The damaging revelations about the Labour Party in the recent four-part Al Jazeera series, ‘The Labour Files’, and the almost totalitarian silence in response by British news media, should ram home the illusory nature of ‘democracy’ in the UK.
‘Western’ media continue to denazify Ukraine by pretending that the Nazi formations in that country, which they had long decried, are now a harmless collection of celebrities.
One could follow those changes along various pieces in the New York Times:
By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and first posted at PressTV
There’s no question that future unbiased historians will rank Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address on the Return of the Baby Bears – Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia – on September 30 as a landmark inflection point of the Raging Twenties.
Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Western media have tried to suggest that the Nord Stream pipeline incident was the result of a Russian sabotage operation, but this narrative does not seem to convince even Western experts. Recently, a former Pentagon adviser stated that the US and UK appear to be responsible for the operation that led to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 explosions. The evident Western involvement in this crime should be reason for condemnation by international society.
Thierry Meyssan
While the international press treats the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines as a news item, we analyze it as an act of war against Germany and the European Union. Indeed, the three gas supply routes to Western Europe have been cut off simultaneously, while at the same time a new gas pipeline has been opened to Poland.
What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
— Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?”, The National Interest, No.16 (Summer 1989)
Hmmm… so much for predictions.
The Russians have surely put the cat amongst the pigeons and put paid to “the end of history” nonsense, big time! All our traditional yardsticks, the way we evaluate events and ideas in this post-Soviet space, have we to jettison them all because of Russia’s ‘Special Military Operation’ (SMO) in the Ukraine? Even the much-vaunted contest between left and right, a contest all of us have grown up within, has been cut adrift from its moorings, but these alone don’t identify the key elements of the transition to a neoliberal planet, however brief its reign may be. But of course, it’s not just the Russian SMO, it’s the entire trajectory of events since the US’s regime change operation that overthrew the Soviet Union in 1989, that have been leading up to this denouement. What is depressing, is that so few in the West recognise it for what it is, and of course this is intimately connected to what has happened to politics in the West. Or rather the disappearance of politics, which in its way, explains in part, why the left has been rendered impotent. If you like the SMO is a wakeup call as it signals a new epoch in the making for both left and right to chew on. So far however, the left has shown that it’s not up to the task.
From Vladimir Putin’s speech held at the signing ceremony of treaties on accession of Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions to Russia:
‘Well of Solutions’ or Problems: Why Reforming the UN is Critical
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/well-of-solutions-or-problems-why-reforming-the-un-is-critical/
Vladimir Putin at Together For Ever Concert , by Vladimir Putin
https://www.voltairenet.org/article218175.html
Only Adult Children Still Believe U.S. Propaganda
https://dissidentvoice.org/2022/10/only-adult-children-still-believe-u-s-propaganda/
Óscar Muñoz (Colombia), Línea del destino (‘Line of Destiny’), 2006.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Each year, in the last weeks of September, the world’s leaders gather in New York City to speak at the podium of the United Nations General Assembly. The speeches can usually be forecasted well in advance, either tired articulations of values that do not get acted upon or belligerent voices that threaten war in an institution built to prevent war.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) met Turkiye President Recep Erdogan at Samarkand, Uzbekistan, September 16, 2022A mild flutter ensued after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s recent meeting with his Turkiye counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York on September 21 when it came to be known that Cyprus figured in their discussion. Jaishankar highlighted it in a tweet.
The UK government’s economic policies under new PM Liz Truss have caused a stir among, not only leftists, but also among mainstream economists. The new government says the solution to the stagnation and failure of British capitalist production is to cut taxation on the rich and on big business. The extra income flowing to them will then be available to boost investment and spending that can deliver economic growth.
On Monday 26 September, the IRR was delighted to host a panel event at this year’s The World Transformed festival in Liverpool. ‘IRR50: New circuits of anti-racism’ explored the last half-century of British anti-racism, and how that can inform the struggles of today. Whilst Liz Fekete highlighted how the growth of copwatch and anti-raids groups echoed the monitoring groups of the 1980s, Sophia Siddiqui stressed the importance of connecting anti-racism to feminism and how all of our struggles are interconnected. We were also joined by Surviving Society’s Chantelle Lewis who explained how podcasting continued a tradition of accessible knowledge production outside the academy, and Azfar Shafi, whose co-authored book Race to the Bottom: Reclaiming Antiracism makes urgent calls to learn from our history in order to forge a new path towards stronger, coherent and relevant anti-racist praxis.
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It should now be quite clear to any reasonable person that the Biden administration is hell-bent on destroying Russia and will risk nuclear war in doing so. It has already started World War III with its use of Ukraine to light the final match. The problem is that reasonable people are in very short supply, and, as Ray McGovern recently wrote in “Brainwashed for War with Russia, the Biden administration and their media lackeys
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michael roberts
“If there was no intervention today, gilt yields could have gone up to 7-8 per cent from 4.5 per cent this morning and in that situation around 90 per cent of UK pension funds would have run out of collateral… They would have been wiped out.” So says a UK bond trader yesterday.
A liquidity crisis erupted in British bond markets after the announcement by the new right-wing Conservative government that it would spend up to £60bn to maintain and energy price cap for householders for up to two years, subsidise business energy costs AND also cut corporate and income taxes. The total hit from this largesse (mainly to the rich) to the UK public debt level over the next few years has been estimated at over £400bn or nearly 20% of GDP. With UK public debt already at 100% of GDP, that sounded the death knell for the UK bond prices. Yields (interest rate) surged.
Last February, Emily Maitlis left her role as presenter of the BBC’s Newsnight programme to join rival media group Global. In a recent speech, Maitlis made a surprising reference to Theresa May’s former communications director Sir Robbie Gibb:
‘Put this in the context of the BBC board, where another active agent of the Conservative Party – former Downing Street spin doctor and former adviser to BBC rival GB News – now sits, acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality.’
“You should know, by and large, we haven’t even started anything yet in earnest.”I have been attempting for several days to collect my thoughts on the Russo-Ukrainian War and condense them into another analysis piece, but my efforts were consistently frustrated by the war’s stubborn refusal to sit still. After a slow, attritional grind for much of the summer, events have begun to accelerate, calling to mind a famous quip from Vladimir Lenin: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
Interview I did on RT yesterday, after observing the DPR referendum (from September 23-27) on whether to join Russia. During that time, I visited areas where voting was occurring in homes/apartments to lessen the opportunity for Ukraine to shell large crowds. Wherever I went–central Donetsk, hard-hit northern & western Donetsk, hard-hit Gorlovka, Mariupol, I saw relaxed people keen to vote (as opposed to Western BS narrative about guns to their heads).
I have a lot of footage from these days which I am nearly done subtitling (I do it manually and of course can’t do so when I’m out on the streets, which I have been, so it’s taking time) and will share here soon.
The three leaks that were discovered on Monday at the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines connecting Russia with Germany — one after another within hours of each other in the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark — were caused by blasts. Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde tweeted that the blasts “are consequences of detonations, probably caused by sabotage. We continue to collect information and do not rule out any cause, actor or motive.”
The Conflict Between The West And Russia In Ukraine Has Reached The Point Of No Return
https://orientalreview.org/2022/09/28/the-conflict-between-the-west-and-russia-in-ukraine-has-reached-the-point-of-no-return/
The Democratic Party, Now the Leading Party of War
https://dissidentvoice.org/2022/09/the-democratic-party-now-the-leading-party-of-war-2/
Disgruntlement with US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan Reaches Critical Levels
https://journal-neo.org/2022/09/28/disgruntlement-with-us-ambassador-to-georgia-kelly-degnan-reaches-critical-levels/
The New Dark Age 