Building the New World Order

Much to the chagrin of the western establishment, the way of the future is being articulated by this man:

"We have consistently underscored the diversity of the world as a prerequisite for its sustainability. It may appear paradoxical, as greater diversity complicates the construction of a unified narrative. Naturally, universal norms are presumed to aid in this regard. Can they fulfill this role? It stands to reason that this is a formidable and complicated task. Firstly, we must avoid a scenario where the model of one country or a relatively minute segment of humanity is presumed universal and imposed upon others. Secondly, it is untenable to adopt any conventional, albeit democratically developed code, and dictate it as an infallible truth to others in perpetuity. The international community is a living entity, with its civilisational diversity making it unique and presenting an inherent value. International law is a product of agreements not even between countries, but between nations, because legal consciousness is an integral part of every unique culture and every civilisation. The crisis of international law, which is the subject of broad public discussion today, is, in a sense, a crisis of growth. The rise of nations and cultures that have previously remained on the periphery of global politics for one reason or another means that their own distinct ideas of law and justice are playing an increasingly important role. They are diverse. This may give the impression of discord and perhaps cacophony, but this is only the initial phase. It is my deep conviction that the only new international system possible is one embracing polyphony, where many tones and many musical themes are sounded together to form harmony. If you like, we are moving towards a world system that is going to be polyphonic rather than polycentric, one in which all voices are heard and, most importantly, absolutely must be heard. Those who are used to soloing and want to keep it that way will have to get used to the new 'scores' now. Have I mentioned post-WWII international law? This international law is based on the UN Charter, which was written by the victorious countries. But the world is changing – with new centres of power emerging, and powerful economies growing and coming to the forefront. That predictably calls for a change in the legal regulation as well. Of course, this must be done carefully, but it is inevitable. Law reflects life, not vice versa."

Enter the BRICS+. The recent Kazan Summit is indeed a watershed, but there is disagreement over what was intended and what was achieved. The following video will go a long way toward clarifying these issues. In it, political economist Radhika Desai is joined by Ben Norton and former central banker Kathleen Tyson, author of the book "Multicurrency Mercantilism" to explain BRICS's plans to transform the international monetary and financial system, and to discuss policies at the 2024 summit in Kazan, Russia.:



By the way, Youtube has the bad habit of censoring taking down inconvenient videos. If that happens in this case, the audio of said video can easily be accessed here.

A Fabulous New Video Site

Oh, and speaking of cars, read THIS.

The incredible clarity of Norman Finkelstein

The incredible clarity of Norman Finkelstein. Although the entire interview is absolutely stellar, listen in particular what he says commencing from 25:05.

UKRAINE: As I've been saying for YEARS!

THIS is how it all started, and it was THOROUGHLY DOCUMENTED.

...And of course there was the BIG LIE.

Rain is Coming

Every year since I started writing, whether in Arabic or English, I have produced various iterations of the same essay or poem on Nakba Day, riddled with the same facts and figures and tired arguments, in hopes that one day such persuasion and schooling would no longer be necessary. The thesis has been consistent: pairing “anniversary” and “Nakba” in the same sentence is a misalliance; the time frame, 76 years, is a miscalculation. The English translation—“Catastrophe”—is reductive, because it wasn’t a sudden natural disaster. Nor is it a tragic relic from the past. The Nakba is an organized and ongoing process of colonization and genocide that neither began nor ended in 1948. The perpetrators have names and the crime scene remains active. And where you cannot see the rubble, know that pine trees have been planted on top of it, to conceal it.

I read that, in Gaza, they have opened a new kindergarten in the North, a phoenix of sorts, and I want to believe that there is already a clean scent of jasmine that follows the teachers as they go about their day — what, if not jasmine, can ease the nagging of children and the nagging of warplanes? I have been holding on to this piece of good news for the past couple of weeks, filling in the blanks with my own speculations. There is jasmine because seeds do not need permission, or a ceasefire, to germinate. Children nag because that is what children do. What do five-year-olds learn, besides the numbers and alphabet, in the time of genocide? What jokes do they tell to pass the time? Their vocabulary expands, naturally, to include words more brutal than “invasion,” “siege,” and “Nakba,” and their teachers, I imagine, tell them that the Nakba, the original Nakba (1947-49), pales in comparison to Gaza’s present. Even the rich — all of the rich — are in tents this time around.

It is hard to predict how we will historicize this current moment, but if our reflections on the late forties are any indication, we might remember only today’s destruction and defeat. And for good reason — at this very moment, with no hyperbole, our people’s corpses have been piled up in mass graves, plural, their wrists, big and tiny alike, bound with zip-ties. Horrors that we once learned as oral histories and cautionary tales are livestreamed today, incessantly, forever etched in our memories. The past seven months have shown us that even metaphor is a casualty of war. What was once figurative is painfully literal: bloodied beards, furniture in trees, a limb hanging from a ceiling fan, women giving birth on the concrete. Clichés cover the terrain: plants erupting through rubble, flowers springing from cement, etcetera. The surreal happens so much. Journalists are poets, almost, when reporting about the decomposed under ruins. Doctors have invented acronyms for conditions my fiction professors would have called unrealistically episodic. Death is everywhere.

And so when one begins to write or speak about Palestine, it is tempting to look at loss and only loss, and to find in this loss a plea for survival. We have suffered a lot, we say to those who will listen, we have suffered enough. Too often our suffering is reported without a culprit, our anguished cries exist outside of history and politics. We have no national aspirations, no land to cultivate. Our existence is purely mechanistic — we are reminded, through policy and procedure, that we are unfortunately born to die. And in our deterministic march to the grave, we encounter each other as unlucky strangers, frail and futureless.

But there is — and always has been — more to our reality. We are, without a doubt, subjects of conquest and colonization, products of circumstance, but we are also so much more than that. At every turn of our bloodied history, we have been brutalized, bereaved, dispossessed, exiled, starved, slaughtered and imprisoned, but we have, to the world’s dismay, refused to submit. For every massacre and invasion, there have been and there are now men and women who pick up their weapons, makeshift and sophisticated — Molotovs, rifles, slingshots, rockets — to fight. There has always been struggle, there has always been jasmine.

In parallel, there is also more to our enemy. Zionism, behind the facade of the impenetrable superpower it purports to be, is more vulnerable today than ever. And I do not say this naïvely: I do not ask that we gloss over our enemy’s capabilities or the power of the empires and mercenaries that back it. Nor do I ask that we trivialize the crushing weight of forty thousand martyrs, or glamorize the men confronting tanks in tracksuits and burden them with more than they can handle. Freedom fighters understand that their opponent is Goliath, that the odds are stacked against them, that they do not have an option but to pick up the stone. But this is a new dawn. Through close inspection — watching state media, listening to the shifting global narrative, witnessing the renaissance of radical movements, even reading the inscriptions in random airport bathrooms — one discovers that this is a new dawn. Zionism may remain a formidable opponent, but it is also an aging, trembling beast, blinded by its own significance, unpredictable as it may be. Sometimes it pounces on you and pierces its fangs in your flesh. Sometimes it is but a paper tiger.

And it is this discovery that not only shatters the myth of colonial invincibility, but it reminds us that liberation is attainable, the future is within reach. Amid the unrelenting airstrikes and the havoc of demolished cities, it might seem frivolous to fixate on the blossoming jasmine. But we owe it ourselves to look at everything, to look for everything. To see the picture with all of its details. As deadly and treacherous and unrelenting as it is, the Nakba will not last forever. The world is changing because it must. If seeds can germinate in the inferno, so can revolution. On the phone, my mother tells me, rain is coming and God is almighty. ~ Mohammed El-Kurd

The world is changing because it must.

2024: The Year the United States Threw in the Towel

I will dare to make a prediction: The United States has reached the end of its rope: It will (if it hasn't already done so, surreptitiously) throw in the towel. I'm not saying that it will perform some sort of public "mea culpa" and accept that its "unipolar moment" is finally dead and buried. No! By no means. It will instead cling to its pretense of being the world's "indispensable nation" for some indeterminate period of time into the future. For how long? I don't know, but it is likely to be years, if not decades. History is often written in retrospect. Whenever the USA finally admits to its fate (sometime in the near or distant future), the historians and analysts of the epoch will likely ask (or speculate) when it arrived at that conclusion. When was it forced to throw in the towel? It is my firm belief that the consensus will eventually coalesce around the year 2024 (or the transition from 2023 to 2024). The Roaring Twenties? What do you think?😎

The History and Origins of Curry

The entire video is worth watching, but I like the part which begins at 3:30.

The World should be Ashamed

Blinne Ni Ghralaigh KC described the situation as a crisis or humanity, and the embodiment of hell. Violence, death, disease, no school, starvation - Gaza is becoming uninhabitable. For children there is nothing but the sound of war, day in, day out. Reports of torture and abuse of bodies more common. 4 out 5 people in the world in catastrophic hunger are in Gaza. The daily stats are clear proof: 247 deaths (including 48 mothers and 117 children, 3 medics, a UN worker, a journalist) Some are wounded over and over. Each day 3,900 homes destroyed, ambulances and hospitals are targeted. Bombs are dropped on places people have been told to evacuate to. There’s a new acronym – WCNSF – which stands for “Wounded Child, No Surviving Family”. There is imminent and irrevocable evidence of urgency. UN aid remains unimplemented. Humanitarian ceasefire calls have been ignored. Since the case was filed, over a thousand have been killed. Over 85% repeatedly forced to move, into shrinking slivers of land. This is a population that was already vulnerable after 16 years of blockade. Many dying from preventable problems. Children in particular subjected to mental torture, much of which is irreparable.

Many people have no access to food, water, medicine or safe shelter. A trapped population that has nowhere safe to go. In addition services are denied or restricted, even though even the US asked for it to be allowed.

Israel denies it is responsible for the crisis. 500 aid trucks were necessary daily before 7 October. Promises of future aid therefore hold little sway. UN SG has stressed that number of trucks doesn’t matter, because aid cannot be delivered effectively. Everyone and everything remains at imminent risk if irreparable prejudice.

The international community continues to fail the Palestinian people. The horror being live streamed, as victims broadcast their own destruction in real time. This has repercussions for generations to come. “The world should be ashamed”. Palestinian pastor on Xmas Day “this is a genocide, we will arise…but this is by far the biggest blow we have received”. South Africa is doing what it can, standing up to be counted.

Two videos to end the year...

If you do nothing more before the end of the year, do watch these two videos:




Oh!, ... and GO HOUTHIS!

Palestinian Resistance Confrontation with IOF in Gaza

From Al-Manar:

Abu Obeida, the military spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, expressed his satisfaction with their performance and unity, stressing that thousands of fighters were awaiting their turn on the battlefield. He highlighted the successful targeting of the occupation forces in both old and new incursion axes. Notably, the Qassam Brigades managed to destroy more than 180 military vehicles in prominent areas like Shuja’iya, Zeitoun, Sheikh Radwan, Jabalia camp, Beit Lahiya, Deir al-Balah, and Khan Yunis. These attacks included the use of Yasin shells, canisters, guerrilla tactics, ambushes, machine guns, booby-trapped tunnels, entrapment maneuvers, and sniping operations.

The occupation forces have relatively high losses, much higher than they admit.

Even Israel's allies aren't very sanguine.

QIZHA - Nigella Seeds Pie

An aspiration of mine...

Succinct, and to the Point!

With perhaps the exception of his endorsement of Robert Kennedy Jr., I agree with much of this:



It's stubbornness, however, will get the best of the United States. The perfect example is its attempt to pull a "Tonya Harding" on the Chinese:

Israel-Gaza - Where do things stand?

Despite its errors (see the article's comments section for itemized clarifications and corrections), I think the following does a fairly good job:

Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and Racialism

P.S. A reminder.

Two Crucial Analyses

In the following interview with Michael Brenner, the key take-away is his explication of a Western behavioral puzzle, a veritable "collective psychopathology" (commencing at 22:55):

Rabbi Feldman

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE from Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE via United Nations Resolutions pertaining to Israel throughout the years.

We study history for a reason

Dedicated to Turdeau and Zelenskiy:

Zoo time at Operation Circe {Asia Times}

Must read:

In classic Greek mythology, Circe was a sorceress who turned men into beasts, a neat trick if you are prepping your country for conflict. Not only are America’s opponents being dehumanized as fierce, bloodthirsty creatures, but to entertain the new barbarism, the population of the world’s most advanced nation is being dragged to new depths by state magicians and their little helpers on bloated budgets who know how to flip everyone’s amygdala en masse.

The more you hate, the less you think.

BRICS+ Onward Ever, Backward NEVER

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:


Find the above video HERE

The world has changed economically and geopolitically, and who better to provide the background than Pepe Escobar:



More on the BRICS Summit here:



...And here:



Key speeches at the BRICS Business Forum:



While undeniably positive overall, it is important to temper expectations:

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.

May you live in interesting times. Yes indeed we are!

The Fascist International

Why would the United States want to cover up the fact that following the Second World War, American intelligence immediately set about the task of rehabilitating the world’s fascists to fight the new war on Communism? (rhetorical question) Didn't the U.S. government at least suspect that such support would come back to bite it on the butt?

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.

Information versus Misinformation in the Battle for Multipolarism

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 Maidan coup. 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.