This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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US President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin did not have a phone conversation about the Ukraine conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
The Washington Post claimed on Sunday that Trump called Putin after winning a new term as US president to discuss his vision regarding how the Ukrainian crisis could be deflated. Peskov said on Monday that the article was a “vivid example of the quality of information published by even some respectable outlets.”
“This absolutely does not correspond to reality. This is pure fiction. This information is simply false,” he told the press.
Kiev previously denied the claim made by the Washington Post in its piece that the Ukrainian government was informed about the phone call beforehand and gave its consent to the US-Russian engagement.
“Reports that the Ukrainian side was informed in advance of the alleged call are false,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman told Reuters on Sunday.
Trump had claimed while on the campaign trail that he could end the Ukraine conflict “in 24 hours,” if US voters grant him a second term in office. He reportedly intends to leverage US military and financial aid to Ukraine to pressure both Moscow and Kiev to achieve a compromise.
Russia, which currently has the advantage on the battlefield, has said that it will only accept an outcome that addresses the core causes of the Ukraine conflict. Those include NATO’s enlargement in Europe and Kiev’s discriminatory policies against ethnic Russians, according to Moscow.
The Washington Post reported a phone call between Trump and Putin based on accounts by sources “familiar with the matter,” who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The post WaPo Putin-Trump Call Claim “Pure Fiction” – Kremlin first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan – Ukraine has released an audio clip of what it says are intercepted radio communications between North Korean soldiers in Russia, as media reported that Russia had gathered 50,000 soldiers in its Kursk region, including North Korean troops, to attack Ukrainian positions there.
In the audio, uploaded by the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, or DIU, on YouTube on Sunday, soldiers can be heard exchanging coded terms in North Korean-accented Korean.
“Mulgae hana, Mulgae dul,” was one exchange, which translates as “Seal one, Seal two”.
In another recording, a soldier says, “wait,” apparently giving an instruction to a subordinate.
The DIU said it intercepted the radio communications on Saturday, adding that the signals were about “ordering them to return immediately.”
Ukraine and the United States estimate that North Korea has sent 11,000 troops to help Russia in its war against Ukraine, with these forces reportedly stationed in the Russian border region of Kursk, which Ukrainian forces aided in early August. Moscow has faced challenges in reclaiming territory from Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian troops have held parts of Kursk since then and Russia has struggled to re-take them.
The Ukrainian military suggests that the North Koreans may engage in combat in the coming days. The Pentagon has also confirmed the presence of a “small number” of North Korean soldiers on the front lines, speculating they may be deployed in “some type of infantry role.”
The New York Times, citing U.S. and Ukrainian officials, reported on Sunday that the Russian military has assembled about 50,000 soldiers, including North Koreans, to launch an assault to reclaim territory in Kursk.
Similarly, CNN quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying Russia has gathered a “large force of tens of thousands” of troops and North Korean soldiers to participate in an imminent assault.
Strategic partnership
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law to ratify a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty with North Korea, which includes a mutual defense clause in the event of “aggression” against either signatory, Russia’s state news agency TASS said on Saturday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a plenary session as part of the 21st annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, Krasnodar region, Russia, Nov. 7, 2024. The treaty was signed in Pyongyang on June 19 as Putin was visiting North Korea. Commenting on the treaty, Putin said on Thursday that it did not contain anything new but the two countries had returned to a similar arrangement that they had during the Soviet era.
“The treaty we signed with North Korea was the one we’ve signed with other countries. It was with the Soviet Union, then of course it ceased to exist, and we actually returned to it. That’s all. There is nothing new there,” said Putin, as cited by TASS in a separate report.
Putin also mentioned the possibility of Russia and North Korea holding joint military exercises.
“Why not? We’ll see,” Putin was cited by TASS as saying, without commenting on reports about North Korean troops in Russia.
Possible Russian support
South Korea and its allies have speculated that North Korea could get Russian assistance with its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for its help for Russia to fight Ukraine, which has included large volumes of weapons including missiles and artillery shells.
The South Korean military said that an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, that North Korea tested on Oct. 31, was launched without the test of a new engine, which could suggest Russian assistance.
North Korea test fired what it said was a Hwasong-19, a new model, not an improved version of an existing missile. It was launched without testing a new engine, said South Korean lawmaker Yoo Yong-won, who was briefed by the South’s Defense Intelligence Agency.
“Considering the increased length and diameter of the missile’s fuselage and the increased maximum altitude, we can say the Hwasong-19 is a new ICBM that is different from the Hwasong-18,” the agency said, cited by Yoo.
The agency said that the fact that North Korea developed and launched the new missile without having to test its engine lent weight to the possibility of Russian technical assistance. Media also reported the possibility that Russia had provided North Korea with the engine.
North Korea reported a ground-based engine test for a medium-range ballistic missile on Nov. 15 last year, and on March 20 this year disclosed a multi-stage engine ground-based test for a new medium- to long-range hypersonic missile.
The South Korean military said that North Korea had not been confirmed as conducting any additional solid-fuel engine tests since March.
“There is a possibility that the North is receiving technologies from Russia under the name of ‘cooperation in the field of space technology’ that could be used for ballistic missile development,” the agency said.
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North Korea first tested an ICBM in July 2017. It tested two more that year, including one in November that traveled for 50 minutes and reached an altitude of 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles).
Over the next five years, the North did not test any ICBMs, but in March 2022, it launched one that blew up shortly after takeoff.
North Korea tested four ICBMs in 2022 and 2023. The Oct. 31 test was the first this year.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Ever since the November 5 defeat of the so-called ‘Democratic’ Party and of its unanimous neoconservative obsession to defeat Russia with the help of Ukrainians (claiming all the time that doing this is necessary in order to protect Americans and America’s ‘democracy’), the Bilderburg member Donald Graham, who at the 2013 Bilderburg meeting met privately with Jeff Bezos and agreed to sell him the Washington Post, has been instead using his Foreign Policy magazine in order to increase the pressure upon President Joe Biden to escalate the U.S. Government’s proxy-war in Ukraine against Russia up to and including World War Three (WW3).
On November 5, the magazine headlined “The Biden Administration Now Has an Expiration Date — and a To-Do List,” and reported:
As of late October, the Biden administration still had $5.5 billion it could throw into Ukraine’s war chest. In the past, that has come in the form of air-defense batteries, battle tanks, and long-rage U.S. firepower that can help Ukraine balance the playing field against a larger neighbor with seemingly inexhaustible manpower and ample assistance from allies in Asia. …
With no reason to worry about spiking oil and gasoline prices, the United States may be more amenable not only to Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, but also to the unsheathing of additional sanctions on miscreant oil producers such as Iran and Venezuela, which skated clear of sanctions all year thanks to U.S. worries about the domestic impact of an energy war.
On November 7, it headlined “Ukraine Now Faces a Nuclear Decision: Under a new Trump administration, Ukraine’s government can’t avoid considering a nuclear weapon,” and reported:
Last month, with little fanfare, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made the stakes of the ongoing war in Ukraine as clear as possible…. “Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and that will be our protection or we should have some sort of alliance,” he said. “Apart from NATO, today we do not know any effective alliances.”
It was the first time the Ukrainian president had revealed an outcome that has become, for the war’s observers, increasingly inescapable. In this war for Ukraine’s survival, with Kyiv facing both declining men and materiel, the only surefire way of preventing Ukraine’s ongoing destruction is NATO membership—a reality that has gained more supporters since the war’s beginning but still remains years away. Barring such an outcome, as Zelensky outlined, only one option remains: developing Ukraine’s own nuclear arsenal and returning it to the role of a nuclear power that it gave up some three decades ago. …
Putin, after all, has only grown increasingly messianic and monomaniacal in his efforts to shatter Ukraine. Previous designs on simply toppling Kyiv have given way to outright efforts to “destroy Ukrainian statehood,” especially following Ukraine’s successful occupation in Russia’s Kursk region [“Kyiv has secured a substantial political victory in Kursk whether it stays or decides to withdraw from this territory in the coming months. It has called Putin’s bluff and made a mockery of his stated “red lines” and nuclear bluster.”], as the Moscow Times recently reported. With Ukrainian statehood — and even Ukrainian identity, given Russia’s genocidal efforts — at stake, any nation would understandably pursue any option available for survival. …
This reality has been made blindingly clear by recent archival work from a number of scholars, poring through overlooked U.S. and Ukrainian documents. For instance, Columbia University’s George Bogden has recently published extensively on the internal debates in both the United States and Ukraine surrounding Kyiv’s post-Soviet arsenal…
In both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, U.S. officials placed continued emphasis on reassuring Russia that Moscow could have regional primacy — and that the United States was not trying to take advantage of the power vacuum emerging in the Soviet rubble…
The reason why the GHW Bush Administration agreed to this demand by Gorbachev was that during WW2, many Ukrainians in western Ukraine sided with Germany against Russia and participated eagerly not only in wiping out Jews but in assisting the Germans and Nazi-supporters such as the anti-Russian FInns to kill Russian troops. If Bush would have gone along with what Graham’s propaganda-magazine says he should have done, then Gorbachev would never have allowed the break-up of the Soviet Union, because it would quickly have meant war against Ukraine.
Basically, Graham is propagandizing for Biden to cross all of Russia’s (or ‘Putin’s’ — as-if Putin doesn’t really represent the Russian people) national-security red lines. Graham’s basic argument is that though the U.S. and its colonies (‘allies’) have their national security to protect, Russia (China, and other countries that America’s billionaires demand to control) don’t. This gives the U.S. regime carte blanche to subterfuge, coup, sanction, and/or outright invade, wherever and whenever they want to; or like Elon Musk famously said, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” (Britain’s Guardian featured an article on 25 November 2023, “‘We will coup whoever we want!’: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros. Challenging each other to cage fights, building apocalypse bunkers – the behaviour of today’s mega-moguls is becoming increasingly outlandish and imperial”. However, it’s not ONLY “the billionaire tech bros.” but ALL of U.S.-and-allied billionaires who control the U.S. Government and tolerate, if not outright demand, further expansion of the U.S. empire, regardless of the national-security needs of other countries.)
On 4 June 2024, the internationally well-known geostategic analyst Pepe Escobar headlined at youtube “Putin and China Issue a GRAVE Warning: Tensions Near Breaking Point”, and he reported that WW3 is wanted by Bilderberg=NATO because the billionaires who control Western Governments want to nullify Governments’ debts (such as America’s $36 trillion); they’re now desperate, and EU/NATO breakup will likely come soon. So: these post-Kamala-Harris articles from Donald Graham’s propaganda-mill Foreign Policy are clearly in line with that scenario by Escobar on June 4th, not because they are truthful or even realistic, but because they clearly display this desperation by the billionaires, to retain control over international institutions, and even their willingness to risk destroying the world in order to achieve it.
I don’t know whether Escobar is correct that cancellation of debts is an objective — much less a main objective — in this, but the reality of the rest of his analysis is hard to refute; and, on 18 October 2024, I headlined an article documenting this, “The Collapsing U.S. Empire.” It opened:
The neoconservative dream, ever since neoconservatism started on 25 July 1945, has been for the U.S. Government to take over the entire world, but this 79-year-old dream for them (nightmare for everyone else) has now practically ended, because after having played nuclear chicken against Russia ever since that date, the U.S. Government has finally — as-of 9 October 2024 (Biden’s cancellation then of his planned October 12th Ukraine-war victory summit at America’s Rammstein Air Force Base in Germany) — come to the painful realization that their plan (ever since at least 2006) to win a nuclear war against Russia, is unrealistic, and would only leave this planet virtually uninhabitable, a lose-lose war for both sides, instead of to produce the neocons’ ardently hoped-for win-lose war (in which, of course — as the neocons have imagined — the U.S. regime emerges victorious) against Russia.
The neoconservative chorus (singing to the music of America’s billionaires) are trying to persuade the U.S. public to support what is, effectively, all-out U.S.-and-‘allied’ aggression against Russia. All of this is based upon the lie that Russia started Ukraine’s war on 24 February 2022, America didn’t start it on 20 February 2014.
On October 10, I headlined “Biden’s plan calls for WW3 to start after Election Day.” People such as Donald Graham evidently want it to turn out to be true — notwithstanding that America’s Government — NOT Russia’s, had started this war. I still have some hope that it won’t. But if it won’t, then Biden will lose his most ardent supporters, neocons (which include virtually all U.S. billionaires — even the ones who prefer Trump). They will feel that he betrayed them. And, in that case, it will have been so — he did.
However, in either case, a deluge will come soon. Because the collapse of the American empire will not be able to go smoothly. I agree with Escobar on that.
The post How & Why the Washington Post‘s Former Owner Now Pushes Biden to Go Nuclear Against Russia first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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‘Indigenous communities must have better political representations to ensure our rights are protected both constitutionally and in practice,‘ says Victoria Maladaeva, and Indigenous peoples’ rights defender from Russia. Victoria was also a participant in ISHR’s Women Rights Advocacy Week this year. She spoke to ISHR about her work and goals.
Hello Victoria, thanks for accepting to tell us your story. Can you briefly introduce yourself and your work?
Sure! I’m a Buryat anti-war decolonial activist, co-founder of the Indigenous of Russia Foundation.
What inspired you to become involved in the defence of human rights?
Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Indigenous peoples, particularly Buryat, have been hit the hardest. I wanted to help my people, fight the Russian propaganda and raise awareness about systemic colonial oppression and discrimination faced by Indigenous people and ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation.
What would Russia and your community look like in the future if you achieved your goals, if the future you are fighting for became a reality?
The country needs a large-scale transformation— political, economic, and cultural. Indigenous communities must have better political representations to ensure our rights are protected both constitutionally and in practice. Genuine democratic reforms involve fundamental rights for self-determination and autonomy where Indigenous peoples gain control of their land and resources. Putin’s constitution’s amendments to national Republics must be reversed, our languages must be mandatory in all schools, universities, and institutions where Indigenous communities live.
How do you think your work is helping make that future come true?
I’m advocating for the rights of Indigenous peoples with international stakeholders and institutions to raise awareness about issues faced by our communities and spreading awareness, producing documentaries, and mobilising diasporas.
Have you been the target of threats or attempts at reprisals because of your work?
Unfortunately, yes. There have been threats because of my anti-war activism and for shedding light on the disproportionate mobilisation in the Republic of Buryatia. For some reason, my colleagues and I were denied participation in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. I would like to believe this was a mistake and that there was no influence from the Russian delegation at the UN.
Do you have a message for the UN and the international community?
Russia needs decolonisation and de-imperialisation. Without revising the past and acknowledging colonial wars (not only in Ukraine) and discrimination, there can be no bright future for Russia—free and democratic. The international and anti-imperialist community should acknowledge that the Russian government is not for any anti-colonial movement. Stand in solidarity with independent Indigenous activists!
https://ishr.ch/defender-stories/human-rights-defenders-story-victoria-maladaeva-from-russia
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
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I am always leery of hubris. It may be true that all people of good now want ‘the fall’ of Israel, after a century of lies, deceit, killing and more killing, first by the British and European Jews, then by the US and European Jews, now by Britain-US-EU-Israel and European and Arab Jews. But compassion does not pay the bills. The stakes keep mounting, along with high tech death toys, and it’s very hard to image Israel on the verge of collapse. It, and world Jewry, have never been so rich, so powerful in all history.The major world powers – the ‘collective West’, China, India, Russia – provide it with most of the death toys and the fuel to run them. None of these hard-nosed political schemers want to see Israel collapse, nor do any of them lose much sleep over the plight of the Palestinians. I, like many others today, am devoting my life to help free Palestine and really, really don’t want to be disappointed, so I’ll temper my enthusiasm, hold off on celebrating the end of the monstrosity. I am not counting any chickens yet. It’s a long way till the final act when the fat lady belts out her last hava nagila.
Dan Steinbock has written a book titled The Fall of Israel: The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy & Military (2025). Steinbock is a leading international economic expert who has put his chips on the side of BRICS and multipolarism. That’s where the future is and the ‘collective West’ better wake up soon as it is being left behind. And that includes Israel, as the West’s swan song to 19th century imperial glory. He is CEO and founder of Difference Group (Paul Krugman is a member of the board), its purpose: In the past, the West drove the global economic prospects. Today, that role belongs to the Global South. We help governments, institutions, businesses, and NGOs navigate in the new and complex, multipolar environment.
The thesis of The Fall is simple: Aiming to turn a secular democracy into a Jewish autocracy/ theocracy, the most far-right government in the history of Israel has continued to push this judicial coup amid the fog of war. These cleavages in the Israeli society figure large in its political disintegration.
Most analysis of the dilemmas Israel faces looks to the occupation of the Palestinian territories in the 1967 War and the subsequent expansion of Jewish settlements as the chief problem. They are its proximate effect; following directly on the ethnic expulsions of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. Steinbock makes it clear the Israelis never had any interest in anything but one Jews-only state, which was sort of achieved in the 1950s. Everything thereafter is footnotes.1 A pro-forma future two-state solution with present de facto one-state realities.2
The US is both the problem, having encouraged Israel in its expansion from 1948 on, feeding it with lethal weapons, financing settlements condoning ethnic cleansing and murder on a daily basis, and the solution, as the current genocidal monster Israel would indeed ‘fall’ at the ‘twinkling of an eye’ if the US closed the spigot.
The last US president to try that was Bush I, whose feeble attempt to stop the settlement expansion led to his humiliating defeat from a vengeful Israel lobby a few months later in 1992. The penultimate protest, JFK’s stand against Israel acquiring nukes, led to his assassination and replacement by Israel sycophant LBJ. With both Republican and Democratic parties in lockstep today, supporting Israel’s textbook genocide, the only hope is public opinion, anti-apartheid activism, which is increasingly criminalized in the ‘collective West’.
Steinbock points to the mid-50s as the moment of truth, though we can go back to Jabotinsky in the 1920s, or Ben Gurion in the fateful 1948, when the slaughter began in earnest and was clear, certainly to the Palestinians, if not to a still naive collective West. The ‘bilateral’ ties with Washington and massive US military aid kicked in then and have reached staggering proportions now, a virtual blank cheque to reak havoc, no end in sight.
These ties led to such new-old doctrines as the Dahiya (suburb) doctrine of carpet bombing civilians, the Hannibal directive to murder Israelis stupid enough to be taken hostage, and mass assassination factories, backed by pioneering artificial intelligence. The socialism of labor Zionism was replaced by the hard-right coalitions driven by revisionist Zionism, thanks to US neoliberal economic policies, assertive neoconservatism and Jewish-American donors. It also explains the rise of the Messianic far-right, centrist parties, and the failure of the Left.
The Fall of Israel covers the country’s political and ethnic divides, economic polarization, social and military changes, the shifts in the Palestinian struggle for sovereignty, the apartheid regime in the occupied territories, the genocidal atrocities, the regional and global reverberations, and the ensuing human and economic costs, both prior and subsequent to Israel’s fatal war on Gaza. Not to mention the domestic hell – the economic polarization, the collapse of innovative, high tech start-ups, the talent brain drain, the undermined welfare state, rising poverty and the subsidized religious sector.
Steinbock documents the three waves of settlers from 1948, the last following the 1993 Oslo Accords, which should have ended the settlements, but was so flawed that it allowed their acceleration, now under policing by the Palestinian Authority, even as Hamas was elected in Gaza, and the PA totally discredited, but still the de facto ‘authority’, now just a fig leaf for creeping genocide. Israeli attacks on Palestinians increased, killing Palestinians on a daily basis, with occasional massive bombings of Gaza (2008, 2009, 2014, 2023) killing thousands each time.
Steinbock documents the atrocities, the complicity of the US. His many charts show the massive increase in West Bank land seizures in 2023, clearly part of a push to fully steal all the West Bank, even as there is no ‘exit strategy’ for the millions of Palestinians still alive. We know what Netanyahu would like to do to each and every one of those vermin, and at this point US politicians are more or less united on letting him ‘finish the job’. Steinbock (and all of us) pin our hopes on world mass opinion. None of the world leaders apart from the Axis of Resistance can be counted on. Arab leaders loathe the pesky Palestinians almost as much as US-Israel does. It is only the revolting masses that stand between them and the Palestinians.
Tactics? Strategy? Duh …
Their only strategy to achieve Apartheid 2.0 is denial of the facts on the ground, starting from 1948, denying the ethnic ‘cleansing’, the mass slaughter, the erasure of hundreds of Palestinian villages. Israelis pay no attention to the current slaughter, most hoping that the IDF and settlers kill all Palestinians still breathing. Israelis tactics are violence, murder, theft. In short, terrorism. But this is also its strategy since 1948, along with ‘divide and conquer’ of its Arab neighbors.
Steinbock doesn’t take seriously the option of total erasure of the Palestinians, though that is the stated goal of Israeli leaders. The victory of the dead. But even if they could dump the Palestinians in Sinai, that is not a strategy which can bring peace, which would require negotiating with your own dispossessed citizens, and neighbors. In good faith. Which is impossible for Israel, as it is terrorizing its own Arab and its neighbors. In short, Israel can only survive through 24/7 terror, which is very expensive and means 24/7 US military aid. This can continue only as long as the US can keep printing dollars to cover its own massive debt. 18% of government spending is just to pay interest on this debt. As this continues to increase, eventually the US will be bankrupt, unable to function under the mountain of debt. This inevitable bankruptcy of the US will finally hit Israel, bringing to an end the blank cheque on its daily horrors, but I keep reminding myself, it took Rome four centuries to finally collapse collapse.
What is particularly creepy is how Israel has used Palestinians as guinea pigs for testing its weapons of crowd control, now touting itself as the leader in the technology of totalitarian mind-body control. The only growth industry now for Israel is producing weapons, spyware, i.e., anything disgusting and lethal. This also began in the 1950s as Israel settled in to its schizoid de facto one-state- Jews-only state. The Israel Military Industry (IMI) began collaboration with the IDF, aiming to develop the most technologically advanced small arms systems for troops fighting in urban areas and harsh environments. The state-owned IMI (i.e., socialized death toys) was privatized in 2018, when it was taken over by Elbit Systems. (Poor Elbit is now the victim of western activists, who forced it to close up shop in Britain. Elbit has become our calling card for smashing windows and splashing red paint.)
Israel has had to work very hard to overcome its notoriety as terrorist and mass killer. And it worked! By the early 1980s, more than 50 countries on five continents had become customers for Israeli killing technology. Israel added some sugar to its military toys, famously bragging about its agricultural successes in ‘making the desert bloom,’ and uses that as PR abroad about how nice Israel really is. That and weapons, ‘butter and guns’, though its ‘butter’ is all milked from stolen land, and its guns are used not to defend, but to suppress popular uprisings in oppressive Israel-like regimes around the world.
Yes, Dahiya and Hannibal, but these ‘doctrines’ are merely (disgusting, inhuman) tactics rather than winning long run strategies. Israel’s tactics/ strategy have been violence, denial, theft with the goal of a Jews-only state, ignoring the natives who lived there, and then more violence. Which apparently works for world elites, including not just the US, but Chinese, Indian and Russian. No one besides plucky South Africa, Colombia and Bolivia have broken relations with the monster, despite rivers of crocodile tears.
The Palestinian strategy is primarily nonviolent resistance with a militant wing occasionally fighting back, which is fully legal for a nation under occupation but condemned as terrorism. Funny how the real terrorists call the shots. The militants address the egregious crimes of the occupiers; they do not target civilians, even medevac helicopters.3 This strategy of compassion for the wounded is based on Islam, where rules of engagement with the enemy are nonnegotiable. Another religious principle rejects assassination of enemy leaders.
Such ethical behavior is alien to Israel, which has assassinated hundreds of Palestinian, Lebanese, etc leaders, ‘rationally’ reasoning that the enemy will collapse without them. When Israel assassinates Palestinian leaders, they are mourned, they become martyrs, inspiring the next generation. Whatever personal flaws Nasrallah may have had, he is now a saint, an inspiration to all freedom-loving people. His body parts were gathered and temporarily hidden to prevent Israel from bombing them, and eventually will be buried probably in Karbala. Sinwar’s body was captured by Israel and most likely will not be returned (maybe dumped from a plane over the ocean like Bin Laden) as it will be a potent sword hanging over Israel’s head.
Israel’s mass murderers, such as Meir Kahane are gruesomely worshipped, but only by nutcase settlers. Israel has few such martyr-heroes, but then neither the Palestinians nor their Muslim allies target Israelis for assassination, not believing that it is a useful tactic or strategy, rather giving a romantic aura of martyrdom to any victim as indeed is the case when Israelis target Palestinians. The Palestinians’ goal is jannah, the path/ strategy is moral and ethical living, prayer, jihad, martyrdom. Tactics are waging war to the death against the enemy, picking up unexploded Israeli bombs and reusing them. All the time, appealing to humanity, to the basic decency of the outside world, calling on world opinion, boycotting, bringing criminal charges to bring peace.
Steinbock introduces necrotization, which seeks to transform a world of life into a world of death, because that is what displacement, dispossession and devastation ultimately require. It is the collective psychological obliteration of those who have nothing to lose, and therefore fight for their homes, refuse to move away, risk nothingness for being.4 Is this a strategy, or again just a tactic meant to kill or so disillusion Palestinians, so that whoever remains alive will be glad to leave. Whatever. It ignores the ‘last stand’ psychology of the dispossessed, who prefer to die fighting for their homes than to flee to a desolate refugee camp, so it really just amounts to genocide. It just occurred to me that a crude policy of terror, dispossession and genocide doesn’t need any subtleties like tactics vs strategy. The victory of the dead.
Jew vs Jew, Arab turmoil
The real showdown should be between the more universalist Jewish diaspora and the nationalist, racist Israeli Jews. Even as Trump is showered with Adelson’s millions to complete the Israeli dream of total control of the Middle East, some Jews are protesting, but have made zero difference politicly as the Democrats and Republicans are still in lockstep. So much for that strategy. What’s left? The brain drain and increased emigration of Jews from Israel as the crisis deepens. But that leaves the Kahane-ites in control. So much for that strategy.
He considers the rise of Islamic movements in particular the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt under al-Banna, which spread to all the Arab world, rivaled by Arab nationalism under Nasser and Hafez Assad. In all cases, the MBs were crushed by neocolonial regimes, and then attempts to promote Arab nationalism failed, descending into personal dictatorships. Muslims make poor nationalists. Islam rejects ideologies that interfere with being good Muslims. In Iraq the Baath party reformers finally ending in the humiliating defeat of atheistic Saddam Hussein (who called on Allah in a panic at the end). Though battered, the MBs remain the only survivors of a century of anti-imperialist struggle, still determined to face off against the Zionist occupiers.
With Israel commanding everyone’s undivided attention, the Arab world remains shamefully ‘divided and conquered’, resentful, even hostile to Shia Iran’s lifeline to Gaza and Lebanon. Jordan and Saudi assistance to US-Israel to shoot down Iran’s missiles will never be erased. Jordan and Saudi leaders have a lot to account for before their people. Only when Israel is eventually brought to justice, can the Middle East develop more naturally. Islam remains the bedrock, and Islamic reforms will be the way forward, based now on the experience of the past century, including Egypti’s MB, Islamic Iran and Afghanistan. The Saudis and Gulf emirates are remnants of 19th century British imperialism and do not represent the future of the Egyptian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian, etc masses. But until the enemy is defeated, we must stand shoulder to shoulder (though the Saudis et al should keep a look out over theirs).
Russia, China
Steinbock doesn’t make predictions on their account. He puts his hopes on BRICS, especially China’s hint at engagement, its brokering Saudi-Iranian reconciliation, and Palestinian factions uniting. The latter was called the Beijing Declaration, calling for a larger-scale Israeli-Palestinian peace conference and a timetable to implement a two-state solution.
I think it is a mistake to be too hopeful. Russia and Chinese have highly developed economic relations with Israel; Russia provides it with the oil to use to bomb Palestinians; China is Israel’s largest trade partner – 18% of trade vs 10% for US and 2.5% for Russia. Chinese investment is more than US$15b, spawning seed capital in Israeli startup companies, as well as the acquisition of Israeli companies by major Chinese corporations that incorporate Israel’s know how to help invigorate the development of the modern Chinese economy more efficiently. China ranked second in 2015 after the US on collaboration with Israeli high-tech firms that are backed by Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist. Neither Russia nor China want to see Israel collapse. BRICS is not a coherent economic force. We are stuck with US-Israel, the Axis of Resistance, the Palestinian now scattered around the world, working with the handful of anti-Zionist diaspora Jews, until the US itself collapses. That seems to be our strategy.
All countries listen to China, Israel included. It would be lost if China made an serious move to threaten its economic ties. China’s recent two-state proposals prompted Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority to move forward with plans to present a joint political vision for rehabilitating the Gaza Strip and establishing a Palestinian state after the Israel-Hamas war. To preempt such schemes, Netanyahu’s office presented its own vision of ‘Gaza 2035’ in May. The Israeli proposal labels Gaza as an ‘Iranian outpost’, taunting the quisling Arab leaders as ineffectual, traitors, allies of the hated Israel. So Gaza can be taken, as it isn’t really part of the Arab world, but an Iranian outpost which must be destroyed. More tactic than strategy and very silly. Israel would mobilize the emirates and Saudis to divvy out aid to Gazans and hunt down and eliminate Hamas, much like the Oslo Accords got the PA to police Palestinians as settlements proceeded. After 15 years, if things go well, some limited autonomy would be allowed, all the while under Israeli hegemony.
Steinbock puts his eggs in China’s basket in his vision of any future Middle East peace. At each step, China is filling in where the US fears (or is too lazy) to tread. Re Egypt, in the absence of Israel’s full withdrawal from the occupied territories, the bilateral trust with Israel has been eroding for decades. Today it is sustained mainly by US aid, which is vital to bottomless-pit Cairo. Meanwhile China’s multibillion-dollar economic cooperation initiatives are fostering rather than undermining Egyptian development. Ditto Jordan, where China is building a national railway network, an oil pipeline to link Iraq and Jordan, and a new Jordan-China university. Egypt and Jordan, weak and corrupt, are throwing themselves at China’s feet, much like Iran did over the past decade. China is waging a positive-sum war against/ with the world, promising prosperity and Chinese hegemony as a package deal. (At least this is not the subtle Bretton Woods ‘prosperity and US imperialism’.)
China’s Belt Road Initiative has reached around the world, despite US attempts to sabotage China with its own rail-ship road from India through the Middle East to Europe, but that assumes Saudi compliance, which is dead-on-arrival now. One can only laugh in disbelief as US hegemony is being K-Oed by the Chinese economic fist – everywhere. Unlike US-Israel, China has a clear strategy of nonzero sum cooperation with all, promising advantages where past ‘aid’ meant corruption, misuse of funds, more debt.
The US-China economic rivalry is providing lots of brainstorming by potential participants in both hopeful outcomes, but China remains cautious, more or less abiding by US sanctions on Russia. BRICS at least has raised the profile of the South, given them collective clout though still much less than the collective West.
With the Ukraine war unending, Russia is now unofficially joining all anti-US efforts, probably providing Iran and the Houthis with satellite information to keep the Suez Canal out of commission and for accurate bombing, possibly even providing a few missiles and drones. Why not? The world really is going to Hell in a handbasket, and the ride is rocky but exciting and even hopeful, considering the bad guys seem to be doing everything wrong, pushing Putin into the hands of enemy.
Nuke time?
The ongoing war on multiple fronts from the Axis of Resistance, with 100,000s of Hezbollah bombs ready, could push Israel to use its nukes.5 The Begin ‘doctrine’ was ‘formulated’ to justify bombing Iraq’s nuclear facilities and is still in play against Iran. Several nuclear sites were bombed in October, though not the main sites, and were accompanied by a promise to bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities after the election.
Trump has already voiced his approval. But Iran’s success in bombing Israel twice in 2024 shows it has jumped ahead of Israel (and the US) in hypersonic missiles, which can be mobilized to really destroy little sitting-duck Israel. Israel is still loudly threatening Iran but my gut reaction is to imagine hundreds of hypersonic missiles reining down on Israel. Israelis are uniformly racist monsters now, so the civilian-military distinction is moot. When the whole world feels that way about you, all the king’s horse and all the king’s lackeys won’t be able to put Humpty-Dumpty together again.
In the West, Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), and the Abraham Accords (2020–2021) with some Gulf states are often portrayed as steps toward a two-state solution. In Israel, they are seen more as bilateral “normalization” deals with individual Arab countries that will over time marginalize or exclude Palestinians from a final peace solution. The Gaza War has jeopardized the future of such normalization agreements, while severely shuttering the existing deals. The trouble is neither the US nor Israel ever took the negotiations seriously. No one believed then or now that the two-state solution is possible. Meanwhile even US presidents don’t control things, as congress is completely in thrall to Israel and will not allow any pressure to be put on Israel to negotiate. The Knesset voted unanimously against a Palestinian state for the nth time (68, 9 Arab Israelis voting for a Palestinian state).
Given the likely Trump second term, funded by Adelson, probably none of this matters at all. Trump’s Project 2025 includes Project Esther, which plans to crush all anti-Israel dissent in the US and Europe and to create a Potemkin villlage of acceptable Palestinians, to be kept in line by Arab sheikhs with Israeli puppet masters. Netanyahu couldn’t have said it better.
Steinbock is hopeful re Russia, with its offer to Iran of S-400 anti-missile defense (a decade after Iran paid for them), showing the US that it is not the only kid on the block with nukes. But Steinbock’s only real hope is that world opinion, backed by a Jewish diaspora, will somehow click in and bring the US to its senses. I would add the Palestinian diaspora, which is already larger (in 2003 9.6m) than the Jewish one (8.5m), working together, will be the driving force of change. And Islam. It is the fastest growing religion (always has been) and the Middle East is now multiple-birthing Ziophobia and Islamophilia. It’s never been a better time to be a Muslim. We have a huge diaspora in the House of War. And we have Boycott Divest Sanction as the secular version of jihad. When Jews, Christians6 and Muslims can join forces, we can do anything.
The first real sign that South African apartheid would be dismantled was when (Jewish) MP Harry Schwarz met with ANC’s Mangosuthu Buthelezi to sign the Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith in 1974, enshrined the principles of peaceful transition of power and equality for all, the first such agreement by black and white political leaders in South Africa. But it took another 2 decades of struggle until de Klerk opened bilateral discussions with Nelson Mandela in 1993 for a transition of policies and government.
It seems we have reached that first stage today. Ehud Olmert, who served as the Israeli prime minister from 2006 to 2009, and Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian foreign minister from 2005 to 2006, met Pope Francis October 17, 2024, to promote a peace plan that would see a Palestinian state existing alongside the state of Israel ‘on the basis of 1967 borders’ with a few territorial adjustments. Their plan calls for the city of Jerusalem to be the capital of both Israel and Palestine, with the Old City being ‘administered by a trusteeship of five states of which Israel and Palestine are part.’
The post To Turn a Secular Democracy into a Jewish Autocracy first appeared on Dissident Voice.1 Dan Steinbock, The Fall if Israel: The Degradation of Israel’s Politics, Economy & Military, 2025</a>, p362.2 Israel has been in complete control of all lands since 1948. Palestinians who stayed were to be ethnically cleansed, killed or deported over time.3 There may be an implicit pact here: you let us retrieve our wounded soldiers and we will not starve you TO DEATH.4 Ibid., p126.5 Ibid., p350.6 I have given Christianity short shrift here, but ‘that’s life.’ The Palestinian Christians have been decimated already, hanging on only due to their Muslim friends.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Warnings are not enough. After Victoria Roshchyna’s death, we need zero tolerance of the detention and brutal treatment of female reporters
Last summer I began receiving messages about the disappearance of 26-year-old Victoria Roshchyna, a young Ukrainian journalist, who had gone missing while reporting from occupied east Ukraine.
Since we began our Women Press Freedom project, I and my colleagues at the Coalition for Women in Journalism have received a lot of messages of concern about the safety of female journalists all over the world, but I vividly remember the pain and terror that peppered the SOS calls from Roshchyna’s friends and colleagues.
Kiran Nazish is the director and founder of the Coalition for Women in Journalism and Women Press Freedom
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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Russia has threatened to file a lawsuit against Latvia in the UN International Court of Justice for allegedly racially discriminating against its Russian-speaking population, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced on Wednesday. Ethnic Russians make up nearly a quarter of the country’s population.
Speaking at a press briefing, Zakharova claimed that Russophobia had reached “a qualitatively new level, particularly in the Baltics” and that Moscow would seek to take “offensive actions to hold accountable states that violate their international obligations in the area of eliminating all forms of racial discrimination.”
Moscow has already filed pre-trial claims against Riga for its failure to comply with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965, Zakharova noted.
“We are talking about open discrimination against Russians, the glorification of Nazism, which are systemic in nature, and part of the targeted state policy of the Latvian authorities,” she explained.
She specified that these Russophobic policies are expressed in the disadvantaged status of non-citizens, the ban on education in Russian and its exclusion from all spheres of public life, the persecution of those who fought against Nazism – namely veterans of World War II – Riga’s attempts to erase the historical memory of the fight against Nazism, allowing annual marches of Latvian SS veterans, and the glorification of Nazi criminals.
“In order to hold Latvia accountable internationally for these violations, the Russian Federation has invoked the official dispute resolution procedure under Article 22 of the Convention,” Zakharova said, adding that Latvia will have to answer to the UN-based International Court of Justice if it continues to violate provisions against racial discrimination.
Since the escalation of the Ukraine crisis in 2022, relations between Russia and the Baltic states have significantly deteriorated. Latvia in particular has introduced a number of restrictions on Russian citizens.
These have included amendments to the country’s migration laws that make it more difficult for Russians to obtain extended residence permits, as well as extensive bans on the use of the Russian language – the second-most spoken language in the country – in nearly all spheres of life.
Earlier this year, one activist was even sentenced to three years in prison for displaying pro-Russian flags in her windows, while the Latvian National Theater has imposed a blanket moratorium on any performances in Russian.
The post Russia threatens EU country with racism lawsuit first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Thursday‘s record-long ICBM test indicated that Pyongyang’s missile program is being helped along by its closer ties to Russia, North Korea observers in the United States told Radio Free Asia.
Pyongyang fired what it called a new intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, which flew for about 87 minutes, the longest-ever flight of a North Korean ICBM, and landed in waters off northwest Japan, the South Korean and Japanese militaries said.
It was the first ICBM test since December, and the seventh in as many years.
“North Korea is getting ever more dangerous missile technology thanks to its new alliance with Russia, and I think yesterday’s test goes a long way to proving that,” Harry Kazianis, of the Washington-based Center for the National Interest thinktank, told RFA Korean.
Kazianis said it seemed like Pyongyang was gaining billions of U.S. dollars in economic aid and missile technology, or even nuclear weapons technology from Moscow.
He said that it appeared that neither Washington nor Seoul could do very much to address the threat posed by the Russia-North Korea alliance.
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“With Russia now bankrolling the Kim [Jong Un] family and China looking the other way when it comes to sanctions there is little that can be done—North Korea is in the drivers seat,” said Kazianis, adding that Russia’s interest in North Korea would wane if war in Ukraine were to end.
“The longer the Ukraine war goes the more powerful Kim Jong Un’s missile will become,” he said.
South Korea, Japan and the United States condemned the test, North Korea’s latest violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at curbing its development of nuclear weapons and the missiles to carry them around the world.
ICBM test timeline
North Korea first tested an ICBM in July 2017. It would test two more that year, including one in November that traveled for 50 minutes and reached an altitude of 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles).
Over the next five years, Pyongyang would not test any more ICBMs, but in March 2022, it launched another ICBM that blew up shortly after takeoff.
North Korea tested four more ICBMs in 2022 and 2023, and Thursday’s test was the first of 2024.
The launch came less than a week before the U.S. presidential election.
But regardless of who wins the election, Washington’s North Korea strategy will not be heavily influenced by missile tests, David Maxwell, vice president of the Washington-based Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, told RFA.
“It is doubtful that either Harris or Trump will be influenced to change policy in a way that will benefit [North Korean leader] Kim [Jong Un],” said Maxwell. “But does KJU think that Trump would serve him better? I think he would be mistaken and disappointed. I do not believe either he or Harris will provide the concessions he desires.”
Maxwell said that South Korea and the U.S. should recognize and counter Kim’s political warfare strategies and attempts to drive a wedge between them.
Reporting by Kim Soyoung for RFA Korean.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Eugene Whong for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Thae Yong Ho, North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, defected with his family to South Korea in 2016. At the time, he was the highest-ranking diplomat ever to defect to South Korea.
Thae was elected to the National Assembly in 2020, becoming the first North Korean escapee who had previously served in the North Korean government to join South Korea’s legislative body. He represents Seoul’s wealthy Gangnam district.
In July, he was appointed to the country’s Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, making him the first defector to hold a vice-ministerial position in the South Korean government. He said at the time that the appointment shows the North Korean people that those who have escaped can achieve success in the South.
Thae spoke to Radio Free Asia in Washington DC on Monday about reunification policy and the recent deployment of North Korean troops to Russia.
RFA: Welcome. What brings you to Washington DC?
Thae: My main purpose is to have a global strategic meeting with more than 60 members of the Peaceful Unification Advisory Committee, where I am now working as secretary general. My organization is attached to the presidency. We advise and follow the policies of the president of the Republic of Korea, especially on the issue of North Korea.
Before coming to Washington, I was in New York and Philadelphia. We had a policy seminar in New York on the Aug. 15 Reunification Doctrine put forward by President Yoon Sung Yol.
And on Sunday, we had a seminar with young Korean Americans, to which we invited Julie Turner, the U.S. ambassador on North Korean human rights.
In Washington, I’m also going to speak at several think tanks, and I’m planning to meet American politicians to talk about South Korea and America’s policy on North Korea.
RFA: In both the North and South, there are many people eager to reunify. But last November, Kim Jong Un put out a statement that he is no longer interested in reunification. He had many reunification terms deleted from textbooks and subway stations and also demolished a statue dedicated to unification. What do you think were his motives?
Thae: The main reason for this is that now, inside North Korea, dreams for possible unification with South Korea have grown due to the widespread South Korean cultural wave. Younger North Koreans know about South Korean movies and dramas and pop music.
So, Kim Jong Un wants to totally separate the North and South. Quite recently he cut off the railroads and road systems between North and South and started to build walls along the military demarcation line to give a kind of a strong message to the North Korean population that there will be no reunification anywhere in the near future. He wants to totally isolate North Korea from the rest of the world.
RFA: How do you think North Korean people inside the country – especially younger people – are reacting to this?
Thae: It is only Kim Jong Un and [his sister] Kim Yo Jong who have said “no reunification.” But North Korean media, like the state-run Rodong Sinmun or Central TV, haven’t legitimized Kim Jong Un’s no reunification policy.
In North Korea, people have been trained and brainwashed with the word “reunification” for quite a long time. Now, all of a sudden, Kim Jong Un is saying “no more talking about reunification.” So there is a lot of confusion now inside.
RFA: What were your thoughts when you watched the video footage of North Korean soldiers in a Russian facility?
Thae: When I first saw that video file, I wondered whether they were North Korean soldiers or not because they seemed very shabby compared with the Russian soldiers. They are very small. They looked very much malnourished, very hungry.
But later on many intelligence agencies worldwide confirmed that they are really North Korean soldiers. I was almost shocked because during my days in North Korea, I was educated that North Korean soldiers wouldn’t ever fight for the interests of other countries.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un visits the 2nd Corps of the Korean People’s Army at an undisclosed location in North Korea on Oct. 17, 2024. (Korean Central News Agency) Even inside North Korea, this deployment is kept as a kind of top secret. I’m still waiting to see what could be the new development by sending these soldiers to the Ukrainian war – whether they would fight well or whether Kim Jong Un’s policy to support Russia would fail. The next couple of weeks or months could be very crucial for the future of North Korea.
RFA: Even the Rodong Sinmun hasn’t mentioned the troops in Russia.
Thae: And maybe even the parents of those soldiers don’t know whether their sons have been sent by the North Korean regime.
RFA: South Korea’s intelligence service has reported that Russian defense official Sergei Shoigu went to North Korea last month to talk with Kim Jong Un about this issue. Also, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui went to Russia for meetings this week. Can you give us insight on how she plays a role in this?
Thae: The interest for North Korea is how much foreign currency they would get in return for these soldiers. North Korea is now in great difficulty economically because of its investments in nuclear and missiles and because of recent flooding. So maybe Choe Son Hui will ask the Russians to pay a lot.
Secondly, North Korea is thirsty for Russia’s new technology. Kim Jong Un has stated a couple of times that he would succeed with a military satellite before the end of the year.
But now we are in November already and North Korea hasn’t made any dramatic advancements toward a satellite launch. Kim Jong Un has also promised that he would launch a nuclear submarine but so far we haven’t seen any sign of that.
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Thirdly, Kim Jong Un wants to play a role as a game changer in world politics. For instance, when Kim Jong Un has had success with nuclear weapons and ICBMs, he has boasted that North Korea could be a country with strategic importance. But so far, he hasn’t shown to the world that North Korea is a strategically important country.
Former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong Ho sits for an interview at the Radio Free Asia studio in Washington, D.C., Oct. 28, 2024. But if North Korea can make an impact in the Ukraine war by sending their soldiers, then North Korea could say to the world that North Korea really is a game changer in world situations.
RFA: They can use that as propaganda.
Thae: That’s right. So the coming few weeks or months could be a very important period not only for North Korea, but I think for world security as well.
RFA: How do you think North Korean diplomats feel about the deployment?
Thae: I think all North Korean diplomats may be, at first, surprised. Secondly, they would be a little bit angry because these soldiers are sent to Ukraine to sacrifice their young lives just for, you know, the Kim Jong Un regime.
RFA: I remember that the South Korean defense minister said the soldiers will just be cannon fodder.
Thae: Yes, that’s right, and I’m not quite sure how many casualties North Korean soldiers may face. But if it gets serious and if there are many casualties from the side of North Korea, I think it could be remembered that they were sent for the interests of Kim Jong Un.
RFA: What do you think has been the role of the North Korean embassy in Moscow in preparing for this?
Thae: I think it’s been prepared for a while. You know, Russia used up most of their ammunition and then approached Kim Jong Un for help. That gave Kim Jong Un the opportunity to sell North Korean missiles and rockets to Russia. That then developed into sending soldiers.
The world should be united to make sure that this North Korean engagement in the Ukraine war is a failure. If North Korea succeeds in changing the current situation in Ukraine, I think the security framework on the Korean peninsula could get dangerous.
RFA: How do you view the response of the other embassies in North Korea to the troop deployment?
Thae: So far, it is not 100 percent proved that North Korea is engaged in the fight against Ukraine. But in the coming weeks or months, if there is clear proof that North Korean soldiers are really engaged in battle, then I think European countries should take more diplomatic sanctions against North Korea. Because it directly threatens peace on the European continent.
European countries could expel North Korean ambassadors to their countries or level down the current diplomatic relations with North Korea. And also the United Nations could further tighten the current sanctions regime against North Korea.
RFA: North Korea‘s UN mission first denied that North Korean troops are in Russia. But after the United States and NATO countries said it was confirmed – and also Vladimir Putin kind of hinted at it – suddenly North Korea’s Foreign Ministry put out a statement that basically said, “If it happened, it was within international law.” So why do you think they keep changing their word?
Thae: North Korea isn’t quite sure whether their soldiers will have any success in the war. Later on, if there’s no victory or some kind of great defeat, that could cause direct damage to Kim Jong Un’s leadership. So that’s why North Korea won’t acknowledge or deny. They want to keep a kind of ambiguity on this matter.
RFA: What do you think will be the overall effect on South Korea’s national security?
Thae: It could have a great effect. First of all, North Korean soldiers are testing their ability to fire their manufactured rockets and guns at the war front. They’ll figure out shortcomings and work on improving them. And secondly, North Korean troops are gaining experience on a real battleground.
RFA: Are you concerned that South Korea and North Korea will have any hostile activity anytime soon?
Thae: North Korea has been very provocative but I don’t think that the current inter-Korean relations will develop into conflict or war because now, for North Korea, this is the time for it to earn money and new technology. That’s why they’re sending more missiles, rockets, ammunition and even soldiers.
RFA: Do you have anything to say to any North Korean soldiers in Russia or Ukraine who may hear this interview?
Thae: I strongly urge them to escape because this really is a rare opportunity for them to defect. And I really strongly urge them to come to South Korea and enjoy freedom and human rights as human beings. There is no point for the young soldiers of North Korea to sacrifice their lives for Kim Jong Un.
RFA: What message do you have about unification?
Thae: Unification is the only way for all North Korean citizens to become happy and free. Kim Jong Un may continue to use all his available assets for the development of nuclear weapons and missiles.
But the North Korean people, they are also human beings so they deserve freedom and a normal life like the people of the rest of the world. Why should the North Korean people live like a hostage of the Kim Jong Un regime?
Edited by Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jaewoo Park for Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The recently concluded 2024 BRICS (an acronym for the combined economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazan and attended by scores of Global South leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Berlin, October 24, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Apple Inc. to reinstate two mobile apps belonging to the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which were removed from the Russian App Store at the request of state media regulator Roskomnadzor.
“Apple’s actions restrict access to vital information and embolden authoritarian regimes seeking to silence independent media in countries like Russia,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “We call on Apple to uphold press freedom and ensure that people have access to objective and unbiased news.”
Apple informed RFE/RL in a letter that it had removed the app of Current Time TV, a Russian-language digital network operated by RFE/RL, because it contained content deemed illegal in Russia and included materials from an organization classified as “undesirable” by Russian authorities, RFE/RL reported on October 18.
In an October 22 post on X, RFE/RL said Apple’s compliance with the Russian government’s request was “part of a trend to deny people in authoritarian countries access to uncensored information.”
A representative from RFE/RL confirmed to CPJ that the app of Radio Azattyk, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, was also removed.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Roskomnadzor has blocked the websites of RFE/RL, including its Russian Service, Radio Svoboda, and Current Time.
On March 6, 2022, RFE/RL suspended its operations in Russia in response to government actions aimed at forcing its Russian division out of business. In February 2024, the Russian Justice Ministry officially labeled RFE/RL as “undesirable.”
As of late September, Apple had removed nearly a hundred of VPN services from its Russian App Store. Roskomnadzor publicly acknowledged the blocking of only 25 VPN apps at its request.
VPNs can be used by Russians to gain access to censored news and information.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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It’s been a long time but worth remembering, if you can, that when the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, the whole world watched in horror. The events of that day were repeated on television over and over and over again, to the point where they became afterimages lodged in people’s minds.
As a result, although the buildings were not brought down by the impact of planes (no plane hit Building 7) but by explosives planted in the buildings (see this and this, among extensive evidence), most people thought otherwise, just as they thought that the subsequent linked anthrax attacks were directed by Osama bin Laden when they were eventually proven to have originated from a U.S. military lab (thus an inside job), and, as a result of a massive Bush administration/corporate media propaganda campaign, most Americans supported the invasion of Afghanistan, the subsequent invasion of Iraq, and decades of endless wars that continue to this day, bringing us to the edge of nuclear war with Iran and Russia.
It is impossible to understand the United States’ full-fledged support today for Israel’s genocide in the Middle East without understanding this history. Israel’s genocide is the United States’ genocide; they cannot be separated.
All these wars involve the machinations of the neo-conservative clique that in 1997 formed the Project for the New American Century that ran George W. Bush’s administration and whose protégées have come to exert great control of the foreign policies of Democratic and Republican administrations since. It is not that they lacked power before this, as a study of American foreign policy as far back as the Lyndon Johnson administration and its non-response to Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty confirms.
Contrary to the widespread claims that Israel runs U.S. Middle East foreign policy, I think it is important to emphasize that the reverse is true.
It is convenient to claim the tail wags the dog, but it is false.
Israel’s war crimes are U.S. war crimes. If the U.S. wanted to stop Israel’s genocide and expansion of war throughout the region, it could do so immediately, for Israel is totally reliant on U.S. support for its existence – as they like to say, “It’s existential.”
All the news to the contrary is propaganda. It is a sly game of responsibility ping-pong: shift the blame, keep the audience guessing as they hit their little hollow ball back and forth.
Control of the Middle East’s oil supplies and travel routes has been key to American foreign policy for a very long time. Such geo-political control is linked to the United States’ endless war on Russia and the control of natural resources throughout the vast region (a look at a map is requisite), stretching from the Middle East to southwest Asia up through the Black and Caspian Seas through Ukraine into Russia.
In both cases, the attacks of September 11, 2001 and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians whose ultimate target is Iran (America’s key enemy in the region as far back as the CIA’s 1953 coup d’état against Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh), savage wars of extermination have been promoted through decades of carefully orchestrated propaganda. In the former case, through the mainstream corporate media’s magic of repetitive cinematic images, and in the latter, through their absence. To be shown photos of many thousands of dead and mutilated Palestinian children does not serve the U.S./Zionist’s interests. Propaganda’s methods must be flexible. Show, conceal.
The September 11 attacks and the current genocide, each in its own way, have been justified and paid for with similar but different credit cards without spending limits, the so-called wars on terror waged on the visual credit card of planes hitting buildings preceded and followed by endless pictures of Osama bin Laden, and the genocide of Palestinians on the holocaust credit card minus images of slaughtered Palestinians or any awareness of the terrorist history of the Zionist’s century-long racial nationalist settler movement of “ethnically cleansing” Palestinians from their land.
To know this, one has to read books, but they have been replaced by cell phones, functional illiteracy being the norm, even for college graduates who are treated to four years of wokeness education and anti-intellectualism that reduces their thinking to mush and graduates them with sciolistic minds at best. I am being kind.
The eradication of historical knowledge and the devaluation of the written word are key to ignorance of both issues. Digital media and cell phones are the new books, all few hundred words on an issue conveying information that conveys ignorance. Guy DeBord put it succinctly: “That which the spectacle ceases to speak of for three days no longer exists.” Amnesia is the norm.
To which I might add: that which the mass media spectacle continues to speak of or show images of for many days exists, even if it doesn’t. It exists in the minds of virtual people for whom images and headlines create reality. The electronic media is not only addictive but hypnotically effective, producing cyber people divorced from the material world. News and information have become a form of terrorism used to implode all mental defenses, similar to the floors at the World Trade Center that went down boom, boom, boom.
The war crimes of US/Israel are readily available for viewing outside the coverage of the corporate mainstream media. Most of the world views them, but these are the unreal people, the ones who don’t count as human beings. These war crimes are massive, ruthless, and committed proudly and without an ounce of shame. To face this fact is not acceptable.
Those who pretend ignorance of them are guilty of bad faith.
Those who support either Harris or Trump are guilty of bad faith twice over, acting as if either one does not support genocide or that genocide is a minor matter in the larger scheme of things.
Choosing “the lesser of two evils” is therefore an act of radical evil hiding behind the mask of civic duty.
That it is commonplace only confirms these words from the English playwright Harold Pinter’s extraordinary Nobel Address in 2005:
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El
Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
Little has changed since 2005, except that these crimes have increased along with the propaganda denying them, together with vastly increased censorship – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Russia via Ukraine, etc. – all targets of U.S. bombs, just like Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, etc. Now the U.S. has brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and the voting public is all worked up over choosing between candidates supporting genocide and the massively expanded Israel attack on neighboring countries. It is a frightening spectacle of moral indifference and stupidity as we await the Israel/U.S. bombing of Iran and Iran’s response.
Yet I ask myself and I ask you: Is there a connection between the voting public’s support for these war criminals and attention deficit disorder, amnesia, and dementia?
Or is this embrace of the demonic twins’ – US/Israel – foreign policy a sign of something far worse? A death wish?
Soul death?
The post Soul Suicide in the Ballot Box as Palestinians Are Butchered first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The death toll in Russia’s war on Ukraine is reaching alarming new heights. Roughly 1 million soldiers and civilians on both sides have been killed or wounded, a recent in-depth review of available data published by the Wall Street Journal found. As Russia attempts to secure key towns and cities in the Donbas region, the war of attrition along the front line has become extremely violent as the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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A spokesperson for Kansas City’s KCXL defended its former Radio Sputnik programming as “produced in Washington, DC, by American journalists who jumped at the chance to not be told what to report on by big media and big corporations” (Desk, 10/15/24).
Russian state radio network Radio Sputnik is off the air in the two markets on which it aired in the United States, and the cause of the closure is reportedly US government sanctions.
The Desk (10/15/24), quoting “one source familiar with the decision to wind down the network,” said “it was directly influenced by the US State Department’s imposition of new sanctions on Russia-backed broadcast outlets last month.”
“While Sputnik was not specifically named by the State Department,” the Desk reported, the sanctions did hit Sputnik‘s parent company, a Russian government media agency called Rossiya Segodnya. This “made it difficult to continue leasing time on Washington and Kansas City radio stations where its programming was heard.”
The State Department (9/13/24) accused Rossiya Segodnya of carrying out “covert influence activities”; earlier (9/4/24), it had named Sputnik itself as well as Rossiya Segodnya as “foreign missions.” Significantly, the executive order under which Rossiya Segodnya was sanctioned extends penalties to the property of anyone who “acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly…any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.”
‘Years of criticism’
When Moscow does it, it’s “propaganda”; when Washington does it, it’s the Voice of America (10/16/24).
US government broadcaster Voice of America (10/16/24) said Sputnik‘s departure comes “after years of criticism that its local [Washington] radio station, WZHF, carries antisemitic content and false information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The VoA did not offer any evidence of its claims of antisemitism, other than saying Jack Bergman, a Republican congressman from Michigan, “cited a steady stream of antisemitic tropes.” (Critical profiles of Sputnik‘s US programming have not previously charged it with antisemitism–Washington Post, 3/7/22; New York Post, 3/28/22.)
Sputnik’s departure from US airwaves is sudden but not unexpected. Communications lawyer Arthur Belendiuk, who has represented the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, has been trying to shut down Sputnik via the Federal Communications Commission since February (Radio and Television Business Report, 2/1/24).
Belendiuk maintains that the network “is in violation of commission rules for broadcasting ‘paid Russian state propaganda’” (Radio and Television Business Report, 10/16/24). He told FAIR that while he understood Sputnik had freedom of speech, he also had a “freedom to petition my government.” Bergman, the Republican congressmember, requested that the FCC take action against Sputnik (Inside Radio, 1/5/24).
The pressure has been building against the radio network for some time. VoA reported that the National Association of Broadcasters had issued a statement in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine calling on “broadcasters to cease carrying any state-sponsored programming with ties to the Russian government or its agents.”
The Washington Post (3/7/22) also noted:
In 2017, three Democratic members of Congress sought an investigation into why it was still on the air despite evidence that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at the time, Ajit Pai, declined to take action, saying the First Amendment would bar his agency “from interfering with a broadcast licensee’s choice of programming, even if that programming may be objectionable to many listeners.”
Chilling effect on speech
In 2020, the New York Times (2/13/20) called the arrival of Radio Sputnik in Kansas City “an unabashed exploitation of American values and openness.” Those loopholes have subsequently been closed.
I have been interviewed several times on Sputnik programs about my articles here at FAIR (e.g. By Any Means Necessary, 4/26/23, 5/27/23, 9/27/23). I have objected to much of the network’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which its website still calls a “special operation,” as if it’s gallbladder surgery. But I am open to talking as a source to many forms of media.
Sanctions that scare broadcasters against carrying Sputnik do carry a chilling effect on speech; if programmers know that a certain kind of content could open them up to government punishment, most are going to steer well clear of that content.
The feds have made it clear that their punishments are serious. In 2009, New York City small-business owner Javed Iqbal “was sentenced…to nearly six years in prison for assisting terrorists by providing satellite television services to Hezbollah’s television station, Al Manar” (New York Times, 4/23/09). This is an outlet that Middle East reporters constantly monitor, as they do with lots of other Middle East media.
The New York Times (2/13/20) called Sputnik “Russian agitprop,” carrying the message that “that America is damaged goods.” The Kansas City Star editorial board (3/4/22) said that listeners to KCXL, which carried Sputnik programming, were “bombarded with pro-Putin talk” thanks to Sputnik. The paper wondered why such programming was airing in the area. “Money talks,” the board said. “Or maybe we should say rubles.”
These critiques are hard to argue with, as you’d be hard-pressed to find investigations of the Russian government or its business elite in such media. Government broadcasters, whether it’s VoA or Sputnik, are not meant to be fair and balanced newsrooms, but vehicles to convey official thinking about the news to the rest of the world.
But Ted Rall, the cartoonist and political commentator who co-hosted the Sputnik show Final Countdown, challenged the idea that Sputnik’s content was government-managed. “We were no one’s dupes,” he wrote in an email to FAIR explaining the end of the network’s airing in the US:
I have worked in print and broadcast journalism for most of my life in a variety of roles at a wide variety of outlets, and I cannot recall an organization that gave me as much freedom to say whatever I felt like about any topic whatsoever.
He said that his show offered “an incredibly interesting, intelligent roster of political analysts,” which he believed were on par with “the finest journalists at NPR, the major broadcast networks or anywhere else.”
‘Growing wave of threats’
The president of the US equivalent of Radio Sputnik said that its operations being shut down in Russia “shows that Moscow considers independent reporting to be ‘an existential threat’” (RFE/RL, (2/20/24). So what does the shutting down of Sputnik show?
Belendiuk, for his part, called Sputnik’s content “divisive.” That’s a term that could be applied to lots of US radio content, like right-wing talk shows and religious broadcasting that consigns nonbelievers to Hell. The FCC’s Fairness Doctrine has been gone for a while (Extra!, 1–2/05; Washington Post, 2/4/21). At FAIR,we have long documented that US corporate media serve a propaganda function for the US government, much of it false or deceptive.
But when official enemy states treat US-owned outlets the way the US is treating Russia’s, that’s considered an assault on a free press. When the US’s anti-Russia broadcaster, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (2/20/24), was put on a government watch list that “effectively bans RFE/RL from working in Russia and exposes anyone who cooperates with the outlet to potential prosecution,” the outlet reported that its president, Stephen Capus, responded that “the move shows that Moscow considers independent reporting to be ‘an existential threat.’”
And when Russia barred a VoA reporter from entering the country, the CEO of the government agency that runs both VoA and RFE/RL, Amanda Bennett, told VoA (3/14/24):
The Russian government’s decision to ban VoA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin from its country echoes a growing wave of threats to press freedom by authoritarian regimes.
That’s heavy stuff, but ultimately the US is doing the same thing. In the case of Sputnik, sanctions seemed to have crushed the network. RT America fell without overt government pressure, as it shut down its operations after “DirecTV, the largest US satellite TV operator, stopped carrying RT America…a decision based on Russia’s attack on Ukraine” (CNBC, 3/3/22).
And the US State Department (1/20/22) said:
RT and Sputnik’s role as disinformation and propaganda outlets is most obvious when they report on issues of political importance to the Kremlin. A prevalent example is Russia’s use of RT and Sputnik to attempt to change public opinions about Ukraine in Europe, the United States, and as far away as Latin America. When factual reporting on major foreign policy priorities is not favorable, Russia uses state-funded international media outlets to inject pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda into the information environment.
Harsh, but again, this is what state broadcasters have been doing for decades, and if we as Americans dislike American outlets being blocked abroad, then we are, at this point, getting a taste of our own medicine.
‘Begin with the least popular victim’
Reporters Without Borders dropped the US’s press freedom ranking in 2024, “thanks in part to consolidation that has gutted local news and forced corporations to prioritize profits over public service” (Axios, 5/7/24).
Actions like the moves against Sputnik are troubling, and not just as another sign of a roiling new Cold War. While the US prides itself on being a model of free expression, journalists here have been concerned for some time now about the nation’s decline in press freedom (Axios, 5/7/24; FAIR.org, 3/16/21).
“In this situation, journalists should be absolutely terrified that the US government will come after them next,” Rall said. “President Biden unilaterally killed a media outlet with the stroke of a pen. Yes, it’s a foreign outlet, but the First Amendment is supposed to protect those.”
For FAIR, the action against Sputnik seems no less dangerous than local government attempts to silence even small domestic outlets like the Marion County Record (FAIR.org, 8/14/23) and the Asheville Blade (FAIR.org, 6/8/23). For example, the New York Times (10/21/24) recently fretted that former President Donald Trump’s statement that “CBS should lose its license” was a sign that if he is elected, he would pressure the FCC to revoke licenses of major network affiliate stations. The recent news about Sputnik makes that idea far more possible.
Rall added that he didn’t believe that the US government would stop after taking action against Russian outlets.
“Any effort at censorship is going to begin with the least popular victim and then creep and spread after that,” he said.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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The BRICS Summit taking place in Kazan, Russia, from October 22 to 24 is a pivotal gathering in global geopolitics. The summit brings together the original BRICS members – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – along with five new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Then, dozens of other countries are attending as well:
Russia
is hosting the BRICS+ summit with many world leaders attending, including India’s
Narendra Modi & Xi Jinping of China
, the two largest populations on Earth…Along with representatives from even more countries, yet CNN claims Putin is isolated. You can’t make this… pic.twitter.com/3r0OgtXxP9
— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) October 22, 2024
This includes the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, as well as leaders from Algeria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Indonesia, and Mexico. There is even a possibility that UN chief António Guterres may appear at this BRICS Summit.
This expansion marks a significant step in the group’s evolution as a counterbalance to Western influence.
Dedollarization. Whoops.
The first day of the summit, October 22, was marked by formal opening ceremonies and a dinner hosted by Russian president Vladimir Putin. This day set the tone for discussions on a broad array of topics, including economic cooperation, multilateralism, and security.
Russian officials emphasized BRICS’ role in reshaping global governance, promoting multipolarity, and addressing economic disparities.
One of the most significant discussions will centre on dedollarization – the effort to reduce global reliance on the U.S. dollar in international trade and finance.
This topic is particularly important for Russia and China, both of which have been vocal about creating alternatives to the dollar-dominated financial system. In line with this, BRICS introduced BRICS Pay, a payment system designed to facilitate transactions among member countries, bypassing Western-dominated systems like SWIFT.
Additionally, the summit will address the integration of new members, which represent significant geopolitical and economic forces. For instance, Saudi Arabia’s inclusion as a full member is seen as a notable development, given its substantial influence in global energy markets.
The creation of a “partner country” model will probably also be discussed, which could further expand BRICS reach by offering other nations limited membership in the future.
Why the BRICS Summit matters
This year’s summit carries a deeper significance than past meetings. It marks Russia’s largest diplomatic event since the Ukraine conflict began, positioning BRICS as a platform for Russia to demonstrate that it is far from isolated on the global stage.
Hosting the summit allows Russia to underscore its continued influence despite efforts by Western countries, particularly NATO members, to marginalize it.
Moreover, the summit serves as a crucial platform for member states to advocate for a more equitable global order. Since its inception, BRICS has sought to challenge Western hegemony, particularly the dominance of the US and its allies in global governance institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
Over the years, BRICS has worked to establish alternative institutions, such as the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, though these efforts have met with mixed success.
In 2024, the summit has renewed focus on reducing reliance on Western financial structures, particularly in light of sanctions imposed on Russia and Iran. Many of these nations are eager to develop their own systems to protect their economies from potential punitive measures by the West.
The addition of powerful economies like Saudi Arabia and the UAE only strengthens BRICS ability to challenge Western financial dominance.
The West and NATO will NOT be happy
For Western and NATO countries, the growing influence of the group presents a challenge. BRICS Summit’s push for dedollarization and the creation of alternative financial and political structures could erode the West’s economic leverage.
The US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is central to American financial and geopolitical power. So, efforts at BRICS Summit to reduce its role could have long-term implications for global financial markets.
While the West may downplay the significance of BRICS as a geopolitical competitor, it is closely watching developments, especially the group’s increasing appeal to countries in the Global South.
Nations like Turkey, a NATO member, have expressed interest in closer ties with BRICS, indicating that even countries traditionally aligned with the West are looking to diversify their diplomatic and economic relations.
Moreover, the summit occurs against the backdrop of heightened geopolitical tension, particularly concerning the war in Ukraine and the broader rivalry between the U.S. and China.
For countries like India and Brazil, both of which have sought to maintain a careful balance between the West and BRICS, this summit underscores their desire to pursue a multi-aligned foreign policy that maximizes their strategic autonomy without alienating either bloc.
BRICS Summit: a pivotal moment whether the West likes it or not
The 2024 BRICS Summit is a landmark event in the evolving global power dynamics – whether the West likes it or not.
By expanding its membership and advancing its goals of financial independence from the West, BRICS is positioning itself as a formidable force in international relations.
For the West, this signals the emergence of a more multipolar world, where Western dominance is no longer taken for granted, and alternative powers are increasingly asserting their influence on the global stage.
Featured image via the Canary
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on Canary.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
