Trade unions in Italy continue mobilizations against government’s labor policies, support to Ukraine war

Working class sections have demanded an increase in wages and pensions at par with inflation, including raising the minimum wages to 10 euros (10.87 US$) per hour, and additional investment in public health, education, transport, and infrastructure

Peoples Dispatch | May 16, 2023

Mobilization in Milan. (Photo: via CGIL)

Mainstream trade unions in Italy, including the Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL), the Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions (CISL), and the Italian Labor Union (UIL), organized a major demonstration in Milan on Saturday, May 13. The unions denounced the economic policies of the right-wing government led by Giorgia Meloni, including proposed cuts to public services and social welfare programs, along with lack of investment in job creation. Cadres from various political groups including the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) also participated and expressed solidarity with workers. According to the unions, around 40,000 people participated in the demonstration. Earlier, on May 6, a major mobilization was held in Bologna. Another round of mobilization is scheduled in Naples on May 20. 

Ukraine war: The short view

M. K. Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline | May 12, 2023

Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky has somewhat eased the suspense by his remark to the western media on Thursday that his army needs to wait and still needs “a bit more time” to launch the much-anticipated counter-offensive against Russian forces. 

He acknowledged that Ukraine’s combat brigades are “ready” but would reason that the army still needed “some things,” including armoured vehicles that were “arriving in batches” from NATO countries.

On the matter of Prigozhin’s “outburst” and Artemovsk (Bakhmut)

Are we looking at well-orchestrated deception? All is possible in war.

ALEKS | BLACK MOUNTAIN ANALYSIS

Since it is being widely discussed right now, I decided to also express my opinion about what is going on with Prigozhin. A little remark before I start: Since I am very short of time, I decided to write a very small opinion piece, not an analysis. I did no research for this. Hence, take it for what it is. An opinion and NOT an analysis. So, let’s start.

Zelensky regime’s fate is sealed

M. K. Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline | May 04, 2023

Moscow Kremlin

The West’s cryptic or mocking remarks doubting the Kremlin statement on the failed Ukrainian attempt to assassinate President Vladimir Putin do not detract from the fact that Moscow has no reason on earth to fabricate such a grave allegation that has prompted the scaling down of its Victory Day celebrations on May 9, which is a triumphal moment in all of Russian history, especially now when it is fighting off the recrudescence of Nazi ideology on Europe’s political landscape single-handedly all over again. 

The alacrity with which the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken debunked the Kremlin allegation, perhaps, gives the game away. It is in the neocon DNA to duck in such defining moments. That said, predictably, Blinken also distanced the Biden administration  from the Kremlin attack. 

Earlier, the chairman of Joints Chiefs of Staff General Marks Milley also did a similar thing in an interview with the Foreign Affairs magazine disowning in advance any responsibility for the upcoming Ukrainian “counteroffensive”. This is the Biden Administration’s new refrain — hear no evil, speak no evil. No more talk, either, of backing Kiev all the way “no matter what it takes” — as Biden used to say ad nauseam. 

We Lied, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Tells On Key U.S. Mistake With Russia

Countercurrents | May 05, 2023

“We should have listened to Putin over many years. We made a commitment to Russia, to Gorbachev, that we would not move NATO one inch to the east. Then we went in, and we lied,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview with UnHerd (Robert Kennedy Jr: America needs a revolution, by Freddie Sayers, Editor-in-Chief of UnHerd, ), published on Wednesday.

Instead of listening to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warnings about “red lines”, the U.S. has repeatedly crossed them, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in the interview.

The Democrat running for U.S. president added that Washington should have either invited Moscow to NATO or dismantled the anti-Russian alliance after the Cold War.

US sees in Finland’s NATO accession encirclement of Russia

M. K. Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline | April 06, 2023

Foreign minister Pekka Haavisto (L) hands over Finland’s NATO accession document to US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, as secretary-general Stoltenberg looks on, Brussels, 4 Apr 2023

The national flag of Finland was raised for the first time at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Brussels on Tuesday, which also marked the 74th anniversary of the western alliance. It signifies for Finland a historic abandonment of its policy of neutrality. 

Not even propagandistically, anyone can say Finland has encountered a security threat from Russia. This is an act of motiveless malignity toward Russia on the part of the NATO,  which of course invariably carries the imprimatur of the US, while being projected to the world audience as a sovereign choice by Finland against the backdrop of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. 

Why the Media Don’t Want to Know the Truth About the Nord Stream Blasts

Jonathan Cook

The Greanville Post | April 11, 2023

No one but the terminally naïve should be surprised that security services lie – and that they are all but certain to cover their tracks when they carry out operations that either violate domestic or international law or that would be near-universally rejected by their own populations.

Which is reason enough why anyone following the fallout from explosions last September that ripped holes in three of the four Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea supplying Russian gas to Europe should be wary of accepting anything Western agencies have to say on the matter.

In fact, the only thing that Western publics should trust is the consensus among “investigators” that the three simultaneous blasts deep underwater on the pipelines – a fourth charge apparently failed to detonate – were sabotage, not some freak coincidental accident.

How the U.S. Regime Is Scaring Its Public to Accept Martial Law

Eric Zuesse

The Greanville Post | April 16, 2023

Virginia’s Mark Warner, a Democrat senator pushing a tyrannical and fully unconstitutional law, with strong bipartisan support, and , as usual, complete media cover. The idea is to institute total narrative control behind supposed threats to national security.

Like with any dictatorship, America’s is based upon censorship (as a consequence of which my articles are virtually banned in the U.S.-and-‘allied’ — or vassal — countries). In a democracy, there is no censorship, because censorship kills even the possibility of democracy. It enables mass-mind-control, which any dictatorship needs in order to exist and to survive. On April 6th, I headlined “How the U.S. Government Is Now Secretly Instituting Martial Law”, and linked to the text of what will be, if it becomes passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by the President as is expected to happen, martial law over all publication, broadcasting, and Websites — all media — in the United States. This expected-to-become law bill in the U.S. Congress states explicitly that it is needed in order to protect America (especially its children) against “foreign adversaries” that explicitly include (but are not limited to) six supposed enemies: China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. (If you already know all of that, then you probably learned about it on a Website that is already banned.)

Common Sense, Not Conspiracy Theories, Accounts For Africans’ Embrace Of Russian Media

And China’s help to provide Africans with free TV, even in remote villages, is making a new life possible.

Andrew Korybko

The Greanville Post | April 15, 2023

Children watch TV in a village in Cote d’Ivoire. The Wan Cun Tong project cooperates with some 500 villages in Cote d’Ivoire. (Photo: Courtesy of StarTimes; see story in Appendix below)

The New York Times condescendingly implied that Africans lack the media literacy to discern the difference between fact and fiction in their latest piece about why they’re embracing Russian media. Titled “How Putin Became a Hero on African TV”, it pushes the conspiracy theory that there’s supposedly a shadowy Kremlin-concentric plot at play to explain this growing trend, which denies Africans any agency with respect to deciding for themselves which information products to consume.

It’s not difficult to figure out what’s going on as long as observers aren’t blinded by wishful thinking fantasies like those that continue to influence many Western commentators. It’s common sense that Africans would gravitate towards alternative sources of information to learn more about events across the world after rightly coming to suspect the US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) of ulterior motives.

Putin’s Enormous Blunder

Eric Zuesse

Putin’s biggest-ever blunder has been his failure to have offered to Finland a guarantee of peaceful relations, and of favored-nation status on trade (including on energy-prices of oil and gas, which, prior to the 2022 U.S.-imposed sanctions against Russia, European countries had, for decades, been buying at lower prices from Russia than from any other country, even without any favored-nation status), if Finland will not join NATO.

If Finland’s Government would have turned down such an offer, then what excuses could they provide to their voters, for having said no to it? (And, if the offer had been made privately and then privately rejected, Putin would then have made the offer publicly, and might have been able to get the Finnish public to support it., and then the Finnish Government to support it.) If Finland would have accepted such an offer, then how much benefit would that provide to the Russian people?

Regarding the latter matter: the main reason why Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was that on 7 January 2022, both the U.S. Government and its NATO anti-Russian military alliance not only rejected Russia’s 17 December 2021 proposal for there to be peaceful relations between Russia and The West, but neither the U.S. Government nor NATO were even willing to negotiate with Russia regarding any one of the specific clauses in Russia’s thoughtful and lengthy — very serious — proposal.