GILBERT DOCTOROW—In her ten minutes at the microphone, Margarita Simonyan gave a more detailed answer, saying that indeed many men who left Russia a year ago following the mobilization orders did so because the mobilization was not conducted with uniform professionalism. In some cases, the local mobilization personnel ignored the legal exemptions from service that reservists may have had for reasons of their profession, for reasons of health or family circumstances. As far as the Russian government is concerned, it stood ready to leave in place IT specialists who were more useful to the nation sitting at home by their computers with a latte at their side than if they were sent to the front.
VASSAL STATES
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Norman Finkelstein on Israel’s BRUTAL Assault On Gaza
241 mins readEDITOR—A wide-ranging discussion of the situation in Palestine with Middle East expert and anti-imperialist/Zionist Norman Finkelstein, as world opinion is buffeted by the West’s and specifically Israel’s propaganda machine to justify total ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Zionist regime, while most of the Global South and alt media present the Palestinian attack on Israel from the perspective of undeniably oppressed, enslaved people seeking liberation. In Dr Finkelstein’s opinion Israel in this case does not deserve the moral right of “self defence” any more than those who serve as guards for concentration camps.
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PEPE ESCOBAR—Sections of the west applauding the upcoming ethnic cleansing – including Zionists posing as “analysts” saying out loud that the “population transfers” that began in 1948 “must be completed” – believe that with massive weaponry and massive media coverage, they can turn things around in short shrift, annihilate the Palestinian resistance, and leave Hamas allies like Hezbollah and Iran weakened.
Their Ukraine Project has sputtered, leaving not just egg on powerful faces, but entire European economies in ruin. Yet as one door closes, another one opens: Jump from ally Ukraine to ally Israel, and hone your sights on adversary Iran instead of adversary Russia.
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BLOWBACK: Current events through a Marxist lens / The Collective West’s NAZI Infatuation / POLITICO’s pathetic apologetics
12 minutes readBILLY BOB—The Blowback roundtable convenes to discuss current events and to relate them to the dominant political ideologies proliferated by the Western ruling class. The popular paradigm of “Democracy vs. Authoritarianism” (or “Democracy vs. Dictatorship”) peddled by Western propaganda is critically examined in this episode, and an alternative conceptual framework is advanced. A framework based on a (Marxian) material analysis of where wealth and power actually reside, and where they truly originate.
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EDITOR—As it turns out, the source of many of the allegations of rape – including multiple alleged cases of rape to death of children – was the Ukraine parliamentary commissioner for human rights, Lyudmila Denisova. Her evidence was alleged to be a helpline set up to report allegations of human rights abuses. Her tales were too much even for the Ukrainian government, which dismissed her at the end of May 2022.