United States – Empire and domestic

Pepe Escobar August 25, 2021 The Persian Gulf harbors an array of extremely compromising secrets. Near the top is the Afghan heroin ratline – with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) positioned as the golden node of a transnational, trillion dollar heroin money laundering operation. Originally posted on LewRockwell homepage on January 18, 2021 In this 21st century Opium War, crops harvested in Afghanistan are essentially feeding the heroin market not only in Russia and Iran but especially in the US. Up to 93% of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan. Contrary to predominant Western perception, this is not an Afghan Taliban operation. The key questions — never asked by Atlanticist circles — are who buys the opium harvests; refines them into heroin; controls the export routes; and then sell them for humongous profit compared to what the Taliban have locally imposed in taxes. The hegemonic narrative rules that Washington bombed Afghanistan in 2001 in “self-defense” after 9/11; installed a “democratic” government; and after 16 years never de facto left because this is a key node...

Jan Oberg August 22, 2021 When it comes to Western mainstream media’s coverage of international affairs, I would today dare the hypothesis that 10-20% is truthful, 20-30% is fake and narratives and 50-70% is omitted (see definition in point 2 below). This is not a scientific statement or hypothesis that I have tested empirically; rather, it is my judgement based on two things: a) witnessing over some forty years the decay of the mainstream media’s international affairs coverage and b) my experiences from conflict zones such as e.g. all parts of former Yugoslavia, Georgia, Iraq before it was occupied, Iran, Syria and China and comparing them with the media images conveyed by the mainstream Western press. Originally written as an editorial for Transcend Media Service, TMS, here In TFF’s recent analysis ”Behind The Smokescreen. An Analysis of the West’s Destructive China Cold War Agenda And Why It Must Stop”, we...

Pepe Escobar August 24, 2021 At one point last week, the price of a barrel of crude oil — which had risen as high as $147 last July and, with the global economic meltdown, hit a low of $32 in 2009 — rebounded above $51. Prices at the local gas pump are expected to rise as well in the coming weeks. However, given a worldwide falloff in oil use, these price jumps may not hold for long. Still, cheap or not, oil and natural gas (as well as coal) are what drives global civilization, and that’s clearly not going to change any time soon. Originally posted on Tom Dispatch on March 24, 2009 That, in turn, means the major powers are going to be no less eager to secure key energy reserves and control the flow of energy in bust times as they were in boom times, which is where Pepe Escobar comes in. In a...

Brilliant cartoon from 2010… August 23, 2021 Jeffrey Sachs is professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He’s a leading intellectual on global economic affairs in general and sustainable development in particular. Here he chooses the unusual way of communicating: Instead of going into a lot of “academic” issues and dimensions of the US-led war on Afghanistan since 2001, he characterises the underlying mentality, decision quality and level of knowledge by using the word “stupidity” a number of times. And that’s what this US policy has been: stupid. Repeatedly stupid. We find it important that people proven excellent intellectuals do not feel that they have to separate the personal and academia and feel free to express themselves in plain language – indicating also, of course, a sense of frustration and anger over that very ignorance . . . stupidity and its tragic human consequences. Perhaps...

Gordon Hahn on Guadalajara Geopolitics Institute August 10, 2021  Professor Gordon Hahn is interviewed by Hrvoje Morić of Geopolitics & Empire Gordon Hahn discusses what he calls the New East-West Cold War or Russia-West Tinderbox, which can potentially escalate into a WWIII scenario. He examines the key drivers between the Russia-West divide which is primarily EU/NATO expansion (e.g. Belarus, Ukraine, Donbass), a situation that will continue to fester and could explode at any moment unless it is resolved. He comments on China’s rise as a global hegemon and believes Russia and China will make Afghan inroads as the U.S. withdraws and the Taliban likely come to power. Finally, he looks at the “authoritarian-ization” or “Putin-ization” of America, where neo-liberals, leftists, and big tech have melded with the military-industrial-complex and oligarchic globalists who are pushing the U.S. toward a one-party state. Beyond that, these forces are pushing for some form of...

© Jan Oberg, “Capitol Hill, January 6, 2021” By Global Times August 7, 2021 Editor’s Note: “No alternative to the CPC in terms of people or a party with a program and a vision is known of inside or outside China,” said Carsten Boyer Thøgersen, a former diplomat with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and the European Commission. How to objectively evaluate the CPC’s role in China’s social progress? Why cannot some Western media outlets and some Western forces separate the CPC from the Chinese people? How will the West’s prejudice of the CPC affect their China policies? Thøgersen shared his views with Global Times (GT) reporters Yu Jincui and Lu Yuanzhi.  Originally published at Globaltimes.cn GT: You have witnessed China’s reform and opening-up. It was reported that on November 20, 1976, a farmer in Hu county, Shaanxi Province drew a sketch of you, do you still remember...

William H. Overhalt July 20, 2021 President Biden’s foreign policy team says China is the priority, but the team lacks China expertise. Other than trade experience at the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Biden’s Cabinet has no China expertise. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has worked on issues involving Europe, Canada and the Middle East. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has a distinguished career as a general in Iraq and as leader of U.S. forces in the Middle East. National security adviser Jake Sullivan’s biography highlights work on Libya, Syria, Iran and Myanmar.  Originally posted by The Hill on July 7th, 2021 Biden’s lead candidate for ambassador to Beijing continues the pattern. Nicholas Burns has served in the Middle East and Europe. An Indiaphile and Sinophobe, he lacks China experience and disdains China experts with more complex views.  I’m a lifelong Democrat who criticized George W. Bush’s foreign policies. But Bush had outstanding success...

Andrew Bacevich July 1, 2021 Has a new Cold War, this one pitting the United States against the People’s Republic of China, commenced? Rhetoric coming out of Washington, amplified by hawkish media commentary, appears to take a Second Cold War as a given, something perhaps even to be welcomed. Originally posted by Los Angeles Times on April 18th, 2021 If Cold War II looms, how will it compare with its predecessor? Does the term “Cold War” aptly describe the contest now being joined? Or might the revival of the term itself represent a potentially fatal misstep? The first Cold War, dating from 1947, centered on geopolitical competition with an overlay of ideology. The so-called free world, led by the United States, stood in opposition to the Soviet-led Communist bloc. Whatever the passing allure of Marxism-Leninism, that competition was never a contest between equals. Although the outcome may not have been...

Quincy Institute July 1st, 2021 WASHINGTON — In response to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s recent vote to advance the Strategic Competition Act of 2021 (SCA), and reports that it will receive a Senate floor vote this week, 66 organizations said: Originally posted on the Quincy Institute’s website on May 17, 2021 here “We, the undersigned organizations that represent millions of people across the United States, are deeply concerned about the growing Cold War mentality driving the U.S. approach to China. Although our organizations may have different mandates or ideological persuasions, we know that the new Cold War with China currently being pushed in Washington does not serve the millions of people demanding change across this country nor the billions of people affected by U.S. foreign policy abroad, and will instead lead to further insecurity and division.  Worryingly, both political parties are increasingly latching onto a dangerously short-sighted worldview that presents China as the...

Photo: Martin Luther King. [bswise / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0] Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon June 29, 2021 The MLK tributes are sure to pour on the anniversary of the civil rights hero’s death, but don’t expect them to acknowledge his anti-militarist ideals. The anniversary of his assassination always brings a flood of tributes to Martin Luther King Jr., and this Sunday will surely be no exception. But those tributes — including from countless organizations calling themselves progressive — are routinely evasive about the anti-militarist ideals that King passionately expressed during the final year of his life. You could call it evasion by omission. The standard liberal canon waxes fondly nostalgic about King’s “I have a dream” speech in 1963 and his efforts against racial segregation. But in memory lane, the Dr. King who lived his last year is persona non grata. Originally published April 21. 2021 at scheerpost.com The pattern is positively Orwellian....

Photo: Pankaj Mishra By Radmila Nakarada and Jelena Vidojević June 29, 2021 This conversation with the Indian-born essayist, novelist and historian Pankaj Mishra, took place before the US elections. Q: In your major writings you deal with the Western model of modernisation and in the suffering involved in its evolution, expansion and emulation. You have emerged as a prominent critic of the empire and its links to liberal ideas. Reviewers often depict you as the voice of the marginalised and excluded, humiliated, the victims. How would you define yourself today?  A: I think I was fortunate to write for mainstream publications in the United States and Britain from the late 1990s onwards, when the illusions of Americanising the world were at their strongest. Britain and America were being held as models for the rest of the world to imitate and no attention was being paid to their long past of slavery and...

Biljana Vankovska, TFF Associate June 22, 2021 There is a comprehensive, independent-minded “alternative” analysis of NATO’s crisis in general and the membership of North Macedonia in it. Dr Vankovska writes in the intro to her analysis that: “North Macedonia (hereafter in the text, Macedonia) was officially admitted to NATO on 27 March 2020 as its 30th member state. It was supposed to look like a dream come true for generations of Macedonian citizens and the political elites across the ethnic divides. However, the act was hardly met with any euphoria… Although Macedonia has joined NATO the political narrative and public (media and intellectual) rhetoric have not changed a bit. The military alliance is still seen through rose-coloured eyeglasses with not much relation to the objective state of affairs. It shows that the submissive and even naïve position in the mind and behaviour of the political elites is unlikely to change...