Eleven people have been detained over the terrorist attack on the Crocus Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said in a statement.
The arrested suspects include “four terrorists who were directly involved in the terrorist attack on Crocus,” the statement read. Investigative work to track down other accomplices are ongoing, it added.
After carrying out the attack on Friday night, “the perpetrators tried to escape by car, fleeing towards the Russian-Ukrainian border,” the FSB said on Saturday. “The criminals intended to cross the Russia-Ukraine border and had relevant contacts on the Ukrainian side,” it added.
According to the agency, “all four terrorists” were arrested in Russia’s Bryansk Region within several hours as a result of well-coordinated actions by the security services and the police. The detainees are now being transferred to Moscow, it added.
The attack on Crocus Crocus City Hall was “carefully planned,” with the perpetrators using weapons that had been placed in a stash in advance, the FSB said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee also confirmed that four suspects, who “committed the terrorist attack” on Crocus City Hall, were detained in Bryansk Region, “not far from the border with Ukraine.”
Crocus City Hall, in the town of Krasnogorsk in Moscow’s western outskirts, was attacked by gunmen on Friday night. It happened before a concert by Russian rock band Picnic, when the venue, which has an estimated capacity of 7,500, was nearly at capacity.
The attackers shot at the crowd indiscriminately then set the building on fire. They managed to flee the scene in what was said to be a white Renault Symbol/Clio car, prompting a large-scale manhunt.
According to Russia’s Investigative Committee, the death toll in the attack has reached at least 115. The Moscow Region Health Ministry said that at least 121 people were also wounded, with 107 requiring hospitalization.
Israeli forces used drones to kill four Palestinian youths in Gaza in cold blood as they walked down a road in the city of Khan Yunis in Gaza, footage obtained by Al-Jazeera shows.
The drone first fired two missiles at the youths as they walked on a dirt road, hoping to reach the remains of their
destroyed homes. Israeli bulldozers had been active in the area but had withdrawn. Israeli forces continued to monitor the area by drone.
The missiles killed two of the youths. The other two tried to escape, but Israeli drones opened fire with missiles a third and fourth time, killing them both separately as well.
The last youth had tripped and fallen and was on his knees in the road as the missile struck him.
The missiles obliterated the bodies, barely leaving a trace of them.
The video shows the youths were unarmed and posed no threat to any Israeli forces.
The drone was broadcasting video to an Israeli command center as it opened fire.
On Thursday evening, the Gaza Media Office stated that the killings constituted evidence of a “deep crisis within the Israeli occupation.”
“We strongly condemn this crime in which the occupation army bombed four civilian youths with drones, killing them vindictively and turning them into scattered remains, indicating the magnitude of the deep crisis that this occupation is going through by killing in this monstrous manner,” the media office said.
“The US administration, the international community, and the Israeli occupation bear full responsibility for the continuation of these crimes against Palestinian civilians for the sixth consecutive month (of the war),” it added.
Since 7 October, Israeli forces have killed over 31,000 Palestinians in Gaza in a campaign widely-viewed as genocide.
On Tuesday, four critical care doctors who recently returned from Gaza spoke to the UN. “I saw the most appalling atrocities, and I saw things I never would have expected to have seen in any healthcare setting,” Dr. Nick Maynard said, adding that he saw “mass indiscriminate bombing” and targeting of healthcare workers.
Americans do not understand how badly the United States’ reputation has been damaged across the world, which sees Gaza as “a US genocide” and “not just an Israeli genocide,” Mohammad Marandi, a professor of English literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday.
“It’s revealing the reality of [the US] empire in a way that not even [author of ‘A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn] could do because it’s being done in front of our eyes, it’s being done in front of a global audience. We’ve never seen such a thing before,” Marandi said, adding that he suspects that is why the US is attempting to ban TikTok.
“The United States has lost credibility across the world. I don’t think many Americans understand how bad this has become for the United States. People across the world see this as a US genocide, it’s not just an Israeli genocide.”
Co-host Wilmer Leon asked about a recent freeze on Canadian arms shipments to Israel, which Marandi said showed that “public opinion is shifting” but that ultimately “stopping Canadian exports of weapons is nothing.” Marandi said Canada needs to take a much tougher approach.
“They sanctioned Syria… they’ve imposed sanctions on Cuba, on Venezuela, on Iran, on Yemen. Why don’t they impose sanctions on Israel? They’re carrying out a holocaust. Why don’t they hit the economy?” Marandi asked, noting that Israel will, unlike Russia, be allowed to participate in the Olympics. “No one takes this seriously. And, of course, the bulk of the weapons come from the United States anyway.”
“In any case, there is no reason to believe that the Canadian government cares about Palestinians, that they oppose the genocide, because they’ve done absolutely nothing to stop it,” Marandi added.
Ultimately, Marandi believes that Israel has laid the path for its destruction through its actions in Gaza. “I believe that the Israelis have made a fatal mistake and that what they’ve done in Gaza will be the beginning of the end of the Zionist project,” he asserted. “The real catastrophe for the Israeli regime is the fact that it’s been carrying out the genocide for almost six months in front of the world and it has demolished the facade that the regime had created for itself… about it being a democracy… All that is gone now and across the board the regime is despised and the image of the United States has been destroyed.”
Marandi noted that he has been to China twice and public opinion there has shifted as well. He noted that he does not think China will ever invest in Israel again.
“They see on their own social media networks what you and I are seeing,” he noted.
Former US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, who is known to be a close ally of both Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, let the cat slip out of the bag in a recent interview.
Speaking to Harvard’s Middle East Initiative faculty chair, Prof. Tarek Masoud, Kushner lauded the “very valuable” potential of the Gaza Strip’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the territory.
According to a report in the Guardian, the former real estate dealer, married to Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka, made the comments in an interview at Harvard University on March 8.
As if echoing Netanyahu’s grand plan of ethnic cleansing Gaza’s 2.3 million population, Kushner said “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Without any hint of empathy for the suffering and devastation inflicted on the Palestinians which has outraged the world, Kushner advanced his idea that Israel should move civilians from Gaza to the Negev desert in southern occupied territories.
As the executioner of Trump’s much-hyped “normalization” project, his comments carried a tone of a cold calculated plot to eradicate the presence of Palestinians in their own territory.
As per the Guardian account of the interview, Kushner said that if he were in charge of Israel, his number one priority would be getting civilians out of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and that “with diplomacy” it could be possible to get them into Egypt.
“But in addition to that, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” he said. “I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”
The report pointed out that Kushner’s suggestion drew a startled response from the interviewer, who was clearly taken aback by the former White House adviser’s proposal.
“Is that something that they’re talking about in Israel?” Masoud asked.
“I mean, that’s the first I’ve really heard of somebody, aside from President Sisi [Egypt’s leader], suggesting that Gazans trying to flee the fighting could take refuge in the Negev. Are people in Israel seriously talking about that possibility?”
In response to another question about whether Palestinians should have their own state, Kushner dismissed it as “a super bad idea” that “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.
Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor who compiled the report on Kushner’s interview, reminded us that as a senior foreign policy adviser under Trump’s presidency, Kushner was tasked with preparing a plan for the West Bank.
“His remarks at Harvard gave a hint of the kind of Middle East policy that could be pursued in the event that Trump returns to the White House, including a search for a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel”.
Given his close association with the settler colonial regime, it is indisputable that Kushner has a vested interest in Netanyahu’s ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss revealed way back in 2016 that Kushner’s family foundations gave $325,860 to the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces, an influential pro-Israel lobby group in the US, during that period.
The Seryl and Charles Kushner Family Foundation gave the Zionist lobby group over $200,000 in the years 2010 and 2011. A second family foundation, the Charles Kushner Companies Foundation, also made gifts to the FIDF.
Not surprising at all given that Kushner serves on the board of the Zionist lobby group.
Haaretz and the Washington Post also reported back then that the Kushner Family Foundation had given nearly $60,000 to settlement organizations between 2011 and 2013.
What is apparent from his history of association with Israel’s illegal settlement projects as well as his funding of the Israeli occupation forces, Kushner’s intentions are known to all.
As Weiss pointed out, support for an occupying army that has committed genocidal crimes does not speak to Kushner’s impartiality.
Not that impartiality has ever been a criterion for US mediators or the US State Department, but this has been borne out for decades and is in sharp focus today with the hypocrisy and double standards of the Joe Biden Administration.
Most of the world is aware that Biden has thrice vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in the besieged Palestinian territory where nearly 32,000 Palestinians, 70 percent of them children and women, have been killed since October 7
Also known is the fact that an airbridge of unlimited supply of weapons from the US to Israel has been in operation in addition to financial aid running into billions of dollars.
Critics of both Trump and Biden have justifiably claimed that [Zionist] Washington is deeply vested in keeping its Zionist colony alive at all costs, including at the expense of the lives of Palestinians.
Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa.
In a display of solidarity with Palestinians, hundreds of workers and protesters have shut down arms factories across England and Scotland to condemn the UK’s complicity in the Israeli regime’s war of aggression in Gaza.
The factories, which produce components for F-35 fighter jets, are accused of shoring up the Israeli regime’s military offensive in Gaza.
Under the banner “Workers for a Free Palestine,” a diverse coalition of individuals from various unions and sectors including health, education, hospitality, academia, and the arts, launched the protests on Wednesday.
Activists aimed to disrupt the supply chain of arms to Israel and denounce the UK’s complicity in the ongoing genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.
GE Aviation Systems in Cheltenham and Leonardo UK in Edinburgh were among the targeted sites where components for the F-35 jets are manufactured.
The protesters vowed to continue their protest actions for a month, demanding an immediate cessation of arms sales to Israel and advocating for a permanent ceasefire.
The decision to blockade the arms factories was prompted by Israel’s impending invasion of Rafah, which the United Nations and other international organizations have warned would have catastrophic consequences for Gaza’s population.
Unionists have called on workers across the UK to challenge their government’s military support for the Israeli regime.
“We’re demanding our government immediately halt arms supplies to Israel before it launches this offensive in Rafah using British-made bombs. But we are not waiting for this genocide-appeasing prime minister to act,” Zad, a union member, said in a press release.
This isn’t the first time such protests have occurred.
In December, similar blockades targeted four other arms factories across the UK. Despite assurances from the UK government that it hasn’t supplied lethal military equipment to Israel since October, evidence suggests otherwise.
Affidavits filed at the High Court revealed ongoing export licenses and pending applications for equipment likely to be used in offensive operations in Gaza.
Furthermore, the UK Ministry of Defence disclosed that Israeli warplanes have been permitted to take off from and land in the UK during the Gaza war, raising concerns about Britain’s involvement in facilitating Israeli atrocities.
A group of four critical-care doctors who were recently in Gaza spoke on a UN panel about the horrors they witnessed in the besieged Strip. The doctors described multiple war crimes, horrendous injuries to children, kids dying of treatable wounds, and a shortage of supplies so severe that young patients die on the floors of hospitals without anesthetic to ease their suffering.
Addressing the UN on Tuesday, four physicians from France, the US, and Britain described the dire conditions in Gaza. “I saw the most appalling atrocities, and I saw things that I never would have expected to have seen in any healthcare setting,” Dr. Nick Maynard told the panel.
Maynard said that Israeli forces were bombing Gaza indiscriminately and intentionally attacking healthcare facilities, noting that some media outlets had uncritically repeated Tel Aviv’s assertion that it was carefully targeting Hamas. “I want to just dispel some of the narratives coming from the Israelis, [and] from some of the media,” which claimed the bombs were “only targeting Hamas.”
“I can certainly bear witness, as can any medic who’s been on the ground in Gaza in recent months, [and] dispel that notion with absolute certainty,” he continued. “There is mass indiscriminate bombing killing many, many thousands of civilians and a very clear targeting of healthcare facilities and healthcare workers.”
Maynard’s first-hand account is backed by Israeli and US sources. The White House has known for several months that Tel Aviv is bombing targets in Gaza without “solid intelligence” indicating any military value. President Biden himself previously described the Israeli onslaught as “indiscriminate,” while the Tel Aviv-based +972 Magazine detailed Israel’s intentional strikes on civilian “power targets” in what it dubbed an “assassination factory.”
Dr. Zaher Sahloul explained the toll the indiscriminate bombing has taken on the civilians in Gaza. “The number of children killed is 13,000 or so or more. Which means, one out of 100 children in Gaza has been killed and this is an astronomical number; the equivalent of that in the US would be half a million children,” he said.
“Of the 70,000 people who were injured, half of them have moderate to severe injuries. That means they will have some type of disability for the rest of their lives,” Sahloul continued before adding the numbers are likely an undercount.
Dr. Thaer Ahmad stated he was providing care to wounded Palestinians at the Nassar Hospital in Khan Younis before Israeli forces surrounded, raided, and disabled the medical center. He said aid could not enter the Strip and that doctors did not have the medicines needed to treat patients.
Extreme supply shortages have forced doctors to make “impossible decisions” at Gaza’s overwhelmed healthcare facilities, Dr. Amber Alayyan told the UN panel. Hospital officials “have to choose between whether to fully stock the operating theater, ICU, or emergency room.” She continued, “This is where you have doctors faced with horrific decisions of having to intubate and amputate children and adults without anesthetics in emergency rooms. Part of the reason for this is the lack of medications.”
At times, shortages are so severe that hospitals do not have morphine or antibiotics while doctors rewash surgical gloves.
Maynard explained the impact of the limited aid for one Palestinian girl. “One child that I’ll never forget had burned so bad you could see her facial bones. We knew there was no chance of her surviving that,” he said. “But there was no morphine to give her. So, not only was she going to die, but she would die in agony.”
The doctor continued, “And what made it even worse was that there was nowhere for her to go and die, so she was just left on the floor of the emergency department to die. And that’s just one story; we’ve all seen multiple stories like that.”
Israel has imposed tight restrictions on aid deliveries into Gaza since October 7. While the Biden administration claims it is pressuring Tel Aviv to ease its blockade, fewer than 100 aid trucks have entered Gaza each day in recent weeks – down from 200 in January and 500 in September. The White House has refused to use its considerable leverage over Tel Aviv to persuade Israel to allow more aid into the Strip and has declined to condition future US military aid on that request.
The physicians explained that Washington’s efforts to relieve the humanitarian crisis would be ineffective, saying the real issue was distribution problems that could only be solved with an end to the fighting. Additionally, they pointed to multiple Israeli attacks on aid deliveries in Gaza, including a February 29 massacre that left more than 100 Palestinians dead.
Dr. Maynard went on to warn that an attack on Rafah would have devastating consequences for the 1.5 million people in the city. “It’ll be apocalyptic, really, the number of deaths that we’re going to see,” he said. “And of course, as we’re seeing, they’ll be told to evacuate and move somewhere safe, and there is, as we’ve heard, there is nowhere safe for them to go.”
South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor accused Israel yesterday of setting a precedent in defying the decisions of the International Court of Justice, the highest court in the UN also known as the World Court, and insisted again that Gaza is witnessing a deliberate “starvation” campaign.
South Africa took Israel to the ICJ in December, accusing it of committing genocide in the military offensive it has been waging since October. Pretoria’s move angered Israel and was condemned by the US.
Pandor pointed out that Israel has defied the ICJ’s January ruling which ordered the occupation state to do everything in its power to prevent genocide. Earlier this month, Pretoria asked the ICJ to impose “provisional measures” to put an end to the “widespread starvation” occurring as a result of Israel’s military attack in Gaza.
Pandor made her comments at a symposium at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace during a visit to Washington DC. “The provisional measures have been entirely ignored by Israel,” she warned. “We’re seeing mass starvation now and famine before our very eyes. I think we, as humanity, need to look at ourselves in horror and dismay and to be really worried that we have set an example.”
The minister noted that Israel’s actions may be interpreted by other nations that they have a licence to do what they want and will not be stopped.
She added that South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy, in going through international institutions on this issue, was “merely practicing what is preached to us every day” by the West. “The ICJ has not been respected. And the day that an African disrespects [the court] I hope we don’t go to that leader and say ‘Listen, you’re out of bounds; because you’re an African, we expect you to obey’.”
South Africa once again petitioned the court in The Hague to order measures for Israel to stop “widespread starvation” due to its attack on Gaza.
Israel denounced the petition, describing it arrogantly as “morally repugnant” and noting initiatives it is taking, including suspending aggression for humanitarian reasons.
A food security assessment backed by the UN has found that Gaza faces imminent famine, with about 1.1 million people, or nearly half of the population, suffering from “catastrophic” hunger.
No matter how brutal an event, there will be those who can justify, rationalize, or spin a positive narrative. Real and imagined injustices inspire reactions that lead to more injustice, creating a spiral of revenge. Or a group can decide that it is superior, righteous by default, and has the right to claim territory in order to thrive. Outside observers can grapple with favoring one party over others, claiming that it was a “lesser evil.” Despite any pretense or deceptions, most violent actors do the irrationally vile for little reason other than self service or with inhuman distance. Trying to argue against such irrationality with reason and rationality can be a fool’s errand. Decency and moral dignity are seldom in consideration for those who would murder on a large scale. This is the prevailing predicament for those who oppose war and injustice with principles, trying to find compassion and empathy within those who appear callous, indifferent, or even deranged.
Despite this, we often argue and appeal with reason to those who may not see the world as we do. They may understand it differently, seeking a particular utopia or a piece of the imperial pie for themselves. They do not care about how many “eggs are broken” to achieve such an omelette. So how do we find common ground?
It seems that it is only after the fact that many of the killers and their masters come to understand the demented business that they made possible; rarely do many protest and object early on. It was only decades afterwards when Robert McNamara exhibited a degree of remorse, or years later when veterans may experience moral injury that leads them to challenge their original mission. Smedley Butler’s words are often cited by anti-imperialists, though he is an example of the cynical veteran, waiting until after he served his warmasters heroically for decades to write a book about his deeds which made their imperialism possible at all. George W. Bush paints portraits of his victims while in retirement, seemingly delusional with his legacy.
Those labelled conscientious objectors or “draft dodgers” tend to be viewed as cowards, ridiculed because they would not join the brave (nearly always men) who march into the meat grinder of war. In 1918, Reverend John Kovalsky and three other men were attacked by a mob of around three hundred in the town of Christopher, Illinois. The mob violently tarred and feathered the four men, and the reverend was forced to kiss the American flag because of disloyal language. Despite being fined by law enforcement, a mob saw it fit to humiliate and punish the men for disloyalty. The four disloyal men needed to show fidelity to a government that was waging war for human rights and free expression; because the four challenged the war and government with words, both the law and a mob punished them.
“The country was in peril; he was jeopardising his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
Such acts of mob violence are often looked back on as moments of group insanity. Yet time and time again the world over we see such displays of unreason and violence tear away individual rights. The mob could be heard squealing “Do the right thing” during the COVID madness, attacking those who breached curfew, who remained unmasked, or who refused a vaccination. The term Mass Formation Psychosis began floating around the internet whenever such critical dissent was not censored. In time of war it is also apparent, even if the war is not widely supported or understood. There will be elements that lean into the legitimacy of power and authority, even if they claim to be anti-power and against authority. There is nothing rational about such mobbery; it is crude and obscene, but seemingly ‘normal’ people can fall into such a frenzy.
Those who oppose the wars with consistency may notice the tourists of the cause who pick and choose their moments, depending on who is waging the war and whether it’s politically expedient or profitable to be for or against. The hypocrisy is only obvious to the principled because inconsistency can’t be used against those who lack any. They are political animals and opportunists who come and go as they please and will betray anyone. During the Cultural Revolution in China, millions of idiotically ideological youths did the deadly bidding of cunning political purists who were able to whip them into a frenzy. These mobs of youth would tear powerful party officials and elites from their positions of rule without fear, throwing China into a sort of civil war as irrationality purged the party and nation under the guise of some form of socialist purification. Millions died. As confusing as events were, and as uncertain as the victims were in the lead up of any “guilt,” the killers were certain (even if they were uncertain) as to why they should be certain at all. They killed regardless.
Now we see those who were against one war support another while wanting to prevent further war elsewhere, but are eager to make war in another spot. Outside of those who have particular geopolitical or strategic reasoning are those who claim to be antiwar in times when it suits them to claim as such. In arguing for a military action, they do not have to convince the principally antiwar; those with such consistent views are only useful when it suits them. They only need to convince themselves, their allies, and those who have no principles but think they do. Those that have no principles will reveal the truth when irrationality emerges, when with the pressure of crisis they can help fill the mob. Most can sit with a straight face and claim that they would not have been in the tarring mob in the town of Christopher, Illinois or a murderous goon in the Red Guard, yet most people have no proof otherwise in their life.
Principles only matter when they require courage. The political animal seldom has any courage or dignity; it’s how they survive and thrive. Those who lack principles may not have the ambitions of the political class but they certainly will follow them. That is how we have moments in history like the Cultural Revolution, wars that fell out of favor once attrition emerged, and the policies and mob mentality reaction to the COVID virus that infected the minds of too many. It’s in such moments that reason and rational discourse give way to emotions fuelled by lies, half truths, and fears. If you add in the bigotry of collectivism, then you have a tendency to err in the direction of a conclusion that generally leads to mass murder or injustice. Once the victims are buried, the mob and political animals move on, wiping the injustice and irrationality from their minds. From there it’s “ancient history” to be forgotten, time to let “bygones be bygones,” and so on; the lack of reflection satisfies the return to reason inside ones mind.
Albert Camus once said that “the purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” That may be true for those writers who seek to challenge said civilization and by presenting it with a mirror to see its self upon. There are also those who write with such splendid prose only to satiate putrid intentions or to cover up the true nature of that which they justify. The delicate balance between admission and omission which is crucial in persuasion and propaganda dangle with the words of writers. To lie when appropriate and reveal when necessary is their job.It’s a rational choice to deceive, an awareness that a bad thing is being hidden.
When the Nazi military found the remains of murdered Polish prisoners in Katyn, evidence that the Soviet government had slaughtered thousands of unarmed men, it was revealed as a crime. The Nazi government invited neutral officials and Allied prisoners to investigate. The Nazi officials understood that it was wrong and immoral to slaughter unarmed people. The Soviets denied it as Nazi propaganda, also aware that what they had done is widely considered “wrong.” Yet, both Nazi and Soviet governments committed such atrocities en masse, only to see and reveal the evil in the other. The need to be seen as good is more important to those who are the epitome of evil, rather than to be not-evil. That is the contradiction of human beings: despite being capable of such abhorrent evil, beneath that violence lurks the warm heart of complicated creatures, many capable of love and selective kindness. Nearly all are aware of what to conceal or be justified with deceit, usually that which is understood to be evil.
Samantha Power is the author of A Problem From Hell: American and the Age of Genocide, where she argues for liberal interventionism and promotes the United States as a force for good, a shield to protect the innocent and to stop mass murder. Power recently drew criticism from Agnieszka Sykes, who works under Power in the United States Agency for International Development, and said, “You wrote a book on genocide and you’re still working for the administration: You should resign and speak out.” It’s the principled appealing to the political. It’s not that Samantha Power is necessarily a hypocrite that can be reasoned with; she is political. What principles she may have written about only exist as a means to an end, or as a validation of power and empire. For those like Power, enabling and downplaying the Israeli Defense Forces slaughter of Palestinian civilians is simply politics. A recently released White House transcript shows that President Joe Biden and his White House are aware of “thousands and thousands of innocent women and children [that have been killed],” yet his support and arms for Israel continues. It’s unlikely Power or the others will resign.
In financial markets it is understood that there is a madness in crowds or “rational irrationality.” An individual’s level of behavior tends to be perfectly reasonable, but in the case of markets and the marketplace, chaos can arise. Clearly, such a maniacal mentality exists outside of finances and with the added problem of the sociopathic and mercenary mindset. On a personal level, most understand that it is all absurd. But when expanded into the mob or nation there is a sense of helplessness even while participating in the absurdity. Is it absurd if it’s common and normalized? Maybe in the end the absurd are those who see it for what it is: insanity. Maybe the abnormal are those who remain principled and the unprincipled and irrational are normal. It seems no amount of reasonable explanation or set of principles matters to them;irrationality could end life on Earth with those doing it certain of their reasons for doing so until it’s all done.
Ukraine should step up its ground and artillery attacks on Russian border regions to demoralize the population, Mikhail Podoliak, President Vladimir Zelensky’s top adviser, has suggested.
In an interview with Ukrainian TV anchor Vladimir Golovanov on Monday, Podoliak stated that Kiev would like to see the turmoil spread into Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod Regions. “I would like the scale of this to be much greater… So that Russia could feel what a war… is,” he said.
According to the adviser, many Russians who live far from the front line should feel the brunt of the conflict. “Once they live in bomb shelters, constantly hear sirens and so on, they will [think] differently. Although I doubt that. The Russian world, it has certain peculiar features.”
He also voiced support for the incursions into Russian territory of the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) and Russian Freedom Legion, paramilitary units composed of Russian defectors and fugitive neo-Nazis that are collaborating with Kiev. Those units – which are designated as terrorist organizations by Moscow – should be supported and given all the necessary funding, Podoliak insisted.
The RDK and the Russian Freedom Region attempted to breach the Russian border earlier this month, but the attacks were repelled, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow. Russian officials estimated the losses sustained by the units at 1,500 casualties and dozens of armored vehicles.
President Vladimir Putin has denounced Russians collaborating with Ukraine as “traitors,” signaling that such individuals would be given the same treatment as any others who took up arms in the combat zone.
Ukraine has routinely launched artillery and drone strikes on Russian border regions, many of which target critical infrastructure and residential blocks, resulting in numerous civilian casualties.
In light of this, Putin has suggested that Russia could at some point create a “cordon sanitaire” on Kiev-controlled territory large enough to prevent Ukraine from launching attacks on Russia.
Around 9,000 children will be evacuated from Russia’s Belgorod Region on the border with Ukraine, following increased attempts by Kiev’s forces to strike targets behind the front line, local Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced on Tuesday.
The first group of 1,200 children will be transported from unsafe areas on March 22 and will be relocated deeper inside Russia to Penza, Tambov, and Kaluga, Gladkov said.
“We are already relocating [people from] a large number of villages. Now we are planning to evacuate about 9,000 children from Belgorod and the surrounding regions, Shebekinsky and Grayvoronsky districts,” he added.
The announcement came a day after President Vladimir Putin said Russia wants to create a buffer zone to protect border regions and civilians from long-range Ukrainian strikes and cross-border raids, which have intensified in recent months.
Civilian areas of Belgorod have been struck with increased frequency in recent weeks. Despite Russian air defenses shooting down large numbers of missiles, 16 people have been killed and 98 wounded over the last week, according to Gladkov.
Around 600 people were in temporary accommodation as of Monday after being evacuated from their homes, the governor added.
On Saturday, Gladkov ordered the closure of shopping malls and schools for several days because of the situation.
Three people, including a teenage boy, were seriously injured on Tuesday following Ukrainian shelling of Belgorod, while the previous day four members of one family died in a missile attack on the village of Nikolskoye, the governor said. The Russian Defense Ministry announced last week that the military had thwarted a Ukrainian incursion in Belgorod and Kursk regions, killing 30 fighters.
School holidays for children from border areas in Belgorod Region will begin on Wednesday, earlier than planned, while colleges and universities will move to online learning, Gladkov announced.
Prominent Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti has been attacked with clubs by Israeli prison guards and suffered bleeding in his eye, Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed reported the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs and Barghouti’s family saying.
Barghouti, 64, who is a member of the Central Committee of Fatah, is being subjected to isolation, torture and humiliation, said his wife, Fadwa Barghouti.
Fadwa explained that her husband’s life and the lives of other prominent prisoners are in great danger, adding that the Israeli prison administration “deliberately brutalises them in order to break their morale.”
“Marwan was subjected to continuous attacks, which we learned of on 6 and 12 March [through lawyers], which caused bleeding in one of his eyes, while the prison’s repressive forces constantly threatened him,” she added, explaining that he had been relocated five times during the last three months, and each time he was assaulted and his prison conditions were tightened.
In four prisons he was put in solitary confinement, she said, warning of a “real war” being waged against Palestinians prisoners and their leaders, which hurts their morale.
For its part, the Free Marwan Barghouti and All Palestinian Political Prisoners campaign said in a statement that lawyers who had visited Megiddo Prison learned of the brutal attack on Barghouti and other prominent prisoners by the prison’s special repression units, adding that many of them had been placed in solitary confinement.
The campaign said it had contacted a number of international figures, including diplomats, parliamentarians and human rights institutions, as well as leaders of the Fatah movement and the National and Islamic Action factions, calling on them to provide protection to the Palestinian people including political prisoners in Israeli jails.
Barghouti was arrested in 2002 and later sentenced to five life terms on charges of “killing and injuring Israelis.”
In parallel with the onslaught on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, Israel has increased raids and arrests in the occupied West Bank, arresting more than 7,000 people, alongside a campaign of harassment against prisoners in Israeli jails, resulting in the deaths of at least 13 prisoners since 7 October 2023.
By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | August 18, 2013
There is no way to say this truth nicely: Politicians lie. That includes Japanese, American, Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian politicians! Is there something more common sense than that? Yet, so many citizens around the world believe their own politicians or wistfully acknowledge lies but think it is part of the job needed to run things. They believe even when politicians contradict themselves blatantly. This phenomenon is rather remarkable. It is a dissonance and disconnect from reality that many seem oblivious to. It is very dangerous because it can lead to accepting rationales for going to war. These can be deadly wars that lead to millions of lives lost as happened in what was called World War 1 and WW2. Even when incredible and declassified evidence abound, politicians continue to lie and old mythologies refuse to die. Here are just a few of the countless lies told to us over the past few decades… continue
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