Patrice de Bergeracpas

PEPE ESCOBAR—It didn’t take long for Tokayev to understand the merits of immediately calling the CSTO to the rescue: Kazakhstan signed the treaty way back in 1994. After all, Tokayev was fighting a foreign-led coup against his government.

Putin, among others, has stressed how an official Kazakh investigation is the only one entitled to get to the heart of the matter.

It’s still unclear exactly who – and to what extent – sponsored the rioting mobs. Motives abound: to sabotage a pro-Russia/China government, to provoke Russia, to sabotage BRI, to plunder mineral resources, to turbo-charge a House of Saud-style ‘Islamization’.

JOHN RACHEL—When finally provoked, immediately blame chemical-biological attack on Donbas separatists and Vladimir Putin. Introduce UN resolution condemning Russia for sponsoring chemical-biological warfare.
Have Ukrainian military sweep into the separatist territory to defend against more chemical attacks (this has to be a brutal campaign . . . refer to Germany’s scorched-earth blitzkrieg methods for guidance).

JONATHAN COOK—Assaults on the right to speak, and to think, are coming thick and fast. But the significance – and coordination – of all these developments is being largely missed.

Those who try to open up a little space – in politics, academia, and journalism – to think critically about our society and how power is misused are the chief targets. Western establishments have grown increasingly concerned about the expansion of popular freedoms that arrived with social media a decade or so ago, which have allowed us to analyze and critique elite interests and strategies. This has posed a very obvious threat to the establishment’s continuing ability to propagandize us and has led to far more unpredictable and unstable social and political landscapes.

Alicia was a great Argentine revolutionary, the daughter of workers who at a very young age took up the struggles of a generation that dreamed of building an Argentina with social justice for the people. Alicia once said in an interview…”in Latin America a great admiration was forged for Cuba, for Fidel, Raul, Che and so many other revolutionaries. In Argentina we wanted the same thing, but it was not achieved and a great part of my generation lost their best children”.

Alicia was born on January 1, 1953 in Merlo, Buenos Aires province, grew up and was educated in Córdoba, where she studied journalism. Argentina’s military dictatorship imposed in 1976 unleashed a fierce repression against all popular militants. Thirty thousand were detained-disappeared, among them many of Alicia’s classmates. She was unable to finish her degree, and with the clothes she was wearing, in the same year ’76 she had to go into exile.

CHRIS HEDGES—It is essential to understand the pathologies of the uber-rich. They have seized total political power. These pathologies inform Donald Trump, his children, the Brett Kavanaughs, and the billionaires who run his administration. The uber-rich cannot see the world from anyone’s perspective but their own. People around them, including the women whom entitled men prey upon, are objects designed to gratify momentary lusts or be manipulated. The uber-rich are almost always amoral. Right. Wrong. Truth. Lies. Justice. Injustice. These concepts are beyond them. Whatever benefits or pleases them is good. What does not must be destroyed.