The heartfelt pleas of the mother of Mariella Gedge-Rogers, recently imprisoned for five and a half years for taking part in the riot on March 21 last year, only attracted the predictable slew of online comments that Mariella “deserves what she got”.
Throughout Bristol’s Kill The Bill campaign last year, one constant barrier between protesters and the public was communicating what “Kill The Bill” actually meant.
The “right to protest” is a foreign concept to the majority who have never participated in one, and connections between protest and tackling the climate emergency or systemic racism were ignored by those more comfortable with the status quo.
Any hope for a nuanced conversation about police violence in response to peaceful protest seems a pipe dream.
Far-right and authoritarian leaders in the U.S. and Russia are pushing the planet toward “the most dangerous point in human history,” renowned scholar Noam Chomsky said in an interview published by The New Statesman Wednesday, pointing to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the planetary emergency.
Chomsky condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “criminal aggression” in Ukraine, where his forces have killed an estimated 1,430 civilians since their February 24 invasion according to the United Nations, and warned that the U.S. must help to negotiate peace to avoid nuclear war with Russia.
After calling in 2021 for “enhanced military cooperation with Ukraine”—suggesting that NATO expansion to the former Soviet state was possible—the U.S. should help protect Ukrainians from further suffering, Chomsky told senior editor George Eaton.
“We may move on to terminal nuclear war if we do not pursue the opportunities that exist for a negotiated settlement,” said the University of Arizona professor.
In a wide-ranging interview, Noam Chomsky, speaks to @georgeeaton about Brexit, the war in Ukraine and the return of Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/DxFzYcSlBd
Chomsky’s comments came less than two weeks after U.S. President Joe Biden alarmed peace advocates by appearing to suggest regime change in Moscow—sparking fears that his comments could further provoke the world’s largest nuclear power.
Belarus. On 22 March, a dozen of local antifascists and DIY band members were arrested in Mozyr following searches in their homes.
As a result, two women were detained under criminal charges – Kristina Cherenkova (inciting hatred to cops for a few Instagram posts and comments) and Anna Pyshnik (assistance in extremist activity for sending a video recording to the NEXTA Telegram channel that had been recognised as an extremist formation).
Audio and text from the event-discussion on the war in Ukraine that took place on March 25, 2022, at the Binio occupation in Mytilene (Lesvos, Greece) with the participation of militants from the anarchist organization in Ukraine Rev Dia.
Wind turbines in Mojave, California. A new UN climate report says that switching to renewables from fossil fuels—and immediately—is the only way to limit the most dire effects of climate change on the world.
According to the report, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, which was released on Monday, if urgent action is not taken, humanity will fail to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the threshold for a future of more fires, drought, storms, and more. At their presently rising levels, however, greenhouse gas emissions are likely to create twice as much warming: approximately 3.2°C (5.7°F) by 2100.
“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C,” said Jim Skea, co-chair of the IPCC working group that produced the report, at a press briefing. “Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”
Greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere are at their highest levels in human history. Emissions of the gases fell sharply in 2020 as a result of pandemic lockdowns, but in 2021 they equaled or even surpassed the record in 2019, when they were about 12 percent higher than in 2010—and 54 percent higher than in 1990, when the first IPCC report was published.
Skea noted, however, that “there is increased evidence of climate action.” The rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions was slower between 2010 and 2019 than over the previous decade; and technologies and policies do now exist that would enable sharp reductions in emissions—if the political will exists to implement them.
“We are at a crossroads,” added IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee at the briefing. “The decisions we make now can secure a livable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming.”
B-52 aircraft from the 69th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron based out of RAF Fairford, England, conducted integration missions with NATO Allies from Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Czech Republic, March 31, 2022.
During the most recent series of integration flights, the B-52 Stratofortress aircraft participated in Close Air Support Training alongside U.S., Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian Joint Terminal Attack Controllers near Poland. This integration focused on cutting-edge Beyond Line Of Sight target acquisitions practices, aimed at refining the process of obtaining a target while the target is outside the line of sight, or not clearly visible. This type of training not only adds another tool to the Air Force’s arsenal, but significantly extends it’s strategic reach.
The bombers also conducted operations in the Czech Republic for the second time in two days. The first integration on March 29, 2022 centered on bomber intercept and escort procedures. The aircraft also landed in Mosnov airport….Today, the bombers integrated in the air over the Czech Republic where they executed another round of bomber intercept and escort trainings.
“We’re shortening the kill chain, talking to our partners, and getting after what interoperability can do in this theater,” said Gen Jeff Harrigian, U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa commander….
Throughout the strategic bombers trajectory, the Stratofortreses also executed bilateral intercept and escorting procedures with aircraft from Denmark and Poland.
No flowers, no families, no mourning, no identification , no wreaths in the street. They scooped them in rubbish bags and dumped them in mass graves. (The western media even tried to suggest it was the Russians who buried them).
Another easy way to find the truth was just to ask their families their names.
Did they have Ukrainian names? Or ethnic Russian, as maybe suggested by many wearing the white armbands (see below) and having boxes of Russian Food Aid.
Were they really all ethnic Ukrainians? How come then that few demanded to bury the bodies of their relatives?
How come mothers didn’t identify their sons lying in the street for days waiting for the Press Corps to arrive?
Why were there no flowers, wreaths or candles where they fell?
Did they even seek or speak to the families of the dead? Just a few words would show their origins, their accents, or grammatical mistakes.
How is it possible that on April 2, the Ukrainian police published a news report on Bucha. There are no claims of a massacre or of corpses. There are no bodies in the recording and photos.
Why was there no outcry about the massacre on local social media?
Were some of them poor working class ‘immigrants’ from the war in Donbass where nearly 14,000 more have been killed by the now nazi led Ukrainian army?
Or how many of the dead were Roma, or Black, Lesbian, Gay .. or Trans, Immigrants or Refugees? Were any of them from the minorities the new leaders in the military urged each other to ‘eliminate’? Those earnest young men conditioned by 8 years of glorifying white-supremacist macho morons, and now banning all seven opposition parties.
Why won’t the Russians directly accuse the nazi led army of the massacre? Would that be an admission their war to de-nazify Ukraine is backfiring? (An RT op/ed insists some died from 2 weeks of indiscriminate Ukrainian artillery, citing the ubiquitous craters, but this doesn’t explain the massacre).
So why did they so hastily mass bury the victims, like rubbish left in the streets? Imagine if Russia did that! Is not the first police duty to identify murder victims?
Also why was there hardly any blood on the streets?
And why were many of the corpses taken away freshly killed and floppy in the photos (no rigor mortis) if they had been there at least 3 days since the Russians left. (Never mind if they had been there “weeks” according to ‘CIA supplied’ satellite photos via the New York Times).
Removing the evidence, No rigor nortis.
Is it true, as claimed on Twitter, that nazi groups boasted on Telegram of their ‘exploits’ in Bucha after the Russians pulled out? We tried to find out by copy/pasting Ukrainian into Google Translate, but couldn’t get into their Telegram channels. The New York Times reported that between April 1 and 2, remnants of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, which forms part of the Ukrainian military, entered the city of Bucha.
Did they claim revenge for the ‘Blood and Honor of their leaders killed in a downed helicopter escaping from Mariupol?
Is it possible that the uncontrollable Azov battalion or the Territorial Army agreed to make a False Flag and at the same time win more military control and kudos, and terrify their opponents into silence?
And what about the armbands? Why were some victims still wearing the white ‘non-combatant’ armbands after the Russians left?
Did they not realize that nationalists might take that to mean they were pro-Russian? That they might rip off the armbands to tie their hands before killing them?
Why were many of the dead photographed next to boxes of Russian Food Aid? Why were none of the nearly 400 killed apparently wearing the blue Ukrainian armbands?
Awful that media is all over this #Bucha carnage story w/out one iota of proof. Having covered Syria for 9 years, there is one thing I learned well. The west and its local allies are well-versed in staging atrocities to jack up emotions, demonize adversaries, and extend wars.
Does Zelensky know 0r suspect the truth? If so he is still a great actor! We know he has been forced to shut up and give in to the mass murder of Azov in Donbass, Mariupol, etc. and that his ‘sponsor’, oligarch and billionaire backer, Ihor Kolomoyskyi also sponsors the Nazi battalion in the Ukrainian army.
Would you or I dare speak to the press, place flowers, or demand the body of our son, if it were true that fascist forces inside the state had killed him and threatened us and our families?
On the other hand why would we NOT demand his body, speak to the press, demand aid, lead a vigil or hold a family funeral with all our community, if our dead son was really killed by the evil invaders, now gone?
Why is there apparently no outcry about the massacre on local social media, surprising the assembled international media? Could it be that locals, taken in by the nationalist hype, informed on neighbours who were ethnic Russian “traitors”?
Was this really the the war crime of Putin? Or could it be the long awaited False Flag, covered up by hysterical national war fever, that nobody dares speak against.?
Why was it left up to the Ukrainian state to make the most shocking ‘gore-porn’ video clip that swept the planet?
Is Putin justified in trying to stop the fascist takeover and defend Donbass? Even appealing to the traditional Soviet trauma of losing 27 million dead the last time they attacked Russia in 1942?
Or does he even care at all?
Nazis are still a minority in Ukraine. Few of us would actually vote for them. But fascists first abolish democracy of any sort. Putin’s war may have backfired by giving the fascist minority power and more control of the 250,000 strong Ukrainian army.
What happened and is happening is a successful Atrocity against Humanity, whoever did it.
The truth of the Bucha Pogrom will likely be argued for generations. But the consequences of rampaging western financed fascism are already arriving in Ukraine.
Hitler, Goebbels and Stepan Bandera would be proud.
It has been a few busy days in climate emergency activism.
On Friday 1st April, Extinction Rebellion and groups associated in the Just Stop Oil Coalition have blocked several major oil facilities across the UK, stating they will “continue to block the sites until the UK Government agrees to end all new fossil fuel investments…
The Free 