Sections
-
Recent Posts
Search Results for: syria
The Nakba Day triumph: How the UN is correcting a historical wrong
The next Nakba Day will be officially commemorated by the United Nations General Assembly on May 15, 2023. The decision by the world’s largest democratic institution is significant, if not a game changer. Continue reading
Twilight of the Gods
Europeans have embraced American manacles more readily than any other subjugated people have in history.
Not only has America slain all Europe’s gods but our moral cowardice ensures there can be no room for either our gods or us in Valhalla. We are a sorry, doomed lot. We Europeans have embraced our American manacles more readily than any other subjugated people have in history. The best protest we can manage is that of the German football team who were laughed out of Qatar all the way back to their obese nation. Continue reading
Sanctions batter Russia as the Kremlin attempts to overcome them
Western economic punishments on Russia continue to severely limit its economic prospects. But they also risk hastening the development of sanctions evasion techniques and rival economic mechanisms outside the control of Brussels and Washington.
Immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S., the UK, and the EU placed major sanctions on Russia to constrict its economy and restrain its war effort. Having been updated several times since, these sanctions have compounded the effects of the previous sanctions placed on Russia in 2014 after it annexed Crimea. Continue reading
Bittersweet freedom for Mutulu Shakur
Mutulu Shakur has been granted parole, but he is terminally ill. Black political prisoners in this country are held for 30, 40 and 50 years. Reprieve happens only when they are at death's door.
After 36 years of incarceration, political prisoner Mutulu Shakur was granted parole after having been denied on nine occasions. Invariably media accounts mention that he is the step-father of the late rapper and actor Tupac Shakur while saying little about his own history. Any of the elder Shakur’s accomplishments are given short shrift in favor of an emphasis on pop culture celebrity. Continue reading
‘Nothing works’: Europe must stop blaming others for its own crises
The European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell is not particularly perceived by the EU’s political elite or mainstream media as a rightwing ideologue or warmonger. But seen through a different, non-western prism, it is hard not to mistake him for one. Continue reading
Pan-Turkism’s aggressive dreams of empire—yesterday and today
Turkey’s imperial ambition of creating a Pan-Turkic empire, ruled from Ankara, is on display in today’s Caucasus and elsewhere. Continue reading
Double trouble: Dr. Mehmet Oz and Turkey
TV personality Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Oz is the Republican candidate for U.S. senator in Pennsylvania. He could become the first senator to hold dual citizenship, notably that of Turkey and America. Continue reading
‘Avenging Sabra and Shatila’: On Israeli massacres and Palestinian resistance
September 16 marked the 40th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the killing of around 3,000 Palestinians at the hands of Lebanon’s Phalangist militias operating under the command of the Israeli army. Continue reading
Compromising nuclear secrets—it’s deja-vu
The revelation that Donald Trump had stored in Mar-a-Lago Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information/Special Access Program (TS/SCI/SAP) documents on foreign nuclear capabilities, which came on the heels of his owned-and-operated dime store federal judge in Fort Pierce, Florida ruling in his favor on halting the government’s damage assessment on Trump’s treason, brought back some vivid memories of 2003. Continue reading
‘Painful march for freedom’: The triumphant legacy of Palestinian prisoners
“As soon as I left prison, I went to Nael’s grave. It is adorned with the colors of the Palestinian flag and verses from the Holy Quran. I told my little brother how much I loved and appreciated him, and that, one day, we would meet again in paradise.” Continue reading
Where does Russia receive its aid from?
While Ukraine has received enormous aid from around the world since the Russian invasion began in February, open support for Russia should not be dismissed.
On August 24, Ukraine’s independence day, the U.S. provided a $3 billion military aid package to the country. The additional assistance adds to more than $80 billion worth of support that Kyiv has already received between January 24 and August 3, the majority of which was provided by the U.S., the UK, and the EU. In addition to gaining access to Western weapons systems, military data, and training, the Ukrainian armed forces have further been augmented by foreign volunteers serving in the International Legion. Continue reading
NATO’s five steps to control any country
NATO employs the five basic processes of location, dependency, bribery, civilian control and force to subjugate every country that makes it onto their hit list. Continue reading
Investigating the victim: On Abbas’ ‘holocaust’ and the depravity of Israeli hasbara
“There was no Massacre in Jenin” was the title of a Haaretz editorial on April 19, 2002, one week after Israel ended its deadly onslaught on the besieged Palestinian refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Continue reading
It’s gross to live under the US empire and spend your time criticizing Russia and China
The other day an Australian journalist was giving me a hard time for not criticizing Russia and China the way I go after the US empire, calling me “morally bankrupt” for not criticizing all governments equally. He said the ethical thing to do would be to criticize the US, but also criticize the governments the US doesn’t like for balance. Continue reading
US invades Syria, kills people, claims self-defense
Numerous Syrian and foreign militants have reportedly been killed and several US troops injured in an escalating exchange of attacks between the American invaders and the people in the country whose territory they are illegally occupying. Continue reading
The deadly business of reporting truth
Two grim anniversaries demonstrate how journalists around the world increasingly face violence, but leaders—including President Biden—have been slow to act
Violence is the most basic and blunt form of press censorship. To kill or imprison a journalist is to silence the public’s source of news. To date, 33 journalists around the world have been killed this year and another 494 are currently imprisoned, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Put another way, thus far in 2022, on average, once per week somewhere in the world a journalist is killed for reporting the news. Continue reading
Walker, Pollard, Hanssen, Trump . . . America’s most traitorous spies
Donald Trump, with his affectation for Eastern European models during the Cold War, should have registered with the FBI early on as a potential spy for America’s enemies. Czechoslovak State Security (ŠtB) certainly believed that to be the case when they tripled their efforts to ensure that their two assets, Ivana Zelníčková and her father, Miloš Zelníček, applied a full-court press on Trump beginning in 1976 when Ivana first met Trump. A year later, ŠtB asset Ivana Zelníčková married Trump. The first Mrs. Trump and Warsaw Pact intelligence asset worked her way into top-level executive jobs in the Trump Organization, including president of the Trump Castle Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, later becoming the manager of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. These positions and her marriage to Donald Trump gave Ivana, and the ŠtB and, by default, the Soviet KGB, important access to the movers and shakers of American politics, business, and media. Ivana Trump, the mother of Donald Trump, Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, would continue to have access to her ex-husband and his business and political operations long after their divorce in 1992. These benefits included her use of Mar-a-Lago for one month a year pursuant to her divorce settlement with Donald. Continue reading
Journalists hijacking planes for performing bears
Recent revelations that MI5 outlet Bellingcat was involved in a Keystone Cops plot to hijack Russian planes should give their primary targets pause for thought regarding MI5’s Ukrainian machinations. Although fighter pilots have defected from other theaters in the past, this twist in a hoary old Hollywood plot is important because given that the players, clowns like Zelensky and Bellingcat, are so innately stupid, we must examine why MI5 employs such cretins. Continue reading
The weaponization of food
Russia and Ukraine have come to an agreement on food exports. Will the deal hold?
When Russia bombed the port in Odesa last month, it was not an auspicious beginning to the new deal on grain exports. If anyone believed that this agreement between Moscow and Kyiv would have some positive spillover effect on the war grinding on elsewhere in Ukraine, the Russian military surely destroyed that wishful thinking. Continue reading
Europe is at a tipping point, as the abyss is closer than we think
It’s Italy which will fire the starter’s gun on a turnaround on the EU’s policy on Russia and the Ukraine war.
It might well be Italy which marks the starting point of a demise of sorts of the EU, as the coalition government collapses. Mario Draghi, who might be remembering interest rate hikes like the ECB’s this week, which only happened previously when he was the boss overseeing the eurozone crisis, is out. Continue reading
Welcome to the Anthropocene—can we prevent human die-offs?
The world today is on the verge of a major food emergency, provoked in part by Russia’s attack on Ukraine but more broadly by the damage heat from global warming is doing to crops worldwide. This is both a crisis and an opportunity. Continue reading
The war ‘diplomat’: How Borrell and the West lost the ‘global battle of narratives’
In a blog entry, reflecting on the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia on July 7-8, the High Representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell, seems to have accepted the painful truth that the West is losing what he termed “the global battle of narratives”. Continue reading
The Kremlin seeks to exploit growing wariness over refugees in Europe
Instability and rising living costs have caused significant growth in refugee and other migrant numbers globally. The opportunity to exploit the crisis will not be missed by other countries, most notably Russia.
Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 7 million Ukrainian refugees have left the country till mid-June. While some 1.5 million ended up in Russia, the rest have mostly entered the European Union, where they have been granted the right to live and work for up to three years, in addition to receiving welfare, education, housing, food, and medical assistance. Continue reading
Liberté, égalité & fraternité on the march
Although the Bastille and Versailles are safe for now, NATO tyrants and their flunkeys are once again becoming fair game.
The spirit of La Marseillaise, that greatest of all national anthems, is again infusing citizens in countries as diverse as Ukraine, Canada, England, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, where the banners for liberté, liberté chérie are again unfurled against NATO’s “horde of slaves, traitors, plotting kings.” Continue reading
NATO’s banana blockade
The world is at a critical inflection point as it pits the children of Ecuador, Paraguay, Russia, China, Vietnam, Gaza, the Philippines and Syria against Del Monte, Hunter Biden and Liz Truss in a fight to the death with only one winner.
As fierce fighting continues in Ukraine and British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss determines to arm Taiwan to fight China, Ecuadorian bananas have found themselves smack in the center of NATO’s campaign to crush Russia. The key to getting Russia to hoist the white flag and surrender her bountiful resources to the Anglo American alliance is, it seems, not only to deprive Russia of Ecuador’s bananas but to ensure the Russians cannot source their banana supply elsewhere. Continue reading
Will the Ukraine conflict turn private?
The expanding use of private military and security companies in recent years suggests that they may take a leading role as the Ukraine conflict develops.
Since the turn of the century, private military and security companies (PMSCs) have played an increasingly important role in conflict zones. Because the lines between private military companies and private security companies are often blurred, the all-encompassing PMSC term is used to describe them. Continue reading
$2 trillion for war versus $100 billion to save the planet
The West seems more fixated on spending social wealth on the military rather than addressing the climate catastrophe.
During late April and early May, South Asia experienced the terrible impacts of global warming. Temperatures reached almost 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in some cities in the region. These high temperatures came alongside dangerous flooding in Northeast India and in Bangladesh, as the rivers burst their banks, with flash floods taking place in places like Sunamganj in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Continue reading
Cuba should be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism
The United States maintains a list of countries that it considers as “state sponsors of terrorism.” There are currently four countries on that list: Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria. The basic idea behind this list is that the U.S. State Department determines that these countries have “provided support for acts of international terrorism.” Evidence about those “acts” are not provided by the U.S. government. For Cuba, there is not one shred of evidence that the government has offered any such support to terrorism activities, in fact, Cuba has—since 1959—been a victim of acts of terrorism by the United States, including an attempted invasion in 1961 (Bay of Pigs) and repeated assassination attempts against its leaders (638 times against Fidel Castro). Continue reading
Chomsky on Israeli apartheid, celebrity activists, BDS and the one-state solution
This is, according to the Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci, the ‘interregnum,’ the rare and seismic moment in history when great transitions occur, when empires collapse and others rise, and when new conflicts and struggles ensue. Continue reading
The Great White West aims to crush the Slavs and Chinese
As the United States fractures internally (Roe v Wade overturned, economy, military spending, etc.), president Joe Biden and his NATO cronies continue to pursue a sanctions regime—and NATO expansion—against Russia that is having the ironic effect of damaging the economies of Europe and the United States, and the ability of the US to wage war. That reality seems to have reached everyone in the world except the dolts who lead the Western nations. Continue reading
The impact of destructive information
The 23 of November, according to information of Security Department of Uzbek Republic, the clandestine group of extremists’ organization “Katiba Tauhid val Jihad” was uncovered in Tashkent region. Continue reading
The Yemen yes-men ride again
Posted on December 19, 2022 by Thomas L. Knapp
“Today,” US Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Masquerading-as-I-VT) said in a December 13 statement, “I withdrew from consideration by the U.S. Senate my War Powers Resolution after the Biden administration agreed to continue working with my office on ending the war in Yemen. Let me be clear. If we do not reach agreement, I will, along with my colleagues, bring this resolution back for a vote in the near future and do everything possible to end this horrific conflict.” Continue reading →