alanjjohnstone
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Making immigrants the scapegoats
Tunisian law enforcement has launched a wave of repression against the country’s sub-Saharan African population, carrying out random identity checks and sometimes violently arresting them, leaving their children abandoned and offering no access to any kind of legal support. Xenophobic and racist sentiments have also been circulating widely on Tunisian social media, a toxic climate that recent statements by the Tunisian president only exacerbated.
The Tunisian Nationalist Party promotes the “great replacement theory”, championed by the extreme right in both Europe and the United States, with what they call the “sub-Saharan invasion”
l Macron, has said China’s engagement in peace in Ukraine is a “good thing”.
Macron told reporters that he would visit China in early April, in part to seek Beijing’s help with ending the war.
He said: “China must help us put pressure on Russia so that it never uses chemical or nuclear weapons, (an effort) which China has already made, and that it stops its aggression as a precondition for talks.”
Has China recognised the annexations of Crimea or the Donbas.
The answer is no.
China has maintained its neutrality by abstaining from all UN votes.
Has Putin fallen into an American trap?
Promising developments
Zelensky has said he wants to meet China’s Xi Jinping to discuss Beijing’s proposals for ending the war in Ukraine.
Russia hailed the Chinese peace proposals. “We share Beijing’s views,” the foreign ministry said.
It is Biden throwing cold water over the proposals
Biden told ABC News, “Putin’s applauding it, so how could it be any good? I’ve seen nothing in the plan that would indicate that there is something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia,”
At my work, we used to have what was called ‘job and finish’.
Some postal workers would come in early or decline to take official breaks so to sort up their mail for their delivery route, to be the first out with many taking their own car rather than Royal Mail vehicles hoping to be the first to finish and go home.
Such flexibility was removed when individual work-loads increased. The result was that all mail was delayed with postal workers obliged to work to their official finishing times.
Junior doctors in England will strike on 13, 14 and 15 March, the British Medical Association has announced.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64758661
The three-day strike, starting and finishing at 07:00, will see junior doctors walk out of both routine and emergency care. But by law they they can only withdraw from life-and-limb emergency care if the NHS has found other staff to cover for them.
The term “junior doctors” covers everyone who has just graduated from medical school through to those with many years’ experience on the front line. Overall, they account for more than 40% of the medical workforce.
Is Russia threatening Poland?
Russia’s former president and now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said that tough negotiations with Ukraine and the West would culminate in “some kind of agreement”. But he said that deal would lack “fundamental agreements on real borders” and not amount to an overarching European security pact, making it vital for Russia to extend its borders now.
“That is why it is so important to achieve all the goals of the special military operation. To push back the borders that threaten our country as far as possible, even if they are the borders of Poland.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russias-medvedev-floats-idea-pushing-102848023.html
Saied plays the racist immigrant card
Saied called for urgent action to halt the flow of sub-Saharan migrants into the country. “The undeclared goal of the successive waves of illegal immigration is to consider Tunisia a purely African country that has no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations,” he said, going on to accuse unnamed parties of complicity in a “criminal arrangement made since the beginning of this century to alter the demographic structure of Tunisia”.
In an earlier post, I speculated about Russia opening a second front from Belarus as a game-changer. Others appear to raise the possibility too.
“a south-western thrust from Belarus to sever the weapons supply routes that lead from Poland – that is a realistic option available for Russia.”
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1431/notes-on-the-war/
TS – “Why do you consistently pass off as news NATOstani state media narratives while ignoring the evidence of a catastrophic Ukrainian defeat in the making?”
Simply because there is no convincing evidence of what you describe as a probable “catastrophic” Ukrainian defeat.
I have already stated my opinion that there can be the loss of the Donbass to a Russian offensive but it will not be a decisive victory as the war could continue.
Your own scenario also can imagine a war that spreads as far west as the Polish border. And I find it incredible that you believe that this advance can be done speedily when obviously the present eastern battlefront shows that gains are very slow and costly.
Russia could also be vulnerable to a Summer counter-offensive (as Kharkiv and Kherson has shown) and possibly be cut off from Mariupol, Melitopol and Crimea. The promised armour reinforcements will have eventually arrived and been deployed to the frontline combat battalions. Russia’s window of opportunity for making substantial progress is narrowing.
I do wonder if Russia can launch a new front from Belarus which may make your scenario of a wider war a bit more likely.
I believe that there is a strong chance that the war will enter 2024 and even go beyond into 2025.
I don’t underestimate humanity’s capacity to inflict so much suffering and pain upon one another in the name of imaginary “concepts” as motherland and fatherland.
I take no pleasure in the unnecessary deaths of soldiers from either side.
The average life expectancy of a frontline soldier in eastern Ukraine is just four hours, a retired US Marine fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region told ABC News.
4 Hours.
TS – “Moscow will give Kiev one last chance to negotiate after Donbass is taken.”
There is the well-known saying – “They make a desert and call it peace”
As contributors have repeatedly said on this forum, it is very much hoped that territory is given up for peace, no matter how temporary it may prove to be. We have never supported the right to national self-determination nor defended the integrity of any country’s sovereignty.
The statement in the Communist Manifesto, “The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got” is no empty phrase or platitude for us on the forum. During WW1 and WW2 members of the SPGB went to jail and faced social ostracisation for standing by that principle.
From Day One of the war our advice has been to both sides – don’t fight, flee the country whether Ukraine or Russia. Don’t die for nationalism or patriotism. As Wilfred Owen called it “…The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria more.”
How do you account for the UN votes where Russia can only achieve full approval from North Korea, Nicaragua, Belarus, Syria and Eritrea.
China, India, Brazil and South Africa, fellow members of BRICS abstained.
Then there is this opinion poll.
It reflects the prevailing attitude that we have discussed here, that it is better for Ukraine concede territory to gain peace.
A lot to take from this poll and again confirms what we have stated, it is not a war for democracy.
