The depressing, crushing spectacle of extreme violence and mayhem unleashed across Israel and Palestine over recent days is a reminder of the depths to which humanity can sink. 

To see complex historical, cultural and geopolitical questions – let alone humanity and decency – reduced to a ceaseless cycle of hatred, death and destruction is hard to stomach. We gaze at our TV screens aghast, we hear the threats, counter-threats, and the endless justifications and commentary. Meanwhile, the bloodletting goes on – and on. Western politicians, weighed down with simple binaries, take sides and in so doing obliterate any sense of context or complexity that might help us understand how this mess occurred in the first place.

 

Months after leaving the White House, former President Donald Trump allegedly discussed potentially sensitive information about U.S. nuclear submarines with a member of his Mar-a-Lago Club -- an Australian billionaire who then allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Police use teargas on banned pro-Palestinian rally in Paris as Macron calls for unity

French police used teargas and water cannon to break up a banned rally in support of the Palestinian people in Paris on Thursday night, as President Emmanuel Macron urged the French to remain united amid fears a spillover of the Israel-Hamas conflict in France, home to Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities.

"Let us not, through illusion or calculation, add national divisions to international divisions, and let us not give in to any form of hatred", said Macron, adding that the number of French people killed in the Hamas incursion in Israel had risen to 13.

Seventeen French nationals, including four children, have been reported missing since the attack.

Israel’s siege of Gaza will not be lifted unless Hamas releases all the hostages it has captured, Energy Minister Israel Katz announced on Thursday. His statement came after Israeli authorities cut off water, fuel and electricity to the Palestinian enclave following a surprise attack by Hamas militants on Saturday.

“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water pump will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” Katz wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

US national debt surged by more than $500 billion in just 20 days to reach $33.5 trillion, according to data provided by the Treasury Department last week.

On September 18, the Treasury reported that the amount of money borrowed by the federal government to cover operating expenses stood at $33.04 trillion. It took Washington three months to drive it from $32 trillion to the current level.

The debt ceiling, which was legally set at $31.4 trillion, was surpassed in January 2023.

The total output of the US economy was only $25.46 trillion, meaning that the economy would have to grow by 33.5% to cover the national debt.

The White House has been pressing Congress to lift the limit. On June 3, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan debt bill that allowed the limit to be lifted until January 2025, thus averting an economically disastrous default.

I visited Julian the other day at Belmarsh Prison for the second time. Britain’s Guantanamo. He spends 23 hours every day, for 3½ years in solitary confinement. This is an attempt not to break him but to kill him.

 

Julian Assange could be dying: Yanis Varoufakis     By Double Down News

 

It’s slow murder.

Of a man who’s not been convicted.

Has not been charged of anything except journalism.

I find it astonishing that there were people on the left who turned against Julian.

Newspapers like The Guardian who played a role in his incarceration and vilification.

Julian is holding on. Julian is not well.

The Wall Street Journal Blames Iran For Helping to Plot Tribe of Nova Massacre When This is Uncorroborated

During the late 1800s, the Hearst yellow press ran stories falsely accusing Spain of sinking the U.S.S. Maine in order to help mobilize public opinion in support of the Spanish-American War that resulted in the U.S. colonization of Cuba and the Philippines.

 

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

 

In the 100+ years since, the same formula has been followed time and again. The latest target appears to be Iran, whose Islamist government neoconservatives in Washington and Tel Aviv have long dreamed of overthrowing.

Russia sees absolutely no sense in the EU’s current policy of forgoing Russian energy supplies, particularly gas, President Vladimir Putin told the Russian Energy Week forum on Wednesday. He added that “the modern political system in [the West] obviously sometimes brings not the smartest people to the top.”

Speaking about the issue of Russian gas exports to Europe, he pointed to what he called a lack of common sense in some European capitals.

“There is no sensible explanation to why some European economies, including Germany's, should behave like this,” the president said, referring to the situation in the European energy market. He called it “surprising” that European nations did not demand that Kiev reopen one of the Russian gas pipelines going through Ukraine after it was shut down.

Had I been Palestinian born,

Would I hate god chosen people

Would my colonial blood ignore

Flowing through my black veins

From ancient rape and stolen generation

Born Ukrainian of Russian parents

What to do with the Kiev fascist nation

Should an Irishman love mother England 

American Indians running gambling dens

Defeated in the prairies by dollar passion

Confused by constant oppression

And pained by a tarnished tradition

Kept cattle-like in Gaza — a prison??????

 

Submit, says the empire

Love, the missionary inspires a lie

 

Die, tells the last horror of hope

 

    Robert Urbanoski - 11 October 2023

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

 

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced on Wednesday a new $200 million security assistance package for Ukraine that includes munitions for a new air defense system that will soon be delivered to Ukraine, among other weapons.

"I am proud that the United States has just announced its latest security assistance package for Ukraine, valued at $200 million," Austin told reporters ahead of a Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Brussels.

The Indian reaction to the massive eruption of violence between Hamas and Israel on Saturday belies ground realities and ignores the geopolitical environment in that region and globally in which this cataclysmic event merits careful appraisal. It will prove to be unsustainable and can damage the country’s interests and standing globally. 

 

By M.K. Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline

 

10 Problems With India’s Stance on Gaza

 

“We are fighting human animals and are acting accordingly.” – Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

On October 7, the special day being Simchat Torah, the vaunted security barriers protecting the State of Israel from those troublesome, sovereignty yearning Palestinians were spectacularly breached. From sea, air and land, Hamas executed a daring operation that saw, within hours, attacks being mounted within Israel proper. Hundreds of Israelis were killed. Dozens were taken hostage, some even transferred back to Gaza. In retaliation, the Israeli Defence Forces have killed hundreds of Palestinians in kind, huddled in the incarcerated, dense confines of Gaza itself, with a promise to do more.

 

Russia reiterates warning over black market Ukrainian weapons

The Foreign Ministry in Moscow has compiled a list of briefings in which it raised the alarm about unchecked weapons deliveries to Kiev

 

The unchecked delivery of Western weapons to Ukraine has resulted in a large amount of these arms ending up in the hands of organized criminal groups and extremists around the world, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has again claimed. 

On Tuesday, the diplomat published a compilation of excerpts from briefings over the past 18 months in which Moscow consistently raised concerns and provided evidence testifying to the unchecked spread of weapons supplied to Kiev. 

In a lead article published on the front page of The Saturday Paper on the 30th of September Rick Morton discussed the people who were planning to vote against the Voice. He remarked that focus groups conducted late last year revealed what he called ‘a shocking hurdle’ blocking the path of the yes vote. Almost a third ‘of all participants believed First Nations people had been treated fairly. Not just now, but since invasion.’

 

Will a “shocking hurdle” defeat the Yes vote?

 

By Henry Reynolds

 

Should Academic History Survive?

State of the Union: True and good historical research will survive outside the corrupt ivory towers—as has been the historic norm

Can Academic History survive, at least in its current form? Or should it?

 

BY Sumantra Maitra

 

If you ask Joel Kotkin, the answer is a cautious maybe. Kotkin writes in an interesting essay, that: