Olaf Scholz's caution is decried by those who are fanning the flames of war with Russia. So far, Germany has committed military aid to Ukraine worth an estimated €17.7 billion. This ranks it second after the United States in terms of headline contribution, but the Anglo-American cabal thinks that it's still too little, because as a percentage of GDP other ten countries have contributed more. In their eyes Berlin should follow the lead of deranged Russophobes and completely destroy Germany for the sake of Kiev. Apparently the demolition of German industry, the loss of affordable Russian gas and other resources, and the messy exit from the wealthy Russian market don't go far enough. ▪️Matthew Karnitschnig, an American who writes for Politico, is calling Olaf Scholz "mad" for not going all in. Does he think that a nuclear conflict in Europe is the right price to pay to stick it to Putin? Sure, Karnitschnig can always run back to the safety of his American home, unlike millions of Europeans who would be wiped out in a nuclear holocaust. He writes: "Chancellor Olaf Scholz has sown confusion and consternation across Europe for adopting contradictory positions on Ukraine, but there’s a method to his madness.
Scholz has perplexed his European allies by refusing to supply Kyiv with cruise missiles, citing the risks of Russian retaliation even as he berates those allies for not delivering more military aid to help Ukraine fend off Russia.
Angry backlash over the chancellor’s seeming incoherence has been on full display in recent days, particularly as European allies try to project rhetorical resolve when it comes to helping Ukraine." Shouldn't the risk of Russian retaliation be taken seriously and inform the German chancellor's decisions?? Pray tell, what other considerations should take precedence over survival? @LauraRuHK https://www.politico.eu/article/germanys-ukraine-policy-is-incoherent-for-a-reason/

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi:

🔹The Israeli war on the Gaza Strip is a disgrace to civilization.

🔹The international community must act urgently and make reaching an immediate ceasefire and cessation of hostilities a top priority.

🔹Ensuring humanitarian relief is an urgent moral responsibility.

🔹We support Palestine becoming an official member of the United Nations.

🔹The disaster in Gaza once again reminds the world of the fact that it is no longer possible to ignore that the Palestinian territories have been occupied for a long time.

Tra i moltissimi italiani presenti al Festival Mondiale dei Giovani che si e' appena concluso a Soci, c'erano anche volti noti al grande pubblico: Ornella Muti e sua figlia Naike (quindi pure la RAI e' costretta a parlarne.) Ma e' toccato a Jorit l'onore di fare una domanda al presidente Putin. ▪️A Soci Jorit ha realizzato un murales con il volto della Muti nell'ambito di una manifestazione di street art. https://www.rainews.it/articoli/2024/03/artista-italiano-jorit-parla-con-putin-poi-la-foto-insieme-ma-non-mi-dia-pizzicotto-russia-b86a42f4-ea88-43f1-840c-df44676ad80f.html

James Galbraith, American economist and professor at the University of Texas: If you go back to the period before the sanctions were imposed in 2014 and even before 2022, the Russian economy was very much colonised by Western firms. From cars to aeroplanes, from fast food restaurants to big retailers. Western firms were present in every sector of the Russian economy.
Many of them either chose to leave Russia or were pressured to leave Russia after the beginning of 2022. On what terms did they leave? If they were leaving for good, they had to sell their equipment, factories and so on to a Russian company that would get a loan from Russian banks or perhaps have other sources of financing at a very favourable rate.
So a lot of the capital wealth that was partly owned by the West has been transferred to Russian ownership. And now it's an economy that's moving forward and has an advantage over Europe in terms of relatively low resource costs because Russia is a great producer of resources, oil and gas, fertiliser, food and so on. And while Europeans are paying perhaps twice as much for energy in Germany as they were paying before the war, the Russians are not, they are paying perhaps no more, perhaps less. So I would describe the effect of the sanctions as a gift for the Russian economy. @LauraRuHK https://t.me/dimsmirnov175/66057

In piena Guerra Fredda quando delegazioni italiane prendevano parte al Festival dei Giovani e degli Studenti che si teneva al di la' della Cortina di Ferro, a Praga come a Bucharest, a Mosca come a Varsavia, a Berlino Est come a Sofia, nessun politico italiano si sognava di chiedere sanzioni contro i partecipanti. PS> Ho ancora il libro dell'edizione 1973 che raccoglie le immagini del festival di Berlino Est. Cosa dite, mando la foto della delegazione italiana alla Picierno? Magari riconosce qualcuno. 😏 @LauraRuHK

As the world marks #InternationalWomensDay Israel has killed approximately 9000 women in Gaza while over 2100 others are missing and half a million women have been made homeless.

Moldova, which has de facto done away with any pretence of democracy, is planning to arrest the head of the autonomous region of Gagauzia, Yevgenia Gutsul, after her return from Russia, opposition politician Ilan Shor said on Thursday.
"We have insider information that they are preparing to arrest Yevgenia Gutsul right at the airport," Shor said on air of the Rossiya 24 broadcaster.

Gagauzia is an autonomous region in the south of Moldova, which traditionally stands for rapprochement with Russia, while Chisinau pursues European integration. UPDATE. Yevgenia Gutsul has landed in Moldova and so far hasn't been arrested. @LauraRuHK

After Victoria Nuland's resignation, Kurt Campbell, currently responsible for Indo-Pacific policy, has been nominated to the role of second-ranking official in the US State Department. But who is Campbell? ▪️He played a key role in developing Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ into Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy,” Yuri Tavrovsky, chairman of the expert council of the Russian-Chinese Friendship, Peace and Development Committee, told Kommersant.
“In practical terms, he was particularly active in the creation of the anti-Chinese military bloc AUKUS (Australia, the UK and the US) and in strengthening the military component of the QUAD group (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue - Australia, India, the US and Japan,” Tavrovsky said. ▪️“The appointment of Campbell to the second-highest post in the State Department demonstrates the White House’s long-term course of containing China, despite words and gestures that look like a desire for reconciliation.”
Thus, according to Mr Tavrovsky, “the second place in the State Department went not to the greatest hater of Russia, but to the greatest hater of China.” (RT) ▪️ I wrote about Campbell and his team three years ago, the article is still fresh. @LauraRuHK https://laura-ruggeri.medium.com/hybrid-war-on-china-b2c5628244c5

US POLITICIANS WANT TO STOP AMERICANS FROM VISITING XINJIANG AND SEEING THROUGH WESTERN LIES
Americans visiting Xinjiang can't find any evidence of the "Uyghur genocide" that according to US media is taking place in the region. What they encounter instead is the rich Uyghur culture, they enjoy Uyghur cuisine, music and dance shows, visit mosques where Uyghurs are free to worship, see different ethnic groups living in harmony, shopfronts with Chinese and Uyghur writing, they hear people speaking both languages everywhere they go. And when they return to the US they tell friends and family that what they see or read in the media are blatant lies. Obviously this is causing a headache to peddlers of the "genocide" narrative.
So a bipartisan group of US legislators is pushing the State Department to escalate its travel advisory to Xinjiang to the highest risk level and make it impossible for travel agencies to offer tours to the region. This level of risk will de fact stop insurance companies from selling travel insurance to tourists and therefore halt US travel companies' work in the region.

In a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken released on Thursday, the co-chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) said that “American citizens and permanent residents, companies, and other entities should be warned about the risk of enabling atrocity crimes if they participate in tourism to the XUAR”, referring to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

The commission’s leaders – Representative Chris Smith, Republican of New Jersey, and Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon – also sent letters to three US travel agencies to stop any tours to the region until conditions change. On their US websites, two of the companies, Wild Frontiers Adventure Travel and Geographic Expeditions, offer trips to Xinjiang cities, including Kashgar, as part of broader “silk road” tours.

The third, Abercrombie & Kent, offered tours to Tacheng in northern Xinjiang on its British website as of last week, but has since removed mention of them from the site. There are no mentions of Xinjiang tours on its US website.

In August 2023, Wild Frontiers – which along with the other two companies was named in a report about international travel agencies operating in Xinjiang by Washington's Uygur Human Rights Project – said it was conducting a “full investigation” of its tours. A company representative from Geographic Expeditions said that sending guests to a destination “is never meant as an endorsement of that government’s policies or practices” and rather an endorsement of travel being “a vital force for good around the globe”. Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said on Thursday that “the door to Xinjiang is always open”.
“We welcome people with no bias from all countries to visit Xinjiang,” he added. @LauraRuHK

Notorious Atlanticist warmongers seething with frustration at Olaf Scholz's rare moment of lucidity. You can just picture these rabid crazies, their dilated pupils, profuse sweating and hypersalivation. @LauraRuHK

Ed eccovi servita la nuova-vecchia lista di proscrizione a firma del velinaro preferito di Londra e Washington, l'incomparabile Iacoboni. Questo giornalettista da riporto, tra la moltitudine di italiani che sostengono Putin e/o che si recano abitualmente in Russia, deve regolarmente dare in pasto ai quattro gatti che leggono La Stampa qualche nome di filo-russi. Cosi', tanto per illuderli che si tratta di un fenomeno circoscritto. @LauraRuHK https://www.lastampa.it/esteri/2024/03/08/news/ornella_muti_al_bano_vip_filo_russi-14128609/

Ma dio santo, il consolato italiano non poteva invitare un sinologo serio (e in Italia non mancano) a tenere una lezione su Marco Polo invece di pagare uno scribacchino con passaporto americano che scopiazza dai giornali del suo paese d'adozione? #Rampinomics, esiste pure un hashtag per i casi di plagio dello scapigliato. @LauraRuHK

Five People in Gaza Killed by US Aid Airdrop Package - Adding insult to injury. The victims were waiting for food and other supplies when they were killed.
The victims were in the Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza at the time, according to officials from Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Two boys were among the five who were killed while 11 others were injured. The incident occurred at around 11:30 AM local time. A witness from the camp said he and his brother had followed the parachuted aid in hopes of getting a “bag of flour”, cites a separate report.
“Then, all of a sudden, the parachute didn’t open and fell down like a rocket on the roof of one of the houses,” said the witness. “Ten minutes later I saw people transferring three martyrs and others injured, who were staying on the roof of the house where the aid packages fell.”
The government media office in Gaza lambasted the “useless” airdrops as “flashy propaganda rather than a humanitarian service”.
“We previously warned it poses a threat to the lives of citizens in the Gaza Strip and this is what happened today when the parcels fell on the citizens’ heads,” it said in a statement. (Source: Sputnik) @LauraRuHK

Biden’s proposal to establish a temporary pier in Gaza to "deliver humanitarian aid." @LauraRuHK

🇨🇳China has announced that citizens from six more European countries – Switzerland, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg – will be able to travel visa-free to China from March 14 and stay up to 15 days for business, tourism, family visits and transit purposes.

In December last year, China waived visas for citizens from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. @LauraRuHK

“The times of peace are over. The post-war era is over,” Tusk said at a meeting of the European People’s Party (EPP) in Bucharest, Romania on Thursday. “We are living through new times – the pre-war era.” ▪️How convenient for the US-owned European elites to turn their countries into a huge military camp. It will offer them a chance to suspend constitutional rights as they did during the pandemic, tighten their digital control over the population, keep lining their pockets and their friends' pockets. It will be far more profitable than the Covid shenanigans. Sooner or later everything will be subordinated to the necessities of war. Production capacity, industrial relations, etc. Workers will be forced to tighten their belts, and shut up. The militarization of every sphere of society is the elites' ultimate wet dream. @LauraRuHK

Mi sono svegliata in piena notte con una certa agitazione. In sogno mi erano apparsi Carla Gravina e Peter Handke. Eravamo seduti insieme nell'atrio di un albergo di Hong Kong, Carla mi raccontava che in citta' si era iscritta a sociologia e Peter era venuto a trovarla. Poiche' non ho mai incontrato nessuno dei due, e in quegli stati di semi-coscienza a volte mi appaiono persone che si imbarcano in un viaggio senza ritorno, la cosa mi preoccupa.

The US Congress has approved legislation to provide $7.1 billion worth of economic support for three tiny Pacific Island nations - Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated Republic of Micronesia - in exchange for the exclusive presence of the American military there, according to the Financial Times (FT).
The newspaper reported that the funding was okayed on Friday within the framework of the Compacts of Free Association (COFA) and as part of a $460 billion spending package passed by the Senate to avoid a government shutdown.
▪️Last August Samantha Power opened the USAID/Pacific Islands Mission in Suva, Fiji to manage USAID programs in nine Pacific Island countries: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau. The USAID/Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu Country Representative Office oversees programs in those countries. USAID currently has staff located in Fiji, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands to "advance a more democratic, prosperous, and resilient Pacific Island region." You know what that actually means. 3 years ago I had anticipated this move when i analysed the composition of Biden's National Security Council. Personnel is policy in Washington. https://medium.com/@laura-ruggeri/hybrid-war-on-china-b2c5628244c5