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Iran Condemns US For Dangerous Mid-Air Harassment Of Civilian Plane

July 25, 2020 Jessica Corbett, Commondreams. , , ,
In yet another display of the heightened tension between Iran and the United States under President Donald Trump, several passengers on an Iranian commercial plane were reportedly injured Thursday when the aircraft swiftly dropped altitude after being approached by at least one U.S. military fighter jet over Syrian airspace. Iranian media reported Thursday that two fighter jets flew near the Mahan Air passenger plane, forcing the pilot to quickly descend. Video footage from Iranian state broadcasting network IRIB showed one passenger with blood on his face and another lying on the floor of the aircraft.

The Undeclared War Against Iran

July 25, 2020 Paul R. Pillar, Responsible Statecraft. , , ,
A series of violent attacks, involving explosions and fires, has been hitting Iran. The incidents have been too frequent and intense to be random accidents. They are part of an organized effort. Caution is always advisable in attributing responsibility for such unclaimed acts, especially for all of us outside the government channels that possibly have better information about what is going on. But circumstances point strongly, as some mainstream press reporting reflects, to either or both of two suspects: the Netanyahu government in Israel, and the Trump administration in the United States.

US – China Spat Over Quarantine And Consulates

July 25, 2020 Moon of Alabama. , , ,
On Tuesday the U.S. government ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas. The move comes amongst a slew of factless accusations of Chinese hacking and surveillance. While Trump, like Biden, is using anti-China propaganda as part of his campaign, the closure of the Houston consulate has nothing to do with it. But U.S. media fail to mention the real and unreasonable motive behind this move: The United States ordered China to close its diplomatic consulate in Houston within 72 hours, dealing another blow to the rapidly deteriorating relations between the two countries. China promptly vowed to retaliate, calling the move illegal.

US Orders China To Shut Down Its Houston Consulate In 72 Hours

July 22, 2020 Sputnik News. , , ,
The United States has asked China to close its Passport and Visa Office at the China Consulate General in Houston, Texas, according to the Global Times editor-in-chief, as cited by Reuters. The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed the development, saying that Washington had "abruptly" informed Beijing to close down its Texas consulate on 21 July. According to daily briefing of Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, Beijing has strongly condemned the decision and called upon the US to rescind the move, while suggesting retaliatory measures in response, as quoted by Reuters. During the briefing, Wang Wenbin also described the US decision as a "political provocation" and "a grave violation of international law".

The Human Cost Of Nuclear Tests

July 19, 2020 John Letman, The Diplomat. , , ,
July 16 - Seventy-five years ago today, the United States conducted the Trinity test, the world’s first nuclear detonation. In the ensuing years, the U.S. ultimately conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests, half of all known tests conducted by the world’s nine nuclear nations since 1945. Now, on the 75th anniversary of the nuclear age, the United States is contemplating the resumption of live testing for the first time in nearly three decades.  A nuclear test, the Washington Post reported in May, could be used as leverage in negotiations with China and Russia. The news provoked widespread criticism, not only from the Chinese government, but also Nevada’s congressional delegation (the state where a future test would presumably be conducted).

All Confusion And Contradictions In Trump’s Apocalyptic America

July 19, 2020 Andre Vltchek, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
Americans are angry. I suspected they would be, but I got confirmation that they are, all over the place: in Miami, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Minneapolis, New York, and Boston. Basically, everywhere I went, while "taking pulse and temperature" of this country where I used to live, cumulatively, for more than a decade, I felt frustration and bewilderment. "What is your job?" Shouted an African-American lady, right in the middle of the Union Station in the nation's capital. Obviously, it was a rhetorical question, as she almost immediately answered her own query: "There are no jobs!" Mr. Floyd got murdered by perverse, sadistic police officers.

Trump’s Harsh Sanctions Lead To Iran-China Partnership

July 15, 2020 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , ,
China and Iran have drafted a “sweeping economic and security partnership,” according to The New York Times. China will get a regular, heavily discounted supply of Iranian oil for the next 25 years, as well as an expanded role in Iranian banking, ports, railways, telecommunications and myriad other projects. Iran and China will also increase their military cooperation. This “strategic partnership” is the result of Donald Trump’s punishing sanctions against Iran. Although it has not yet been formally approved by Iran’s Parliament, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, favors the partnership. Two years ago, Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal — the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Ajamu Baraka: Race, Class And US Protests Today

July 12, 2020 Look Left Online. , , ,
Speaking at an event organised by the Workers’ Party, the national organiser of the Black Alliance for Peace and the 2016 Green Party candidate for vice president said that: “The current ongoing capitalist crisis has created the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economy during the years referred to as the Great Depression. We are now seeing, within the economy, the genocidal implications of economic conditions in which young black workers have more value as human generators of profit locked up in prisons than as participants in the economy as low wage workers.” Founded in 2017, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement.

The US And UK Are A Wrecking Ball Crew Against The Pillars Of Internationalism

July 11, 2020 By Vijay Prashad, Globetrotter. , ,
Over the past few decades, Western countries—such as the United Kingdom, but more so the United States of America—have flouted international laws and failed to even try to uphold the high-minded principles of the charter. Most recently, the United States has attempted to muzzle the International Criminal Court (ICC) as it has pursued a perfectly reasonable investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan; and the United Kingdom has denied Venezuela its sovereign right to gold held in the Bank of England. In both cases, the United States and the UK have undermined the sovereignty of nations and mutilated international law. The lawlessness of the governments of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Donald Trump is better explored through their actual practices than through the high-minded speeches of their ambassadors to the United Nations.

A New Tonkin Gulf Incident In The Making?

July 10, 2020 Michael T. Klare, The Nation. , , ,
While the American public, the media, and Congress have largely been focused on the Covid pandemic, demands for racial justice, and other domestic concerns in recent months, the US military has been mobilizing all of its capabilities for a massive show of force in waters abutting China. Every Pacific-based US submarine is now deployed in the area; two nuclear-powered carriers and their escort ships are conducting naval maneuvers there; the Air Force has sent B-1 bombers overhead; and the Army is practicing to seize Chinese-claimed islands. In the most provocative of these efforts, the carriers Nimitz and Ronald Reagan, accompanied by several cruisers and destroyers, have sailed into the South China Sea—an extension of the Pacific that abuts China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines and encompasses several clusters of islands claimed in their entirety by China and in part by the others.

US: American Journalist Has No Right To Challenge Decision To Assassinate Him

July 9, 2020 Reprieve.org. , , ,
The US Government has asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to affirm the dismissal of American journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem’s challenge to his Government’s apparent decision to assassinate him without telling him why, or affording him the constitutional right to due process. Mr Kareem is a recipient of the Edward R. Murrow and Peabody Awards, who grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, and used to be a stand-up comedian in New York City. He has been reporting on the conflict from Syria since it began. In 2016, he narrowly escaped being killed on five separate occasions, including two strikes on cars he was travelling in and a further two strikes on the headquarters of his news agency, On The Ground News.

United States: Record 47.2% Of Working-Age Without Jobs

July 7, 2020 Shannon Jones, WSWS. , , ,
According to newly released Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures, 47.2 percent of working-age Americans were without work in May, the highest level recorded since the end of World War II. The numbers are based on the BLS employment-population ratio, which states the proportion of the total labor force who are actually working. It is a more accurate measure of joblessness than the monthly unemployment report, which counts only those actively seeking work. At the end of May the employment-population ratio stood at 52.8 percent; it stood at 61.2 percent at the start of the year. The employment-population ratio reached a postwar high of nearly 65 percent in 2000.

Investigation Into The Erosion Of Public Health

July 4, 2020 The Associated Press and Kaiser Health News. , , ,
Local and state public health departments in the United States work to ensure that people have healthy water to drink, their restaurants don’t serve contaminated food and outbreaks of infectious diseases don’t spread. Those departments now find themselves at the forefront of fighting the coronavirus pandemic. But years of budget and staffing cuts have left them unprepared to face the worst health crisis in a century. KHN, also known as Kaiser Health News, and The Associated Press sought to understand the scale of the cuts and how the decades-long starvation of public health departments by federal, state and local governments has affected the system meant to protect the nation’s health. Six takeaways from the KHN-AP investigation.

Testing Is Not Causing Case Counts To Rise

July 2, 2020 By Charles Ornstein and Ash Ngu, ProPublica. , , ,
President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have repeatedly attributed the increase in the coronavirus case count in the United States to an increase in testing. “We’re doing so much testing, so much more than any other country,” Trump said in an interview with CBN News on Monday. “And to be honest with you, when you do more testing, you find more cases. And then they report our cases are through the roof.” “I would just encourage you all, as we talk about these things, to make sure and continue to explain to your citizens the magnitude of increase in testing,” Pence said on a call with the nation’s governors last week, according to audio obtained by The New York Times. “And that in most of the cases where we are seeing some marginal rise in number, that’s more a result of the extraordinary work you’re doing.”

Four Giant Reasons To Remove The Statues

July 1, 2020 Lee Camp, Consortium News. , , ,
I’m a descendant of General Robert E. Lee. My family also descends from George Washington and John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the Supreme Court. (The oligarchy was a rather small club back in the day.) And I, along with many other Lee descendants, say: Remove the statues. Yet, this week President Donald Trump has made it his mission to catch and prosecute those who have taken down statues. I’m positive he’s not doing it out of any racist ideology, although it doesn’t help that he also retweeted a white power message soon afterwards.   With that said, here are four exceedingly stupid reasons to keep the statues in place, and how to refute them. If you agree with any of these arguments… ummm, stop doing that.
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