United States – Empire and domestic

Yet ‘experts’ still cling to the narrative that Ukraine can somehow ‘win.’ If Ukraine can hang on for just a few more months. Image: iStock Cameron Leckie August 24, 2022 The more events proved them to be wrong, the stronger their defences became against admitting this to be the case’ – Norman Dixon (On the Psychology of Military Incompetence) In my last piece for Pearls and Irritations I argued that the conflict in, or more accurately, over Ukraine was rapidly accelerating the transfer of the balance of power from West to East. The progress of events associated with the conflict has resulted in a re-evaluation of this assessment. What we are witnessing is the self-inflicted demise of the West as a major power bloc. The belief in a series of delusions by Western leaders and governments is the driving force behind this demise, with the conflict in Ukraine being the focal point. Originally published...

Image: Wikimedia Commons By John Menadue August 23, 2022 The most likely way we could get into a war with China is if we continue to act as a proxy or deputy sheriff for the US in the region. Nancy Pelosi is doing her best to provoke China. Malcolm Fraser was right about ‘our dangerous ally’. The US is the most aggressive and violent country in the world. It is addicted to a belief in its exceptionalism, grounded in aggression and violence both at home and abroad, and finding it hard to admit mistakes. Originally published at John Menadue’s “Pearls And Irritations” on August 3, 2022 It is looking more and more like a slow motion train wreck. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war. The record is clear. Time and time again we have allowed ourselves to be drawn into the imperial wars of...

Together We Are Wrong — by Mr Fish By Chris Hedges August 4, 2022 The massive expansion of NATO, not only in Eastern and Central Europe but the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, presages endless war and a potential nuclear holocaust. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the arms industry that depends on it for billions in profits, has become the most aggressive and dangerous military alliance on the planet. Created in 1949 to thwart Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, it has evolved into a global war machine in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia.  Originally published in The Chris Hedges Report on July 10, 2022 NATO expanded its footprint, violating promises to Moscow, once the Cold War ended, to incorporate 14 countries in Eastern and Central Europe into the alliance. It will soon add Finland and Sweden. It bombed Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. It launched wars in...

In just 18 months, his ambitious agenda has been demolished – along with his popularity. Where did the president go wrong? Adam Tooze – in The New Statesman July 26, 2022 In the summer of 2022 a trip to Washington DC can seem like a visit to the scene of a disaster foretold. Having removed Donald Trump from office, and with majorities in both chambers of Congress, the Democrats began 2021 with high ambition and the eyes of the world upon them. A year and a half later, they are facing political ruin. A combination of bad luck, ineptitude, internal divisions, the structures of US politics and the ruthlessness of their enemies has put not only the future of the Biden administration but the republic itself in danger. The fraying of the existing order is visible at all levels. Internationally, Joe Biden has rallied Nato and its allies against Vladimir...

Richard Falk July 21, 2022 The U.S. Government at the highest level criticized Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, because she went to China on a mission to develop opportunities for cooperation with respect to the protection of human rights. I found that criticism appalling at the time. The mission had been carefully prepared several weeks earlier by UN staff that had visited China and negotiated the itinerary of the visit, which occurred in May of this year. The whole experience seemed a win/win breakthrough as a major country opened itself up to a high degree of independent international scrutiny with respect to its human rights record, an exposure the U.S. itself has resisted and opposed. High officials in Washington let it be known in advance that they considered the trip ‘a mistake,’ and expressed consternation that its hyped allegations of ‘genocide’ associated with the treatment of...

Biden at Bat – by Mr. Fish Chris Hedges July 18, 2022 The United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel, responsible for military fiascos, hundreds of thousands of deaths and innumerable war crimes in the Middle East, are now plotting to attack Iran. The United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia are plotting a war with Iran. The 2015 Iranian nuclear arms accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Donald Trump sabotaged, does not look like it will be revived.  U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is reviewing options to attack if Teheran looks poised to obtain a nuclear weapon and Israel, which opposes U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, carries out military strikes. During his visit to Israel, Biden assured Prime Minister Yair Lapid that the U.S. is “prepared to use all elements of its national power,” including military force, to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon.  Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S....

Arms Control Today June 30, 2022 On June 26, 1997, a group of 50 prominent foreign policy experts that included former senators, retired military officers, diplomats and academicians, sent an open letter to President Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion. Stanley Resor, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Arms Control Association, spoke at the press conference announcing the letter, focusing on the arms control implications of expansion. Resor’s remarks and the group’s letter are printed below. Remarks by Stan Resor: A key, if not the key, U.S. interest in Russia is a rapid and substantial reduction in the tens of thousands of Russian strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and the hundreds of tons of nuclear material which are still deployed or stored throughout that nation some six years after the end of the Cold War. Progress towards these goals will require comprehensive and sustained cooperation between the...

President Joe Biden speaks at the NATO summit at the group’s headquarters in Brussels on June 14, 2021. Photo: Francisco Seco/Pool/AFP via Getty Images Jon Schwarz June 30, 2022 NATO’s summit showed how the “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization has decided it has an extremely expansive global mission. IN A STOP last week on his way to Belgium for Monday’s NATO summit, President Joe Biden visited a Royal Air Force base in eastern England. “In Brussels,” he told the assembled crowd, “I will make it clear that the United States’s commitment to our NATO alliance and Article 5 is rock solid. It’s a sacred obligation that we have under Article 5.” These lines were aimed at a tiny number of human beings. Certainly almost no Americans have any idea what “Article 5” is part of or what it says. Originally published at The Intercept on June 15, 2022 But Biden’s words were genuinely significant. Article 5...

Craig Murray June 17, 2022 I was in Turkey to try to further peace talks, as an experienced diplomat with good contacts there, and as a peace activist. I was not there as a journalist and much of what I discussed was with the understanding of confidence. It will be probably be some years before I judge it reasonable and fair to reveal all that I know. But I can give some outline. Originally published on Craig Murray’s homepage on June 7, 2022 Turkey continues to be the centre of diplomatic activity on resolving the Ukraine war. It is therefore particularly revealing, and a sign of Western priorities, that I did not come across a single western journalist there trying to follow and cover the diplomatic process. There are hundreds of Western journalists in Ukraine, effectively embedded with the Ukrainian authorities, producing war porn. There appear to be none seriously...

Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury June 17, 2022 Food crises, economic stagnation and price increases are worsening unevenly, almost everywhere, following the Ukraine war. Sanctions against Russia have especially hurt those relying on wheat and fertilizer imports. Unilateral sanctions illegal Unilateral sanctions – not approved by the UN Security Council – are illegal under international law. Besides contravening the UN Charter, unilateral sanctions inflict much human loss. Countless civilians – many far from target countries – are at risk, depriving them of much, even life itself. Sanctions, embargos and blockades – ‘sold’ as non-violent alternatives to waging war by military means – economically isolate and punish targeted countries, supposedly to force them to acquiesce. But most sanctions hurt the innocent majority, much more than the ruling elites. Originally published at Human Wrongs Watch on June 7, 2022 Like laying siege on enemy settlements, sanctions are ‘weapons of mass starvation’. They “are...

Quwatli declaring Syria’s independence from France, 17 April 1946 (Licensed under the public domain) Shane Quinn June 2, 2022 The United States, with occasional interruptions, has been interfering in the important Middle East nation of Syria for over 70 years, and today there are hundreds of American soldiers still present on Syrian soil. These realities are not well known. Originally published at Globalresearch US intrusion in Syrian affairs can be traced to the late 1940s, as outlined in 2016 by the American author Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The CIA, at the behest of Harry Truman’s government in Washington, started to destabilise Syria shortly after the country’s official independence in April 1946. Kennedy Jr. wrote, “The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949 – barely a year after the agency’s creation. Syrian patriots had declared war on the Nazis, expelled their Vichy French colonial rulers, and crafted a fragile secularist democracy...

Jack F. Matlock, Jr. May 27, 2022 An avoidable crisis that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense, writes Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. We are being told each day that war may be imminent in Ukraine. Russian troops, we are told, are massing at Ukraine’s borders and could attack at any time. American citizens are being advised to leave Ukraine and dependents of the American Embassy staff are being evacuated. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president has advised against panic and made clear that he does not consider a Russian invasion imminent. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has denied that he has any intention of invading Ukraine. His demand is that the process of adding new members to NATO cease and that in particular, Russia has assurance that Ukraine and Georgia will never be members. President Joe Biden has...