Day: January 1, 2009

Europe

Propaganda game in fight over Ukraine military aid

With Republicans holding up new military aid for Ukraine on Capitol Hill, Russia launched one of the most massive aerial assaults of the war, killing 40 in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Lviv. Ukraine retaliated the next day with a missile strike on the Russian city of Belgorod, killing at least 22. Russia counter-retaliated with a wave of drone strikes, damaging schools, hospitals and homes across Ukraine, killing at least 24. Russia accused Ukraine of using internationally prohibited cluster munitions in the strike on Belgorod, and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. Of course, Russia has itself used cluster munitions since the start of the war in February 2022, despite international criticism from bodies including the UN Human Rights Council. (Photo from Little Ukraine, NYC: CounterVortex)

Europe

Maidan martyrs betrayed in Ukraine prisoner swap

Activists in Ukraine are protesting a judicial ruling they say defers accountability in the massacre of scores of protesters during the Maidan Square occupation of 2014, popularly known as “Heaven’s Hundred.” Five ex-officers of the Berkut, the former regime’s now-disbanded political police, faced charges of killing 48 protesters and wounding 80 others during the February 2014 repression. Another 21 sought in the violence, also members of the Berkut’s elite Black Company, managed to escape to Russia after the fall of the Viktor Yanukovich regime later that month, and some are now believed to have been incorporated into paramilitary groups by the Vladimir Putin government. The five were ordered released from custody by the Kyiv Court of Appeals—among the 200 prisoners freed in a swap between the Ukrainian authorities and Russia-backed separatists. Their release was protested in an open letter to President Volodymyr Zelensky by the group Families of the Heaven’s Hundred Heores, who asserted that it violates international law. (Photo: EuroMaidan)

Palestine

500-plus West Bank demolitions in 2018: report

Israel demolished 538 Palestinian homes and facilities across the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in 2018, leaving 1,300 Palestinians and 225 children homeless, according to a year-end report by the Abdullah Al-Hurani Centre, an affiliate of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The report stressed that these demolitions were carried out in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international norms. It charged that Israel "continues its policy of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem," pointing out that, in addition to the demolitions, Israel had issued 460 "stop-building orders" during the same period. (Photo via Middle East Monitor)

Watching the Shadows

Counterpunch justifies Kremlin propaganda

After the Washington Post cited FBI sources to the effect that at least one recent contributor to Counterpunch was a "probable Russian troll," editor Jeffrey St. Clair responds by defending "pro-Russian" bias, pointing to instances of "bias" in favor of horrible things like torture and nuclear strikes by mainstream wonks. So much for the notion of the "alternative media" actually taking a higher standard than the dreaded "MSM," and actually providing an alternative. Instead the idea seems to be that if they can run sinister propaganda, so can we. (Photo: Wikipedia)

The Caucasus