Tag Archives: protests

News, Observation, Politics

Mass Anti-War Protests Held Across Europe as Russia’s Assault Continues

In addition to protests in Berlin and London, people also took to the streets in occupied Ukrainian cities and in Moscow, despite the threat of arrest.

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to join anti-war demonstrations across Europe on Sunday as Russia continued its deadly assault on Ukraine, bombarding major cities and intensifying a humanitarian crisis that is having reverberating effects worldwide.

In addition to protests in Berlin, London, Warsaw, and Madrid—where participants carried signs and banners that read “Stop the War” and “Peace and Solidarity for the People in Ukraine”—demonstrations also sprang up on a smaller scale in occupied Ukrainian cities and in Moscow, despite the threat of arrest and police brutality.

Thousands of Russian anti-war protesters have been detained and abused by law enforcement since the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, according to human rights organizations.

The demonstrations Sunday came amid some signs of diplomatic progress in talks between Russia and Ukraine, which have been negotiating on the border of Belarus since the early days of the invasion.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Sunday that Russia is “beginning to talk constructively” and predicted that “we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.”

Leonid Slutsky, a Russian delegate to the negotiations with Ukraine, echoed his counterpart’s assessment.

“According to my personal expectations, this progress may grow in the coming days into a joint position of both delegations, into documents for signing,” Slutsky told reporters Sunday, without offering specifics on what an agreement would entail.

Seemingly positive developments in diplomatic talks came as Russia showed no sign of easing its attack, which has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee Ukraine and internally displaced millions more.

Zelenskyy said Saturday that around 125,000 people have been able to escape through humanitarian corridors established in besieged cities, but hundreds of thousands remain trapped in Mariupol and other areas facing heavy shelling from Russian forces.

Early Sunday morning, Russia bombed a Ukrainian military facility located just 22 miles from the border of Poland, a NATO member. The airstrike, believed to be Russia’s westernmost attack on Ukraine thus far, killed dozens of people and wounded more than 130 others.

The Associated Press reported that “continued fighting on multiple fronts heaped further misery on the country Sunday and provoked renewed international outrage.”

Brent Renaud, an American journalist who had previously contributed to the New York Times, was killed by Russian forces in the town of Irpin, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday. A second journalist who was traveling with Renaud was reportedly injured.

“We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of U.S. journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine,” Carlos Martinez de la Serna of the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement. “This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law. Russian forces in Ukraine must stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once, and whoever killed Renaud should be held to account.”

According to the United Nations, at least 549 civilians have been killed and nearly 1,000 have been wounded since Russia invaded Ukraine—estimates that are believed to be significant undercounts.

Local Ukrainian officials said Sunday that 2,187 civilians have been killed in Mariupol alone since the start of Russia’s attack.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Breaking News, News, Observation, Politics

Over 2,100 Anti-War Protesters Arrested in Russia

Video

More than 5,500 peace advocates have been detained across the country since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine, according to a human rights group.

Above: Photo collage – Times / Lynxotic

Russian police arrested 2,114 people at anti-war protests in 48 cities across the country on Sunday, the fourth consecutive day that demonstrators have risked their personal safety to hit the streets in opposition to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

That’s according to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights group that has long documented crackdowns on civil liberties in the country. A total of 5,500 anti-war protesters have now been detained since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale military assault on Ukraine, said the independent monitor.

As Al Jazeera reported:

Many held posters that read “No to war,” “Russians go home,” and “Peace to Ukraine.”

“It is a shame that there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of us and not millions,” said 35-year-old engineer Vladimir Vilokhonov, who took part in the protest.

Another protester, Alyona Stepanova, 25, came to the protest with a packed bag in case “we get taken away.”

“We believe it is our duty to come here,” she said.

More than 350 civilians, including 14 children, have been killed in Ukraine since the start of Putin’s attack, according to the country’s health ministry. In addition, it said that 1,684 people, including 116 children, have been wounded. According to the World Health Organization, Ukraine’s hospitals are quickly running out of oxygen supplies.

United Nations officials have said that more than 368,000 people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries, and they estimate the war could produce four million refugees. European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic, meanwhile, has said that the number of people displaced from Ukraine could reach seven million.

While Kyiv has agreed to attend talks with Moscow at the Ukraine-Belarus border—negotiations are reportedly set to begin Monday morning—Russia’s former deputy foreign minister Andrei Fedorov told Al Jazeera on Sunday that Putin is seeking a complete victory by Wednesday.

“Everything will depend frankly speaking on the coming two days because, according to my knowledge, Putin orders for complete military operation with a victory by March 2,” said Fedorov, who added that the Kremlin has been surprised by the strength of Ukrainian resistance and by European governments’ unified decision to impose far-reaching sanctions despite their reliance on Russian gas.

Western sanctions have “caused a lot of problems over here now,” said Federov. Some commentators argued Sunday that an economic collapse in Russia could make Putin more likely to escalate his threat to use nuclear weapons.

In a rare move, the U.N. Security Council voted for the 193-member General Assembly to hold an emergency session Monday on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As the BBC explained, “the resolution, called ‘Uniting for Peace,’ allows members of the Security Council to call a special session with the General Assembly if the five permanent members (Russia, U.S., U.K., France, and China) cannot agree how to act together to maintain peace.”

Sunday’s vote to authorize an emergency meeting was supported by 11 of the Security Council’s 15 members. Russia opposed the measure while China, India, and the United Arab Emirates abstained. Even though Russia, China, and other permanent members can typically exercise veto power, is was a procedural vote and therefore only required nine votes in favor.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that an emergency session had been called for the first time in decades because “this is no ordinary moment.”

“We need to take extraordinary action to meet this threat to our international system,” said Thomas-Greenfield. “So let us do everything we can to help the people of Ukraine.”

The Security Council is holding another meeting on Monday at 3:00 p.m. ET to discuss Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis. On Tuesday, France and Mexico are expected to submit a Security Council resolution that calls for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, the protection of civilians, and a guarantee that aid can be delivered.

Russia, which on Friday blocked a Security Council resolution condemning Moscow’s “premeditated aggression” in Ukraine, is expected to prevent the passage of France and Mexico’s planned resolution.

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Breaking News, Climate Solutions, Earth and Ecology, News, Politics

Hundreds of Thousands Take to Streets Worldwide for ‘Uproot the System’ Climate Strikes

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic

“The climate crisis has not disappeared,” said Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. “It’s the opposite—it’s even more urgent now than it was before.”

Young people by the hundreds of thousands took to the streets across the globe on Friday to deliver a resounding message to world leaders: The climate crisis is getting worse, and only radical action will be enough to avert catastrophe and secure a just, sustainable future for all.

“As emissions and inequalities increase, we rise up and demand climate justice.”

From Pakistan to Italy to Germany to the Philippines, the worldwide “Uproot the System” actions marked the largest climate demonstrations since the coronavirus pandemic forced campaigners to take their protests online last year. Climate activists in developing countries—where access to vaccines is limited due to artificial supply constraints and hoarding by rich nations—were still forced to limit the size of their demonstrations Friday as a public health precaution.

“Last time it was digital and nobody was paying attention to us,” Yusuf Baluch, a 17-year-old activist from the Pakistani province of Balochistan, told Reuters. “In the global north, people are getting vaccinated so they might be out in huge quantities. But in the global south, we are still limited.”

Above: Photo Collage / Great Thunberg – via Instagram / Lynxotic

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, whose solitary sit-down strike outside her home country’s parliament in 2018 helped spark the global Fridays for Future movement, said that “it has been a very strange year and a half with this pandemic.”

“But of course, the climate crisis has not disappeared. It’s the opposite—it’s even more urgent now than it was before,” said Thunberg, who on Friday joined a large demonstration in Berlin, which was hammered by massive, climate-linked floods in July.

Watch Thunberg’s full speech in front of the Reichstag building:

Organizers said that more than 1400 climate strikes are set to take place in at least 70 countries Friday, with hundreds of thousands expected to attend demonstrations in Germany alone.

“As emissions and inequalities increase, we rise up and demand climate justice,” saidBerlin-based climate activist Luisa Neubauer.

The latest youth-led global action kicked off just weeks ahead of the pivotal COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, which many civil society organizations want to be postponed over fears that inequities in coronavirus vaccine access could prevent delegates from developing nations—those most vulnerable to the climate crisis—from attending.

Equalizing global vaccine distribution is one of the six demands that climate campaigners are aiming to put before world leaders during Friday’s mass demonstrations. The full list is as follows:

  1. The Global North needs to cut emissions drastically by divesting from fossil fuels and ending its extraction, burning, and use. We need concrete plans and detailed annual carbon budgets with roadmaps and milestones to ensure we get to net-zero with justice and equity in the time needed to address climate change.
  2. The colonizers of the north have a climate debt to pay for their disproportionate amount of historic emissions and that starts with the increase of climate finance to implement anti-racist climate reparations, the cancellation of debts especially for damage caused by extreme weather events, and providing adaptation funds that serve the communities.
  3. Work towards a genuinely global recovery from Covid-19 by ensuring equitable vaccine distribution worldwide and suspending intellectual property restrictions on Covid-19 technologies. This is an essential step towards a global, green, and just recovery.
  4. Recognize the tangibility of the climate crisis as a risk to human safety and secure the rights of climate refugees in international law.
  5. Recognize the invaluable impact of biodiversity on indigenous communities’ lives and culture, and commit to make ecocide an international punishable crime.
  6. Stop the violence and criminalization against indigenous peoples, small farmers, small fisherfolk, and other environmental and land defenders. Support the work they do. Respect and listen to our defenders. 

The worldwide demonstrations came a week after the United Nations warned that even if the 191 parties to the Paris Agreement meet their current climate targets, global greenhouse gas emissions will still rise 16% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels. The U.N. also estimated that the planet is on track for 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, a level of heating that experts say would be cataclysmic—particularly for developing nations.

At the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week, the leaders of vulnerable countries pushed wealthy nations—the largest contributors to the climate emergency—to stop shirking their responsibilities to confront the planetary crisis.

“We simply have no higher ground to cede,” Marshall Islands President David Kabua said Wednesday. “The world simply cannot delay climate ambition any further.”

Participants in Friday’s global action pointedly amplified that message. Valentina Ruas, a Brazilian activist, told The Guardian that “the global north should be developing climate policies that have at their core climate justice and accountability to the most affected people and areas.”

“Instead,” she added, “they continue to exploit vulnerable communities and recklessly extract fossil fuel, while bragging about their insignificant emission reduction plans.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons.

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Observation, Politics

Trump minions, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley Excoriated in new Lincoln Project Ads

Video
https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1349052964753735680/vid/1280x720/iuED49Qv_avQyzwZ.mp4?tag=13

Above: Video from The Lincoln Project

The Lincoln Project, the super PAC opposed to Trump and famous for great ads that help Biden beat Trump in the campaign, took direct aim at GOPs, specifically pointing out Cruz, Hawley and McCarthy. It has been Trump’s layer of corrupt minions that helped him to propagate the “Big Lie” – the lie that he won the 2020 election “in a landslide” and that there was massive fraud.

Many of Trump’s followers believe virtually every lie simply because a) Trump says it’s true and b) his minions, lackeys and sycophants back up his lies and lie further for him. This whole evil crap-shack is coming apart now. The brand “Trump-backer” is now a badge of shame and not a ticket to corrupt liar heaven.

The two videos from Lincoln project drive those points home and are the beginning of a well deserved reward of shame for those that lied for Trump for the last four years. Check them out and see what you think.

https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1349390978717683712/vid/1280x720/ZQFIIZuajS_qXNwH.mp4?tag=13
Follow the MOney
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1349056046086590464?s=20
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Observation, Politics

Observation: Forget the Alamo: Trump is still trying to incite an Insurrection

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic

Using a location that conjures a war reference about remembering a slaughter is already a veiled message to extremists 

Faced with a world without his Twitter account Trump appears to be reaching out to symbolism and and tacit messaging to continue to try and build anger and foment a civil war. 

Texas officials were quoted as saying that they oppose Trump’s visit outright, citing the possibility that he would be citing more violence and that maskless fans could create a coronavirus surge, as has happened in relation to other Trump events.

By choosing Alamo, TX, “coincidentally”, for some kind of news conference, vaguely related to his unfinished and disastrous border wall, he is likely sending a message to the most violent and most extreme of his “army” of followers across the nation. 

The Battle of the Alamo, which took place at the Alamo Mission (no where near Alamo, TX), a former Spanish religious outpost which had been converted to a makeshift fort, is a historic symbol of Texans’ resistance and their struggle for independence. The battle cry of “remember the Alamo” first became popular during the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848.

There is no sign that Trump is trying to reduce the potential for violence, more likely it’s the opposite

Already many of those that engaged in a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol have stated openly, either in interviews or in social media posts, that they believe that politicians not named Trump, regardless if they are Republican like Pence (who that were intent on hanging from gallows in sight of the Capitol Steps) or Democrat (“Put a bullet into Nancy Pelosi’s Head” was a threat from one individual) should be murdered.

Further, they say that they will never stop or give up “because this is like 1776”. Apparently, Trump would like to add “Remember the Alamo” to this brain-worm controlled thought process. Interestingly, since Trump began his run for president stating that “Mexicans are Rapists”, using a symbol from the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 has a kind of dual purpose – Mexicans are the enemy in his book, apparently, and so is the U.S. government. 

Buried somehow in these references is the idea that somehow the “Patriots” in his “army” were “oppressed” by the U.S. Government (which he is the current “leader” of) and Mexico (by the racist belief that people are a threat simply due to their race & heritage) and they must therefore fight back and get revenge. 

This kind of convoluted circular logic is typical of the propaganda that has, amazingly, led to thousands of radicalized Trump followers looking for blood and wishing for a second civil war. Since this brainwashing is not a simple thing to reverse, once various “Big Lies” are accepted as truth, the situation has the potential to get much worse before it gets better.

“Remember the Alamo” is literally a battle cry that means it is time to fight back. Trump is not likely staging his circus at that location by chance. Should the press and the 84+ million Americans that do not want Trump as a dictator stand up to this insanity? Should the press take off the kid gloves and clearly state what this subterfuge os clearly all about?

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Politics

The economy is experiencing the ‘Trump Depression’- new ad by MeidasTouch

Video

The one time that Trump told the truth

Trump’s lies are legion. By one count he has lied 273,693,849 times since 2016. This is well known. The anti-Trump group of brothers known as The MeidasTouch (who are similar to The Lincoln Project but not Republican) has uncovered a rarity: Trump actually telling the truth.

In a world where millions suddenly find themselves unemployed, desperate, even searching for ways to make ends meet – it would be nice to get some help from the Federal Government. Fix the problems so people can fend for themselves again. Unfortunately it will require a new administration for that to happen.

Read More: Trump is the Fear-Monger in-Chief and the New Panic-Man who lied to Woodward in two-way deceit

When basic human needs are not being met, as the video implies, its time for a Democrat to take control. Therefore: Vote Biden-Harris is the true message from Trump. When he tells the truth that is.

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