While international actors discuss governance and reconstruction, Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel has no intention of ending its military occupation, says RAMZY BAROUD
THE death of Mikhail Gorbachev this week brought discussion of the collapse of Soviet socialism back to the fore — especially as the neoliberal world order it ushered in is crumbling around us.
Just a couple of days before the last leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s death I was sat with the last leader of East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), Egon Krenz, a speaker at one of the multiple political talks and rallies that with music, food and drink make up the Unsere Zeit press festival.
Krenz led the German Democratic Republic for a mere six weeks in late 1989 and, unlike Gorbachev, can take neither blame nor credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall: “It was too late for me to do anything.”
While millions face poverty and public services are squeezed, France is committing billions to defence spending and weapons production, in a dangerous shift towards permanent preparation for war, says CONOR BOLLINS
SEVIM DAGDELEN says European Nato states are escalating ever closer to direct conflict with a nuclear power, and sacrificing welfare states built up over a century to finance it
After NGOs and the EU, UN condemns Germany’s crackdown on Palestine Solidarity, writes LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
While 69 per cent of Ukrainians want negotiated peace, Western leaders are cynically prolonging the war for their own strategic and economic goals, to the immense detriment of Ukraine and Europe, write BOB ORAM and MAGGIE SIMPSON


