“Empires don’t just fall like toppled trees. Instead, they weaken slowly as a succession of crises drain their strength and confidence until they suddenly begin to disintegrate” – historian Alfred W. McCoy.

Israel’s war on Gaza is a war on children, a war on their childhood and a war on their future. Children are dying at an alarming rate from malnutrition and dehydration and doctors are no longer seeing normal-sized babies.

On the first Friday in Ramadan this year 36 members of the Tabatbi family were killed by an Israeli air strike that bombed a 4-story building in the al Nusairat refugee camp, in central Gaza. Most of the killed were women and children. Just another terrible statistic of murder by Israel with America bombs, an entire family slaughtered and family history, memories and life extinguished, just like that.

IN 2016, AS THE AMERICAN MEDIA WAS PREPARING TO CELEBRATE "THE FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES", I THINK CNN INVITED JOURNALISTS AROUND THE WORLD, INCLUDING AUSTRALIA, TO WITNESS THE OCCASION AT "ELECTION PARTIES", WITH STREAMERS AND LOLLIES...

THE ELECTION DID NOT GO AS PLANNED, AND TRUMP WAS ELECTED....

THE AMERICAN MEDIA AND THEIR AFFILIATED PEN-PUSHERS AROUND THE WORLD ARE PISSING IN THEIR PANTS BECAUSE "PUTIN IS BACK" AS HE NEVER LEFT, EXCEPT FOR A FEW YEARS WHEN MEDVEDEV WAS "PRESIDENT", WHILE PUTIN WAS PULLING THE STRINGS, AS PRIME MINISTER.

AS UKRAINE IS BEING "CUT IN HALF" (OR THIRDS), AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN 1991, DUE TO ETHNIC COMPOSITION, AS THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY IS GOING OKAY, AS EUROPE IS TANKING IN ITS OWN BRAND OF FASCISM, THE WESTERN MEDIA IS GOING CRAZY AT THE PROSPECT OF THE DONALD COMING BACK AS CEO OF THE EMPIRE....

Putin may be the biggest dupe of his fake election landslide

With official results showing he won nine out of 10 votes, has the Russian autocrat overplayed his hand?

BY EVA HARTOG

“The most important outcome of any Russian election is legitimacy,” Vladimir Putin told Russia’s top election officials when they gathered at his residence outside Moscow in November. “That is the foundation of political stability.”

On Sunday, after three days of voting, those same officials declared a landslide victory for the president.

Why Dutton is going nuclear
The opposition leader thinks he can sell nuclear power to the public. The energy industry remains unconvinced by the business case.

BY Jennifer Hewett

Peter Dutton believes he has found a politically saleable energy formula. It includes the now familiar condemnation of Labor’s “reckless” policy and warnings of catastrophic consequences in making power “exorbitantly expensive and the grid unreliable”. The shiny new element is the Coalition’s commitment to establishing nuclear power.

https://www.afr.com/business-summit/why-dutton-is-going-nuclear-20240312-p5fbs1

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that by criticizing democratic processes in other states, all while using their own administrative resources to suppress one of American presidential candidates, Washington has become a laughing stock of the rest of the world.

Speaking to the journalists at his campaign headquarters in Moscow on early Monday morning, after the preliminary results indicated his victory with over 87% of the vote in the country’s presidential elections, the Russian leader said that the "whole world is laughing at what is happening” in the US.

“We are behaving with more restraint than their opponents in other countries, but this is just a catastrophe, not a democracy – that’s what it is,” Putin said.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he will propose a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine during the Summer Olympic Games, set to take place in Paris between July 26 and August 11.

In an interview with Ukrainian media on Saturday, Macron was asked whether France, as the host of the games this year, will follow tradition and seek “a ceasefire during the Olympics.” The journalist was apparently referring to the Olympic Truce, a period of conflict cessation which historically began seven days before the games and ended seven days after so that the athletes could safely travel to and from the Olympics. 

“It will be requested,” the French leader responded.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said that interest accrued from Russian assets frozen in the EU will be used to purchase weapons for Ukraine.

Soon after Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine in February 2022, Western countries froze approximately $300 billion of funds belonging to the Russian Central Bank. Of that sum, the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear holds around €191 billion ($205 billion), which has accrued nearly €4.4 billion in interest over the past year.

Speaking at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin on Friday, Chancellor Scholz said: “We will use windfall profits from Russian assets frozen in Europe to financially support the purchase of weapons for Ukraine.”

Unpredictability has become a feature of life in Russia. 

But that does not apply to elections. 

When Russian state TV flashed initial results showing that Vladimir Putin had won re-election with nearly 88% of the vote, this official landslide came as no surprise. 

James Eastwood and his union colleagues got to their office one Tuesday afternoon to find that someone had broken in. The intruder hadn’t taken personal valuables or expensive equipment: all they had done was pull down the pro-Palestine posters in the window.

The break-in didn’t come as a huge shock to Eastwood, co-chair of the University and College Union (UCU) branch at Queen Mary University in east London. 

By Anita Mureithi
Open Democracy

The Israel Files is a new MintPress series exploring and highlighting the many revelations about the Israeli occupation of Palestine that WikiLeaks documents disclosed. It hopes to shed light on many of the most important and underreported revelations the publishing group exposed.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in ScheerPost as a reprint from MintPress News on September 29, 2022. We are reposting it now because of its relevance. 

     By Alan MacLeod / MintPress News

One of the most dangerous things that a government can do is present a glossy picture of the economy at a time when families and small businesses are suffering. Governments are always optimistic, but sending euphoric messages tends to backfire, especially when the situation for the middle class is complicated.

Daniel Lacalle

In the United States, the Biden administration’s message of “the strongest economy in decades” is not just an exaggeration; it may anger voters who suffer the burden of negative real wage growth, accumulated inflation, and higher taxes.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE ARGUED THAT PUTIN SHOULD NOT HAVE “INVADED” UKRAINE OUT OF HIS OWN FREE WILL. HE HAD A CHOICE NOT TO. OTHERS, MUCH CLEVERER THAN GUS, SUCH AS PROFESSOR JOHN MEARSHEIMER SAY THAT PUTIN “DID NOT HAVE ANY CHOICE”… 

After escaping an abusive partner more than a decade ago, Adriana Carrington felt life was just getting back on track.

She had worked through years of therapy, finally got a mortgage for a new home, and started her own business.

But she says the tax office has now derailed her life by hitting her with an alleged tax debt dating back to the 2008-09 financial year — a debt she never knew existed.

We have previously discussed the unrelenting attacks by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his allies on free speech. There has been a steady criminalization of speech, including even jokes and religious speech, in Canada.