Back in time, when we had plenty of gasbags.... PM John Howard pushes 15 Bn gas deal with the US... All now hanging in the balance with Governor Arnold Beefcakenegger... The PM raised the issue with Vice president Dick Cheney-of-Halliburton at a private lunch yesterday. SEE: Pre-dinner informal talks......

But NOW:

WATCH: Mexican President Obrador Suggests Dismantling Statue of Liberty if Assange Convicted in US

The Mexican president has once again said that he was willing to provide asylum to Julian Assange, adding that he would raise the case during his meeting with Joe Biden next week.

The Statue of Liberty should be dismantled if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is convicted in the United States, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said during a Monday press conference.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Monday said that former President Trump’s return to office would feed into the “national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust” that the senator said President Biden has not been able to break through.

WNBA star Brittney Griner, who has been held in Russia since February, urged President Biden in a letter delivered to the White House on Monday not to forget about her and other Americans detained abroad.

“…[A]s I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomplishments, I’m terrified I might be here forever,” Griner wrote to Biden in excerpts of the letter shared by Wasserman, a talent agency that includes her management team. 

US sanctions, even by outdated estimates, have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans. The unilateral policies have been widely condemned by multilateral bodies and human rights experts for their deadly impact, as well as for violating international law (Venezuelanalysis, 9/18/21, 9/15/21, 3/25/21, 1/31/19).

In 1985, at age 41, I visited Disney World for the first time. I remember the experience for two things: the endless lines so cleverly organized that you never knew how long they truly were and the Hawaiian Luau dinner I attended. Yes, a genuine Hawaiian feast that reminded me of American Chinese food circa 1953 and the unforgettable “entertainment” offered by “native” Hawaiian dancers with spears who smacked their weapons on the ground and rhythmically advanced on the diners glowering fiercely. Whoever those dancers were, they were quite skilled at playing “primitives” from elsewhere, also circa 1953, objects of fear, wonder, and scorn. (Oh yes, and Disney World was the place that first taught me this country had an obesity problem — along with some of the most fattening food on the planet.)

Liz Truss warns the world of evil women

The British foreign secretary disagreed with UK PM’s ‘if Putin were a woman’ claim, adding that such rhetoric is “unhelpful” for Kiev

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has argued that calling Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine an example of President Vladimir Putin’s “toxic masculinity” is not the best way to help Kiev. Prime Minister Boris Johnson previously suggested that Putin would have behaved differently on the world stage if he were a woman.

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine started on February 24, Australian embassy staffer Nadia Teriokhina had one thought on her mind: She didn't want to get trapped behind enemy lines.

She told Anthony Albanese she counted herself among the lucky ones.

Hundreds were massacred in Bucha, outside of Kyiv, and about 10 minutes from her home in Irpin, including women and children.

Some women were raped before they were killed.

"We didn't know what to do, how to behave or where to run," she said.

"I said to my husband, 'I just don't want to be in the occupied territory,' so we went to Kyiv."

Ukrainian tanks were headed in the opposite direction as they fled.

Macron says he doesn’t want to ‘annihilate’ Russia

While the French president has backed anti-Russia sanctions, he has refrained from the extreme rhetoric of his US and UK counterparts

MEANWHILE:

Ukraine angry at French state media

Kiev claimed that AFP is spreading “Russian propaganda” by referring to Lugansk fighters as “Ukrainian separatists”

History repeats itself, we’re often told. And it seems as if it’s happening more than usual these days. Interstate war is back. The world is once again worried about nuclear weapons. A pandemic has killed millions of people and shut down commerce—just as it did a century ago. Inflation has hit levels unseen since the 1970s. The world is running out of food. There’s an energy crisis. In a replay of the Cold War, the United States is aligning nations against Russia—and once again, despite unity in the West, several large countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America would rather stay out of the tussle. 

Today, politicians and common people in all countries expressly say that the United States is losing its influence on the global stage. Even The Washington Times, by publishing the results of the new survey conducted by Pew Research Center, acknowledges that the prevailing opinion among the US nationals is that America is definitely a loser in the race with “growing” China.

Many American and Western media outlets desperately acknowledge the USA’s clear failure in its sanctions policy forced upon Russia and the whole world, as it has only strengthened the Kremlin’s global weight and brought the wreckage of the American and the Western economy as a whole.

BY Valery Kulikov

According to Prashad, while “many of the assassins’ bullets have been fired by people who had their own parochial interests, petty rivalries and small-minded gains, more often than not, these have been ‘Washington’s bullets.’”

Their main purpose, he says, was to “contain the tidal wave that swept from the October Revolution of 1917 and the many waves that whipped around the world to form the anti-colonial movement.”

By Jeremy Kuzmarov
CovertAction Magazine

While the Anglo-Saxons have already succeeded in excluding Russia from the Council of Europe and are preparing to prevent it from participating in OSCE meetings, they are working to sink the European Union by creating a competing structure in Central Europe: the Three Seas Initiative. In doing so, they are taking up an old Polish project aimed at developing this region while preserving it from any German or Russian influence.

RISING TENSIONS (24)

The scuttling of peace in Europe

by Thierry Meyssan