United States – Empire and domestic

Edward Curtin November 2, 2022 It should now be quite clear to any reasonable person that the Biden administration is hell-bent on destroying Russia and will risk nuclear war in doing so. It has already started World War III with its use of Ukraine to light the final match. The problem is that reasonable people are in very short supply, and, as Ray McGovern recently wrote in “Brainwashed for War with Russia,” the Biden administration and their media lackeys … will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China …. Most Americans are just as taken in by the media as they were 20 years ago, when they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They simply took it on faith. Nor did the guilty media express remorse – or a modicum of embarrassment. Originally published...

Trust among Chinese citizens in their government is a record 91 percent, the highest seen in a decade. The result is even more striking compared to the U.S., where trust in government is at 39 percent. By Deborah Lehr October 24, 2022 Fraught U.S.-China relations will continue entering 2022. This year, leaders of both countries will be focused on domestic politics, the ongoing pandemic and uneven economic recoveries — challenges that have further added to existing bilateral tensions. Originally published at Edelman on January 18, 2022 It is an important political year in both countries. U.S. President Joe Biden is facing midterm elections with the Republicans likely to gain seats in the House and potentially the Senate, complicating his administration’s ability to implement its policy agenda. By contrast, China’s Xi Jinping is on the verge of assuming a third term as President and is strongly positioned to ensure that his...

You should ask yourself, ask friends, others and decision-makers in the West why the type of important news and conversations like the one I have here – including on nuclear abolition – is possible on Russia’s RT (and explicitly appreciated, watch the end) but not possible in the Western mainstream media. Interestingly, the conversation develops into the issue of the risks of nuclear war and why – I argue strongly – nuclear weapons must be abolished and that the nuclear weapons powers implicitly adhere – all of them – to a philosophy of terrorism. Remember how it was once called the balance of terror – a word that disappeared from the nuclear discourse after September 11, 2001. There are many definitions of terrorism, but one essential element in them all is that terrorism is about deliberately harming or killing civilians, targeting innocent people and not military forces, to achieve a...

Natylie Baldwin October 18th, 2022 I first came across Benjamin Abelow’s analysis of the Ukraine war as a lengthy article published on Medium in May.  I found the depth and thoroughness of his article impressive and complimented him on it.  When he told me that he’d expanded it into a short book, I was intrigued and offered to review it.  I was not disappointed. Originally posted on Natylies Baldwin’s homepage on October 2nd, 2022 Abelow’s overall argument as expressed in the overview of the book is that in the world in which we live, countries that are able, will use the means they have available to defend what they perceive to be their national security interests, including force.  This includes deterring or repelling hostile countries from encroaching on their border and near abroad.  The prime defender of this concept for itself is the U.S. as reflected in the Monroe Doctrine and its defense...

By Connor Echols October 17, 2022 A recent piece in Foreign Affairs revealed that Kyiv and Moscow may have had a tentative deal to end the war all the way back in April. Russia and Ukraine may have agreed on a tentative deal to end the war in April, according to a recent piece in Foreign Affairs. “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement,” wrote Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. “Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.” Originally published at Responsible Statecraft on September 2, 2022 The news highlights the impact of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s efforts to stop negotiations, as journalist Branko Marcetic noted on Twitter....

Former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland testifies during a hearing on Policy Response to Russian Interference in the 2016 US Elections before the Senate Intelligence Committee at Capitol Hill in Washington, USA on June 20, 2018. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) A Cold War true believer who sabotaged Obama’s foreign policy, Nuland is a huge risk at the State Department Medea Benjamin – Nicolas J.S. Davies – Marcy Winograd October 13, 2022 Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her, because the U.S. corporate media’s foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden’s pick for deputy secretary of state for political affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia.  Nor do they know that from 2003...

Dario Rivolta 10 October, 2022 The European sanctions on Russia would have expired on 31 January 2017. They were imposed at a time as one insinuated that the Russian side had a hostile attitude in the question of Ukraine. These sanctions have been extended for six months at an early stage. Certainly, the reason for this was some fear that the new American President Donald Trump could lift them and urge Europe to do the same. Recently, the American President has stated that at the moment nothing in this direction would be undertaken, but everyone knows his desire to establish good relations with Moscow. As the NATO and Europe support the current Government in Kiev and accuse Russia, to be blamed for the current crisis, one has to remember in the name of truth how it all started. Originally published by the Swiss journal Current Concerns in April 2017 Ukraine...

Johan Galtung TFF Associate October 2nd, 2022 Originally written in 2003 and expanded upon in 2015 and posted on Transcend Media Service’s, TMS, on September 26, 2022. 1.  Definitions and Hypotheses: An Overview Definition: An empire is a transborder Center-Periphery system, in macro-space and in macro-time, with a culture legitimizing a structure of unequal exchange between center and periphery: economically, between exploiters and exploited, as inequity; militarily,   between killers and victims, as enforcement; politically,  between dominators and dominated, as repression; culturally,   between alienators and alienated, as conditioning. Empires have different profiles.  The US Empire has a complete configuration, articulated in a statement by a Pentagon planner: “The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault.  To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing”.[1] In other words, direct violence to protect...

When Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene are the only people objecting to endless war, it’s all gone wrong Editor’s noteThis article was published by “salon” on May 26, 2022. Perhaps better than any other short analysis, it describes and summarises the present situation in the United States of America. For me as editor of The Transnational, it raises of course the question: How is this going to end? But it also highlights one of the biggest enigmas of our time – at least for intellectuals: How is it possible that so many media, politicians and researchers with their names, values and ethics stand behind the United States, believe its official words, faithfully explain, legitimate and support in every way the narrative of the good America – the narrative that completely omits Hedges’ perspectives and is overflowing with fake and every comparison between the reality and the narrative – not...

Shastri Ramachandaran TFF Associate September 20, 2022 As the war in Ukraine grinds on, the US-led West is discovering that defeating Russia was easier said than done. The West is now realising that: the war will drag on for longer than foreseen; the US and Europe cannot keep boosting President Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime with a steady flow of readily usable weapons; Russia, far from being beaten by sanctions, has reaped economic gains in the process; and, above all, weaponising resources is a game that both sides can play.   Originally published at WION on September 6, 2022 To take the last point first, OPEC+ which has discussed an output cut to prop up oil prices, has proved that it is no pushover. Petroleum prices have acquired a new urgency in the wake of Russia’s decision last week to shut down the Nordstream gas pipeline to Germany. Moscow said that this...

Jeffrey Sachs By Amy Goodman (*) – Democracy Now! September 19, 2022 Jeffrey Sachs: “Dangerous” U.S. Policy & “West’s False Narrative” Stoking Tensions with Russia, China GUESTS: Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, sustainable development solutions advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres, and former adviser to three U.N. secretaries-general. We discuss Western hegemony and U.S. policy in Russia, Ukraine and China with Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, whose new article is headlined “The West’s False Narrative About Russia and China.” Sachs says the bipartisan U.S. approach to foreign policy is “unaccountably dangerous and wrongheaded,” and warns the U.S. is creating “a recipe for yet another war” in East Asia. Originally published at Other News on September 5, 2022 Transcript This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: Politico is reporting...

David Swanson TFF Associate September 6, 2022 It’s tricky to oppose both sides of a war, and rarer even than supporting both sides. The weapons dealers support both sides. In obedience to their televisions, people all over the world spend a great deal of time expressing the opinions dished out by those televisions regarding a particular war that is far from the worst war at the moment. It is the war that creates the greatest risk of nuclear apocalypse, but that does not typically enter into the opinions. Originally published at World BEYOND War on September 4, 2022 You cannot just state that you oppose both sides, because that will quite literally be understood by almost everyone as asserting the unrelated and ridiculous proposition that the two sides are identical, and that will be understood as outrageous propaganda on behalf of whichever side the listener opposes. So, you have to...