May 2023

Edward Curtin May 30, 2023 By the lake’s lapping shore above the town and the railroad tracks, my wife and I stopped and marveled, struck stone silent by two dazzling Baltimore Orioles, clawed together as they tumbled, wrestling in the green morning breeze above our heads. They perched upon a branch and sang a morning hymn, an ode to joy and the spring’s morning glory. Their black and orange throats vibrated amid the green quaking aspen’s leaves as the lake’s low lapping sounds lent counterpoint. They were sublime. Originally published at Off Guardian on May 14, 2023 I too felt a quake, a shiver down my spine as associations tumbled through my mind. Poems, songs, memories of other early morning walks in spring. Intoxication, elation, the horripilation that accompanies spring’s rising, the sexual excitement. Hope, and the loose feeling of being forever young. No solution to anything, just reverence for existence. Nothing changed, except a few years....

Read about Kristin in my article from March this year. Head over to her excellent YouTube Channel – and subscribe! – and then visit Countercurrents, which publishes all Christman’s articles as well as the texts she reads in her videos. Here is the latest – an 8-part critical/devastating analysis of the US National Defence Strategy 2022. We love Kristin’s passionate, unique and super-knowledgeable work for a better world and look forward to much synergy and cooperation with her in the years to come. We’re both struggling to prepare for the renaissance of peace that we believe will come when the US empire has declined further and we live in a more just, balanced and multipolar world – a humanity and peace-ruled international order…

By Lily Lynch May 29, 2023 The anti-war movement has fallen for a progressive circus In January 2018, Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg held an unprecedented press conference with Angelina Jolie. While InStyle reported that Jolie “was dressed in a black off-the-shoulder sheath dress, a matching capelet and classic pumps (also black)”, there was a deeper purpose to this meeting: sexual violence in war. The pair had just co-authored a piece for the Guardian entitled “Why NATO must defend women’s rights”. The timing was significant. At the height of the #MeToo movement, the most powerful military alliance in the world had become a feminist ally. “Ending gender-based violence is a vital issue of peace and security as well as of social justice,” they wrote. “NATO can be a leader in this effort.” Originally published at UnHerd on May 16, 2023 This was a new and progressive face for NATO, the same one it has...

TFF Associate Here’s a terrible “syllogism” from a wonderful person, Ray McGovern, longtime CIA employee, then longtime peace activist, and now year-long contender, that Russia had no choice but to attack Ukraine. “The Russians had other options to invading Ukraine.They attacked Ukraine in a ‘war of choice’; also threaten NATO.Ergo, the West must arm Ukraine to the teeth, risking wider war.” This is supposedly an explanation of the thinking of we believers that Russia had some choice other than to invade Ukraine. In reality, it illustrates a very sad and enormous distance between the thinking of people who once agreed that war was immoral, but who have now spent over a year utterly failing to persuade each other of anything. Of course the quote above is not a syllogism at all. This is a syllogism: A threat of war requires war.Russia is threatened with war.Russia requires war. (Or write the...

The citizen’s starter kit to understanding the new global information cartel Susan Schmidt, Andrew Lowenthal, Tom Wyatt, Techno Fog, and 4 others Originally published by Racket News on Substack on May 10, 2023 Introduction by Matt Taibbi On January 17, 1961, outgoing President and former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave one of the most consequential speeches in American history. Eisenhower for eight years had been a popular president, whose appeal drew upon a reputation as a person of great personal fortitude, who’d guided the United States to victory in an existential fight for survival in World War II. Nonetheless, as he prepared to vacate the Oval Office for handsome young John F. Kennedy, he warned the country it was now at the mercy of a power even he could not overcome.  Until World War II, America had no permanent arms manufacturing industry. Now it did, and this new...

Zhang Lihua May 18, 2023 Traditional Chinese values directly influence China’s foreign policy and create a novel approach to resolving conflicts and conducting international affairs. Originally published at Carnegie Endowment on November 21, 2013 China’s traditional cultural values The cultural values of a country influence its national psychology and identity. Citizens’ values and public opinions are conveyed to state leaders through the media and other information channels, both directly and indirectly influencing decisions on foreign policy. The traditional cultural values that influence the psyche of the Chinese people are harmony, benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, honesty, loyalty, and filial piety. Of these, the core value is harmony. Harmony means “proper and balanced coordination between things” and encompasses rationale, propriety, and compatibility. Rationale refers to acting according to objective laws and truths. Propriety indicates suitability and appropriateness. The value of harmony advocates “harmony but not uniformity.” Properly coordinating different things by bringing...

From: Une artiste confronte les différences entre l’Orient et l’Occident Alex Lo May 12, 2023 “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,/ Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;/ But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,/ When two strong men stand face to face though they come from the ends of the earth!” – The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling When I was in university and the Asian tiger economies were just starting to roar in the 1980s, political leaders such as Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad started promoting what they called “Asian values”, that is beliefs, practices and norms that they claimed, underpinned the region’s success. They were mercilessly hounded. Western critics said there were no such things as Asian values, and Lee and Mahathir were just trying to justify...

Hein Berdinesen May 10, 2023 A fundamental thesis in Hans Jonas’ The Imperative of Responsibility – In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (1984) is that the golden promises of modern technology have turned into a threat, and that technology is inseparably linked with the threat. The thesis is a reminiscence of Heidegger’s diagnosis of the modern in «The Question Concerning Technology» (1977): The «Enframing» (Gestell) is a way to uncover the world where not only nature but also human beings are revealed as part of a «standing reserve» (Bestand). Through technique and technology, nature is just a raw material for manipulation. In this technological «Enframing» of the world, human beings sees everything as orderable, as part of a standing-reserve. Even man is seen as a part of a standing-reserve. This kind of uncovering the world is not in itself a threat amongst other threats, but the threat. In light of the...

We believe that public education about China is of great importance, not the least given the fact that so much of what the Western mainstream media focus on China is negative, condescending or otherwise unbalanced – some even pure propaganda, as we have shown in the TFF Smokescreen Report. We also believe that it is wrong to try to understand China – which is so very different in most ways from the West – by applying only Western concepts and values. It’s any concerned academic’s duty also to try to understand China on its own premises, its culture, history and ways of thinking. Here is a video – and there are many like it – that explains to you in just 7 minutes how China’s political system works. It also explains why China is neither a ‘dictatorship’ nor a Western-style democracy – how it is a completely different type of...

Source: World Atlas. Maps of Russia Ivan Timofeev May 9, 2023 Long before relations between Russia and the West spiralled into a comprehensive political crisis, officials and experts here were enthusiastically voicing ideas about developing ties with the rest of the world. At the administrative level, such a course began to take shape as early as the 1990s, starting from the views of former Foreign Minister Evgeny Primakov. Subsequently, it also received practical development within the framework of a multi-vector foreign policy. Originally published by RT on May 4, 2023 The gradual growth of contradictions with the West accelerated the formation of ‘pivot to the East’ ideas, although their implementation was slow. It was limited by objective infrastructural and economic conditions, as well as the absence of a direct and painful incentive for such a ‘turn’. However, the current crisis in relations between Russia and the West, for all its...

This whole affair – this sad weaponisation of law in favour of the exceptionalist Western exceptional war criminals – can be debunked in about 4 minutes. See how below! That did not influence thousands of Western mainstream journalists, editors and what they call experts from talking at length about how important it would be to arrest President Putin. Did you ever hear the same people argue for just one in the series of Western lawbreakers/assumed war criminals? As is clearly pointed out by The South China Morning Post’s chief news editor, Yonden Lhatoo, in his intro, this is not a defence of Russia’s invasion. It’s a matter of exposing the West’s double standards. I find this as brilliant as exhaustive on the issue. I celebrate that it has been seen by so many. You can’t fool all the people all of the time… Jan Oberg, editor

A proxy war in Ukraine is not enough for Jens Stoltenberg, who clearly thinks his mandate extends to containing China in its own backyard Alex Lo May 8, 2023 Jens Stoltenberg is wasted on being merely the Nato chief. Over Russia, China and much else, he almost always sounds more extreme than your average Pentagon general and the US defence secretary, who appear rational and restrained by comparison. The Norwegian career politician and former prime minister beats the drums of war louder than many Washington hawks. He would make a perfect US secretary of defence, if not the president. Too bad the United States constitution bars non-natives from being the commander-in-chief, but nothing stops him from being the war secretary; just make him a citizen. The man is more patriotic than most Americans and reads off Washington’s warmongering scripts more faithfully than any European leader, while adding more propaganda niceties...