This afternoon at a memorial park north of Kaliningrad it occurred to me that I had not ever before in my life seen an official hammer and sickle live, in the flesh. You see it as antifa graffiti, and in movies, and decades-old Soviet memorials, but this was a real, current hammer and sickle. I have never seen this flag before. The way Russians integrate the Soviet past is really interesting.

Some Samidoun posts are appearing again, right after I posted the observation they had appeared and then been censored.

I have never had this happen before on X, and find it really interesting: this morning posts from Samidoun started reappearing on my X feed – Samidoun remember has been declared an illegal organization in Germany even though they were founded in the US simply as a Palestinian support org. I replied to a post and had it disappear, then reposted one and got the message „this post has been deleted“, then my entire X feed disappeared and I got the message „Something went wrong. Try reloading.“ When next I tried to follow a post I saw this.

It was like watching censorship switched off and on in real time. Really tantalizing, like reminding the viewer there is another world out there, which is so close just you can’t see it.

I was watching a video entitled „Undercover cops beating up students at the University of Amsterdam“ when the X feed disappeared and this came up. I hadn’t touched my keyboard or mouse, I was just watching the video.

welt:

Annalena Baerbock beim Fototermin anlässlich des Bundespresseballs
Quelle: REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Die Ampel-Koalition ist Geschichte, doch Annalena Baerbock hat schon eine neue Perspektive. Beim Bundespresseball verriet die Noch-Außenministerin nun ihre Pläne für ihren neuen Posten bei den Vereinten Nationen – und was die Töchter davon halten.

Presse und Politik tanzten in der vergangenen Woche auf dem Bundespresseball.

In Gaza Palestinians continue to die in large numbers. Annalena Baerbock will shortly no longer be Außenministerin, and is now off to a fresh position in New York. Just like that. First, a dance gala.

In Gaza Palestinians, including children, journalists, medical personnel, continue to die in large numbers.

Craig Murray:

The neo-con immigration narrative in Europe is peculiarly complex and flexible. Effectively immigrants viewed as on the West’s side in its wars (Sunni Syrians, Ukrainians) have an open door.

Mass immigration to Europe is therefore a direct result of imperialist foreign policy, and that plays out in complex ways, with the West’s victims arriving against official disapproval and the West’s clients arriving with official approval.

Equally, the economic dislocation and large rise in inflation which also has strengthened the populist right, is itself exaggerated by Western foreign policy. The proxy war in Ukraine is largely responsible for the step change in Europe’s energy prices, with the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline a key factor in the major struggles of German manufacturing industry.

Incredibly, for a year the entire Western media and political class tried to enforce the lie that Russia destroyed its own pipeline – just as they claimed Hamas blew up the first of the dozens of hospitals and health centres destroyed by Israel.

We come back to Gaza, as all serious discussion must at present. I cannot come to terms with the fact that the takeover of the political Establishment by Zionist interests – itself a consequence of the massive growth of the comparative wealth of the ultra-rich – is making it possible for the most brutal genocide possible to happen before the eyes of the world, with active support from the Western establishment.

It is not that the people do not want to stop it. It is that there is no mechanism connecting the popular will to the instruments of government. The major parties all support Israel’s genocide in almost all the Western “democracies”.

It has become impossible to deny the intention of Genocide now. Israel has stepped up its killing of children to dozens every day, is openly executing medics and destroying all healthcare facilities, is bombing desalination plants and is blockading all food.

The Zionist narrative on social media has shifted from denial of genocide to justification of genocide.

I simply cannot understand the mainstream tolerance of this Holocaust.

There are different interpretations of perestroika in the West, including the United States. There is the view that it has been necessitated by the disastrous state of the Soviet economy and that it signifies disenchantment with socialism and a crisis for its ideals and ultimate goals. Nothing could be further from the truth than such interpretations, whatever the motives behind them.

—Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika, (London: Collins, 1987), 10.