Zugzwang*
Strategic Culture Foundation (RSS)

Europe’s future looks bleak. It is now pressed by its own imposition of sanctions, and the resultant spike in commodity prices. The EU is lumbering around in a daze.

Western self-destruction – a puzzle defying any unique causal explanation – continues. The examples where policy is pursued in apparent indifference to anything resembling rigorous reflection, has become so extreme as to provoke a former British military chief (and former head of NATO forces in Afghanistan), Lord Richards, to huff that the relationship between strategy and any synchronisation of ends has become hopelessly broken in the West.

The West pursues a “let’s see how it goes” ‘strategy’, or in other words, no real strategy at all, Richards contends. Many would say that a cult of unrelenting, untethered, positive spin, has asphyxiated mainstream critical faculties. How is it that the West, awash with ‘think-tanks’, invariably gets it so wrong? Why is it that facile memes and illusions, posing as geo-politics, get little or no challenge? Compliance to official and mainstream narratives is all. It is baffling to observe this becoming routine, without apparent cognizance of the risks which this entails.

The key epicentre to today’s spiking geo-political instability is the state of the western economy: So complacent have the authorities been – that inflation would never ruffle the waters of the reserve-currency-based U.S. economy – that cyclical recession was assumed to have been ‘eradicated’; it would never sully the consumer (electoral) sphere again, thanks to a money printing ‘vaccine’; and anyway, ballooning debt ‘does not matter’.

This facile view assumed that ‘reserve status’ in, and of, itself eradicated inflation – whereas to the outside world, it was always the petrodollar system compelling the entire world to purchase dollars to finance their needs; it was the flood of cheap Chinese consumer goods; and it was the cheap energy sources made available to western industry by Russia and Gulf States, that kept inflation at bay.

Western government spending ‘shot the moon’ in the wake of 2008 crisis, and simply exploded during Covid lockdowns, and then – in an episode of impaired geo-strategic vision – those cheap energy and other vital resources underpinning economic productivity were heedlessly sanctioned, and even threatened with a ban.

Rose-tinted wearers of Energy Transition spectacles simply refused to acknowledge that an EROI (energy return on energy invested – to extract that given energy) of greater than a multiple of 7 is required for modern society to function.

We now observe the consequences: Rampant inflation, and the West scrambling around the world looking for cheap alternatives that won’t ‘break the bank’. Alas, they are scant. What is the geo-political implication? In a word, extreme systemic fragility. This has already wholly upended U.S. domestic politics. Yet, neither interest rate hikes, nor demand destruction (by crashing asset values) will cure structural inflation. Western economists remain obsessed with monetary effects on demand, at the expense of acknowledging the consequences of taking a trade-war hammer to a complex network system.

The social pain will be immense. Already many Americans are having to buy their food on near maxed-out credit cards, and this will only worsen. Yet the dilemma is deeper. The ‘Anglo’ economic model of Adam Smith and Maynard Keynes – the system of debt-fuelled consumption, over-lay...

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 MI5’s Leaked Flowcharts Expose NATO’s War on British Democrats
Strategic Culture Foundation (RSS)

The Grayzone has done the British state some service by exposing MI5’s war of terror against its democratic proponents, Declan Hayes writes.

Their two most recent such contributions are leaking a series of flow charts showing who exactly are in MI5’s cross hairs. The leaked Mason flowchart shows how BBC journalist Paul Mason and Chatham House extremist Amil Khan targeted not only prominent peace activists but also entire minority communities for harassment, deplatforming and frivolous lawsuits. The Priti Patel flowchart shows a sinister web of Green activists MI5 would prefer that Patel, Britain’s far right Home Secretary, neutralize as a master of urgency.

Although these two flowcharts are further evidence that all previous relevant articles on this website are true, factual and alarming, they paint a much darker and almost infinitely more sinister panorama of the British political landscape than anything previously explicitly expressed here or that Jimmy Dore, in his review of the Mason flowchart, might have imagined.

To see that, let’s look at the main actors in this MI5 side show before widening our vista. Paul Mason’s experience as a former music teacher apparently qualified him for top positions as business editors in some of England’s leading media outlets. As a former asset in Workers’ Power — an extremist Trotskyist off shoot of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, MI5 opened career paths as a political commentator for Mason on its national airwaves.

Mason is now the British Labour Party’s main conduit to the Ukrainian junta, where his role is to argue that, as Ukraine’s Azov Nazis are at the forefront of NATO’s fight for democracy, they must be supplied with ever more bundles of advanced weaponry to sell off on the Dark Web. The appearance of Jeremy Corbyn, whom Mason secretly helped expel from the Labour Party, George Galloway, who was expelled from the Labour Party for opposing NATO’s genocide campaign in Iraq, the (pro Irish) Connolly Association, anti war groups and personalities, the “Muslim Community”, the “Black Community” and very many more show that MI5 casts a wide and somewhat indiscriminate net.

Although Mason targeting Britain’s entire Irish, Black and Muslim communities could be dismissed as the work of a sycophantic MI5 crank, the involvement of the very sinister Amil Khan shows that is far from the full story. As well as conspiring together to take down The Grayzone and joking about how MI5 took down their earlier targets, they discuss how Chloe Hadjimatheou, the disgraced British intelligence-linked BBC journalist we previously met along with Bellingcat, their low level “intel service input by proxy,” could be utilized against the Grayzone’s citizen journalists.

As Khan was centrally involved in promoting MI5’s White Helmets murder gang, his proposal to form an “Internation...

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China planning to bring Mars sample to Earth before NASA, ESA joint mission
WION - world News Releases (RSS)

According to reports, China intends to return Mars samples to Earth in 2031, two years ahead of NASA and European Space Agency's joint project.

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RT News (Telegram)

Roy Jones Jr Offers to Fight Klitschko in Russia-Ukraine Row

Roy Jones Jr has hit back at fellow boxing Hall of Famer Wladimir Klitschko after the Ukrainian questioned the American's "moral compass" due to him taking Russian citizenship in 2015.

Jones went on to say that if he were a "president, senator, or politician", then he would be qualified to argue with Klitschko – whose brother Vitali is the mayor of Kiev in addition to an ex-heavyweight champion himself – on the topic.

"If you think you can whoop me, that's a whole different thing. I do still box for a living," Jones pointed out.

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News | Today's latest from Al Jazeera (RSS)

Trump ally’s Sen­ate cam­paign video blocked on so­cial me­dia
Face­book says the ad vi­o­lates its poli­cies on vi­o­lence and in­cite­ment while Twit­ter blocked the video from be­ing shared.
Published On 20 Jun 2022

Quillette
Quillette Podcast #191: Richard Dawkins on the Wonders of Flight

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Soldiers of fortune, not subject to Geneva Convention, says Russia on Americans captured in Ukraine
WION - world News Releases (RSS)

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the two Americans captured in Ukraine while fighting against Russian forces had committed crimes.

mailto:wionnewsweb@gmail.com

Russian Nobel laureate Muratov sells medal for whopping price to aid Ukraine children
WION - world News Releases (RSS)

Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov who had decided to auction his Nobel Prize to help Ukrainian children successfully sold the gold medal for $103.5

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 RT News (Telegram)

Caravan of Dreams / 2019

In June 2022, some 6,000 migrants set off from Mexico in one of the largest caravans bound for the United States. Over the last four years, migrant caravans have become a common phenomenon. Men, women and children from Central and South America trek hundreds of kilometres on foot across multiple borders. As a result, hundreds of thousands are caught at the doorstep of the US, but migrants remain undeterred and keep marching towards a safer life in the United States.

June 20 is World Refugee Day. Watch this documentary to learn why people are forced to leave their homes.

Follow: t.me/documentaryplanet

RT News (Telegram)

UK Set for Biggest Rail Strike in 30yrs

The mass industrial action is set to paralyze Britain’s rail network from Monday night as 40,000 RMT union members stage three 24hr walkouts that will see 1 in 5 trains run on strike days.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has refused to join talks claiming the dispute is between employees and their companies, but unions claim his department controls contracts and funding while rail operators have been told they can’t offer pay rises.

Shapps accused union leaders, who are protesting a salary freeze during rocketing inflation, of “gunning for a fight” that will “punish millions of people”.

British lawmakers passing the buck? Well, I never.

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Gript
Russian Spy Who Studied at Trinity Expelled from Internship at Hague Based ICC

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News | Today's latest from Al Jazeera (RSS)

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Live updates
Live updates,
Sit­u­a­tion in Severodonet­sk ‘just hell’, says Luhan­sk gov­er­nor
Ser­hiy Haidai de­scribes non-stop shelling in the city, say­ing ‘every­thing is en­gulfed in fire’.
Published On 21 Jun 2022