeanine Áñez, a far-right politician who was not in the line of succession, seized power; the military, the fascistic civil society groups, and sections of the evangelical church backed her. Áñez said that she would hold elections soon, but that she would herself not stand in them.

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