(2024-04-13). US Officials Brazenly Deny Genocide. popularresistance.org US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was pressed by Senator Tom Cotton during a recent Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, on whether Israeli actions in Gaza constitute a genocide. | "We don't have any evidence of genocide being created," Austin responded, who recently met with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (the same Israeli official who called Gazans "human animals" in October), as Gallant came knocking on the US's door to ask for more weapons. The United States has sent tens of thousands of weapons to Israel since October, with Israel being the largest recipient of US military aid for decades.
(2024-04-13). Australian actors condemn Gaza genocide, oppose Zionist crackdown on free speech. wsws.org The pro-Israeli campaign of lies and intimidation has its limits, as evidenced by the principled and courageous statements of world-renowned actors Hugo Weaving and Miriam Margolyes.
(2024-04-13). Comment] Offline: A mirage of progress for health and democracy. thelancet.com "Hong Kong parliament passes draconian law to crack down on dissent." "Macron feels force of Kremlin's fake news machine." News headlines suggest democracy is under threat. And so it is. Last month, the Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index (BTI) recorded a further decline (between February, 2021, and January, 2023) in the quality of democracy across 137 countries. Only 63 nations were classified as democracies. The majority were labelled autocracies—covering 4 billion people. The BTI deploys words such as "gloomy", "gradual erosion", and "a new nadir".