Rayya, an 89-year-old Palestinian woman, is a survivor of the holocaust that has engulfed the Palestinian population since the Nakba of 1948. She has now taken refuge in Rafah from the US-backed Gaza Genocide. Her story is told briefly by her niece, Ghada Ageel, in Al-Jazeera under the headline “In Rafah, the final – and most deadly-stage of this genocide is upon us.” Rayya’s biography reminds us vividly that history in historic Palestine did not begin on October 7.
There is another reason to read this brief piece on Rayya. The ongoing genocide in Gaza has been so widely reported in social media, over web outlets and in foreign media that it is hard for Western media to completely ignore the massive bombing and daily carnage.
In this informative and engaging interview, former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, provides an honest analysis of the Gaza crisis, its history and context, including the new geopolitical realities that are determining its impact in the 21st Century. McGovern combines a detailed knowledge with a gentle sense of humor to provide an account that will be useful to the informed as well as to those new to it all. In fact, the interview is especially useful for the many who are misinformed due to the relentless bias of the mainstream media on this subject.
McGovern does not shy away from uncomfortable truths about an Israeli regime that many, including Jimmy Carter, have justly described as Apartheid. For example:
Israel, not the Palestinians, is responsible for the recent bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza and the bombings of other hospitals in the past;
The Twitter Files are a set of internal Twitter documents that Elon Musk released to a group of journalists and other writers soon after his takeover of the company. Journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss organized the publication of the documents in a series of Twitter threads.
In this lecture (video below) Taibbi explains what the Files are and what their significance is. It is enlightening both for those who know little of the Files and for those who have closely followed the controversies surrounding them.
There are two aspects of the Twitter files that are striking.
First, the investigation into the Files shows federal agencies like the FBI systematically working with Twitter in the pre-Musk days to suppress information, using a variety of censoring techniques including shadow banning. (Shadow banning is best described as censorship which hides the tweets or decreases their circulation without their author knowing.) Since censorship by the federal government is forbidden by the First Amendment, this fact would seem to merit a full investigation and proper punishment for those who engaged in any illegalities. It has also emerged in the course of the investigations stimulated by the Files that federal agencies have exerted similar influence over other social media platforms such as Facebook.
Second, the Twitter Files have gained precious little attention in the mainstream media. Much of the mainstream coverage has been in the vein of, “Move along, there is nothing to see here.” Much of the rest has been devoted to attacks on Musk for daring to release the Files and motley other matters.
In this speech at the William F. Buckley Institute at Yale, Matt Taibbi describes the Twitter Files and what we know of them to date. Taibbi, a man of the “left” appears at the Institute bearing the name of one of the most prominent Cold War Conservatives, another example of so-called “right-left” collaboration that we see in response to the dangers of the moment.
"HUGE. China-brokered Deal, Iran and Saudi Arabia Restore Diplomatic Ties," ran the headline for today’s installment on The Duran YouTube Channel hosted by Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris. In terms of diplomacy the news was indeed earth shaking.
Some of the many far reaching geopolitical ramifications are explored by Christoforou and Mercouris.
More details are contained in an excellent early report here by Antiwar.com’s own Kyle Anzalone.
The first national demonstration against the Ukraine War under the banner of Rage Against War will take place on February 19 in Washington, DC. The lead demand is "Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine." It is being organized by the left-wing Peoples Party and the Libertarian Party, a broad coalition that reflects the enormous concern, transcending ideologies, over the U.S. proxy war to the last Ukrainian and the path to nuclear Armageddon on which we now tread.
But what about all those who crave peace but for one reason or another cannot make it to Washington? For people like us, many cities are having local rallies, sister demonstrations, in support of the national effort in DC. San Francisco is one such city. A full list of sister city demonstrations and information about them and details about each can be found here on the RageAgainstWar web site. At the time of this writing they include cities in 10 states: Corvalis, OR; Ann Arbor, MI; Los Angeles, CA; Milwaukee, WI; Bath, ME; Santa Cruz, CA; Denver, CO; Fresno, CA; Tacoma, WA; Minneapolis, MN; Seattle, WA; HiLo, HI; Austin, TX – and of course, San Francisco, CA. Details of each and contacts are here. (Some occur a day or two before Feb. 19.)
In this recent interview Jeffrey Sachs reveals a great deal from an insider’s point of view on the role of the West in ginning up the present war in Ukraine and about the "Shock therapy," that the West administered to both Russia and Poland in the 1990s. The interview carried on The Duran YouTube channel is both informative and in certain respects inspiring.
"Insider" is an understatement when it comes to Sachs. For example, as an advisor to the Soviet government on economic reform in the 1990s, he sat in a room with Russian economist colleagues in the Kremlin when Boris Yeltsin entered with an announcement. Yeltsin had just conferred with the Soviet military in a nearby room and they had agreed to dissolution of the Soviet Union!
Perhaps the most stunning bit of information in the interview comes from Sachs’s disclosure of the reason for the failure of "Shock therapy" in Russia. "Shock therapy" is the name given to the abrupt transition from the Soviet-style command economy to a market-oriented economy. It was a success in Poland, but a failure in Russia where it led to a depression deeper and more costly than our own Great Depression. Why? Sachs was an advisor to Poland and then Russia for the "therapy." So he had witnessed a "controlled experiment," as he put it elsewhere. At a certain point it the process, financial help from the outside was needed to revive the economy on a new basis. It was provided to Poland; but when Sachs called for the same help in Russia, it was refused by the West, specifically by the White House. This happened despite Sachs’s direct pleas to the White House. The depression that followed was neither accidental nor a surprise. Far from it. This was the first time that the US attempted to "weaken" post-Cold War Russia, an attempt that was eventually reversed under Putin.
Various aspects of the US role in Ukraine are also touched on. Why, for example, have the European nations not stood up to the US’s demands to press on with the Ukraine war even though it is damaging to them? Sachs says he discussed that issue with a number of unnamed European officials and their reply was that the decision was not under their control; the US controlled that. What a sad admission that, in their alliance with the US, they have lost their sovereignty.
There is more. Sachs admits to his early naïveté as a younger man about the role of the US and holds out hope despite the present dismal order of things. In that last sense the interview is inspiring. Watch it. It is an antidote to the naïveté that abounds in almost every quarter of the West.
