Irene Montero, a Communist who is the Minister of Equality in the left-wing Podemos government in Spain, says the quiet part out loud: that equality means children have the right to have sex if they want to. Here's the clip, in Spanish, but with English subtitles (turn on the CC on the YouTube frame):

There are no prospects for dialogue now, however, since Kiev abandoned negotiations months ago, spokesman explains

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will eventually be needed, but there are no signs that such a dialogue could resume in the near future, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. He also pointed out that Kiev backed out of talks some months ago.

Speaking to reporters, Peskov was asked whether Moscow believes that engagement is warranted under the current conditions. President Vladimir Putin's spokesman signaled that dialogue is "of course needed."

Kiev is behind an explosion that took place in the city of Melitopol on Friday morning, just as Moscow-controlled areas of southern Ukraine began to vote on whether they want to officially join Russia, a local official has said.

Melitopol is located in Zaporozhye Region, large chunks of which are held by Russian forces.

A senior Russian-appointed official, Vladimir Rogov, said the culprits threw an explosive device out of a moving vehicle. The blast, which occurred around 7am local time, damaged a house. Rogov blamed Ukraine for the "terrorist act."

It's no secret at this point that the EU is an anti-democratic organization. The leadership isn't elected, but selected from a pre-determined pool of candidates from within the Party structure.

Everyone with the power to make a decision was placed there not by popular vote but by backroom collusion.

As we approach this weekend's Italian elections there is real despair in the air that there is any light out of this dark time. That no matter what decisions we try to make, they are only in service of those that seek total dominion.

And yet all you hear from these Eurocrats is that we are in a "war of Democracy versus Autocracy," as EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen put it in her hellish EU state of the union address to the European Parliament recently.

Cloaking herself in the inverse of the EU flag's colors to show solidarity with another anti-democratic regime, Ukraine, Von der Leyen and her merry tribe of vandals in Brussels cast themselves as the protectors of the sacred right of a 'democracy' they deny to anyone who disagrees with her.

The same can be said for nearly every major government in Europe. Every time an 'election' rolls around the local system is gamed to ensure a particular outcome. The political establishment always coalesces around maintaining the status quo, freezing out any possibility of an 'unworkable' or 'representative' coalition.

Any outcome they can't overcome that lies outside the scope of the EU's values is either laden with poison pills, immediately put under pressure by the EU's Byzantine rules, and eventually forced out of office.

There is no better example of this anti-democratic structure made flesh than Italy.

For more than a decade Italians have been saddled with mostly-unelected technocratic governments who, at best, stymie any populist/sovereigntist impulses within Italy's electorate or, at worst, advance the EU's centralization agenda under the false rubrics of Climate Change and "European Values."

European Values is a phrase that is synonymous with the phrase "rules-based order." We make the rules, they say, and you abide by them. We're allowed to break those rules because 1) we can and 2) we are the goodies.

A new cache of leaked Labour documents shows how Israel lobby operatives worked against former leader Jeremy Corbyn from within the UK's main opposition party.

Israel lobbyist Luke Akehurst intervened to help save suspended right-wing Labour activist Luke Stanger from expulsion - despite a series of complaints of harassment and intimidation.

The leaked files also detail how Palestine solidarity activists and left-wingers were investigated, suspended and expelled from the party, while right-wing pro-Israel members were protected by senior party figures.

The documents were revealed on Thursday in the first episode of The Labour Files, a new three-part series by Al Jazeera's investigative unit - the same team behind the 2017 series The Lobby and the censored 2018 series The Lobby - USA.

Hungary is against imposing new sanctions on Moscow, especially in the energy sector, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday after a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, in New York.

According to the minister, energy sanctions are "a clear red line" for Hungary as Europe is grappling with soaring gas prices.

"Our position is very clear. We see no reasonable reasons to discuss a new package of sanctions, especially when it comes to energy," Szijjarto outlined.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was "pushed" into invading Ukraine and wanted to put "decent people" in charge of Kyiv, former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi has said, drawing fierce criticism just ahead of Italy's election.

The Italian leader, whose Forza Italia party belongs to a right-wing coalition expected to win Sunday's parliamentary election on Sunday, is a long-time friend of Putin and his comments are likely to alarm Western allies.

"Putin was pushed by the Russian people, by his party, by his ministers to come up with this special operation," Berlusconi told Italian public television RAI late on Thursday, using the official Russian wording for the war.

"Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace."
― Baruch Spinoza

It hasn't been a month since President Biden mounted the steps of Philadelphia's Independence Hall, declaring it his duty to ensure each of us understands the central faction of his political opposition are extremists that "threaten the very foundations of our Republic." Flanked by the uniformed icons of his military and standing atop a Leni Riefenstahl stage, the leader clenched his fists to illustrate seizing the future from the forces of "fear, division, and darkness." The words falling from the teleprompter ran rich with the language of violence, a "dagger at the throat" emerging from the "shadow of lies."

"What's happening in our country," the President said, "is not normal."

Is he wrong to think that? The question the speech intended to raise — the one lost in the unintentionally villainous pageantry — is whether and how we are to continue as a democracy and a nation of laws. For all the Twitter arguments over Biden's propositions, there has been little consideration of his premises.

Thanks to Establishment media, the sorcerer apprentices advising President Joe Biden - I refer to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jacob Sullivan, and China specialist Kurt Campbell - will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China. And, shockingly, under false pretenses.

Most Americans are oblivious to the reality that Western media are owned and operated by the same corporations that make massive profits by helping to stoke small wars and then peddling the necessary weapons. Corporate leaders, and Ivy-mantled elites, educated to believe in U.S. "exceptionalism," find the lucre and the luster too lucrative to be able to think straight. They deceive themselves into thinking that

(a) the US cannot lose a war;
(b) escalation can be calibrated and wider war can be limited to Europe; and
(c) China can be expected to just sit on the sidelines.

The attitude, consciously or unconsciously: "Not to worry. And, in any case, the lucre and luster are worth the risk."

At the end of 1942, when the Wehrmacht could advance no further east, Hitler switched German ground forces from an "enemy force-oriented" strategy to a "ground-holding" strategy. Hitler demanded that his armies defend vast, largely empty and irrelevant stretches of Soviet territory.

"Holding ground" not only robbed the German military of its ability to exercise operational discretion, and, above all, to outmaneuver the slow, methodical Soviet opponent; holding ground also pushed German logistics to the breaking point. When holding ground was combined with endless counterattacks to retake useless territory, the Wehrmacht was sentenced to slow, grinding destruction.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, (presumably with the advice of his U.S. and British military advisors), has also adopted a strategy of holding ground in Eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces immobilized themselves inside urban areas, and prepared defenses. As a result, Ukrainian forces turned urban centers into fortifications for what became "last stands." Sensible withdrawals from cities like Mariupol that might have saved many of Ukraine's best troops were forbidden. Russian forces responded by methodically isolating and crushing the defenders left with no possibility of either escape or rescue by other Ukrainian forces.

Moscow's determination to destroy Ukrainian forces at the least cost to Russian lives prevailed. Ukrainian casualties were always heavier than reported from the moment Russian troops crossed into Eastern Ukraine, but now, thanks to the recent failure of Ukrainian counterattacks in the Kherson region, they've reached horrific levels that are impossible to conceal. Casualty rates have reached 20,000 killed or wounded a month.