Severodonetsk is perhaps not as well known as other Donbass cities such as Mariupol, Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), Donetsk, or Lugansk. However, the battles waged there in the spring of last year were significant for both Russia and Ukraine.
For over eight years, this industrial hub with a population of around 100,000 – in the western part of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) – was a stronghold of Kiev’s military. This happened despite the feelings of its residents – in fact, back in 2014, it was in Severodonetsk and nearby Lisichansk that the Lugansk militia was formed under the leadership of field commanders Pavel Dremov and Aleksey Mozgovoy.
At that time, local forces could not retain control of the city, whose residents voted for independence from Ukraine in a 2014 referendum. On July 22, that year, Kiev’s forces captured Severodonetsk, and for almost eight years it was under Ukrainian control. But on June 25, 2022, the situation changed.
This time, President Vladimir Zelensky’s troops were forced to beat a hasty retreat while Russian soldiers and the People’s Militia of the LPR took advantage. A week later, LPR authorities announced the complete liberation of the republic.
However, for Severodonetsk, that wasn’t the end of the story. Over the past ten months, aided by Russia’s central and regional authorities, the city has been recovering from the scars left by fierce battles.
Although Severodonetsk was spared from battles as bloody as the ones that shook the likes of Mariupol, destruction is visible throughout the city. The Azot chemical plant – often compared to Mariupol’s Azovstal because Ukrainian servicemen and foreign mercenaries similarly went into hiding there – was practically unharmed.
Azot did not suffer the same fate as Azovstal because to avoid being surrounded by Russian troops, Ukrainian forces were forced to retreat. On their way out, they intentionally left the city in ruins. Locals told me how a Ukrainian tank stood at an intersection and fired in all directions at the surrounding houses.
Whenever possible, Ukrainians use a scorched-earth policy, destroying towns and villages during their retreat. As a result, the economy and infrastructure are completely destroyed and restoration requires huge investment.
In addition to the plant and residential areas, Ukrainian troops also used social facilities, including educational institutions, as places of deployment.
One of them was School No.4, located in the city’s 79th Microdistrict. The presence of Ukrainian troops was evident from the improvised pillboxes in the basements, reinforced with sandbags.
The manic Western warmongering instinct is still viral and a potentially catastrophic danger.
In line with its fateful imperial implosion, the United States-led military machine known as NATO is desperately cranking up on all cylinders – in order to incite war tensions in both of the world’s hemispheres.
The global picture is at once condemnable and outrageous, and yet consumers of Western corporate media are numbed with lies, sophistry, distractions and blandishments.
In the coming weeks and months, the Cold War-era North Atlantic Treaty Organization is conducting its biggest-ever war maneuvers not only in its usual transatlantic domain but also in the Asia-Pacific.
The war maneuvers in Europe are reportedly the biggest ever since NATO was formed in 1949 following the defeat of Nazi Germany. So too are the war drills in Asia-Pacific. Together, they confirm that China is in NATO’s cross-hairs along with Russia.
But this provocative maneuvering – let’s just call it what is: aggression – is somehow normalized by Western corporate media.
At a time too when the Western public is being brutally crushed by dictatorial economic austerity, as our interview discusses this week.
Indeed, Western news media have become an utter embarrassment and affront to ordinary public intelligence and decency. Self-proclaimed bastions of journalism and public information, such as the New York Times and the BBC, are masters in the use of syrupy syntax to cover up the U.S.-led global war mobilization as “defensive exercises” when in reality it should be plain for most people to see that the nefarious purpose is to inflame tensions and assault global peace and security.
It is criminally reckless for Washington and its allies to militarize the world’s hemispheres simultaneously at a time of already fraught tensions with nuclear powers Russia and China.
And, it should be reiterated, those relations have been made fraught by relentless demonization of Russia and China as aggressive, expansionist powers when in reality it is the U.S.-led Western imperialist axis that is guilty of projecting its own depredations.
Take the Genocidal toys from the Corrupt Political Boys!
Russia sought a political security arrangement before the conflict erupted in Ukraine last year. Moscow was ignored by the West. China has repeatedly advocated for an end to Cold War mentality and for multipolar dialogue and cooperation. Beijing is wantonly disparaged and caricatured by Washington and Europe as “autocratic” and a “security threat”.
The Americans and their vassals use narcissistic self-regarding rhetoric about rules-based order and world democracy while in practice they exploit every opportunity to ratchet up conflict. That’s because militarism, war, conflict, division and tensions – death and destruction – are the lifeblood of American-led capitalism.
NATO’s so-called Defender war drills start this month in Europe and will cascade into multiple other large-scale maneuvers bearing similarly corny names such as Noble Jump and Dynamic Guard (George Orwell eat your heart out!).
It was the BALTOPS war games last June that provided the cover for the eventual blowing up of the Russian Nord Stream gas pipelines in September by U.S. navy divers, under the personal orders of President Joe Biden, according to Seymour Hersh.
This year sees the biggest deployment of United States troops and aircraft to the European continent since 1949. The New York Times hails the “U.S. is back at the heart of European defense”. The sheer idiocy and gullibility of the New York Times and other Western media are staggering.
The forthcoming NATO operations will stretch from Iceland in the North Sea to Germany and the Baltic Sea, all the way down to Romania and the Black Sea. The massive mobilization involves all members of the 30-nation NATO bloc plus partner countries.
The purpose is declared by military commanders to be “offensive simulation” and forming a “war-fighting alliance”. And yet the Western media keep telling us it’s all about “defenses”. Such media are thus complicit in normalizing aggression.
Center for Strategic and International Studies Center for a New American Security Hudson Institute Atlantic Council International Institute for Strategic Studies Australian Strategic Policy Institute Australian Strategic Policy Institute Note: ASPI has been one of the primary purveyors of the “Uyghur genocide” narrative From their 2021-2022 annual report $186,800: Thales Australia (aerospace and defense corporation) $100,181: Boeing Australia […]
If only George Orwell were alive today! He would love it – Orwell, who wrote: “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” George Orwell tried to show us the danger of accepting sloppy, dishonest language, and how this erodes democracy. Already we have the mantra on Ukraine and Taiwan, spreading one of Orwell’s favourites […]
The United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand had their hottest years on record in 2o22
Pakistan.. and around the planet, unprecedented Rain Bombs
Record levels of greenhouse gases have caused “planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere”, a UN agency says in a report that shows the past eight years were the hottest ever recorded on Earth.
Sea level rises double, and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit a record, World Meteorological Organization warns.
The melting of glaciers and sea level rises are on track to continue for thousands of years, the World Meteorological Organization warns in a report released on April 21, 2023 [File: Pernille Amdahl/Nansen Legacy]
Global sea levels are rising at more than double the pace they did in the first decade of measurements from 1993 to 2002 and touched a new record high last year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Friday in its State of Global Climate 2022 report.
Extreme glacier melt and record ocean heat levels, which cause water to expand, contributed to an average rise in sea levels of 4.62mm a year from 2013 to 2022, the organisation said in a report detailing the havoc wrought by climate change.
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“Melting of glaciers and sea level rise – which again reached record levels in 2022 – will continue to up to thousands of years,” the report said. “Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record and the melting of some European glaciers was, literally, off the charts.”
Killer floods, droughts and heat waves occurred around the world, costing many billions of dollars. The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane in the air reached the highest amounts recorded in modern times.
“This report shows that, once again, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to reach record levels – contributing to warming of the land and ocean, melting of ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, and warming and acidifying of oceans,” WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas wrote in the report’s foreword.
Overall, the WMO said, 2022 ranked as the fifth or sixth warmest year on record with the mean global temperature 1.15 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average despite the cooling impact of a three-year La Niña climate event in the Pacific Ocean.
Climate scientists have warned that the world could breach a new average temperature record in 2023 or 2024, fuelled by climate change and the anticipated return of warming El Niño conditions.
Record-breaking
The past eight years are the hottest on record globally, the report said.
The United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand had their hottest years on record.
“In 2022, continuous drought in East Africa, record-breaking rainfall in Pakistan, and record-breaking heat waves in China and Europe affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damage,” Taalas wrote.
China’s heatwave was its longest and most extensive on record with its summer not just the hottest but also smashing the old record by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit), the 55-page report said.
Africa’s drought displaced more than 1.7 million people in Somalia and Ethiopia while Pakistan’s devastating flooding, which put one-third of the nation under water at one point, displaced about 8 million people, it said.
Fossil Fuels Did This: Floods… We believe that the fossil fuel industry is responsible for the worsening climate impacts you see in the news. Today, we discuss the devastating power of water: floods
In a message ahead of Earth Day on Saturday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that “biodiversity is collapsing as one million species teeter on the brink of extinction”. He called on the world to end its “relentless and senseless wars on nature”.
“We have the tools, the knowledge and the solutions” to address climate change, Guterres said.
Breaking news: It was revealed this week that 350.org was targeted by a private security company during the Standing Rock resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016.
The Climate Justice Coalition fights on many fronts for climate justice, and a rapid and just transition to a more socially owned, renewable energy-powered economy that provides clean, safe and affordable energy for all.
These past weeks, Malawians, Mozambicans and Madagascans paid the price – as did many other frontline communities around the world. The science is clear: the solutions for stopping global heating are available and viable, and we need bold action now.
#StopCopCity is a grassroots movement that has arisen from many years of Black-led organizing in Atlanta, Georgia to oppose a plan to build a $90 million police and military training site in Weelaunee Forest – the largest urban forest in the United States. 350.org gathered a delegation of climate activists to visit the on-the-ground organizers in Atlanta to learn about their work.
The company achieved a record-breaking annual revenue of $74.9 billion. Environmentalists accuse Equinor of profiting from the energy crisis and call for a higher tax on windfall profits in the sector.
Twelve vanloads of riot police, a crane and a digger destroy dozens of squatted garden plots for a parking lot, with 3 arrests and numerous bruised people after 4 hours of resistance on top of a crane and up in the trees on the site
Three activists have been arrested after an epic day of defense of the space that, for nearly three years, hosted the Horta Alliberada de Sant Cugat del Vallès.
Cooperative journalism for social transformation and self management
A hectare of land freed by the neighborhood since June 2020 and which had become a social space, a source of food and meeting place for more than sixty families, many of which “are in a situation of great economic difficulty and share a house between several families, so they spent many hours of the day there, and they fed themselves with what they took from the harvest,” explains Cecília, one of the members of the Horta assembly.
— Sindicat de Llogateres de Sant Cugat (@LlogaterStCugat) April 20, 2023
Several activists have suffered injuries and bruises as a result of the viiolence of ARRO agents
Activists, residents and gardeners have organized themselves and planted themselves in front of the gates of the site since the early hours of the morning, in order to prevent the Mossos d’Esquadra from entering.
It has been a very tense day, and the defense has lasted for hours. Several activists have suffered injuries and bruises as a result of the beatings forcefully perpetrated by the officers of the ARRO Metropolitana Nord of the Mossos d’Esquadra.
Other activists have climbed the trees on the agricultural land, with the aim of delaying the eviction as much as possible and forcing the police withdrawal.
A young activist climbed for several hours on the articulated arm of the backhoe digger, just as the operator who commanded it began to destroy the first structures and plantations.
The head of the Mossos d’Esquadra of the Sant Cugat del Vallès police station, seeing that the police operation was getting complicated, asked for the presence of a team from the Fire Brigade of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
The firefighters, however, claiming “conscientious objection” h refused to carry out the orders of the Riot Police and, theywere forced to maneuver the crane truck themselves to bring down the activists, who have been arrested and transferred to police departments.
Since six in the afternoon, a rally has been called at the gates of the police station, from where the three arrested activists were funally released after the declaration process, under the charges of disobedience, resistance and in one of the cases attack on authority.
Avui ens hem defensat amb dignitat. La violència de les forces repressores ha estat brutal i desmesurada, com sempre
— Sindicat de Llogateres de Sant Cugat (@LlogaterStCugat) April 20, 2023
The people gathered outside made peaceful resistance in front of the Firefighters’ truck, getting them to opt for “conscientious objection”
Just today in Sant Cugat del Vallès, before the events of the vegetable garden, La Palmira, an occupied house and social center at Passeig de Rubí, 34, in Valldoreix, has been evicted, which had been facing an open court date since last Monday . Seeing that this first eviction was being carried out with a large police presence, the activists of the vegetable garden have called to gather in the compound, anticipating that the Mossos would go there right after.
Destruction of a “living space”
“A lot, a lot of sadness, and we don’t even have words to say anymore,” comments Juli, one of the members of the space, excitedly. The Horta Alliberada de Sant Cugat has been for three and a half years a multicultural and multigenerational space of nature, health, network, sovereignty and self-management.
— Sindicat de Llogateres de Sant Cugat (@LlogaterStCugat) April 20, 2023
It has hosted celebrations, birthday parties, cultural talks and leisure activities, among many other events. “Many of us come from other countries, and being here in the fields reminded us of our lands and what we left there,” he laments.
It should be noted that two men have been living precariously on the site in a self-built cabin for more than a year, and that they have also been evicted from the space without having any alternative housing
Property of InmoCaixa (CaixaBank), this one-hectare property, before the neighbors moved in, had been abandoned for more than twenty years, disused and in very poor condition.
It is located next to a plant of dangerous chemical products of the company Lubrizol, which currently “does not yet meet the requirements for the reduction of dangerous toxins that they committed to, nor has anything been signed”, reported the councilor of the CUP Marco Simarro, and that “therefore, it is still a non-developable space, nothing can be built there”.
At the end of the day, the entire terrain has been completely reduced to rubble, and different conversations with the property have led us to conclude that the land will be asphalted to build a parking lot.
It should be noted that two men have been living precariously on the site in a self-built cabin for more than a year, and that they have also been evicted from the space without having any alternative housing.
One of the activists climbed a tree and took photos of the police and uploaded them to the networks to call for resistance
“Children came to play there, whole families… Here we formed a community of people from Bolivia, Honduras, Ecuador, Peru, and Catalans and Spanish who made the Horta their peaceful village”, explains Dénia, with tears in her eyes.
“It’s been a job of three and a half years thrown in the trash, and to realize that they want to throw everything on the ground to make a parking lot, an asphalt track, it simply has no name.”
The community faced eviction with an open date since Monday. It was the third launch, after two failed attempts, one in September 2022 and the other last March 8, Working Women’s Day.
“It was very difficult to follow up on the case, because there was no one involved in the case and the judicial notifications arrived in the form of a paper addressed to the legal form of “ignored occupants” that they left through the gate of the “horta any day,” explains Mariona Bota, a member of the Sant Cugat Tenants’ Union, which has been supporting those affected.
Apart from people, the Horta was also home to rabbits, pigeons, chickens, cats and dogs, some of which have been evacuated in time, but others, like the rabbits, have remained trapped inside the enclosure
Apart from people, the Horta was also home to rabbits, pigeons, chickens, cats and dogs, some of which have been evacuated in time, but others, like the rabbits, have been trapped inside the enclosure once it had been cordoned off by the Mossos Riot Police.
The deputy mayor of the CUP, Lourdes Llorente, and members of various animal associations, such as the PACMA of Sant Cugat, have interceded to mediate with the police the evacuation of these animals, after a moment of uncertainty in that neither the police, nor the property owner, nor the City Council – claiming that it was the property’s task, as it is on private land – wanted to take care of it.
The disused lot is owned by CaixaBank and everything indicates that it will be asphalted to make a parking lot
In turn, the Firefighters for the Republic association has denounced on its Twitter account “the use of firefighting equipment for police and repressive purposes”.
In this regard, it should be remembered that the main firefighters’ unions agreed more than 30 years ago that this body could not participate in any operation to dislodge activists as part of protest actions and that firefighters could resort to conscientious objection, as they did today.
Ja han sortit les tres companyes detingudes. Ara a descansar i a reagrupar-nos
Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ There’s a lot happening in the life of the empire, so we’re doing another multi-story article to wrap it all up. Today we’re discussing four stories: Facebook is censoring multiple articles by Seymour Hersh. Weapons industry-funded think tank helps Congress discover that Taiwan needs way more weapons. […]
The Free 