It is important for American journalists to combat these misperceptions, so that the US can learn from China’s response on how to better deal with the current crisis—saving lives in this as well as future pandemics, as well as reducing tensions between the nuclear powers US and China.

For Canada to ratify OPCAT, or introduce any oversight over federal institutions, would need to go hand-in-hand with the introduction of national standards, against which Canada’s compliance can be measured. Yet, the foot-dragging of Canadian legislators on the issue of torture prevention has received little coverage. As a result there is a lack of public awareness of the effects that this international law might have across different sectors of society.

“I got out of the Marines and within a few years, 15 of my buddies had killed themselves,” one veteran rifleman who served two tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2011 said to me recently. “One minute they belonged and the next, they were out, and they couldn’t fit in. They had nowhere to work, no one who related to them. And they had these PTSD symptoms that made them react in ways other Americans didn’t.”

During the year of the COVID, output, investment and employment in nearly all the economies of the world plummeted, as lockdowns, social isolation and collapsing international trade contracted output and spending. And yet the opposite was the case for the stock and bond markets of the major economies. The US stock market indexes (along with others) ended 2020 at all-time highs. After the initial shock of the COVID pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns, when the US stock market indexes plunged by 40%, markets then made a dramatic recovery, eventually surpassing pre-pandemic levels.

Any future government that’s concerned about environmental and human rights issues will have to reign in mining companies operating abroad.

Neoliberal leaders who failed to protect their countries from the virus must be investigated | by Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad

Over a century later, and over two decades after the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis exposed the systemic financial fragility creating conditions for the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, the reluctance to learn from the East continues, ignoring Prophet Muhammad’s advice to ‘seek knowledge, even unto China’.

Even before Biden took the oath of office at noon on Jan. 20, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, citing D.C. lobbyists, reported Biden would cancel the Keystone permit on his first day in office. He did so late that afternoon, as one of 17 executive orders.
News reports added Biden is also cancelling the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit for another controversial project, the Dakota Access Pipeline, on grounds that it both endangers Missouri River drinking water and that it traverses sacred Native American lands.

On January 14, the US International Development Finance Corporation provided Ecuador with a loan of $2.8 billion. This move was part of the US strategy to remove Chinese businesses and political influence from Latin America | by Vijay Prashad