Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Israel’s war with Palestinians in Gaza could spread well beyond West Asia if the bloodshed in the region could not stop soon.
Putin made the comments on Wednesday during a meeting with Russian religious leaders of different faiths in Kremlin, Reuters reported.
He said it was wrong that innocent women, children and old people in Gaza were being punished by Israel.
The Russian leader said he told other world leaders in phone calls that if bloodshed did not stop, there was a risk of a much wider conflagration.
“Our task today, our main task, is to stop the bloodshed and violence,” said Putin, according to a Kremlin transcript of the meeting.
“Otherwise, further escalation of the crisis is fraught with grave and extremely dangerous and destructive consequences. And not only for the Middle East region. It could spill over far beyond the borders of the Middle East,” he stated.
The Russian president slammed certain Western powers, saying they are seeking to provoke further escalation and to draw as many other countries and peoples into the conflict as possible.
He added that the aim is to “launch a real wave of chaos and mutual hatred not only in the Middle East but also far beyond its borders.”
“For this purpose, among other things, they are trying to play on the national and religious feelings of millions of people,” he added.
Putin said Russia continued to advocate for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli issue, something he said was the only way to reach a long-term settlement.
He said Israel was wrong to keep bombing Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas attack.
Putin denounced “the notorious principle of collective responsibility when old people, women, children, entire families and hundreds of thousands of people are left without shelter, food, water, electricity and medical care.”
Israel has heavily bombarded the Gaza Strip since October 7, leaving over 6,500 people dead, including more than 2,700 children, and 18, 000 others injured during its 19 days of aggression.
The regime’s strikes are coupled with a crippling siege of Gaza. Israel has also barred any fuel transport into the strip.
The soaring number of casualties from the regime’s escalating bombardment comes as medical facilities across the territory were forced to close because of bombing damage, according to health officials.
More than 40 medical centers had to halt operations after they ran out of fuel or were damaged by Israeli air raids.
The bombings have destroyed thousands of buildings and left over one million people displaced in one of the most densely populated places in the world, which is largely deprived of water, food and other basic supplies due to Israel’s blockade.
Aid agencies have warned that a humanitarian catastrophe was unfolding in the besieged territory.
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A volunteer with the Feed Scarborough Food Bank unloads donations at the charity’s warehouse. A new report from Food Banks Canada said demand for food banks across the country has reached its highest level since its studies began nearly 35 years ago. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Every Friday, people line up around the block to pick up dinner from a tiny church off College Street in downtown Toronto. Volunteers working for the food program inside serve a hot casserole, some rice, and maybe fruit and yogurt if supplies come through.
Rev. Canon Maggie Helwig, who helps run the program out of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields church, said it regularly serves 130 people for dinner on Fridays — compared to the two dozen they saw a few years ago.
On Saturday and Sunday mornings, the lineup for breakfast is even longer — with hundreds of parents, seniors, students, working adults and those who are unemployed.
“Every week we are scrambling,” Helwig said. “Every week we run out of food and start foraging in the cupboards and in the freezers for something that we can give to people.
“It’s terrifying.”
That staggering demand is also playing out at food banks and other food programs across the country. A new report from Food Banks Canada released Wednesday found that this year, with the cost of living skyrocketing, food bank usage rose to its highest level since the survey started in 1989.
A volunteer at the Daily Bread Food Bank’s Toronto warehouse prepares food for distribution. The number of people using Canadian food banks has grown by nearly 80 per cent since 2019, the HungerCount report showed. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
The annual HungerCount report is based on surveys sent to food security organizations, tracking their usage in the month of March. This year’s report found that nearly two million people — including more employed people than ever — used food banks March 2023 alone.
That’s a 32 per cent increase from the same month last year and more than 78 per cent higher than in March 2019.
It’s data that comes as no surprise to staff and volunteers who have been trying to keep up with demand.
“Anyone who works in any kind of food-security programming knows that things have gotten astonishingly worse,” Helwig said.
Food insecurity rose in line with inflation
A few years ago, unemployment was a major factor in the number of people seeking support, as the early months of the pandemic brought the economy to a halt. The report said food insecurity is now being driven by inflation and the high cost of living — with more Canadians struggling to afford basics like housing and food.
The study said demand for food banks started exploding around the same time inflation shot up, doing so at its fastest rate in the last 40 years.
“It’s not necessarily that there’s not enough food,” said Larry Mathieson, who runs the Unison for Generations 50+ program for older adults in the Calgary area. “It’s that we can’t afford the food.”
The study said 17 per cent of clients this year had jobs, but they didn’t earn enough to make ends meet.
“Never before have food banks seen such a high level of need among the working population,” the report said.
The demand is high from coast to coast. The Food Bank of Waterloo Region in Ontario said its annual funding needs to double to more than $1.6 million to keep up as demand reaches a “crisis” level.
Mathieson said the seniors’ program in Calgary has 200 people seeking help every day, for the few days a week it operates, compared to “maybe 12 to 16” during the earlier months of the pandemic.
“With the cost of housing, inflation, grocery prices, all of those things are combining to make the situation worse,” Mathieson said.
Volunteers shelve food at the Muslim Welfare Centre food bank in Scarborough, Ont. The report found that newcomers, racialized Canadians and Indigenous people made up high percentages of food bank users. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
1 in 3 food bank users are children
The study found that more than 640,000 children under 18 used the food bank in the same time frame, accounting for a third of the total number of clients. More than a quarter of all clients were newcomers who have lived in Canada for less than a decade — a figure that has doubled since 2016.
Racialized people accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the food banks’ client base, up from 32 per cent the year before. Nearly half of Indigenous people who participated in the report said they’d gone hungry within the last year, compared to just 15 per cent of the white population.
WATCH | How high grocery prices hurt school food programs:
How high grocery prices hurt school food programs
22 days ago
Duration6:20The rising cost of living has more families relying on school food programs, but those services are also feeling the pinch from skyrocketing grocery prices. CBC’s Deana Sumanac-Johnson shows the challenges facing programs, their importance and breaks down the renewed calls for nationwide school meal funding.
Low social assistance rates are also a factor in high demand, the report found. More than 40 per cent of clients received provincial income assistance, either general welfare or disability support, as their primary source of income. The report said that in every province and territory, the assistance rates are too low to raise many households above the poverty line.
The report offered several recommendations to help alleviate food insecurity, such as better support for those on low incomes, providing more affordable housing and creating better financial supports for seniors on fixed pensions.
The key, it said, is to address low incomes as well as the skyrocketing costs of living — not one or the other.
Helwig said her church is leaning on donations and food rescue programs to keep the service running, though donors — like consumers — are also struggling to pay grocery bills. She said church volunteers have never turned anyone away, but they’re not providing as much as she wishes they could.
“I can tell you people have gone away with some pretty strange and unsatisfying meals sometimes,” she said. “Like, ‘Here’s a granola bar and a hard-boiled egg that got cracked while it was being cooked and a slice of bread.’
“It’s sometimes definitely not what we would want to be giving people.”
Almost four million people, including more than a million children, in Britain experienced the most extreme form of poverty last year, according to a recent study published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), a local social change organization.
According to the charity, the number of Britons experiencing ‘destitution’ surged 61% between 2019 and 2022, with 3.8 million people going through these levels of poverty.
‘Destitution’ is defined as the inability to meet basic physical needs, like staying fed, warm, clean and dry either due to lack of essentials – such as clothing, heating, shelter and food – or because an income is so low that people cannot afford to buy these items.
Household income dropped below a minimum level after housing costs, ranging from £95 ($115) a week for a single adult to £205 ($249) a week for a couple with two children. Over half of destitute households had a weekly income of less than £85 after housing costs, the study concluded, adding that a quarter reported no income at all.
The number of ‘destitute’ children has nearly tripled since 2017, marking a dramatic increase by 186%.
Adults from across the country reported a frequent inability to have more than one meal a day, saying that they are often forced to go without to ensure their kids could eat. Around two-thirds of respondents (61%) said they had gone hungry in the past month, having relied on food banks or relatives for groceries.
Over half of destitute adults (51%) regularly went without hygiene and cleaning products, along with toiletries like shampoo and toothpaste, reporting heavy reliance on food banks for these items.
Most of the polled adults were not able to afford clothing and footwear, claiming they only purchased new clothes that were necessary, such as school uniforms and trainers for their children.
In a deep dive with one of the most controversial figures of modern media, GOP Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks with Alex Jones on ‘The TRUTH Podcast’ revealing unsettling insights into modern censorship, geopolitics, and American exceptionalism.
Dubbed “The Most Censored Man In The World”, Jones’ revelations shed light on the startling decline of free speech and the challenges it presents to the core principles upon which the United States was founded.
“When they censor you and deplatform you they can then steal your identity and misrepresent what you’ve said.”
Jones highlights this as a chilling indictment of the state of modern discourse where narratives can be manipulated by simply silencing dissenting voices, warning Vivek in his usual husky tones that:
I’m not as big as Trump, I’m probably like 5% of the power he’s got and so I have been silenced. …
The idea you get to speak your mind as long as I get to in return, the idea that there’s a republic where your voice counts.
Echoing Vivek’s perspective on the state of the nation, Jones agrees “This is our 1776 moment…”
“…instead of the leftist mind of ‘we’re being attacked, we’re being oppressed, let’s give up'” Jones says “let’s innovate, let’s out-communicate, let’s use this pressure like lifting weights or jogging or climbing a mountain to get stronger… That which doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.”
“It’s true and this is 1776 Part Two for the whole world and it’s very exciting.”
The challenges go beyond mere suppression of speech, as nations grapple with post-colonial identities and evolving geopolitical dynamics, the balance of power on the global stage plays a role:
“The current economic model, the globalists have to enslave us. We are going to resist them.”
As Ramaswamy highlights:
“The Democrats aren’t my enemy. It’s the system, the shadowy figures that are pushing these agendas.”
Reiterating concerns about the fragile state of national unity and identity, Jones warns:
“If we don’t pledge allegiance to the American flag… we’re going to pledge allegiance to a different flag.”
The discussion is broad and deep as the two return time and again to the that the tentacles of corporate influence are omnipresent, intertwining with every controversial issue that shapes the global narrative. Additional topics covered vary from the contentious discourse surrounding climate change (with its fearmongering tactics and misleading statistics):
The climate agenda itself is a hoax… climate change is a constant. I think any person who leads the United States going forward cannot be somebody who accepts the premises of the climate change agenda as a fixed principle.
…to the intricate dance of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East with mentions of “crime families” and vested interests in military contracting.
“It’s not about left or right. It’s about the globalists versus the people,” says Ramaswamy.
“…these other candidates they’re puppets of a broken Super-PAC Puppet Master System and that’s just the state of American politics today.”
It’s a stark reminder of the high stakes in today’s information warfare, where the erasure of a voice can lead to the distortion of its message, and ultimately, to the rewriting of historical facts.
“Our country’s going into a technocracy. That’s why I’m fighting.”
And no one knows better than Alex Jones, the deeply entrenched mechanisms that quash dissent and manipulate narratives in the digital realm.
“The United States of America was founded on free speech and open debate. It’s in the First Amendment for a reason,” he exclaims.
Watch the full discussion below on X:
00:00 Intro 1:55 Censored 3:15 “Don’t Talk to Him” 4:40 The most informed candidate 6:57 Globalist Puppets 8:27 Alex Jones background 13:12 Speaking/Finding Truth 19:00 Admitting Wrongs and Corrupt Trials 28:58 Digital Prison 30:05 Founded on Radical Ideas 32:30 Rules for thee not for me 35:50 Our 1776 Moment 38:30 A Time of Revival 41:58 The Failed Power Structure 45:27 Unapologetically American 48:00 Tyranny of the Minority and the Climate Cult 52:01 Question Everything 53:40 Sean Hannity Attacks and WW3 59:00 Outro
“But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.” – Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Enough already.
Enough with the distractions. Enough with the partisan jousting.
Enough with the sniping and name-calling and mud-slinging that do nothing to make this country safer or freer or more just.
We have let the government’s evil-doing, its abuses, power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny go on for too long.
We have seen this convergence before in Hitler’s Germany, in Stalin’s Russia, in Mussolini’s Italy, and in Mao’s China: the rise of strongmen and demagogues, the ascendency of profit-driven politics over deep-seated principles, the warring nationalism that seeks to divide and conquer, the callous disregard for basic human rights and dignity, and the silence of people who should know better.
Yet no matter how many times the world has been down this road before, we can’t seem to avoid repeating the deadly mistakes of the past.
This is not just playing out on a national and international scale. It is wreaking havoc at the most immediate level, as well, creating rifts and polarities within families and friends, neighborhoods and communities that keep the populace warring among themselves and incapable of presenting a united front in the face of the government’s goose-stepping despotism.
We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, disguised as “the better good,” marketed as benevolence, enforced with armed police, and carried out by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.
For too long now, the American people have rationalized turning a blind eye to all manner of government wrongdoing – asset forfeiture schemes, corruption, surveillance, endless wars, SWAT team raids, militarized police, profit-driven private prisons, and so on – because they were the so-called lesser of two evils.
Yet the unavoidable truth is that the government – through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny – has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
At its core, this is not a debate about politics, or constitutionalism, or even tyranny disguised as law-and-order. This is a condemnation of the monsters with human faces who walk among us.
Many of them work for the U.S. government.
This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film “They Live,” which was released 35 years ago and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.
Best known for his horror film “Halloween,” which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.
Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.
In “Escape from New York,” Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.
In “The Thing,” a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.
In “Christine,” the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.
In “In the Mouth of Madness,” Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”
And then there is Carpenter’s “They Live,” in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace — blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.
It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper [see YouTube clip below]) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses – Hoffman lenses – that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.
When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.
Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”
When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.
This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in “They Live” is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.
A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.
In this way, the subtle message of “They Live” provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”
Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: what we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.
We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.
Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist, we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end – the source of money and power.
As the Bearded Man in “They Live” warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”
We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth.
From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.
The powers that be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, pandemics, mass shootings, etc.).
They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.
They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.
We are little more than expendable resources to be used, abused and discarded.
In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.
In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.
Sound familiar?
Clearly, we are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests.
We have moved into “corporatism” (favored by Benito Mussolini), which is a halfway point on the road to full-blown fascism.
Corporatism is where the few moneyed interests – not elected by the citizenry – rule over the many. In this way, it is not a democracy or a republican form of government, which is what the American government was established to be. It is a top-down form of government and one which has a terrifying history typified by the developments that occurred in totalitarian regimes of the past: police states where everyone is watched and spied on, rounded up for minor infractions by government agents, placed under police control, and placed in detention (a.k.a. concentration) camps.
For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary.
But why would a people agree to such an oppressive regime?
Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government. And, as most social commentators recognize, an atmosphere of fear permeates modern America: fear of terrorism, fear of the police, fear of our neighbors and so on.
The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is transforming the populace into fearful, compliant, pacified zombies content to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.
This brings me back to “They Live,” in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.
When all is said and done, the world of “They Live” is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society, and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”
We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. A concern for human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.
Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.
So where does that leave us?
The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.
Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.
When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hypno-transmitter in “They Live,” he delivers a wake-up call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”
In other words: we need to get active and take a stand for what’s really important.
Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.
As I make clear in my book “Battlefield America: The War on the American People” and in its fictional counterpart, “The Erik Blair Diaries,” the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.
All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.
Wake up, America.
If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “We the People” sleep.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone