Posted by George Galloway: Niger revolutionary govt increased the uranium price it exports worldwide to €200 per kg. It used to charge 80c. France was getting Niger’s uranium for 80c per kg. The world market price is €200 per kg, little Macron will have to pay that from now on. It pays to stand up to stand up for your rights like Niger, it remains to be seen if Nigeria will now do the same
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27th September 2023
Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh have been pouring across Armenia’s border for four straight days, fleeing Azerbaijan’s control. They say the world has left them in this catastrophe. My latest from the Armenian border for
26th September 2023
BREAKING: Romania starts the process of buying F-35 multirole fighter jets from the U.S. The Romanian Defense Ministry today issued a letter to Parliament, asking it to approve the purchase of 48 F-35s. 32 of them would be bought in a first batch for USD 6.5 billion.
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26th September 2023
Azerbaijan’s use of force last week to retake Nagorny Karabakh, an Armenian-populated territory, should serve as a wakeup call to European leaders that policy toward Azerbaijan must be reevaluated.
explores this issue for
carnegieeurope.eu The EU and Azerbaijan: Time to Talk Tough By launching a military offensive in Nagorny Karabakh, President Aliyev forfeited the trust of Europeans. Azerbaijan’s status as a transport hub
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27th September 2023
Ukraine handed over a 47-page secret report to the G7 about European spare parts in the “Shahed”, — The Guardian We are talking about manufacturers from the USA, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and Japan.
The Anti-Corruption Foundation
European countries still import huge amounts of goods from Russia. They buy ore, rubber, foil, etc. from Putin’s richest oligarchs. At the same time, cars with Russian license plates are no longer allowed into the #EU
The Anti-Corruption Foundation
Replying to
Russia’s largest petrochemical company Sibur is one of Putin’s personal wallets. Sibur is owned by Gennady Timchenko and Leonid Mikhelson (both not sanctioned). It supplies rubber to Austria and Poland, ethylene oxide to Italy.
Replying to
Azeri petrodollars have corrupted numerous decision-makers in EU member states who still refrain from criticizing Azerbaijan’s war of aggression and war crimes. Politicians in Germany, in particular, were targeted—a country that was also responsible for the #ArmenianGenocide.
Ukraine can not win this War against Russia, They don’t have enough Soldiers Russia has a lot more Soldiers Ready to Fight for what Comes Next Washington must call for Peace There is no winning Strategy Thousands of Ukrainian and Russians are Dying.. It’s Tragic This War is… Show more
·26th September 2023
If you want to understand the torture of the Russian prison system, please read this heartbreaking thread by
where he describes the hell that 62 year old disabled political prisoner Alexei Gorinov is being subjected to. This hell is simply for calling Putin’s war a “war”
Quote
Alexey Navalny
@navalny
Sep 26
1/19 Political prisoner Gorinov will be mad at me because of this post. He will not write it himself because he is a strong person, and I feel guilty in this situation.
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27th September
I get asked about the risks of AI generated imagery and deep fakes a lot. I see them in terms of evidence and information. As evidence, we’ve nothing to worry about, as any good investigation uses multiple sources to verify and corroborate claims 1/
theguardian.com TechScape: AI-made images mean seeing is no longer believing In this week’s newsletter: Why an AI-generated image of Tiananmen Square jumping up Google search rankings is an omen for future
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27th September 2023
Get it done. Nearly 50 Russian companies involved in the extraction, processing & sale of diamonds could be put under western sanctions under a proposal from the Ukrainian authorities. In 2022, Russia exported over $3.8 billion worth of diamonds. https://theguardian.com/world/live/2023/sep/27/russia-ukraine-war-live-updates-shahed-drones-european-components-sokolov-situation-unclear-us-thinktank?CMP=share_btn_tw&page=with%3Ablock-6513ffdc8f0844f4dfe540a7#block-6513ffdc8f0844f4dfe540a7
27th September 2023
Was a pleasure to see Ukraine’s Ambassador to Washington (
) last night & to discuss the work being done by my
colleagues – who are “Ukraine’s global voice.” America supports Ukraine .
·27th September 2023
Dmitry Peskov said he was unaware of Azerbaijan’s detention of Ruben Vardanyan, who he mistakenly said was a Russian citizen.
27th September 2023
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Kyiv had relied on “NATO satellite equipment and reconnaissance aircraft” to carry out the attack.
27th September 2023
The updated entry ban list includes individuals from journalists and academics, to military and political figures.
themoscowtimes.com Moscow Bans 23 Britons From Entering Russia Moscow has added 23 British nationals to its entry ban list in retaliation for London’s war-related sanctions, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
27th September 2023
More than 42,000 ethnic Armenians have left Nagorno-Karabakh since Baku regained full control of the region last week. The line of refugees waiting to cross the Armenian border in the Lachin Corridor is visible from space. Here’s what it looks like.
27th September 2023
European components have been found in Iranian-made drones used by the Russian military to attack Ukraine, reports The Guardian, referencing a secret document that Kyiv submitted to the G7 in August.
Ukrainian Community in Ireland reposted
Ukrainian Community in Ireland
26th September 2023
Replying to
and
Shame on
! Every 3rd tax dollar it pays in Russia is spent on slaughter! #boycottUnilever
Exclusive: Russia doubles 2023 defense spending plan as war costs soar
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Thomas Fazi
@battleforeurope
Lord Skidelsky: “We’re not helping Ukraine by continuing to support a war it cannot win”
Speech by Lord Robert Skidelsky — economist and award-winning biographer of John Maynard Keynes — in the House of Lords, September 21, 2023:
“My Lords, I thank the government for giving this all too rare opportunity to discuss the most fateful foreign policy issue of our day. I see that I have been bracketed with one or two other notable troublemakers; I am very happy to be speaking after the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.
I feel more isolated in this House when I speak on foreign policy than on any other subject, despite my strong feeling that what I am saying urgently needs to be said. I was one of a handful of Peers who opposed NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The three main parties supported both policies. I managed to avoid speaking about Afghanistan in this House, though not writing an article in the Guardian headed ‘Seven pointless years in Afghanistan’, in which I argued that a negotiated settlement with the Taliban was the only way to bring an unwinnable war to an end. I clearly have an excellent track record in what my noble friend Lord Owen calls appeasement.
Before staking out my distinctive position on Ukraine, let me emphasise one point on which I think we are all agreed: that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was an act of aggression against an independent state contrary to the UN charter and fully deserving of the condemnation it received in this country and around the world. I would go further and say that it was worse than a crime; it was a blunder, since it achieved the exact reverse of what Putin intended, alienating Ukraine irretrievably from Russia. As I said a year ago, you do not call Ukrainians your brothers and then try to bomb them into submission. That is common ground.
Where I deviate from the consensus is in rejecting the possibility of a Ukrainian military victory at the present level of economic and military deployment. This leaves three alternatives: economic and military escalation, a long stalemate — a period of frozen war — or negotiations to end the war as quickly as possible. I favour the last. Supporters of the present policy are committed to the first option, a complete defeat of Russia, which means escalation, or they are resigned to a continuation of the present position. Let us be clear about this: driving the Russians out of all the territory lost since 2014, plus reparations for all the damage they have caused, is Zelensky’s war aim, and it is the stated objective of our government as well. They are very cagey about it if one asks what the end game or the condition for ending is, but it is clear what it is. As [Foreign Secretary] James Cleverly stated on 23 August:
‘Be in no doubt, the UK and the international community will never recognise Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, or any Ukrainian territory, and will stand with you for as long as it takes’.
That is the government’s official position.
Complete victory, in this sense, is the key to what all supporters of the present policy want — such as the Nuremberg court, suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, which depended, as she knows, on the complete defeat and occupation of Germany — reparations by Russia for its aggression and, of course, regime change in Russia and an end to the Putin system. Short of a complete defeat of Russa, I do not see how any of these goals of holding Russia to account can be achieved. They are the necessary premise of the policy, and it is not surprising that this is the official policy.
A lot of the moral force behind it depends on viewing the Russian action in Ukraine as unprovoked — ‘brutal and unprovoked aggression’ is the commonly used term. Yet, how can you take the notion of unprovoked aggression seriously? As the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and I noted in a co-signed letter published in the Financial Times soon after the outbreak of the war, Russian hostility to NATO expansion has been constant since 1991. We wrote:
‘NATO Governments have rightly said they are willing to address Russia’s security concerns, but then say in the same breath that Russia has no legitimate security concerns because NATO is a purely defensive alliance’.
This has been the contradiction at the heart of Western policy on Russia and, in my view, eventually provoked a Russian response.
To say that the Russian attack was provoked is not to say it was justified; that is an important distinction for clear thinking about peace prospects. The only point I make is that a careful look at the background to the war is needed to judge the scale of Putin’s ambition, to judge whether he is a Hitler — an increasingly common comparison — and therefore what a justifiable endgame might be like.
There is evidence that our government have not only endorsed President Zelensky’s war aims but helped define them. There is so much that we do not know about this and so much misinformation on both sides. I agree that there is much more misinformation on the other side than on our side, but there is a hell of a lot of misinformation on our side as well. Is it true, for example, that on a visit to Kyiv in April 2022, Boris Johnson strongly advised Zelensky not to sign any peace agreement, assuring him of continuing Western support, come what may? I do not know, but it has been widely said that it aborted what were then promising peace negotiations.
Behind the government’s reluctance even to whisper the language of peace is their failure to recognise the extent of Ukraine’s victory. Ukraine has fought for its independence and won, much as Finland did in 1939-40, although Finland’s independence did come at the cost of some territory. If we could think of the Ukrainian achievement in these terms, we would be much less hung up on defining victory in terms of the reconquest of every inch of territory it has lost since 2014.
Apart from these general considerations, the war aims espoused by our government are unachievable. Ukraine is not in a position to fight the kind of war it can win. Its overhyped counteroffensive has stalled, and most military experts believe that inconclusive trench warfare will be the order of the day for months to come. In those circumstances, there will be a strong temptation on our side to break the stalemate by progressive scaling up of warfare. Escalation has already started. At his meeting with Zelensky at Chequers in July, our Prime Minister confirmed that we have provided Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles and attack drones with a range of 200 kilometres. The longer the war goes on in its stalemated form, the greater the temptation to supply Ukraine with longer-range weaponry that could hit targets deep inside Russia and involve NATO military forces in direct attacks on Russian military positions.
I and others have warned about the danger of nuclear escalation. We all hope that China’s veto on the use of nuclear weapons will be binding on Russia, but it would be very imprudent to expect it to hold in the event that the Russians face a catastrophic military defeat or failure on the ground as a result of NATO support for Ukraine. An important contribution by the defence analyst Charles Knight argues that the Ukraine war presents a greater nuclear risk than the Cuban missile crisis, calling for careful rationality and restraint by Russia and the United States. Can the Minister assure us that the government have not broken off all contact with Russia’s leaders and that behind official policy façades and smokescreens, Putin and other Russian leaders know that there are feasible endgames that avoid either total Russian defeat and humiliation or inexorable progress to Armageddon?
My dream is of a congress of London to bring peace to Ukraine as the Congress of Berlin pacified the Balkans in 1878, but we await our Disraeli”.
Who Watches the Watchers? 