March 26th marks the seventh anniversary of the disastrous war in Yemen, which has resulted in almost half a million dead. ​​The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi rebels has recently ramped up its attacks in this destabilizing conflict that, prior to the Ukraine war, was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. 

A little over 20 years ago, [1999] North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) conducted a military exercise that involved a “hypothetical scenario” of hijacked planes flying into both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

According to the fantasy, there is a ‘moral obligation’ toward dead Anzacs – but not to democratise the decisions that would throw live Anzacs into war.

There is no doubting the sincerity of the grief felt by the bereaved, those who will gather at the myriad sites of memory and mourning across Australia on Anzac Day. Let us acknowledge that sincerity at the outset, and pause respectfully.

But there is a fantasy that haunts our cult of the fallen. The fantasy is this: that our political leaders so love the serving men and women that they would never recklessly commit them to war.

 

 

By Douglas Newton

 

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared on Sunday that a Chinese military base on the Solomon Islands would be an unacceptable “red line,” without adding how Canberra would retaliate. Morrison’s government and the United States are scrambling to respond to a recently-signed security deal between the islands and Beijing, which they consider an “aggressive” move.

“Working together with our partners in New Zealand and of course the United States, I share the same red line that the United States has when it comes to these issues,” Morrison said. “We won’t be having Chinese military naval bases in our region on our doorstep.”

For many years, I have studied and given much thought to the UN Charter’s prohibition against aggressive war. No one can seriously doubt that the primary purpose of the document – drafted and agreed to on the heels of the horrors of WWII – was and is to prevent war and “to maintain international peace and security,” a phrase repeated throughout. 

 

Daniel Kovalik: Why Russia's intervention in Ukraine is legal under international law

 

Autistic disability rights advocate Michelle Swan was frustrated when she heard Scott Morrison say he was "blessed" that his children hadn't had to deal with a disability in Wednesday's leaders' debate. But her six kids — all of whom are neurodiverse — had an even stronger reaction.

"They were more angry than I was. They could see that by implication if he was blessed not to have children like them, then I must not be blessed to have had them," Ms Swan says.

A retired US Army general will help coordinate the massive effort to deliver weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, the White House announced on Friday. Veteran Pentagon policy planner Terry Wolff, who previously oversaw Washington’s aid to militants in Syria, was brought onto the National Security Council after a group of senators urged President Joe Biden to put someone in charge of the program.

Wolff “recently” joined the NSC, a spokesman told reporters on Friday, noting the retired three-star general’s previous experience with the White House body, as well as the State Department, the Pentagon and the Joint Staff.

A high-level Hillsong Church executive dismissed founder Brian Houston’s explanation for why he visited the hotel room of an unidentified woman for 40 minutes during the church’s annual conference in 2019 as insulting “dribble” just days before Houston resigned, a leaked letter suggests.

Ukraine will not be left alone if Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons, Victoria Nuland said 

Russia will pay an “astronomical” price should its President Vladimir Putin order the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said on Friday, amid the ongoing Russian offensive.

In an interview for the Ukrainian outlet European Pravda, Nuland was asked to assess the possibility of Russia using tactical nuclear weapons. She responded that she could not rule out such a “catastrophic scenario.” As Putin “has already ordered” what, she said, were “brutal war crimes,” the world must be prepared for the worst. At the same time, Nuland stressed, the consequences of such steps would be catastrophic for Russia and for Putin personally.

It was a dastardly formality. On April 20, at a hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court, Julian Assange, beamed in via video link from Belmarsh Prison, his carceral home for three years, is to be extradited to the United States to face 18 charges, 17 based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.

Russia is bad. There is no excuse for attacking Ukraine, and the argument that it was a strategic imperative to stop NATO’s encroachment is just propaganda, right? That’s what every source in the mainstream media will tell you. But oddly enough, that logic never seems to apply when western countries perceive rival states to be encroaching on their own peripheries, and there’s been no bigger example of that than as to how American and Australian political classes have reacted to the now signed “Bilateral security agreement” between China and the Solomon Islands, a small archipelago which exists not far from Papua New Guinea. 

 

“I’m going to become the Joker” is some of the Internet’s most poignant shorthand. Referencing Todd Phillips’ 2019 film noir, the phrase describes becoming so thoroughly disillusioned that one loses faith in everything.

The process is a dark descent: Individual indignity after interpersonal insult after institutional injustice prompts a downward spiral from George Costanza screaming “we’re living in a society!” to nihilists barking “we believe in nothing, Lebowski” to finally just a depressed clown laughing at the idea of anything mattering at all.

Many thousands of people have fallen victim to war in Ukraine over the past eight years. Indeed, another “defeat of humanity”. Every day sooner that the weapons rest means saving human lives. An early positive outcome of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine should therefore be desired by everyone. But many who are currently condemning this war are doing so with quite bellicose intentions. Unfortunately, this is also the case in Germany.

 

German politicians speak about peace – but what do they do about it? by Karl-Jürgen Müller

 

 

The recent Russophobic frenzy by Washington and its Western allies over Russia’s special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine with more and more anti-Russian sanctions imposed each passing day, makes one involuntarily wonder: why then doesn’t the West react in the same way to another special operation – the one Turkey is conducting on Iraqi territory? And how, in fact, are the two special operations different in their international treatment?

As you know, Turkey launched another (sic!) military special operation in Northern Iraq on April 18, striking the hideouts, bunkers, caves and warehouses of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). “We’re determined to save our noble nation from the scourge of terrorism,” said the country’s Minister of Defense Khulusi Akar, adding “Our struggle will continue until the last terrorist is neutralized.”

Former Intelligence Officials, Citing Russia, Say Big Tech Monopoly Power is Vital to National Security

When the U.S. security state announces that Big Tech's centralized censorship power must be preserved, we should ask what this reveals about whom this regime serves.

 

BY Glenn Greenwald