Egypt announced on Sunday that it intends to formally join the lawsuit launched by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, which accuses Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

A Foreign Ministry statement explained that the step comes "in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip."

Israel's tanks were stationed in Rafah on Egypt's border with Gaza on Sunday for the sixth consecutive day since its military invaded the border crossing facility.

Tariq Marzbaan and Nora Hoppe interview Professor Karaganov from Russia's leading public foreign policy organisation, conversing with him on an array of issues, including Western escalation against Russia, the war in Ukraine, colonialism, and the genocide in Gaza.

It is clear that the Anglo-Saxon industrial-military-media complex, with the help of its vassals, intends to preserve its global hegemony and its colonialist conquests at all costs. The Hegemon cannot accept the paradigm shift of an emerging Multipolar World. Any discussion of peace, diplomacy, or negotiations regarding the wars it has started is out of the question. Western populations, whose minds are contaminated with neoliberalism and Russophobia, are currently terrified of an "imminent Russian invasion"... Mass delirium is preventing REASON from returning to the West. How can the rest of the world cope with this madness? And what can the rest of the world hope for?

We turn to Professor Sergei A. Karaganov* - Honorary Chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy (Russia's leading public foreign policy organisation) and academic supervisor of the Faculty of World Economics and World Politics of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow - as he has long been offering insightful views on such topics as the use of nuclear deterrence as a wake-up call to the West to restore common sense and Russia's needed pivot away from the West and to the East.

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Being an "ally" with the USA does not guarantee immunity against economic interference, subversion and sabotage, quite the opposite.

The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, once said that the formula used by the European Union to manage its relations with China is "impractical", "it's like driving a car to an intersection and looking at the traffic light and seeing the yellow, green and red lights on at the same time". I would say more... In addition to the confusion with the traffic light indications, the driver — for the Chinese only — still has to watch out for nails, oil and potholes in the road, which can lead to a crash or damage to the vehicle.

And who would cause such dangers along the way? Given the desperation of the actors involved and the unidirectional nature of the actions... Consequently, the exasperated and catastrophic tone that we find in the Western press, as opposed to a more triumphalist tone that was still in force six months ago (maybe even less than that), tells us everything we need to know. It's incredible how Western emotions run riot, going from one extreme to the other in very short periods of time. From certain victory in Ukraine against Russia, we move on to widespread panic, in which Sullivan, Biden, Borrell or Macron, who as recently as September were already bathing in the good waters of Crimea, have now moved on to the certainty that Russian troops will not stop at the Dnepr and perhaps not even at the Danube, Rhine or Elbe.

The UK and its allies got tricked into backing a "corrupt mafia state" in Ukraine and getting into a war of attrition against a Moscow-Beijing partnership, Dominic Cummings has said in an interview.

The longtime Tory political strategist led the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit and was one of the key aides to then-PM Boris Johnson until resigning in November 2020.

"We should have never got into the whole stupid situation," Cummings told the outlet I News in an interview published on Wednesday, commenting on London's full-throated support for Kiev. He also described Ukraine as a "corrupt s**thole that doesn't matter at all."

Tuesday is the 32nd anniversary of Russia's modern Armed Forces. NATO may have planned otherwise, but the crisis has served to forge an effective, battle-tested fighting force - one uniquely prepared for the postindustrial warfare of the future, US and Russian military experts have told Sputnik.

May 7 marks Russian Armed Forces Day, with the holiday sandwiched in among a busy schedule of major events and holidays which Russians have been celebrating since last week, from May Day and Easter to the presidential inauguration and Victory Day.

A quote once attributed to 19th century Russian Czar Alexander III holds that "Russia has only two allies: its army and its fleet."

I remember a time not too long ago when you could sort of see what was happening in the world, even in your own backyard, with some degree of certainty.

If you looked hard enough, got past the politics, and the greedy capitalists, and the ideological socialists, you could make some sense of it. Even then it took some work. You had to read a lot and find journalists, historians, and authors you could somewhat trust.

Throw in a bit of common sense here and there, and you could pretty much lock on to a rather trustworthy sense of what was true and what probably was not. At least it seemed that way.

There were still always mysteries. People were saying one thing and doing another. But there were stakes in the ground — pillars of truth, certain things you could trust, still with a grain of salt, but for the most part trustworthy. Take the American press for example.

Yes, weird things are discovered here and there with the press during the best of times, but I remember trusting the press. Remember the great Washington Post revelations during the Watergate scandals in the 1970s? A great book and movie came out of it, All the President's Men. It was journalism at its best (was it?). The controlled manner in which it was presented to the public, to be assured of accuracy and relevance. I was very proud of that paper. But was even that the truth?

Yes, there were problems with journalistic suppressions, particularly during the Vietnam conflict. But truth always seemed to prevail. Was it all as it seemed? Unfortunately, I don't think so. Not even then. But it sure seemed like there were various bastions of truth you could depend on.

I remember even with the JFK assassination I thought the corruption revealed in that fiasco was limited. At the very beginning of my investigations into the event, I had no understanding that the entire government of the US was in on it. I thought the unscrupulousness was limited. I believed that with the Watergate scandal as well.

Even when 9-11 hit us, I didn't realize how deep the cancer penetrated our government (the US) and even the world. Little did I know back then what a mess everything was in. And to tell you the truth, I still don't know the extent of it. For a shrew with a pretty long nose, I am certain I don't know the half of it. It is pretty daunting.

When did all these lies and corruption start?

If you've ever taken a lifesaving course, you know there's a real possibility that a drowning person will drag you under and you'll both die. It's a lesson that should be kept in mind when discussing America's relationship with Israel. (Adapted from @LarryBoorstein)

On Monday, Israel intensified its airstrikes on Rafah, bombing more than 50 sites in the heart of the city. Video footage on Twitter showed plumes of smoke rising from the makeshift encampments and residential buildings where more than 1.4 million refugees are presently huddled in the most densely populated place on earth. Israel's air campaign was accompanied by a sizable ground-offensive that deployed tanks and armored vehicles to the southern border where Israeli troops quickly seized the Rafah Crossing without resistance.

The sudden uptick in violence has triggered widespread panic among the Palestinians many of who have already gathered their families and belongings onto carts and buses and fled northward to safety. The opening assault on the civilian enclave is reminiscent of earlier attacks on Gaza City and Khan Younis both of which followed a similar pattern. The launching of random bombings is designed to amplify feelings of terror within the population while the humanitarian blockade tightens the stranglehold on critical food and medical supplies. The objective here is not to kill as many Palestinians as possible, but to force them into sprawling tent cities where they will languish amid the rubble until the international community finds a way to spirit them out of the country. For Israel, the endgame has always been ethnic cleansing, a comprehensive erasure of the native population. The ground invasion of Rafah represents the final phase of that maniacal strategy.

The U.S. is expected to announce a new $400 million package of military aid for Ukraine on Friday, U.S. officials said, as Kyiv struggles to hold off advances by Russian troops in the northeast Kharkiv region.

This is the third tranche of aid for Ukraine since Congress passed supplemental funding in late April after months of gridlock. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had warned Thursday that his country was facing "a really difficult situation" in the east, but said a new supply of U.S. weapons was coming and "we will be able to stop them."

According to officials, the package includes High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and rockets for them, as well as artillery, air defense and anti-tank munitions, armored vehicles and other weapons and equipment. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been announced. It will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which pulls systems and munitions from existing U.S. stockpiles so they can be sent quickly to the war front.

Almost immediately after President Joe Biden signed the $95 billion foreign aid package, the Pentagon announced it was sending $1 billion in weapons through that drawdown authority. And just days later the Biden administration announced a $6 billion package funded through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays for longer-term contracts with the defense industry and means that the weapons could take many months or years to arrive.

"These agencies are not trusted because they are not trustworthy."
- El Gato Malo on "X"

The miasma of anxiety befogging so many brains in our troubled land begins to lift as every narrative served up by the US fascist intel blob goes annoyingly stale and impotent. The worst media meme — that a vicious officialdom is "defending our democracy" — gets laughed out of the room now when repeated incessantly by such shills as Jen Psaki and Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC. Everybody understands they want to "defend our democracy" by cancelling your freedom of speech, pounding you into bankruptcy, and stealing whatever remains of your stuff.

Likewise, everything else, namely: that our doings in Ukraine are a "fight for freedom," that "white supremacy" lurks just out of sight getting ready to pounce on the "marginalized" (who are actually running things, and doing it very badly), that "Joe Biden" turned around the economy, that "voting rights" equals non-citizens getting to vote, that election fraud is a "big lie" (and that the J-6 riot over it was an "insurrection"), and that the Covid vaccines were "safe and effective."

None of these dishonest persuasions work anymore, and all of the persuasion machinery stands in plain sight like so many nauseating carnival rides. One by one, the rides are flying apart, scattering debris and body parts of the poor slobs who were on the rides all over the fairgrounds. And so, the fear rises in the ones running the carnival. The county sheriff stands by looking to round up the sleazeball carnies with their missing teeth and needle tracks inside their elbows. Before long, they will find themselves in the courtroom. . . .

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognizing it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council "reconsider the matter favorably."

The vote by the 193-member General Assembly was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member — a move that would effectively recognize a Palestinian state — after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.

The assembly adopted a resolution with 143 votes in favor and nine against — including the US and Israel — while 25 countries abstained.

It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognizes them as qualified to join.