It is becoming irrefutably clear that the United States and its NATO partners have been planning for many years for the current war in the Ukraine against Russia. That fact makes the prospects for peace all the more elusive. How to negotiate with a mindset that is so deeply invested and ingrained with belligerence?
As Merkel’s comments reveal, the war mentality in the West against Russia has been extant for over a decade if not longer.
Western governments and media accuse Russia of “unprovoked aggression” against Ukraine and are clamoring for Moscow to hand over eye-watering financial compensation as well as face war crimes prosecutions.
The bitter irony is that the war in Ukraine, which is dangerously escalating and could spiral into a nuclear cataclysm, was sown by the United States and its accomplices. It is the West that bears ultimate responsibility for this abysmal situation, not Russia.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel (2005-2021) is the latest Western source to come clean or let their guard down. She disclosed in a recent interview with Der Spiegel the real roots of the war.
Putin responds to Merkel bombshell. The President believes that the former German leader’s remarks justified Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine. “I thought the other participants of this agreement were at least honest, but no, it turns out they were also lying to us and only wanted to pump Ukraine with weapons and get it prepared for a military conflict,” Putin said.
Merkel’s reprehensible revelation is inadvertent. She refers to appeasing the Ukrainian regime as a way to eventually build up its fighting strength against Russia. She invokes this reasoning as a way to justify why she objected to Ukraine’s earlier membership of the NATO alliance in 2008. The fact of membership wasn’t wrong, it was just a matter of wrong timing, according to Merkel.
As respected independent military analyst Scott Ritter points out, Merkel also knew that the Kiev regime installed by the CIA-backed coup d’état in 2014 was not interested in a peaceful resolution of the civil war in that country.
The unspoken policy in Berlin was all about buying time for the anticipated aggression against Russia. This was in spite of the fact that Germany along with France was supposed to be a guarantor of the Minsk peace agreements negotiated in 2014 and 2015.
In other words, Ukraine was primed for war against Russia from 2014 onwards.
Merkel’s admission is therefore really a confession of Western duplicity towards Russia, as Ritter astutely notes.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the military intervention into Ukraine on February 24 this year, the order was one of force majeure because the offensive threat from the NATO-backed Kiev regime had crossed Russia’s red lines. Those red lines had been repeatedly conveyed to the West by Moscow to no avail.
Merkel has admitted 8 year deception over Minsk peace deals – The Minsk agreements, brokered by Germany and France, were supposed to be a roadmap for peace in the war-torn country, giving the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state, whose rule they rejected after the 2014 Maidan coup.
Thus, the Western media claims about “Russian aggression” are propaganda laundering about the real causes of and responsibilities for the war.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and other NATO commanders have also admitted on several occasions that the coup in Kiev was followed by massive weaponizing of the regime by the United States and other Western powers.
Delegates from around the world are gathering in Montreal this week to address what United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has described as “humanity’s senseless and suicidal war with nature.”
Deforestation is a major threat to the survival of orangutan. Here a baby sumatran orangutan plays around in a tree as they train at Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme’s rehabilitation center in Indonesia. Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images
Environment | 7 Dec. 2022
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which kicked off Tuesday, comes at a critical time. More than a million species are at risk of extinction globally, many within decades, because of human actions. Destruction of forests, wetlands and other natural ecosystems that clean air and water for the world’s now 8 billion human residents continues worldwide. Climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
In this column, we present our monthly roundup of political prisoner, prison rebel, and repression news, happenings, announcements, action and analysis. Packed in as always is updates, calls to action, fundraisers, and birthdays.
There’s a lot happening, so let’s dive right in!
Political Prisoner News
Mutulu Shakur has been granted parole and is need of release funds. You can donate via paypal, cash app or via a tax deductible donation by check. All the info is at https://t.co/nEPmMSBkFf Please support this elder! pic.twitter.com/wfh3pI2bA1
The support crew for anarchist prisoner Eric King have published an update on his situation, featuring new writing and poetry from Eric, who remains amazingly defiant while in the depths of the supermax.
Earth liberation defendant Joseph Dibee has been sentenced to time served, meaning that he’s due for release, a rejection of the prosecution’s attempt to get a longer sentence.
Indigenous anarchist political prisoner Oso Blanco has designed some new greeting cards to raise money for children on reservations and in Zapatista territory.
British rock legend Roger Waters slammed the authorities in London, accusing them of doing the bidding of their “masters in Washington,” at a rally in New York on Saturday, calling for the release of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange.
“Julian, you are not alone! … We are many, and we have a message for Vanessa Baraitser, that apology for a magistrate that set you down in that kangaroo court in London,” Waters said, referring to a judge who signed the extradition order. “Ms. Baraitser, you are a disgrace to the legal profession. F**k you.”
UK district judge Vanessa Baraitser initially refused to surrender Assange to the US, citing fears that he would be subjected to inhumane treatment, but Washington managed to convince London that the journalist’s rights would be “respected.” In the US, Assange faces espionage charges that carry a prison sentence of up to 175 years.
Addressing a crowd outside of the British Consulate on Saturday, the rock musician, who has long been a vocal supporter of Assange, recalled how in 2020, he “wasted a few words on Boris Johnson, who was then the United States’ tamed poodle” and who “ignored the law and did the bidding of his masters in Washington.”
Today, the current pitiful British poodle, Rishi Sunak, is equally well-trained… ‘Rishi, sit! Good boy!’
“What about the law, Mr. Sunak? What about magna carta? What about basic human rights?” Waters asked.
WikiLeaks supporters insist that Assange was simply practicing journalism by publishing the documents, which were redacted to remove sensitive information. Activists claim Washington retaliated against the outlet and its co-founder for exposing its own war crimes.
“Without Julian Assange we might as well be alone. Without a free press we might as well be alone,” Waters said. “Without basic human rights for all our brothers and sisters irrespective of their color, religion or nationality, we might as well all be alone.”
Julian Assange entered the crosshairs of the US government in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified documents revealing alleged war crimes committed by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was forced to take refuge inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London from 2012 to 2019, when a new government in Quito revoked his asylum status and he was arrested for skipping bail.
The Australian-born publisher remains locked up in Belmarsh Prison in the UK, pending extradition to the US. His health and mental state are said to be deteriorating after years of confinement.
It has been branded the “Bali Bonking Ban”. The revised criminal code which has been approved this week by the Indonesian parliament is getting the kind of publicity rarely given to arcane changes in another country’s legal system.
Indonesia’s revised criminal code has been approved this week by parliament
By Jonathan Head | South East Asia correspondent | 8 Dec. 2022
Headlines around the world are warning tourists visiting Indonesia that they face up to a year in jail if caught having sex or cohabiting with someone they are not married to.
Suddenly a country usually lauded as a pluralistic Muslim democracy finds itself being accused of mediaeval moral meddling.
It is actually a much more complicated story, and the “sex ban” is not the most disturbing change for many Indonesians, who see other areas of the code threatening human rights and freedom of speech.
10th Edition of the Festival! We are coming! December 10th, 2022 Fofão Rock’n Bar (Estrada de Taipas 3827, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil)
Last year we didn’t have the event in respect of the pandemic context, but 2022 we came to celebrate one decade of hard work and fruits that we had during these years.
We will be on the road for another year to spread counter cultural libertarian productions along with debates, exchanges and much more.
And this year we will have @cine.molotov together on the schedule. The 1st Edition of the Anarchist and Punk Film Festival in Fortaleza will take place on the same day. Much mutual support, DIY and anarchism for all.
2022 PROGRAM
2:30 pm | LIVE BREATH [Experimental Documentary | 25min | 2021 | Association of Cariri Indians of Poço Dantas-Umari | Crato/CE ) > An indigenous community of the Kariri people, located in Chapada do Araripe (rural area of Crato/CE), reflects on water: the indigenous myth of recreating the world together with the waters against the capitalist developmentalist myth of control of the waters and human and non-human bodies that inhabit the São Francisco River (Opará).
15h00 | SESSION ANARCHICAL EXPERIMENTATIONS
– ANDALE [Experimental short film | 4min | 2017 | Cannibal Movies | Palmitos/SC] > A film about today’s world, about the need for a revolution, an uprising of the masses against the exploiters, so that the financial system can be completely rethought. An anarchist view of the chaos we need for this change to occur.
– DARKNESS [Animation | 5min | 2019 | Subversive Art Hakai Teki Ato | Mexico | subtitles in Portuguese] > Animation narrated and illustrated by ARTE SUBVERSIVO HAKAI TEKI ATO, with a poem by the anarchist Praxedis Guerrero. Performed in territory dominated by the Mexican state, this animation features illustrations that were also published in fanzine format.
– 290 POISONS [ Fiction | 10min | 2020 | Petter Baiestorf/CineCaos | SC) > In 2019, the Brazilian government released 290 new pesticides in its domestic market. 18 of them are extremely toxic. 290 Venenos makes an imaginative exercise about the excessive use of poisonous substances in our food, since the release of pesticides in Brazil tends to increase.
– 2021 [Video art | 1min | 2021 | AriFrost | Carapicuiba/SP] > This is an anti-racist video constructed from a speech recorded during a demonstration in the capital of São Paulo in memory of Moïse Mugenyi Kabagambe, a Congolese immigrant who was murdered on January 24, 2022. This work is a cry for revolt and a manifesto against the violence suffered by the black population in these lands known as Brazil.
– 2022 [Video art | 30sec | 2022 | Arisfrost | Carapicuiba/SP] > This is a video work that addresses the issue of gentrification in the city of Carapicuíba. The current repossessions, displacement of occupations and favelas are points in this discussion that, through the report of Lukinhas, a resident of Favela do Escadão in Cohab 5, displaced in 2019, form a poetic set between dialogue and images.
– BRECHT BANK [Fiction | 9min | 2017 | Tiago Aguiar and Marcio Souza | Recife/PE] > Group of people seeks ways to finance actions against the political system, planning a bank robbery. Banco Brecht is a short film that questions society, what violence is and what kind of violence is allowed or not by the State.
3:40 pm | Memory & Anarkia Session!
– OUR STEPS WILL FOLLOW YOURS [Experimental documentary 13min | 2022 | Corpo Fechado Producer | RJ] > Erased from the official history of the labor movement, Domingos Passos, a fierce anarchist militant, had to face State terrorism and police violence that devastated the worlds of work in the First Republic (1889-1930) in order to organize Brazilian workers and follow his new direction, towards eternity…
– SON OF ALMEREYDA [Documentary | 9min | 2022 | Alex Fedox/Cine Molotov | Fortaleza/CE] > A fable about the life and work of filmmaker Jean Vigo, son of anarchist activist Miguel Almereyda, had in his father a strong inspiration for the construction of his poetic realism.
– REQUIEM MENEGHETTI [Documentary | 8min | 2016 | Utopia Productions | Rio de Janeiro/RJ] The story of the anarchist thief Gino Meneghetti, a legendary character in São Paulo in the 20th century, is told through the highlights he had in the press at the time. Any resemblance to fiction is not coincidental.
– BOX POSTAL 195 (Experimental documentary | 5 min. | 2012 | Giuliana Miguel and Rodrigo Rosa da Silva | São Paulo/SP) > Police surveillance in São Paulo and the role of DEOPS investigators against anarchists. A simple mailbox in the center of the city becomes the pivot of a chase through the streets and neighborhoods frequented by libertarians.
– PUNKY MAURI: BEAUTIFULLY VIOLENT [ Documentary | 13” | 2017 | Chile] > A small record in memory of Mauricio Morales, anarchist who died in 2009 as a result of the explosion of a bomb he was transporting, and whose death was used as an excuse for a whole police operation of criminalization and assembly against squatters, anarchists and punks in the Chile. This operation, which became known as Caso Bombas, was later dismantled, given the numerous false evidence presented by the prosecution.
16:40 | PROJECTING FREEDOM [Documentary | 21min | 2020 | Anarchofilms | Mexico | subtitles in Portuguese] > Reflections on the anarchist audiovisual, the use of this tool in our struggles, and a little of what was the organization of the 1st Festival Internacional de Cine Anarchista in Mexico City in December 2019.
FOLLOWED BY A CONVERSATION : 1 DECADE OF ANARCHIST AND PUNK FILM FESTIVAL – SEEDING AND HARVESTING IN LIBERTARY AUDIOVISUAL , with the participation of former members of the collective that organizes the event
18:50 | PUNX REALITIES SESSION
– PUNK ERA [Documentary | 25min | 2022 | Line of Action | SP] > Music, revolt and direct punk action against the fascist and necrophilic politics of today’s Brazil. Êra Punk is a cry stuck in the air, an urban chronicle of resistance in the streets of yet another country exposed to the rise of the extreme right in the world. – REPORTS FROM AN ANARCOPUNK SCENE [Documentary | 23min | 2012 | César Medeiros and Danilo Tázio | Natal/RN] >
Made in a do-it-yourself way, with zero resources and a lot of willpower and rush, the film tries to tell how the punk culture arrived in the city of Natal/RN, how it was organized and consolidated based on anarchism. Bands, collectives, zines, events, all reported by some of the active characters in the Potiguar punk scene between 1980 and 2003. The video was produced in 2008 and presented as a final paper for the Journalism course at UFRN by César Medeiros and Danilo Tázio. It was re-edited in July 2012 with new cuts, scenes and archival footage that had been left out, and shortened by 20 minutes for exhibition.
– MACEHUALOPUNKS [Documentary | 30min | 2019 | HeyWild | Veracruz/Mexico | subtitles in Portuguese] > The defense of the Nahuatl language in the community of San Juan (Rafael Delgado) at the entrance to the Sierra de Zongolica in the state of Veracruz. It is present through young punks who, with anarchist ethics, are recovering their lives, facing the civilizing process that is ending nature and, therefore, Macehual culture. Through self-management, meetings and music, they lead us to reflect on other forms of struggle that take place outside the big cities.
– Beyond the Screams: A US Latino Hardcore Punk Documentary [Documentary | 29min | 1999 | Martin Sorrondeguy | USA – subtitles in Portuguese] > Documentary about the Latin punk scene within the North American context, with various interviews, period images and presentations by bands such as Huasinpungo, Los Crudos, Subsistencia, Sbitch, among others.
20:50 | FINAL SESSION
– OCUPA RIA : Art and Politics in the Federal District [Documentary | 10min | Yuri Barbosa / RIA | Taguatinga/DF] > The International Resistance Collective of Artists (RIA) occupies and revitalizes the abandoned building located in the Hotel Sector South of Taguatinga projection “C”, former Military Police Battalion, giving new meaning to a space that has been idle for so long. Transforming it into a Cultural and Pedagogical Center, where artistic and educational activities will be carried out aimed at the community and general public.
– GYNEPUNK [Documentary | 15min | 2019 | Julia Ostertag | Germany/Mexico] > Gynepunk is an autonomous research project on the history of gynecology, which opens up direct practical access to a self-managed bricolage knowledge about our bodies, as well as an active and radical proposal to give patriarchal history a spin. Gynepunk’s goal is to create efficient and affordable medical tools that allow us to take care of our own bodies. I had the opportunity to meet one of the initiators, Klau Kinki (transhack activist and performance artist) in Mexico and I attended her workshop… Decolonize the female body!
– LA FORMA: VIDEOFANZINE DE CONTRACULTURA [Documentary | 18” | 2016 |Arlen Herrera | Ecuador] > Self-managed and counter-information project of joint collaboration and mutual support, of different individuals and spaces in Quito, Ecuador, which in different environments has resisted and acted there. This video has several themes within the counterculture, such as way of life, action, creation and criticism. Starting from a common criticism of the capitalist system and the imposed heteronorm, initiatives and ideas are born to seek different ways to combat it.
– PUNk[A]h4ck1ng [Documentary, 33min | Cin’Surgente – [A]filmes | 2016 | Brasília/DF] > Documentary about memories and imagined futures of the relationship between punk, anarchy and hacktivism. the memory is inscribed in the context of two agitated situations in brasília, the circulation, via floppy disks and cds, of anarchist, punk and free software material by 3137r0_p4nx (eletropunx) – digital publishing house – in 1998 and an experimental event on cyberculture in the year 2000 .the imagined futures are born from the memories of the London punk context by an English hacker and his reflections for the future, and from the memories of a Brazilian hacker, who transited through punk at the beginning of this century, and who today works in the creation and propagation of hackerspaces and the actions of merry riot from “b[A]leia pret[A] hacker sub_clube”.
The Free 