"For I am a direct descendant of slaves, too near to the actual enterprise to believe that its echoes are over with the reign of emancipation. Moreover, I am a direct descendant of Prospero worshipping in the same temple of endeavour, using his legacy of language - not to curse our meeting - but to push it further..." George Lamming
I am glad to have lived long enough to witness this, even if it is in its early stages and the road ahead is long and treacherous. Here is a major marker to celebrate on that long road:
To be clear, it’s a positive development that a broad range of countries will now participate in BRICS’ countless gatherings each year ahead of its annual summit, but the only thing that they all have in common is their interest in accelerating financial multipolarity processes via their national currencies. That’s not to downplay the importance of BRICS expanding in the way that was ultimately decided upon, but just to inform readers of its newfound limits in order to temper their expectations. At the same time, BRICS also has more opportunities than before in the sense that more countries can now participate in whatever alternative financial architecture their group unveils in the future such as an inclusive non-Western SWIFT-like payment system. These benefits balance out the obstacles and arguably make the latest move worthwhile in the long term, which is the period that they have in mind, not the short- or medium-terms per se.
As soon as World War II ended and the Nazis were defeated, US intelligence agencies built ties with former Hitler collaborators to work together against the Soviet Union and then Russia. The operation to form an armed underground movement in Western Ukraine was dubbed 'Aerodynamic'. The CIA assembled war criminals and Bandera movement activists from filtration camps, and created an agent network. Their task was to sabotage nuclear plants and dams on Ukrainian territory in an effort to separate it from the Soviet Union. They terrorised civilians and were responsible for at least 35,000 casualties, according to CIA co-founder Frank Wisner.
There have been some momentous developments since the year commenced, but these have rarely made it into the minds of North Americans. It has been said that what is happening in Ukraine is a hybrid war being fought on multiple fronts, one of which is the sphere of information:
[Eurasia Economic Union’s Sergey] Glazyev: My book, The Last World War, that I already mentioned, which was published as far back as 2015, argued that the likelihood of this happening eventually is very high. In this hybrid war, economic warfare and informational/cognitive warfare are key theaters of conflict. On both of these fronts, the U.S. and NATO countries have overwhelming superiority and I did not have any doubt that they would take full advantage of this in due course.
As far as this informational/cognitive warfare is concerned, professor of philosophy Peter Ludlow at Northwestern University published an article which appeared in the New York Times nearly a decade ago entitled The Real War on Reality. I'll quote it in part:
This may sound like nothing so much as a “Matrix”-like fantasy, but it is distinctly real, and resembles in some ways the employment of “Psyops” (psychological operations), which as most students of recent American history know, have been part of the nation’s military strategy for decades. The military’s “Unconventional Warfare Training Manual” defines Psyops as “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.” In other words, it is sometimes more effective to deceive a population into a false reality than it is to impose its will with force or conventional weapons. Of course this could also apply to one’s own population if you chose to view it as an “enemy” whose “motives, reasoning, and behavior” needed to be controlled.
Returning to the Ukraine conflict, it is therefore essential that North Americans be made aware of the mythology they are being handed under the guise of "information" or "news":
As we witness the collapse of various mainstream narratives, especially those surrounding the U.S./NATO war with Russia in Ukraine, Americans should begin to reassess their understanding of U.S. national leadership. Most American citizens have no notion of the great disparity between what their government does overseas and the stories they hear from its mouthpieces. As a result, Americans unwittingly support all sorts of foreign operations with little or no understanding of what is actually going on. For years, they have been misled by a non-stop propaganda campaign that is only now beginning to crumble. We are experiencing the death throes of the United States’ unipolar hegemony over large parts of world. Until citizens begin to realize the magnitude of their government’s policy deceptions, it will become increasingly difficult to understand the United States’ changing global position and adjust to the effects of the growing negative perception of our country held by many people around the world.
...Go read the whole thing, especially if you are North American. Most of the rest of the world doesn't need such deprogramming since it is more or less innoculated against the West's mythical narrative.
While the above article from The American Conservative is much more extensive in its coverage (via the various valuable links included), one mustn't forget the particulars of the Ukraine conflict. Perhaps of greatest importance is to understand that the war didn't start in 2022; it started in 2014 with the Maidancoup. A succinct eleven minute summary is given by Jeffrey Sachs in the following brief video:
So where do things stand today and where are they headed? I was actually correct earlier this year when I contradicted many claims that Russia was preparing a massive military offensive in Ukraine's Donbass that could possibly even make its way to Kiev. Why should Russia change what it has been doing when it has been relatively successful so far?, I asked. Rather than explain my view, you cannot do better than listen to Brian Berletic:
Finally, it is essential to keep one thing in mind: This "war" extends beyond what is happening in Ukraine, Poland and Eastern Europe. Check out what is happening in the Middle East, re-baptized as Western Asia:
...the reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran is also a precursor to their induction as BRICS members in a near future. To be sure, there is a Russian-Chinese understanding already on this score. The BRICS membership for Saudi Arabia and Iran will radically reset the power dynamic in the international system.
Go read the whole thing. And while you're at it, read this, too.
It has been more than one year since Russia initiated its Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Although there are many assessments available online, there is perhaps no better assessment than the following by Robert Freeman:
Since I really can't add much more to it than what Mr. Freeman has written (except perhaps THIS), I will just end by saying that I am in full agreement with the vast majority of what American author, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, and former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector, Scott Ritter says HERE.
"...former British diplomat, and is the founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, an organisation that advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West.[1] Previously he was a ranking figure in both British intelligence (MI6) and European Union diplomacy."
I suggest you savour his article, entitled The Most Egregious Mistake, in its entirety. Here is the gist:
"The point here is that Russian Resilience, at a single stroke, shattered the plate-glass floor to western convictions about its ability to ‘manage the world’. After the several western debacles centred on regime-change by military shock-and-awe, even hardened neo-cons – by 2006 – had conceded that a weaponised financial system was the only means to ‘secure the Empire’. But this conviction has now been upended – and states around the world have taken notice."
author Michael Collins Piper actually accused Israel of the crime. Of all the conspiracy theories, it remains one of the most intriguing. What is indisputable is that although it was kept out of the eye of both the press and the public, a bitter dispute had developed between Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who believed that his nation’s survival depended on its attaining nuclear capability, and Kennedy, who was vehemently opposed to it.
According to the logic of elimination that subtends settler colonial projects, native populations are displaced in order to replace their systems of life, a process that structures invasion in its initial stages as in the present. By looking into the case of modern Palestine in an integrative fashion, in this essay we suggest that settler colonialism targets native populations along with social formations – established ways of life – that nurture native life in various ways. We define this settler specificity as the “logic of double elimination.” Our story shows that in Palestine, Zionism developed and the Israeli state was eventually established by means of (a) the continuing elimination of the Arab-Palestinians and their sovereignty, and (b) the destruction of the social infrastructure and identities that fostered Arab–Jewish shared life and forms of cooperation as they flourished in Ottoman times, and the prevention of these forms as they survived into the British Mandate era.
I suppose it's better to die of laughter, than frightened to death by a nuclear holocaust.
The following is worthy of a modern-day Keystone Kops revival:
The EU and US both still appear unable to accept that having failed to kill Russia with their shock and awe sanctions, they are now caught in their own booby trap by reducing access to Russia commodities, particularly ones on which they depend like gas, oil, fertilizers, neon, titanium, aluminum, platinum, palladium…. And then they get pissy when Russia is less than fully cooperative in continuing to supply them, even as they also threaten to stop/reduce buying from Russia (admittedly on largely imaginary timelines).
And as if that weren't enough, here is the Great Leader of Ukraine which the West has been parading all over the media. You just can't make this stuff up!
Seriously, though, this is the reality of the Ukraine conflict:
Suffice it to say that Russia is beating a military trained and equipped to NATO standards [force] over eight year, which had the additional advantage of building extensive, layered bunkers in Donbass. Russia is wearing it down with a peacetime expeditionary force, battle-hardened local militias, the Chechens, the Wagner Group (somewhere between volunteers and mercs) and most importantly lots of ammo and missiles. Russia has depleted Ukraine’s armored vehicles, heavy weapons, and seasoned fighters, as well as draining NATO caches, while reportedly manufacturing ammo and weapons at a rate so high that Russia is keeping up with the usage in the Special Military Operation. Russia has also demonstrated superiority to the West in missiles, missile defenses, and signal jamming. Yet somehow our strategists had convinced themselves that Russia was a military paper tiger, when that is increasingly looking like projection.
A cultural icon who mentored me through his written works (and in person when Gordon K. Lewis brought him as visiting author to the Institute of Caribbean Studies) passed away today.
Renowned Barbadian novelist and poet George Lamming died on Saturday at the age of 94. He passed away in Barbados four days short of his 95th birthday on June 8. Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, in a release following Lamming’s passing, said there would be an official funeral for the writer who was so integral to the literature of the region.
If you frequent my blog you will be familiar with the eternal quote from one of his landmark works at the heading:
"For I am a direct descendant of slaves, too near to the actual enterprise to believe that its echoes are over with the reign of emancipation. Moreover, I am a direct descendant of Prospero worshipping in the same temple of endeavour, using his legacy of language - not to curse our meeting - but to push it further..."
This conflict is noteworthy for the concerted effort by the West to dominate the narrative and exclude everything the Russians have to say about it. One should always listen to both sides of any conflict if there is to be a fig-leaf of impartiality.
One of the first documents that should be read and confronted concerning the crisis in Ukraine is the following letter signed and published in 1997. It is testimony to the fact that notable diplomats and historians knew back then that NATO expansion would elicit a backlash from Russia, and that U.S. President Clinton's rush to push NATO eastwards would turn a once compliant and reformist Russia into an implacable enemy.:
As for the nature of the situation in Ukraine, the West has pushed back against accusations that there exist significant fascist elements in Ukraine, something which has been documented beyond a shadow of a doubt:
On 16 February 2020, the U.S. State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism arrived in Ukraine.[1] The agenda was not announced. The hope is that he discussed at least some of the issues discussed in this report with his Ukrainian counterparts. Five years ago the threat of ultranationalist-neofascist Ukrainian terrorism (UNUT) should have been clear to all, but it was not.[2] Things have not gotten any better. The threat has grown, and there remains no acknowledgement of the UNUT threat. The threat remains one both to Ukraine as well as Europe, Russia and the United States and is part of a larger ultranationalist-neofascist international movement and terrorist threat.
Identitarian violence and terrorism is deeply embedded in the nationalist, ultranationalist, and neofascist strand of Ukrainian political culture. Contemporary UNUT is inherited largely from Galicia and the Nazi-allied Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Partisan Army (UPA) of World War II and thus is a near century-long tradition. Not only did the OUN assassinate officials, including Polish and perhaps more understandably Soviet officials and NKVD officers, OUN members also tried to assassinate US President Delano Roosevelt, according to archival documents.[3] The UNUT tradition is being carried forward by Ukraine’s ultranationalist and neofascist groups, such as Right Sector, the Svoboda Party, Right Sector, Azov, the National Corps (Natsional’nyi Korpus) or NatsKorpus, and C14. This is no coincidence as it these groups that have fostered a cult of personality surrounding Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich, the OUN’s and UPA’s respective founders. in the nationalist, ultranationalist and neofascist subculture of Ukraine, helping to establish them as officially recognized national heroes.
As for the lead up to the 2022 Russian "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Monitoring Mission had documented a marked increase in Ukrainian armed forces shelling of the Donbass (Ukrainian territory where there is a predominance of Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens) in February of 2022:
...the OSCE’s daily report of 18 February...That same report records numerous violations of the ceasefire agreement by the Ukrainian government in moving heavy weaponry in to menace separatist held areas and in keeping weaponry outside agreed storage facilities. It equally reports precisely the same kind of violations by separatist rebels. None of which balance has been recorded by the same western media which loves to give detailed accounts of troop movements within Russia.
If none of this suffices to convince you that the Russians have a point, then perhaps you should listen to former Swiss intelligence officer, senior United Nations official, and NATO advisor Jacques Baud:
Good to see more evidence of the premature end of what was arguably supposed to be the American Century. As far as I'm concerned, its demise couldn't arrive too soon. There were already signs at the beginning of the current century that this was the case, given the inauguration of the infamous "war on terror" following the 9-11 attacks.
In my opinion, the USA's "upholding" of human rights was always overblown. How could you lay claim to that after flattening North Korea, or devastating Vietnam to no end? Nevertheless, one of the USA's (arguably) least destructive Presidents made a good case for this being an essential pillar to what has been dubbed the USA's "soft power". Well..., even that has now been jettisoned!
Patrick Armstrong, in a February 4, 2021 column titled The West Is Losing Its Soft Power, explains why whatever "soft power" the USA may have had is fast disappearing. He starts out by delineating the basis for what may have been the USA's "soft power":
I would argue that American soft power stood on four pillars: the attractiveness and excitement of its popular culture, its reputation for efficiency, rule of law and the “American Dream”. Every American could expect that his children would be better off –
better off in every respect: healthier, longer-lived, better educated, happier, richer – than he was.
Then Mr. Armstrong proceeds to deal a devastating blow to the notion, with quotes from several articles by formidable analysts, commencing with two by Stephen Walt in the USA's foremost foreign policy journal:
Next, Mr. Armstrong demolishes the "American Dream" pillar of said "soft power" by citing just one graph. I will leave it to you to read what he writes about inequality in the article. The next pillar Mr. Armstrong aims his guns at is probably the "rule of law", but I deem it "freedom of expression". Here, he cites the Director of the Center for the Study of Digital Property at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, James V. DeLong, about Amazon’s decision to deplatform the 'Parler' networking service:
If 6 January was a new Pearl Harbor, extraordinary reactions will be said to be justified. But this is becoming the Western norm: where exactly is the rule of law with Meng in Canada, Sacoulis and Assange in the UK, or Butina in the USA? Will more lawfare against Trump strengthen the image of stability and rule of law? Neither will the 2020 U.S. election and its consequences advance the American reputation of democratic leadership. Some cheerleaders of “American leadership” like Richard N. Haass are quite despondent:
No one in the world is likely to see, respect, fear, or depend on us in the same way again. If the post-American era has a start date, it is almost certainly today [6 January].
Wow! Speak about schadenfreude! In summary, Mr. Armstrong points out:
Popular culture, competence, justice and values and the dream of betterment may have been the pillars on which the USA’s soft power was based, but the ground upon which those stood was success. Success made the others attractive; success is the most powerful attraction. The West is losing its aura of success – endless wars, divisive politics, COVID failure, financial crises, debt. And ever more desperate attempts to hold power against ever bolder dissent. It’s just beginning. And not just the USA, the West doesn’t present well any more: protests in Amsterdam, London, Berlin; a year of gillets jaunes in France. The world is watching. Not efficient, not attractive, not law-based. Not successful.
Patrick Armstrong ends by offering some brief highlights of the contrasting success of China, followed by a warning from the USA's "nemesis" from Russia. Go read the whole thing!
I wasn't really sure how to title this post, which is chiefly about what I believe was the final 'column' of Consortium News founder Bob Parry, before his untimely death on January 27, 2018. It is an outstandingly honest, determinative, yet at the same time very disquieting, manifesto on the demise of journalism in the United States which requires a complete reading from start to finish (easily done in one sitting). If I were to go against my better judgement and highlight a small piece of the manifesto, it would be the following:
What is perhaps most alarming about the past year of Donald Trump is that the mask is now gone and, in many ways, all sides of Official Washington are revealed collectively as reflections of Donald Trump, disinterested in reality, exploiting “information” for tactical purposes, eager to manipulate or con the public. While I’m sure many anti-Trumpers will be deeply offended by my comparison of esteemed Establishment figures with the grotesque Trump, there is a deeply troubling commonality between Trump’s convenient use of “facts” and what has pervaded the Russia-gate investigation.
It isn't just the narrow issue of Russia-gate, nor for that matter Ukraine-gate, which has supplanted or perniciously extended the former, that concerns me here. It even extends beyond the mostly "bi-polarized" political context that Parry refers to in his excellent manifesto on journalism. In fact, Parry hints at it when he mentions Seymour Hersh, and the staging of the chemical weapons attacks in Syria. Perhaps one positive (and accidental) outcome of the whole Trump affair is the sudden return to prominence of the term "Deep State". While necessarily ambiguous a term, the amorphous and secretive "Deep State" manifests itself concretely and precisely through journalism - that of the establishment or "mainstream" media.
It is an uphill battle to effectively thwart the lies, half-truths and outright propaganda of the mainstream media. Yet it becomes a necessity in a world of false flags, used to justify innumerable wrongs. Nonetheless as difficult and "uphill" a task it may be, one must be relentless. Why? In the end, quod ratio non quid, saepe sanavit mora!
George Duke was born in San Rafael, California and raised in Marin City. At four years old he became interested in the piano. His mother took him to see Duke Ellington in concert and told him about this experience. "I don't remember it too well, but my mother told me I went crazy. I ran around saying 'Get me a piano, get me a piano!'" He began his formal piano studies at the age of 7 at a local Baptist church.
It is time for the final word on the Special Counsel investigation conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019. The report, which purported to get to the bottom of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials, was finally released, hence the curtain can finally be brought down on the whole affair. In this respect, the assessment by British former diplomat turned political activist, human rights campaigner, blogger and whistleblower, Craig Murray, hits the nail squarely on the head:
Mueller, as a matter of determined policy, omitted key steps which any honest investigator would undertake. He did not commission any forensic examination of the DNC servers. He did not interview Bill Binney. He did not interview Julian Assange. His failure to do any of those obvious things renders his report worthless.
Unfortunately, we know ahead of time that the curtain most certainly won't be brought down on this whole affair. In fact it will fester and grow well into the future. The reason for that is laid out succinctly in the following *MUST-WATCH* video.
By the way, as a footnote, there is something absolutely profound that Gabor Maté says at 25:33 on the above video concerning 'disillusionment': "Would you rather be illusioned or disillusioned?". I recognized it right away as the identical point made by my mentor and friend Calvin Hernton during a discussion in one of the Black Literature classes he gave us in college back in the late seventies.
With the new year almost upon us, some green shoots are appearing to signal the renewal of the (human) spirit:
The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom. ~~ Mencius
Of course, the new "geen shoots" I am referring to are these: "Kudos to the New York Times for hiring [Michelle] Alexander as a columnist and letting her say this...:"
[Martin Luther King’s] was a lonely, moral stance. And it cost him. But it set an example of what is required of us if we are to honor our deepest values in times of crisis, even when silence would better serve our personal interests or the communities and causes we hold most dear. It’s what I think about when I go over the excuses and rationalizations that have kept me largely silent on one of the great moral challenges of our time: the crisis in Israel-Palestine.
I have not been alone. Until very recently, the entire Congress has remained mostly silent on the human rights nightmare that has unfolded in the occupied territories. Our elected representatives, who operate in a political environment where Israel’s political lobby holds well-documented power, have consistently minimized and deflected criticism of the State of Israel, even as it has grown more emboldened in its occupation of Palestinian territory and adopted some practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.
Many civil rights activists and organizations have remained silent as well, not because they lack concern or sympathy for the Palestinian people, but because they fear loss of funding from foundations, and false charges of anti-Semitism. They worry, as I once did, that their important social justice work will be compromised or discredited by smear campaigns.
Similarly, many students are fearful of expressing support for Palestinian rights because of the McCarthyite tactics of secret organizations like Canary Mission, which blacklists those who publicly dare to support boycotts against Israel, jeopardizing their employment prospects and future careers.
Elsewhere, however, things remain unperturbed in their darkness:
We now have proof that the U.S. has been dispatching New Zealand human intelligence officers, sending them on overseas missions. And not simply to Afghanistan or Iraq. But in one case, to infiltrate a multitude of political parties contesting the 2012 Presidential elections of an ally – France.
I seem to recall officials of the U.S. government accusing another government of precisely this behavior.
A further WikiLeaks release shows that the U.S. weren’t only involving New Zealand in spying on France for political reasons alone. They were ordering us to steal commercial and trade secrets as well.
Oh, really?
Wasn't a foreign firm accused in the U.S.A. of doing just that?
According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, U.S. federal prosecutors are preparing a criminal indictment against Huawei for stealing trade secrets. The report, which cites sources with knowledge of the indictment, specifically mentions Huawei’s actions surrounding a T-Mobile smartphone testing tool known as “Tappy.” The report notes that the current investigation is far enough along that an indictment may come soon.
Pot bottom calling the kettle black? Whence will renewal be complete?
