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Ukrainian soldiers walk nonchalantly in Bakhmut city, a strategic hub, amidst Russia’s attacks, Donetsk, Oct. 2, 2022The inconclusive outcome of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s phone call with Ukraine President Vladymyr Zelensky on Wednesday could have been easily foretold. The initiative simply didn’t make sense.
Jonathan Cook
The sabotage of the two Nord Stream pipelines leaves Europeans certain to be much poorer and colder this winter, and was an act of international vandalism on an almost unimaginable scale. The attacks severed Russian gas supplies to Europe and caused the release of enormous quantities of methane gas, the prime offender in global warming.
León Ferrari (Argentina), Untitled (Sermon of the Blood), 1962.Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Since 1947, the Doomsday Clock has measured the likelihood of a human-made catastrophe, namely to warn the world against the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who attend to this clock, originally set the device at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight being, essentially, the end of the world. The farthest that the clock has been from midnight was in 1991, when it was set at 17 minutes from midnight. The closest to midnight that the clock has been is now. Since 2020, the clock has sat at ‘doom’s doorstep’ – 100 seconds from midnight. The motivation for this alarming setting was the unilateral withdrawal by the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019. This is the ‘most dangerous situation that humanity has faced’, said former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.
AbM members carry the coffin of slain leader Nokuthula Mabaso. Photo: Siya Mbhele
Carl von ClausewitzWith the sole possible exception of the great Sun Tzu and his “Art of War”, no military theorist has had such an enduring philosophical impact as the Prussian General Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz. A participant in the Napoleonic Wars, Clausewitz in his later years dedicated himself to the work that would become his iconic achievement – a dense tome titled simply “Vom Kriege” – On War. The book is a meditation on both military strategy and the socio-political phenomenon of war, which is heavily laced with philosophical rumination. Though On War has had an enduring and indelible impact on the study of military arts, the book itself is at times a rather difficult thing to read – a fact that stems from the great tragedy that Clausewitz was never actually able to finish it. He died in 1831 at the age of only 51 with his manuscript in an unedited disorder; and it fell upon his wife to attempt to organize and publish his papers.
Russian Duma ratified the accession of four Ukrainian territories into the Federation, Moscow, October 3, 2022[This is an abridged version of my column featured by The Cradle, published from Beirut, which can be seen here.]
Russian Duma’s ratification of the annexation of four regions of Ukraine (Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions) and the adoption of the relevant laws thereof creates a new dynamic and will take time to create a new balance of forces on the ground.
Congressional Black Caucus Continues Its Downward Spiral
Margaret Kimberley
The Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference returned with corporate sponsorships and obedience to the democratic party oligarchy. Joe Biden received a warm welcome from a group which lives off a now undeserved reputation.
ESSAY: A Case of Mistaken Identity: Antihaitianismo in Dominican Culture, Ernesto Sagás, 1993
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
On the history and origins of anti-Haitian sentiment in the Dominican Republic.
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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