Russia’s President Putin isn’t an irrational actor; he and his administration are suffering from a deficiency of democracy, and that’s why he’s making terrible decisions. Seriously. Follow me on this. Continue reading
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The war in Ukraine is sending Russia-China relations in new directions
While the Ukraine crisis may put some strain on the Chinese-Russian relationship, it has also spurred deeper collaboration between them. Based on a shared desire to undermine the United States’ global order, their constructive partnership will not only endure the blowback from the Ukrainian invasion but is likely to expand.
With the world’s attention focused on Ukraine in the weeks since Russia began its invasion of the country on February 24, there has been fervent debate among foreign policy experts on how Russia’s relations with the West will be affected. Officials in Moscow and Western capitals have traded barbs at each other in the media, while sanctions and counter-sanctions have already begun to bite. Continue reading
Why the U.S. Postal Service offers a great model for other government services
Progressives, take note: a newly passed bipartisan reform bill strengthens the U.S. Postal Service—a federal agency that serves as a hopeful model for government-run services in other arenas.
In case you missed it—because it got so little news attention—there’s a bit of good news regarding the United States Postal Service (USPS). In what was a very rare moment of bipartisan unity on a domestic issue, the U.S. Senate on March 8 passed the Postal Service Reform Act with a robust vote of 79 to 19. The House of Representatives passed the same bill in February with similarly high levels of support from both parties in a 342-92 vote. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law. Continue reading
Commercial defrauding of Uncle Sam—biggest booming business
The biggest business in America is stealing and defrauding the federal government, Uncle Sam and you the taxpayers. In terms of sheer stolen dollars, the total amount is greater than the annual sales of Amazon and Walmart over the past two years. Continue reading
Our military budget is more lopsided than ever
Spending 12 times as much on our military as Russia didn’t prevent a war in Europe. It just deprived us of resources at home.
Congress recently announced a bipartisan budget deal to fund the federal government through 2022. It’s a lopsided budget if there ever was one. Continue reading
Donald Trump’s fourth link to the Supreme Court: Ginni Thomas
WASHINGTON—During his four years in the Oval Office, Donald Trump catered to his right-wing supporters and used the Federalist Society, a right-wing judicial advocacy group, to name three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court—Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. They cemented the rightist majority on the nation’s highest bench. Continue reading
Weathering the global storm: Why neutrality is not an option for Palestinians
A new global geopolitical game is in formation, and the Middle East, as is often the case, will be directly impacted by it in terms of possible new alliances and resulting power paradigms. While it is too early to fully appreciate the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the region, it is obvious that some countries are placed in relatively comfortable positions in terms of leveraging their strong economies, strategic location and political influence. Others, especially non-state actors, like the Palestinians, are in an unenviable position. Continue reading
How excessive CEO pay undermines enterprise effectiveness and efficiency in the 21st century
Enterprises that tolerate huge pay gaps “succeed” not by empowering employees, but by building and wielding monopoly power.
Our most effective and efficient enterprises today understand, as University of Southern California Center for Effective organizations director Edward Lawler puts it, that all employees, not just the top brass, “must add significant value” to how their enterprises operate. Old-style “command-and-control” management techniques make no sense in Information Age marketplaces that regularly reward enterprises that customize products and services to what customers want. Continue reading
Beware the Ides of March… Russia defeated and Putin assassinated?
By the end of this month, as the Western media messaging goes, Russia will be defeated by the NATO-backed Ukrainian rag-tag of neo-Nazi brigades.
Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine takes war to a new level of information warfare. Over the past three weeks, Western mainstream media has unleashed a tsunami of false information and distortion that has swept many people off their feet in disarray. Continue reading
Central Asia struggles with the consequences of Russia’s war
During the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Antalya, Turkey, which took place from March 11 to March 13, 2022, the Kyrgyz Republic’s Foreign Minister Ruslan Kazakbaev told Helga Maria Schmid, the secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), that his country would be happy to host Russian-Ukrainian talks and serve as the “mediator for re-establishment of peace and mutual understanding” between the two countries. Continue reading
Cracking down on Russian oligarchs means cracking down on U.S. tax havens
While other EU countries have been increasing transparency and cracking down on kleptocratic capital, the U.S. is a laggard.
As part of sanctions against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States, United Kingdom, and other European Union nations are cracking down on Russian oligarchs, freezing assets and tracking the yachts, private jets, and luxury real estate holdings of oligarchs. Continue reading
As ‘la Françafrique’ comes to an end, Russia is ready to replace France in West Africa
Finally, France will be leaving Mali, nearly a decade after the original military intervention in 2013. The repercussions of this decision will hardly be confined to this West African nation, but will likely spread to the entirety of the Sahel Region; in fact, the whole of Africa. Continue reading
How U.S. has empowered and armed neo-Nazis in Ukraine
Russian President Putin has claimed that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine to “denazify” its government, while Western officials, such as former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, have called this pure propaganda, insisting, “There are no Nazis in Ukraine.” Continue reading
Cutting through the fog masking ‘a new page in the art of war’
The non-government in Kiev is simply not allowed by the Empire to negotiate anything. Continue reading
Why does everything the GOP touches cause poverty, disease & death?
Senator Marco Rubio said he wouldn’t attend the State of the Union address because it required a Covid test and he was too busy to swab his nose. Rubio’s bizarre behavior is right in line with the GOP’s embrace of poverty, disease, and death. Continue reading
Ukraine: A conflict soaked in contradictions and new patterns in war and media
Surprise and horror have defined the reaction to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. That’s likely because although the intervention has followed the contours of a modern land war, it has also marked a break with the past in a number of ways. The world has become used to military interventions by the United States. This is, however, not a U.S. intervention. That in itself is a surprise—one that has befuddled reporters and pundits alike. Continue reading
The war between Russia and Ukraine has been brewing since 1991
The tragic and illegal war of aggression launched by Russia (pop. 146 million) against Ukraine (pop. 44 million), its neighbor, on Thursday, February 24, 2022, has raised much emotion and many reactions in the West, and for good reasons. Continue reading
How the U.S. started a cold war with Russia and left Ukraine to fight it
The defenders of Ukraine are bravely resisting Russian aggression, shaming the rest of the world and the UN Security Council for its failure to protect them. It is an encouraging sign that the Russians and Ukrainians are holding talks in Belarus that may lead to a ceasefire. All efforts must be made to bring an end to this war before the Russian war machine kills thousands more of Ukraine’s defenders and civilians, and forces hundreds of thousands more to flee. Continue reading
Russia and Ukraine: Know and understand US objectives
Standard media reportage of recent events has become so dogmatic and simplistic, there is no longer even a vague distinction between journalism and propaganda. Dissent and attempts to contextualize such events are treated as seditious inhumanity, ignorance of history, and even foreign agency or espionage as one has experienced. Therefore, in the few short paragraphs ahead, I will attempt to “shed light”, as it were, as an observer and critic of US foreign policy, on how standard narratives and media fare of late have been grotesquely disingenuous.
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After race history, the far-right is coming after World War II history
The Trump-led Republican Party has used its opposition to teaching the actual racial history of the United States in public schools to capture political power in Virginia and school boards across the nation. Using as a weapon the convenient but erroneous label of “critical race theory,” a niche college post-graduate level course not taught in any public school, the far-right is not stopping at banning outright or altering the teaching of European genocide of Native Americans; the Underground Railroad Emancipation, post-Civil War Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation laws, and the modern civil rights movement; and the era of McCarthyism. The right is also targeting the history of World War II and the almost universally-accepted justification for going to war against Nazi Germany. What the far-right is accomplishing with increased success is historical negationism, denialism, falsification, and revisionism. Legitimate educational institutions find themselves, quite needlessly, on the defensive. That has to change and fast. The right is not entitled to alter the historical record for its own racist, religious, and fascist purposes. Neither does the right possess license to promulgate nonsensical and easily debunked “alternate facts,” as Trump White House official Kellyanne Conway once put it to an astonished public. Continue reading
Why the Freedom Convoy is more American than Canadian
Conservatives in the United States have fallen in love with the fringe protests led by Canadian truckers. It is a cause that unites the libertarian and extremist wings of the GOP and offers a new front in the culture wars to mobilize right-wing forces.
Canadians have a reputation for being polite, nice people. But the high-profile weeks-long civil disobedience actions by some Canadian truckers that began in late January in the capital city of Ottawa has undermined this reputation. Truckers and their allies caused traffic snarls within the city and wreaked havoc along the international supply chains crossing the United States-Canada border. Continue reading
Why is China fanning the flames of ethnic politics in the Balkans?
The fragile geopolitical nature of the Balkans has allowed Russia to consistently undermine Western integration attempts in the region. While foreign interference is nothing new in Europe’s underbelly, it has historically been limited to regional powers and the U.S. But China’s recent collaboration with Russia in supporting ethnic separatism in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) reveals that Beijing is happy to challenge the West and to highlight EU and NATO vulnerabilities within Europe. If Western pressure over China’s policies in Xinjiang and Taiwan increases, China’s enhanced coordination with Russia will further erode the West’s delicate balancing act in the Balkans. Continue reading
Western democracies have mutated into propagandists for war and conflict
Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened. Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the U.S. and Britain. Continue reading
The U.S. needs Cold War but the real enemy is within
The U.S. has a date with destiny as it faces up to its own inherent failings and its very real enemy within— the national security state.
Georgy Arbatov, the witty Soviet diplomat, remarked for an American audience at the end of the Cold War: “We are going to do a terrible thing to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy.” His observation at the time seemed to be an oxymoron. Continue reading
What is going to happen in Ukraine?
Every day brings new noise and fury in the crisis over Ukraine, mostly from Washington. But what is really likely to happen? Continue reading
The Western allied nations bully the world while warning of threats from China and Russia
On January 21, 2022, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach attended a talk in New Delhi, India, organized by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. Schönbach was speaking as the chief of Germany’s navy during his visit to the institute. “What he really wants is respect,” Schönbach said, referring to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. “And my god, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost.” Furthermore, Schönbach said that in his opinion, “It is easy to even give him the respect he really demands and probably also deserves.” Continue reading
On the eve of another war: familiar bluster and false signals
A European dictator was expected to launch a full-scale military assault on his neighbor. The media was all over the map in speculating whether war was imminent or not. Peace feelers by diplomats and heads of state and government abounded, “don’t worry, he’s bluffing,” many stated to an anxious and nervous public. Continue reading
American overlord demands Europe sign suicide note
The infernal danger is that Washington and London are pushing Europe and the world towards the abyss of a nuclear with Russia.
The Anglo-Americans are running a modern-day reworking of Operation Overlord, the June 1944 military invasion plan billed to liberate Western Europe from Nazi Germany. This time around, the billed objective is to “liberate” the European Union from its “tyrannical” dependency on Russian natural gas. Continue reading
So Biden, Sullivan, Stoltenberg, UK PM & defense officials, presstitutes, where is the “Russian invasion”?
So Biden, where is the “imminent Russian Invasion of Ukraine?” Where, Jake Sullivan, is the “major military action that could begin any day now?” Where UK government, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, NY Times, Bloomberg, Washington Post, BBC, and the rest of the presstitutes are the Russian hordes that are supposed to be overrunning Ukraine?” Continue reading
Why Republicans now love the Post Office
The Republicans are about to win a major battle in their war on electric vehicles, this time with the second largest vehicle fleet in America owned by the US Postal Service. It’s an outrageous story that most Americans don’t know a thing about. Continue reading
Fossil fuel companies and their mouthpieces offer net-zero logic on climate change
Oil and gas CEOs were too chicken to show up to a recent congressional hearing—perhaps fearing that their climate pledges will be revealed as nothing more than slick PR.
Everywhere around us there is evidence of climate change, from the increase in winter storms such as New England’s late January blizzard, to California’s recent record-breaking winter heat wave. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP, whose products directly fuel global warming, have done little to counter the disastrous trend. While they have made promises that sound constructive on the surface, a cursory examination reveals them to be hollow. Perhaps worried about their deception being exposed, the executives and board members of these fossil fuel companies snubbed members of Congress at a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on February 8, 2022. Continue reading
Cubans will not forget U.S. treachery
Is the U.S. in a position to maintain the embargo upon the pretext of bringing democracy to Cuba with its record in destabilising secure states, even those upholding democracy?
Economic sanctions against Cuba were discussed in April 1960 by the U.S. government. If the U.S. found it impossible to counter the Cuban Revolution, a memorandum with the subject “The Decline and Fall of Castro” stated, economic hardships should be imposed on the island. “If such a policy as adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” Continue reading
