June 2023

June 26, 2023 New York Times About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Originally published in The New York Times on Dec. 26, 1977 Not long after John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard economist, arrived in India in 1961 to take up his new post as American Ambassador, he became aware of a curious political journal called Quest that was floating around the Asian subcontinent. The following oracle is bused on reporting by John M. Crewdson and Joseph B.Treaster. It was written by Mr. Crewdson. “It had a level of intellectual and political competence that was sub‐zero,”...

From Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, and farther afield, all eyes were on what looked like a march to Moscow. Was it a one-off or an ominous portent? Christina Sizova for RT June 27, 2023 Editor’s introduction Normally, we do not publish articles from dailies about current events. However, we make an exception because this particular event is significant in and of itself and also for an understanding of the NATO-Russia conflict that plays out so tragically in Ukraine. Furthermore, unless people in the West use a proxy server/VPN, they cannot access RT (formerly Russia Today)and see for themselves how this Russian flagship media covers the war and international affairs. The purpose, of course, is part of the media war – that NATO citizens are told not what Russia actually says but how so-called experts in the NATO countries interpret things – carefully selected anti-Russian and pro-NATO. Thus, they are grossly deceived...

Graffiti of swastika on a softball field dugout in Wellsville, N.Y., Nov. 9, 2016. Brian Quinn, Wellsville Daily Reporter One of the constant features of US society is, to put it crudely, that it is an enigmatic mixture of the worst and the best. Few who have followed this country from abroad over decades would dispute that the US has spearheaded a lot of essentially good developments, ideas and products that have benefited itself and the world. The other side of the US is that, over time, it has decayed into innumerable dimensions and types of domestic and global violence and become more destructive to the rest of the world and itself than it has ever been – and than any other country. The main historical catchwords are genocide on its native people, the slave trade, racism, socioeconomic inequality, discrimination in terms of justice, employment, incarceration, health care, housing, work...

Alex Lo & Daniel Bell June 24, 2023 “It’s quite clear from recent policies that the US aims to curb China’s economic development and encircle the country with military bases in unfriendly (from China’s viewpoint) countries. Such demonisation only reinforces repressive trends in China and benefits security-obsessed hardliners in China’s political system. That’s why “de-demonisation” can help those in China who favour a more open and humane social and political system. I have yet to meet a single academic, for example, who favours more rather than less censorship and “de-demonisation” can help to strengthen such forces”, says Daniel Bell in a recent interview with Alex Lo. Published at johnmenadue.com on May 11, 2023 On the Confucian Communist Comeback in Contemporary China Once denounced as a fossilised ideology holding back China’s development, an updated Confucianism may be a guide to its future, according to Daniel Bell of the University of Hong Kong in...

Caitlin A. Johnstone June 12, 2023 When most people in the English-speaking world hear the word “propaganda”, they tend to think of something that’s done by foreign nations who have governments that are so totalitarian they won’t even let people know what’s true or think for themselves. Others understand that propaganda is something that happens in their own nation, but think it only happens to other people in other political parties. If they think of themselves as left-leaning they see those to their right as propagandized by right wing media, and if they think of themselves as right-leaning they see those to their left as propagandized by left wing media. Originally published at Mronline, on May 28, 2023 A few understand that propaganda is administered in their own nation by their own media, and understand that it’s administered across partisan lines, but they think of it in terms of really egregious lies like weapons of...

For any given war, one can examine the months or years or decades during which one or both sides worked diligently to make it happen, and both sides conspicuously failed to develop peaceful alternatives. Even in the moment of greatest violence, one can consider the unarmed-resistance alternatives that are carefully kept out of consideration. But even if you can explain away all justification for every side of every particular war — yes, even that one, there remains the false claim that war is somehow simply part of “humanity.” If ants were to stop waging wars, nobody would bat an eye, but such a feat is deemed simply beyond the intelligence of homo sapiens. There is a problem for this nonsense. It is the problem of peaceful human societies. We know that many, if not most, hunter-gatherer groups of humans engaged for the vast bulk of human existence in nothing resembling...

Nancy Pelosi, then U.S. House speaker, center, gestures as she leaves parliament in Taipei on Aug. 3, 2022. © Reuters Kishore Mahbubani June 8, 2023 Outspoken Western leaders are putting region’s peace at risk A war over Taiwan would be disastrous for Asia. By contrast, it would have only a marginal impact on Europe. The total population of the 53 countries that make up the U.N.’s Asia and the Pacific Group comes to about 4.5 billion. By contrast, the total population of the 27 countries that make up the European Union comes to around 446 million, less than 10% as much. So whose voices are making the most noise about Taiwan? Originally published at NIKKEI ASIA on May 12, 2023 Asian leaders have generally had little to say about Taiwan, notwithstanding some recent statements made jointly with their U.S. counterparts. European leaders have been much more outspoken about the island. European Commission...

Ben Freeman, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft June 5, 2023 Executive Summary (excerpts) “Think tanks in the United States are a go–to resource for media outlets seeking expert opinions on pressing public policy issues. But think tanks often have entrenched stances; a growing body of research has shown that their funders can influence their analysis and commentary. This influence can include censorship — both self-censorship and more direct censoring of work unfavorable to a funder — and outright pay–for–research agreements with funders. The result is an environment where the interests of the most generous funders can dominate think tank policy debates. One such debate concerns the appropriate level of U.S. military involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine… The analysis offers a number of key findings.  First, of the 27 think tanks whose donors could be identified, 21 received funding from the defense sector (77 percent). Unfortunately, because donor disclosure...

“Long before Trump and “deep state” became an expression, I produced one ginormous investigation — Top Secret America — for the Washington Post and I wrote a nasty book — American Coup — about the creeping fascism of homeland security.” William M. Arkin June 5, 2023 (When I wrote this open letter in January 2019, decrying NBC and the news media’s singular focus on Trump and their subsequent cheerleading for the state of perpetual war, I didn’t think that much would change, and indeed it hasn’t. When the letter went viral (thanks to Glenn Greenwald), all the news media could talk about was my attack on the news media, missing the basic point that we’d built a system of subservience and even subordination to the war machine, one that the news media fed. I wrote: “NBC and much of the rest of the news media has somehow become a defender...

Andrey Kortunov June 5, 2023 A Quad summit meeting in Sydney scheduled for May 24 was abruptly cancelled. The US president had to pull out of his long-anticipated trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea. Instead, the heads of the four Quad member states got together on the margins of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima on May 20.  The main reason for the change of plans was the continuous struggle between the White House and Republicans on the Hill over the national debt ceiling. [This issue has now been solved by raising once again the debt ceiling – The editor]. This rather awkward last-minute cancellation of the Quad summit reflects a fundamental US problem – a growing imbalance between the US geopolitical ambitions and the fragility of the national financial foundation to serve these ambitions.  This article was originally published by Gobal Times on May 25, 2023 The Biden administration appears...

Waving goodbye? Not agreeing whether to wave at the world or not… Words. Words. Words. And words missing. The G7 countries’ share of the global GDP has fallen from about 70% in the 1960s, to 46% in 2019, to 31% in 2021 and is projected to fall to 28% in 2027. They make up less than 10% of the world’s people. According to the World Bank, between 2013 and 2021, all the G7 countries contributed 26% to world economic growth, and China 39%. I shall argue here that the G7s are in denial and need a reality check. The Hiroshima summit will, I predict, be seen in the future as a milestone of Western decline and militarism’s self-destructive role in it. These countries had agreed in advance on a statement of no less than 19 000 words, 40 pages. It contains all kinds of things and, thus, spreads thin with...