The Cradle | June 18, 2024 A senior doctor from Gaza was killed in November while under interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, Haaretz reported on 18 June. Dr Iyad Rantisi, 53, directed a women’s hospital that is part of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip. Rantisi was detained […]

Palestinian doctor tortured to death during Israeli interrogation

Switzerland’s direct democracy allows citizens to shape policies, as seen in the recent support for a renewable energy law.

The Swiss public gives the final nod to boosting renewable energy 

A orillas del río Madre de Dios, las balsas, como mosquitos, succionan el suelo día y noche en busca de oro. La minería ilegal avanza voraz sobre la selva amazónica en Perú, gran productor mundial del metal precioso. Mientras tanto, bosque adentro, o en lo que queda de él, crece el conflicto entre mineros que […]

La sed de oro en el mundo consume la Amazonía peruana

An Election is a device for Maximising conflict and Minimising democracy.

from thefreeonline on 20/ 6/2024 by George Monbiot, at Monbiot.com NEW- The Free is now on Telegram: HERE

Everything hangs on Elections but little changes.

For weeks or months, elections dominate national life.

Media reports and public conversations are monopolised by furious jostling and frantic speculation.

All else – policymaking, problem-solving, reason itself – grinds to a halt.

Unsurprisingly, when the frenzy is over, we discover we have solved almost none of our problems.

Venezuelan Citizens Assembly celebrates three years:..

An election is a device for maximising conflict and minimising democracy. Parties gain ground by sowing division and anger, often around trivial issues that play to their advantage.

At the same time, as the big players seek to appease commercial lobbies and the billionaire press, they converge disastrously on far more important issues, such as austerity, privatised public services, massive inequality of wealth and the unfolding genocide in Gaza. Many of those who seek election manipulate, distract and lie.

Communities are set against each other: see how the Tories appeal to their elderly base by treating young people as a problem to be solved, currently .through national service.

The parties reduce our complex choices to a brutal binary; sometimes, as in the 2019 election, to a three-word slogan (Get Brexit Done). Vast questions, such as the environmental crisis, the spiral of accumulation by the wealthy, the possibility of food system failure or the resurgent threat of nuclear war, remain unresolved and generally unmentioned.

When anarchists support the myth of one Ukrainian People, they are supporting this ethno-nationalist and fascistic project. ..

from thefreeonline on June 10, 2024 By Bill Beech at libcom org….. NEW- The Free is now on Telegram: HERE

“War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense”.

“The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties. The minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them really to be converting them”.

“Of course, the ideal of perfect loyalty, perfect uniformity is never really attained. […] (I)n general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war.” – Randolph S. Bourne, The State (1918)1

The split in the anarchist movement between antimilitarists and Natopolitan Anarchists2 has grown deeper since February 2022.

The Natopolitans continue to support the arming of the Ukrainian state, the escalation of hostilities, both in weapons and in scale, despite the numbers of dead Ukrainians, regardless of the threat of nuclear conflict, regardless of the reality of this war and its unending suffering meted out on the working class of Ukraine.

In doing so, they are waging war on anarchism, here, over there and everywhere.3

If only the Natopolitan Anarchists were as honest as Pyotr Kropotkin during WWI.

His position was that, of all the imperialisms, the German one was the most abominable, and that is why he sided with the imperial alliance to bring about its defeat.

The Natopolitan position is an ‘anarchism’ even more degenerate than Kropotkin’s because often they don’t accept the existence, and never the crucial role, of US Imperialism (and its EU client states) in provoking this war.

If they wanted to be truthful to Kropotkin’s position of lesser-evil-cheerleading, they would support the Russian state, since it is working to bring about the downfall of the most over-reaching and lethal empire in existence.4

That would mean they at least held some healthy antagonism towards their own ruling class.

Instead, one can’t escape the impression that Natopolitan Anarchists are nothing more than good liberals,5 believing that when Russia broke international law in its invasion of Ukraine, given no redress was available, they had to rush to the Global Policeman (the USA), just this once, in this most moral of wars, just until the Russian Hitler was beaten back.

To mask the contradiction between their supine liberal self and their anarchist self, they have spewed a number of myths since February 2022.

Wayne Price is a typical example of this breed of Natopolitan Anarchist, which is why it is useful to examine some of his statements published on the pages of Black Flag.

The People

Price ventriloquizes Malatesta (in his writings on Libyan and Cuban struggles for independence) to garner support for “the Ukrainian People” under attack from the Russian state:

The US financed FELLA movement male-bonds deluded nazis

What light do Malatesta’s views cast on the Ukrainian war? Certainly he would oppose an inter-imperialist war between Russia and the U.S.A. and its NATO allies—if it ever got to that—just as he denounced World War I. The war between the Russian state and the people of Ukraine is another matter. Russia is an imperialist aggressor. Ukraine is a weak, poor, and non-imperialist country.6

This phrase does not survive contact with reality. In reality, “the Ukrainian People” is a weapon of class war, a nationalist project of the Ukrainian state, which has been drawn in stark ethno-nationalist terms since 2014.

The Maidan coup ushered in a project of ethnic unmixing – to be part of the Ukrainian People, one could not hold multiple identities and legacies, be they Soviet, Russian etc.

To be part of the Ukrainian People also meant increasingly that one had to be anti-Russian, and the last people to fight the Russians, were the Banderite heroes of WWII, so the myth goes.

Ukrainians (and their supporters) should therefore ignore that the Banderites were also fascists who participated eagerly in the race-supremacist genocides of the Nazis.

As the war in the Donbass started and escalated, the Banderite legacy (in its soft and hard versions) was therefore equated with the project of Ukrainian self-determination.7

This state project of an ethnically pure Ukraine is being enforced internally and projected abroad, one reliant on ethnic unmixing and ethnic cleansing.

This is why the fully credentialed SS officer, Yaroslav Hunka (living out his days peacefully, aged 98) received a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament, in the presence of Zelensky on 22nd September 2023.8

This is why the Azov Battalion (an organisation proscribed as “neo-Nazi” by the US Congress and various EU states) were welcomed as “heroes” to the British Parliament in May 2024, where Boris Johnson posed for a picture with their Nazi flag.9

The point I am making here is not that all Ukrainians are Nazis, but that these Nazis currently shaping the Ukrainian national project are our Nazis.

There is perfect continuity with the post-WWII years during which the CIA and NATO worked to Nazify Ukraine.

Firstly, by shielding Bandera in Western Germany (until the KGB assassinated him) and stoking anti-Soviet armed resistance, then through another fascist, Mykola Lebed, held in the USA.

The CIA project was called AERODYNAMIC and was redesignated to QRPLUMB/QRDYNAMIC10 in 1970.

It ran until 1991, when Ukraine was officially approached by NATO for integration into the military alliance.11

For this project of building (unmixing) a pure Ukrainian People, one had to ignore that the anti-Russian President Poroshenko spoke Russian at home and that Zelensky had to learn Ukrainian to address the nation (this resulted in cringeworthy gaffes while he learned the language on the job).

The current supreme commander of Ukraine, Syrsky is an ethnic Russian, born in Russia, whose parents and brother live in Russia.

All three men have undergone ethnic unmixing in the service of the Ukrainian state.

Since 2019, Russian, Belarusian and Yiddish have been banned from public life.12 19 million books in Russian have been withdrawn from libraries13 – the aim is to destroy 100 million of them.14

It should be clear that there is no pure-blooded fascistic Ukrainian People, it is a state project to destroy a rich set of heterogeneous traditions and peoples.

When anarchists support the myth of one Ukrainian People, they are supporting this ethno-nationalist and fascistic project. They are weakening any local initiative which opposes it.

In NATO countries, they are weakening antimilitarist initiatives, strengthening the hold of the state on speaking the truth about the war, and assisting the state in the criminalisation of dissent.

The other sense of the phrase “Ukrainian People” is that of a unified population, without class or regional differences.

Even in 2022, this myth was obvious, but with the war in its third year, the fractures in Ukrainian society cannot be ignored.

An estimated 6.4 million Ukrainians have fled the country and an estimated 650,000 men of a fighting age are among them.15

The remaining men continue to dodge the draft in huge numbers. Hunted in the streets by state gangs, they cower indoors. Fleeing, they drown trying to swim across the Tisza River on their way to Romania.16

Draft-dodging through corruption was so widespread and such a well-known scandal, that the Ukrainian state was forced to sack all military recruitment chiefs in 2023.17

This exposes the class-struggle within the mythical unity of the Ukrainian People. Always it is the working class that gets sent to fight the war of the ruling class.

Therefore, the ruling class abides in Kyiv and abroad, remaining untouchable, while the middle-class buys its way out of conscription.

Listen to the words of the Ukrainian anarchist group ‘Assembly’ from Kharkov in August 2022:

(W)e should understand that the national unity of Ukrainians around Zelensky’s power rests only on fear of an external threat.18

And this is what they said in an interview in February 2024:

The Assembly is an online newsletter, and if we can help the deserters in any way, then only by giving them a political justification for their acts, so that they do not suffer from remorse, but are proud of their refusal to choose between serving either Vladolf Putler or François Zevalier, personifications of the darkest reaction that is only possible in today’s Europe, refusal to choose between the occupying colonial expedition and the defense of what has been grabbed by the Ukrainian ruling class since 1991.19

How hollow do the words of Wayne Price ring in contrast:

It is true that the Ukrainian people are not anarchists or socialists; they accept their state and capitalism. Does that mean that anarchists should punish them by refusing to defend them when attacked by a strong enemy which massacres their people and smashes their cities?20

Assembly’s position is anarchist, Price’s reeks of the full patronising and proselytizing zeal of liberal imperialism, which hides behind an endorsement of the myth of national self-determination. To perpetuate this myth, Price also has to maintain the myth of a people’s army.

The people’s army

Two days after the Russian invasion, the BBC treated us to the spectacle of Ukrainian women workshopping how to make molotov cocktails.21

This astroturfed photo-op seems to have been designed for those as gullible as Wayne Price. At the time, the Ukrainian army was the greatest NATO proxy ever to be assembled, trained and equipped. Its success in the field did not depend on guerilla warfare, as has become blindingly obvious in the months that followed.

Shortly after, we saw the emergence of Natopolitan Anarchism, another manifestation of NAFO.22

see alao Support the revolutionary media struggling in Russia April 2023

In capturing a large section of the Western anarchist movements and scenes, this was a victory for the militarist project.

A good example of this is the backslapping folkloric feelgood group ‘Good Night Imperial Pride’, which crowdfunds for snipers, drones etc. for so-called ‘anarchist fighters’ integrated into the Ukrainian Army.

GNIP is popular online, promoted by anarchist groups and even held a stall at the 2023 London Anarchist Bookfair.23

Only someone completely deranged by virtue signalling can believe that their crowd-funded donation to the “Ukrainian anarchist cause” will tip the scales, when all the state economies of NATO countries are sending money and materiel on a scale hitherto unseen.24

Those unlucky anarchists blindsided by the NAFO psyop have ended up dead in the meat-grinders of Bakhmut and Avdeevka, circles of hell forced upon the Ukrainian working class by the Ukrainian state.

For them, NAFO was the mainline to FAFO. They deserved better than elders like the Natopolitan Anarchists who misled them.

Radical critics accuse the US and other Western governments of seeking to use Kenyan soldiers to further “neo-colonial” and “imperialist” interests.

from thefreeonline on June 18 2024 info via Dan Cohen at Uncaptured.Media

Jimmy Chérizier, Barbeque, the leader of the ‘Living Together’ militia alliance

Who’s behind Haiti’s most powerful gang alliance?

Haiti has been undergoing a new crisis since 2018, including political assassinations and a gang turf war since 2023. On 1 March 2024, Haitian unelected prime minister Ariel Henry signed an agreement in Nairobi, Kenya attempting to allow the deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti.^[9]

WATCH: As the U.S. organizes the next invasion of Haiti, Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier and Toto Alexandre discuss the birth of the Viv Ansanm (Living Together) alliance and resistance to U.S. imperialism.

*Jimmy Chérizier, the leader of the “G9 Family and Allies” faction in Port-au-Prince, released the above video announcing his successful intention to prevent Ariel Henry from returning to Haiti with the Policing Operation.

Events Timeline

*On 1 March, when asked if it was safe for him to return to Haiti, Henry shrugged.^[10] Chérizier had the backing of other gangs as part of a coalition named “Viv Ansanm”, Haitian Creole for “living together”. Though that coalition was quick to dissolve, other gangs launched attacks, together with Chérizier’s G9 gang.^[11]

*On 2 and 3 March, armed gangs stormed the two largest prisons in Haiti, one in Croix des Bouquets, the other in Port-au-Prince.^[12]

*More than 4,700 inmates escaped.^[10] Police were reported to be undermanned and outgunned by the gangs, with only 9,000 operating in Haiti at the time of the fighting.^[13]

Jimmy Cherizier, alias Barbecue, who heads the gang coalitions opposing the US financed police invasion and the now ruling imposed “Transition Council”

Haitian police officers walk out of the international airport after a U.S. plane landed, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, April 23, 2024.

*The 400 Mawozo gang operates in the Croix-des-Bouquets area and has influence at its prison, according to Insight Crime.^[14]

*Chérizier, who took responsibility for the surge in violence, said his goal was to capture Haitian government officials, including the police chief.^[15] Over 12 people have been killed in the conflict.^[12] The UN estimated that 15,000 people fled the violence in Port-au-Prince.^[15]

*The Haitian government, under finance minister Michel Patrick Boisvert, declared a 72-hour state of emergency and a nighttime curfew in an attempt to curb the violence and chaos.^[16]