March 2024 This is an archived page on The Multipolar World for the month indicated. Items with red headlines indicate they were published in full on the home page of the website and emailed to website subscribers. Comments and information in square brackets [ ] are by the website editor.
World news headlines on The Multipolar World, March 2024
The Feb 29 massacre by Israel of Palestinians awaiting food suplies on Gaza City’s Al-Rashid Street is a horrific war crime, by Seraj Assi, in Jacobin, Mar 1, 2024 On February 29, Israeli troops killed more than 100 hungry and starving Palestinians who were awaiting flour delivery from aid trucks. Palestinian officials have described the carnage as a “cold-blooded massacre, and the people have dubbed it the ‘Flour Massacre’. Emboldened by U.S. complicity, Israel persists in acting with impunity in Gaza…
On March 2, the world will march to stop Israel’s genocidal assault on Rafah, report by by Layan Fuleihan, in People’s Dispatch, Mar 1, 2024 Israel is threatening to carry out a full-scale invasion of Rafah, a tiny section of Gaza where 1.5 million Palestinians are now packed, on March 10. Ahead of the deadline, a global day of protest is scheduled for Saturday, March 2.
Related:
* Data shows no diminishing of the Gaza Resistance to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, analysis by Tim Anderson (researcher in Australia), in Al Mayadeen English, Mar 2, 2024
* Israeli army in Gaza is in a ‘state of shock’, reports Israel newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, report by Palestine Chronicle, Mar 1, 2024
* George Galloway back in UK Parliament after landslide by-election win championing Palestinian rights, report by Consortium News, Mar 1, 2024 Galloway says his victory heralds the demise of the Labour-Tory duopoly in British politics. It’s a stinging defeat for the right-wing Labour Party leader who displaced as party leader the soft-left Jeremy Corbyn and then drove him out of the party in October 2020.
Two years of the Russian military operation in Ukraine and ten years since the coup in Kiev that started it all, situation report from Ukraine by Dmitri Kovalevich, in A Socialist In Canada, March 1, 2024 (Dmitri Kovalevich is the special correspondent in Ukraine for Al Mayadeen English, where this report first appeared on March 1, 2024.)
Russia’s military intervention into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, is a direct consequence of the illegal and violent coup in Kiev in February 2014 and the far-right, war-making regime that the coup-installed.
German generals exposed discussing a missile strike against Crimea’s Kerch bridge, the role of the CIA in Ukraine, and other recent news of Ukraine, situation report published in the Substack page ‘Simplicius The Thinker’, Mar 1, 2024
As Ukraine suffers major military setbacks, CounterPunch journal steps up its support to NATO’s war there, feature commentary in CounterPunch, Mar 1, 2024
[The wretched commenary compares Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine to stop NATO expansion to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Here is how the commentary opens: “There are only losers in the wars between Russia and Ukraine in Europe and between Israel and the Palestinians in the Middle East. The increased brutalization of the Russian and Israeli military forces against the innocent civilian populations of Ukraine and Gaza has exposed the cruelty and violence that President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have unleashed…”
[The writer hails NATO threats against Russia: “At war’s end, Putin will find Russia facing a phalanx of NATO nations on its western border that is increasing defense [sic] spending against a Russia that underestimated the will of Ukrainians and Europeans [sic] to counter its aggression.” The writer argues the U.S. has gone “wobbly” in its support to the NATO/Ukraine war effort: “Meanwhile, the United States has gone wobbly in its support of Ukraine, and refuses to stand up to Israel.”
[And how about this presentation of U.S. policy in Gaza: “Biden has demonstrated genuine sympathy [!] for the Israeli hostages in Gaza, which is completely appropriate, but insufficient [emphasis added].” And here you have the writer totally confusing and belittling the ongoing genocide by Israel in Gaza: “The correct moral and political choice [for the U.S. government] would include sympathy for and protection of innocent women and children in Ukraine and Gaza from the savagery and terror of Russian and Israeli military forces.”
[Ukraine and NATO’s mounting military defeat occurs as Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, backed by the NATO powers, worsens and reaches new levels of horror and impunity. Yet much of not-so-alternative media in the West is doubling down on its support to NATO, as evidenced by the awful CounterPunch and others like it.]
World news headlines on A Socialist In Canada, February 2024
Israeli wages ‘heinous’ attack against people seeking aid in Gaza, killing more than 100, report in the anti-Russia Al Jazeera, Feb 29, 2024 and read: report by RT News, Feb 29, 2024
It’s time to end Western complicity in genocide in Gaza, by Ramzy Baroud, editor, Palestine Chronicle, Feb 28, 2024 …In his statement to the Ineternational Criminal Court on February 19, British barrister Philippe Sands, a member of team Palestine, oexplained how the world must force Israel to end its occupation. He said, “The right of self-determination requires that UN Member States bring Israel’s occupation to an immediate end. No aid. No assistance. No complicity. No contribution to forcible actions. No money. No arms. No trade. No nothing.” …
Related news:
* In Michigan primary vote for Democratic Party, one in six voting Democrats support ‘Uncommitted’, in solidarity with Palestine. Report by Mondoweiss, Feb 28, 2024 [Genocide Joe Biden won some 625,000 votes in the Michigan primary (Wikipedia) while the ‘Uncommitted for Palestine’ vote was more than 100,000.].
* China voices support for Palestinian ‘right to self-defence’ before Int’l Court of Justice, drawing condemnation by Israel. Report in South China Morning Post, Feb 27, 2024 (see the news headline and comment posted below on Feb 26: China’s timid response to the genocide in Gaza)
The West wants to destroy Russia, Vladimir Putin charges in annual address to Russia’s Federal Assembly, news report by RT News, Feb 29, 2024 …The so-called West, with its colonial practices and penchant for inciting ethnic conflicts around the world, not only seeks to impede our progress but also envisions a Russia that is a dependent, declining, and dying space where they can do as they please. In fact, they want to replicate in Russia what they have done in numerous other countries, including Ukraine. They want to sow discord in our home and weaken us from within. But they are wrong, which has become abundantly clear now that they have run up against the firm resolve and determination of our multi-ethnic people… Our soldiers and officers – Christians and Muslims, Buddhists and followers of Judaism, people representing different ethnicities, cultures, and regions – have proven that the centuries-old cohesion and unity of the people of Russia are a formidable and invincible force. All of them, shoulder to shoulder, are fighting for our shared Motherland…
Related: Sovereignty, U.S. hypocrisy, nuclear warnings: Key takeaways from Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly address, RT News, Feb 29, 2024
Transnistria republic bordering Moldova issues appeal to Russia for protection against aggression, RT News, Feb 28, 2024
Head of Ukraine military intelligence says Alexey Navalny died of natural cause, report in pro-Ukraine Kyiv Post, Feb 26, 2024 …Kyrylo Budanov told journalists on the sidelines at the ‘Ukraine. Year of 2024’ forum in Kiev on February 25, 2024, “This may disappoint you, but as far as we know, [Navalny] died as a result of a blood clot. This has been more or less confirmed”…
Related:
* Navalny’s value, op-ed commentary by Winslow Myers, in Knoxville Daily Sun (Tennessee), Feb 19, 2024 (and reprinted in LA Progressive, Feb 28, 2024) …Aleksei Navalny, to all effects murdered by Putin, represented about as absolute a standard of what might constitute a morally honest life as humanly possible… [Winslow Myers is a regular correspondent at CounterPunch and also appears in Common Dreams. He is affiliated with ‘World Beyond War’.].
Rambling diatribe published on CounterPunch by writer ‘Winslow Myers’ who claims Vladimir Putin is on U.S. presidential ballot in the form of Donald Trump. Reference: ‘Beyond delusion’, rambling diatribe against Russia published in CounterPunch, Feb 29, 2024 …Joseph Biden, elderly or not, is one of the few adults in the room during this 2024 presidential election year… Ukraine’s agony, with its echoes of Hitlerian aggression [sic] concerns those of us who are convinced there must a more robust way to constrain the Putins of this world [emphasis added]…
Related: Joe Biden vs Vladimir Putin, essay by ‘Winslow Myers’, published in LA Progressive, Feb 26, 2024 original opening text: As the anti-climate Koch network withdraws its support of Nikki Haley, there is now only one viable candidate for the Republican ticket: Vladimir Putin. While he is precluded from formally declaring his candidacy due to trivial U.S. constitutional constraints, Donald J. Trump is running as his proxy…
Some Western leaders float idea of ‘boots on ground’ in Ukraine in last-ditch effort to save their proxy regime in Kiev, situation report published on the Substack page ‘Simplicius The Thinker’, Feb 27, 2024 The forward march of Russian military forces in Donbass continues, threatening to become a stampede of Kiev regime forces
[Watch the Russian television news broadcast embedded in the above report, on the present-day manufacture of tank and artillery barrels by Russia. A factory manager praises the foresight of the past leaders of the Soviet Union for stockpiling large quantities of tank and artilley barrels in case of imperialist aggression against the country. He explains that these stockpiles are now being used to fight the aggression by NATO and its Ukraine proxy. The English word for the past actions of Soviet leaders is ‘prescient’, meaning ‘having or showing knowledge of events before they take place’.]
Related:
* Ukraine in ‘catastrophic situation’ says Moscow as it assesses Kiev’s frontline status, report by RT News, Feb 28, 2024 Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has told a radio interview that the musings of French president Emmanuel of sending Western troops to Ukraine are hardly reassuring to the people in Ukraine, quite the contrary. A large number of leaders of NATO countries are responding to Macron’s statement by rushing to say they are in no way considering sending their own soldiers to fight for Ukraine. Thus are all the promises by NATO of ‘military victory’ against Russia disappearing into a cloud of dust and leaving a bitter aftermath of stupid promises
* Disarray and humiliation as NATO leaders rush to dissassociate themselves from the militaristic musings of the French president and prime minister to send troops to Ukraine. Report by CNBC, Feb 28, 2024
Canada’s state-run television network broadcasts a pretend-report on the rebuilding of Mariupol, focused on praising the neo-Nazis who occupied the city from 2014 to 2022
[The CBC Television News reporter did not have the courage nor credibility to even travel to Mariupol, instead using and abusing for credibility video footage scatterings drawn from a broadcaster in Norway and YouTube broadcasters in Russia. The wretched report, broadcast on February 24, was given a sarcastic title by the CBC: ‘Russia claims it’s making Mariupol great again’. The centrepieces of the report are 1. a fawning interview in Ukraine by the CBC reporter with a female, Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary who was taken prisoner by Russian forces in spring 2022 and later released in a prisoner exchange, and 2. a video interview with an anonymous, disgruntled female supposedly in Mariupol who praises the ‘good life’ she led in the city during neo-Nazi rule. The port and steelmaking city of Mariupol was seized by neo-Nazi paramilitaries (‘Azov Battalion’) in 2014 as part of coup Ukraine’s military assault against the people of Donbass. It occupied the city until its liberation in early May 2022 by Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. The concluding minutes of the report are dedicated to dismissing the rapid and impressive rebuilding underway in Mariupol. You can watch the foul, seven-minute broadcast (if your brain and stomach can handle it) here. But much better is to read this news report on the rebuilding of Mariupol: The reconstruction plan for Mariupol in 2024 has begun, report by Oreanda News (St. Petersburg), Dec 11, 2023 …Ninety per cent of habitable buildings in the city are now connected to the rebuilt, central, water-boiler heating system of the city (typical of all of cities in Russia and Ukraine, a legacy of the Soviet era)…
Related: ‘Relief Web’ news agency publishes findings of report by Human Rights Watch [sic] lamenting the 2022 liberation of Mariupol from neo-Nazi occupation [You can read the wretched, ‘Relief Web’ propaganda report here. The propaganda agency is widely used and cited by UN agencies; its report says not a word of who controlled Mariupol prior to its liberation and the terror and wreckage they wrought upon the city and its residents.]
The six crises of capitalism, book review by Michael Roberts, published on his website blog, Feb 28, 2024 Reviewing: Six Crises of the World Economy: Globalization and Economic Turbulence from the 1970s to the COVID-19 Pandemic, by José A. Tapia, published by Palgrave Macmillan, Feb. 2024 (339 pages, $100+ in hardcover)
China’s shipbuilding industry is thriving despite U.S. sanctions, report in South China Morning Post, Feb 28, 2024 Despite Trump-era U.S. restrictions, the shipbuilding industry in China achieved record growth in 2023, with most supply chains resilient, researchers say. Ninety per cent of the world’s shipbuilding capacity is in Asia. (here in pdf format: China’s shipbuilding industry is thriving despite U.S. sanctions)
Related: China’s regional passenger jet C919 is conducting test flights in Asia and will eventually rival Boeing and Airbus, report in South China Morning Post, Feb 28, 2024 The C919 (140 to 210 passengers) has only been certified to fly in mainland China, while the ARJ21 (78 to 97) has flown commercially since 2016, including in Indonesia
Russian and Cuban officials meet in Havana to boost economic development projects and mutual defense. Report in Al Mayadeen English, Feb 27, 2024
Boost military spending and cut social spending for war against Russia, says Danish PM in interview. Report by RT News, Feb 27, 2024 ‘As the world changes, you cannot spend the same penny two times. Freedom [sic] comes with a price.’
Bloodthirsty British general left a blueprint in Ireland for counter-insurgency against the populations of the Western countries, by Mick Hall (New Zealand writer), in Consortium News, Feb 26, 2024 (part one) British general Sir Frank Kitson died in early January 2024. He was the chief architect of the torture centres, death squads, psychological operations, extra-judicial killings and illicit created in Northern Ireland during 30 years of violent effort to crush the Ireland independence movement. (Mick Hall was fired from New Zealand’s state media outlet in 2023 for his diligent editorial work in reporting NATO’s war in Ukraine. That story is told on the ‘World news’ page of A Socialist In Canada, December 2023.)
Related: part two here
The Irish government’s shameful betrayal of the Palestinian peope, essay by Fra Hughes, in Al Mayadeen English, Feb 27, 2024 …There is a rising chorus in Ireland demanding that Irish politicians not attend the traditional St. Patrick’s Day celebrations at the White House on March 17, 2024. Sinn Féin party members and elected representatives, north and south, have attended and even organised some of these rallies in Ireland calling for a ceasefire in palestine. Yet they have at the same time publicly asserted their intention to go to Washington. There, Sinn Fein and other corporate-endorsed Irish politicians will pose for selfies with Genocide Joe Biden while the killing of Palestinians continues…
Russia’s victory in Ukraine in retaking city of Avdiivka resonates in Central Asia, analysis by MK Bhadrakumar (former Indian diplomat), published in his website blog Indian Punchline, Feb 25, 2024 Russia’s stunning victory in routing the Ukrainian military from the city of Avdiivka boosts the credibility of Russia as provider of security for the Central Asian region. The point is not lost on the erudite Central Asian mind that Russia has single-handedly put the NATO on the back foot.
China’s timid response to the genocide in Gaza, analysis in South China Morning Post, Feb 26, 2024 (here in pdf format: China’s timid response to the genocide in Gaza) ‘China has an important role and can definitely can do much, much, much more,’ says Rula Shadeed, co-director of the Palestine-based Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, which advocates for the embattled population. She explains, ‘There has been no cessation of trade between China and Israel, no mention of cutting ties, not even a summoning of the Israeli ambassador in Beijing.’
[This informative analysis does neglect to scrutinize China’s declared support for a ‘two-state’ solution to the existence of Israel apartheid and now genocidal war. In the days of South Africa apartheid, the equivalent of the ‘two state solution’ was the apartheid regime’s efforts to create ‘bantustans’. The long-failed ‘two state solution’ is today regularly voiced by the very Western powers as they support Israel’s war. so much for thiis ‘solution’–it is a farce that has been exposed as such for decades by true defenders of Palestine. The Western powers and their media outlets stand in violation of two fundamental United Nations conventions–the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1976 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Note the language of ‘suppression and punishment’. Why are the governments of China and certain other countries silent over this language? Apartheid Israel and the Western powers supporint it, along with their respective state and corporate media, should be prosecuted under international law for aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide. The governments of the world who voice support for Palestine should be at the forefront of such calls. They should immediately cease all economic, diplomatic and cultural ties with Israel, just as in the days of South African apartheid. All this is sorely lacking in the world of 2024.]
Tens of thousands rally in Sao Paulo, Brazil in support of rightist Jair Bolsonaro amid probe of attempted right-wing coup by him and supporters against 2022 election result, report in Al Jazeera, Feb 26, 2024
Related:
* Fascist movement in Brazil stages rally of hundreds of thousands in support of ex-president Bolsonaro. He waves the Israel flag at the gathering. Report in Al Mayadeen English, Feb 26, 2024 The fascist gathering in Sao Paulo protested the recent remarks against Israel by Brazil president ‘Lula’ da Silva. He has been declared persona non grata by Israel, prompting the Brazil government to recall its ambassador to the apartheid entity.
* Brazil recalls ambassador to Israel, report in Al Jazeera, Feb 19, 2024
Head of Valdai Discussion Club writes favorable assessment of a possible Trump presidency, and RT News publishes it. Reference: ‘Does Russia want Donald Trump to win?’, commentary by Fyodor Lukyanov, in RT News, Feb 26, 2024 ‘A second term for the Republican would herald the beginning of a real change in the international positioning of the U.S.’ (Fyodor Lukyanov is editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, chairman of the presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club.
At World court hearing, Global South countries call for end to occupation of Palestine while U.S. and allies back Israel apartheid and genocide. Report by People’s Dispatch, Feb 25, 2024 On the fifth day of hearings on February 23 the British gov’t echoed the earlier U.S. gov’t argument before the world Court (ICJ) defending Israeli apartheid and its continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The two governments are asking the Court not to deliver an opinion on the legality of Israel’s actions, claiming the Court has no jurisdiction to opine on the questions formulated by the UN General Assembly because apartheid and genocidal Israel has not consented [!]…
Western leader are Israel’s human shields, essay by Dmitri Lascaris, published on his website blog, Feb 16, 2024 (Dmitri Lascaris is a lawyer, writer and longtime Palestine rights advocate in Canada.)
Day 142 of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, latest daily situation report in Mondoweiss, Feb 25, 2024 Satellite imagery broadcast on CNN shows Egypt is creating a buffer zone more than two miles wide along the wall it has built across its border with southern Gaza in order to keep displaced Palestinians at bay and imprisoned in Gaza. The wall and the buffer zone are planned to stretch across the entire Gaza-Egypt border. [Egypt has been governed by a military-fascist dictatorship since the coup of July 3, 2013 that overthrew the elected president Mohamed Morsi and the elected legislature of the country in which The Freedom and Justice Party led by Morsi won the two-round national election in May and June 2012. The coup was a terrible blow against the Palestinian people as subsequent events have shown, but liberal and most ‘left-wing’ forces in the imperialist countries welcomed the coup (and here) because of their fear of political forces in the Middle East inspired by Muslim faith.] Related:
* The Gaza Strip explained in maps, Al Jazeera, Aug 7, 2022
* No way to remember: Review of Samir Amin’s new book on the Arab Spring, book review published on Sept 8, 2016 (with an introduction by Roger Annis)
Avdeevka denouement: A turning point for Russian momentum, analysis on the Substack page of ‘Simplicius The Thinker’, Feb 24, 2024
The alienated state of Ukraine: How the paths of the government and population are increasingly diverging, special report by Dmitri Kovalevich, A Socialist In Canada, Feb 24, 2024 (here in pdf format: The alienated state of Ukraine)
Introduction by A Socialist In Canada: In February 2014, extreme-right paramilitaries in Ukraine carried out a violent coup against the elected government of the day. They did so with the full backing of the NATO powers, the pro-Western (pro-imperialist) sections of the Ukrainian elite, and much of population in the west of the country. The new coup regime quickly launched a war to suppress the domestic opposition to the coup. Opposition was universal in Crimea and widespread in what was then eastern and southern Ukraine (Donbass region, Odessa region, the territories lying east and south of the Dnieper River). Russia’s manyfold attempts since 2014 at peaceful resolution of Ukraine and NATO’s war, notably the ‘Minsk 2’ peace agreement of February 2015 (text here), have been rebuffed and betrayed all along by the leading powers in NATO. This has left the Russian government and people with no option but to fight fire with fire.
Adviivka falls, and with it NATO’s credibility, essay by Dmitri Lascaris (Canadian lawyer and analyst), published on his website blog, Feb 20, 2024
[Dmitri Lascaris is a very rare writer in Canada to challenge the lies and myths appearing in corporate and even alternative media in the West to justify the war by NATO and its far-right proxy Ukraine against the people of Russia. But several flaws in his latest analysis bear mention. He claims that Ukraine conducted a successfiul counter-offensive against the Russia armed forces in autumn 2022, but the truth is that Russia staged tactial retreats at that time as it became aware of just how heavily fortified since 2015 that coup Ukraine built up in the territory it occupied in the Donbass region. Another example is that he describes well how the Donetsk suburb of Adviivka came to be heavily fortified by Ukraine, but he neglects to descibe that this was part of the betrayal of the Minsk-2 peace agreement of February 2015 (which he loosely refers to one time, as “the Minsk agreements”) by the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors. He furthermore fails to describe how fortified Adviivka has been used for years by the far-right regime in Kiev, with weaponry provided by NATO, to mercilessly bombard with atillery and rockets the rebellious people of Donetsk city and its surroundings.
[PS A former journalist at Canada’s war-loving state broadcaster has contributed a string of sarcastic and pesky comments to the above blog writing on Adviivka by Lascaris. The comments could be interpreted, if read superficially, as some kind of welcoming of Lascaris’ views. But the former CBC hack has previously well described his support for NATO’s war in Ukraine: Why arming Ukraine is the road to peace, by David Gutnick, August 2023. That essay was published in the wretched, fake-left, anti-Russia Canadian Dimension journal.]
Liberal environmentalist Bill McKibben weighs in on NATO’s war in Ukraine war… on the side of NATO imperialism. Reference: ‘Breaking Putin’s petro-power grip: An urgent call to tighten sanctions and embrace renewable revolution [sic]’, jointly authored essay by Bill McKibben, published on Feb 24, 2024
Related: Absurd essay on Ukraine and ‘clean energy’ is making the rounds in absurd alternative media outlets in USA. Reference: ‘Ukraine’s commitment to clean energy is a beacon of resilience’, essay published in Common Dreams, Feb 21, 2024, in LA Progressive, Feb 26, 2024, by former Green Party leader Howie Hawkins on Twitter
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov tours Latin America as leaders demand ‘profound reform’ of global institutions, report by Benjamin Zinevich, in People’s Dispatch, Feb 22, 2024
Trotskyist ‘Counterfire’ group in Britain, a leading force in that country’s ‘Stop The War’ coalition, publishes commentary hailing pro-Western, Russian crusader Alexey Navalny Reference: ‘Why socialists should condemn the death of Alexei Navalny’, commentary published in Counterfire, Feb 17, 2024
[The commentary repeats many of the tropes of Western media dragging through the mud the Russian government and people while ignoring their impressive social, economic and political achievements of the past 25 years. Navalny was a pro-Western ideologue and a failed financier who served five years in prison for embezzlement beginning in 2013. The ‘Counterfire’ group exists and publishes in Britain, the country that has detained Julian Assange without charges for five years now in the hope of extradicting him into the U.S. prison/industrial complex. Unlike the United States, Russia has no death penalty, it outlaws the possession of handguns, and strictly observes the right of women to control their reproductive functions, including through access to abortion.]
Excerpts from the commentary:
* Like the charges against Navalny which led to his arrest [in 2021], the reported cause of his death sounds like [sic] a sham.
* Navalny opposed the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which probably [sic] condemned him to death.
* Under the weight of its war against Ukraine and its proxy battle [sic] with the West, the Russian regime is becoming ever more repressive. It is already one of the most unequal societies (!) in the world… [Liar, liar, pants on fire! Wikipedia shows inequality in the Russian Federation as measured by Gini coefficients to be lower than in the United States and on par with Britain, Italy and China. Countries with the highest inequality include Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.]
[The commentary notes frequent and hypocritical slanders and threats against the Russian government and people by Western media and government, noting that there are also ‘problems’ with political repression and poverty in the Western, imperalist countries. But not mentioned anywhere in the commentary is that Western countries are purposely seeking to weaken and derail the budding movement to fight global warming and expansionist capitalism. They want to divide peoples and countries so as to continue their imperialist dominance. The wars against the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Palestine are only the beginning if they are not stopped. The world finds itself in a 1914 moment all over gain. The ‘Counterfire’ group describes itself as socialist, Marxist, even. Yet it doesn’t understand imperialism and it doesn’t oppose imperialism systematically. We speak of the real, Western imperialism one, not the make believe ‘Russian imperialism’, still less a ‘Chinese imperialism’. The genuine socialists and Marxists of the world have an obligation to expose all this fraudulence.]
Previously reported:
* Media and anti-Russia liberals and leftists in the West use Alexey Navalny’s death in vain efforts to weaken Russian gov’t, news compilation on A Socialist In Canada, Feb 21, 2024
* Wikileaks revelations revealed the funding by the U.S. gov’t for Alexei Navalny, report by Brian Berletic, broadcast on his YouTube channel ‘The New Atlas’, Feb 20, 2024 (34 minutes) ‘Let’s look at how the United States government is exploiting the death of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny’
* From Russian nationalist agitator to darling of Western liberals: Who was blogger Alexey Navalny?, analysis in RT News, Feb 16, 2024
Another step towards fascism in the USA as Trump supporters win big in Republican Party primary in South Carolina. [Informative analysis to follow if it should be published somewhere.]
Measles cases are rising in the USA, as is misinformation about the vaccine, report by PBS, Feb 23, 2024 …Public health experts say 95 per cent or more of children should be vaccinated against the disease to foster sufficient herd immunity within a community. According to data from the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, 85 per cent of children there have received both doses by age five, giving the disease an opening… In the United States, 93 per cent of children under five have received their measles vaccine, which falls short of the threshhold to prevent transmission of the virus. Idaho has the lowest rate of U.S. states, at per cent. All U.S. states require certain vaccines for schoolchildren, but some have adopted or expanded exemptions to go beyond medical concerns to include religious and philosophical beliefs…
How the Israel daily Haaretz has aided Israel’s genocide in Gaza, by Jonathan Ofir, published in Mondoweiss, Feb 21, 2024 Haaretz is Israel’s leading liberal newspaper. It has published and promoted some of the most harmful propaganda in support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Indonesia’s new president is a dangerous, authoritarian thug, by Michael Vann, published in Jacobin, Feb 22, 2024 …The makeover of the image of Prabowo Subianto into a wise grandfather-type figure appealed to voters under the age of 40, who account for 56.6 percent of the total electorate — well over 100 million people in total. This crucial demographic has no memories of the ‘New Order’ military-fascist dictatorship that ruled the country for decades following the heinous military coup in 1965. The fiery-tempered former general has a human rights record so problematic that even the United States denied him entry for decades… [General elections were held in Indonesia on February 14, 2024 for the presidency and national legislature. Some nine days later, the vote result for the presidency has not been reported anywhere. Alternative media in the Asia-Pacific region appear perplexed or perhaps frightened by the results; it is speechless. Prabowo Subianto is reported as elected in this above report in Jacobin, winning nearly 60 per cent of the vote. The results of the election to the legislature are reported here in Wikipedia.].
Background: Indonesia: The country with no left, essay by Max Lane (Australina writer), published in Jacobin, July 15, 2018 In 1965, the Indonesian military staged a coup and massacred hundreds of thousands of members and supporters of the country’s mass communist party, a party of Maoist inspiration and example. The country’s left still hasn’t recovered.
At day two of Assange hearing, U.S. gov’t reinforces its deceptions, two judges retire to make decisions, by Joe Lauria, editor, published in Consortium News, Feb 22, 2024
Chris Hedges: Julian Assange’s grand inquisitor, Consortium News, Feb 22, 2024 …The fatal flaw in the case against Julian is that he did not commit a crime. He exposed the crimes of others. Those who ordered and carried out these crimes are determined to make him pay, no matter how they have to deform the British and U.S. legal systems…
Related: The controversial prosecutor at the heart of the Julian Assange case, by Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept, July 17 2021 Gordon Kromberg has been dogged by allegations of bias and politicized prosecutions. Now he could shape the future of journalism.
Latest call for peace in Ukraine by liberal U.S. writers Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies is a lament that Ukraine cannot win. Reference: ‘After two year of war in Ukraine, it’s time for peace’, by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, originally published in Z Network, Feb 21, 2024, with limited publication in other anti-Russia, alt-media outlets, including CounterPunch, Feb 22 and The Progressive, Feb 22
Excerpts:
* A March 2023 European initiative to produce a million shells for Ukraine in a year fell far short, only producing about 600,000. U.S. monthly shell production in October 2023 was 28,000 shells, with a target of 37,000 per month by April 2024. The United States plans to increase production to 100,000 shells per month, but that will take until October 2025…
* President Biden has been anxious to send more money to Ukraine–a whopping $61 billion—but disagreements in the U.S. Congress between bipartisan Ukraine supporters and a Republican faction opposed to U.S. involvement have held up the funds…
… [The threat of global nuclear war] has not changed in two years, and it will not change unless and until our leaders [ie U.S. leaders, emphasis added] take a radically different approach…
[The title of the two authors’ book published in November 2022, says it all: War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. But for the people of Russia, there is nothing ‘senseless’ about the country’s military intervention in Ukraine beginning in February 2022. It is an intervention to halt Ukraine and NATO’s ongoing threats and military aggression and occupation since 2014 against Donbass and Crimea, and to halt further NATO expansion eastward. Benjamin and Davies do not see matters this way; instead, they place naive faith in the U.S. government to miraculously “take a radically different approach”. Sorry you two writers, that train left the station many years ago. Russia and its people waited for peace during seven long years of sabotage of the Minsk-2 peace agreement of February 2015. Sadly but unarguably, Ukraine and NATO’s military threats and interventions have left the Russian people with no option but to ‘fight fire with fire’, as a well-known English language phrase has it.]
Related: Latest vaunting of far-right Ukraine in Common Dreams alt media outlet, published in Common Dreams, Feb 21, 2024 …Amid the relentless challenges posed by Putin’s brutal war, Ukraine’s unwavering commitment to clean energy [?] stands as a beacon of resilience…
Marxist economist in UK, Michael Roberts, dips his toes into Ukraine war, says the Russian president has ‘killed off all his opponents’. Reference: ‘Ukraine: Two years on, no end in sight’, opinion piece by Michael Roberts, published in his website blog, Feb 22, 2024 …The Russian economy is stable, the war effort is being sustained, and Putin will win a new presidential term next month (and would probably could have done so even without killing off all potential opponents [sic] )…
[This analysis contains valuable information on the state of the economies of Ukraine and Russia. But the writer utterly fails to explain how the war in Ukraine results from the long and unrelenting drive of the Western imperialist countries to weaken and divide the Russian Federation its enduring Soviet legacy and anti-imperialist stances on the world stage. The Western powers seek to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russia fortress under their complete domination and control. The writer dismisses the Russian government that is defending Russia’s sovereignty mightily, calling it “the Putin regime”. He describes Russia’s defensive military response to NATO aggression and expansion as something bad that “damages the long-term potential of the economy”.
[Since the end of WW2, Ukraine nationalism has been bourgeois and petit bourgeois nationalism in character, utterly opposed to the achievements and legacy of Soviet Ukraine and welcoming neo-Nazi ideology into its ranks. This nationalism has been presented by former left-wing currents, notably Trotskyism, as something progressive. It was not and is not. A Soviet Ukraine arose and flourished following WW2, with a new, progressive, anti-imperialist and ‘Soviet’ outlook. Much of this legacy endures, albeit weakened by the incessant militarism and aggression of world imperialism. In Ukraine, the Soviet legacy is persecuted and its proponents have been killed and even massacred beginning in 2014: in Crimea, Odessa (May 2014), and especially in Donbass, as with Crimea an historically Russian region. A confluence between Trotskyism and far-right, nationalist ideology has always been evident over Ukraine in the longstanding promotion by Trotskyism of the bogus claim of a ‘genocide’ by the leaders of the Soviet Union against the Ukrainian people in 1933-34.]
Background: The reactionary origins of Ukrainian nationalism and the extreme-right ideology of its present-day expression, special report by Dmitriy Kovalevich, A Socialist In Canada, Nov 16, 2022 (Dmitri Kovalevich is the special correspondent in Ukraine since early 2023 for Al Mayadeen English, writing two reports per month from inside Ukraine. Sadly, his reporting is discomforting to otherwise credible alternative media outlets in Western countries; they shun any re-publication of it. Find all his past reports from Ukraine since 2014 here.)
The civilized world condemns the latest, third, veto by the United States government of a Gaza ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council, report in Press TV, Feb 21, 2024 [The resolution was sponsored by Security Council member Algeria and voted on February 20. Thirteen countries voted in favor; one opposed–the USA. The less-and-less United Kingdom (aka not-so-great Britain) abstained.] Related: U.S. vetoes for the third time a resolution demanding immediate ceasefire in Gaza, report by UN News, Feb 20, 2024 [This report is an extensive summary of the Security Council meeting.]
Fear and loathing of Chinese diaspora exposed in Canadian inquiry into ‘foreign interference’ in Canada’s elections, by Alex Lo, columnist, South China Morning Post, Feb 22, 2024 (here in pdf format, with several explanatory notes by A Socialist In Canada: Fear and loathing of Chinese diaspora permeates Canadian gov’t inquiry)
Your man in the public gallery at Julian Assange’s final appeal, by Craig Murray, published on his website, Feb 21, 2024 (and re-published in Consortium News, Feb 21, 2024) The WikiLeaks publisher’s legal odyssey has been a travesty and charade marked by undisguised institutional hostility. Now we are in the last-chance-saloon at Britain’s Royal Courts of Justice.
Previously reported: Julian Assange’s final appeal before the British court system to block the extradition demand by the U.S. government, by Chris Hedges, in Scheerpost, Feb 18, 2024 [Consortium News is reporting extensively on this week’s appeal by Julian Assange and his legal team and supporters to block the U.S. government demand that the British court system allow his extradition and disappearance into the U.S. industrial-prison complex. Washington wants the WikiLeaks publisher on its soil where he could face a prison sentence of up to 175 years.]
Media and anti-Russia liberals and leftists in the West use Alexey Navalny’s death in vain efforts to weaken Russian gov’t, news compilation on A Socialist In Canada, Feb 21, 2024
Wikileaks revelations revealed the funding by the U.S. gov’t for Alexei Navalny, report by Brian Berletic, broadcast on his YouTube channel ‘The New Atlas’, Feb 20, 2024 (34 minutes) ‘Let’s look at how the United States government is exploiting the death of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny’
Echoing similar, recent comments by the Russian president, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says he places little confidence in U.S. election outcome, analysis in RT News, Feb 21, 2024 Russia is interested in policies, not personalities, and has no expectation that the U.S. intends to change its antagonistic stance, regardless of who wins the November presidential election, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Brazilian media on February 20
[For nearly ten years, Western media has promoted the lie that Russia prefers to have Trump or a similar rightist as U.S. president. Liberals and most leftists in the West, including among the trainwreck of the Trotskyist agglomeration, have repeated the lie endlessly (example here). But anti-Russia prejudice and total confusion on ‘what is modern-day imperialism’ among them is so prevalent that none notice or care about the truth anymore.]
Trump and allies plotting militarized mass deportations, detention camps, report in Washington Post, Feb 20, 2024 (here in pdf format: Trump and allies plotting militarized mass deportations) There are about 11 million immigrants in the United States without legal status, according to the most recent estimates. A smaller subset of that caseload — about 1.3 million people — remain in the United States despite having received a deportation order from an immigration judge. These potential deportees, if taken into custody, are the easiest for the government to send home, because they have already received due process. But ICE often doesn’t know where they are.
Putin comments on the rights of gays and lesbians in Russia, report by RT News, Feb 20, 2024 … “We are quite tolerant towards people with non-traditional sexual orientations. We just don’t flaunt it, and we don’t believe it’s right to flaunt it. Let everyone live – the adults – as they want. Nobody limits them in anything.”
Time to occupy Israel, essay by Stuart Rees, in Pearls And Irritations (Australia), Feb 21, 2024 [This essay has flaws, but its great merit is to argue that the world must move from words and protests to action in order to halt the genocide in Gaza. Among the flaws in the essay are its failure to mention the imperative of enforcement of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention (yes, the essay mentions the Convention, but does not discuss its enforcement). The essay suggests that the 2005 ‘Responsiblity To Protect’ doctrine could be be invoked, but that should be a non-starter. This doctrine was a nice-sounding invention by the Western powers and their ideologues designed to suppress the rebellious people of Haiti at the time. The essay appears to suggest that flotillas be organized to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza, but this would appear to many potential participants as being reckless. It is very likely that Israel would attack such vessels and sink them. Lastly, the essay makes no mention of the most obvious step that should be taken worldwide, which is to organize to halt arms shipments by the Western powers to the Israeli apartheid regime.]
Polish farmers block Ukraine’s border as they intensify protests against non-EU imports, Associated Press, Feb 20, 2024 Polish farmers are blocking border crossings with Ukraine while spilling Ukrainian grain and burning tires on February 20 as they intensify a nationwide protest against the import of Ukrainian foods and European Union environmental policies. Farmers from Spain to Italy to Belgium have been protesting recently, worried that EU’s Green Deal plan to place limits on the use of chemicals and on greenhouse gas emissions will result in a reduction in production and income…
[The border protests by Polish farmers are NOT affecting Western arms shipments into Ukraine. Agence France presse reports on February 20: There were cases a few days ago when protestors didn’t let several trucks with weapons pass. (emphais added) ]
The Taliban vowed to change Kabul, but the city may be starting to change the Taliban, report in Washington Post, Feb 19, 2024 (here in pdf format: Subtle social changes underway in the new Afghanistan)
[It is next-to impossible to find accurate reporting of the situation in Afghanistan, now two and a half years since the 20-year U.S. occupation and destruction of the country (with the participation of NATO countries) ended in a humiliating defeat and routing of the occupiers, in August 2021. (Wikipedia politely and inaccurately calls the rout a ‘U.S. troop withdrawal’.) If such reports exist, they are blocked by the Western search engines that now control and regulate the Internet. This report in the Washington Post at least has the rare merit of allowing some insight into the country. Not a lot of insight, but more than the usual ‘nothing’ and propaganda in Western media reports of the country.]
The decline of the German economy and its dreams of a ‘green energy’ transition, feature essay in RT News, Feb 20, 2024 [This essay contains some valuable insight into the present state of politics and economics in Germany. But the essay is most noteworthy for what it tells the reader about the cuurent state of thinking of the editors of RT News concerning the global warming emergency. RT News is an eclectic journal when it comes to global warming. Sometimes, there are insightful news report on the subject in the publication. But most of its reporting on global warming fits into the camp of ‘denial’. Many of its reports mock those who warn of global warming and who advocate radical steps to ‘draw down’ all the excess and waste of the global capitalist order. The global warming emergency is an existential crisis for humanity, but the editors and writers at RT News are either blissfully ignorant of this or, like the capitalists who own and dominate the world, they do not care.]
Jeffrey Sachs and Common Dreams condemn Israel apartheid and genocide in the harshest terms, then politely ask the U.S. president to ‘do something’ about it. Reference: ‘Will Netanyahu bring down Biden?’, by Jeffrey Sachs, in Common Dreams, Feb 20, 2024 Sub-headline: ‘The U.S. president needs to take back U.S. policy from the Israel lobby and should stop backing Israel’s extremist and utterly illegal policies’ [This essay is full of weighty words such as ‘Israel’s brutality in Gaza’ and ‘genocide’. There are even several mentions of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide. But there is not a word in the essay of how the Convention requires its signators to take action to stop genocide when it happens, including against those who are complicit. The list of those complicit in Israel’s genoicide includes virtually every government and every corporate media outlet in the West. Applying the 1948 Convention in the present case of Palestine means, necessarily, taking action to disarm Israel, dismantle the Israel apartheid state, prosecute those who ommitted genocide, and prosecute those who were and remain complict. All other talk… is just talk.]
The ghosts of apartheid triggered South Africa’s case against Israel at the World Court in The Hague, by Kubendran Chetty (S. African writer), in RT News, Feb 20, 2024
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 135: Israel’s war on Gaza’s hospitals continues, daily situation report from Palestine, published in Mondoweiss, Feb 18, 2024 Nasser Hospital, the second-largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip, was forced to close early on Februry 18 following a days-long Israeli siege of the facility, followed by a storming and arrests of medical staff and patients. At the same time, Israel has also bombed Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis. [The update reports that in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, more than 29,000 Palestinian people have been killed and at least 68,883 wounded by the Israeli apartheid regime and its armed forces.] Related news:
* Int’l Court of Justice holding hearings on Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories, Al Jazeera, Feb 19, 2024 The hearings into the legality of Israel’s 57-year occupation of Palestine are separate from the genocide case brought before the Court by South Africa in December 2023. The new hearings are focused instead on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem since 1967 and are expected to last for one week. Israel is refusing to attend, but its Western partners in genocide will be there to defend its war crimes.
* Fleeing Rafah, by Tareq S. Hajjaj, in Mondoweiss, Feb 18, 2024 Many Palestinians are fleeing Rafah ahead of Israel’s threat of impending bombardment and invasion. But when they flee back to their destroyed neighborhoods, they continue to endure bombardment by the apartheid regime.
Ukraine flees Donbass city of Avdeevka before Russian military ‘aggressive attrition’, video broadcast by Brian Berletic, broadcast on his YouTube channel ‘The New Atlas’, Feb 18, 2024 (68 minutes)
Related: Avdeevka liberated, report on the Substack page of ‘Simplicius The Thinker’, Feb 18, 2024 …The withdrawal order was only given because the 3rd Assault Brigade (neo-Nazi ‘Azov Brigade’) of the Ukraine Armed Forces had already countermanded orders and begun withdrawing on its own, with other units possibly following. To stave off total collapse of the command, newly appointed army head Oleksandr Syrsky was forced to give the official order of withdrawal on February 17. President Zelensky is reportedly furious, as per ‘Resident_UA channel’…
Recovery in Crimea following decades of Ukrainian misrule is a tough challenge but is being tackled head on, eyewitness report from Crimea by Scott Ritter, in RT News, Feb 18, 2024 Deliberate neglect for decades under Ukraine rule and then a far-right coup in 2014 led to vote in Crimea on March 16 of that year to join the Russian Federation. A blockade by the far-right regime in Kiev of water, electricity, travel and economic trade followed but has failed to break the resolve of the peninsula’s inhabitants.
Millions rally for Gaza worldwide on Feb 17 day of solidarity, Palestine Chronicle, Feb 17, 2024
‘Israel’s war in Gaza is a war on children’, op ed commentary by Dr. Amgad ElSherif, in Toronto Star, Feb 18, 2024 Here in pdf format: Israel’s war in Gaza is a war on children. Dr. Amgad El-Sherif is a co-founder, head of education, and chief thoracic surgeon at Nile Medical Consultants in New York City. He practices medicine in Toronto. [The Toronto Star is Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper. It is a fervent supporter of apartheid Israel and its genocidal war in Gaza; may it someday be held accountable for this stand, a heinous crime according to the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.] Related: Toronto doctors return from Gaza and describe the horrors of Israel’s war there, report by CTV News Toronto, Jan 16, 2024
Ukraine army is retreating from Donbass city of Avdiivka following months of heavy losses to hold it, report by RT News, Feb 16, 2024 [The small city had a pre-war population of some 35,000 and is located some 25 km from the major city of Donetsk, meaning it has been in range of Ukrainian artillery ever since Ukraine’s invasion of the Donbass region in 2014.].
Related: As the second anniversary of the Russia–Ukraine conflict approaches, who has the upper hand?, analysis by Sergey Poletaev, in RT News, Feb 18, 2024
Missouri, Kansas City, and wild-West gun ownership and shootings in the USA. Report in Kansas City Beacon, Feb 15, 2024
[Latest news: The Missouri state legislature has withdrawn, for now, two proposed changes to gun laws in the state following the shootings at the Super Bowl victory event in Kanasas City on February 14. One change would allow guns to be carried inside churches and on buses (!), and another would eliminate sales taxes on firearms and ammunition. This is what counts as ‘progress’ in gun-toting USA. In Missouri, you don’t need a permit to buy or carry a gun. You don’t need a permit to carry a concealed weapon (with a few exceptions for certain locations). The state doesn’t allow “recklessly” selling or lending a gun to anyone under 18 unless a child’s parent or guardian gives consent(!).
[A February 2023 poll by St. Louis University and YouGov found that 69% of Missourians favor banning gun purchases by people under 21, including 59% of Republicans. A majority — 79% — of Missourians also support criminal background checks for all gun purchases, including 73% of Republicans. Whatever. In 2022, the four highest U.S. cities for rates of gun violence were, in order, St. Louis, Birmingham AL, New Orleans, and Jackson MS, each with more than 65 gun deaths per 100k population. Kansas City was in the lower mid-range of U.S. cities, with 24 gun deaths per 100k.
Related: Kansas City was grappling with shootings long before the shooting at the Super Bowl victory rally on Feb 14, New York Times, Feb 16, 2024 The state of Missouri has some of the least restrictive gun ownership laws in the country. Two teenagers have been arrested for the wild shootings that erupted between them on February 14.
Imperiled Gazans do have somewhere to go: Back to their homes in historic Palesstine from which they were forcibly expelled in 1948, by Sam Husseini, journalist, published on his Substack page, Oct 13, 2023 (and re-produced in Consortium News, Feb 16, 2024)
From Russian nationalist agitator to darling of Western liberals: Who was blogger Alexey Navalny?, analysis in RT News, Feb 16, 2024
[The Western media and governments nexus is pulling out all the stops in hailing the right-wing, pro-Western financier and blogger Alexey Navalny in Russia (b. 1976) as a modern-day crusader for ‘democracy’ in the country. In reality, he was devoted to the violent overthrow of the Russian government and welcomed any foreign intervention needed to achieve this. In 2022, he opposed Russia’s defensive military intervention in Ukraine. He wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post in September 2022 advocating that Russia be transformed into a Western-style ‘democracy’. In May 2021, Amnesty International issued an advisory note explaining why it had withdrawn three months earlier its declared status of Navalny as a ‘prisoner of conscience’ and then restored it. The withdrawal of the status was due to Navalny’s part record in advocating violence against people of Muslim faith in Russia; in the words of Amnesty, “discriminatory statements he made in 2007 and 2008 which may have constituted advocacy of hatred”.
[In 2013, a lifetime ago for Russia, Navalny won 27% of the vote for mayor of Moscow. Less than one year later, the coup in Ukraine changed everything for the Russian people because they could now see clearly just how ruthless and violent the Western powers would be in pursuing their ‘rules-based international order’. Navalny refused to recognize the legitimacy of the vote in Crimea in March 2014 to join the Russian Federation, and he opposed the efforts of the people of Donbass to defend themselves from the invasion of their homelands by the far-right, coup regime installed in Kiev in February 2014. (Incidentally, this is how the New York Times fraudulently describes this very same history on February 18, 2024: “Avdiivka has been on the front line of fighting for a decade, dating to Russia’s first bid to cleave off a part of eastern Ukraine, in 2014.” In reality, Russia waited patiently for the Western powers to implement the ‘Minsk 2’ peace agreement of February 2015, notably France and Germany who had signed as co-guarantors. In the end, the promises of Minsk 2 were betryaed by the West, including by France and Germany.
[‘According to a February 2021 survey by the Moscow-based Levada Center polling organisation, only 19 per cent of Russians approved of Navalny’s work and 56 per cent disapproved of what he did.’ source: the anti-Russia Al Jazeera, Feb 16, 2024]
[Sadly, not-so-alternative media in the West is joining in the Western media chorus hailing Navalny (see: Common Dreams, Democracy Now!, CounterPunch, Pearls And Irritations.) Meanwhile, Julian Assange and his supporters can only shake their heads at the spectacle. He is confined in Belmarsh Prison in London since April 2019 on the charge of… oh wait, he is NOT charged with anything! Britain has detained the world’s most prominent political prisoner, for five years(!) in order to facilitate the efforts of the United States government to extradite him into the U.S. prison/industrial complex. But you won’t see the story of Assange being headlined in the Navalny-loving Western media!].
Related: Russian Foreign Ministry comments on Western reactions to Alexey Navalny’s death, RT News, Feb 16, 2024
Ukraine crushingly defeated at Int’l Criminal Court, by Kit Klarenberg. Al Mayadeen English, Feb 16, 2024 On January 31, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a damning ruling in a case brought by Ukraine, in 2017. The Kyiv regime accused Moscow of almost every conceivable “terrorism” offence codified in international law, particularly supporting, sponsoring, and committing “terrorism” in Donbas since 2014 while racially discriminating against ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea. In the end, the Court’s 13 judges ruled in Moscow’s favour in all but two instances. As we shall see, even these two findings were highly questionable…
Putin calls for global fight against ‘Nazi propaganda’, report by RT News, Feb 15, 2024 …The Russian president said many countries have adopted the notion of being “chosen” or “exceptional,” telling television interviewer Pavel Zarubin that “this is how Nazism began”. “If this is so widespread, we should also think about building anti-fascist and anti-Nazi propaganda at a a global level,” Putin said. he added that such an endeavor would be truly effective only if it comes from society, and not from the state, no matter which state…
China investments in Africa are on a post-Covid rebound, report in South China Morning Post, Feb 15, 2024 The global ‘green transition’ is re-energising China’s investments in Africa after pandemic slowdown (here in pdf format: China investments in Africa are rebounding)
Military adviser to Trump proposes to threaten smaller members of the NATO imperialist alliance if they don’t spend more on weapons. Report in South China Morning Post, Feb 15, 2024 (here in pdf format: Military adviser to Trump proposes to threaten smaller NATO members if they don’t spend more on weapons) [Only naive or malevolent people interpret Donald Trump’s recent, seemingly oddball musings over NATO as being anti-NATO. Trump’s musings are quite simply aimed at forcing European countries to pay more as part of plans by the largest NATO member countries to expand the imperialist military alliance.].
Related: Trump proposes continued military aid to Ukraine. Report by RT News, Feb 15, 2024 …’They [the NATO countries] want to give them [Ukraine regime] $60 billion more,’ Trump said at a rally in North Charleston on February 14. ‘Do it this way. Loan them the money. If they can make it, they pay us back. If they can’t make it, they don’t have to pay us back.’ …
Slim majority of Germans oppose Ukraine joining the EU, reports a new poll, RT News, Feb 15, 2024 The result contrasts with stronger support for Ukrainian membership elsewhere in the NATO bloc of countries. Majorities in six other NATO states favor Ukraine membership in the EU, according to the poll: Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.
Related: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of Germany is hostile to her own country, Putin tells a Russian tv interview, RT News, Feb 15, 2024
U.S. to deploy half its aircraft carrier fleet of ten to western Pacific in new round of threats against China. Report in South China Morning Post, Feb 15, 2024 [This report consists largely of repetitions of U.S. government propaganda justifying the use of aircraft carriers in the western Pacific region to step up threats against the People’s Republic of China.]
The world is fighting back against a real genocide taking place in Palestine, by Alex Lo, A Socialist In Canada, Feb 15, 2024 (Here in pdf format: The world is fighting back against genocide in Palestine. Alex Lo is a regular columnist at South China Morning Post, where this column first appeared on February 15, 2024.)
South Africa calls on Int’l Court of Justice to stop Israel’s threatened assault against Rafah in Gaza, Common Dreams, Feb 13, 2024 An attack against Rafah would be an irreparable breach of the UN Genocide Convention and of the Court’s ruling on January 26, 2024 on the charge of Israel committing genocide (Wikipedia)
Crisis at the New York Times as its lies on Gaza face greater scrutiny, feaure essay by Patrick Lawrence, published in Scheerpost, Feb 12, 2024 (and re-published in Consortium News, Feb 14, 2024)
Putin says Russia prefers Biden to Trump because he’s ‘more experienced and predictable’, in Russian TV interview one day after Tucker Carlson interview, Associated Press, Feb 14, 2024
In interview with Tucker Carlson, Putin signals interest in Ukraine talks, analysis by MK Bhadrakumar (former Indian diplomat), published in his website blog Indian Punchline, Feb 13, 2024 [This informative essay voices the naive claim that the U.S. Republican Party “is increasingly leaning toward isolationism and, in some circles, there is even sympathy for Moscow”. For such believers, it’s 2016 all over again (!), when Donald Trump was elected president and he continued, entirely predictably, the war course of his Democratic Party predecessor. Vladimir Putin has put paid to the naive claim, telling a Russian television interviewer on February 14 that Russia prefers Biden to Trump because he’s “more experienced and predictable”. (Associated Press, Feb 14, 2024)].
Related: During interview, Putin debunks Tucker Carlson’s anti-China warmongering and mocks his CIA ties, by Ben Norton, published in Geopolitical Economy, Feb 10, 2024
Germany’s prestigious Max Planck Institute fires visiting Palestinian scholar for condemning Israel genocide. By Ghassan Hage, published on his blog Hage Ba’a, Feb 8, 2024 (and re-published in Pearls And Irritations, Feb 14, 2024) (Ghassan J. Hage, b. 1957, is a Lebanese-Australian academic at the University of Melbourne, Australia. In 2023-2024 he was a visiting professor at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology in Halle (Germany). He was fired from that posting on February 7, 2024 due to his writings opposing Israel’s 2023 horrific war in Gaza war.) …The German daily newspaper sent me an e-mail wanting to know if I could understand why ‘critics classify your statements as antisemitic’. I did not reply to this email because in my experience, the questions were a prelude to a fascistic ideological assassination job which was going to happen regardless of how I replied… When the Office of the President of the Max Planck Institute proposed that I leave my posting silently with a non-disclosure agreement, I refused…
Related:
* As Israel wages genocide in Gaza with Western backing, Canadian PM Trudeau condemns as ‘antisemitic’ a Palestine solidarity protest in Toronto. Report in the pro-Israel Toronto Star, Feb 14, 2024
Canada refuses Russia’s request to extradite wanted Nazi collaborator and war criminal who was given refuge in Canada decades ago, report by RT News, Feb 14, 2024 [Ottawa has cited a technicality in rejecting Moscow’s request for Yaroslav Hunka, who was given a standing ovation as a ‘Canadian war hero’ in the Canadian Parliament on September 22, 2023, during an official visit to Ottawa of Volodomyr Zelensky, the head of the far-right governing regime in Ukraine. As in Britain, Australia and the United States, several thousand Nazi war criminals were given refuge by Canada following World War Two. All four countries condemn as ‘antisemitic’ the global protests taking place today against genocide in Gaza. They know something about hatred of Jews, of course: these countries refused to accept a great many Jewish and other peoples fleeing Nazi persecution before and during WW2!]
* The resettlement of suspected war criminals after WWII, essay by Jayne Persian (U. of Southern Queensland), in The Conversation, Jan 24, 2024 …Around one million “displaced persons” from central and eastern European were resettled [sic] after the second world war in countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. They included soldiers who had fought in German military units, as well as civilian collaborators. Many of these people should have been charged with war crimes, but their resettlement in any country that would take them was a matter of political expediency [sic[ in the fraught post-war and early Cold War period. I discuss the experience in Australia in my new book, Fascists in Exile…
‘Counterpunch’ online journal resumes its condemnations of Russia for defending the country and its citizens in Donbass and Crimea against Ukraine/NATO war. Reference: ‘Post-sanctions Russia’, essay in CounterPunch, Feb 14, 2024 …The purpose of Western sanctions against Russia is to pressure the Russian government to end its war in Ukraine. The West does not want to destroy Russia… With its attack on Ukraine, Russia transformed what had been a great power squabble into a fundamental attack on universal values, undermining the structure of international order that is critical to global peace. So long as Russia actively supports autocratic regimes globally and continues its military operation in Ukraine, there can be no peace in Europe… Real peace is not possible without a new Russian government…
[The above, latest essay in CounterPunch is reproduced from the Washington think tank Foreign Policy In Focus. The essay is notable for its explicit stance in support of NATO’s war against Russia. Not-so-alternative news outlets such as CounterPunch that are explicitly anti-Russia have been more or less silent during the past four months of a genocidal war in Gaza because efforts to condemn Russia during this time would obviously appear as foul and misdirected. But the editors, writers and readers at CounterPunch clearly have little understanding of the real world of modern-day imperialism, and this latest essay proves they also have little or no shame…]
Smear job against anti-imperialists by U.S. writer in the name of anti-imperialism. Reference: ‘Anti-imperialism in the USA today: What it is and is not’, by Stansfield Smith, in Orinico Tribune, Feb 13, 2024
[This essay does not name a single media or political outlet accused of practicing today a false anti-imperialism that bolsters imperialist ideology. Alt media outlets doing so are well known and easily indentified, for example Democracy Now!, Common Dreams and CounterPunch. Instead, the writer condemns Leon Trotsky (?), who was assassinated in Mexico 85 years ago. He is falsely accused by the writer of pronouncing some 90 years ago (!) that ‘the main danger to Russia and the revolution was the dictatorship of Stalin, not imperialism’. But the threat of a new imperialist war that would target the Soviet Union was precisely the warning issued by Trotsky and some others as far back as 1933 when Hitler came to power in Germany. At the time, defenders of the Stalin regime dismissed the threat of war by the Hitler regime, saying that warnings were ultraleft scaremongering. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the bungling and betrayals by the Stalin-led regime led to utter catastrophe. By a string of military and political miracles, the Soviet people mobilized to successfully defend their socialist system. The contemporary, self-declared followers of the ides of Leon Trotsky, are, indeed, scoundrels and scourges of the global anti-imperialist movements. But the writer does not name them and seems clearly unable to understand and explain why such an evolution of ‘Trotskyism’ took place. It all has to do with the ultraleft foundations of Trotskyism 100 years ago, for which, yes, Leon Trotsky himself bears some of the responsibility. But that is world’s apart from smearing Trotsky himself as being some kind of false anti-imperialist.]
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 128: Israeli snipers kill Palestinians at Nasser Hospital; gear up for Rafah invasion, daily update published by Mondoweiss, Feb 11, 2024 Since October 7, the Israel apartheid regime has killed 28,176 people in Gaza and wounded at least 67,784, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Some rights groups put the death toll in Gaza at closer to 35,000 when accounting for those missing and presumed dead. More than 380 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. 564 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7 and at least 3,221 injured.
China’s challenge in building its own jet engine for its passenger aircraft, report in South China Morning Post, Feb 12, 2024 (here in pdf format: The challenge befoe China in building its own passenger jet engine)
How Western sanctions have helped Russia’s cultural sovereignty by expanding film and television production, analysis in RT News, FEb 11, 2024
Pro-Palestine protests across the world on 128th Day of genocide by Israel and its Western backers, report by Al Mayadeen English, Feb 11, 2024
Related: Irish women basketball players protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza at EuroBasket qualifier match, report in Al Mayadeen English, Feb 10, 2024 The Irish athletes refused to shake hands with Israeli players and five players on the team refused to play the match against Israel [Of note is that the ‘EuroBasket’ competition has not barred Israel athletes from the get-go. This small example shows how far the world has yet to travel in order to mount effective responses to Israeli genocide in Gaza. The responses should be guided by ‘Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions’ (‘BDS’) and by ‘Disarm and Dismantle the Apartheid State of Israel’.]
Leading columnist Thomas Friedman in New York Times voices foul racism and justifications for genocide. Analysis by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR.org), Feb 6, 2024 …The comparison of official enemies to vermin is a hallmark of propaganda in defense of genocide. The group Genocide Watch lists “dehumanization” as the fourth of ten stages of genocide, in which members of a targeted group “are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases” in a process that “overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder…
Ukraine continues to violate fundamental principles of international law, report in Al Mayadeen English, Feb 11, 2024
Short on soldiers, Ukraine debates how to find the next wave of troops, New York Times, Feb 11, 2024 A potential expansion of the nation’s military draft to replenish the exhausted, battered army has become an emotional, politically charged issue (here in pdf format: In Ukraine, rising domestic resistance to military recruitment).
[The news of the disarray in the top leadership of far-right Ukraine, exemplified by the firing of army chief Valery Zaluzhny on February 8, is a tough blow for the NATO/Ukraine war effort being waged against Russia. Anatol Lieven writes in the liberal-imperialist Responsible Statecraft online publication on February 9 that the decision “seems to indicate an increasing mood of desperation in Kyiv”. ‘Seems to indicate’? That’s an understatement! Lieven confounds his analysis with claims that Russia has suffered “repeated disasters” in its military campaign. If that is true, why is has “desperation” taken hold in Kyiv? This small example reveals the bankruptcy of the Western liberals who are trying to sustain their support for the NATO war effort.
[Lieven’s February 9 essay is faithfully reproduced on February 10 in the anti-Russia, Common Dreams alt media outlet. A recent essay summarizing the available polling of Ukrainian citizens’ attitudes to the war reveal a very mixed response, but a sizable number of the population still clings to the fanatical belief that extreme-right, post-coup Ukraine shall prevail over the country’s rising domestic opposition and the might of the Russian armed forces. Lieven concludes his essay with two noteworthy and accurate observations:
1. “All the different figures and groups [in present-day Ukraine] are trying to position themselves so as to throw the blame for eventual compromise with Russia on someone else.”
2. “If Kyiv waits too long to seek a compromise it may have nothing left to bargain with — not just because of developments on the battlefield, but because of the collapse of political unity within Ukraine.”
[For a detailed look at the long demise of the NATO/Ukraine war effort, read the biweekly reports in Al Mayadeen English from its correspondent in Ukraine, Dmitri Kovalevich, here. His reports from Ukraine proper have been regularly published since 2014 but have been widely shunned and boycotted by the anti-Russia, not-so-alternative media in the West. Even the alternative media in the West that is sympathetic to Russia’s defensive war effort has participated in the shunning and boycotting, choosing, instead, to publish liberal commentators such as Jeffrey Sachs.]
In latest essay, Jeffrey Sachs shifts his messaging on the war in Ukraine, now entirely faulting the NATO powers, analysis by Roger Annis, published in A Socialist In Canada, Feb 10, 2024 The new essay by Jeffrey Sachs on the war in Ukraine is a welcome shift for the writer. It accurately explains the origins of the war in Ukraine, in contrast to Sachs’ earlier writings on the subject. It also proposes new (for him) solutions. Both shifts in viewpoint are most welcome…
It’s 2016 all over again as Trump pretends to criticize NATO and Western media runs with the story. Reference: ‘Trump says he’d let Russia do ‘whatever the hell they want’ to NATO countries that don’t pay enough’, report by NBC News, Feb 10, 2024 [Every state and corporate media outlet in the West without exception is broadcasting or publishing the absurd idea that Donald Trump is unhappy with NATO and might limit its offensive operations, for example in Ukraine. As in 2016, Trump and his supporters are playing demagogue by pretending to have doubts about NATO. They are sitting back and laughing as every liberal, state-run and corporate media outlet in the West runs with the story. Even RT News can’t resist singing this utterly false and misleading tune, a reprise of its shameful role around the time of Trump’s 2016 election in claiming Trump might withdraw the U.S. from NATO if elected. Donald Trump is every bit as warlike and dangerous as the Democratic Party war regime currently in power in Washington; his record proves this. Trump told NBC News in September 2022, “I would get [Russian President Vladimir Putin] into a room. I’d get [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky into a room. Then I’d bring them together. And I’d have a deal worked out.” Now there’s a laugh! Note how Trump’s demagogy cleverly hides the fact that the main cause of the war in Ukraine is U.S.-led aggression against Russia, including during the entire time that Trump was in office as president. ]
‘Our conditions’ – Full text of Hamas response to ceasefire proposal, re-published in Palestine Chronicle, Feb 7, 2024
Related analysis:
* Israel’s dignity will be damaged, Hamas will be crowned winner, the war will end, analysis by Gideon Levy, columnist, Haaretz, Feb 7, 2024 (text re-published here in Pearls & Irritations) …There are elements of the deal that are good for both Israel and Hamas. The “price” is not always really a price at all. It is not always as painful as they want us to believe…
* Palestine and the unthinkability of slave revolt , by, Zubayr Alikhan, in Mondoweiss, Feb 8, 2024 Those who say that Israel knew about the plans for October 7 all along are repackaging an old colonial trope which believes that the natives are too docile, too submissive, too cowardly and too inferior to revolt against their oppressors
Interview with Vladimir Putin by U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson, complete interview text published on the English language page of the President of Russia, Feb 9, 2024 [The interview with English voiceover can be viewed on the Tucker Carlson Network, here.].
Related: Ukraine conflict, fallout of NATO expansion, relations with United States: Key takeaways from Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson on February 6, report published on RT News, Feb 8, 2024
German chancellor, up to his neck in genocide complicity in Palestine, dismisses V. Putin’s description of the conflict in Ukraine in interview with journalist Tucker Carlson, analysis in RT, Feb 9, 2024 The interview published on February 8 was the first sit-down between a U.S. media personality and the Russian leader since Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. It lasted more than two hours and covered a wide range of topics, with a focus on the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine.
Related:
* Grandfather of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was an ardent Nazi, documents show, report in RT, Feb 8, 2024 …The foreign minister mentioned her grandfather in a talk in 2022 but neglected to explain that he was an officer in the Nazi German army and was awarded in 1944 one of the Third Reich’s highest military honors, the War Merit Cross with Swords… [Baerbock is part of an ‘honor’ roll of Western leaders having a Nazi war criminal as a close family member. That includes Chrystia Freeland, finance minister and deputy prime minister of Canada. Her Ukrainian paternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak (1919-1983), was the editor of a Ukrainian language, pro-Nazi newspaper published in Nazi-controlled Poland then Austria during World War Two. He moved to Austria as the Soviet Union’s Red Army succefully counter-attacked the Nazi armies occupying the western and southwestern parts of the Soviet Union as well as Poland.].
* Anti-Russia Democracy Now! opts for silence over V. Putins’ interview with Tucker Carlson, with not even a mention in ‘headline news’. [Across the board, not-so-alternative, anti-Russia media in the West has toned down or silenced its anti-Russia messaging in recent months. That’s because this media’s claim of an aggressive Russia beating up an innocent Ukraine is becoming an embarassing fable made all the more evident by the confluence of the NATO-driven war against Russia in Ukraine and the Western-backed genocide by Israel in Palestine. Russia argues that the war against the people of Donass by Ukraine and NATO, which began in 2014, is quasi-genocidal because it aimed to crush the national identity of the people of Donbass as part of the Russian world.]
Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin sparks ‘Tucker madness’ in hostile Western media, and that is good news, analysis by Scott Ritter, in Consortium News, Feb 8, 2024
The construction industry in the United States grapples with its top killer: Drug overdoses, report in New York Times, Feb 8, 2024 Construction workers in the U.S. are more likely to die of drug poisonings (‘overdoses) than workers in any other occupation (read the report here in pdf format: Drug overdoses now the largest workplace killer in U.S. construction industry) [This informative New York Times report is deeply flawed due to its failure to address the disastrous, killer ‘war on drugs’ being waged by governments and their many police agencies throughout the U.S.].
Previously reported:
* First state-sanctioned drug injection site in U.S. opens in Providence, Rhode Island, Associated Press, Feb 3, 2024 [Only two other safe-injection sites exist in the U.S., both in New York City. The U.S.-led ‘war on drugs’ is achieving its objective of social control and killing off drug users. In 2021, 98,268 people died from preventable drug overdoses in the country, an increase of 781% since 1999. That death rate is not much lower in neighbouring Canada, where more than 30,000 have died from drug overdoses (drug poisonings) since 2016 and 3,970 died in the first six months of 2023. (The year 2016 was the first year in which federal health authorities in Canada began bothering to compile the numbers of drug overdose deaths.) The province of British Columbia (pop. 5.1 million) has the highest per capita death rate in Canada from drug poisonings, setting a new ‘record’ in 2023 of 2,511 deaths, app. seven per day. The provincial premier, David Eby, has recently declared he “disagrees fundamentally” with health authorities, including the retiring chief coroner, who have long recommended provision of safe drug supply for drug addicts. He proposes in its place an old song: ill-defined and totally under-funded ‘treatment’ programs.].
* City of Belleville, Ontario (pop. 55,000) declares emergency after 23 drug poisoning cases in 48 hours, CP24, Feb 8, 2024 [Luckily, there were no deaths reported during the 48 hour emergency. The hearby city of Ottawa (pop. one million) suffered 93 drug poisoning deaths in the first six months of 2023, the most recent such figures.]
Israeli war crimes in Gaza escalate following Jan 26 ruling by the Int’l Court of Justice on Israel genocide, analysis by Robert Inlakesh, correspondent, Al Mayadeen English, Feb 7, 2024 In history, there have been countless war crimes committed across the globe and on horrendous scales. Yet the current genocide by Israel in Gaza exceeds previous ones because the Western world is directly complicit. Every day, the Israeli perpetrators conduct their crimes with the direct participation of their Western enablers.
Related: Nicaragua taking Germany, Canada, UK, Netherlands to ICJ for genocide, report by Al Mayadeen English, Feb 5, 2024
Study finds media giants New York Times, CNN, and Fox News are pushing for U.S. war in Yemen, media analysis by Alan MacLeod, staff writer, Mint Press News, Feb 7, 2024
Related:
* What Westerners need to know about the Ansar Allah movement and the government in Yemen it leads,
The shameful silence of doctors and health care institutions for children in Canada as the killing spree by Israel and the Western powers continues in Gaza. By Shree Paradkar, social justice columnist, Toronto Star, Feb 6, 2024 (here in pdf format: The shameful silence over Gaza by Canada’s doctors and health care institutions) [This hard-hitting column appears in the pro-Israel Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation newspaper. It is a rare occasion to see such an informed and passionate commentary explaining the Palestinian and humanitarian viewpoint appear in corporate or state-run media in Canada. Two large questions flow from this. 1: Why do socially aware journalists continue to work at media outlets endorsing gencoide in Palestine?; and 2: Why are progressive journalists in Canada and other Western countries unable or unwilling to create genuine media outlets that report the truth about the world?]
The downfall of Boeing: Its airplanes, the company, esssay by Geoff Beckman, published in CounterPunch, Feb 7, 2024 [This very informative essay curiously makes no mention of Boeing as a major armaments manufacturer. It is in the top-four of U.S. armaments manufacturers.]
The barbarism of Israeli Judeo-fascism:
* ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 123: New testimonies emerge of Israel torturing detained Palestinians in Gaza, daily update by Mondoweiss, Feb 6, 2024 Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor publishes new testimonies of Palestinian detainees subjected to dog attacks, forced nudity, and sexual harassment in Israeli jails, as Israeli soldiers continue posting images and videos of themselves committing atrocities in Gaza.
* Social media video postings by Israel soldiers depict them destroying Gaza and mocking Palestinians, two-minute video report on Al Jazeera, Jan 18, 2024 (warning: very disturbing content)
* Videos by Israeli soldiers reveal them cheering their destruction of Gaza and mocking its people, report in New York Times, Feb 6, 2024 (with extensive, very disturbing video clips at original weblink; read the report here in pdf format: Videos by Israel’s depraved soldiers show them cheering their destruction of Gaza)
United Auto Workers union and its ‘progressive’ president Shawn Fain, elected in March 2023, endorse genocidal Joseph Biden for president. Report by NBC News, Jan 24, 2024 [For unions in the United States, endorsing warmaking candidates for president is as American as apple pie. But the genocide in Gaza takes such union betrayals to new levels of degeneration, recalling the years of the genocidal wars by the U.S. in Korea then in Vietnam, during which union leaders of the day fiercely fought against the unions they misled from taking antiwar stands.].
Related: UAW President Shawn Fain is showing how to build working-class struggle [sic], analysis published in Jacobin magazine, Sep 28, 2023
Ukraine’s top general is sparing his allied, neo-Nazi paramilitaries from the frontline slaughter of the Ukraine/NATO war against Russia, report by RT News, Feb 5, 2024
The curency and inflations crisis in authoritarian Egyt, report in Middle East Monistor, Feb 5, 2024 [Egypt is governed by a right-wing, military regime that seized power in a violent coup on July 3, 2013. Since then, the military regime has staged three national elections to provide itself with a veneer ‘democratic’ legitimacy: a presidential election in 2018 and senate and legislature elections in 20220.]
Zionist attacks against UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) in Palestine are proof of the global war on Gaza, essay by Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh, published in Middle East Monitor, Feb 5, 2024 (Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh is a dentist, writer, novelist and screenwriter in Egypt. She is a regular columnist in Middle East Monitor.)
How the miracle of the end of the Chechnya war kick-started a ‘Path of Redemption’ for Russia, historical essay by Scott Ritter, in A Socialist In Canada, Feb 5, 2024 (This essay was first published in RT News on Feb 4, 2024.) I recently visited many regions of the Russian Federation, including Chechnya. There, I met people who fought a bitter war against Moscow three decade ago and are today among the fiercest defenders of the Russian Federation.
In a major defeat for Israel, the Int’l Criminal Court rules that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, statement by the National Committee of the Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment (BDS) movement, Jan 26, 2024 … The Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Coordinating Committee (PAACC), comprising the Anti-Apartheid Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Anti-Apartheid Committee of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the BDS movement, the Palestinian Human Rights Organization Council (PHROC) and the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), warmly welcomes the ICJ’s historic decision. ICJ decisions are final, binding, and not subject to appeal, and all states must comply with their legal obligations by unilaterally and collectively taking all feasible measures to urgently and definitively ensure that Israel respects the court’s decision and implements in full and without delay its ordered provisional measures… In the Unified Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Call of December 2022 [in Arabic, English, French and Spanish at weblink], Palestinians affirmed that “the dismantling of Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid is an indispensable condition for the Palestinian people to exercise its full legitimate and inalienable rights as stipulated in international law”…
Palestine solidarity protest in Australia targets manufacture of F-35 warplane, report by Andrew Martin, in Red Ant socialist journal, Feb 3, 2024 [This report explains that the F-35 warplane, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, is serving as an efficient killing machine of Palestinian people in Gaza, and further, how the warplane’s manufacture and sales depend on a global supply chain that has weaved an intricate web into the manufacturing industries of almost all advanced capitalist countries allied with U.S. imperialism. Unionized workers in these advanced countries who are paid to manufacture the place ‘enjoy’ many privileges thanks to their high-paying jobs, marking yet another example of how the ‘fetishism of commodities’, as originally termed by Karl Marx, and pursuit of illusory lifestyles permeate these working classes.]
China’s Xinjiang province invites regional neighbours and overseas media to observe annual ‘Two Sessions’ political meetings. report in South China Morning Post, Feb 4, 2024 (here in pdf format: China’s Xinjiang province holds annual ‘Two Sessions’ political meetings) read also: report by CGTN News, Jan 29, 2024
Related: Xinjiang to accelerate energy output as Red Sea crisis wears on, report in the Straits Times (Singapore), Feb 1, 2024 [This informative report begins by repeating false Western media tropes about China’s economy, calling it a”sputtering economy”. The GDP growth rate of China’s planned economy in 2023 was 4.5%, about double that of large Wesstern countries, while GDP growth in Xianjing was 7.6% for the same year. Some ‘sputtering’!]
New national security law for Hong Kong is on the right track, commentary by Regina Ip, in South China Morning Post, Feb 4, 2024 here in pdf format: New national security law for Hong Kong is on the right track. (Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee is convenor of the Executive Council of Hong Kong, an elected legislator, and chairwoman of the New People’s Party, a conservative party she helped found in 2011. The NPA is the fourth largest party in the Hong Kong legislature. She served as Hong Kong’s secretary for security from 1998 to 2003.)
Graffiti covers three abandoned skyscrapers in central Los Angeles, across the street from ‘LA Live’ where Grammy awards ceremony to take place on Feb 4, report by NBC Los Angeles, Feb 3, 2024 (with video reporting) …Construction on the $1 billion development named the ‘Oceanwide Plaza’ [Wikipedia] started in 2015 and promised to change downtown Los Angeles into “a place to dwell”, according to the website of the architecture firm CallisonRTKL. But the development has fallen victim to the rising U.S.-China tensions. The mega-project boasted twin 40-story buildings that would house 340 luxury condominiums and include private screening rooms, a dog washing facility and many other amenities on the property. The third building is 49 stories high and was to contain 164 condos in addition to a Park Hyatt hotel, restaurants, a rooftop pool, and other event spaces…
A humanitarian catastrophe in the making: Apartheid regime of ‘Israel’ says it is planning to attack the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, report in Al Mayadeen English, Feb 3, 2024
Related news:
* Hundreds of thousands are marching in London on Saturday, February 3 demanding a ceasefire by Israel and its genocidal backers. [The action is organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. There is no mention in the publicity of how the the dismantlement of the apartheid regime of Israel may proceed in light of the January 26 ruling by the World Court cautioning Israel against genocide.].
* The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, Wikipedia [The Convention was adopted by the UN General Assembly on Nov 30, and came into force on July 18, 1976. It passed by 91 votes in favor, with four against: the U.S., Britain, Portugal and South Africa. There were 26 abstentions, largely consisting of the same cabal of Western countries that is backing apartheid Israel’s 2023/24 war in Gaza.]
* Divestment from Israel is essential to ending apartheid, analysis by Gulzhan Musaeva, in Middle East Monitor, Feb 2, 2024 …State-level anti-boycott laws in the United States have been the biggest reason for the limited success of the Palestinian campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Despite the official commitment to a two-state solution, the U.S. is the only country in the world that does not consider Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories to be illegal…
* Judge in Calfornia court admits horror of Gaza genocide, but will he allow the charge of U.S. complicity in genocide to proceed?, analysis by Marjorie Cohn, in Truthout.org, Jan 31, 2024
In a major escalation of its genocidal war in Gaza, U.S. bombs Iraq and Syria, People’s Dispatch, Feb 2, 2024
Related news:
* Israeli warplanes have been landing at four locations in Britain since October 7, by Matt Kennard, published in Declassified UK, Feb 1, 2024 …In its recent ruling on Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said it is “plausible” Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The latest information about Israeli military assets using Britain may implicate UK ministers in crimes against humanity…
* 800+ government workers in U.S. and Europe condemn Western governments for fueling Israeli war crimes, report in Common Dreams, Feb 2, 2024 Reference: ‘It is our duty to speak out when our governments’ policies are wrong’, statement on Gaza by transatlantic civil servants, published on Google Docs, Feb 2, 2024 [The brief statement is unsigned due to fears of employer reprisals.].
* Gaza’s economy in shambles amid fears of escalating regional war, daily situation report by Mondoweiss, Feb 3, 2024 [The Gaza Ministry of Health reports the following unthinkable, unimaginable figures resulting from the U.S., UK/Israel war in Gaza since October: more than 27,238 Palestinian people killed and at least 66,452 wounded. In the preceding 24 hour alone, 107 Palestinians have been killed and 165 injured.]
India’s prime minister consecrates controversial ‘Ram’ temple in Ayodhya, built on the ruins of a mosque destroyed by a Hindu supremacist mob in 1992, by Tanupriya Singh, in People’s Dispatch, Jan 22, 2024
Related: How the Hindu supremacist movement in India is infiltrating U.S. politics, by Samantha Agarwal, Truthout.org, Feb 2, 2024
China is making Mexico a premier investment destination. Is it a path into the U.S. market, or something more?, South China Morning Post, Feb 3, 2024 (here in pdf format: Chinese industry making Mexico a premier investment destination)
U.S. gov’t is mulling a new, formal partition of Palestine, calling the idea ‘recognition of a Palestinian state’. Reference: ‘State Department reviewing options for possible recognition of Palestinian state’, report in Axios, Jan 31, 2024
[The political terrain in the Middle East is favorable to a new partition of Palestine under the guise of a ‘two-state solution’, that is, recognition of a Palestinian bantustan. (‘Bantustans’ were a creation of apartheid South Africa back in the day, with that regime claiming they represented ‘political autonomy’ to their impoversished residents,) Advocates such as Jeffrey Sachs favor it, and views such as his are widely published in the major ‘alternative’ media in the United States and internationally. There are three large reasons for this favorable terrain: 1. The persistence of confusion over the long-failed ‘two state solution’ for Israel-Palestine, which today represents nothing less than a new partition of historic Palestine, following the original, criminal partition of 1947 (Wikipedia). 2. Prevailing confusion over the imperative of dismantling the apartheid state of Israel. The ‘Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions’ (BDS) campaign, for example, is vitally important for advancing a dismantlement strategy. 3. Betrayal of the Palestinian cause by the two large and dominant governments of the Middle East–Turkiye and Egypt, each country with populations of more than 80 million. These two governments have moved sharply to the right during the past decade and are doing nothing to halt Israel’s genocide. In 2013, a military-fascist coup took place in Egypt against the progressive, anti-Mubarak government led by Mohammed Morsi; most leftists and liberals in the West welcomed this coup or silently acquiesced to it. The coup overthrew a government entirely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and was a terrible blow against their cause. Turkiye, meanwhile, has been taking big steps of late to further integrate into the membership structures of the NATO imperialist alliance. This development runs counter to so much naive or malevolent media analysis during the past ten years falsely positing Turkiye’s president as a ‘critic’ of NATO.]
The International Court of Justice finds there is no discrimination against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians in Russia. The court completely rejects Ukraine reparations claims. Press release by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Jan 31, 2024
Further analysis: World Court (Int’l Court of Justice) rules against Ukraine on its ‘terrorism’ accusations against Russia and on July 2014 Malaysian Airlines shootdown over Donbass, by Joe Lauria, editor, Consortium News, Feb 1, 2024 The World Court ruled on January 31 that Russia did not finance terrorism in its defense of separatists [sic] in Ukraine, and the court refused to find Russia guilty of downing Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 as Ukraine had asked… [This report in Consortium News unfortunately uses the perjorative term ‘seperatists’ to describe the pro-autonomy forces of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The people of the two republics voted several times, in 2014 and since, to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. Their votes to join Russia in early 2022 are definitive. The pro-autonomy forces have never been ‘seperatist’, and the proof is the ‘Minsk 2’ peace agreement of February 2015 which they signed and sought to implement. Minsk 2 contained a series of autonomy measures for the Donbass republics, but the Kyiv regime and its Western backers sabotaged that agreement. Note that the Consortium News report inaccurately states that the UN Security Council earlier endorsed two Minsk agrements. Wrong. It was ‘Minsk 2’ that was endorsed by the UN Security Council, on February 17, 2015. Unanimously, to boot, for the little that was worth!]
China’s yuan becomes Russia’s ‘primary’ currency for foreign trade, but it remains a minor global currency compared to the dollar and euro. Report in South China Morning Post, Feb 1, 2024 (here in pdf format: China’s yuan becomes Russia’s primary currency for foreign trade)
The ICJ ruling ordering Israel to cease genocide in Gaza was a victory for Palestinians and for international law. Here are possible avenues for enforcement, analysis by Marjorie Cohn, in Truthout.org, Jan 29, 2024
South Africa accuses Israel of ignoring UN court ruling, wants more measures taken by the UN to protect Palestinians, including arrest of Apartheid Israel’s prime minister. Report by Associated Press, Jan 31, 2024 Israel has ignored the ruling by the UN’s top court last week by killing hundreds more civilians in a matter of days in Gaza, South Africa’s foreign minister charged on January 31, said Wednesday. She says her country has asked why an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not been issued…
Related:
* Israel army is systematically burning down houses in its scorched-earth, genocidal war in Gaza, report by Al Mayadeen English, Jan 31, 2024
* USAID head Samantha Power, a supposed genocide scholar, is confronted by staff on Gaza massacres. Report in Washington Post, Jan 31, 2024 (here in pdf format: USAID head Samantha Power is confronted by staff over Gaza massacres) Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development and a world-renowned scholar on genocide, was pointedly was challenged by current and former USAID employees during a public event on January 30. They questioned her stance on the war in Gaza and her complicity in the divisive U.S. policy. “You wrote a book on genocide and you’re still working for the administration: You should resign and speak out,” said Agnieszka Sykes, a global health specialist who told The Washington Post she left her job at USAID late last week…
* Daily update on Mondoweiss, Jan 31, 2024
U.S. backers of Israel muddy the waters by smearing opponents of genocide with ‘Russiagate’-style allegations, by Elizabeth Vos, contributor, Consortium News, Jan 31, 2024 The old ‘Russiagate’ and current pro-Israel narratives have converged in Nancy Pelosi’s call for the FBI to ‘investigate’ pro-Palestinian protesters for ‘financial ties’ to Russia. Her call is remarkable in its audacity, but all-too true to form.
Stripped bare: The support by the Labor Party government in Australia to genocide in Palestine, analysis by Peter Henning, in Pearls And Irritations, Feb 1, 2024
Previously reported: The Ansar Allah movement in Yemen saves the world’s honor while New Zealand places itself on the wrong side of history by backing genocide in Palestine, commentary by Eugene Doyle (New Zealand writer), published in Scoop.nz, Jan 30, 2024 New Zealand’s moral compass is pointing somewhere just south of Hell, while the Ansar Allah movement (‘Houthis’), in their own distinct way, have become champions for human decency as they confront the genocidal state of Israel and its powerful enablers
