Fifty weeks have passed since the Great March of Return demonstrations began at the fence separating the Gaza Strip and Israel. Since March 30, protesters in Gaza have demanded the right to return to their homes and villages in historical Palestine, and demanded an end to Israel’s 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of many basic commodities. Palestinian woman have been a part of the protests from the beginning. According to Gaza Health Ministry, more than 250 Palestinians have been killed during the Great March of Return, including six women.

On this Friday, more than 7,000 Gazans demonstrated, more than half of them women after the leaders of the protest called for Palestinians to join in the “Friday of Palestinian women” in honor of International Women’s Day.

Lawmakers last month backed tighter internet controls contained in legislation they say is necessary to prevent foreign meddling in Russia’s affairs. But some Russian media likened it to an online “iron curtain” and critics say it can be used to stifle dissent.

People gathered in a cordoned off Prospekt Sakharova street in Moscow, made speeches on a stage and chanted slogans such as “hands off the internet” and “no to isolation, stop breaking the Russian internet”.

The rally gathered around 15,300 people, according to White Counter, an NGO that counts participants at rallies. Moscow police put the numbers at 6,500.

“If we do nothing it will get worse. The authorities will keep following their own way and the point of no return will be passed”, said 28-year-old protester Dmitry, who declined to give his full name.

A crowd of Yellow Vest protesters broke into and trashed a Masonic lodge in the French village of Tarbes. The ransacking has been condemned by the French government, who accused the protesters of “stupidity” and “intolerance.”

Some 450 protesters had gathered in Tarbes on Saturday for the 17th straight weekend of anti-government demonstrations. Around midnight, La Dépêche paper reported, some protesters began shouting “we’re going to the freemasons!”

A smaller crowd of protesters marched on the Masonic temple, with one battering down the door of the secretive organization’s clubhouse. More protesters pelted rocks at the building and eventually the group forced its way inside. They overturned furniture, trashed the esoteric art hanging on the walls, and stole four ceremonial swords; they gave these back later on.

For some months now, France has been the scene of turbulent upheaval. Fierce social conflict has long been a defining feature of the country’s political life. It has been a historical given in a nation constructed, for the most part, post-1789 on the basis of a revolution of universal scope that, along with the social advances won in 1936, 1945 and 1968, still exerts a strong hold on the collective memory and the country’s institutions, despite attempts to eradicate all traces of it.

Tens of thousands of people braved cold weather on Friday in Algiers to demand President Abdelaziz Bouteflika step down, as rallies against the ailing leader's re-election bid spread across Algeria for a third consecutive week.

The protest, which coincided with International Women's Day, saw an even larger crowd pour onto the streets of the capital compared with the previous mass gatherings.

In what has become a habit since February 22, the mostly young demonstrators chanted slogans against the 82-year-old president, his brother and "le pouvoir", or the powers that be - a vague term Algerians use to refer to the shadowy clique of politicians, high ranking military officials and oligarchs who they believe have been running the country.

Several hundreds of protesters gathered on Saturday at the Place Charles de Gaulle in the French capital of Paris for the 17th consecutive weekend of rallies of the yellow vest movement opposing the French government's social policies, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

While these protesters are planning to walk around three miles during their march, another group of protesters is holding a sit-in demonstration. They are going to sit at the Champ de Mars in downtown Paris during the whole day.

On the same day, yellow vest protests are scheduled to take place in the French cities of Lille, Bordeaux, Toulouse and others.

Emboldened by the election of Trump and the emergence of far right allies across the world, Israel is entrenching its system of oppression in ways that create urgent threats to the realisation of the collective rights of the Palestinian people. Israel is expanding settlements at the fastest rate since Oslo, with Khan Al Ahmar and 45 other Palestinian communities in the West Bank facing forcible transfer. With the passing of its Nation State Bill in July 2018, Israel has embedded into its constitution the denial of equality under the law to Palestinian citizens of Israel who were already subject to more than 60 laws that directly discriminate against them.

Rioters in the French city of Grenoble set fire to 65 cars and targetedsecurity forces with fireworks and Molotov cocktails, officials said Tuesday, after a third night of violence sparked by the death of two teenagers during a police chase.

Clashes began on Saturday evening when two men, aged 17 and 19, were spotted by police riding a stolen scooter without a license plate and without helmets.

They were being followed by a police vehicle when they crashed into a bus, according to the local prosecutor’s office which is treating their deaths as accidental.

“Young people from the neighbourhood saw what happened and have the feeling that there was a mistake by the police,” said Hassen Bouzeghoub, the director of a social club in Grenoble’s Mistral area where the men died.

A family member, who did not give his name, claimed “police are responsible for their death” in comments made to an AFP reporter outside the city court on Sunday.

8,000+ arrested, 500 major injuries, 2,000+ imprisoned (as of Feb. 14), 1,500+ awaiting trials (Feb. 14), 12 deaths, 20+ blindings, 6 hands lost, 10,000+ rubber bullets fired. Cops never switch sides – they have too much to lose.

The Yellow Vest protesters have apparently adopted an unconventional weapon against the French law enforcement – fecal bombs. At least three policemen have been already affected by them during the most recent protest.

The criminal police (BAC) officers came under the excrement attack in the city of Marseille on Saturday, getting heavily stained by fecal matter. One of the officers has reportedly received injury to insult, sustaining physical damage to his elbow.

There is a pushback in France against President Emmanuel Macron’s speech to a major Israel lobby group last month vowing to criminalize anti-Zionism.

More than 400 intellectuals, artists and activists have signed an open letter to Macron that was published on 28 February in the national newspaper Libération.

“Mr. President, we are French citizens who respect the laws of the republic, but if you adopt a law against anti-Zionism, or if you officially adopt an erroneous definition of anti-Semitism that permits outlawing it, please know that we will break this law with our words, our writing, our art and our acts of solidarity,” the letter states.

“And if you decide to pursue us, to silence us, even to imprison us for that, well, you can come and get us.”

For the first time in years, the drumbeat of civil war has become audible across the United States. The nation looks destined to repeat history thanks to a media that is no longer able to objectively perform its job.

The predominantly left-leaning US media has just entered its third consecutive year of open warfare against Donald Trump. This non-stop assault risks aggravating political passions to the point where ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ snowballs into something completely beyond our ability to control. Like full-blown Civil War.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post, one of most prominent serial producers of partisan agitation, published an article entitled, ‘In America, talk turns to something unspoken for 150 years: Civil War’. The piece, which deftly places Democrats above the fray, opens with the following whiff of grapeshot:

Thousands protested in Montenegro’s capital Podgorica on Saturday, the fourth such rally in as many weeks, demanding that President Milo Djukanovic and his government resign over alleged corruption, cronyism and abuse of office.

Throngs of people, rallied by civic activists, bloggers and journalists who say they are not affiliated with political parties, marched through the center of the city chanting “Milo thief”. Opposition politicians have distanced themselves from the protests.

Weekly political protests also continued in Serbia, Montenegro’s larger neighbor and fellow ex-Yugoslav republic.

Marija Backovic, a teacher from Podgorica, said she was protesting for a better Montenegro. “We are not the danger for this country ... those that are destroying it for 30 years are the real danger,” she told the crowd on Saturday.

As the Yellow Vest protests rage across France for the 16th straight week, shocking footage has emerged of police brutality. Apparently a Friday call for calm by President Emmanuel Macron doesn't apply to police.

By conflating anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, Macron is attempting to shield the government from criticism over its active participation in other forms of racism

Large-scale demonstrations began in France on 17 November last year in wake of the government's decision to raise fuel taxes. Despite the French authorities later discarding their plans, yellow vests protesters, dissatisfied with the government's social policies, have continued to rally across the country.

Yellow vests demonstrators are gathering to protest against French President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies for the 16th week in a row.

The Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement has been in steady decline since Christmastime. But the grotesque assault on Alain Finkielkraut in Paris last Saturday marks its end as a social force one could be hopeful about.

Albanian police used teargas to disperse hundreds of opposition protesters who tried to prevent ruling Socialist MPs from entering parliament.

The incineration of the poorest people in Britain at a location surrounded by some of the richest real estate in Europe was a tale of morality worthy of Charles Dickens himself. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was rolling in so much cash, it gave rebates in council tax to some of the world’s richest people. Yet the same borough was the not-so-proud owner of social housing like Grenfell Tower. On June 14, 2017, not even two years ago, 72 people died in a building wrapped in combustible cladding. The smell of the smoke still lingers, along with much anger, and there are signs that a search for a scapegoat may be under way. It won’t be the scapegoat anyone would automatically assume, however

Thousands of yellow vest protesters took to the streets across France on Saturday for a 15th straight weekend of demonstrations, trying to re-energize supporters while stamping down on the violence and anti-Semitism in the movement's ranks.

Among the many rallies around Paris and in other French cities, hundreds gathered at the Arc de Triomphe monument in Paris to march through well-off neighborhoods to protest government policies they see as favoring the rich.

Tempers frayed at the end of the main demonstration at the Trocadero plaza, next to the Eiffel Tower, and French police used tear gas to disperse protesters.

The 15th consecutive yellow vest protests were relatively peaceful compared to previous weeks. Some 46,000 people nationwide joined the protests, a figure slightly higher than last weekend.

French President Emmanuel Macron has floated the idea that those convicted for crimes of hate speech could be banned from social media networks permanently.

President Macron floated the idea at the annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIR) saying that a new bill to fight against hate speech online was being tabled for May of this year broadcaster BFMTV reports.

While the bill is being floated at a time where Jews are facing rising levels of real-life anti-Semitic attacks driving whole communities out of French cities, the proposal to stifle speech online comes as President Macron faces unprecedented levels of criticism from the anti-government Yellow Vest movement. The French state has cracked down hard on Yellow Vest activists, arresting 8,400 protestors in just a matter of months.

Le Parisien today (19 February) has an interview with Frances Kalifat, president of the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Organisations of France), the main Jewish ethno-activist organisation in France. All major French politicians are expected to attend its dinners and pay court to it it, except those of the Front National (now renamed Le Rassemblement National), who, being defenders of French interests, are systematically excluded.

War and killing are now as American as apple pie. Little thought of the victims of U.S. aggression is evident. This lack of compassion for human suffering at the hands of the political and corporate state, and the complicit military, is a travesty. It exposes widespread apathy at a level that belies imagination, and uncovers the glaring lie that Americans are exceptional.

The exceptional ones are those who stand against war and tyranny, not those who salute a flag that represents the murder and slaughter of innocents. Worshiping the purveyors of war is no different than worshiping war itself, but this distinction is lost in the brainwashed minds of those who hold the state up as a god. When support of war and those who prosecute war becomes common even in the houses of religion, as it has in the U.S., then the country as a whole has lost its way.

Last Saturday marked the 14th straight weekend of Yellow Vests demonstrations in Paris. The movement emerged in France back in November following the government's fuel tax hikes proposal and while the French government ultimately abandoned its plans to raise fuel taxes, the protests have continued.

Yellow Vests demonstrators gathered in front of the UN headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday to show their indignation with police violence during protests.

The wave of Yellow Vests rallies — named after the garment all drivers are legally required to carry in their vehicles in France — started in mid-November.

The French people may be renowned for exercising their democratic right to protest, but the Yellow Vest movement has surpassed all expectations. Sputnik spoke to Dr Binoy Kampmark, Senior Lecturer at RMIT University, for his take on what we can expect in future from the Yellow Vests.

Humanity is awakening to tyranny worldwide

For more than a decade Venezuela has aided the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic through a preferential system known as Petrocaribe, and the people of those nations are not taking their governments’ support for the US coup in Venezuela lightly.

As Judas betrayed the Son of Man with a kiss for 20 pieces of silver, the institutionally corrupt governments in Port-au-Prince and Santo Domingo have written another sad chapter in their nation’s history.

Ironically, it was Venezuela that helped to develop the island’s energy infrastructure in recent years. A key part of this is the REFIDOMSA oil refinery in the Dominican Republic which the Venezuelan government helped to develop and partially owns, and which has also been used to help alleviate increased fuel demands and shortages in Haiti.

Two police officers were attacked by angry protesters as law enforcement attempted to control yellow vests demonstrators marching through Whitehall and Piccadilly, The Independent reported, citing London's Metropolitan Police.

"Six arrests were made following a moving yellow vest protest in Whitehall and Piccadilly on Saturday, 16 February. Two officers were assaulted during the course of policing the protest", a police spokesman stated, as quoted by The Independent.

Haiti continues to be gripped by civil unrest and mass protests demanding that President Jovenal Moise step down over charges of corruption and and rampant inflation under his watch — yet unlike similar unrest happening hundreds of miles due south of the small Caribbean country in Venezuela, Washington has stood in support of the president. Starting Thursday the US State Department urged all American citizens out of the country and issued a no-not-travel advisory due to "crime and civil unrest".

Albania's capital, Tirana, was plunged into chaos on Saturday as thousands of people swarmed the square in front of Prime Minister Edi Rama's residence, clashing with police and storming the building with metal poles.

Violence erupted at the protest against Rama's Socialist Party government, with hundreds of demonstrators breaking through police cordons set up around the residence.

Yellow Vests protesters have gathered near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris as Sunday marks three months since the beginning of the rallies and plan to march to the Champ de Mars.

Police have boosted security measures ahead of the demonstration, deploying additional troops and personnel in the city.

The most recent protests across France on Saturday, resulted in police using tear gas against protesters and detaining 29 people, according to the BFMTV broadcaster.

According to eyewitnesses, quoted by the Daily Express, the car was in the middle of the rally when a passenger opened the door to shout at the protesters, which was then followed by the driver accelerating.

Several people were overthrown and at least three were injured as a result of a car that drove into yellow vests protesters in the French city of Rouen, BFM TV reported, citing a police source. As the broadcaster specified, first aid to those injured was provided immediately.

Large-scale protests erupted in France on 17 November 2018 in the wake of the government's decision to raise fuel prices and increase fuel taxes. Even though the French authorities later scrapped their plans, the yellow vest protesters, dissatisfied with the government's social policies, have continued to rally across the country.

The yellow vests are rallying for the fourteenth straight weekend in Paris and other major French cities on 16 February.

According to French TV channel LCI, about 1,300 police officers, gendarmes, and firefighters have been injured since the movement launched.

French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe has revealed that there have been nearly 1,800 court convictions of activists who have taken part in the weekly Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protests.

The French prime minister revealed the extent of the convictions during a speech in front of the National Assembly, updating a previous figure released last month that confirmed just under 1,000 convictions of members of the movement, Le Figaro reports.

“Since the beginning of these events, 1,796 sentences have been pronounced by the court and 1,422 people are still awaiting trial,” Philippe said and went on to add, “more than 1,300 immediate appearances were held and 316 people were placed under an arrest warrant.”

The so-called “yellow vests” protests have been raging across France since mid-November, with the movement calling for the resignation of French President Emmanuel Macron over his government’s policies.

The official Twitter account of an Italian political show, “Piazzapulita", released a video of an interview with a man they claim is Christophe Chalençon, one of the leaders of the yellow vests movement.

READ MORE: Yellow Vests Protester Gets Hand Blown off by Grenade in Paris (GRAPHIC VIDEO)

While the footage, apparently filmed on a hidden camera, shows only the legs of a man, he can be heard speaking about the ongoing unrest in France.

The man, who is alleged to be Chalençon, is heard saying that if anything happens to him, French President Emmanuel Macron would end up on the guillotine.

The wave of demonstrations against Haiti's President Jovenel Moïse and his government’s mishandling of development funds has left a seventh protestor dead after a week of violent clashes in the Caribbean nation.

Haitians took to the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince’s once again on Wednesday to demand the resignation of the country’s President Jovenel Moïse as tensions continue to mount after a week of demonstrations marked by violent clashes with the police.

According to AFP, a young man died at a crossroads near the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince and a Haitian journalist was wounded by gunshots during crossfire between police and protestors.

The former French colony has been mired in a political crisis since February 7 that has left at least seven people dead and everyday life in the largest towns paralyzed by protests and barricades.

Two executives at the company that chartered the U.S. plane that was caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela last week have been tied to an air cargo company that aided the CIA in the rendition of alleged terrorists to “black site” centers for interrogation. The troubling revelation comes as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has rejected a U.S. “humanitarian aid” convoy over concerns that it could contain weapons meant to arm the country’s U.S.-backed opposition.

Last Tuesday, Venezuelan authorities announced that 19 rifles, 118 ammo magazines, 90 radios and six iPhones had been smuggled into the country via a U.S. plane that had originated in Miami. The authorities blamed the United States government for the illicit cargo, accusing it of seeking to arm U.S.-funded opposition groups in the country in order to topple the current Maduro-led government.

Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence.

We have managed to survive crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.

We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.

We’ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.

As Haitians throughout the country seethe with rage over Jovenel Moise’s blatant corruption, gross mismanagement and numerous scandals, the neo-Duvalier era in Haiti that has largely been orchestrated by the U.S. is now in danger of finally falling apart.

46% of the Gilets Jaunes agree with the proposition that:

“immigration is organised deliberately by our political, intellectual and media elites to bring about the replacement of the European population with an immigrant population”

This is 21% more than the population at large.

The more hardcore the Gilets Jaunes are, the more likely they are to believe this.

The first weeks of 2019 have been marked by a dramatic upsurge in the international class struggle. Workers’ strikes and protests have broken out in virtually every region of the world. After decades in which the class struggle has been suppressed by the trade unions, the working class, the stirring giant of world politics, is beginning to find its feet.

In France, the main complaint that the Yellow Vests movement has now taken into its 13th consecutive weekend is crystal clear: people can’t pay their bills anymore. In the UK, austerity has demolished wages, social care, the NHS and much else. In the US, many millions of Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency payment, have ever scarcer access to healthcare and live from paycheck to paycheck.

Rinse and repeat for every western nation. The storylines vary somewhat, but they all tell the same tale, they could be, they are, chapters in the same book. And it makes one think if people are not connecting them.

Renowned French philosopher Michel Onfray summarizes Emmanuel Macron’s ongoing Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes) problem in these words:

“Macron is trying to explain that there is not enough liberalist Europe in our lives, while the Gilets Jaunes are saying back to him that there is too much – not too much Europe, but too much liberalism.”

- Ongoing protests in all cities in France
- Mainstream media: 'a few protesters'
- Protests against Macron govt, high taxes, labor laws
- More than 1000 arrested, hundreds of wounded, multiple dead

There were more violent clashes in France on Saturday as the Yellow Vest protest movement entered its thirteenth week.

The numbers were down again this weekend estimations of the participation vary from 50 to more than 100 thousand but the confrontations were intense. One protestor lost four fingers witnesses said he’d tried to handle a sting-ball grenade thrown by police.

In the south of France police blocked yellow vest leader Maxime Nicolle from crossing into Italy to join forces with Italian demonstrators.