Interview: Capitalism is Addicted to War…not just against Russia but workers as well

 

Neo-feudalism is what we are being offered in place of the “American dream”. This is why we are seeing growing efforts of workers to organize unions

By Finian Cunningham (Strategic Culture Foundation)

The following interview is a follow-up to an earlier one conducted this month with American writer and veteran labor rights activist Bruce Gagnon. He explains the current U.S.-led NATO conflict against Russia in a historical context. U.S.-dominated Western capitalism is addicted to war as a modus operandi going back to its original genocidal conquest and foundations in slavery through its colonial wars and other wars of aggression over the past century and more. The current conflict playing out in Ukraine is but a continuum of class war against the workers of the United States and other Western states.

American workers, however, are fighting back in the form of a resurgence in unionizing and strike actions. The crisis in capitalism is driving the U.S. ruling class and its European NATO associates to war against Russia, and ultimately a Third World War. The struggle for real democracy in the U.S. (and Europe) is part of the same challenge to defeat American-led Western imperialism. What’s at stake is the very future of the planet.

Bruce Gagnon coordinates the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He began his political career in 1978 organizing Florida fruit pickers for the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). While working for the UFW, he served on the union team negotiating contracts between the Coca-Cola Corporation (Minute Maid orange juice) and the UFW. He writes a daily blog called Organizing Notes.
 

Interview

Finian Cunningham: How do you explain the novel trend of U.S. workers joining trade unions, reversing decades of diminishing organizational membership? We have seen significant achievements by workers forming unions at Apple, Google, Amazon, and Starbucks, for example. The mainstream news media have given little coverage to explain this development. Can you put the trend in historical context? What is driving it?

Bruce Gagnon: The driver of these unionization campaigns is two basic factors. First, is the unbridled greed of the big-box-tech corporations who mistreat their workers and pay them as little as possible. The second factor is the declining economy across the U.S. where workers can’t live on low-wage jobs – they can’t afford rent, food, and healthcare. It’s great to see workers standing up to Mr Big, that is, corporate capitalist power and the ruling class. It’s long in the coming. Mr Big will make some transitory concessions but in the long run, will find ways to take back the gains made by workers. It’s another “period of capital re-accumulation”. It is the history of the labor movement in the United States.

For example, take the story of Gary, Indiana. The city is located along the southern shore of Lake Michigan about 25 miles (40 km) from downtown Chicago, Illinois. Gary was founded in 1906 by the United States Steel Corporation as the home for its new plant, Gary Works. The city was named after lawyer Elbert Henry Gary, who was the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation.

What is most interesting is the answer to this question – why was Gary actually created? The labor movement in the U.S. was very strong in the late 1800s. They had fought hard, bloody battles to earn the right to be unionized. This power meant union halls were created. Local bars, stores, parks, and such like, became a growing inter-weaving of worker community power that were threats to Mr Big. Workers can’t be allowed multi-generational stability – they must be kept on a constant treadmill of moving and rebuilding union and community strength.

So many steel mills, and other such industries, moved to new communities – in fact, Gary was created on empty scrub fields. Most importantly, the thriving worker culture in places like Chicago had to be destroyed. Similarly today in the U.S., major industries moved South and overseas to secure cheaper labor. American workers are not needed anymore. Thus, we see working-class whites turned against people of color – divide and conquer. Keep the pressure off Mr Big at all costs! Washington learned this modus operandi (MO) expertly from the Bank of England.

Question: Over the past year, we have also seen a record number of labor strikes in U.S. industries. Would you say that the industrial disputes, like the surge in unionization, are reflective of intensifying class war in the U.S. causing more poverty and stress, but also more unionization and strike actions?

Bruce Gagnon: Younger workers appear to be very clear about the class war being imposed on them by Wall Street and corporate interests. I’d say this has been surging since Occupy Wall Street began some years ago and the slogan ‘We are the 99%’ became part of the public lexicon. I think the impact of the Occupy movement (shut down under orders of Barack Obama) is highly under-rated. When you factor in massive student debt, low wages, often bad working conditions, and the general disrespect for the workers and poor people by corporate America, it is no surprise that this union movement is growing.

I recently read the autobiography of Mother Jones and there are so many similarities between corporate domination of the labor force today and the coal and textile industries’ horrible exploitative treatment of workers in years past. One other key thing stands out that links the past and today’s unionization efforts – the subservience of the political class and the media to corporate interests.

 

Question: At this time of pressing social hardship in the United States and also in Europe when workers are told there is “no money” for improving public services and pay conditions, it seems particularly incongruous that the Western governments are able to find extra billions and billions of dollars and euros to flood Ukraine with military aid. Do you agree that there seems to be a confluence of war, one being waged at home against workers and one abroad de facto against Russia? Are American workers seeing it like that from their own experience or are they susceptible to the mainstream media blandishments about America and NATO “defending Ukraine”?

Bruce Gagnon: Just look at the strong national campaign demanding ‘Medicare for All’ here in the United States. During the last national election, the Democrats refused to embrace and push that legislative agenda. Obviously, the insurance industry was opposed to it. In fact, the Democrat’s talking point on healthcare was “everyone should have the right to access to healthcare”. That actually meant everyone should be able to buy a health insurance policy from the industry.

Covid hit many workers, and the poor not only lost their jobs and their housing but also what little access to the healthcare they may have had. Homelessness grew dramatically.

At the very same time, we witnessed major funding increases for the Pentagon, including for the recently created Space Force. The U.S.-NATO were flooding their military agents in Ukraine with millions (and now billions) of dollars in military hardware. So somehow the Western nations could come up with all this money for another war but not for the most needy in our societies. This was not a mistake on their part – it was a clearly thought-out strategy.

Due to robotics, computerization, agribusiness mechanization, and such, we now have massive numbers of “superfluous” people around the globe. The ruling elites don’t want to encourage the unwanted by treating them with dignity and ensuring they can survive with good jobs, food, housing, healthcare, and the like. It reminds me of Hitler’s Warsaw, Poland’s Jewish ghetto where the Nazis had a “Caloric Reduction Intake Schedule” which was a calculated form of genocide. The Nazis understood that by reducing access to food and some level of healthcare it would mean earlier deaths. The Israelis are today using a similar program to genocide the Palestinian people; Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, etc., all the same.

I’d say with confidence that Wall Street is running the same program across the entire Western nations. Workers basically understand their lives mean nothing to Mr Big, and they are beginning to fight back – as they well should.

Question: American President Joe Biden portrays himself as “the most pro-union president” in a long time. If Biden were really prioritizing the interests and rights of American workers, as he claims, then how do you explain his evident foreign policy of pursuing aggression towards Russia and China? Is he a witting fraud on workers?

 

Bruce Gagnon: Let’s not forget Biden was heavily involved in the creation and promotion of the 1994 federal crime bill. This new law extended the death penalty to 60 new crimes, stiffened sentences, offered states strong financial incentives for building new prisons, and helped lead to the wave of mass incarceration that’s resulted in the United States accounting for 25 percent of the world’s prison population. These are the working class and the poor people that have been locked up in major numbers due to this Biden-backed bill.

Biden’s electoral home state of Delaware is most known for being a tax haven. Delaware is the chosen home for large corporations and many financial services firms. Delaware has more businesses incorporated in the state (1.4 million) than there are residents (967,000 in 2018). Biden is an apparatchik for Mr Big.

Biden, with support from both Democrats and Republicans, has declared that Russia and China are “existential threats” to the U.S. The ever-expanding U.S. military and NATO have been encircling both those nations with more American bases and more frequent war games. All of this takes huge new Pentagon appropriations that of course benefit the military-industrial complex. Members of Congress are rewarded for higher loyalty to the war budget than to the suffering citizenry. Daddy Warbucks, that is the military-industrial complex, makes sure to drop some big coins into the campaign coffers of these “selected” officials.

As the economy worsens, working-class and poor kids, just out of high school (if they even graduated), find it nearly impossible to get jobs. Thus the “economic draft” pulls much youth into the military where they are trained and sent off to the more than 800 U.S. bases around the globe. It was during the George W. Bush administration that the Pentagon was repeatedly announcing that the U.S. role under corporate globalization was going to be “security export”. That is where we are today. Biden was one of the architects of this strategy. If Biden was a Republican the peace movement would be largely united today. It’s very sad. But that is the score.

Question: In a previous interview for Strategic Culture Foundation, you contended that the U.S.-led NATO confrontation with Russia and China – as currently playing out in Ukraine – is really about a bigger geopolitical struggle to stem the historic decline in Western corporate capitalism. Does that mean that the deteriorating social conditions in Western states are the other side of the coin of increasing belligerence in the foreign policy of the U.S. and its NATO partners?

Bruce Gagnon: Mr Big wants it all – all the gold. The war in Ukraine is about attempting to break Moscow’s back – regime change and the balkanization of Russia into smaller nations. This is what the U.S.-NATO did to former Communist Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Bill Clinton administration.

The West fears the multipolar world that Russia and China are helping to birth. The U.S.-EU intends to abort that birth even if it means inciting World War Three. Thus all available monies across the West must be hastily pumped into the U.S.-NATO war machine. Note that Germany recently announced it would increase its military spending by $112 billion. Out of whose hides will those funds come from?

Question: If the U.S. adopted a foreign policy of pursuing amicable, cooperative relations with other nations instead of constantly seeking enmity and adversity; and if the U.S. truly accepted multipolar, mutual relations of equals as opposed to unilateral dominance and hegemony, would you agree that such a United States of America would be much more substantially democratic and orientated towards the priority interests of workers who make up the majority of its 330 million population?

 

Bruce Gagnon: I often share the story about Lakota warrior Crazy Horse and the military-industrial complex that existed in the late 1800s. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were brought onto the reservation in South Dakota. They only surrendered to the U.S. Army because their people were starving. Washington had sent snipers on trains to ride across the western plains and shoot any buffalo they came in contact with. They decimated the herds. The hearts of the native people were broken – they saw the evil enemy they were facing in the flesh.

The U.S. Civil War ended in 1865 and the Indian Wars soon after. The military-industrial complex was worried about its future. They had artists make renderings of Crazy Horse supposedly back on the warpath.

Newspapers in the big cities across the U.S. printed stories about Crazy Horse raping white women and killing children. Soon the public was led to express their outrage and “the people demanded something be done”. Doesn’t that sound familiar? The Congress in Washington immediately swung into action and appropriated more funds for the Indian Wars – while Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were sitting on the reservation in South Dakota without a gun to their name.

This story has been repeated legions of times since – leading up to Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine. And the public relations script coming from Washington is always so familiar.

The citizens of the U.S. could have full employment, a clean environment, Medicare for All, real social justice, and much more, except the U.S. has long been a fascist nation. Italy’s World War Two leader Benito Mussolini defined fascism as the “wedding of corporations and government”. That definition fits the United States of America.

Writer and humorist Mark Twain became an anti-imperialist during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines (1898-1946). Folks might check out his writings. America’s original sin was the genocide of the native people and the institution of slavery. The only way out is to confront this addiction. “Hello, my name is America and I am addicted to violence, greed, and endless war”. Where is the leadership to make this happen?

Question: Is the two-party system in the U.S. doomed to be a bipartisan War Party government?

Bruce Gagnon: As long as the United States has the winner-take-all electoral system there is slim chance of real democracy and justice. This nation is being driven off the cliff – intentionally – as capital has gone global. Neo-feudalism is what we are being offered in place of the “American dream”. This is why we are seeing growing efforts of workers to organize unions. There is no other way around it – we either organize to protect one another or we are condemned to barbarity. 

Life today in Mariupol

 

 

Mariupol is in eastern Ukraine.

Start paying attention to the Romania, Moldova and Ukraine borders. The US encouraging attacks on Russian forces from those places. See more on this story here

In addition the US-NATO appear to be pushing Poland to enter western Ukraine (where the Nazis predominate) in order to grab those lands. It appears Ukraine is going to be broken into smaller bits.

This is precisely what the US-NATO desire to do with all of Russia - break it into smaller nations so the western resource extraction corporations can control the vast resource base of Russia. It would take WW III to make a serious run at that strategy - and sadly it appears that Washington, London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin are willing to take a crack at it.

The western oligarchs are rolling the dice again....didn't turn out so well for US-NATO in Afghanistan even after 20 years.

Are they really willing to go to full-blown war with Russia? 

It would be purely insane for certain.

Bruce

Some joy and calm returns to Mariupol

 

 

Really lovely interviews with the people of Mariupol who are back at the market.

All fighting in the city is over except for the Azovstal steel works plant where Nazis and their civilian hostages are located in the deep underground bunkers. Up to this moment the Nazis have refused to allow the civilians to be released thru humanitarian corridors.  

There are believed to be scores of US-NATO military 'advisers' and other international mercenaries inside the bunker.

Italian journalist with English subtitles just hit the CC at the bottom  

U.S.-Led NATO is at War against Russia

 

 

By Finian Cunningham

 

The full-on U.S. imperial war agenda of targeting Russia for defeat is now coming into focus

 

We are now in the realm of World War Three. The abysmal situation is such that the war is in danger of going nuclear in which case the future of the planet is at stake.

Incredibly, to warn of this danger leaves a person open to the accusation that they are peddling Russian propaganda. Blindly, the Western governments are doubling down on the powder-keg.

The U.S.-led NATO alliance is flooding Ukraine with heavy offensive weaponry capable of hitting Russia, and the British government this week has openly called for Ukraine to target Russia’s “depth” with NATO weapons.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented that the U.S. military alliance is now fully-fledged in a proxy war against Russia. He said there is a “serious danger” of confrontation spiraling into a nuclear conflagration.

Only a fool or an insane person could remain insouciant about the dynamic unfolding.

Ominously, there is evidently no diplomatic will from Washington and its allies to address the background to the war in Ukraine or Russia’s long-held security concerns. The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is being vilified for even attempting to negotiate a peace settlement by going this week to Moscow before traveling on to Kiev.

There is a palpable sense that the U.S. and NATO are recklessly pushing a military showdown with Russia – albeit under the cynical guise of “defending Ukraine”. All the while, the Western public is being kept in the dark by a complicit corporate-controlled news media.

This week saw the United States host what can only be called a war conference at its European command center in the Ramstein airbase, Germany, where NATO military chiefs coordinated their weapons delivery to Ukraine. This is a war footing.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the United States and its NATO allies would “move heaven and earth” to get more weapons into Ukraine to defeat Russia’s military intervention in that country. Austin’s rhetoric was a disturbing malapropism with apocalyptic resonance.

But it does reveal the determination to take on Russia that is now openly visceral. The conflict in Ukraine is emerging for what it is – a war between the U.S.-led NATO bloc and Russia. Moscow has long held that the U.S. and NATO are a hostile entity tacitly aiming to subjugate Russia. Such claims have been derided as Russian paranoia. However, it’s now apparent that the actual intent is hostility and defeat of Russia.

Austin stated at the Ramstein conference that America’s allies are now openly exploiting an opportunity to “weaken Russia” and pursue the regime change objective in Moscow that U.S. President Biden referred to in his controversial Warsaw speech last month.

Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accompanied Austin, the Pentagon’s civilian chief, on a secret visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. American news media dutifully complied with an embargo on reporting the Sunday visit which shows that these media are complicit in conforming to Washington’s agenda of belligerence.

 

The American envoys held three-hour discussions with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky during which they pledged more military support on top of the huge arsenal already provided by the U.S. The meeting is a stark signal to Moscow of what the real American intentions are. This is not about resolving Russia’s grievances over NATO expansionism and the neutrality of Ukraine. That discourse was never taken seriously by the United States anyway. No, now relations are in the framework of the U.S. waging a war against Russia, with Ukraine merely the present battleground.

When the top American officials returned to Poland they held a press conference Monday at a warehouse shipping NATO weapons to Ukraine. At one stage, Austin told reporters about the earlier meeting with Zelensky: “So our focus in the meeting was to talk about those things that would enable us [sic] to win the current fight and also build for tomorrow [sic].”

Unable to contain his enthusiasm for confrontation, the Pentagon chief went on to make it more apparent the direct U.S. involvement: “In terms of our – their ability to win, the first step in winning is believing that you can win. And so they believe that we can win; we believe that they – we can win – they can win if they have the right equipment, the right support. And we’re going to do everything we can – continue to do everything we can to ensure that that gets there.”

When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered what he called “the special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, he said Russia had no choice but to defend the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass who had endured eight years of a deadly offensive by the NATO-backed Kiev regime forces.

The United States, NATO, and the Kiev regime have shown no will whatsoever to resolve the civil war in Ukraine peacefully by implementing the Minsk accords negotiated in 2015.

It is more apparent than ever that the conflict in the Ukraine was never a localized civil war but rather was always a front line in a bigger geopolitical confrontation between the U.S.-led NATO bloc and Russia, as Bruce Gagnon explained in a recent interview for Strategic Culture Foundation.

Instead of an earnest effort to genuinely resolve the conflict, the NATO-backed Kiev regime and its openly Nazi regiments are mobilizing in a general war footing against Russia.

The rationale is now explicitly stated as the U.S. and its allies wanting to defeat Russia and subjugate it.

British armed forces minister James Heappey even went as far as telling the BBC this week that Ukrainian forces should strike Russia’s depth with NATO weaponry.

Russia’s military defense doctrine forgoes first-use of nuclear weapons but it reserves the right to use such weapons if the country comes under existential threat even from conventional military assault.

The United States and its NATO allies have willfully ignored Russia’s decades-long concerns about its security and in particular the use of Ukraine as a cat’s paw to destabilize and dissipate Russia. The full-on U.S. imperial war agenda of targeting Russia for defeat is now coming into focus. The crazies are in charge of the asylum. And shouting about it too.

No Nazis in Ukraine?

 

 

Even Nazis from Israel are coming to Ukraine to fight on the side of the US-NATO puppet regime in Kiev. 

During World War II, German and Ukrainian fascists killed and burned alive hundreds of thousands of Jews, but the Jewish oligarchy from the Anglo-Saxon countries deliberately traded with the Third Reich. 

Jewish fighters today in Ukraine are not representatives of the Jewish people, but are militants of the Jewish oligarchy.

 

 

 

See more about this here

Interview on Italian TV

 

 

In this special Pangea's Grandangolo episode Jean Marazzani Visconti interviews Bruce Gagnon, an exponent of the No War movement in the United States. 

He analyzes the current events related to the war in Ukraine. 

See the Italian version of the interview below. 

 

No love for elensky.....

 

• We know elensky is popular in the Western media, but what’s his popularity in eastern Ukraine?

elensky has decreed that opposition political parties be outlawed, and those accused as traitors are arrested. Also see here

I know, I put no 'Z' in front of his name. He was the one who wanted the letter Z banned around the world. So OK, I won't use it when referring to 'his highness' - Ukraine's most famous actor.

• Don't forget please that when elensky ran for office in Ukraine his main plank was to end the civil war. Once in office he abandoned that promise - with a not so gentle push from the Nazis who told him if he stopped the war on the Donbass they'd kill him.

• I understand that some say there are not really any Nazis in Ukraine - that it is a fabrication from Moscow. But truth is the Ukrainian army is crawling with Nazis.  Don't expect western corporate dominated media to report on that story. Not allowed. 
  

 

• In the meantime the US is planning to upgrade a base called Lakenheath in England to store nuclear weapons. The 2023 Pentagon budget request says that NATO “is wrapping up a 13-year, $384 million infrastructure investment program at nuke storage sites in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, and Turkey to upgrade security measures, communication systems, and facilities”. 

• US officials Blinkin and Austin were just in Kiev meeting with elensky and then held a news conference in Poland. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said at the news conference. 

• Did you hear than an employee of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), detained in the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), confessed to passing classified information in the military sphere to foreign intelligence services' officials? In other words OSCE has been spying on the Donbass republics and passing on targeting information to the Kiev puppet regime. That is a violation of the OSCE charter. But who cares, right?
  

• It appears clear to me that Washington and Brussels are taking serious steps to prepare for a much bigger war. 

• Ukraine is just a pawn on the US-NATO chessboard. The “Grand Chessboard” assumes US supremacy and exceptionalism and adds the strategy for implementing and enforcing this “primacy” on the biggest and most important arena: Eurasia. That means Russia must be taken down.
  

Does anyone notice?

Duck and cover time again?

Good luck world. Just might be time to speak up before it is too late.

Bruce

Canadian journalist Eva Bartlett near Mariupol

 

 

According to Western media, now copy-paste reporting the same claims, Russian forces apparently secretly buried *up to 9,000 Mariupol civilians* in "mass graves" in a town just west of the city. 

Except, it never happened, there is no mass grave. 

It's actually just a normal, small, cemetery…no pits, no mass graves, just an orderly cemetery whose grave diggers refuted Western claims. 

On April 23, with journalist Roman Kosarev, I went to Mangush (Manhush in Ukrainian), found a normal cemetery setting, and spoke with the men responsible for burials, who refused the allegations and said they buried each person in a coffin, including, they noted, Ukrainian soldiers.

More fake news?

 

The car tires look to be in good shape as well. Quite a trick.

Hearing from President of Russian VFP

 

In 2019 I organized a study tour of Russia for members of the Global Network. We went to Moscow, Crimea and St. Petersburg. While in Moscow we met several members of Russian Veterans For Peace (VFP) and heard from their Executive Director Aleksandr Rassokhin (in the center behind the Russian flag holding papers). Below are his words recently sent to US VFP members who inquired about his position on the Ukraine-Russia situation.

 

 Уважаемые Друзья!

 Respected friends,

Буду писать по русски, так как возможности интернет позволят Вам перевести смысл более точно, чем я смогу написать по английски.

I write to you in Russian, because your translations would more accurately convey what I am trying to tell you, than if I tried to write in English.

Во первых мы ( ветераны и члены нашей организации и поверьте подавляющее большинство наших граждан) считаем, что на Украине идет война России с коллективным Западом во главе с Соединенными Штатами.

First of all, [Russian] veterans, members of our organization, and believe me the great majority of our citizenry consider that what is happening in Ukraine is a war between Russia and a Western collective with the United States at its head.

Мы считаем. что все годы со времен распада Варшавского Договора, возглавляемая Соединенными Штатами Европа, сделали все, чтобы эта война состоялась.

We believe that, ever since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, Europe (under the leadership of the United States) has done everything it could to ensure that the conditions for this war would come about.

Мы одобряем войну только в одном случае. Россию прижали к стенке и требуют от нее "застрелиться".

We support this war only because Russia has been backed up against a wall, and they [unspecified] demand that we commit suicide.

И мы будем защищаться до конца.

But we will defend ourselves to the end.

Мы вынуждены были это делать. Иначе сказать-это США и их "союзники" спровоцировали эту войну.

We were forced into this. In other words, it was the USA and its "allies" who provoked this war.

В общественном сознании США и Европы, Россия и  "русские" профилируются как люди второго сорта. Изгои и дикари, которые не имеют право на существование.

The USA and Europe seem to think that Russia and "the Russians" are second class people, not deserving even the right to exist.

Мы видим тотальную ложь и лицемерие по отношению к России.

[All] we see are complete lies and hypocrisy when it comes to Russia.

Если Вы думаете, что во всем виноват Президент Путин и нужно только его убрать, чтобы окончательно решить вопрос существования России, то Вы СИЛЬНО ОШИБАЕТЕСЬ.

If you think that all guilt lies with President Putin, and that if only he could be removed [from power], then the question of whether Russia even exists is thereby solved, YOU ARE MAKING A HUGE MISTAKE.

Вы помогли русским сплотиться. 

 [All you are doing] is helping to unite the Russian people.

Как бы страшно не звучали слова, которые однажды произнес Президент Путин, но я сам готов их повторить.

Нам не нужен такой мир, где нет России.

Allow me to repeat the words that President Putin said. "We have no need of a peace in which there is no Russia."
(Could also be translated as "We have no need of a world in which there is no Russia. The word mir means both "peace" and "world".)

И русские победят в этой войне. Либо весь мир сгорит.

And the Russian people will win this war, even if it means burning up the whole world.

 

 

 

США и НАТО - вот главные разжигатели войны.

Но мы не проиграем. Чего бы нам это не стоило.

Даже если весь мир будет против нас.

The USA and NATO are the primary instigators of war. But we will not lose, no matter what the cause. Even if the entire world is against us.

В 90 годах, мы впервые познакомились с Вьетнамскими ветеранами Америки. Представители этой организации приезжали в Россию.

In the 1990s, we met for the first time with American veterans of the War in Vietnam, who had sent their representatives to Russia.

Мы нашли много общего в нашем отношении к Миру во всем Мире.

В одной из поездок в США я познакомился с мистером Jerry Genesio  и организацией Veterans for Peace.

Мы были рады, что нашли единомышленников в стране, которую всегда считали потенциальным агрессором.

We learned that we had much in common as regards peace in the entire world. And on a trip to the USA, I met with a Mr. Jerry Genesio and the Veterans For Peace. We were delighted to find people of the same mind in the very country we always regarded as a potential aggressor.

И мы делали все, чтобы через народную дипломатию укрепить связи и не допустить больше конфронтации между нашими странами.Я знаю, что большинство Американцев такие же простые люди как и мы. И мы не хотим никаких войн.

And we did all we could through citizen diplomacy to strengthen ties [of friendship] and to prevent further confrontation between our countries. I know that the majority of Americans are just simple people like ourselves, and that we both have no desire for any war.

Но слов простых людей оказалось мало. Все эти годы НАТО приближало свой военный потенциал к границам России.

Сегодня мы видим результат.

But the words of simple people counted for little. Throughout all these years, NATO kept encroaching upon the borders of Russia with its military might. Today we see the result.

Америке нужно перестать относиться к планете как к своему заднему двору. 

America needs to stop thinking of the rest of the world as its back yard.

Нужно уважать интересы других и тогда будут уважать Вас.

Война закончится тогда, когда Америка перестанет вмешиваться  и попирать интересы России и других стран.

If you would only respect the wishes of others, then they will respect you. War* will only end when America stops interfering in the affairs of Russia and other countries.

 Нам не нужна Американская демократия, которую Америка насаждает по всему миру, прикрывая свою сущность захватчиков и агрессоров. Пусть Америка живет со своей демократией как хочет.

We have no need for [the sort of] American democracy, which America imposes on the rest of the world in order to cover up its own robberies and aggression. Let's let America live with its own democracy however it likes.

У России большая история. Нас не нужно учить жить.

Нас не нужно воспитывать. У нас "Большой Театр" в Москве старше, чем вся история Америки.

Russia has a great history.  We do not need to be taught how to live. We don't need to be civilized [Not a literal translation, but it's what he means.] Our Bolshoi Theater is older than your country!

Мы не хотим свободной любви, гомосексуализма и прочей мерзости. И нам не нужно угрожать. Для нас мир это мужчина и женщина. Традиционная семья. Вера в Бога и спасение.

We do not want [your] free love, homosexuality, or any other sort of filth.  And we will not stand for any threats.  In our country, marriage is between one man and one woman - the traditional family. Faith in God and in salvation.

С нами Бог! А если Бог с нами, то кто против?

Не в силе Бог, а в Правде.

 

God is with us!  And if God is with us, who can be against us? And it's not [just] the power of God, but of Truth.

С Уважением

Из России с миром и Любовью

Александр Рассохин.

 Исполнительный директор "Veterans for Peace" Россия. Коми Республика.

With respect,

Aleksandr Rassokhin

 Executive Director "Veterans For Peace", Russia, Republic of Komi

* Could also be translated as "the war". There is no word for "the" in Russian, so Aleksandr might mean "this war" or "all war". Without further context, there's no way to tell. 

A wise voice

 

 

Young boy in Mariupol speaks his truth.

Sunday song

 

 

The owners own you......

 

 

From HBO Life Is Worth Losing.

They're coming for all the gold.....

 

 

Gold is king

 

It's the gold,

the original sin.

 

The lust for power, 

the greed. 

 

• The Golden Rule
• Gold Rush
  
• Golden Triangle
• Golden Moment
• Golden Gate Bridge
  
• Golden Gem
• Golden Palace
• Golden Age
• Golden Nugget
• Golden Girls
• Golden Calf
• Golden State Warriors
• Golden Goose

 

There must be something more though?

The control

of everything.

 

Where did it begin?

The epic struggle,

the darkness against

the light?

 

Human slavery,

Feudalism,

Corporate globalization.

 

Is it the

Atlantis story,

in a modern big-screen re-run?

Do we surrender

to the bully

and his club?

Do we bow

our heads

and stay in line?

Do we raise our hand,

dare open our mouths,

perk our ears up 

and pass on the story?

 

It's our

moment in time.

 

Bruce 

Ukraine - knowing before acting

 

 

1) Igor gives overview of the background of the war,
2) Vladimir gives perspective from Russian/military,
3) Bruce gives US/NATO perspective.

Then Q&A

Please register in advance for the meeting: https://bit.ly/3LdGb3F  

~ Facilitated by Tamara Lorincz (Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and board member of Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space) 

Macron: Not liked by the French people

 

Economist Richard Wolff talks about the U.S. media's "grotesque misrepresentation of not on the French election but French and European politics in general.

Washington's true face....

 

 

Former President of Turkish Denizli Journalists Association Ahmet Deda shared his thoughts on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. 

He said in an exclusive interview with China Media Group that "This is a pre-arranged war game. The ultimate beneficiaries of this war are neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian people....The world has seen the true face of America."

Latest from Mariupol

 

 

British journalist Graham Phillips reports.....he has also been reporting from the Donbass war zone for the past eight years. 

The US-NATO installed Ukranian government has put a price tag on his head. 

Keeping the Public’s Eye on U.S. Crimes in Afghanistan

 

 

 In Afghanistan, the Biden administration continues to use sanctions as political leverage against the Taliban, compounding nation-wide and regional instability, and making food and fuel much costlier for tens of millions of Afghans. As a result, the United Nations estimates 97 percent of Afghans could be living below the poverty line by the middle of this year.

The Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network’s Afghanistan Committee continues its efforts to raise the public’s awareness on the role the United States and its coalition partners continue to play, despite mostly evacuating the country in September.  

The United States continues to support what the UN has called a “downward humanitarian spiral” in the country by:

•     Refusing to return $7 billion in Afghan funds, preventing the country from resolving its crises and meeting the needs of the Afghan people.
•     Leveraging sanctions and using aid as a political tool to destroy the Afghan economy, forcing tens of millions of Afghans into dependence on Western “humanitarian” funding for their well-being.
•     Decades of interference and occupation, which led to reactionary violence, both inside and outside the country, thus paving the way to recent deadly confrontations with regional neighbors Pakistan and Iran.

If the ruling class in the United States continues down this road, more Afghans will die over the next year than the number who died amid two decades of U.S. military occupation. Washington’s hegemonic grip over Afghanistan has been the status-quo for decades, but it may be faltering in the face of constructive diplomatic actions China and Russia have taken.

What does Mr. Big really want?

 

 

The West has essentially declared an all-out war on Russia. Instead of calling for a negotiated end to the conflict, Washington, London and Brussels are looking to sustain the Ukrainian war effort. 

So, we need to ask: What is the West’s policy goal in all of this? 

CrossTalking, with Michael Maloof, Ray McGovern, and Bruce Gagnon.

The fog of war

 

 

 Alex Christoforou reports from Greece on the latest. 

 Assange last chance. Boris Party-gate apology blame Putin. Wimbledon bans Russia.

U.S. bluffs on space weapons 'rules of the road'

 

ASAT Ban Aimed at Presenting US as Defender of Sanctity of Space Which It Surely is Not

 

By Ekaterina Blinova

Vice President Kamala Harris announced on 19 April Washington's commitment to a ban on anti-satellite missile testing (ASAT) while visiting Vandenberg Space Force Base and called upon others to jump on the US bandwagon. What's behind the Biden administration's space initiative?

"I would say that the US is insincere when it suggests a ban on ASAT testing," says Bruce Gagnon, director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. "If Washington was serious about banning offensive military operations in space then why has the US government for at least the last 25 years refused to negotiate at the UN a binding treaty to ban all weapons in space? Each year Russia and China have introduced such a global ban treaty on any and all kinds of weapons in space. The official statement by the US has long been - 'There is no need for a new treaty to ban all weapons in space because there are none in orbit now. There is no problem.'"

The scholar notes that while Vice President Harris denounced Russian and Chinese ASAT tests as "reckless and irresponsible," she apparently forgot that "in early 2008 the Pentagon launched Operation Burnt Frost that used a Navy guided missile cruiser to launch an SM-3 missile into space which knocked down a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite".

The US destroyed the NRO [sat] on 20 February 2008 under the pretext of "safeguarding human lives" by preventing uncontrolled reentry into Earth's atmosphere by the defunct satellite. Remarkably, eight days earlier, China and Russia introduced a draft Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space Objects (PPWT) to the Conference on Disarmament (CD), the world's permanent multilateral disarmament treaty negotiating body. On 29 February 2008, the CD discussed the draft. However, the US dismissed the proposal, dubbing it "a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage".

"[The US' 2008 ASAT] test proved that Navy warships could use the SM-3 missile as an anti-satellite weapon," says Gagnon. "Once again the US shows the world its 'do as I say' exceptional attitude, while Washington does as it wishes and lectures other nations about what they should do."

US' Space Dominance & Lucrative Aerospace Industry

The US has long been seeking "dominance" in space and developing various space weapons technologies, highlights Gagnon. The US created fully capable direct ascent anti-satellite weapons as early as 1963, several short years after the USSR's launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US found itself as the sole military force in space.

In 1997 the US Space Command (USSPACECOM) outlined the "Vision for 2020" strategy, which sought the nation's continued preeminence in space. Decades later, on 17 January 2022 the US-led NATO released its "overarching" space policy saying that any space-based attack on an ally could trigger the alliance's collective defence policy under the bloc's Article 5.

"The recent creation of the Space Force by the US was soon thereafter followed by an announcement by the Pentagon that the first offensive Space Force programme had been created - a satellite jamming device aimed from the ground that would shut down an adversary's space satellite during times of war using a beam of directed energy," Gagnon stresses.

 

According to the scholar, the non-binding 'norms of conduct' or space 'rules of the road' proposed by the US are "window dressing to divert attention away from its own blatant refusal to hammer out an internationally recognised treaty at the UN to make it illegal for any nation to develop, test and deploy weapons in space."

Gagnon argues that Washington "has no intention to honour any binding treaties that would limit these offensive space weapons programmes."

"The aerospace industry has long boasted that the arms race in space will be 'the largest industrial project in human history'," the think tank director says. "Thus the industry views serious proposals for space ban treaties as key obstacles that must be defeated. It is my belief that the 'norms of conduct' for space are merely strategic diversions by the US to get others to sign such 'non-binding' agreements in order to create the image of Washington as a defender of the sanctity of space which it surely is not."

GOP & Dems as Bad and Good Cops

The Biden administration's move to ban ASAT was most likely triggered by the fact that the US is losing its continued preeminence in space, according to the scholar.

"While the US had 'dominance' in space technology it was satisfied to be the one and only nation with ASAT capabilities," he says. "But once Russia, China and India had developed similar capabilities to knock a competitor's satellite out of space, the Pentagon began to worry."

Gagnon suggests that the US Department of Defence does not rule out that in times of hostilities other countries could put US 'space assets' in jeopardy. "Thus Washington is attempting to take the public relations 'high ground' by announcing non-binding rules of the road for space," the scholar notes.

However, the White House's move has already prompted a great deal of criticism from the right side of the US political aisle. The Republicans argue that "this decision creates more opportunities for China and Russia to hold our assets in space at risk".

"The Democrats and Republicans like to play 'good cop-bad cop' for the entertainment of American voters," says Gagnon. "But in the end they always find consensus when it comes to developing military programmes that give the US the ability to claim dominance on the land, the sea, the air above our heads, or in outer space."  

The dark or the light?

 

 

Azov Nazi death squads (2-3 thousand of them) are holding civilian hostages in their last-ditch stronghold - the huge steelworks which has underground tunnels 6-8 stories deep in Mariupol.

They are the killers that US-NATO have been training, arming and directing since 2014. Their job was go to eastern Ukraine and kill Russian-ethnics. The US-NATO has been trying to draw Russia into a fight.  See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxeZFS9hTUg&t=63s

Since 2014 more than 14,000 have been killed Kiev's Nazi-led army.

Russia eventually reacted.

Where have the voices of concern been across the west for the 14,000 who had already died? Most across the west, even 'liberals', have been mind-washed on the real story about Ukraine.

Now we hear Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) calling for US troops to be sent to Ukraine.

All according to CIA plans I am sure.....

Which were the groups that wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons? You'd think they'd all be calling out Washington's hugely aggressive campaign for WW III... The neo-cons are running the show and they want war.

This just might be our last chance. What are people waiting for? 

Bruce

Pentagon’s Bioweapon Threat to Russia and China Is Serious

 

Despite U.S. Bluff and Bluster, Pentagon’s Bioweapon Threat to Russia and China Is Serious

By Finian Cunningham

We must take into account the Pentagon’s threat to Russia from its undeniable bioweapons program in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week that his country had “no choice” but to intervene militarily in Ukraine to halt a genocide against the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass and neutralize the growing national security threat to Russia stemming from Ukrainian territory.

Eight years of military assaults on the breakaway Donbass region by the NATO-backed Kiev regime – causing 14,000 deaths – are exhibit A. The documented Nazi ideology of the Kiev military regiments and their explicit aspiration to kill Russian people is exhibit B. The NATO training and weaponizing of the regime despite its Nazi affiliation is exhibit C.

And fourthly, exhibit D, we must take into account the Pentagon’s threat to Russia from its undeniable bio-weapons program in Ukraine. That threat also extends to China which is faced with expanding Pentagon laboratories near its borders.

When Russia launched its intervention in Ukraine on February 24, the Kiev regime promptly ordered a network of 30 laboratories funded and managed by the Pentagon to destroy samples of pathogens. That these laboratories were engaged in biological weapons development was later admitted on March 8 by U.S. State Department official Victoria Nuland during hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Nuland’s admission has been corroborated by documents published by the Russians which were obtained during operations in Ukraine.

Those documents show and name U.S. officials who were working for the Pentagon and private American firms involved in the development of the laboratories. It is also clear from the documents that the programs were purposed for the development of biological weapons using pathogens such as anthrax and coronaviruses.

The head of the Pentagon’s Orwellian-sounding Defense Threat Reduction Agency is named as Joanna Wintrol whose work in Ukraine was coordinated with the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

Historically, the Pentagon took over laboratories in Ukraine and other post-Soviet republics in the name of decommissioning bio-weapons facilities. But what happened instead was that the Pentagon upgraded and expanded the pathogen programs. This is consistent with the history of the U.S. co-opting the biological warfare techniques and personnel of former enemies. Following the Second World War, the Americans redeployed Japanese and Nazi bio-weapon programs at its then newly established Fort Detrick facility in Maryland.

The trove of documents discovered by the Russians in Ukraine also shows that the Pentagon programs were looking at ways to weaponize the pathogens through aerial delivery from drones. It was also being assessed how deadly diseases could be spread by using bird migration from Ukraine to Russia.

Russia claims that the Pentagon’s work in Ukraine coincides with outbreaks of deadly diseases in Donbass going back several years. For example in 2018, there was a fatal outbreak of tuberculosis in the Russian-speaking region that was resistant to multiple standard drug treatments.

All attempts so far by Russia and China for the topic of bio-weapons in Ukraine to be debated at the UN Security Council have been rebuffed by the United States. The U.S. asserts that Russian and Chinese concerns are “disinformation”. At a hearing called for by Russia and China on April 6, the U.S. and Britain did not even attend the Security Council meeting.

But it’s not just Moscow and Beijing that have expressed concerns. Professor Francis Boyle is a world-renowned author and legal expert on biological warfare. He says there is no doubt that the U.S. was involved in conducting a biological warfare program in Ukraine even though such activity puts the United States in direct violation of the Biological Warfare Convention.

Boyle points out that the involvement of Fort Detrick personnel in the laboratories in Ukraine and the close coordination by the Pentagon demonstrates that the research was for creating weapons of mass destruction.

“The Pentagon funded these bio-warfare labs in Ukraine, and Fort Detrick is an adjunct of the Pentagon. I suspect the right hand of the Pentagon knew what the left hand of the Pentagon was doing,” said Boyle who authored Bio-warfare and Terrorism (2005).

Last year, in June 2021, Fort Detrick had several military professionals assigned to Ukraine to train with Ukrainian troops in “laboratory and field environments” for “understanding capabilities and support each other within a theater,” reported the Military Times.

 

Fort Detrick has a storied and nefarious history of bio-warfare development going back to the early Cold War. It has been clandestinely working on “gain of function” pathogens such as anthrax for decades. It is even known to have conducted experiments on unwitting U.S. populations to study the epidemiology of diseases.

China in particular has complained that the American bio-warfare center based in Frederick, Maryland, should be opened up to independent inspectors to find out what its laboratories are up to. China points out that Fort Detrick was temporarily shut down following a massive outbreak of an unknown flu-like infection in the U.S. in 2019. This was months before the outbreak of the Covid-19 disease in the Chinese city of Wuhan was detected at the end of 2019. Adding to China’s suspicions is that the Wuhan outbreak followed the Military World Games which were held in the city in October 2019. A team from the U.S. participated.

The SARS coronavirus which caused the Covid-19 global pandemic is also believed to have been experimented on in the Pentagon laboratories in Ukraine.

The United States has arrogantly demanded that China be more open to international inspectors over its virology institute in Wuhan with the implication that the institute may have leaked the coronavirus. China has already permitted two scientific teams from the World Health Organization to investigate the Wuhan outbreak. The WHO concluded the infection spread from animals to humans in nature.

By contrast, however, the U.S. has stonewalled all demands by Russia and China for UN discussion about what its Pentagon-sponsored laboratories were doing in Ukraine. Chinese demands for an independent investigation into Fort Detrick’s biological experiments have also been rebuffed.

It’s a measure of arrogance that Washington feels entitled to accuse and impose demands on Moscow and Beijing yet the evidence of American culpability is stacked much higher.

China points out that over the past 30 years since the supposed end of the Cold War, the Pentagon has expanded over 300 biological laboratories in over 30 countries, most of which are neighboring Russia and China.

Fort Detrick’s sinister record of harnessing biological weapons of mass destruction and its growing presence in Ukraine for specific offensive objectives makes the case for Russia’s military intervention. China is also right to take a critical stance and demand answers and accountability from the Americans.

Several thousand Ukraine army troops surrender

 

Ukraine army surrenders growing - interview with one Ukraine officer about why they gave up - English subtitles

 

Click here for the video 

Biden ally floats idea of US troops in Ukraine

 

             The words by Sen. Coons about sending US troops to Ukraine begin at 5:15 mark in the video.
                                                                        

Senator suggests Ukraine may ‘turn into Syria’ unless the US and NATO ‘stop Putin’

 

RT

US Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), a politician described by media outlets as President Joe Biden’s closest Senate ally, has raised the idea of deploying American troops to fight Russians in Ukraine, saying he fears the former Soviet republic will “become the Syria of Eastern Europe.”

“The American people cannot turn away from this tragedy in Ukraine,” Coons said on Sunday in a CBS News interview. “I think the history of the 21st century turns on how fiercely we defend freedom in Ukraine and that Putin will only stop when we stop him.”

Asked by host Margaret Brennan about his recent comments calling for US leaders to discuss troop deployments to Ukraine, Coons said policy makers must consider the “level of brutality” exhibited by Russian forces. He credited Biden with pulling Western allies together to impose “crushing sanctions” on Russia, but suggested that more direct action may be needed as Russian President Vladimir Putin raises the stakes.

“If Vladimir Putin, who has shown us how brutal he can be, is allowed to just continue to massacre civilians, to commit war crimes throughout Ukraine without NATO, without the West coming more forcefully to his aid, I deeply worry that what's going to happen next is that we will see Ukraine turn into Syria,” Coons said. Presumably, he meant to say that the US and NATO need to come more forcefully to Ukraine’s aid, not Putin’s.

Coons worked as an intern in Biden’s Senate office in the 1990s and was elected to fill his former Senate seat in 2010. He was described by the New York Times as “Biden’s eyes and ears in the Senate,” while Politico called him “the Biden whisperer.” Media outlets called him a “shadow secretary of state” after the White House sent him on a diplomatic mission to Ethiopia last year.

Like Biden, Coons has previously spoken out against sending American forces to Ukraine. He seldom, if ever, contradicts Biden’s views, so his change of rhetoric raised concerns over what the commander-in-chief might be considering.

The senator’s latest comments come three days after he said the Biden administration and US lawmakers need to discuss parameters for troop deployments to Ukraine. Speaking at an event at the University of Michigan, he argued that if direct military involvement is ruled out, “we are inviting another level of escalation in brutality by Putin.”

We are coming right up against a Cuban missile crisis moment in terms of a direct confrontation between NATO, the United States, the West and Russia.

Coons added that “autocrats around the world” – from North Korea to Iran to China – are closely watching the US and NATO response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He also called the crisis a “1939 moment,” apparently alluding to Nazi Germany’s early conquests in Europe.

“At some point, we are going to have to confront the reality that Putin may be willing to escalate beyond our willingness to take risks,” Coons said. “And if we allow Ukraine to become the Syria of Eastern Europe, I think we will have failed both the Ukrainian people and this moment in history.”

The Target is China

The Pentagon’s current strategy document clearly identifies Enemy No. 1

By Caitlin Johnstone


The Pentagon has produced its latest National Defense Strategy (NDS), a report made every four years to provide the public and the government with a broad overview of the U.S. war machine’s planning, posturing, developments and areas of focus.

You might assume with all the aggressive brinkmanship between Moscow and the U.S. power alliance this year that Russia would feature as Enemy No. 1 in the 2022 NDS, but you would be assuming incorrectly. The U.S. “Defense” Department reserves that slot for the same nation that’s occupied it for many years now: China.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following:

    “The full NDS is still classified, but the Pentagon released a fact sheet on the document that says it “will act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as our most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the Department.”

    The fact sheet outlines four priorities for the Pentagon:

    -Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC

    -Deterring strategic attacks against the United States, Allies, and partners

    -Deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary, prioritizing the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific, then the Russia challenge in Europe

    -Building a resilient Joint Force and defense ecosystem”

“The Pentagon says that while China is the focus, Russia poses ‘acute threats’ because of its invasion of Ukraine,” DeCamp writes, showing the empire’s view of Moscow as a second-tier enemy.

Ahead of a meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made some comments which clearly illustrate the U.S.-centralized empire’s actual problem with Moscow.

“We, together with you, and with our sympathisers will move towards a multipolar, just, democratic world order,” Lavrov said to the Chinese government on Wednesday.

And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is the real reason we’ve been hearing so much hysterical shrieking about Russia these last five or six years. It’s never been about Russian hackers. Nor about a Kremlin pee tape. Nor about Trump Tower. Nor about GRU bounties in Afghanistan. Nor about Manafort, Flynn, Bannon, Papadopoulos or any other Russiagate Surname of the Week. It’s not even actually about Ukraine. Those have all been narrative-shaping constructs manipulated by the U.S. intelligence cartel to manufacture support for a final showdown against Russia and China to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world.

The U.S. government has had a policy in place since the fall of the Soviet Union to prevent the rise of any powers which could challenge its imperial agendas for the world. During the (first) Cold War the strategy promoted by empire managers like Henry Kissinger was to court China out of necessity to pull it away from the U.S.S.R., which was when we saw business ties between China and the U.S. lead to immense profits for certain individuals in both nations and the influx of wealth which now has China on track to surpass the U.S. as an economic superpower.

Once the U.S.S.R. ended, so too did the need to remain on friendly terms with China, and subsequent decades saw a sharp pivot into a much more adversarial relationship with Beijing.

In what history may one day view as the U.S. empire’s greatest strategic blunder, empire managers forecasted the acquisition of post-soviet Russia as an imperial lackey state which could be weaponized against the new Enemy No. 1 in China. Instead, the exact opposite happened.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Bloomberg New Economy Forum last year that she’d “heard for years that Russia would become more willing to move toward the west, more willing to engage in a positive way with Europe, the U.K., the U.S., because of problems on its border, because of the rise of China.” But that’s not what occurred.

“We haven’t seen that,” Clinton said. “Instead what we’ve seen is a concerted effort by Putin maybe to hug China more.” 

 

 

The empire’s expectation that Moscow would come groveling to the imperial throne on its own meant that no real effort was expended trying to establish goodwill and win over its friendship. NATO just kept on expanding and the empire got increasingly aggressive and belligerent in its games of global conquest.

This error has led to the strategist’s ultimate nightmare of having to fight for global domination against two separate powers at once. Because empire architects incorrectly predicted that Moscow would end up fearing Beijing more than it fears Washington, the tandem between China’s economic power and Russia’s military power that experts have been pointing to for years has only gotten more and more intimate.

And now here we are with Russian and Chinese officials openly discussing their plans to create a multipolar world while Chinese pundits crack jokes about the U.S. empire’s transparent ploys to turn Beijing against Moscow over the Ukraine invasion:

On the empire’s grand chessboard, Russia is the queen piece, but China is the king. Just as with chess it helps to take out your opponent’s strongest piece to more easily pursue checkmate, the U.S. empire would be well advised to try and topple China’s nuclear superpower friend and, as Consortium News Editor-in-Chief Joe Lauria recently put it, “ultimately restore a Yeltsin-like puppet to Moscow.”

Basically, all we’re looking at in the major international news stories of our time is the rise of a multipolar world crashing headlong into an empire which has espoused the belief that unipolar domination must be retained at all cost, even if it means flirting with the possibility of a very fast and radioactive third world war.

This is the Hail Mary pass of the U.S. hegemon; its last-ditch effort to secure control before forever losing any chance at it. Many anti-imperialist pundits I read regularly seem quite confident that this effort will fail, while I personally think those forecasts may be a bit premature. The way the chess pieces are moving it definitely does look like there’s a plan in place, and I don’t think they’d be orchestrating that plan if they didn’t believe it had a chance to succeed.

One thing that does seem clear is that the only way the empire has any chance of stopping the rise of China is by maneuvers that will be both highly disruptive and existentially dangerous for the entire world. If you think things are crazy now, just you wait until the imperial crosshairs move to Beijing.

~ Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium.