New York activists respond to brutal Black on Asian attack by rallying against White Nationalism
RT | February 21, 2021
Anti-racism activists in New York have risen up to rally against white supremacy as they demand justice for a Filipino American man who was viciously slashed with a box cutter on the subway. Never mind that the attacker was black.
Hundreds of protesters gathered at New York’s Washington Square Park on Saturday afternoon and marched through parts of Manhattan, chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets.” The marchers congregated in front of the iconic Macy’s store on 34th Street. One carried a sign declaring, “White nationalism is the virus.”
Organizers billed the event as seeking “justice for the attack on Noel Quintana.” A promotional poster also said, “End the violence toward Asians. Let’s unite against white nationalism.”
The 61-year-old Quintana, a native of Manila, was attacked on February 3 on a crowded subway car as he headed to work in the morning rush hour. The attacker repeatedly kicked Quintana’s tote bag, then slashed his face from ear to ear with a box cutter after the Asian man complained. Quintana had to seek help on his own, as none of the by-standers stepped in or called for an ambulance, and he received about 100 stitches to close his wounds.
Police described the alleged attacker as “wearing a black mask with a Louis Vuitton logo and a black North Face coat.” While apparently having a sharp eye for the apparel brands favored by the suspected knifeman, police didn’t mention other appearance aspects revealed in security camera footage of the man, such as his black skin and afro.
Social media users pointed out the apparent disconnect between the perpetrator of the crime and the race of people targeted in the march for justice. “This is the suspect if you want to identify him,” conservative commentator Ian Miles Cheong said Sunday on Twitter.
Another poster for the anti-racism rally featured Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai immigrant who was killed in late January in San Francisco when a man came running from across the street and slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. A 19-year-old black man, Antoine Watson, was arrested and charged with Ratanapakdee’s murder earlier this month.
“Is there a shred of evidence that 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee was killed by white nationalism?” journalist Lee Fang asked. Former Republican congressional candidate Joshua Foxworth responded with sarcasm, saying, “White nationalism is to blame for black people assaulting Asians.”
The incident involving Ratanapakdee was one in a series of unprovoked attacks on elderly Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay area recently. Yahya Muslim, a 28-year-old black man, was arrested for allegedly shoving a 91-year-old man to the pavement from behind, then knocking down two other Chinese pedestrians on the same street in Oakland’s Chinatown area. Like the Ratanapakdee murder, the January 31 Chinatown attacks occurred in broad daylight.
And just as with the Quintana case in New York, the black-on-Asian attacks in California were blamed on white people. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen argued that Asians must recognize the violence as “part of a pattern of white supremacy.” Even if the assailants are black, he added, “the solution is not to fall back on racist assumptions of our own but to hold the system of white supremacy responsible for dividing us.”
San Francisco diversity activist Michelle Kim offered a similar view, saying Asians have “more work to do to eradicate anti-blackness.” She added that Asians have a “perceived proximity to whiteness,” partly because their “solidarity work with other marginalized communities” was covered up. She wrote an article on the recent spike in hate crimes against Asians, asking, “Who is our real enemy?” Despite acknowledging that the attacks on elderly Asians were perpetrated by blacks, she answered her own question predictably: “white supremacy culture.”
Countless social media observers pointed out the dishonesty of shifting the blame for anti-Asian violence away from those who are committing the crimes, and some pointed out the potential consequences of such deception. “Don’t expect them to stop without addressing who the real perpetrators are,” one commenter said. “If sacrificing your grandma to prove you aren’t racist is worth it, go ahead.”
Biden adviser threatens to punish Russia with ‘tools seen & unseen’ for SolarWinds hack
RT | February 21, 2021
The Biden administration will soon deliver a sweeping response to SolarWinds breach, so that the usual suspect, Russia, understands where Washington draws the line on cyberattacks, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
During his appearance on CBS’s Face The Nation program on Sunday, Sullivan was asked about what the team of new US President Joe Biden was going to do about the SolarWinds hack, given that sanctions have proven to be ineffective against Moscow.
The adviser replied by saying that the American “response will include a mix of tools seen and unseen.” He didn’t specify what those ‘tools’ might be.
And it will not simply be sanctions because, as you say, a response to a set of activities like this require a more comprehensive set of tools, and that is what the administration intends to do.
“It will be weeks, not months” before the US prepares retaliatory measures against Russia, Sullivan stated.
We will ensure that Russia understands where the US draws the line on this kind of activity.
SolarWinds breach was reported in December, becoming one of the largest and most sophisticated cyberattacks to date. The hackers were able to insert software backdoors into a widely used network-management program, distributed by Texas-based SolarWinds company. This allowed them to compromise the systems of more than a hundred commercial firms globally, as well as nine US government agencies, with the breach only discovered eight or nine months later.
Washington insists that such an operation could not have possibly been carried out without a foreign government support, while US intelligence and security agencies declared that the hack was ‘likely Russian in origin,’ echoing evidence-free mainstream media claims as well as their own language in the ‘assessments’ about the 2016 election. Moscow has denied any involvement in the SolarWinds breach, calling it “yet another unsubstantiated attempt” by the US to scapegoat Russia.
Biden Launches Campaign to Silence Critics of Killer Vaccine
By Mike Whitney | Unz Review | February 21, 2021
Imagine if an ordinary working man went on a rampage and killed 929 people and maimed 316 others. The media would naturally call such a man a serial killer or a homicidal maniac. Now imagine if a big pharmaceutical company did the same thing by releasing a vaccine that killed and maimed a similar number people. Would the drug company be treated the same as the working guy? Would their product be denounced as a “killer vaccine” and shunned by the public, or would they be praised on the cable news channels, provided lavish funding by the government, granted full immunity from liability for personal injury, waved through the regulatory process, and had the red carpet rolled out for their spectacular nationwide “Product Launch” extravaganza?
(NOTE: “According to new data released today, as of Feb. 12, 15,923 adverse reactions to COVID vaccines, including 929 deaths, have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since Dec. 14, 2020.” Children’s Health Defense)
And what about the small number of critics who don’t see the vaccine as a life-saving wonder drug but who seriously believe it is a gene-altering experimental concoction that was not sufficiently tested, did not go through the normal protocols, has not met long-term safety standards, excluded critical animal testing trials, and uses toxic synthetics that can trigger anaphylaxis, Bell’s Palsy, miscarriage, Antibody-dependent Enhancement (ADE) and a score of other potentially-lethal or debilitating long-term ailments that have not yet been diagnosed since the vaccine was rushed into service at breakneck speed?
What about these vaccine critics, what rights do they have? Do they have the right to speak their minds and express their concerns on social media or should they be smeared, castigated, blacklisted, censored and dragged through the mud?
In a free country, it is the vaccine manufacturers that should be scrutinized, lambasted and taken to task for the shortcomings or lethality of their product, but not in America. In America, it is the vaccine critics that are being condemned and targeted by the state. According to an article in the New York Post, the Biden Administration is joining forces with Big Tech to actively seek out and eliminate those people who challenge the official narrative and who reject the idea of inoculating the entire population with a dodgy experimental vaccine that poses a clear threat to one’s safety and well-being. Here’s an excerpt from the article in the Post :
The White House is asking social media companies to clamp down on chatter that deviates from officially distributed COVID-19 information as part of President Biden’s “wartime effort” to vanquish the coronavirus.
A senior administration official tells Reuters that the Biden administration is asking Facebook, Twitter and Google to help prevent anti-vaccine fears from going viral, as distrust of the inoculations emerges as a major barrier in the fight against the deadly virus.
“Disinformation that causes vaccine hesitancy is going to be a huge obstacle to getting everyone vaccinated and there are no larger players in that than the social media platforms,” the White House source told the news agency.
The news out of Washington is the first sign that officials are directly engaged with Silicon Valley in censoring social media users; Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain previously said the administration would try to work with major media companies on the issue….
Social media leaders have vowed to squash anti-vaccine “disinformation” on their platforms, but the spreading of such content has persisted....
A Twitter spokesman said the company is “in regular communication with the White House on a number of critical issues including COVID-19 misinformation.” (White House working with social media giants to silence anti-vaxxers”, New York Post )
So, what’s going on here? Why has the government joined with big tech to actively target people who do not accept the ‘official doctrine’ regarding the new vaccines?
It’s simple, isn’t it? The government wants to control want you think by controlling what you read. You see, the oligarchs who control the government behind the mask of the political parties, assume you are an ignorant beast incapable of critical thinking. They believe that your opinions are shaped by the things you read, therefore, they want to control what you read in order to push and prod and coerce you into the behavior that helps them achieve their malign objectives. In this case, they want everyone to submit to vaccination so they can reduce global population in order to curtail carbon emissions that, they believe, are a dire threat to human survival. This, of course, is just my own lunatic conspiracy theory. Nevertheless, the question remains the same: Does the government have the right to shut me up or do I have the right to speak my mind?
According to the report above, I do not have the right to speak my mind, in fact, the government is now explicitly taking aim at people like me who–they feel– are undermining the strategic agenda of the big money elites they work for.
What are we to make of this? What are we to make of this new alliance between the State and big tech or the State and big pharma or the State and Wall Street? Are we no longer a country that is “of, by and for the people” or are we edging closer to Mussolini’s definition of “fascism” as “the merging of the state and the corporation?” It seems to me that Mussolini’s definition is much more applicable.
And what does this tell us about the way the Biden administration plans to conduct business in the future?
It tells us that Joe Biden is essentially the corporate meat-puppet that he’s been for the last 5 decades and, that now, he intends to cancel vast swaths of the Bill of Rights to accommodate his deep-pocket managers. No one should be surprised by this. Biden has always been the Establishment’s best friend.
But do the oligarchs and corporate honchos really gain anything by silencing their critics?
Perhaps, after all, China has experienced exponential growth in the last two decades and, presumably, that is the model of governance our rulers now seek; absolute dictatorial power that allows the people who own the primary industries and businesses to arbitrarily set policy and impose their own laws independent of any democratic process.
Are we there yet?
Well, if the state is able to shut us up and remove us from public platforms, we’re a helluva lot closer than anyone thought.
No Biden Regime Fresh Start with Iran
By Stephen Lendman | February 21, 2021
On Friday, Biden regime press secretary Psaki said “(t)here’s no plan” to lift (illegal) sanctions on Iran or take other good faith steps.
No plans exist for direct negotiations with Iran, no intention to shift from confrontation to engaging in good faith diplomacy.
Ignoring US responsibility for wrecking the JCPOA nuclear deal, Psaki changed the subject with a bald-faced Big Lie, saying: “Iran is a long way from compliance (sic).”
Iran fully complies with JCPOA provisions in stark contrast to flagrantly breaching them by the US, UK, France and Germany (E3 countries).
Once again, she raised the phony issue of “Iran… acquiring a nuclear weapon.”
Knowing no such threat exists, she ignored nuclear armed and dangerous Israel like always before by the US.
Last week, the London Guardian reported that the Netanyahu regime is “expand(ing) its Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where it has historically made the fissile material for its nuclear (bomb) arsenal.”
In the mid-1980s, Dimona nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu publicly revealed the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
Today its thermonukes can destroy large cities. In 2009, anti-nuclear activist John Steinbach published a paper on Israel’s nuclear weapons program, saying:
“With several hundred weapons and a robust delivery system, Israel has quietly supplanted Britain as the world’s fifth largest nuclear power, and now rivals France and China in terms of the size of its nuclear arsenal.”
Its secret program is likely further advanced, more robust and dangerous today — while continuing to maintain nuclear ambiguity, fooling one one.
Last week, Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stressed the following:
“We have heard many nice words and promises (from the US and E3), but in practice, they have not been honored and on the contrary, they have acted against those promises.”
“It is no use talking. It is no use giving promises. This time, only actions matter!”
“If we see actions on the part of the other side, we will take action too.”
“This time, the Islamic Republic will not be satisfied with hearing such and such words and promises.”
“Things will not be like the past.”
Even when positive actions are taken by the US and West, time and again they’re reversed.
Despite agreeing to the JCPOA and affirming it by Security Council Res. 2231, the US and E3 breached their obligations.
It’s clear proof that they can never be trusted no matter what they say or agree to.
Negotiations leading to agreements with the US-dominated West aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
And when Washington abandons international agreements, colonized Britain and EU countries follow suit, in compliance with their US boss.
There’s virtually no prospect that Biden will engage with Iran responsibly.
It’s virtually certain that he and hardliners around him will continue dirty business as usual — no lifting of illegal sanctions, no return to the JCPOA in its affirmed form, no good faith diplomacy — just empty rhetoric and hollow promises when made.
At the same time, the US falsely blames Iran for its own breaches of international law.
On Friday, Biden’s national security advisor Sullivan said Iran must “take the steps required to assure the world and to prove to the world that their program is for exclusively peaceful purposes (sic).”
It’s done this consistently. Its legitimate nuclear program has no military component, no evidence suggesting otherwise.
It’s more intensively monitored by IAEA inspectors than any other nations with nuclear power.
In sharp contrast, nuclear armed and dangerous USA and Israel won’t let IAEA inspectors near their bomb-making facilities.
Sullivan saying that the Biden regime “is prepared to come back into compliance with (JCPOA) terms if Iran is ready to come back into compliance” ignores Tehran’s fulfillment of its obligations while the US and E3 remain in breach of their own.
Defying reality, Sullivan falsely accused Iran of “refus(ing) to cooperate with the (IAEA) to ensure that nothing in Iran’s program is being used for weapons purposes.”
Obsessing over Iran’s legitimate nuclear program by inventing a bomb-making threat that doesn’t exist continues endlessly.
No matter what Tehran does to comply with its obligations, it’s never good enough.
It never will be as long as the Islamic Republic is free from US control.
That’s the core issue, the reason for US/Western hostility toward the country.
Claiming an Iranian nuclear threat is head fake deception. There is none.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei religiously banned development and production of nukes.
Yet the West ignores his fatwa that’s obeyed to the letter. Not a shred of evidence suggests otherwise.
A Final Comment
On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said the following:
Talks with the US and E3 will begin when they fulfill their JCPOA obligations.
They’ve been no actions by Biden to comply with Washington’s obligations, just broken promises.
So far, he’s continuing failed Trump regime maximum pressure.
Illegal US sanctions remain in place.
Iran responded to US maximum pressure with “maximum resistance.”
“Pressure never works with Iran, only respect.”
“The US is addicted to sanctions, bullying, and pressure. But it doesn’t work” and never will with Iran.
Unacceptable Trump regime policies followed by Biden assures continued “maximum failure.”
“Iran (did not) violat(e) (the) JCPOA. (It) implement(ed) remedial measures” as permitted under Articles 26 and 36.
After Trump’s lawless abandonment of the JCPOA in May 2018, the US and E3 breached virtually all their obligations mandated by its provisions.
Because of what happened and overall Western war on Iran by other means in cahoots with apartheid Israel, there’s virtually no chance of these countries engaging with Iran in compliance with their international law obligations.
Voluntary implementation of Additional Protocol must stop if sanctions remain in place: Iran MPs
Press TV | February 21, 2021
Iranian lawmakers have once again highlighted the necessity of stopping voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic remain in place.
The call came in a statement issued by 226 members of the Iranian Parliament following an open session of the legislature on Sunday.
“All Iranian officials, including the administration officials, are duty-bound to stop voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol as of Esfand 5, 1399 (February 23, 2021) and restrict the (International Atomic Energy) Agency’s inspections [of Iran’s nuclear facilities] to those stipulated in the Safeguards Agreement if sanctions are not lifted,” they said.
The statement added that following the conclusion of the multilateral nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), between Iran and major world powers in 2015, Western parties, including the United States and three European countries – Britain, Germany and France – were expected to treat the Iranian nation with honesty and fulfill their obligations under the accord.
“Although the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has verified 15 times at various intervals that Iran has fully implemented its JCPOA commitments, enemies of the Iranian people have not fulfilled any of their fundamental and important obligations.”
Based on the JCPOA, sanctions on Iran’s banking and oil sectors were scheduled to be lifted in January 2016 but “unfortunately” more restrictions were imposed on the country, the lawmakers said.
They added that the process of harming the Iranian people’s interests and imposing more sanctions on Tehran under different pretexts started under the former democratic US president, Barack Obama, and culminated in the decision by former Republican president, Donald Trump, to withdraw from the JCPOA in May 2018.
In 2015, Iran and six world states — namely the US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — signed the historic nuclear deal, which was ratified in the form of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.
However, Trump unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA in 2018 and reinstated the anti-Iran sanctions that had been lifted by the virtue of the deal.
The Trump administration also launched what it called a maximum pressure campaign against Iran, targeting the Iranian nation with the “toughest ever” restrictive measures.
Elsewhere in their statement, the Iranian legislators further noted that in order to defend the Iranian nation’s nuclear rights and make enemies of the nation lift unjust sanctions, Iran finally decided to start the process of enriching uranium to 20 percent purity and also to give a two-month deadline to the US and the three European parties to the JCPOA to lift cruel sanctions.
Another part of that decision, the parliamentary statement said, was to stop voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol based on articles 26 and 36 of the JCPOA and in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2231, if the opposite side failed to fulfill its obligations.
On December 1, 2020, Iranian lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of the ‘Strategic Action Plan to Lift Sanctions and Safeguard Interests of Iranian People’, which intends to counteract sanctions imposed on Iran. The bill became law after being endorsed by Iran’s Guardian Council.
According to the new law, the Iranian administration is required to suspend more commitments under the nuclear deal if the US sanctions are not eased by February 21.
The law tasked the AEOI with producing and restoring at least 120 kilograms of enriched uranium at a 20-percent purity level every year and also enrichment beyond 20 percent if the country’s peaceful nuclear activities demanded.
In January, Iran started the process to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity at its Fordow nuclear facility.
The lawmakers’ statement came on the same day that the IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi held talks with Iranian officials, including Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran, hours before the deadline set by the Islamic Republic to limit inspections by the agency if US sanctions are not lifted.
Grossi announced on Tuesday that he was ready to visit Iran after the country informed the UN body of its decision to end voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as of February 23 in line with the new law passed by the Parliament.
Grossi said in a statement that the aim of the visit was to find a solution for the agency to continue to carry out its verification work under the JCPOA.
In an exclusive interview with Press TV on Sunday, the Iranian foreign minister said the Islamic Republic will be open to negotiations on reviving the historic 2015 nuclear accord once all signatories begin fulfilling their obligations.
He said US President Joe Biden has spurned predecessor Trump’s Iran policy in words, but has so far pursued the same course of action in practice.
“Nothing has changed. Biden claims that Trump’s policy of maximum pressure was maximum failure… But for all practical purposes, they are pursuing the same policy,” Zarif added.
US Marines “Stay Put” In Norway, Russia Responds With Bomber ‘Warning’ Flights In Arctic
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | February 21, 2021
In a hugely significant move that will put Russia-Europe relations further on edge amid an ongoing build-up of NATO forces along sensitive border regions, the large contingent of Marines that arrived in Norway last month are now expected to stay for an indefinite period.
“About 1,000 Marines who arrived in Norway last month — only to have their military exercises canceled due to the pandemic — will remain in the country for arctic training,” Military.com reports based on Marine Corps statements.
They plan to stay and engage in “valuable arctic and mountain warfare training” through at least the springtime. The deployed units are mostly from the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines but will now essentially “stay put”.
Marines have been training on a rotational basis in Norway for years, but the reality is their stays and rotations have been increasingly extended over the past years. Moscow has meanwhile condemned a ‘Cold War’ style build-up near the Arctic Circle, where it also frequently conducts military exercises.
The AFP wrote that Russia is “fuming”, citing a Russian ambassador to say:
“Nobody in the Arctic is preparing for an armed conflict. However, there are signs of mounting tension and military escalation,” Russia’s ambassador to the Arctic Council, Nikolai Korchunov, said.
The current militarization in the region “could turn us back decades to the days of the Cold War,” he told Russia’s RIA news agency in early February.
As we described earlier this month, the US Air Force for the first time ever sent multiple B-1 Lancer bombers along with 200 airmen to Norway, which came amid greater NATO calls to “confront Russia”.
And now just days ago, Forbes detailed that in response “the Russian air force is mobilizing its own warplanes. Fighters to intercept the B-1. And bombers to strike back.”
Here’s more on Russia’s response:
After the U.S. Air Force announced the B-1 deployment, the Russian air force wasted no time sortieing its own bombers. Two of the service’s Tu-160 heavy bombers flew an epic, 12-hour sweep of Northern Europe, the Kremlin announced on Feb. 9.
The 6,000-mile round-trip took the swing-wing Tu-160s from their base at Engels in western Russia north to the Arctic Ocean then west to Svalbard, south into the Norwegian Sea, east along the Norwegian coast and finally south back to Engels.
A pair of MiG-31 interceptors flying from Rogachevo air base in northern Russian briefly escorted the bombers as they roared across the Kara Sea toward the Arctic.
And not helping this Cold War style throwback, President Biden on Friday warned a global audience of Russian “bullying” and “autocracy”.
“The trans-Atlantic alliance is back,” he said before the Munich Security Conference in words intended to restore trust from European allies in NATO.