January 2023

BATIUSHKA—Some write that Russia can only win the war in Ukraine as long as it can help the US to save face after its defeat and then the collapse of NATO and the EU. Remember Saigon? Remember Bush and his ‘Mission Accomplished’? (The world laughed at his farce, but plenty in the US were convinced by it). Remember Kabul? The US just left them and pretended to be in denial about them. Like the British at Dunkirk in 1940, who left their French allies in the lurch, they just ran away back to their island, declaring victory, though leaving lots of their equipment behind them. The Americans can also run away, saying: ‘Forget it. They are not worthy of us’.

The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate are joined by activist and comedian Randy Credico to discuss the pathetic state of Democracy Now, once a beacon of antiwar journalism and now a reliable fount of regime change propaganda that sandbagged Julian Assange when he was fighting for his freedom against the CIA.

Unions have called for a nationwide day of strikes and demonstrations and hope to repeat the large turnout seen on the first major protest on Jan. 19, when more than a million people marched against the reform. Strikes that day also halted trains, blocked refineries and curbed power generation. A second nationwide strike on Tuesday will disrupt French public transport amid protests across the country, in a backlash against the government’s plans to make people work longer before retirement.