Panama detains and deports head of Brazil-Palestine Institute (Ibraspal)
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | March 18, 2023
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network expresses its solidarity with Dr. Ahmed Shehadeh after Panamanian immigration authorities at Tocumen International Airport detained and deported Shehadeh, the head of the Brazilian-Palestinian Institute (Ibraspal), on Thursday, March 16. The Panamanian officials confiscated and held his Brazilian passport while he was transiting at the airport on his way to the second conference of the Palestinian Federation of Latin America, taking place between 17 and 19 March in Barranquilla, Colombia, Ibraspal’s vice president, Sayid Marcos Tenório, said.
“Shehadeh was interrogated by Panamanian intelligence agents, possibly with the participation and support of U.S. and Israeli intelligence,” Tenório said. “The state of Panama is under American occupation. American and Israeli intelligence are targeting anyone working against imperialist Zionist policies.”
Palestinian community sources in Brazil reported that extensive contacts took place with the Brazilian authorities, as Alexandre Padilha (Minister of Institutional Relations), Paulo Pimenta (Federal Deputy) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened, as did the representative of the Brazilian Embassy in Panama, communicating with the Panamanian authorities until Shehadeh returned to Brazil after his deportation, where his passport was returned to him at Brasilia airport.
Shehadeh was detained and interrogated for many hours before he was told that Panamanian immigration authorities were deporting him back to Brazil rather than allowing him to continue his journey to Colombia and the Palestinian conference taking place there.
Rawa Alsagheer, Palestinian activist and member of Samidoun Network in Brazil, denounced the action of the Panamanian authorities. “This reflects a Zionist and U.S. attempt to target and disrupt the organizing of Palestinians in exile in diaspora, especially in Latin America,” she said.
Brazilian media and social media widely reported on the news of Shehadeh’s detention and deportation, and many Brazilian and Palestinian organizations denounced the Panamanian action. The Panamanian Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People also condemned the immigration authorities’ actions.
Brazilian organizations and parties are planning to visit Shehadeh to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and their rejection of the Panamanian authorities’ decision to prevent him from participating in the Palestinian Federation of Latin America’s conference.
Indigenous Rebellion Continues as Post-Coup Peruvian Government Flounders
BY W. T. WHITNEY | COUNTERPUNCH | MARCH 10, 2023
Revived democratic struggle in Peru is well along into a second act. There was the parliamentary coup December 7 that removed democratically elected President Pedro Castillo and the “First Taking of Lima” in mid-January, embittered and excluded Peruvians occupied Lima and faced violent repression. Then on March 1 protests renewed as the indigenous inhabitants of Peru’s extreme southern regions prepared once more to demonstrate in Lima and would shortly be protesting in their own regions. The resistance’s make-up was fully on display.
Protesters throughout Peru were rejecting a replacement president and an elite-dominated congress and calling for early elections and a new constitution. They belonged for the most part belonged to Aymara communities in districts south of Lima extending from Lake Titicaca both west and northeast, into the Andes region.
Their complaints centered on wealth inequities, rule by a Lima-based elite, inadequate means for decent lives, and non-recognition of their cultural autonomy. Their support and that of other rural Peruvians had brought about the surprise election to Peru’s presidency in 2021 of the inexperienced Pedro Castillo. He had defeated Keiko Fujimori, daughter of a now imprisoned dictator and favorite of Peru’s neo-liberal enablers.
By March 1, residents of provinces close to the city of Puno were arriving in Lima to carry out the so-called “Second Wave of the Taking of Lima.” Demanding the de facto President Dina Boluarte resign, as of March 4 protesters had not been able to break through police lines surrounding key government buildings. The main action, however, was going on in the epicenter of police and military repression ever since Boluarte had taken office on December 7.
That would be the Puno area where most of the 60 deaths caused by violent repression have occurred, with 19 protesters having been killed on January 9 in Juliaca, a town 27 miles north of Puno city.
On March 5, violence was again playing out in Juli, a town 58 miles south of Puno, also on the shore of Lake Titicaca. Demonstrations along with roadblocks were in progress throughout the extended region, all in sympathy with the concurrent protests in Lima. Involved were indigenous groups, small farmer organizations, and social movements.
In Juli the demonstrators, confronted by military units and police in civilian dress, set fire to judicial office buildings and the police headquarters. The troops fired, shots came from open windows, and tear gas was released from a helicopter; 18 demonstrators were wounded.
Demonstrators blocking a bridge over a river prevented the entry of troops into the nearby town of Llave. Rains had caused flooding and in the process of swimming across the river, one of them drowned and five others disappeared.
Protesters captured 12 soldiers; community leader Nilo Colque indicated they were released after they admitted to trying to break the “strikes” but that they too opposed the military’s actions. Coolque predicted that soon 30,000 Aymaras would be descending on Juli and nearby population centers.
Aymara activists in Ilave announced a strike of indefinite duration. A “Committee of struggle” in Cusco announced the beginning as of March 7 of an indefinite strike in 10 provinces. The president of the national “Rondas Campesinas” (peasant patrols), said to represent two million Peruvians in all, announced a big march on Lima from all regions set for March 13.
Meanwhile Peru’s chief prosecutor has embarked upon an investigation of President Boluarte and other officials for crimes of “genocide, homicide resulting from circumstances, and causing serious injury,” that allegedly took place mostly in southern regions in the weeks immediately after her taking office.
There are these other developments:
* Peru’s Supreme Court on March 3 heard a proposal that the “preventive imprisonment of ex-President Castillo be extended from 18 to 36 months. Another court had previously denied his appeal for habeas corpus.
* The Congress as of March 6 looked to be on the verge of, for the fourth time, refusing to advance new presidential elections from April 2024 to sometime in 2013.
* The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has released a preliminary report accusing the new Peruvian government of excessive use of force against protesters.
* Polling results currently go one way: 77% of Peruvian reject the Dina Boluarte government, 70% say she should resign, 90% denounce Peru’s Congress. 69% favor moving general elections ahead to 2023, and 58% support the demonstrations. Most of those making up these majorities live in rural areas, according to the report.
The opposed sides in the Peruvian conflict are stalemated. Powerbrokers presently lack a government capable – willing though it may be – of providing structure and organization adequate for protecting their political and economic interests. Marginalized Peruvians are without an historical experience from which revolutionary leadership and strategies might have developed, such that now they might have direction and focus. The people’s movement there is not as lucky as counterparts were in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
Now the U.S. government meddles with this state of precarious balance in Peru. And not surprisingly: it has long intervened militarily and is competing with China economically.
Speaking on March 1, State Department Ned Price did insist that in Peru, “our diplomats do not take sides in political disputes … They recognize that these are sovereign decisions.” He added that the United States backs “Peru’s constitution, and Peru’s constitutional processes.”
Even so, there is active interest hinting at more to come. Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols on February 28 urged Peru’s Congress to expedite early elections and Peru’s president to promptly “end the crisis caused by ex-President Castillo’s self-coup.”
Israel kills 10 Palestinians, injures a hundred in Nablus
MEMO | February 22, 2023
Ten Palestinians have been killed and over a hundred wounded this morning following an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus.
The Israeli occupation’s military stormed the city with armoured vehicles and blocked off all entrances before surrounding a home with two wanted Palestinians inside. Hossam Isleem and Mohammad Abdulghani, who were both killed.
The Israeli forces demolished the building while the two were inside; their bodies were later identified by the occuption’s forces. Israeli military sources claim the two Palestinians were involved in numerous resistance attacks against illegal Israeli settlements and in the death of a soldier last October.
The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that ten people were killed and 102 others were wounded as a result of gunfire by Israeli occupation soldiers.
Palestinian victims among the dead include 72-year-old Adnan Saabe Baara, 61-year-old Abdul Hadi Abdul Aziz Ashqar, 16-year-old Mohammad Farid Shaaban, 25-year-old Mohammad Khaled Anbousi and 33-year-old Tamer Nimr Minawi.
Israeli soldier filmed assaulting Palestinian activist in occupied West Bank
This screengrab shows an Israeli soldier assaulting Palestinian activist Issa Amro on February 13, 2023.
Press TV – February 14, 2023
An Israeli soldier has been filmed assaulting a prominent Palestinian human rights activist in front of a famous American journalist in the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil.
In a video posted on Twitter by Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker on Monday, the Israeli soldier is seen grabbing Issa Amro by his jacket and neck and throwing him to the ground. He then kicks Amro before being pulled away by another soldier.
“I never had a source assaulted in front of me until today when an Israeli soldier who stopped my interview did this … I can’t stop thinking how dehumanizing the occupation is on the young soldiers charged with enforcing it,” Wright, the author of The Looming Tower, wrote in a post on his Twitter account.
The Israeli military claimed in a statement that the incident occurred after the soldier, who was guarding a military post, asked the Palestinian activist who approached the post, to step away.
It further claimed that in response, the Palestinian began recording and cursing at the soldier, and that a verbal confrontation followed, which soon became a physical confrontation, during which the soldier hit the Palestinian.
However, Wright tweeted that Amro had done nothing to justify the “violent assault,” adding that the Israeli military is “misrepresenting” the build-up to the assault on the Palestinian peace activist.
“The soldier initiated the encounter, Amro did not curse him, [he] only asked to call his commander. Nothing to justify the violent assault that followed,” he said.
“Before the assault the other soldiers were afraid to intervene although I warned them it was getting out of hand,” he added.
Amro also posted several videos of the run-up to the incident on Twitter, saying the Israeli military has lied about what happened.
“I was detained outside the military post, I started shouting to bring the commander out, the soldiers refused to tell him, it was a trap for me by them. The commander came out only after I was beaten and grabbed by the throat and kicked and pushed on the ground,” he wrote n another post.
He said that the video is not just about the activist as it tells the story of every Palestinian in Palestine.
“It is not about Issa Amro, it is about the Palestinian women and children who are attacked frequently by Israeli soldiers and settlers. All Palestinians are living under Israeli occupation and apartheid. The video of the attack tells the story of each Palestinian in Palestine,” he added.
The Israeli military said the soldier was jailed for 10 days in a military prison following the incident.
Far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has defended the soldier’s actions, describing the decision to put him in a military prison as a “disgrace.”
Amro, an engineer by profession, is a well-known human rights defender in his hometown of al-Khalil. He is the founder of Youth Against Settlements (YAS), which aims to empower the Palestinian community in the face of Israeli settlers in the Old City of al-Khalil.
He was detained in November days after filming a soldier assaulting an Israeli activist during a visit by Israeli anti-occupation activists to meet Palestinian residents near the Old City of al-Khalil.
Israeli occupation soldiers and Israeli settlers have noticeably been escalating their attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and other areas, in an attempt to forcibly expel Palestinians from their lands and make way for expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
All the settlements are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions. – View videos
Israel ready to bomb Iranian aid deliveries to Syria: Report
The Cradle | February 10, 2023
An unnamed Israeli military official told Saudi Arabia’s Elaph newspaper on 9 February that Tel Aviv will not hesitate to bomb Iranian aid deliveries for disaster-struck Syria under claims that Tehran seeks to “take advantage of the tragic situation … to send weapons and equipment to Hezbollah.”
The anonymous official added Israel has “intelligence” to back up their claims, as the Israeli army has “intensified its monitoring by air, land, and sea of everything that Iran is transporting to Syria.”
Iran has been one of the leading countries providing humanitarian assistance to Syria since a 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated the country’s northwest region.
As of Friday morning, the death toll from the quake in Syria had surpassed 3,300 people.
As a result of western sanctions, aid deliveries for Syria have been largely hindered compared to the flow of aid entering neighboring Turkiye, forcing Damascus to rely on allied nations like Russia and Iran to assist survivors.
Israel’s newest threat comes just two weeks after its drones bombed three Iranian food trucks loaded with flour and rice as they headed from Iraq into Syria.
The trucks were attempting to legally enter Syria through the Al-Bukamal border crossing days after it was opened for commercial trucks for the first time since 2019.
Israel has previously prevented aid from arriving in Syria by bombing the country’s airports, using similar claims of “weapons deliveries” from Iran.
In September of last year, the UN Syria Commission decried Israeli airstrikes on Damascus International Airport “made it impossible” for the UN to deliver humanitarian aid to Syrians in need.
The attack on 10 June severely damaged the two runways at Syria’s main joint-use airport, crippling civilian air traffic in and out of the country. The statement came just days after Israel bombed Aleppo International Airport twice in the same week.
Israel regularly carries out illegal airstrikes inside Syria on what it claims to be Iranian or Hezbollah targets.
European Parliament embraces war criminal Zelensky
Man in green receives standing ovation for his torture and murder of ethnic Russians
Frontnieuws | February 9, 2023
On Thursday, Reuters reported that Zelensky and his entourage in Europe “were told at a summit by several leaders of the European Union that they were ready to supply Kiev with fighter jets to help fight the Russian invasion.”
“The issue of long-range weapons and fighter jets for Ukraine has been resolved,” said Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff. “Details to follow.”
The “taboo” of sending weapons that can reach hundreds of miles into Russia will soon be broken, according to Reuters, the “news agency” that collaborated with the CIA , writes Kurt Nimmo.
“Mr Zelensky received standing ovations before, during and after his speech to European lawmakers,” reports The Hindu. “He held up an EU flag after his speech and the whole legislature stood in gloomy silence as the Ukrainian national anthem and then the European anthem ‘Ode to Joy’ were played.”
More an ode to mass murder.
Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, said the “next step” is to provide “long-range systems” and fighter jets to the ultra-nationalists. Metsola said the “reaction” to Russian efforts to denazify and disarm the Kiev regime “must be proportionate to the threat, and the threat is existential.”
Metsola, who was elevated to President of the European Parliament by a secret vote of MEPs (not European citizens), is taking the war to the next level.
The EU encourages the ultra-nationalist regime in Kiev to continue its ethnic cleansing, torture, rape and other war crimes in the Donbas and wherever Ukrainians dare to speak Russian, attend an Orthodox church, celebrate Russian traditions or speak out against atrocities committed by neo-Nazi thugs.
Metsola and her associates should be required to read “War Crimes by the Armed and Security Forces of Ukraine: Torture and Inhumane Treatment,” a second report on neo-Nazi war crimes in Ukraine by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The PDF document reveals in gruesome detail the war crimes committed by the Ukrainian state following the US government-orchestrated coup in Kiev that brought openly neo-Nazis to power.
From the data collected since the first report of the Foundation for Democracy Studies, it can be concluded that torture and inhumane treatment by the Security Forces of Ukraine (SBU), the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the National Guard and other formations within the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine, as well as by illegal armed groups, such as the Right Sector, have not only continued, but are actually increasing in size and becoming systematic.
According to the report,
The prisoners were electrocuted, and brutally beaten with various objects (iron bars, baseball bats, sticks, rifle butts, bayonet knives, rubber bats) for several days at a time.
Techniques widely used by the Ukrainian armed forces and security services include waterboarding, strangling with a “Banderist garrotte” and other types of strangulation.
In some cases, prisoners were sent to minefields for intimidation and run over with military vehicles, leading to their deaths.
Other methods of torture used by the Ukrainian armed and security forces include breaking bones, stabbing and cutting with a knife, branding with red-hot objects, and shooting various body parts with small arms.
The prisoners captured by the Ukrainian armed and security forces are held for days in freezing temperatures, without access to food or medical attention, and are often forced to swallow psychotropic substances that cause pain.
An absolute majority of prisoners are subjected to mock firing squads and threatened with the death and rape of their families.
Many of those martyred are not members of the Self-Defense Forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR).
The Human Rights Convention “prohibits torture in absolute terms regardless of other circumstances,” and the state that commits these violations “is responsible for the actions of all its agencies, such as the police, security forces, other law enforcement officers, and all other organs of state that have an individual under their control, whether acting by order or of their own accord,” the authors write.
In other words, there is more than enough evidence to convict the Man in Green and his ultra-nationalist associates of serious war crimes. In addition, the US government and the EU are guilty of supporting and facilitating the above crimes. Add to that the owners and managers of the war propaganda corporate media.
The EU-US war crimes collaborators are busy preventing Russia from protecting civilians in Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol, Melitopol, Kherson and Crimea. We can say that they are war criminals and apologists for neo-Nazi terror.
The following video is utterly disgusting: a war criminal and his collaborator in mass murder, torture and rape make a kissing face for the camera.
In a saner and less cruel world, both of these sickening creatures would be on a tribunal similar to the one that sentenced to death Martin Bormann, Hermann Goering, Wilhelm Keitel, Julius Streicher, and other inveterate Nazis.
Copyright © 2023 translation by Frontnieuws.
Israeli troops commit massacre in latest raids on Jenin
Raids focused on Jenin but targeted many other areas across the occupied West Bank
The Cradle – January 26 2023
Israeli occupation forces killed ten Palestinians and injured at least twenty on 26 January during violent raids in the occupied city of Jenin and its refugee camp.
The raids began on the evening of 25 January and persisted into 26 January, in what is being described as “one of the deadliest days” in the West Bank since the start of last year.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), several have been detained throughout the raids and transferred for interrogation by Israel’s security service. As a result of the incursions, intense clashes broke out between Israeli troops and resistance fighters, several of whom sustained bullet wounds.
An elderly woman has also been reported among the dead, according to security officials. Eyewitnesses have referred to the situation as a “massacre.”
Those killed are Majeda Abdel Fattah Obeid (Umm Ziad), brothers Mohammad Ghneim, Nour Ghneim, and Ahmad Ghneim, Mohammad Mahmoud Sobh, Wassim Amjad Jaes, Mutasim Mahmoud Abou Hassan, Ezzedine Yasin Salahat, Abdallah Marwan al-Ghoul, Saeb Issam Azraqi.
The Israeli army cut off the power supply to the Jenin camp, while also blocking journalists and ambulance teams from entering. Health officials have said that injuries are continuing to accumulate.
“There is an invasion that is unprecedented in the past period, in terms of how large it is and the number of injuries … The ambulance driver tried to get to one of the martyrs who was on the floor, but the Israeli forces shot directly at the ambulance and prevented them from approaching him,” Wissam Baker, head of Jenin’s public hospital, told media.
Despite centering around Jenin and its camp, the Israeli raids also targeted several homes and refugee camps across the West Bank, including Ramallah’s Al-Amari camp and Jerusalem’s Shuafat camp, as well as the towns of Silwan, Sur Baher, Al-Tur, and Al-Isawiya.
In response to the Israeli aggression, the Palestinian resistance managed to down a drone as it was flying over the Jenin refugee camp.
According to reports, an Israeli soldier was killed and another injured in the confrontations. Another report says that the Jenin Brigade of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) resistance movement detonated an explosive device inside an Israeli military jeep, resulting in “casualties in their ranks.”
“The military operation in Jenin was launched after intelligence from the Shin Bet about the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement’s intention to carry out a major operation against Israeli targets … the operation aimed to arrest a prominent member of the movement,” Israeli media reported.
The military ended up withdrawing from Jenin, however, the injury toll is expected to rise.
Goodbye empire? US sanctions are failing in the face of multipolarity
By Felix Livshitz | RT | January 25, 2023
Foreign Affairs, a highly influential US magazine – effectively a US empire house journal – has published an article detailing how sanctions are quickly losing their efficiency as a weapon in Washington’s global arsenal.
Published by the Council on Foreign Relations NGO, Foreign Affairs provides space for officials within the US military industrial complex to communicate with one another on matters they believe to be of the utmost significance. Therefore, it is important to pay attention when the magazine makes major pronouncements on any issue.
It recently published an appraisal of US sanctions – the conclusion being that they are increasingly ineffective, have prompted Beijing and Moscow to create alternative global financial structures to insulate themselves and others from punitive actions, and that Washington and its acolytes will no longer be able to force countries to do their bidding, let alone destroy dissenting states, through such measures in the very near future.
The article begins by noting that “sanctions have long been the US’ favored diplomatic weapon,” which “fill the void between empty diplomatic declarations and deadly military interventions.” Despite this, it predicts “the golden days of US sanctions may soon be over.”
These “golden days” were the immediate post-Cold War era, when Washington was “still an unrivaled economic power,” and therefore could at the press of a button cripple each and every overseas economy, in theory. This was due to “primacy of the US dollar and the reach of US oversight of global financial channels.”
As international trade was overwhelmingly conducted using dollars, Washington could stop any country from exporting or importing any and all goods it wished, whenever it liked. Even then, Foreign Affairs recalls, US leaders themselves worried if sanctions were applied too liberally. In 1998, then-President Bill Clinton claimed his government was “in danger of looking like we want to sanction everybody who disagrees with us.”
The Foreign Affairs article says Clinton’s fears were “overblown,” but this is precisely what came to pass. Governments, and the countries they represented, have been sanctioned for pursuing the wrong policies, refusing to be overthrown in US-backed coups and military interventions and showing any degree of independence in their domestic or foreign dealings whatsoever. In the process, millions have died, and even more lives have been ruined for no good reason.
This approach has backfired, and badly. In response, states “have begun to harden their economies against such measures.” For example, after the US cut off Iran from the SWIFT global banking system, many other countries took note. Restricting China’s access to numerous technologies as part of the new Cold War has also served to place both Washington’s allies and adversaries alike “on notice their access to crucial technology could be severed.”
Beijing and Moscow lead the way in the push to create “financial innovations that diminish US advantage,” creating a raft of “currency swap agreements, alternatives to SWIFT, and digital currencies” that serve as “preemptive measures” against any “potential penalties” down the line.
Currency swaps, which connect central banks directly to each other and eliminate the need for trades between them to be dollar-backed, have been eagerly embraced by China. It has signed deals of this kind with more than 60 countries across the world, thereby enabling its companies “to circumvent US financial channels when they want to.”
In 2020, Beijing settled more than half its annual trade with Moscow in currencies other than the dollar, making the majority of these transactions totally immune to US sanctions, and that figure has only risen ever since. In March that year also, the China and Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization officially prioritized development of payments in the local currencies of its members.
Beijing and Moscow are also, Foreign Affairs reports, “busily preparing their own alternatives” to various Western-dominated international systems. Their alternative to SWIFT, the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, isn’t yet a match in terms of transaction volume, but that’s not the point. It prevents them, and any state or organization enrolled in the framework – 1,300 banks in over 100 countries already – from being unable to make international financial transactions, should they be cut out of SWIFT.
Similarly, China is expanding the reach of the digital renminbi, the currency issued by Beijing central bank, at home and overseas. More than 300 million of its citizens already use it, and a billion are forecast to by 2030. The currency is completely sanctions-proof as the US has no ability to prevent its use, and Beijing has encouraged several countries to pay for its exports exclusively using it – “other such deals will probably follow,” Foreign Affairs predicts.
The American empire’s obsessive reliance on sanctions has now created a Catch-22 situation, by the magazine’s reckoning. The already hostile relations between the USA, China and Russia mean Moscow and Beijing are pushing ahead with this revolutionary effort no matter what. If “things get worse,” they’ll simply “double down on their sanctions-proofing efforts,” taking more and more countries with them.
“These innovations are increasingly giving countries the ability to conduct transactions through sanctions-proof channels. This trend appears irreversible,” the article bitterly concludes. “All this means that within a decade, US unilateral sanctions may have little bite.”
It is all these developments, along with Moscow’s economic pivot eastwards after the 2014 Ukraine coup, and move towards self-sufficiency in energy and food and in other vital resources, which account for the embarrassing failure of US-led sanctions against Russia.
Western leaders, academics, journalists, pundits and economists promised when these sanctions were imposed that they would soon lead to Russia’s total political, economic and military collapse. They have not, demonstrating that elites in Europe and North America do not understand the global economy they claim to rule. They should get to grips with the new reality they inhabit in short order, though – for a multipolar world has begun to emerge in 2022, and it is here to stay.
How rapidly US elites are reckoning with the radically different reality in which they are now forced to operate is ironically underlined by how quickly the author of the Foreign Affairs article, Agathe Demarais, seems to have completely changed her tune on the subject of sanctions. On 1 December, less than a month earlier, she authored a piece for Foreign Policy – another US empire in-house journal – that offered a radically different take on the matter.
Boldly declaring “sanctions on Russia are working” in the headline, Demarais dismissed suggestions punitive Western measures were intended to “force Putin to back down and pull out of Ukraine,” or to provoke “regime change” in Moscow, or to prompt “a Venezuela-style collapse of the Russian economy,” despite the fact every single one of these outcomes was explicitly cited as a motivating factor behind the sanctions by Western officials, pundits, and journalists at the time.
Instead, she argued, sanctions were effective in the quest to “send a message to the Kremlin” that “Europe and the United States are standing with Ukraine.”
Whether or not Kiev will be thrown under a bus by its Western backers in due course, and the anti-Russian measures will endure after the war is over, seems to not matter so much, though – for, as Demarais was herself forced to acknowledge less than four weeks later, the effectiveness of sanctions is rapidly diminishing. The speed of this about-face could well be an indication of how irresistibly the multipolar world is coming to be.
Orthodox bishop denounces Ukrainian crimes at UNSC
By Lucas Leiroz | January 20, 2023
The Russian Orthodox Church went to the UN to denounce Ukrainian crimes. At a meeting of the Security Council on January 17, invited by the Russian diplomatic representation at the UN, an Orthodox bishop linked to the Moscow Patriarchate commented on the situation of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine in the face of the persecutions imposed by Kiev’s neo-Nazi regime. This was the first time that a representative of the Orthodox clergy has addressed the UNSC.
The bishop chosen for the interaction was Chairman of the Department of External Relations of the Church of the Patriarchate of Moscow, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, Anthony. He made it clear to all diplomats of the UNSC that the Orthodox Church is currently experiencing serious political and religious oppression under the Ukrainian government. Metropolitan Anthony said that the Russians are “extremely concerned about the blatant violations of the universal and constitutional rights of Orthodox believers in Ukraine”.
The bishop exposed some shocking data about the Ukrainian reality. Due to the ban on Orthodoxy recently imposed by the Zelensky regime, thirteen Ukrainian bishops were actually deprived of their own Ukrainian citizenship. With this measure, the neo-Nazis intend to coerce the clergy to stop disobeying the dictatorial norms aimed at banning the Church. Currently, Ukrainian clerics are trying to resist the regime’s impositions, continuing to offer liturgical services and protecting local traditions.
However, if bishops continue to lose their nationality, they will certainly be forced into exile, which will further complicate the situation for Orthodox believers in Ukraine. The bishop also highlighted that these revocations of citizenship are decreed irregularly, without any legal procedure that legitimizes them, thus violating the country’s constitution.
Another data informed by him concerns the process of expropriation of the Russian Church. Metropolitan Anthony reported in his speech that last year alone 129 churches belonging to the Patriarchate of Moscow were captured by the Ukrainian regime’s agents. Part of these expropriated churches are then used for non-religious purposes, while others are given to the ultranationalist and non-canonical sect called “Patriarchate of Kiev”, which is widely supported by the Maidan Junta, as it adopts the anti-Russian neo-Nazi ideology of the Ukrainian state. It is important to remember that the Ukrainian Orthodox believers are canonically linked to the Patriarchate of Moscow, therefore these acts of the Kiev regime are an attack against the religion of the Ukrainian people itself.
The head of foreign affairs of the Russian Church also emphasized the importance of understanding the current situation of the Church as a kind of mass political repression. He told the UNSC delegates that since last year the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence agency) agents constantly carry out violent operations in Orthodox churches, during which the clergy are publicly humiliated, and the temples desecrated. He compared the oppression suffered today with that of the early years of the Soviet Union.
These recent attacks have taken place officially, as the Ukrainian state has started a banning campaign against all institutions linked to Russia. However, illegally, since 2014 there has been strong persecution against the Orthodox Church in regions with an ethnic Russian majority. Neo-Nazi militias destroyed temples and killed clergy and believers in Donbass during hostilities against resistance forces. There are several photos and videos circulating on the internet showing the oppression to which the Orthodox Church has been subjected in Ukraine.
According to Metropolitan Anthony, since the Orthodox Church is the majority faith of both Russians and Ukrainians, it can serve as a basis for peaceful dialogue towards the end of hostilities. The recent Russian initiative, rejected by Kiev, to establish a temporary ceasefire during the Orthodox Christmas is an example of this. However, from the moment that one of the sides begins to deliberately oppress the Church, the possibility of dialogue ceases. Therefore, the international society must pay attention to the situation of the Church in Ukraine and demand changes in Kiev’s position.
Furthermore, the reports made by the bishop should also generate discussions in the western world, since it is unacceptable that the regime which promotes ethnic and religious persecution continues to receive money and weapons from the West. Although NATO has already made it clear several times that it has no humanitarian concern and that it is willing to do anything to “defeat” Russia, it is important that the costs of this war are known by Western public opinion.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
State of emergency declared in Peru amid deadly protests
RT | January 15, 2023
The Peruvian government has introduced a state of emergency in a number of provinces in a bid to tackle violent anti-government protests. The South American country has been gripped by unrest since early December 2022, when President Pedro Castillo was removed from office and arrested over accusations of corruption.
The former president’s supporters, who claim the ouster was a coup, have been taking to the streets and clashing with security forces ever since. Castillo has denied any wrongdoing, insisting that his removal was orchestrated by his political opponents.
The decree introducing the state of emergency was published in Peru’s official daily newspaper, Diario Oficial El Peruano, late on Sunday.
The decree took effect on January 15 and will last for thirty days. It covers three regions, three provinces, and one district, mostly in the south of the country. The capital city of Lima and surrounding areas are among them. Five major highways were also included in the measure.
Where the state of emergency is in effect, Peru’s National Police has been charged with maintaining order with the support of the military.
Under the decree, local residents are prohibited from gathering in groups, while security forces can detain them if they deem it necessary, and can also enter and search homes.
Moreover, a curfew has been imposed from 8:00 pm to 4:00 am for ten days in the southern department of Puno. The restrictions were imposed after violent clashes left 18 people dead in the region. Certain exceptions are envisaged for the purchase of food or to seek medical care, while workers in a number of critical professions are also allowed to move about freely.
On Friday, President Dina Boluarte apologized to the nation for the violence that has so far claimed 47 lives.
She insisted, however, that she will not resign, and claimed “foreign provocateurs and infiltrators” may have played a role in the deadly unrest.
Genocide Investigation Launched Against Peruvian Authorities Following Massacre
By Wyatt Reed – Samizdat – 11.01.2023
A new government probe suggests the tide may be turning against the US-backed government which seized power in Peru last month, depriving President Pedro Castillo of his power.
Peru’s Attorney General has opened an investigation into the country’s new leaders after over a dozen Peruvians were killed in confrontations with security forces.
According to local media, officials are investigating the politicians for the crimes of genocide, homicide, and inflicting grievous injuries.
“The preliminary investigation is related to the alleged crimes of genocide, murder, and grievous bodily harm committed during the demonstrations of December 2022 and January 2023 in the regions of Apurimac, La Libertad, Puno, Junin, Arequipa, and Ayacucho,” reads a statement issued by the office.
Much of the upper echelon of Peru’s new authorieis are reportedly being scrutinized, including the self-declared president, Dina Boluarte, Prime Minister Alberto Otárola, Interior Minister Victor Rojas, and Defense Minister Jorge Chavez.
On Tuesday morning, left-leaning Congresswoman Ruth Luque asked the Attorney General’s office to probe the role played by high-ranking officials of the Boluarte cabinet in its crackdown on pro-Castillo protesters that left at least 17 Peruvians dead in the Southern city of Juliaca Monday.
The investigation comes as Peru’s notoriously unpopular legislature gave its approval to a vote of confidence aimed to legitimize the new government.
On Friday, Peru’s Attorney General opened an earlier investigation into the the new cabinet, which stands accused of killing dozens of demonstrators and bystanders amid the ongoing political crisis.
Massive protests have consumed Peru since the ouster of Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, who was arrested hours after attempting to dissolve parliament after lawmakers proceeded with an impeachment vote. He has remained in police custody since his detainment.