UK: Removing clause 9 and beyond

16 December 2021 — Institute of Race Relations

Of all the abhorrent clauses in the government’s Nationality and Borders Bill, which passed its Commons stages last week, it is clause 9 – which would allow ministers to revoke the citizenship of British nationals without notice on ‘public interest’ grounds, which has caused the most outrage. When the New Statesman reported that the clause could affect up to six million citizens who have or have access to a second citizenship, most from ethnic minorities, fear and anger erupted on social media, in the pressin parliament and in MPs’ constituency surgeries. Activists and community groups have responded with alacrity to raise the alarm, with almost a quarter of a million people signing a parliamentary petition to remove the clause from the bill. The IRR is working with several organisations including Reprieve, Muslim Association of Britain, Rights and Security International, and Status Now for All to oppose clause 9.

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A Sino-Russian military alliance is gratuitous (as of now)

16 DECEMBER, 2021 — Indian Punchline

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) met with Russian President Vladimir Putin via video link on December 15, 2001

The New York Times got the story correct when its Moscow bureau watched the outcome of the videoconference between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday and assessed that the US’ two main adversaries “sought mutual support in their conflicts with the West but have not yet declared a formal alliance.”

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They Won’t Ever Find Us Because Our Love Is Bound to the Rocks: The Fiftieth Newsletter (2021)

15 December 2021 — TRicontinental

Newsletter art foto de Victor BasterraPhotographs by Victor Basterra (Argentina) / collage by Daniela Ruggeri, Unknown victims and prisoners at the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), 1976-1983.

Dear friends,

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

At the US State Department’s Summit for Democracy (9–10 December), US President Joe Biden announced a range of initiatives to ‘bolster democracy and defend human rights globally’. These measures are to be funded by $424.4 million from the United States. This money will go towards the same institutions that have – for the past sixty years – intervened to undermine the sovereignty of democratic processes from Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) to Honduras (2009) and Bolivia (2019). The US focuses on falsely portraying governments that are unwilling to accept US leadership as corrupt – as was with the case Brazil’s ‘soft coup’ against former Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva – all while shielding its allies who have documented evidence of corruption – such as the outgoing Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, whose political bloc was defeated by the left in the recently conducted presidential election. Washington’s measures amount to a ‘Plan to Destabilise the Planet’, a stark contrast with the ‘Plan to Save the Planet’ recently launched by twenty-six research institutes.

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Russia-China alliance at the tipping point

15 December 2021 — Indian Punchline

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping after their talks, Kremlin, Moscow, June 5, 2019.

The initiative by Beijing to propose a virtual meeting between President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday radically transforms the geopolitics of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s relentless eastward expansion and the Western military deployments on Russia’s borders.

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