Around the World, from Zelenskyy to Die Linke

Trump-Putin negotiations, rising inflation, German resistance to the AfD, and GOP Medicaid cuts feature in this week's headlines.

(credit: BBC/Die Linke)

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This week’s headlines feature a hodgepodge of globe-spanning events, and yet, three weeks after its inception, we still find Trump’s administration at the center of many of these stories. In any case, here are some of the most noteworthy happenings this week:

🇺🇦 Trump seeks to negotiate a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war with Putin in deal that will cede territory to Russia

🥕 Trump’s foreign aid freeze leaves boatloads of food originally bound for foreign recipients sitting to rot at ports

📈 American Inflation hits year-long high and is increasing rapidly

🇿🇦 Trump extends refugee status to white Afrikaners while refugee programs for black and brown nations remains paused

In a move which brazenly contradicts Trump’s ostensible anti-immigrant posture, Trump has signed an executive order which extends refugee status to white South Africans on the basis of helping them escape new land expropriation laws designed to serve justice for decades of racially motivated apartheid. Apartheid, which included explicit land control restrictions on black people, only ended just around 35 years ago, and so white South Africans still control around 70% of farmland. Notably, Elon Musk is a white South African who was raised there during the apartheid era and is likely influencing the administration’s actions on this matter.

🇧🇫 West African nation of Burkina Faso debuts an electric car

Burkina Faso, the West African nation which has taken a continuously confrontational attitude towards western neocolonialism since Ibrahim Traoré took power, has just launched a homegrown electric car. Perhaps this signifies humble new beginnings for a nation which has been stifled and wrought by exploitation since the assassination of their visionary leader, Thomas Sankara.

📊 Germany’s left wing party, Die Linke, surges in the polls

Germany’s democratic socialist party has surged in polling beyond the 5% mark required to remain in the Bundestag (German parliament). This comes as people across the nation rally against the insurgent neofascist AfD party, which has has surged in the polls from 10 percent up to 20 percent since the last election, in spite of the party’s deep connections to Neo-Nazis and virulent anti-immigration attitudes.

🇵🇸 Israel appears to be attempting to sabotage the ceasefire

According to Hamas, Israel has not been holding up its end of the bargain, especially as it pertains to aid. 53,000 of the 200,000 promised tents have been allowed in, and none of the 60,000 mobile housing units have arrived. Trump and Netanyahu have promised to “let hell break out” if all Israeli hostages are not released by Saturday, in spite of not abiding by the deal and against the backdrop of Trump attempting to extort leaders in Jordan and Egypt to accept his resettlement proposal by threatening to cut off foreign aid.

📡 Trump loyalist and FCC Chair Brendan Carr is being used as a tool of extortion by the Trump administration against his enemies

Trump is weaponizing the FCC to attack enemies and extort them. Trump has a long history of seeking to silence his enemies in media through legal action. Now, he is using the FCC to block a merger being organized by CBS’s parent company unless they settle with him over a frivolous lawsuit. Additionally, the FCC is attacking free speech rights in other ways, including targeting companies for DEI initiatives.

🔪 Republican budget resolution seeks to cut Medicaid by $880 billion, food stamp program by at least 20%

This comes after prior reporting from the New York Times detailing a grab bag of social spending cuts Republicans were tossing around in order to pay for Trump’s anticipated $5T in tax cuts: