Xi meets Lavrov, reaffirms China’s emphasis on partnership with Russia
By Yang Sheng | Global Times | April 9, 2024
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday in Beijing. Chinese analysts said the meeting sends a strong signal that China will firmly develop its strategic partnership with Russia, despite pressure from the West. The China-Russia partnership continues to be key for the global strategic balance and the hope for promoting a multipolar world in which countries of the Global South will have greater roles to play.
Xi asked Lavrov to convey his sincere greetings to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Noting that this year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries, Xi said China and Russia have embarked on a new path of harmonious coexistence and win-win cooperation between major countries and neighbors, which has benefited the two countries and their peoples and contributed wisdom and strength to international fairness and justice, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Lavrov in Beijing, and both sides expressed hope for strengthening practical cooperation in various fields, Xinhua reported.
Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that China is willing to work with Russia, in accordance with the consensus reached by the two heads of state, to strengthen the synergy of the two countries’ development plans and promote practical cooperation in various fields.
The top diplomats of the two countries held a joint press conference after their meeting. Wang mentioned “five always” at the press conference. For example, he said that the two countries should always follow the strategic guidance of head-of-state diplomacy, and should always adhere to the principle of no-alliance, no-confrontation and no-targeting at any third party.
China and Russia should always stay on the right course on major matters of principle. As permanent members of the UN Security Council and major emerging countries, China and Russia actively respond to the common aspirations and legitimate concerns of the people of all countries, advocate a new path of state-to-state relations featuring dialogue and partnership rather than confrontation and alliance, and actively promote the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, said Wang.
Yang Jin, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the remarks made by Xi and the “five always” raised by Wang provide a “framework and outline” for the future development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.
Yet many voices from the West, mainly from the US as well as some senior NATO officials, insist on depicting the China-Russia relationship as akin to an “anti-West alliance,” which is completely wrong. By reaffirming the principles of “non-alignment, non-confrontation, and not targeting any third party,” China and Russia are refuting those voices with a clear stance, experts said.
Multipolar world
China always attaches great importance to the development of China-Russia relations, and stands ready to strengthen bilateral communication with Russia and enhance multilateral strategic coordination in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Xi said when meeting with the visiting Russian top diplomat.
Xi said that the two countries will show more responsibility, unite countries in the Global South in the spirit of equality, openness, transparency and inclusiveness, promote the reform of the global governance system, and vigorously lead the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.
China and Russia are trying to promote a multipolar world where developing countries and emerging economies of the Global South will play a greater role, which is the antithesis of the unipolar world dominated by the US, analysts said.
“China and Russia will not target any third party, but if hegemonic forces threaten China and Russia, or threaten world peace, China and Russia will stand together and fight to protect their own interests and safeguard world peace together,” said Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University.
This is why China and Russia, as well as other members in the UN Security Council, are pushing an immediate cease-fire and the resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza, even as the US vetoed these attempts time and again, before the Ramadan cease-fire resolution eventually passed on March 25, experts said.
Wang said at the joint press conference that Russia will hold the BRICS presidency this year, and China will take over the rotating presidency of SCO this year. The two sides will support each other’s chairmanship and light up the “moment of South” global governance.
Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European politics at the School of Politics and International Relations of the UK’s University of Kent, told the Global Times at a forum in Beijing on March 28 that China-Russia relations are “one of the key axes for international politics, and it’s not only very important but also necessary” to maintain the global strategic balance.
Lavrov said at the meeting with Wang that Russia supports the China-initiated Global Security Initiative, and is willing to deepen cooperation with China on multilateral platforms to promote the establishment of a more just and democratic international order.
The two sides also had in-depth exchanges on the Ukraine issue, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and other international and regional issues of common concern.
Ukraine crisis and counterterrorism
Wang said at the joint press conference with Lavrov that on the Ukraine issue, China hopes to see a “cease-fire and an end to the war as soon as possible.” China supports the timely convening of an international conference recognized by both Russia and Ukraine, with equal participation by all parties, and a fair discussion of all peace options, whether it is track one or track two, Wang noted.
Cui Heng, a scholar from the Shanghai-based China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, told the Global Times on Tuesday that “some Western countries have always blamed China for its ‘pro-Russia’ stance, but actually we are just asking for a mechanism that can be accepted by all parties and can treat everyone equally.”
“China’s stance is based on the desire to stop the bloodshed, but the US’ stance is to use the [Russia-Ukraine] conflict to weaken Russia as much as possible. The development of the crisis to some extent depends on the US presidential election later this year,” Cui noted “If Donald Trump is elected, there will be a chance to break the deadlock, but if Joe Biden gets reelected, we might also see some changes, as Washington and its allies might not be able to afford the war anymore.”
Xi stressed at the meeting with Lavrov that China supports the Russian people in following a development path that suits their national conditions, and supports Russia in combating terrorism and maintaining social security and stability.
At the joint press conference with Lavrov on Tuesday, Wang stressed that China must also pay attention to the resolution of other global and regional hot spot issues, including continuing to counter terrorism. “China once again reiterated its condemnation of the terrorist attack in Moscow and its condolences and support for Russia,” said Wang.
“The Chinese people are also victims of terrorism, and terrorism has always been a common threat facing mankind. The international community should resolutely combat all forms of terrorism with a ‘zero tolerance’ attitude, firmly support the efforts of all parties to maintain national security and stability, strengthen international anti-terrorism cooperation, coordinate development and security, and eliminate the breeding grounds for terrorism,” Wang remarked.
“I want to thank China for their condolences in connection with the terrorist attack in the Moscow Region on March 22, and for their support of Russia’s fight against terrorism,” Lavrov said during the meeting with Wang.
All those involved [in the terrorist attack] will be certainly punished, Russia’s top diplomat stated. “Our [Russia-China] cooperation on counter-terrorism will continue, including within the framework of multilateral institutions.”
China and Russia are two major powers in the SCO, and counter-terrorism cooperation between them and other SCO members is significant for regional peace and stability, especially when the threat of terrorism has reemerged in relevant regions, experts said. Apart from the discussion on the diplomatic level, the militaries, law-enforcement and intelligence agencies of the two countries will promote cooperation on combating terrorism, experts said.
Star wars coming – top US general
RT | April 9, 2024
The possibility of a conflict in space is no longer just theoretical, General Stephen Whiting, head of the US Space Command, said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the 39th Space Symposium at the command’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, Whiting painted an alarming picture of Russian and Chinese orbital capabilities.
China has built a “kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and, yes, target US and allied military capabilities,” Whiting said, describing Beijing’s efforts as moving at “breathtaking speed.”
Since 2018, Russia has doubled and China has tripled the number of their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites in orbit, while also testing and fielding anti-satellite weapons. Meanwhile, the US has “the world’s best space architectures,” but its military constellations are “optimized for a benign environment,” he said.
Russian and Chinese space weapons “hold at risk our modern way of life and how we defend this nation, and we must be able to deter and counter these threats when called upon to achieve space superiority,” the general said.
Whiting described a possible armed conflict in space as “economically and environmentally devastating, perhaps for decades,” and said the US wishes to keep things in the state of “enduring competition” instead.
The US is already working with Canada, Australia and the UK on Operation Olympic Defender, a program intended to “optimize space operations,” according to the Space Command. Whiting announced that Germany, France and New Zealand have been invited to join as well.
He also revealed that the command’s new Capability Assessment and Validation Environment (CAVE) has achieved “minimum viable capability.” The modeling and simulation laboratory will enable the US military to “derive better ways of deterring and planning to conduct operations for a war that’s never happened, and a war we don’t want to happen,” he said.
Washington recently accused Moscow of having undisclosed anti-satellite capabilities, possibly nuclear in nature. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US claims were “unfounded” and a ploy to manipulate arms control talks. The Russian embassy in Washington has also accused the US of using “Russophobic slogans” to mask its own plans to militarize space.
UK and France Talk of Reviving WWI Alliance Over ‘Fear’ of Trump Return
Sputnik – 09.04.2024
In an op-ed penned on the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, a landmark agreement signed between the British Empire and France in 1904, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and his French counterpart Stephane Sejourne penned an op-ed essentially calling for the revival of the alliance.
The two ministers argued that NATO must mobilize to deny Russia a victory in Ukraine, claiming that the UK and France, two of the military bloc’s founders and nuclear powers, “have a responsibility in driving the alliance to deal with the challenges before it.”
“We must do even more to ensure we defeat Russia. The world is watching – and will judge us if we fail,” they wrote in a piece published by The Telegraph.
Commenting on this development, Dr. John Laughland, a lecturer in politics and history at the Catholic Institute of the Vendée (ICES) in France and specialist in international affairs, observed that the UK and France are “two principal military powers in Europe” and do enjoy “quite a high level” of bilateral military cooperation.
He did point out, however, that though London and Paris “have indeed been strengthening that cooperation for some years now,” as Cameron and Sejourne wrote, he does not see “any substantial new initiatives” in the article, which he dismissed as “essentially just propaganda.”
Whereas the Entente managed to prevail in World War I in no small part due to the Russian Empire’s contribution to the cause, Dr. Laughland suggested that this new British-French axis would inevitably lean on the United States, “because everything that they say about the British-French Entente is in the context of NATO.”
“The current war is a NATO war. And so they are leaning on the Americans,” he remarked.
He suggested that France and the UK may be driven by the fear of Donald Trump’s reelection as the president of the United States.
“I think that the European powers, including France and Britain, are trying to pre-empt that outcome because whether rightly or wrongly, they fear that Trump would want to make peace in Ukraine, make peace with Russia,” the scholar mused. “But again, I regard this as just a piece of gesture politics, this article and this commemoration.”
Dr. Laughland also recalled a previous attempt by Cameron to partially revive the Entente in 2010 by signing military defense agreements with France during his premiership, with one of the outcomes of said deal being “the attack on Libya in 2011, which, as far as we understand, was a Franco-British initiative.”
“It was a French initiative which the British immediately supported. And the attack on Libya in 2011, which, of course, the Americans also supported, and then became a NATO attack, was an absolutely catastrophic war. It showed once again that NATO is an aggressive alliance,” he remarked. “I say once again, because, of course, NATO had attacked Yugoslavia in 1999. So unfortunately, it’s a very bad precedent, the 2010 agreement.”
Meanwhile, Mikael Valtersson, former officer of the Swedish Armed Forces and chief of staff of the Sweden Democrats political party, argued that the real reason for this talk about reviving the Entente Cordiale is the UK’s and France’s desire to “take a larger role in international politics” coupled with them realizing that they are not “big enough to do it on their own.”
“Both United Kingdom and France are also united in their nearly fanatical hard-line approach towards Russia. As they say in the article, Russia must lose and Ukraine must win,” he added.
According to Valtersson, this “hardline approach” towards Russia may be the reason why Germany was not included in this scheme as Berlin and Paris do not see eye to eye on how to deal with Moscow.
“The difference is that the French leader, President Macron in France, belongs to the belligerent anti-Russian camp, while the German leader Chancellor Scholz belongs to a more moderate grouping,” he explained. “These facts make a new Entante very fragile. Macron might be replaced as French president by a more nationalistic and pragmatic successor. Then the so-called alliance with the UK will be over and done with.”
Another reason for not including Germany might be the UK and France’s concerns that the German economic prowess would afford Berlin “too much influence” in such an alliance, not to mention London and Paris’ fears about Trump’s possible return to the White House, he noted.
“This talk about a revived Entente Cordiale might be an attempt from the UK and France to take over, or at least to prepare to take over, the leadership of the belligerent anti-Russian camp in the West. [It could be] Preparations in case the US abandons Ukraine,” Valtersson postulated. “But as I said earlier, it’s a weak alliance since a large part of the French population isn’t aboard.”
“But as long as the UK and France are united and work together with other belligerent states as the Netherlands, Poland, the Baltic and Nordic states, they probably can force Germany to slowly follow their lead in creating a prewar mentality in large part of Europe,” he added.
Russia launches terrorism probe into US and NATO officials
RT | April 9, 2024
Intelligence agencies and law enforcement are looking at certain Western government officials as part of an investigation into the funding of terrorist attacks such as the massacre at Crocus City Hall and the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, the Russian Investigative Committee announced on Tuesday.
The probe was launched after a referral by several Russian lawmakers, which accused the US and its allies of organizing the March 22 attack on the Moscow concert venue.
Investigators are currently looking at the potential involvement of “specific individuals from among government officials, people with civic and commercial organizations of Western countries,” said committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko.
It has already been established that funding for terrorist attacks inside Russia has been funneled through Ukrainian companies, including the notorious Burisma Holdings – former employers of US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter – Petrenko added.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia has also said it would follow the evidence leading to “persons and structures located in the US, Germany, France and Cyprus.”
In addition to last month’s Crocus City Hall attack, the investigation is looking at other terrorist acts, including the assassinations of prominent public figures and the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in international waters.
Investigators are establishing the connections between the direct perpetrators of terrorist acts and “foreign curators, organizers and sponsors,” Petrenko added.
Killing humanitarian workers as a strategy: Israel’s endgame in Gaza
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | April 9, 2024
Israel described its clearly deliberate killing of seven humanitarian aid workers in Gaza on 1 April as a “grave mistake”, a “tragic event” of a kind that “happens in war”. Obviously, Israel was lying. In fact, this entire so-called war in Gaza — which is in reality a genocide — has been based on a series of lies, some of which Israel and its supporters continue to peddle.
For some in the mainstream media, it took months to accept the obvious fact that Israel has been lying about the events that led to its military offensive and the objectives of its constant targeting of hospitals, schools, shelters and other civilian facilities. As such, it was only logical for the occupation state to lie about killing the six internationals and their Palestinian driver working with the World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity. Notwithstanding an event as atrocious as this undoubtedly was, it is implausible for Israel to start telling the truth now.
Fortunately, few seem to believe Israel’s version of the WCK incident or, indeed, its ongoing massacres elsewhere in Gaza. The state “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” said the US-based NGO on 5 April.
The issue of targeting these internationals, however, has to be placed within a larger context.
Israel was hardly secretive about its intentions to deny Palestinians even the most basic necessities of survival in Gaza, epitomised in the words of Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant way back on 9 October: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water, everything is closed.”
This statement, like many others, was understood at the time to be due to Israel’s desire to punish Palestinians for the 7 October Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by resorting to its usual tactic of collective punishment. Based on statements made by other Israeli officials, though, it soon became clear that the occupation state wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the enclave altogether.
The Israeli stratagem was rejected immediately by Egypt, Jordan, other Arab countries and, eventually, governments around the world. Israel, however, persisted. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians in Gaza as the “right humanitarian solution”. Benjamin Netanyahu concurred. “Our problem is [finding] countries that are willing to absorb Gazans [sic], and we are working on it,” said the Israeli prime minister.
However, for ethnic cleansing to take place, several prerequisites had to be fulfilled. For a start, the bulk of Gaza’s 2.3 million people had to be forced to the south, as close to the Egyptian border as possible. This has been achieved. Then everything conducive to life had to be destroyed throughout Gaza, including all hospitals and clinics.
Thus, we saw the grisly massacre at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on 17 October, for example, and the bloodbath and eventual total destruction of Gaza’s largest medical complex, Al-Shifa, on 1 April. When the Israeli military pulled out of the Shifa area, troops left behind one of the most tragic scenes in the history of modern warfare. Hundreds of bodies were hurriedly buried in mass graves amid charred buildings and indescribable destruction. Limbs of children stuck out of the dirt, and whole families were tied together and executed; and there were other crimes that will take the world a long time to fathom, let alone explain. And yet former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett claimed nonchalantly that “not one civilian” was killed in Al-Shifa. Another blatant lie.
Most civilian shelters, bakeries, markets, electricity grids and water generators also had to be targeted so that the hapless population, especially in northern Gaza, would understand that life there would simply be unsustainable. Becoming fully aware of Israel’s ultimate plan of inducing a famine in Gaza, though, the Palestinians fought back. Their counterstrategy was predicated on ensuring that as many of them as possible remained in northern Gaza, and that those concentrated in Rafah were not pushed into the Sinai desert.
Aside from the ongoing battle between the Israeli army and Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza, there was thus another deadly struggle taking place: Israel’s push for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the latter’s desire to survive and remain within the nominal borders of their land.
This is why Israel has killed countless Palestinians involved in the life-sustaining work in northern and central Gaza.
According to the UN, prior to the killing of the six internationals on 1 April, Israeli troops had already killed 196 humanitarian aid workers in the Palestinian territory. This figure does not include doctors, medical staff, civil defence workers, police chiefs and officers, and anyone else contributing to day-to-day life in areas that Israel wanted to empty of its inhabitants.
Even when, under international pressure, the rogue state allowed limited aid to enter northern Gaza, its army killed and wounded Palestinian civilians on a number of occasions as they gathered in desperation hoping to get some life-saving supplies. According to a 4 April report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has killed 563 Palestinians and injured 1,523 by bombing and shooting people waiting for aid at designated spots in northern Gaza, or when it bombed distribution centres and workers responsible for distributing the aid. The Kuwait roundabout area in Gaza City alone witnessed the murder of 256 starving refugees, while 230 others were killed on Al-Rashid Street elsewhere in the city.
Israel’s bombing was not random, as it also targeted and killed 41 police officers who had worked with volunteers from various Gaza clans to help the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to distribute aid among the famine-stricken population. Even the clans themselves were targeted in equally merciless bombardments.
On each occasion, just as happened after the attack on the WCK workers, the entity responsible for the aid would declare that it would no longer be involved in aid distribution. This is how Gaza’s hunger turned into famine. It was Israel’s very deliberate strategy.
The killing of the internationals in Gaza served the same goal of ensuring that no aid distribution mechanism was in place, because Israel would not allow it. Ironically, the involvement of World Central Kitchen was itself the outcome of a US-negotiated agreement that would deny the Gaza authorities and even UNRWA any role in the distribution of aid.
The apartheid state of Israel must be stopped at any cost. Moreover, that cost must include Israeli war criminals being held accountable for one of the worst genocides in modern history.
See also:
Drone footage shows Gaza turned to wasteland since start of Israeli offensive
Hundreds of corpses recovered from vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital
The Cradle | April 9, 2024
The bodies of hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israel have been recovered from the vicinity of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, in the north of the strip.
The medical facility was destroyed in a massive Israeli operation inside and around the hospital, which spanned two weeks.
“The bodies of 409 martyrs – some of them decomposed – have so far been recovered by civil defense teams from the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and its surroundings in Gaza City,” Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on 9 April.
Israeli troops raided Al-Shifa Hospital on 18 March – for the second time since the start of the war – carrying out what it said was an operation against Hamas leaders in the facility. During the onset of the attack, Brigadier General Fayeq al-Mabhouh, Gaza’s chief of police and overseer of aid distribution in the north of the strip, was assassinated by Israeli forces.
The army withdrew from Al-Shifa Medical Complex on 1 April. Following the withdrawal, videos on social media showed the full extent of the damage inflicted on the hospital by Israel’s army and aircraft.
The complex’s entire buildings were ravaged, and hundreds were killed in the two-week attack. The hospital has been sheltering thousands of displaced Gazans since the war began. Dozens of Palestinians, among them children, were executed by Israeli forces around the hospital throughout the operation.
Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza also reported massive damage and unprecedented numbers of dead bodies in the strip’s southern city of Khan Yunis on 9 April. Israel had been operating in Khan Yunis since early December in an attempt to dismantle the presence of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades – which it failed to do.
Following the army’s large-scale withdrawal from Gaza over the weekend – which has left a limited number of troops inside the enclave – families returning to Khan Yunis witnessed scores of bodies, many trapped under rubble.
Dozens of young men have also been reported missing, according to what returning families told the civil defense.
The city “smells of death,” one mother said as she was returning, adding: “We don’t have a city anymore – only rubble. There is absolutely nothing left.”
The civil defense has urged the international community to provide specialized equipment to remove the bodies from underneath the rubble.
Palestine’s Sacrifice
By Paul Larudee | Dissident Voice | April 8, 2024
Years ago, I made the statement that Palestinians had not sacrificed enough. It was meant to be a shocking statement, but it wasn’t a judgmental one. What I meant was that all of the terrible sacrifices that Palestinians had made up until that time had failed to liberate Palestine, and that we would know when adequate sacrifice had been made by the standard of whether liberation had been achieved.
I believe that we are reaching a vantage point where this accomplishment is now within view, or at least just over the horizon. If so, it is utterly astonishing, but the greatest part of the sacrifice is yet to come. We call it genocide, and although we are in the midst of it, we have not yet seen the worst.
Israel, which has spent its entire history building its image and cementing its relationships – security, technological, academic, economic and cultural – with the rest of the world, now perceives that it must allow itself to become a reviled international pariah in order to commit horrors that will preserve itself as a Zionist exclusivist enclave on stolen territory. Israel, in its desperation, has given up on all civilized pretenses and most links to the outside world, except its lifeline with the only superpower that can single-handedly transfuse enough arms and wealth to maintain its ability to wreak havoc upon its unwanted subjugated population and instill fear in its neighbors.
It has come down to this: From Israel’s perspective, it must commit genocide in order keep the Zionist dream of a Jewish state alive. There will be no de Klerk-Mandela moment, no integration, no truth commission, no mutual acceptance. The Israelis who believed in good will and mutual respect do not exist anymore, and their dream was a fantasy in any case, depending as it did upon tolerance in a society that required racist credentials for admission. Roughly a million of them emigrated in the decade prior to October 7th, 2023, and another million in the six months after. In the remaining Israeli population, fanaticism rules. It is the future of Israel, to the extent that it has any. Like the crusader castle at Acre, it will be a fortress that remains until it is no longer viable, losing its body of the faithful, unwilling to keep it going.
That is the future. At present, it is a fearful, enraged beast, ready to commit all manner of atrocities in order to resist the inevitable. As it makes no visible progress against its armed foes in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon, it is now seeking to widen the war, with direct superpower military engagement. Although the US remains unlikely to take the bait, it is also ruled by a similar siege mentality, especially at the highest levels of government, which are impervious to popular will, and are wedded to interests that largely determine its composition, regardless of the party “in power”. One of those interests is the Israel lobby, which not surprisingly maintains especially strong control over US policy towards Israel. The practical implications are that, regardless how unpopular a government or its policy may be, it will not waver in its support for Israel – in effect a sock puppet with a teleprompter.
These factors will raise the cost of the Palestinian victory. Yet even those who are the victims of the greatest crime of this century refuse to accept a return to life in the concentration camp that was Gaza. Indeed, the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are swelling with more recruits than they can accept at present.
Will the crescendo of the world’s voices and actions prevent the worst from happening? Will the ships of aid and volunteers change the outcome? The demonstrations? The suspension of trade and exchange agreements? The isolation of Israel as a pariah? The alienation of Jewish youth from Zionism? I would like to think so, but as far as I can tell, none of this has any impact upon the thinking – much less the decisions – in Israel or the US. Our predictions for the future are projections of the past and present, and I see nothing in those projections that will avert the course of genocide. I would love to be wrong.
Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization.
German Intelligence Chief Advocates for Monitoring Speech and Thought
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 9, 2024
The head of Germany’s domestic spy agency, Thomas Haldenwang, has penned an op-ed for a German newspaper and provided some insight into the way he understands freedom of expression, and more importantly, its limits.
Haldenwang, who is at the helm of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), defended in the article published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung his policy of keeping watch on citizens, which includes things like “thought and speech patterns.”
At the same time, Haldenwang didn’t rule out that legal expressions of opinion might be targeted in this population surveillance effort, and made attempts to provide justification for such a stance.
Meanwhile, critics see this as a policy designed to advance restrictions on speech and economic freedoms, primarily aimed at political opponents. In fact, recent polls suggest that most citizens also believe that BfV has become a political tool, and this opinion is said to be strongly present among parties (other than, unsurprisingly, the Greens).
That seems to be precisely the reason Haldenwang felt compelled to publish his thoughts in the newspaper, noting the increased frequency of “headlines and articles” that question and criticize BfV’s activities, some suggesting the agency is policing opinion, language, and even “mood” – and is morphing into German government’s, basically, “bodyguard.”
Haldenwang goes on to assert that “freedom of opinion prevails” in his country, and reminds his readers (less so, it seems, himself) that this freedom is what separates a democracy from an autocracy.
But, the BfV chief also seems to differentiate between “freedom of opinion” and freedom to actually express that opinion. And while in Germany one can have “offensive, absurd and radical opinions” – freedom of expression “has its limits,” he writes.
“Even within the limits of criminal law, however, expressions of opinion, despite their legality, can become relevant for constitutional protection,” the op-ed goes on.
This can be interpreted as yet another example of authorities in a declaratively democratic country trying to find a way to restrict speech they don’t like regardless of its being formally legal – while at the same time being unwilling to legislate to outlaw it, either because of lack of political consensus, or fear of political backlash.
As for what is speech and opinion that the Constitution may need protecting from, the “definition” is broad enough to fit in a lot of things.
It includes “permissible criticism and democratic protest escalating and turning into aggressive, systematic delegitimization of state conduct” – and this may or may not include “calls for violence.” There’s also violation of “human dignity of members of certain social groups or political actors.”
Desperados… NATO cranks up false-flag mode
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 9, 2024
It’s open season for false-flag provocations in NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Russia is winning the war – now in its third year – and the NATO weapons laundering scam with its NeoNazi regime in Ukraine is coming apart. So what to do?
Only two weeks after a terror attack near Moscow that killed 144 civilians, which the Western media roundly attributed to Islamist jihadists and Western governments categorically asserted had nothing to do with the Ukrainian regime it sponsors, there now follows a spate of other false flags.
Russia is being accused of dropping chemical weapons on Ukrainian soldiers while also trying to blow up Europe’s biggest civilian nuclear power plant.
Over the weekend, Western media reports bore the hallmark signs of disinformation campaigns by peddling lame claims that the Russian military was dropping gas grenades on Ukrainian troops.
It was reported that chemical weapons were being used daily to target Ukrainian positions near Lyman and Chasiv Yar in Donetsk Oblast. The source of this information was purportedly an “American combat medic” serving in the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces. That detail alone raises suspicion of planted disinformation.
The second realm of cloying propaganda is the sudden reappearance of reports that the Zaporozyhe Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is coming under constant artillery fire from drones. Those attacks had gone into a lull since last year. Now they are back, as if by clockwork.
Western media have repeated their earlier pattern of trying to make out that it is not clear whether it is the Ukrainian or the Russian side that is firing on the ZNPP – thereby risking a nuclear catastrophe that would engulf Europe from radioactive fallout.
Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is again shamefully indulging the Western media disinformation. Grossi confirmed that the ZNPP was hit at least three times in recent days and he warned of “a significant risk of a major nuclear accident” adding that “this cannot happen”. But Grossi feigns to be agnostic about who is carrying out the attacks. He did not specifically call out the Ukrainian side as the perpetrator.
The Western media affects the ambiguous notion that it could not confirm Ukrainian or Russian claims, thereby giving the impression that it could have been Russian strikes on the ZNPP.
That is ludicrous. Russian forces control the nuclear plant having taken it in March 2022 soon after intervening in Ukraine to halt the aggression of the NATO-backed regime. Russia has provided documented evidence to the UN that the Ukrainian side has been targeting the ZNPP repeatedly with US-supplied artillery and NATO logistics.
Yet the Western media and the UN’s IAEA indulge in the risible charade that Russian forces might be shelling a nuclear plant that they are in possession and control of.
The Western media claims that Russia is resorting to chemical weapons are also absurdly illogical. Why would Russia need to use such a weapon when it is already gaining the strategic upper hand in the war? Besides, Russia has verifiably destroyed all of its chemical weapons years ago as mandated by the 1997 CW Convention.
The same illogical scenario was seen when the Syrian Arab Army was in full control of the battlefield against NATO-backed mercenaries. It was the Western-sponsored cut-throat jihadists of Al Nusra Front and so on that were the ones who contrived chemical weapons attacks and the Western media would reflexively and wrongly blame the Syrian state forces. The provocation succeeded in Syria in triggering the United States, Britain and France to launch air strikes against the Syrian army.
Russia has no need – even if it had chemical weapons – to use them when it is decimating NATO’s proxy army of the NeoNazi Ukrainian regime.
Likewise, Russia commandeered the Zaporozyhe Nuclear Power Plant at an early stage in the conflict knowing that the NATO regime would otherwise use it as a terror card. How right Russia was. The NATO forces are once again stepping up efforts to bomb the ZNPP in an attempt to create a crisis that would presumably justify an escalation by NATO.
Just like the atrocious mass murder at the Crocus City Hall near Moscow on March 22, the NATO proxy war is shifting to all-out hybrid terrorism. The NATO axis has lost conventional warfare on the battlefield due to Russia’s superior firepower and military tactics.
The NATO powers are becoming desperate from the historic defeat. They have invested an unprecedented huge amount of political and financial capital in winning a proxy war to defeat Russia – and they stand to now lose with devastating losses.
This is the feverish context for French leader Emmanuel Macron mouthing off about sending NATO troops into Ukraine and other NATO leaders issuing desperate pleas for more weapons supplies and compulsory military conscription. Their insane proxy war is a monumental debacle that spells calamity for the political establishments in the West, including the lying propaganda news media.
Amid this desperation on a sinking ship of Titanic proportions, the NATO powers are going into full false-flag mode to create some frenetic distraction.
The trouble for them is that we have been here many times before, and the whole world can see through their sordid playbook.