Disruption: historians challenge Russophobic propaganda
Professor Geoffrey Roberts is one of a growing number of ‘free thinkers’ who are rejecting the standard Western propaganda model that frames Putin and Russia as merchants of evil, instead ascribing to them motives that are both pragmatic and commonplace. This leaves plenty of room to criticize Putin’s regime and its hardball geopolitics. These academics, however, have shouldered the intellectual’s role to challenge the dominant narrative and expose underlying untruths – “Russia’s totally unprovoked war”, etc.
Posturing is not policy. How the West doomed Ukraine.
As any rookie strategist knows, outcome-focussed policy is based around the alignment of ends, ways and means: what you set as your goals must be matched with a clear strategy and the necessary resources to achieve them. Ukraine as a Western proxy war has proven a massive failure on all three counts.
Keir Starmer’s psychiatrist report leaked
10 Downing Street has dismissed the claims as Russian disinformation but the clinical profiles seem accurate according to sources in Washington, Paris and London who spoke on condition of anonymity. Dr Freud has been uncontactable since the leaks. The Palais de l'Élysée has warned that the Tik-Tok “désinformation scandaleuse” is so serious that the next French Presidential elections may have to be postponed indefinitely in order to preserve democracy.
Ursula and the steel porcupine
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called for the EU to turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine” and for Europe to undertake a massive rearmament. If successful, the project would convert the EU from a largely political-economic union into a military-industrial superpower. It could also create a debt bomb as well as cluster bombs of social discontent that explode at various points in the future.
Rumble in the White House. Why things went pear-shaped in the Oval office.
Witnessing the extraordinary cage fight this week between Zelensky and Trump in the Oval Office was an eye-popping glimpse into what is normally kept behind closed doors when world leaders meet to nut out matters of great consequence.
What we seem to be back to is the kind of unequal treaties
Yellow Peril! Red Peril! “We cannot hide anymore”. Chinese warships in the Tasman Sea.
The Western media went into overdrive this past week to work the laconic Kiwis into a mild frenzy over three Chinese naval vessels conducting exercises in the Tasman Sea a few thousand kilometres off our shores. What was really behind this orchestrated campaign?
Back to Russia with Love - détente is a win for everyone.
Time will prove that an ugly peace delivers more than a beautiful war. Russia and the US are setting to work on something even bigger than the Ukraine conflict: normalising relations between the two superpowers which will have huge consequences economically, geopolitically and, hopefully, all to the benefit of the long-suffering Ukrainians and other peoples caught between the two behemoths.
Trump and foolish old men who redraw maps
It generally ends badly. An old tyrant embarks on an ill-considered project that involves redrawing maps. They are heedless to wise counsel and indifferent to indigenous interests or experience. Before they fail, are killed, deposed or otherwise disposed of, these vicious old men can cause immense harm.
Is Romania’s stolen election what’s in store for “democracy” in the West?
To save Democracy, the US and the European elites appear to have found it necessary to destroy democracy. For the first time ever an election was overturned in an EU/NATO country. Ever. There were no allegations of voting irregularities – it was about whether Russia had spent money on a Tik Tok influence campaign to support the eventual winner of the first round. If that sounds an unconvincing reason for such an historic event, the truth is even weirder.
Niger, stolen billions and the uranium-fuelled lights of Paris
This story is about vast quantities of uranium, stealing squillions of dollars, how to screw desperately poor people and what an outstanding job the mainstream media does in keeping us all blithely ignorant of this.
“All I wanted was to bid my daughter a final farewell.” Hostages and the Mainstream Media.
Khalida Farrar, a leading Palestinian is finally free from an Israeli hell-hole. The mainstream media has ignored the incredible stories of hostages like her. It’s time to share their stories.
Reality hits home: “Ukraine is running out of Ukrainians,” US Secretary of State.
Back at the very start of the war retired US Ambassador Chas Freeman, an eloquent critic of many aspects of his government’s international conduct, warned that the US was prepared “to fight to the last Ukrainian”. Some want to prove him right. Others want to save the remaining young men of Ukraine.
Marwan Barghouti - the world’s most important hostage - must be released.
A litmus test of Israel’s commitment to abandon genocide and start down the road towards lasting peace is whether they choose to release the most important of all the hostages, Marwan Barghouti. During the past 22 years in Israeli prisons he has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken. What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian - a symbol of his people’s ‘legendary steadfastness’ and determination to win freedom from occupation and resist the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand.
A man, a plan, a canal: Trump might be on to something.
Trump’s rough woo-ing of Canada to become the 51st state, and his threat to use military force to seize both Greenland and the Canal, speak to a back-to-basics focus for American imperialism – a shift in US policy that will bring it closer to its core strategic interests
The dismemberment of Syria is a crime
What we are witnessing is not just the end of a regime but quite possibly the destruction of the Syrian state. We are being told by the Western media that we should join Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden and the Europeans in celebrating what risks being the creation of yet another failed state in the Middle East/West Asia.
The demon in the mirror. Trump exposes who we are.
They “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America." Donald J Trump about the people of Gaza and their defenders.
“Western justifications for their barbarism is well-established – after all, genocide is a Western liberal value.” Professor Joseph Massad.
BBC goes full Goebbels in support of Israeli soccer hooligans
Imagine any human being chanting “Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!” after an entire year of genocide in Gaza, after the deaths of so many thousands of children, after thousands of children have lost limbs due to US-Israeli violence, hundreds of thousands having to sleep in tents, a couple of million people being slowly starved by Israel. Imagine who is capable of chanting that.
The Ukraine war is lost. Three options remain.
Former director of the CIA’s Russia desk and current director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute George Beebe gives a masterclass in responsible statecraft - and why the West must negotiate with Russia to end the war.