Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

The US-Israeli war on Iran rages on. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed. Iran has been hammering US military bases in the region with missiles and drones, and oil prices are already beginning to rise as the IRGC cuts off the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the attacks.

US soldiers have already begun to die. US Central Command reports that three American service members were killed in combat, with five seriously wounded — and it should here be noted that “seriously wounded” can mean permanently brain damaged, comatose, or otherwise rendered severely handicapped for the rest of their lives.

Trump said during an interview with The Daily Mail that he now expects this war to last “four weeks or so”, and that he expects US casualties to continue. I have said it before and I will say it again: every single American soldier who dies in this war was killed by Trump and Netanyahu. The US and Israeli governments bear sole responsibility for their deaths.

Dmitry Gubin
VZGLYAD.RU

The hysteria surrounding the “abducted children” will not stop. After all, nothing human should remain in the enemy.

To provoke targeted discontent among the masses that turns into long-term hatred, you need to throw in something that makes the object appear to be a complete maniac in the public eye. The topic of violence against children and pets is best suited for this purpose.

One of the favorite topics of Russophobes around the world is the fate of Ukrainian children allegedly kidnapped by Russia. It is used not only by Zelensky and his entourage, grant-funded public organizations, but also by international courts.

It would seem that everything or almost everything is clear in this case, but the topic does not disappear from the speeches of politicians or the pages of the press. And since it does not go away, we will have to figure out what is wrong with it, why, and how. There are several components to this topic: psychological, factual, and legal. Let's look at them in order.

Martin Jay
Strategic Culture Foundation

Britain, a country which practically invented the tenets of free speech, is now the most repressive, backward country of the West.

Britain, a country which practically invented the tenets of free speech, is now the most repressive, backward country of the West which is ridiculed on a daily basis by the very same countries that it regaled for its human rights record. There are just too many cases to rattle off which have at least made the news – social media, at least – but the mother who had police officers come into her house while she was in the bath to arrest her for calling an ex-boyfriend a ‘faggot’ has shocked many, given that the boyfriend in question beat her up and the message was not even sent to him. Elizabeth Kinney escaped jail but received a sentence involving community service and a considerable fine. Kinney was just one of around 12,000 people each year in the UK who are arrested and charged for giving their views about a given subject which the state deems could hurt someone, or in the case of politics, if it simply challenges a narrative. This farce would appear to have gotten out of hand when the long arm of the law even arrested and questioned right-wing hack Katie Holmes, who, during a stand-up comedy routine called herself a “spazza” and was subsequently detained for hours by UK police for the “offence”.

Yet while Britain sinks to an all-time low with the state strangling its citizens right to express thoughts, or even think in the case of an anti-abortion activist who was arrested for having a quiet prayer in her head what is remarkable is the lack of hue and cry by the masses who are very well versed on history and what they believe their ancestors were fighting for in two world wars. Often older people, who are very lucid in their ideas about why the British don’t carry identity cards, unlike Europeans, will not really have a strong reaction to the wave of absurd and worrying arrests for those who wish to practice free speech, around 30 a day.

Perhaps what is more remarkable though is how the world is watching this every day and commenting on how Britain is literally crumbling. A recent interview by Tucker Carlson on Piers Morgan involved the American polemicist goading the British commentator to say a rude word during the interview, claiming that Morgan would probably be arrested at a later point for merely uttering the vulgar word.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Indians are among the most Russian-friendly people in the world as proven by credible surveys, and unlike Central Asian Muslims, they harbor no historical grievances (whether objectively existing or subjectively perceived) that could be manipulated by foreign forces to weaponize them against Russia.

Putin will visit India late next week to meet with Modi for their annual summit, the first time that the Russian leader will travel to India since the special operation began, his last one being in December 2021. Aleksei Zakharov, a Fellow at India’s esteemed Observer Research Foundation, published a detailed article about how “Key Policy Outcomes Expected at the India-Russia Summit”. It’s an excellent read, but it omits mention of their large-scale labor migration talks, which might lead to a deal next week.

Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retired), the former Director-General of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi, published an intriguing piece about this at RT in early November. He noted how both countries representatives “discussed potential collaboration on social and labor issues”, contextualizing their conversation by adding that Russia “plans to recruit up to 1 million foreign workers – including from India. The Russian Labor Ministry estimates the shortfall could expand to 3.1 million workers by 2030.”

He makes a lot of compelling arguments about how India could help resolve this dimension of “Russia’s demography problem”, but what’s left out is how its labor migrants pose less of a security risk than Russia’s traditional ones from Central Asia. Conor Gallagher touched upon this in early November in his extensively detailed analysis about the US’ evolving strategy towards that region. From this point here near the end for the next several paragraphs, he describes Russia’s new approach towards migration.

Not only is Russia “getting rid of 700,000-plus migrants, mostly Central Asians, a process which was jumpstarted by the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in outer Moscow in March 2024”, but “the Concept of State Migration Policy for 2026-2030…focuses not on increasing the population through Central Asian citizens, but on strengthening control, digitalization, and the task of attracting only those migrants who share the ‘traditional spiritual and moral values’ of Russian society.”

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
President of Russia (en.kremlin.ru)

Vladimir Putin took part in the plenary session of the 22nd annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club.

Research Director of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai International Discussion Club Fyodor Lukyanov: Ladies and gentlemen, guests of the Valdai Club!

We are beginning the plenary session of the 22nd annual forum of the Valdai International Discussion Club. It is a great honour for me to invite President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to this stage.

Mr President, thank you very much for once again finding time to join us. The Valdai Club enjoys this great privilege of meeting with you for 23 consecutive years to discuss the most topical issues. I believe that no one else is that lucky.

The 22nd meeting of the Valdai Club, which took place over the past three days, was titled “The Polycentric World: Instructions for Use.” We are attempting to move from merely understanding and describing this new world to practical matters: that is, comprehending how to live in it, since it is not yet entirely clear.

We may consider ourselves advanced users, but we are still only users of this world. You, however, are at least a mechanic and perhaps even an engineer of this very polycentric world order, so we eagerly await some guidelines for use from you.

Kersasp D. Shekhdar
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Thoughts, Musings, Perspectives, Prognostications (Or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the [AIs]”)

Susann Witt-Stahl
Junge Welt

The Azov military claims to debunk Kremlin 'myths,' but in doing so, it reaffirms its Nazi legacy and highlights the contradiction between this tradition and German narratives of normalization.

The Azov military is gradually being integrated into the Western European security architecture. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion and escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the German media establishment has been presenting “emotionally touching” frontline reports of the individual fates of members of the “elite unit,” portraying them as “the nice guys next door.” Springer's Welt TV has now even served its viewers the first home story of a volunteer from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and his proud father, a former “Cheetah” tank driver in the German Armed Forces. The integration of the “Azov” units into the Ukrainian armed forces and their rearmament, primarily with German weapons, requires narratives that portray their warriors as sincere patriots and loyal allies of “defensive democracy.”

The “Azov” propaganda apparatus is apparently trying to provide the appropriate “historiography.” Leading the way is the Kiev-based publishing house Rainshouse, run by Olexij Reins, the new chief ideologist since the death of ‘Azov’ philosopher Mikola “Kruk” Kravchenko in March 2022. Reins, who also serves in the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade “Azov,” which forms the backbone of the 3rd Corps of the Ukrainian Army, is steadily intensifying efforts to whitewash the incriminating past—historical predecessor organizations, their leaders, worldviews, theories, symbols, rituals, and deeds. Reins’s English-language book aims to counter 'myths' about Azov by presenting its members as idealists, yet in attempting this, he inadvertently confirms Azov’s deeply problematic tradition—directly undermining efforts to normalize its image.

Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc
VernonColeman.com

Traditionally, nurses are beyond criticism. They are `angels' and they have always received a `good press'. But nurses have changed. And they have changed a good deal. The result is that today's nurses are nothing like their predecessors. If they are to be forced back into doing what they should be doing then they need to be criticised - and their shortcomings need to be identified.

The big problem is that today's nurses are too self-important to carry out any of the traditional tasks entrusted to nurses. Modern nurses don't like to bother much with caring, touching, feeding or comforting. They regard themselves as above collecting bedpans or plumping up pillows. Nurses are now too self-important to feed patients or to lift them and too protective of their past to let anyone else do these things either. It is a tragedy that as nurses have become too important to nurse, no other group has been allowed to take on the most essential caring tasks. Auxiliaries, for example, are not allowed to do anything with to or for patients and the result is that there is no one on the average hospital ward to wash, feed or care for patients.

In the bad old days nurses would help their patients in a thousand tiny ways. They would make sure that their female patients wore clean nighties and had their hair brushed before visiting time. They don't do these things any more. And it isn't that they have other, more important things to do. Go into any hospital these days and you will see half a dozen nurses sitting around the nurses’ station chatting and eating chocolates. (It's no wonder they're all so fat. You'd think nurses would be more concerned with their health. If they got up and moved about a bit occasionally they would burn up some of the calories.)

Nurses should bandage wounds, make beds, empty bedpans and soothe sweaty brows. They should take temperatures and record pulse rates and give out prescribed medicines. That's what they are there for and it's what they are best at. It is also what patients need from them. These are important tasks. Sadly, most nurses consider themselves far too grand for such work. Nurses have become lazy.

Ian Proud
Strategic Culture Foundation

The western governments are turning a blind eye once more to activity that they would never tolerate in their own countries.

A number of topics remain taboo in discussing the war in Ukraine. Busification, Zelensky’s democratic mandate, Ukraine’s casualty numbers and anything suggesting that Ukraine cannot win are all off limits. Likewise the problem of alleged neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

One of the most embarrassing episodes since the Ukraine war started in 2022, was when Yaroslav Hunka, was given two standing ovations in the Canadian House of Commons public gallery by MPs during the visit of President Zelensky in 2023. Hunka has been accused by Russia of genocide, because of his alleged involvement in the Huta Pieniacka massacre of February 28 1944 in which more than 500 ethnic Poles were murdered in a village, in what is now western Ukraine. Hunka was a member of the SS Galicia Division, a mostly Ukrainian unit of the Waffen SS, which Commissions in Germany and Poland later found guilty of war crimes.

This was shocking because it opened the lid on a topic of conversation that has been largely silenced by the western mainstream media since the beginning of the war: Ukraine’s contemporary challenge of far-right ultranationalism. But the Hunka case also illustrates how western authorities airbrushed discussion of nazis in Ukraine after World War II too.

On 13 July 1948 the British Commonwealth Relations Office, what is now part of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, sent a telegram to Commonwealth governments, proposing an end to Nazi war crimes trials in the British zone of Germany. “Punishment of war crimes is more a matter of discouraging future generations than of meting out retribution to every guilty individual… it is now necessary to dispose of the past as soon as possible.”

After the conclusion of the Nuremberg War Trials in 1946 the western world faced a new enemy in the Soviet Union. Limited security resources in cash-strapped Albion and its colonies were re-deployed to uncover suspected Soviet agents and Communists, rather than to identify and track down lower-order Nazi war criminals.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The sequence of events that would have to transpire in order to turn this into a reality are that: the next NATO leader and his team end up being hawkish on this issue; Polish policymakers overcome their differences and agree that it’s worth the risks; and the US gives them the greenlight.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the Financial Times in an interview earlier this week that “Membership in Nato does not trump each country’s responsibility for the protection of its own airspace — it’s our own constitutional duty. I’m personally of the view that, when hostile missiles are on course of entering our airspace, it would be legitimate self-defence [to strike them] because once they do cross into our airspace, the risk of debris injuring someone is significant.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Pawel Wronski clarified that these was Sikorski’s own personal views and don’t reflect Poland’s official ones, elaborating that “If we have the capability and Ukraine agrees, then we should consider it. But ultimately, this is the minister's personal opinion.” Nevertheless, their comments still suggested that this scenario might once again be in the cards under certain conditions despite having earlier been rebuffed by the US, UK, and NATO. Here are three background briefings:

● 17 April: “It Would Be Surprising If Polish Patriot Systems Were Used To Protect Western Ukraine”
● 18 July: “Ukraine Likely Feels Jaded After NATO Said That It Won’t Allow Poland To Intercept Russian   Missiles”
● 30 August: “Poland Finally Maxed Out Its Military Support For Ukraine”

The last of these three included Zelensky’s most recent demand at the time to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine. He said that “We have talked a lot about this and we need, as I understand it, the support of several countries. Poland ... hesitates to be alone with this decision. It wants the support of other countries in NATO. I think this would lead to a positive decision by Romania.” That same analysis also cited Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz’s response to him too.