US Empire decline

Few are better qualified to challenge the official orthodoxy that stifles any discussion of this topic Peter Oborne August 12, 2024 No review has yet been published of Professor Ilan Pappe’s magnificent and passionate new book on the Zionist lobby. This silence is no surprise. Even a passing reference to the lobby is liable to lead to charges of antisemitism and potential career destruction. Faiza Shaheen was dropped like a stone last month as Labour candidate for the London seat of Chingford and Woodford Green. “There have been complaints, allegedly, about her ‘liking’ a tweet that referred to the ‘Israel lobby’ – widely considered an anti-Semitic trope,” reported the New Statesman’s associate political editor, Rachel Cunliffe. On a now-infamous Newsnight appearance following her defenestration, a tearful Shaheen apologised for liking the tweet and accepted it was a “trope”. She didn’t have much choice. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC),...

Given their lack of information about the Ukraine-Russia deal scuttled by Boris Johnson early in the war, many Americans will be inclined to believe Biden’s evidence-free claims in last week’s CNN debate. Ray McGovernSpecial to Consortium News, July 2, 2024 July 5, 2024 At Thursday’s debate with Donald Trump, President Joe Biden, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” claimed that he “wants all of Ukraine. … Do you think he’ll stop? … What do you think happens to Poland and other places?” Spoiler Alert: Official Ukrainian sources confirm that Putin did stop in March 2022, after Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky agreed to forswear membership in NATO. This was the key provision in the Ukraine-Russia deal initialed by Davyd Arakhamia, who at the time was Zelensky’s chief negotiator (and his party’s faction leader in the Rada) at the talks in Istanbul at the end of March, hardly a month...

July 4, 2024 “Each of us has had our own experience of the cascading failures of process, leadership, and decision-making that have characterized this Administration’s intransigent response to this continuing calamity. Taken together, these paint a picture of an overlapping and systemic set of problems in this Administration’s policy approach, and a series of warnings that have gone unheeded…” Read the entire – extraordinarily important – statement here. It is a significant example of civil disobedience and personal ethics. It all began with Josh Paul when he resigned from the State Department last year. See also the video below. This is the way to go. May thousands upon thousands feel inspired and resign, too – and not only in the U.S. but in all Western countries that facilitate and support the genocide in Gaza and the barbaric policies in the Middle East.

When he first took office, the Russian president was trying to integrate with the West, now the whole ball game has changed Fyodor Lukyanov May 30, 2024 The question of how Russia’s foreign policy will be managed during President Vladimir Putin’s new term seems redundant, if not irrelevant. The head of state is a man who has led the country in one form or another for almost a quarter of a century. He is known for his conservatism – not only in the ideological sense, but also in his aversion to sharp turns. Moreover, Russia is engaged in an intensive military campaign against an international coalition, and there is little point in making plans until it is over, and while its prospects are still unclear. The successful completion of this campaign remains a task of incomparable importance. Nevertheless, it is necessary to reflect on this issue. Firstly, all of the...

. He first tells why he was in Belgrade during the bombing and then explains how that bombing was a turning point towards the new multipolar – and better – world we are now approaching. First Beoforum’s version on YouTube. Then you can always find it on TFF’s Vimeo Channel – because we boycott Goggle-owned YouTube as much as we can.

The agreement has much more serious consequences for Sweden than the people have been told – and it’s a binding agreement that shall be debated in parliament ex-post in violation of normal democratic procedures. We publish it in English to alert an international audience to the DCS’s extremely problematic character and warn other countries not to sign DCAs with the U.S. The Swedish original follows the English edition. Ola & Erni Friholt – TFF Associates The Peace Association at Orust, Sweden April 17, 2024 Response to the consultation on the Government Office’s registration number FÖ2024/00152 on the so-called DCA agreement. From Erni & Ola Friholt on behalf of the Peace Movement on Orust.Address: Torget 1, Stocken, 474 92 Ellös. Tel: 0304-51215.E-mail: ernifriholt@gmail.com and friholtola@gmail.com On 5 December 2023, the Swedish and US defence ministers unexpectedly signed an agreement on defence cooperation between Sweden and the US, known as the Defence...

“This was never about Ukraine, it was about weakening Russia.” Ex-NATO analyst, Colonel Jacques Baud, is a special guest with Afshin Rattansi’s “Going Underground” April 15, 2024 Jacques Baud is a legendary expert on Ukraine – not the least thanks to his book, “Operation Z”, his former life at NATO’s HQ and his being in Ukraine at the time when the historical changes took place… that you never heard about. You know, you only began to hear about Ukraine under the headline of Maidan and then when Russia took over Crimea. But it all started a bit earlier, and everything the West/NATO did was about getting control of Ukraine – not because that country has any importance to the West – but because it could be used to “weaken Russia.” The US/NATO “useful idiots” in our media, politics and research continue to deceive you (and themselves?) that it all started...

John Menadue March 6, 2024 Pearls and Irritations has posted an outstanding series of articles by Percy Allan on the so-called ‘China Threat‘. He highlighted that America is deeply divided and that promoting the China threat helps unite Americans; that unlike the UK and the US, China has no imperial legacy; that unlike the Soviet Union, China is not exporting ideology; that China is concerned about managing its large ethnic and religious minorities; and that surrounded by scores of US bases, China’s military is defensive. Most important of all, Percy Allan emphasises that China’s focus is economic. Initially published by Pearls and Irritations. John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal here Western media, including in Australia, has become quite unhinged about the China threat. Our political ‘leadership’ slavishly follows Washington propaganda conducted mainly through the help of security agencies and the Five Eyes. The China threat agencies are unwilling to stand back...

This extremely dangerous man, back then, also revealed that the real purpose of arming Ukraine was to weaken Russia. The video below may give you a more than two-hour hearing. Please click on this to see only the two minutes mentioned with his shocking statement. Dear Reader Archive this less than 2-minute video so you will remember who presented this perverse eschatological – end-times – vision first. Austin here reveals how the real NATO is is anything but what you are told: it’s offensive, pursues out-of-area operations(e.g. Yugoslavia), willing to fight an opponent we are told is a huge threat and NATO is inferior to. And, thus, it has operated in complete violation of its treaty’s peaceful, defensive provisions. He did not say that NATO will fight if Russia attacks a NATO country. He says NATO will fight Russia if Ukraine falls. Ukraine is a non-NATO country (which NATO should...

Photo © Jan Oberg “Eclecticism” 2019 Johan Galtung 2015 February 29, 2024 A theory serves comprehension, prediction and identification of conditions for change. Seven such historical-cultural pointers will be indicated for China; using the West in general, and the USA in particular, for comparisons. The presentation draws on countless dialogues in China over 40 years, since 1973. Published by Counterpunch in 2015 China: in time, as dynasties; West: in space as empires. Look at a histomap combining world history and geography, time and space: China shows up through 4,000 years as relatively coherent dynasties with complex transitions – and the West as empires–birth-growth-peaking-decline-fall, like the Roman, UK and now the US empire – duration vs bubbles that burst; as China-centric vs Western hegemonic. Chinese space: Barbarian; US time: to create, past irrelevant. China marginalized space peopled by South-West-North-East barbarians – outside the “Chinese pocket” between Himalayas-Gobi desert-Tundra-Sea–except for Silk roads...

February 24, 2024, marks the second anniversary of the tragic Russia-Ukraine war – with its underlying conflict between NATO and its reckless expansion on the one hand and Russia on the other. In this video produced by The China Academy in Shanghai, I talk about the four basic chapters of that drama and why, as it seems, none of the parties has learned any lessons yet. See this 8.02-minute video, which the important Global Times has re-posted on its YouTube Channel. And take a look at the comments, too. I have also been asked to comment, in 100 words, on this anniversary by the Chinese national news agency, Xinhua. Here is what I wrote: “Both the EU and NATO keep denying that the conflict was caused by NATO’s unnecessary expansion; they focus conveniently on the Ukraine war that Rusland caused. That serves only the Military-Industrial-Media Complex, MIMAC. The US/European ill-considered response to Russia was...

The China Academy has produced some new videos with me – and those we made last year are still to be posted here. They have been seen by an estimated hundreds of millions around the world in about three months! In this one, I address various aspects of the – predictable – fact that the US is now receiving a series of blowbacks, or boomerangs, because of its reckless policies beginning with the attack on Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 – as the thoroughly wrong-headed response to what happened in New York and Washington on September 11 that developed into the Global War On Terror, perhaps the most foolish war project in modern time. The China Academy posts them on China’s Bili-Bili platform (some call it China’s YouTube) and on YouTube at its “Thinkers Forum” Channel. See this 5:35-minute video on Thinkers Forum here – “Yankees go home,” Middle Eastern...