En dehors de la boîte

Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known and much-loved Al Jazeera reporter who covered Palestine for two decades, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper May 11 while documenting an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank.

Kit Klarenberg investigates the troubling links between the CIA’s clandestine Guantanamo Bay torture program and MKULTRA-era mind control experiments.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International claim to be independent, but they have a revolving door with the US government, and serve its foreign-policy interests, with funding from CIA-linked foundations and billionaire oligarchs.

After meeting in Beijing, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin released a joint statement clarifying the ideological divisions of the new cold war: Eurasian calls for multipolarity, cooperation, sovereignty, and “redistribution of power in the world” against US unipolar hegemony and interventionism.

“Why China Is in Africa” (12/16/21) is a question Trevor Noah took up last month for Comedy Central’s Daily Show. As with many of the topics taken up by the Daily Show, the issue is no joke: China has a large and growing economic presence in many African countries. The China/Africa deals cry out for analysis: Are they different from the deals on offer from Western countries like the US, Britain or France?

From Djibouti, the US trains proxies and bombs strategically-important countries in the name of democracy and counterterrorism. To justify the country’s militarization, Washington hypes fears over China’s regional ambitions.

While the OTF presents itself as independent internet freedom activists, their funding, staff, history and choice of targets all point to the conclusion that they are a digital weapon being used against Washington’s enemies.

Cobalt, a key metallic element used in lithium batteries and other “green” technology, is sourced from slave labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As the West points the finger at China, the US Africa Command is indirectly policing mining operations that profit US corporations.

Early in the OPCW’s Douma investigation, expert toxicologists ruled out chlorine gas as the victims’ cause of death. Leaks expose how senior OPCW officials censored this explosive finding — and then targeted the inspector who raised the alarm.

The Venezuelan people deserve better than another administration sabotaging a dialogue and imposing more deadly sanctions.

Supposedly “independent” website Bellingcat raked in money from scandal-ridden Western intelligence firms that wreaked havoc – and reaped massive profits – in Syria.

Le temps présent met à l’épreuve les catégories de la philosophie politique classique. Il impose de penser à nouveaux frais la justice et la force, la liberté et la servitude, la politique et la morale. Aucune philosophie universelle ne fournissant les réponses exigées par la raison, l’histoire en acte se charge de rebattre les cartes. Signe des temps, les notions les plus communes ne résistent pas au vent de la critique, les vieilles idoles vacillent sur leur piédestal. Ainsi le discours dominant brandit le nom de démocratie comme un talisman. Mot-valise, bon à tout et propre à rien, emblème douteux des régimes occidentaux, il doit son efficacité symbolique à son caractère équivoque. Pour peu qu’on lui donne une définition rigoureuse, le charme s’évanouit, la supercherie s’évente.

In Washington’s eyes, the point of funding Black, indigenous, LGBT or other minority groups in enemy countries is not simply to promote tensions there; it is also to create a narrative that will help convince liberals and leftists in the United States to support American intervention.

When Naftali Bennett, the first yarmulke-wearing Israeli prime minister, refers to the Bible to justify his claim to the Land of Israel, he is not referring to Jewish scripture but to Protestant religious doctrine.

The Netherlands investigated fraud by the Mayday Rescue Foundation, which funded the Syrian White Helmets with over $120 million in Western government contracts. But top Dutch officials covered up the corruption.

Some troubling connections contradict Amnesty’s image as a benevolent defender of human rights and reveal key figures at the organization during its early years to be less concerned with human dignity and more concerned with the dignity of the US and UK’s image in the world.