Alastair Crooke

(This paper [was] the basis of a talk [...] given at the 25th
Yasin (April) International Academic Event on Economic and
Social Development, HSE University, Moscow, April 2024)

Israel's strategy from past decades will continue with its hope of achieving some Chimeric transformative "de-radicalization" of Palestinians that will make 'Israel safe'.

In the summer following Israel’s 2006 (unsuccessful) war on Hizbullah, Dick Cheney sat in his office loudly bemoaning Hizbullah’s continuing strength; and worse still, that it seemed to him that Iran had been the primary beneficiary from the U.S. 2003 Iraq war.

Cheney’s guest – the then Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Bandar – vigorously concurred (as chronicled by John Hannah, who participated in the meeting) and, to general surprise, Prince Bandar proclaimed that Iran yet could be cut to size: Syria was the 'weak' link between Iran and Hizbullah that could be collapsed via an Islamist insurgency, Bandar proposed. Cheney's initial skepticism turned to [enthusiasm], as Bandar said that U.S. involvement would be unnecessary: He, Prince Bandar, would orchestrate and manage the project. 'Leave it to me', he said.

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Robert Inlakesh

In one case, a young Black woman is violently shoved to the ground by a crazed Zionist man, while in another case that was caught on video, a young man is caught yelling the N-Word repeatedly.

As the American corporate media and government mobilize in opposition to student protests across the United States, ridiculously attempting to portray pro-Palestinian demonstrations as being in support of terrorism and anti-Semitism, pro-Israeli counter-protesters launch a campaign of racist hate. Repeatedly there have been reports of and videos in which Zionists yell the N-word, but why do they direct their hate towards Black people?

While student encampments are being set up on University campuses across the United States and beyond, with protests urging academic institutions to divest from Israeli-linked companies, the establishment is employing every tactic available to discredit and combat these efforts. Suddenly, US corporate broadcast media outlets, such as CNN and FOX News, who would usually object to the others' description of the color of the sky being blue, are condemning pro-Palestinian students together. With few exceptions, a bipartisan effort between Democratic and Republican Party representatives - who only seem capable of agreeing on financing war - has been launched to smear the anti-war movement as violent and anti-Semitic.

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Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc

"Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue." (From Psalm 109)

Anyone over 60 years of age, disabled, chronically ill or poor will probably be dead by the year 2030, killed by a euthanasia programme which is rapidly going global and which is out of control.

The euthanasia squad will kill you, your family and your friends unless you speak out now. This is the population control plan they have been working towards.

Euthanasia is going global in the same way that the covid fraud went global. And, just as with covid, celebrities all over the world are advocating `doctor assisted suicide’.

If you thought that face masks and the covid jab were fashionable, just wait until you see what happens as the euthanasia bandwagon rolls onwards.

Since I last wrote about euthanasia, Ecuador has joined the growing list of countries endorsing euthanasia. In Peru, a psychologist with a muscle disease has already died from `doctor assisted suicide’. Make no mistake about it: euthanasia is spreading and is now more popular than Taylor Swift.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

The eastern portion of Europe and the end of WWI – The end of WWI resulted in significant changes concerning the political boundaries of Central, East, and South-East Europe. The extent of these changes resulted in regional wars over the land distribution in several mini-regions in the eastern portion of Europe, and it was to take around five to six years before new borders between the states were finally established and stabilized. This continued at least up to 1938.

The political transformation of the eastern portion of Europe after 1918 was a direct result of the collapse of both the German Second Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the last months of 1918, as well as due to unsettled western borders of the ex-Russian Empire (collapsed in 1917) which still was involved into the revolution and civil war. Most of the boundary changes in this half of Europe after WWI were direct result of decisions reached by the Entente powers (Allied and Associated Powers during WWI) at the Paris Peace Conference that began in early 1919. This resulted in five peace treaties, named after the castles outside Paris where they were been finally signed. Each of these peace treaties dealt in part, but in some cases entirely, with states in Central Europe. This was the case, for instance, for Poland which was already in the post-WWI military-political conflict with the West Ukrainian nationalists over the land of East Galicia.

The state borders of post-WWI Poland were decided by the Paris Peace Conference by three means: 1) Through decisions of the Council of Ambassadors; 2) Plebiscites held under Entente direction; and 3) By the result of the war between West Ukraine and Bolshevik Russia. Concerning Poland, the final settlement of its eastern borders became the most complex. In fact, the first boundary problem was Galicia, or more precisely East Galicia, where Poles went to open war with Ukrainians. On November 1st, 1918, when the rule of Austria-Hungary finally collapsed in the region, local Ukrainian nationalistic leaders proclaimed the independence of the West Ukrainian National (People’s) Republic. This new state claimed the whole of East Galicia (eastward from the San River with Lwiw) to be Ukrainian followed by North Bukowina and Carpathian Rus’. However, these territorial claims became immediately challenged by local Poles who fought all over Galicia to be united with the post-WWI Poland. Consequently, the result was a Polish-Ukrainian War that lasted from November 1918 until the summer of 1919, when the Galician-West Ukrainian military detachments were expelled from East Galicia which finally became a part of the interwar Poland.

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Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc

There seems to be some confusion about what Israel is doing in Gaza. So, let’s be clear.

By stopping the provision of food and water supplies, the Israelis have been deliberately, cold-bloodedly slaughtering babies and children. The ones who haven’t been shot or blown up have been starved to death.

Fortunately, most of us in the West have no idea what starving to death is really like. So, let me explain. The process of starvation starts with stomach cramps and intense pains. There is a loss of energy and sufferers feel extremely tired.

Babies and children who are starving will cry incessantly and will eat anything they can find – mud, grass, gravel, dust. They will eat anything in an attempt to fill their bloated stomachs.

Their hearts beat faster and their breathing slows. They are overwhelmed with a feeling of thirst. Their eyes appear glazed and distant. Their muscles shrink. They look pale and feel dizzy. It is a slow, torturous, painful process.

Eventually, the child becomes so weak that they cannot cry. They just whimper. Their breath smells of acetone as their body burns its tissues. When the fat stores are gone the body eats its muscles. Without protein, the cells die. The kidneys fail. And then the children fall asleep. And then they die.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

Introduction — This article deals with the question of political and human/minority rights in the region of Kosovo & Metohija twenty years after the „2004 March Pogrom“ and twenty-five years after NATO's military aggression on Serbia and Montenegro and occupation of the region. This research topic is important because this is the first time in European history, that a terrorist-style and mafia-ruled (quasi)independent state was created by a full diplomatic, political, economic, military, and financial sponsorship by the West under the umbrella of NATO's and the EU's protective administration. The precedence of Kosovo's self-proclaimed independence in February 2008 already had several negative „domino effect“ consequences elsewhere in Europe (the Caucasus, the Crimean Peninsula, the Donbas region...). The article aims to present the current situation in Kosovo & Metohija and the possible consequences of the Kosovo case for international relations and the post-Cold War 1.0 world order.

The NATO's intervention in 1999 and its consequences — Twenty years passed after the „2004 March Pogrom" in Kosovo & Metohija against the local Serbs was organized and perpetrated by Kosovo Albanians, led by the veterans from the Kosovo Liberation Army – the KLA and logistically supported by NATO's occupation troops in Kosovo & Metohija under the name of the Kosovo Forces – the KFOR. That was simply a continuation of the last stage (up till now) of the dismemberment of ex-Yugoslavia – the Kosovo War (1998-1999), and NATO's military intervention and aggression against Serbia and Montenegro. (At that time they composed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia the FRY.) This represented a violation of international law. In this context, we can say that at the end of the 20th century, the fate of ex-Yugoslavia was determined by several international organizations, and not decisively by the Yugoslavs themselves.

NATO's military intervention against the FRY in March-June of 1999 (led by the USA) under the pretext of protecting human rights in Kosovo (Albania), marked a crucial step toward finishing the process of creation of the global „Pax Americana" in the form of NATO's World Order, the NWO. As NATO used force against the FRY without permission from the UN Security Council, and also without an official proclamation of the war, we can call this military intervention pure „aggression" against a sovereign state, according to international rules and law. In the Balkans in the 1990s, NATO acquired not only considerable military experience but also had the opportunity to get rid of old weapons and use some new ones. NATO also managed to enhance its activities, and thus developed into a global organization.

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Rob Slane

[March 3, 2017] According to popular legend, if you place a frog in boiling water it will immediately jump out, whereas if you put it in cold or tepid water and then gradually turn up the heat, it will stay until it is eventually boiled to death. Simmering Frog Syndrome is often used as an analogy to show how people react rather quickly to sudden change, whereas if you spread the change out over time they don’t notice.

The analogy is a good one, but the problem with it is that it isn’t strictly true. Yes, a frog placed suddenly in boiling water will immediately try to exit, and yes a frog that is gradually heated will stay put for some time. But apparently (although I must stress I’ve never experimented myself) at a certain point when the water is being heated, the frog will not just stay put, but its pain receptors will cause it to seek to get out.

It has been said that we in our society are like simmering frogs. If you were to gather all the social changes that have occurred over the last 50 years and imagine that they had been foisted on us overnight, it’s easy to see what would have followed. Revolution would have been met by resistance, which in turn may well have been met with force, and so on. Yet the Cultural Bolsheviks that have led the revolution in the West have been far more cunning, and have introduced their changes in dribs and drabs, bit by bit. By and large we’ve taken it lying down, so that what was once unthinkable has now become normal. This means that what is unthinkable today…well I’ll leave you to work that out. But if we’ve been like simmering frogs, at what point do we reach that ouch point where we feel compelled to get out of the pan? I’ll return to the frogs in a moment.

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Staff Alahed News

Dozens of protesters were arrested on Wednesday while participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations across US college campuses.

At least 34 protesters, including a member of the media from a local news station, were arrested during protests at the University of Texas in Austin, and at least 50 more were detained by police at the University of Southern California [USC].

The arrests come amid a wave of demonstrations at campuses across the US, which began last week after students at New York’s Columbia University set up encampments calling for the university to divest from weapons manufacturers with ties to “Israel”.

The crackdown led to mass suspensions and arrests of hundreds of students in New York and other cities.

House speaker, Mike Johnson, jumped into the fray on Wednesday with a visit to Columbia’s campus, where he faced jeers from the pro-Palestinian protesters and called for the resignation of the university’s president.

Flanked by several Republican members of Congress, Johnson denounced the demonstrations as “mob rule” and condemned what he called a “virus of antisemitism” at colleges nationwide.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

In 2009, Russian President Medvedev (President from May 7th, 2008 to May 7th, 2012) called for a new European security policy known as "Fourteen Points" as a new security treaty to be accepted to maintain European security as the ability of states and societies to maintain their independent identity and functional integrity (this Russian draft European security treaty was originally posted on the President's website on November 29th, 2009). This treaty proposal was passed to the leaders of the Euro-Atlantic States and the executive heads of the relevant international organizations such as NATO, EU, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Organization of Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In this proposal, Russia stressed that it is open to any democratic proposal concerning continental security and is counting on a positive response from Russia's (Western) partners.

However, not so surprisingly, D. Medvedev's call for a new European security framework (based on mutual respect and equal rights) became interpreted particularly in the USA in the fashion of the Cold War 1.0, in fact, as a plot to pry Europe from its strategic partner (USA). Nevertheless, this program in the form of a proposal was the most significant initiative in IR by Russia since the dismissal of the USSR in 1991. From the present perspective, this proposal could save Ukrainian territorial integrity, but it was rejected primarily due to Washington's Russo-phobic attitude.

Moscow since 1991, and particularly since 2000, viewed NATO as a Cold War 1.0 remnant and the EU as no more but only as a common economic-financial market with many crisis management practices. Nevertheless, Medvedev's 2009 "Fourteen Points" was announced on November 29th, 2009, and Russia published a draft of a European Security Treaty. Medvedev's program resembles the program drawn up by US President Woodrow Wilson (issued on January 8th, 1918), who had emancipated peace aims in his well-known "Fourteen Points". These two programs have two things in common: 1) Both documents advocate multilateralism in the security area and devotion to international law, and 2) They are very idealistic in terms of the tools needed for their implementation.

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Staff, Alahed News

Severely damaged skin, signs of fatigue, unkempt hair and long beards - this was the state in which a number of Palestinian detainees emerged from “Israeli” prisons following six months of detention.

In the past few days, at the end of six months of renewable administrative detention, “Israel” released dozens of Palestinian detainees from several jails - people who had been arrested in the wake of the start of the aggression on Gaza on 7 October.

The evidence of mistreatment shown by the prisoners is indicative of what rights groups have warned is an unprecedented level of abuse taking place in “Israel's” jails.

Community activist Omar Assaf was among those released in recent days. Assaf, 74, was arrested on 24 October after his house in central Ramallah was stormed by the “Israeli” army. He was immediately transferred to administrative detention, which allows him to be held without trial or charge for as long as the Zionist authorities want.

He unveiled that the prison conditions were indescribably cruel, and that his appearance speaks volumes about the condition of Palestinian detainees.

💬 “They constantly assaulted the prisoners with severe beatings, using batons, rifles, and heavy shoes," he explained. "There were prisoners with broken ribs and limbs without providing them with any treatment."

Palestinian prisoner groups said that the “Israeli” occupation army has arrested more than 8,000 Palestinians from the West Bank alone since 7 October, including 280 women and at least 540 children.

Rights groups have documented widespread mistreatment, with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees [UNRWA] last week releasing a report detailing - among other abuses - detainees being urinated on and made to act like animals, and children being attacked by dogs.

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Mark B. Rosenthal

[August 17, 2005] VAWA Reauthorization: Billions for battered women, not a penny for battered men!

For thirty years now, researchers have known that wives kick, punch, stab, or shoot their husbands about as often as husbands kick, punch, stab, or shoot their wives. But federal law ignores the facts and instead uses the power of the purse to get states to impose Kafkaesque policies that punish victimized men and reward violent women.

Back in 1975, the First National Family Violence Survey turned up results that surprised even the sociologists conducting the survey. Wives attack husbands about as often as husbands attack wives. And wives attack first about as often as husbands attack first, which is strong evidence that women's assaults on men can't be explained away simply as self-defense.¹ But battered women's advocates were intent on portraying domestic violence as something only men do and only women suffer from. So they'd conveniently leave out the part about women's assaults on men whenever they cited the study's results.²

Susan R. Paisner is a criminologist and longtime advocate for abused women and men. She recalls being stunned by the hostile attitudes toward male victims that she encountered at one of the nation's first conferences on domestic violence. She naively thought that "we were all there to do good -- for all who needed it." Yet when she mentioned having read a brief newspaper article about male victims, many of the other women at the conference turned on her, saying,

💬 "This is OUR issue, OUR cause. If men are battered, then let other MEN do something for them."³

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Rob Slane

[June 16, 2017] It’s been fun learning over the past week or so that I am an extremist. I hadn’t previously considered myself to be one, but it’s now been pointed out so many times over the past few days, by certain young left-leaning folks, that I can no longer be in any doubt. I assume that I, along with other like-minded people, must now wait for the powers-that-be to start issuing little badges with the letter “E”, to warn others that there are dangerous people with unwholesome views in their midst.

Until recently, I’d sort of thought of extremists as being those bearded head-chopper chaps with their black flags, or radical anarchist types intent on bringing down the State. Compared to them, I’m a fantastically dull extremist. Happily married for 17 years; raising six fairly contented children; held down jobs since leaving university 20-odd years ago; never been in trouble with the law; taxes paid into the Treasury’s redistribution scheme; an elder in a local Anglican church; no links to any terrorist organisations; good relations with neighbours; and by and large, pretty relaxed and content with my lot.

But according to Napoleon’s puppies (I’ll explain that in a moment), none of this counts for diddly squat, and I am indeed to be regarded on a par with chaps heading out for an extended holiday in one of those “training camps” in David Cameron’s New Libya.

You might say that it was quite by accident that I found it out. Had Theresa May not taken the inexplicably stupid decision to hold an election shortly before beginning the process of negotiating our way out of the EU, I might never have known. But after her gamble went splat, and she was forced into begging the DUP to bail her out, the grin which had been slowly spreading over the faces of some of the more mathematically challenged citizens during the election night (who still seem to think that 262 seats get you into government), soon started to be turned into a rather menacing scowl.

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Jamal Kanj

Imagine you are at home, with your wife and children. It's dinner time before you put your three children to sleep. The room is cold, the propane cooking cylinder empty, no food, no electricity, or drinking water.

Your youngest child, Manar, cries, "I'm hungry. We haven't had food for the last four days." She rubs her dry bluish hands together, "Uhf-uh-ih-ih-uhhf, … I'm cold." The words escape her chattering teeth.

You, let's say your name is Nader, look at Manar's feeble body, her pale skin has lost color. The once bouncy curly black hair had tangled and knotted like a cluttered eagle nest, unwashed for more than a month.

Ahmad asks his wife, "Noora, did you search the cabinets and closets for the dry food?"

Noora took a deep breath, "More than ten times, our kitchen is as empty as our stomachs." She looked at the cold floor in despair, her face twisted into a sorrowful mask.

"Press this against Manar's stomach," he said in a low voice and handed Noora a bag full of sand. "It'll help her sleep, again."

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Veniamin Popov

The dates of 7 October 2023 and 13 April 2024 will go down in the history of the Middle East as milestones that defined a new balance of power. The myth of Israel’s military superiority and the invincibility of its army will be gone forever.

The Gaza massacre, which caused enormous loss of life and destruction, effectively isolated the Netanyahu government in the international community. Only the US and a few other Western powers provided diplomatic cover for his military provocations.

When the Israelis attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April, killing senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Western countries disrupted the UN Security Council’s discussion of this terrorist act by refusing to condemn this clear violation of international law.

In Tehran, many political forces demanded a response to this monstrous crime, and Iran’s representative to the UN made it clear that the Iranian authorities would be prepared to refrain from using force if the UN Security Council took a clear decision to condemn the attack.

On 13 April, Iran fired more than 300 drones and missiles at Israeli military installations – the first time in history that the Iranians have attacked Israel directly from their own territory. This was essentially the beginning of a new policy line for Tehran, which had previously been guided by the “concept of strategic patience”, avoiding direct attacks against Israel and the United States.

Iran used only a small fraction of its missile arsenal and warned that it was ready to use its new cruise and hypersonic missiles in the event of an Israeli attack: only military targets were targeted on 13 April, and the entire operation was conducted in such a way as to avoid civilian casualties.

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Paulo Nogueira Batista

Let us hope that the BRICS will confirm expectations entertained by the Global South and rise to the challenge of providing constructive alternatives for all.

The background to the recent discussions between the BRICS countries on international monetary and financial matters and, in particular, on possible joint initiatives is well-known in general. There is, first and foremost, an increasingly widespread perception that the current US dollar-centred international monetary system is becoming dysfunctional. Second, the increasing multipolarisation of the world in economic and political terms seems inconsistent with the indefinite continuation of a basically unipolar world monetary system.

Let me address these points in turn. It should be kept in mind that they are both international political economy issues, i.e., problems that are at the same time both political and economic.

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