18 November 2020 — Indian Punchline
M.K. Bhadrakumar
The analysts focusing on the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis through the prism of regional politics fail to factor in that the Caucasus comprises ancient peoples. The Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted this in remarks to the media in Moscow yesterday when he brushed aside the perception that Moscow could be harbouring a grudge against Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power through a ‘colour revolution’ in 2018.
13 November 2020 — Mercola
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the clarion call has been to test, test and test some more. However, right from the start, serious questions arose about the tests being used to diagnose this infection, and questions have only multiplied since then.
18 November 2020 — Global Research
By Rosemary Mason and Colin Todhunter
On 12 March 2020, British PM Boris Johnson, referring to COVID-19, informed the public:
“We’ve all got to be clear; this is the worst public health crisis for a generation.”
Since that time, we have seen lockdowns, on ongoing government-backed fear campaign, fundamental rights being stripped away, dissent censored, inflated COVID-19 death numbers and the use of a flawed PCR test to label perfectly healthy individuals as COVID-19 ‘cases’ in order to fit the narrative of a ‘second wave’.
But, just for a moment, consider an alternative scenario.
18November 2020 — Good Law Project
Today, the National Audit Office has released a damning report into Government procurement practices. It confirms what we have been saying for months. Government failed to manage conflicts of interest, dished out public money to deeply unsuitable companies, and has improperly shied away from proper scrutiny.
18 November 2020 — Counter Currents
Masks can prove liberating. The hidden face affords security. Obnoxious authority breathes better, hiding in comfort. Behind the material, confidence finds a home. While tens of millions of jobs have been lost to the novel coronavirus globally, security services, surveillance officers and pen pushers are thriving, policing admissions to facilities, churning through health and safety declarations, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
18 November 2020 — The Electronic Intifada
The government of President Emmanuel Macron is defying a landmark judgment from the European Court of Human Rights that protects the right of people to call for a boycott of Israeli products.
18 November 2020 — Dr Malcolm Kendrick
The COVID19 pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the concerns that a number of people have about vaccination. However, such is the eagerness to develop a vaccine, and get everyone to take it, that authorities are now looking to ban anyone who raises doubts. For example, the Labour Party in the UK is now calling for emergency ‘anti-vaccine’ laws: (more…)
17 November 2020 — Political Concern
The original brief of this website, set up ten years ago, was to raise awareness of the ‘revolving door’, rewards for failure, widespread behind-the-scene lobbying and party funding which corrupts the decision-making process here and abroad. There is currently a resurgence of such concerns, expressed here by Professor Prem Sikka and later by Sophie Hill, a PhD student.
On 6th November Professor Prem Sikka wrote an article showing the imperative for a public inquiry into how Covid contracts are handed out.
Two weeks later a Hackney reader sent this link to a Metro article which reported that Sophie Hill, a British PhD student in Government at Harvard University, had created a ‘My little Crony’ map – snapshot below.
16 November, 2020 — ROAR
The workerist environmentalism of Italy’s Porto Marghera group connects the workplace and the community in the struggle against capitalist “noxiousness.”
Amidst the renewed rise of obscene inequalities, a wave of protests is sweeping through Italy, from south to north. On the one hand, the pandemic has engendered an upsurge in workplace disputes to defend health and in mobilizations to protect the income of workers affected by COVID-19-related restrictions. On the other hand, however, we have also witnessed successful interventions coordinated by the right and infused with a bewildering array of conspiracy theories in response to such measures.
17 November 2020 — Media Lens
The Roman poet Horace famously declared:
‘Dulce et decorum est pro patrie mori.’
It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. Wilfred Owen, the great English poet of the First World War, described this phrase as ‘the old Lie’ in his famous war poem, ‘Dulce et decorum est’. Patriotism so often means ‘honouring’ those who ‘fell in service to this country’, grand ceremonies at war memorials, feasts of royal pageantry. And then sending yet more generations of men and women to fight in yet more wars.
15 November, 2020 — Indian Punchline
There has been a spate of reports in the American media that the US president-elect Joe Biden is assembling his cabinet of ministers. Most reports mention that Biden’s secretary of state will be Susan Rice, former US ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Advisor in the Barack Obama administration. Reportedly, Biden’s choice for US defence secretary is likely to be Michele Flournoy, who had previously served as a senior defence adviser in Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s administrations. (more…)
17 November, 2020 — Asia Times
By Pepe Escobar
Ho Chi Minh, in his eternal abode, will be savoring it with a heavenly smirk. Vietnam was the – virtual – host as the 10 Asean nations, plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, on the final day of the 37th Asean Summit.
16 November 2020 — Internationalist 360°
Wall Street’s war machine includes 11 aircraft carriers and 5,800 nuclear weapons. Yet the capitalist government in the United States is helpless to combat the latest coronavirus surge.
16 November 2020 — Assange Defense
First, we have to start off this note with a huge thank you to all of the folks who have worked with us to get LTEs published in their local papers! We have had huge success so far and have published over 40 of your letters with more on the way.
What we are writing today to talk about is our next angle for LTEs– getting the President to pardon Assange before he leaves office. Whether you think this is a long shot or our best chance at freeing Assange, we believe this is a crucial piece of our advocacy. We want to show the nation and the world that across the political spectrum there are folks who want to free Assange with a Presidential pardon.
16 November 2020 — Spycops
The second week of the Undercover Policing Inquiry has been shocking and frustrating. We’ve heard harrowing testimony from women deceived into relationships by undercover officers, accounts of racism and discrimination – and also attempts at justification from police lawyers.
13 November 2020 — BMJ
BMJ 2020; 371 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4425 (Published 13 November 2020) Cite this as: BMJ 2020;371:m4425
Kamran Abbasi, executive editor
Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments. They do so to support innovation, to bring products to market at unprecedented speed. Both of these reasons are partly plausible; the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling. (more…)
15 November 2020 — Global Research
By Carla Stea
On November 10, 2020, UN Report: International Organization of Migration – World Food Program Find Global Hunger and Population Displacement Could Surge as People on the Move and Those Relying on Dwindling Remittances Seek Work to Support Their Families.
The Report Shows how the Pandemic has Driven up Food Insecurity and Increased Vulnerability Among Migrants, Families Reliant on Remittances and Communities Forced From their Homes by conflict, violence and Disasters.
14 November 2020 — Indian Punchline
M.K. Bhadrakumar
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks at the 17th ASEAN-India Summit on November 12 makes sad reading. It comes in the specific context of the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership [RCEP] on Sunday — the mega free trade agreement centred on the ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea.
10 November, 2020 — Liberation School
By Jodi Dean
Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch is a classic work of anti-capitalist feminism. The book examines capitalism’s investment in sexism and racism, showing how the consolidation of the capitalist system depended on the subjugation of women, the enslavement of black and indigenous people, and the exploitation of the colonies. Federici demonstrates that unpaid labor–especially that of women confined to the domestic sphere and of enslaved workers–is a necessary support for waged labor.
11 November 2020 — Unlimited Hangout
British and American state intelligence agencies are “weaponizing truth” to quash vaccine hesitancy as both nations prepare for mass inoculations, in a recently announced “cyber war” to be commanded by AI-powered arbiters of truth against information sources that challenge official narratives.
by Whitney Webb
