Building Europe to have peace. Such is the just and fine ambition that one must pursue relentlessly. Nevertheless, it is necessary to define ‘Europe’ and to specify the conditions for the peace that is desirable on our continent.
For Europe is a continent. Only de Gaulle had envisaged Europe as a geopolitical ensemble composed of all the states participating in balance. François Mitterrand took up the idea in the form of a European confederation, but he too quickly abandoned it.
Since 1945, what is presented as ‘Europe’, in the West of the continent, is only a subset of countries incapable by themselves …
He Supported Savage Sanctions that Killed One Million Iraqi’s in the 1990s and Criminally Ignores the Plight of Post-War Afghanistan
by John Stanton / March 22nd, 2022
Who, really, is the War Criminal?
So what does President Joe Biden want the sanctions imposed on Russia to do? Think back to the 1990s and what the US-NATO imposed no-fly zone and sanctions did to the people of Iraq? The results were almost 1 million Iraqis dead, according to the website GlobalIssues.org.
Over at truthout.org, Jake Batinga reported that President Joe Biden strongly supported those sanctions as a US Senator and recently has turned a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan:
Senator Biden strongly supported the sanctions and advocated for even more aggressive policies toward Iraq. Biden …
by Bruce and Barbara MacLean-Lerro / March 22nd, 2022
Part I – Pre-History of Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism
Waking Up
In 2001 Barbara had her awakening to the disasters that capitalism caused. This started as part of the 9/11 events, beginning after the response to the supposed attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It became immediately clear the US would respond to the attacks with military action against whatever country seemed most vulnerable and had access or proximity to resources, in this case oil. The attacks were supposedly coordinated by al-Qaeda, a radical Islamic group founded by …
The US is planning to provoke conflict with China through Taiwan just as it has done to Russia through Ukraine. A similar process of replacing both governments in 2014 and then preparing both territories for war has been underway since.
US policy papers have called for the encirclement and containment of both Russia and China for decades and ultimately, stopping China requires first isolating it from its largest, most powerful ally, Russia.
In 2009, after helping rescue the US from the Global Financial Crisis, Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the Peoples Bank of China, said, “The world needs an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and able to remain stable in the long run, removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.”
Zhou proposed SDRs, Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic reserve currency dynamically revaluing itself against a basket of trading currencies and commodities. Broad, deep, stable, and difficult to influence.
Nobelists Fred Bergsten, Robert Mundell, and Joseph Stiglitz agreed, “The creation …
PressTV Interview with Peter Koenig (Enhanced Transcript)
by Press TV / March 21st, 2022
Background
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi says the first priority of his administration during the Persian New Year is boosting employment and creating new jobs.
He made the remarks in his New Year message aired live from the Grand Mosque of the southwestern Iranian port city of Khorramshahr on Sunday evening, March 20.
“My first Nowruz message as the servant of the public is the message of round-the-clock and incessant work to build a powerful and advanced Iran,” he said.
“No nation and no country has achieved anything without intensive work and the maximum use of human and natural resources. The New Year and the …
Then all cried with one accord,
‘Thou art King, and God and Lord;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!’
— “The Mask of Anarchy,” Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819
Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the American ruling establishment embarked on a policy of backing radical anti-nation state ideologies (henceforth to be referred to as ANSIs) with the goal of dismantling national identities and leaving failed states in their wake. Only through acknowledging both the extraordinary dangers that this entails, and the fact that the process emanates from powerful transnational capitalist forces rather than from “the left” (which once referenced …
A guest op-ed appeared in The New York Times this week. Its headline read, “We will forget most of the pandemic. And that’s a good thing.” This odd submission was penned by Scott Small, an executive at, of all things, an Alzheimer’s foundation. Small has also written a book called, Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering, which sounds awfully strange in the context of the pandemic. Small seems to mean well, and reasonably encourages an eventual letting go of some of the emotional trauma of the pandemic, if just for one’s own mental health, to use forgetting of some …
WFP food distribution in Raymah (credit: Julian Harneis CC BY-SA 2.0)
The United Nations’ goal was to raise more than $4.2 billion for the people of war-torn Yemen by March 15. But when that deadline rolled around, just $1.3 billion had come in.
“I am deeply disappointed,” said Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “The people of Yemen need the same level of support and solidarity that we’ve seen for the people of Ukraine. The crisis in Europe will dramatically impact Yemenis’ access to food …
Tsai: Hello Volodya. I hope you do not mind my calling you that.
Zelensky: (Sobs, wordless.)
Tsai: What is it Volodya? Calm down.
Zelensky: (Sobbing continues.) We have been left alone to defend our state. Who is ready to fight alongside us? I don’t see anyone. Who is ready to give Ukraine a guarantee of NATO membership? Everyone is afraid.*
Tsai: But the Americans have given you weapons, rifles. The Germans even gave you helmets — right away — and now they are promising more. And they also sent military advisors “little green men”– I think that is what they call them when they …
In a significantly escalatory move, potentially giving Russia justifiable pretext to mount an incursion in Slovakia, Bratislava appears to have struck a deal with NATO for transferring its Soviet-era S-300 air defense system to Ukraine in return for Netherlands and Germany delivering three Patriot missile systems to Slovakia.
Although NATO has provided thousands of anti-aircraft MANPADS to Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias, those are portable surface-to-air missiles, whereas S-300 air defense system, equivalent in capabilities to American Patriots, is a large and advanced system that constitutes a nation’s backbone of air defense capabilities.
During 2011, NATO bombed a path to Tripoli to help its proxy forces on the ground oust Gaddafi. Tens of thousands lost their lives and much of Libya’s social fabric and infrastructure lay in ruins.
The 2016 article appearing in Foreign Policy Journal ‘Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libyan Intervention’ exposed why Libya was targeted. Gaddafi was murdered and his plans to assert African independence and undermine Western hegemony on that continent were rendered obsolete.
A March 2013 Daily Telegraph article “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’’’ reported that 3,000 tons …
by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East / March 19th, 2022
Over the past three weeks, CJPME has witnessed Canada’s prompt and forceful response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, clearly demonstrating its opposition through both words and actions.
Canada’s willingness to take these steps against Russia within days, and its refusal to take such steps against Israel after decades, is hypocritical. At the same time, this jarring contrast provides an opportunity for us to force a rethink and push politicians to be more consistent in their foreign policy.
CJPME has been talking to politicians and others about this double-standard, and we summarize our key points below. Please consider using these …
The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 — a.k.a. the Smith–Mundt Act — was first introduced by Congressman Karl E. Mundt (R-SD) in January 1945. It was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, “The Act was developed to regulate broadcasting of programs for foreign audiences produced under the guidance of the State Department, and it prohibited domestic dissemination of materials produced by such programs as one of its provisions.”
Translation: When the State Department and other nefarious agencies produced propaganda …
Early on the evening of Tuesday March 15, anarchists and anti-authoritarians converged in the historic working-class neighborhood of St-Henri, Montreal, for the 26th annual International Day Against Police Brutality. This year, in addition to venting their hatred of the SPVM (the Montreal police), a central theme of the march was the colonial repression faced by Wet’suwet’en land defenders and their supporters at the hands of the RCMP.
Omicron strains break out in China. China warns against further US sanctions. Majority of global South countries refuse to adopt sanctions against Russia. Poor sanitary conditions are cited in instant noodle factories. There is an increase in anti-imperialist views among Chinese youth.
Politics can literally kill. It can seep into the vitals, gnaw away and suck life. Some of the worst battles are waged against colleagues within your own party, all driven by a crazed Social Darwinism to survive. Individually, they may be human and credentialled beings; as a faction, they are monstrous and venal. The threat of a metaphorical lynching or stabbing is never far away.
The late Victorian Senator Kimberley Kitching of the Australian Labor Party did not shy away from the contest. She lacked timidity. Former Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten described her as having a “serene intellect”. Colleagues across …
A Review of Kees van der Pijl’s book States of Emergency: Keeping the Global Population in Check
by Edward Curtin / March 18th, 2022
This book is a brilliant and comprehensive analysis of the Covid-19 crisis and the worldwide states of siege instituted under its cover. Reading it, one cannot help but shake one’s head in outrage at the long-planned nature of the wealthy global elite’s seizure of power under the guise of a germ emergency and the revolutionary crisis it has created.
I say this not only because I am predisposed to the author’s thesis, but because he buttresses his argument with overwhelming documentation that is meticulously sourced and noted. This is a work of genuine scholarship of the highest order, and to …
Just following the money of one military murder equipment company is worth a million words about disaster-shock-insider-death Capitalism
by Paul Haeder / March 17th, 2022
Quote — “The US will likely end up supplying Ukraine with Switchblade loitering munitions. The system poses a real threat. Nevertheless, the Russian military will likely use the tactics we saw in Syria to neutralize this threat.” (Southfront)
And, well, it is tax time, and these beasts of a nation — Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, MSM — they rally around the military offensive murdering complex for, well, billions thrown at the Nazi regime of Ukraine. And I have to pay …
Great reformers are not normally found in theocratic monarchies. Despite assertions to the contrary, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains archaic in the way it deals with its opponents. In its penal system, executions remain standard fare. With liberal democratic countries fixated with the Ukraine conflict and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, it was prudent for Saudi authorities to capitalise.
On March 12, the Saudi Ministry of the Interior announced the execution of 81 Saudi and non-Saudi nationals, bringing the total of those put to death by Riyadh in 2022 to 92. The last grand bout of killing was in 2019, …
Chiharu Shiota (Japan), Navigating the Unknown, 2020.
The war in Ukraine has focused attention on the shifts taking place in the world order. Russia’s military intervention has been met with sanctions from the West as well as with the transport of arms and mercenaries to Ukraine. These sanctions will have a major impact on the Russian economy as well as the Central Asian states, but they will also negatively impact the European population who will see energy and food prices …
On Monday, 14 March, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.
Guterres said:
Food, fuel and fertilizer prices are skyrocketing. Supply chains are being disrupted. And the costs and delays of transportation of imported goods – when available – are at record levels.
He added that this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.
Poorer countries had already been struggling to recover from the lockdowns and the closing down of much of the global …
A new global geopolitical game is in formation, and the Middle East, as is often the case, will be directly impacted by it in terms of possible new alliances and resulting power paradigms. While it is too early to fully appreciate the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the region, it is obvious that some countries are placed in relatively comfortable positions in terms of leveraging their strong economies, strategic location and political influence. Others, especially non-state actors, like the Palestinians, are in an unenviable position.
Despite repeated calls on the Palestinian Authority by the US Biden Administration and …
Wars disturb and delude. The Ukraine conflict is no exception. Misinformation is cantering through press accounts and media dispatches with feverish spread. Fear that a nuclear option might be deployed makes teeth chatter. And the Russian President Vladimir Putin is being treated as a Botox Hitler-incarnate, a figure worthy of assassination.
The idea of forcing Putin into the grave certainly tickled South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Liberated by more generous rules regarding hate speech (freedom in Silicon Valley is fickle), Graham took to Twitter to ask whether Russia had its own calculating Brutus willing to take the murderous initiative. Moving …
It can be easy to be pulled into the vortex of the group think, but when the group’s thinking is flawed, maybe you should trust your own critical thinking skills.
Freedom of Speech and Art and is a Revolutionary Conquest
The freedom of artistic expression is a permanent part of human liberation struggles. Explosions of artistic creativity have always accompanied the great social revolutions in history. Genuine social revolutions – of which the 1959 Cuban Revolution is an outstanding 20th Century example – involve the conscious mobilizations of millions upon tens of millions of oppressed, exploited, and working people, individually and collectively, in the determination of their fate and future against the old, decrepit systems and used-up ruling classes.
One of the Russian Government’s main accusations against the Government of Ukraine’s President Volodmyr Zelensky is that Zelensky’s forces are using Ukraine’s civilians as “human shields” in order to prevent Russian forces from bombing Ukrainian Government forces: in other words, Russia says that a major reason for civilian casualties in this war is the Ukrainian Government’s using its own citizenry as hostages to the conflict, so as to rely upon the non-brutality of Russia’s forces in order to protect Ukraine’s own forces.
