The new coronavirus and its accompanying disease Covid-19 has stopped the globe in its tracks. Governments, markets and news cycles have become dominated by the pandemic. Europe is now the epicenter for the disease, with reportedly more fatal cases of infection than China where the virus first erupted in December.
Is that it? Nearly two decades of war – America’s longest-ever, almost twice as long as the Vietnam War – and now, finally, a dubious peace deal.
It’s a “deal” that could have been signed years ago by previous U.S. administrations, thereby saving hundreds of thousands of casualties and trillions of dollars in damages.
Turkey is threatening Europe with an influx of millions of refugees from Syria’s conflict, while the United States this week announced over $100 million in “humanitarian aid” for Syria. The Europeans are wringing their hands over further problems from unwanted migration, yet Brussels continues to pile economic sanctions on war-torn Syria, thus impeding the nation’s recovery and exacerbating suffering.
The guilty parties to Syria’s suffering and misery have the rank audacity to profess seeming compassion.
The extradition trial for journalist and publisher Julian Assange is nothing but a travesty. His brutal persecution by American and British authorities is a shocking indictment of these Western states and their hypocritical pretensions about professing democratic rights and rule of law.
Assange may be the one sitting in the dock. But the whole world can see that it is not he who is really on trial, but rather the so-called authorities who are persecuting him.
Western news media are once again distorting the conflict in Syria with lopsided coverage this week, claiming to focus their concern on a humanitarian crisis in the northwest of the country.
More evidence has emerged to indict the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in carrying out a despicable cover-up in Syria. Even more damning is that the cover-up appears to have been orchestrated at the highest ranks of the organization in response to political pressure from the United States and Western allies.
The Pentagon confirmed this week that it has, for the first time, armed some of its submarines with long-range nuclear missiles which have a lower destructive power compared with existing warheads. These so-called “mini-nukes” represent – despite the diminutive-sounding name – an increased risk of nuclear war.
It is astounding and deeply disturbing that 75 years after the end of World World Two the history of that event is being re-written before our very eyes.
That war resulted in over 50 million dead with more than half of the victims from the Soviet Union. It incorporated the worst crimes against humanity, including the systematic mass murder of millions carried out by Nazi Germany, known as the Holocaust. The victims included Jews, Slavs, Roma, Soviet prisoners-of-war and others whom the fascist Nazis deemed to be “Untermensch” (“Subhumans”).
There was good reason why Polish President Andrzej Duda was prevented from addressing the Holocaust memorial event in Israel this week. The organizers anticipated he would use the event to make ugly and foolish accusations against Russia for having alleged complicity in the Nazi genocide.
On being refused the opportunity to make such a speech, Duda then decided to cancel his attendance altogether. Such is the thin-skin of Polish sensitivity.
Polish President Andrzej Duda pulled out of a major Holocaust commemoration event in Jerusalem, the 5th Holocaust Forum, scheduled for January 23. Duda wanted to give a speech there, but he was not invited to speak. That was the official reason.
