650,000 brave men have defied the Ukrainian police state and fierce media pressure to join the insane slaughter, fleeing the country, 0ften to where their families are waiting, in the EU
Some 74% of men and 65% of women said they would opt to hand over their passports to avoid a useless death in the demoralised Ukrainian army, in Facebook surveys
FILE PHOTO: Mariana Bezuglaya, extreme Right deputy chair of National Security, Defense and Intelligence
A majority of Ukrainians responding to a Facebook poll by a leading lawmaker have said they would be willing to renounce their citizenship in order to avoid being drafted into the military.
Nearly 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers now “dead or badly wounded”… Dec 2023
According to Russia 125,000 have been ‘lost’ just in the first part of this year year’s bungled Great Offensive (2023). Under Martial Law desperate police are raiding bars, clubs, saunas etc and chasing down any men they can find.
Close to the generals and ethnic armed groups who began a major offensive in October, Beijing brought both to the table. However, asa creation of colonial looting Myanmar is a mix of ethnic cultures, religions, and capitalist predators, fighting continues.
A Karenni Nationalities Defence Force soldier helps civilians evacuate amid the military bombing of Loikaw in November
Bangkok/Taipei – China has emerged as the dominant foreign power in terms of shaping possible outcomes in Myanmar’s spiralling political crisis as Beijing seeks to exert its influence over several armed groups who have staged the biggest challenge to the generals since they seized power in the February 2021 coup.
Beijing last week pushed the three powerful ethnic armies – the Arakan Army (AA), the Mandarin-speaking Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) – to agree to a truce after fighters working with anti-coup coalitions across Myanmar pushed Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s military out of swathes of the north, overran hundreds of military outposts and seized control of border crossings with China under Operation 1027.
Operation 1027Alliance of ethnic armed groups, AA, Tiang and MNDAA says it has taken a key border town and overrun dozens of military bases. December 2023
European nations join Myanmar genocide caseThe case at the UN’s top court accuses Yangon of committing genocide against people belonging to the Rohingya community …17 Nov 2023
All eyes are on the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, which said it took control of another key town days after the supposed ceasefire [AFP]
China’s ceasefire announcement followed talks in its southwestern city of Kunming between the State Administration Council (SAC), as Myanmar’s coup leaders call themselves, and the Three Brotherhood Alliance, the coalition of the AA, MNDAA and TNLA, which is driving the 1027 offensive.
Hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children and elderly, are held hostage in ‘Sde Teman’ military camp in inhumane conditions. Press TV – December 19, 2023 A Geneva-based rights group has called for an urgent international investigation into torture and murder of Palestinian abductees held in Israel’s “Guantanamo-like” jails. In a statement released on Monday, the […]
In a statement released on Monday, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said it had gathered testimonies confirming recent reports in Israeli media about the regime’s field execution of the Gaza abductees.
The Sde Teman Israeli army camp has been turned into “a new Guantanamo-like prison,” where detainees lose their lives after being subjected to extreme torture and mistreatment, it added.
The Israeli army uses open-air chicken coops to house the inmates and withhold food or drink for long periods of time.
The rights group also noted that the Palestinians held in Sde Teman are caged in inhumane conditions, blindfolded and subjected to harsh interrogations with their hands tied.
It further said that turning on lights at night, as well as barring the abductees from using phones and meeting lawyers and representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are among the torture tactics being used at the Israeli jail.
The testimonies affirm that multiple elderly abductees endured cruel beatings and humiliating treatment, Euro-Med said.
One of the released detainees, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he witnessed Israeli soldiers directly shooting and killing five abductees in separate incidents.
Earlier, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the deaths of six Palestinians in Israeli prisons since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing bloody war on Gaza.
Despite evidence of violence preceding the inmates’ death or medical neglect – their cause of death was not established, according to the report.
It added that Just 71 out of 500 Palestinians arrested during the Gaza war have been brought before Israeli courts, and that the remaining detainees have been moved to prisons run by the Israeli Prison Service or to detention facilities run by the regime’s so-called internal security service, Shin Bet.
Previously, the Euro-Med field teams documented the detention of more than 1,200 Palestinian civilians in random Israeli arrest campaigns across Gaza during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged territory.
The abductees were subjected to all forms of beatings and ill-treatment during their detention and purposefully left blindfolded, nearly nude, and kneeling on the ground upon their release.
Israel waged the devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the aggression against Gaza, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 19,453 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 52,286 others.
Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza, which is under “complete siege” by Israel.
The Houthis would only halt their attacks if Israel’s “crimes in Gaza stop and food, medicines and fuel are allowed to reach its besieged population”, al-Bukhaiti said.
He spoke after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a coalition on Monday to protect trade in the Red Sea after the attacks forced shipping lines to suspend operations.
The Iran-linked Houthis have waged attacks on more than a dozen commercial ships in an attempt to pressure Israel to end its bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
“These reckless Houthi attacks are a serious international problem and they demand a firm international response,” Austin said about the new 10-nation coalition. He said the force would operate “with the goal of ensuring freedom of navigation for all countries and bolstering regional security and prosperity”.
After the US announcement, Houthi Major General Yusuf al-Madani said in a statement: “Any escalation in Gaza is an escalation in the Red Sea … Any country or party that comes between us and Palestine, we will confront it.”
Spokesperson al-Bukhaiti told Al Jazeera on Monday that the group would confront any US-led coalition in the Red Sea.
Not an act of ‘defiance’
“You have the military establishment in Yemen, in the areas controlled by the Houthis, warning that they will continue to target ships cruising through the Bab el-Mandeb strait and the Red Sea and they insist they are doing this to protect people in Gaza, in particular,” Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra said, reporting from Doha on Tuesday.
“A top Houthi official, Mohammed Abdulsalam, who is also a senior negotiator, said the attacks by the Houthis are not an act of defiance but if this new coalition is adamant on launching attacks, then they will have to bear the consequences of what he described as a broader conflict in the region.
“But he said at the same time that the Houthis are still adamant on the need for the Israelis to stop the war if they want the Houthis to stop the attacks,” our correspondent added.
On Tuesday, Abdulsalam told Reuters news agency that the US-led naval patrol mission is “essentially unnecessary” – as all waters near Yemen are still safe, except for Israel-linked ships or vessels travelling to Israel.
The US and British navies said over the weekend that their destroyers had shot down a total of 15 drones in the waterway.
In the latest incident on Tuesday, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, said four small boats, each carrying four to five people, approached a vessel off the coast of Djibouti in a “suspicious” manoeuvre – but that no weapons were seen during the incident.
At least 12 shipping companies, including the Italian-Swiss giant Mediterranean Shipping Company, France’s CMA CGM and Denmark’s AP Moller-Maersk, have suspended transit through the Red Sea due to safety concerns. UK oil giant BP on Monday became the latest firm to announce it would avoid the waters.
About 12 percent of global trade passes through the Red Sea, which connects to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal.
Houthi attacks have effectively rerouted a significant portion of trade by forcing freight companies to sail around Africa, imposing higher costs and delays for energy, food and consumer goods deliveries.
Ahmed Helal, MENA director at The Global Counsel, told Al Jazeera the “cascading impact” of the crisis is on inflation. “Major central banks have been cutting interest rates to combat inflation and bring prices down for consumers. But this disruption in a major global trade artery affects regular goods and energy, both oil and natural gas,” he said.
He added that because of the Houthi attacks, and the ongoing disruption of natural gas supplies to Europe as a result of the Ukraine war, “European natural gas prices jump by 12 percent, UK natural gas prices jump by 10 percent, and the price of oil also jumped by 4 percent in the past 24 hours”.
This bombshell essay is part of Crimethinc’s coverage of Steal Something from Work Day 2023. See ‘Further Reading’ links below for much more info.
Welcome to Steal Something from Work Day coverage from 2023! Every year, we observe this day as an opportunity to reflect on the individualized forms of anti-capitalist resistance that millions upon millions of employees engage in on a daily basis, and to imagine forms of collective action that could start with take this .
Today, we’ll zoom in on a particular variant of workplace theft: the leak.
There are many things you can steal from work. You could steal money, time, goods, raw materials, access to specialized equipment. Another thing you could steal is information. For this year’s Steal Something from Work Day, let’s talk about the last of these.
In the information age, knowledge is power. The circulation of classified information is integral to the lattice of repressive institutions that maintain the prevailing order. Information is the blood in the bloodstream of the beast.
Controlling which information circulates and which does not has always been central to statecraft. But in the heyday of social media, this is arguably the most determinant aspect of rule itself, even more so than military force.
“In a digitally interconnected world, whoever has the most robust networks, the right relationship between visible and opaque channels, and the most persuasive narrative will triumph. Communication and coordination trump brute force when any clash can draw in a potentially infinite number of participants on either side.”
In a globalized economy in which work has penetrated into every corner of our lives, practically every worker is accustomed to inhabiting multiple identities and being subject to conflicting loyalties. The battle lines of social conflict now cut directly through the heart of every ordinary civilian. One weapon in these battles is the information leak.
Information leaks can serve a variety of agendas. On the one hand, they can destabilize established power.
For example, embassy cables published by Wikileaks played a role in catalyzing the revolution that brought down president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, sparking a global wave of uprisings that lasted from 2011 through 2014.
On the other hand, defenders of the prevailing order can use leaks to circulate cherry-picked information, as well. Intentionally or not, the advance leak of the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade arguably served to defuse resistance, giving the general public a chance to get used to the bad news before it was confirmed and ensuring that those who might otherwise have been shocked into action joined predictable liberal demonstrations.
Still, as a persistent strategy aimed at the reigning power structure, leaking information has considerable advantages.
The less that the various institutions of repression can trust each other and their own employees, the more difficult it becomes for them to respond rapidly and coordinate with each other.
We saw this in the administration of Donald Trump in 2017, when a series of leaks eroded trust within the regime. If information is the blood in the bloodstream of the security state, persistent leaks coagulate that blood.
Today, it is widely understood that our society is headed directly for economic and ecological disaster, but the authorities have yet to take meaningful steps to change course.
When millions are complicit in structures that they know to be destructive and doomed, this creates the conditions in which formerly complacent employees may choose to carry out individual acts of subversion from within the halls of power.
This is not the first time that such conditions have developed in the American workplace. At the end of the 1960s, the Vietnam War contributed to an erosion of faith in the United States government and associated corporations and industries.
In late 1969, with the assistance of his former RAND Corporation colleague Anthony Russo, Daniel Ellsberg secretly made photocopies of a number of classified documents that became known as the Pentagon Papers.
Ellsberg set out to reestablish contact with anarchist poet Gary Snyder, with whom he had previously debated US foreign policy, and put the Pentagon Papers into circulation.
Inspired by by Daniel Ellsberg’s action, former National Security Agency employee Perry Fellwock revealed the existence of the NSA and its worldwide covert surveillance network.
Peter Buxtun, an employee of the United States Public Health Service, revealed the existence of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in 1972.
Many more revelations followed, impacting the nuclear power and petroleum industries as well as various government agencies.
Three decades later, the Iraq War created a similar erosion of faith. When US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning discovered that she was, in her words, “actively involved in something that [she] was completely against,” she began bringing rewritable CDs to her job:
I would come in with music on a CD-RW, labelled with something like “Lady Gaga”… erase the music… then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing. […]
You had people working 14 hours a day… every single day… no weekends… no recreation… people stopped caring after three weeks.
Exemplifying the spirit of Steal Something from Work Day, Manning “listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ while exfiltratrating possibly the largest data spillage in Nth American history.”
On 12/13, an open meeting of the “Self-call for the suspension of payment and investigation of the debt” was held, convened by the member organizations of the space after the assumption of Javier Milei and the deployment of an adjustment plan on the popular sectors
Given the announcements of the new government, we call for a response in the broadest unity.
Milei’s mask is falling. The mega-adjustment and devaluation that he promised to the IMF, along with the commitment to pay the debt, are the only thing that remains of the campaign rhetoric. Not to mention “caste”.
With the first announcements, it has been clearly shown that it is the government of the dominant classes and their international bosses, without mediation. With Caputo they assume those directly responsible for the debt and looting of Argentina. They come for everything.
The crumbs with which it boasts of helping the recipients of the planned misery do not even come close to compensating for the incentivized hyperinflation and the announced adjustment.
It is a brutal attack against the working people, the territories, the bodies and all of nature, in order to unload the full weight of the crisis on them: immediate devaluation of 118%;
Drastic increase in transportation, water and energy; state layoffs and maximum delay in their income; the same in retirements and social benefits; closure or degradation of organizations and public policies for the defense of our Sovereignty, Rights and Social Justice; new awards for exporters and importers including a new nationalization of their doubtful debts; deepening of the dependent, extractivist and debtor model.
The vaunted Freedom will only exist for price-forming monopolies, banks and speculators.
They tell us that “there is no money,” but they intend to continue deriving every penny produced in the country, what was obtained from the looting of our natural assets and the privatization of state companies, to “honor” said scam.
Presents to be seized and searched.. and confiscated if they contain any of 1000’s of sanctioned goods
photo … Sean Gallup
Germany may confiscate gift parcels sent from Russia ahead of this year’s festive season, the country’s Federal Customs Service announced in statement on its website this week.
According to the statement, gift parcels are regulated by the same sanctions legislation as any imports, as they may contain sanctioned goods such as paper, pulp, precious stones and metals, cigarettes, chemical and plastic products, cosmetics, etc.
“There is no exception to the prohibitions covered by an Annex XXI to the Sanctions Regulation for gift consignments sent from a private individual in Russia to another private individual in the customs territory of the European Union,” the statement read, signaling that even such innocent items such as books, toys and perfume sent from Russia will likely not make it to their German recipients.
Gifts are not the first personal items belonging to Russians that have not been allowed in Germany. Previously, the country’s customs officials warned that any personal belongings of Russians falling under sanctions could be confiscated at the border, including smartphones, laptops, suitcases, portables, clothing and even toiletries.
Cars have also been subject to the embargo: there have been several incidents this year when German customs officers seized cars bearing a Russian license plate, which travelers brought across the German border.
EU parliament is urging member states to stop seizing private Russian cars because it ‘discredits’ bloc’s sanctions
Several other EU member states have also been confiscating Russians’ personal items at border crossings. Most began doing so after the European Commission issued a sanctions clarification in September that condoned such measures.
Last month, the European Parliament urged EU nations to stop the practice and called on the executive body to “review its interpretation of sanctions leading to the seizure and confiscation of items and vehicles for personal use only.” In a joint motion, lawmakers warned that “such over compliance discredits the goal and instrument of sanctions.” However, the recommendation was not legally binding and has not yet been taken up by the European Commission.
EU-sanctions-against-Russia
Moscow has repeatedly slammed the practice of taking away the belongings of ordinary Russians as illegal, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova calling it outright “racist.”
*************
The Top 10 most weird and unusual sanctions against Russia.
Here is a spoiler — even the Russian cats are under sanctions
Also banned
BCC states that “sanctions are penalties imposed by one country on another, to stop it acting aggressively or breaking international law”. There are plenty of types of international conduct that should be punished. The US Department of Treasury is currently running 37 sets of sanctions against countries as diverse as Russia, South Sudan, Cuba, China, North Korea, and against various causes, such as cyber-crime and narcotics.
The overall number of sanctions against Russia just reached 5,532 on March 8, 2022, by now maube 10,000. But some of them are not quite conventional, and some are outright funny.
Alas all have boomeranged against the West, with Russia predicted to have 3.5% growth in 2024, and Europe down in in the doldrums.
Here is the list of most unusual sanctions imposed by the West against Russia:
On March 8 2022 the company declared that it was immediately shutting down all 850 fast-food restaurants in the Russian Federation (some are actually still open for one reason, or another). A lot of parents across the world are wondering why such a blessing was bestowed onto the undeserving Russians. And by the way, its competitor Burger King decided to stay on.
2. Black caviar
Yes, Russians eat caviar every day, 3 times a day
No more Russian black caviar in Paris? Not exactly. The European Union banned its EXPORTS of black caviar TO Russia, the world’s largest exporter of the staff. This reminds me of the infamous speech by Jen Psaki, then the State Department spokesperson in 2014 when she said that the natural gas flows from Western Europe to … Russia.
3. Aircraft
He is not allowed to fly the planes to Europe
Over 500 of the aircraft used by Russian airlines are owned by the foreign (mostly Irish) lessors who now demanded the return of their property from the Russian users. But there is a slight problem — the European airspace is closed to the Russian-operated aircraft, so the planes may not physically fly “home”.
4. Cartoons
Disney will not show its new animation movie “Turning Red” in Russia. Wow, that will definitely show Vladimir Putin and his 7-year-old supporters who is the boss here! Poor kids will have to learn about the US from the cartoon movie “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America”. He-he…
They will do Mother Russia next
5. Classical music concerts
The news article heading stated: The Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra has removed Tchaikovsky from its programme of its upcoming concert ‘in light of the recent Russian invasion’ . Surely, this is because the famous Russian composer (who died in 1893) missed his chance 129 years ago to condemn Putin’s invasion in Ukraine. Should not the same logic apply to ALL Russian writers, painters and composer without exceptions?
6. Cats
The International Cat Federation banned Russian cats from participation in its competitions. I am not sure what to say here. Perhaps, there are some military feline brigades of fighting cats that represent tangible threat to the world but… if I suggest it here, I may end up in a psychiatric ward.
Oops… they exist
7. The US sparkling wine, cheap booze and… American vodka
Wow! The country, which is one of the largest consumer of the elite French champagne is definitely going to suffer from not having the American sludge. By the way, MD 20/20 is also banned.
Brings back some bad memories…
American vodka? In the world’s largest producer of the quality vodka?
8. The US chewing tobacco, snuff and tobacco refuse
Did someone at the US Department of Treasury mistook Russia for West Virginia? I am yet to find a tobacco chewing Russian…
Misfired sanctions
9. Saddles
I am not kidding! It is listed under the number 8714100010 of the US department of Commerce document 15 CFR Parts 738 and 746.
10. Grand concert pianos
I think I kinda understand this one. Every educated person in the world surely knows that those Russkies use those pianos only to play military marches. So, every Russian military unit is always accompanied by a crawler-based concert piano.
Nothing has changed in 70 years
Well, I decided to propose a few of my own sanctions in order to really weaken Vladimir Putin and his cronies:
· Let’s abolish Mendeleev’s periodic table of chemical elements. His invention must be a devious device to bring the West to its knees.
· Also the use of Pavlov’s conditional reflexes theory should no longer be used as Mr. Pavlov is not a known pacifist.
· And let’s also abandon all those 100 million AK-47s made in the last 74 years. The devilish toy of war was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov who is so evil that even actually met Vladimir Putin once.
Well, should we then keep Maria Sharapova with her balls that don’t bounce?
Do those tennis balls bounce?
By the way, the very first attempt of economic sanctions was undertaken by the League of Nations which imposed the ban on coal and oil imports by the Mussolini regime. It was a major failure since Italy simply left the League of Nation and signed direct bilateral agreements with England and France.
The Free 