AJAMU BARAKA, ajamubaraka2 at gmail.com
Baraka is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies who is based in Colombia. He recently wrote: “The normalization of white supremacist domination and its prerogatives are so completely inculcated in U.S. and Western consciousness that not only is the question as to what right the U.S. and the West have to attack Syria outside the framework of consideration, but alternative ways of viewing the world are beyond cognitive comprehension. This is the cultural and ideological foundation of ‘American exceptionalism’ and the intellectual framework and assumptions that informed Western-based human rights organizations and their theoreticians in the construction of the notion of humanitarian intervention.”

MATTHEW R. LEE, Matthew.Lee at innercitypress.com, @innercitypress
Lee covers the UN for Inner City Press, regularly questioning officials and breaking stories. He has written several pieces today, reporting in one: “Syria has confirmed it gave a letter from Bashar al-Assad to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for accession to the Chemical Weapons treaty of 1993 (Inner City Press put it online).

In another piece, Lee writes today: “For weeks the UN has said its report on chemical weapons in Syria will only say if they were used, not by whom. Since August 24 the UN has said it would release its report as soon as it was ready.

“Now, from statements by [French Foreign Minister] Laurent Fabius in AFP this morning, and orchestrated leaks last night, neither it true.

“Fabius says the UN report will be released on Monday — in four … or five days — and will implicate Assad.

“First, the report wasn’t supposed to implicate (or ‘finger,’ as one UN scribe pre-spun it) anyone. …

“Second, why would France get a heads-up about the report, and why would Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delay its release for five days?”