On January 27, Israeli forces kill 10 Palestinians in Jenin, including two youths and an elderly woman. The following day a lone Palestinian gunman shoots dead seven Israelis as they leave a synagogue in a settlement in East Jerusalem.

In response to the murdered Israelis, the US ambassador to Israel refers to the synagogue attack as ‘a horrific act of violence’, but with no reference to the fates of Palestinians in Jenin.

By Stuart Rees

The International Monetary Fund has revised upwards its estimate of Russian economic development, projecting GDP to grow by 0.3% this year, and 2.1% in 2024.

According to the fund’s World Economic Outlook update published on Monday, Russia’s GDP fell by 2.2% last year. In its October forecast, the IMF reported that the decline was expected to be 3.4%. For this year, the fund previously predicted a drop of 2.3%, and for 2024, a 2.1% decline.

The IMF’s estimates are beginning to converge with Russian forecasts, the press service of the Ministry of Economic Development told RBK business daily following the release of the report.

Members of 6th Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment, 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment and 2nd Health Battalion have been preparing for their deployment as part of Joint Australian Training Team - Philippines (JATT-P) 2023, at Gallipoli Barracks, Brisbane.

They will deliver lessons on combat shooting, urban clearance, tactical care of a combat casualty and explosive breaching drills.

As part of the preparation, the soldiers simulated working with the Armed Forces of the Philippines to help overcome language and cultural barriers.

Some members role-played as soldiers from the partner nation to enhance the realism of the training. 

Private Jack McCombe, who was acting as an instructor, said it was a new experience. 

I received an email ostensibly from President Joe Biden the other morning which scared the hell out of me. It was the usual plea for money but the headline read “Philip, our work is far from over!” suggesting to me that the White House is seeking to do even more damage to the country in the months to come! In it, Joe claimed that he had created millions of jobs and expanded access to healthcare among other lesser achievements in his two-plus years in office.

The cannibalistic remark made by the head of the Swedish Home Guard, Laura Swaan Wrede, sparked outrage on Twitter, where many users decried it for its hypocrisy, pointing out that the quote would have been perceived as horrendous if it were directed towards non-Russians.

Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden’s largest dailies, has found itself in hot water after Twitter branded the cover of its weekend supplement as “offensive content".

Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall.

Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.

So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front.

BY PEPE ESCOBAR

IF YOU HAVE BEEN A FOLLOWER OF THIS VENERABLE WEBSITE (yourdemocracy.net) YOU WOULD HAVE ENCOUNTERED MANY BITS OF INFORMATION COMING FROM WEIRD AND UNEXPECTED SOURCES…..

HERE’S SOMETHING THAT RESONATES TODAY….

Mike Pompeo swaggers in the pantheon of the best and the brightest who engineered the Vietnam War debacle fueled by the counter-historical domino theory. He graduated first in his class at West Point, graduated from Harvard Law School and served as an editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He is intellectually quantum levels above his former boss President Donald Trump.  But as Julius Caesar said of Cassius, “He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”

Pompeo sallies forth like Alexander the Great on Bucephalus in his new book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for America I Love, to slay the bad guys, i.e., predominantly communist China, Iran, Venezuela and international Islamic terrorists. 

BY Bruce Fein

Centuries ago, mankind was slaughtered to near extinction by monstrous humanoid creatures called Titans, forcing humans to hide in fear behind enormous concentric walls. What makes these giants truly terrifying is that their taste for human flesh is not born out of hunger but what appears to be out of pleasure. To ensure their survival, the remnants of humanity began living within defensive barriers, resulting in one hundred years without a single titan encounter. However, that fragile calm is soon shattered when a colossal Titan manages to breach the supposedly impregnable outer wall, reigniting the fight for survival against the man-eating abominations.

Titusville, Florida: A man has filed a defamation lawsuit against a Florida sheriff who posts weekly “Wheel of Fugitive” videos on social media, saying that he wasn’t a fugitive when his name and image appeared several times in 2021 in the officer’s posts inspired by the long-running TV game show “Wheel of Fortune”.

Because of the sheriff’s posts, David Gay lost a job and suffered emotional distress, according to the lawsuit seeking more than $US50,000 in damages. The lawsuit was filed last week in state court in Brevard County, along Florida’s Space Coast.

Gay’s prospective boss called him as he was driving to his first day of work and told him not to bother showing up as he had seen Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey’s “Wheel of Fugitive” videos, the lawsuit said.

https://www.claritypress.com

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

The Western public, like others, are justly appalled by the human suffering and the horrors of the Ukrainian war. Empathy is one of the great virtues of humanity, which in this instance translates into the demand for helping Ukrainians. Yet, propaganda commonly weaponizes the best in human nature, such as compassion, to bring out the worst. As sympathy and the desire to assist the displaced are used to mobilize public support for confrontation and war with Russia, it is necessary to ask if the Western public and Ukrainians are being manipulated to support a proxy war.

By Glenn Diesen

Is NATO helping Ukraine to fight Russia or is NATO using Ukraine to fight Russia?

— There goes Kangaroo Kate and Liz O’Connor foxing that Transvaal bloke about. What has she slung you, Pippo?

— Wars, she called me a chump, and told me to go and fight for me Queen and country. I says, ‘aven’t I been doin’ that for the larst seven years — stouching them Chows?.

                                                                AMBROSE TYSON — THE BULLETIN, 1900

The other day I stumbled across a 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian, “It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war,” by Seumas Milne, who the following year would go on to become the Labour Party’s executive director of strategy and communications under Jeremy Corbyn.

I bring this up because the perspectives you’ll find in that article are jarring in how severely they deviate from anything you’ll see published in the mainstream press about Ukraine in 2023. 

50 years after leaving Vietnam, the US keeps getting involved in wars without understanding them
In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords saw American troops abandon their partners. It wouldn’t be the last time

By Matthieu Buge, who worked on Russia for the magazine l’Histoire, the Russian film magazine Séance, and as a columnist for Le Courrier de Russie. He is the author of the book Le Cauchemar russe ('The Russian Nightmare').

In January 1973, the US signed an agreement that saw it pull out of Vietnam, abandoning its South Vietnamese partners. In August 2021, history repeated itself in Afghanistan.