World future

Meetings of the G7 and NATO (top) and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (bottom) Ben Norton March 29, 2023 A study by the elite EU-funded European Council on Foreign Relations found the West is out of touch politically with the rest of the world. Most people in China, India, and Türkiye see Russia as an important ally, and they want multipolarity, not continued “American global supremacy”. Originally published at Geopolitical Economy on February 25, 2023 A study by an elite European government-funded think tank found that, while the United States and Europe are growing closer together, the West is increasingly out of touch politically with the rest of the world. The report, from the EU member state-financed European Council on Foreign Relations, conceded that the system of “American global supremacy” is in rapid decline, and many people in the Global South want a new “multipolar world”. The series of polls concluded that NATO’s proxy...

Jan Oberg March 21, 2023 Letter from a soul-sister stranger for peace One autumn day in 2022, a mail winged into TFF’s inbox from a woman in the United States. Here first some excerpts; the first sentence reveals a sense of being in a larger world. ” I hope you’re feeling all right, even though it’s difficult to feel that way now. I’d like to send you this letter that I’m sending to as many people that I can think of. Given the urgency of the international situation I figure it’s no time to be shy. Here it is! Hardly a soul responds to me, but I was hoping maybe you would. Peace will never arrive if people are not able to listen to the other side’s perspective. Peace will never arrive if people on one side of conflict tell half-truths and lies to paint the other side as only...

© Sputnik / Maksim Blinov Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual address to the Federal Assembly, including lawmakers of the State Duma, members of the Federation Council, regional governors and other officials, in Moscow, Russia, on February 21, 2023. Dmitry Trenin March 8, 2023 The West’s failed Ukraine strategy has empowered the Global Majority to reject US domination In his recent landmark address to Russia’s parliament, President Vladimir Putin cited the war in Ukraine and US/NATO involvement in the conflict as the main reason for his decision to “suspend” Moscow’s participation in the 2010 New START Treaty on strategic nuclear weapons. Putin also suggested that Russia should be ready to resume nuclear testing. Effectively, this announcement, promptly turned into law by the Russian parliament, means a formal end to the long-ailing institutions of strategic arms control that began over 50 years ago. If New START is followed by the...

Image by Loco Steve on Flickr Tony Robinson March 1, 2023 In Europe, North America and a few other countries that feed themselves with information from the western media, it can have escaped no one’s attention that we are actually on the march towards World War III. The similarities with the 1930s are terrifying: Yes, all the ingredients are here for the outbreak of an all-out world war from which human civilisation will not survive. At this critical juncture in human history, we find the “peace” movement in the west to be totally fragmented and unable to give a clear and unified response. In the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003, millions of people around the world marched against a war that they understood would never affect them personally because it was too far away geographically. Now when we are on the brink of a war that will...

Dennis Argall February 13th, 2023 The US is at war, and the dollar is at risk of imminent collapse. Australia’s lobbying of the United States as a good ally should focus on these issues above all else. Originally posted on John Menadue’s journal Pearls and Irritations on January 19th, 2023 I am aware that many readers will say oh dear, you must not talk like that. But it’s sensible to discuss the distance to the ground before we jump off the cliff. And a lot has already gone over the cliff. In the narrow spectrum of security, focused on war and peace, the largest problems we cannot afford to ignore right now are as follows: War elements are increasingly out of control, In Europe and elsewhere. Clausewitz was right, war drives out policy and pursues its own ends. We are effectively in a world war, and the barrier to nuclear...

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida rides on a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Type 10 tank during a review at JGSDF Camp Asaka in Tokyo on November 27, 2021. Photo: JiJi Richard Javad Heydarian February 5th, 2023 Prime Minister Kishida goes on a diplomatic offensive in the West as Tokyo cranks up defense spending to counter China Originally posted on Asia Time on January 23, 2023 here MANILA – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida kicked off the new year with a series of high-profile visits across key Western allied nations, including the United States. In Washington, he held “very productive” talks with US President Joe Biden on strengthening bilateral cooperation in critical industries, particularly semiconductors, as the West contemplates decoupling from its decades-long dependence on China.  Earlier, the Japanese leader also met counterparts in Europe where he signed new defense agreements to augment military interoperability and joint exercises in the Indo-Pacific. Together with the United...

Give yourself 38 min, and you’ll understand how extremely self-destructive the NATO/EU world’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been and why all the assumption it made was wrong. Professor Emeritus of Economics (University of Massachusetts) and founder of Democracy at Work, Richard Wolff, talks with brilliant clarity about the economic impact of the Ukraine war. He assesses the impact of Western sanctions on Russia as well as how the war has affected the West economically. And very importantly, he analyses just how destructive arms spending is for the rest of society and the working people. Here are the main themes: 0:00 Introduction 0:32 “Economic War” with Russia? 12:01 Moral significance of Western sanctions 14:20 Economic impact on the United States 21:07 Economic impact of military spending 32:21 Economic impact on Ukraine I cannot recommend this – and the acTVism Munich and The Source Channel – enough. Please share...

Photo: The Cradle Pepe Escobar January 23, 2023 As Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative enters its 10th year, a strong Sino-Russian geostrategic partnership has revitalized the BRI across the Global South. The year 2022 ended with a Zoom call to end all Zoom calls: Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping discussing all aspects of the Russia-China strategic partnership in an exclusive video call. Putin told Xi how “Russia and China managed to ensure record high growth rates of mutual trade,” meaning “we will be able to reach our target of $200 billion by 2024 ahead of schedule.” On their coordination to “form a just world order based on international law,” Putin emphasized how “we share the same views on the causes, course, and logic of the ongoing transformation of the global geopolitical landscape.” Originally posted on The Cradle on January 6, 2023, here Facing “unprecedented pressure and provocations from the...

Martin Jacques December 28, 2022 The West could learn a great deal from China’s system of governance. It is highly unlikely this will happen, at least anytime soon. On the contrary, the West believes that its governance system is the best in the world, cannot be improved upon, and is incomparably superior to that of China. Why then is the West in rampant decline? And why has China, in contrast, enjoyed a dramatic rise over the last four decades. Have these contrasting fortunes got nothing to do with their respective governing systems? Are national success and the system of governance utterly disconnected from each other? Is the system of governance little more than an ornament of decoration, with little bearing on the performance of a nation? This is obviously nonsense. The quality of governance is fundamental to the success or failure of a country. If a country is doing well, then...

Institut Montaigne’s broad-spectrum interview, on October 13, 2022, with Fyodor A. Lukyanov, Chairman of the Russian Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and editor-in-chief of the “Russia in Global Affairs” journal. Note to our readers We intend in the future to publish more materials by Russian scholars and intellectuals because the de facto cancellation by NATO/EU countries of such views and of access to leading Russian media is both unfair, a violation of human rights and an element in a self-serving media warfare which, regrettably, only makes a peaceful, negotiated resolution even more difficult. We believe it is necessary to hear all conflict participants’ motives and views to be able to help solve a conflict peacefully. Any professional conflict analyst and mediator knows that and also that that does not mean an implicit endorsement of everything stated. Earlier ones are published here, here and here. – Jan...

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin welcoming Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to a meeting at the Pentagon, Aug. 31, 2021. (DoD, Jack Sanders) In addition to advancing longstanding U.S. geo-strategic aims, it seems the proxy war in Ukraine is also being used to sharpen the imperial war machine’s claws for a looming hot war with China and/or Russia. Caitlin Johnstone December 5, 2022 Listen to a reading of this article. A surprisingly frank article in The New York Times, “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” describes how the imperial war machine is capitalising on the U.S. proxy war to test its weapons for future use. “Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come,” writes Lara Jakes. Jakes says “new advances in technology and...

Jan Oberg November 20, 2022 Perhaps you have no time to read thick analytical books, but you are interested in macro-history and how the world changes right before our eyes? If so, the two clips below from 2021 and 2022 are loaded with content that speaks volumes of history, conflict and world order change. And the decline of the West. Watch – and, in particular – listen carefully (here is The Guardian’s longer text with quotes): Something is happening, and we do know what it is, don’t we, Mr Jones…?