🌀The sense that things are bad, and getting worse, is palpable. There is an undeniable eschatological tint to today’s zeitgeist. Spiralling geo-political factors all suggest extreme turbulence ahead.

Biden and the Democrats discover – to their surprise – that they are in a ‘bind’: Having thought to run in 2024 on ‘the Biden economic record’, Biden’s Team finds prospects dissolving in the face of accelerating events.

And Ukraine – which was to be precursor to the toppling of Russia per se – looks more likely to descend into débâcle. With defeat on two fronts (the financial ‘war’ and diplomatic) already established, and with the Ukrainian entity now incrementally atrophying under Russian military attrition on yet another front, Washington frets whether or not to run a Ukrainian offensive at all – fearing it might seal a Ukrainian catastrophe.

Kiev hears Washington’s equivocation on the likely outcome of the Ukrainian offensive; Kiev understands too that this could mean ‘curtains’ for the Zelensky ‘project’ – were Biden to decide that it is time to draw a line under it, and to complete the pivot to China. It would mean literally ‘the end’ for most of the Kiev leadership.

China and Russia are joining hands militarily. This will portend a strategic paradigm change that may force a U.S. re-consideration of the way ahead 🎯

💬 Read more by Alastair Crooke

#geopolitics #war

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🇲🇱 What the hell is going on in Mali?

Many will be asking this question as to the future of the UN’s mission there, after Germany just announced that intends to withdraw its troops from the mission.

💬 Martin Jay writes

#Mali #Germany #UN

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🇸🇾 Syria has been reinstated as a member of the Arab League, which will meet on May 19 in Riyadh. After a 12-year absence, Syria is in the midst of an Arab-led political path to normalization in the region.

The regional powerhouse, Saudi Arabia, and the vision of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have taken center stage in diplomatic resolutions to persistent crises.

Foreign ministers from Arab League member states voted in Cairo on Sunday to return Syria to the brotherly diplomatic league.

💬 Read more by Steven Sahiounie

#Syria #ArabLeague #MiddleEast

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📢 Chilean-American journalist Gonzalo Lira, has been a thorn in the Kiev junta’s flesh for a long time.

On May 1, the Ukrainian secret police arrested him again in Harkov, where Lira, a long-time resident of Ukraine, has been living for several years.

From the beginning of the Special Military Operation in late February 2022, Lira has been using his internet bully pulpit to convey to a global audience his take on the Ukrainian conflict.

After gaining several hundred thousand followers world-wide with his provocative reporting and commentary from the belly of the beast, the beast has apparently decided that it has had enough.

There is virtually no chance that the Nazi regime in Kiev will feel either shame or remorse for what it has just done ❌

💬 Stephen Karganovic writes

#GonzaloLira #Ukraine #HumanRights

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📺 The Western mainstream media have never been so blatant in their propaganda for the U.S. empire.

The pretensions are threadbare. As the warmongering U.S. government/regime and its Western/NATO imperialist lackeys are becoming more exposed and desperate to maintain credibility, so too are their media tools. The likes of the New York Times, BBC, CNN – and many more – are a contemptible joke on the public. They are an insult to common intelligence.

Fake news has been around for centuries, but it’s now becoming glaringly obvious and self-destructive. In the same way that the U.S. warmongering empire is becoming glaringly obvious and self-destructive 🧨

The disconnect with reality and degradation of supposed independent journalism is reflected in record levels of distrust among the Western public toward the mainstream, corporate-controlled news media.

In this interview, U.S.-based writers Bruce Gagnon and Daniel Lazare demolish the pretensions of Western media.

🎞 Watch the interview

🎞 Watch on YouTube

#Syria #ArabLeague #MiddleEast

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🦅 How much longer has Zelensky got with his so-called special relationship with western elites and NATO?

It is a popular notion among geopolitical experts that the relationship is beginning to sour as in recent weeks there have been a number of indicators which hint that the marriage of convenience may well be on the rocks.

💬 Read more by Martin Jay

#Zelensky #Ukraine #UK #West

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💢 The hot war is in the hands of the Russian Armed Forces and NATO. There is nothing, besides joining up, we can do about it.

💬 Declan Hayes writes

#war #Ukraine #NATO

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🇮🇱🇵🇸 The Israeli aggression against Palestinians has reached the point where they are not permitted to hear the call to prayer, Steven Sahiounie writes.

#Palestine #Israel #Gaza

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💢 This week marked the 78th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945. While the evil Third Reich was vanquished, a deeper monster had not been slain👺 Nazi Germany was only one version of Western imperialist fascism, a force that reemerged postwar in full strength in the form of the United States of America and its various Western clients.
 
It is not hyperbole to describe Washington and its Western satellites as the Fourth Reich.
 
The ad hoc wartime alliance between the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and other Western allies would promptly give way to the Cold War, even as the ashes of the most destructive war in history were still smoldering. It is staggering to contemplate the deviousness here.
 
This reconfiguring of Western militarism explains why the United Nations established in 1945 was immediately made a mockery of by the U.S.-led Western powers and the NATO axis formed in 1949 with countless foreign wars of aggression, from the Korean War (1950s) right up to the present war in Ukraine.

The origins of the Cold War in 1945 and of today's confrontation in Ukraine can be traced to the secret relations between the Americans and British and the Nazi Reich at World War Two’s end.

Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945 has proven to be only a pause in a longer historical struggle against fascism. We are seeing that struggle playing out in Ukraine, and with Washington’s madcap psychopathic aggression toward Russia 💣

💬 Read more in this week’s Editorial

#Nazism #West #war

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⚔️ To quote Dylan, who might have been a Bulgakov epigone: “So let us stop talking falsely now/the hour’s getting late.” By now it’s quite clear the delusion of a “peace” deal in Ukraine is the latest wet dream of the “non-agreement capable” usual suspects, always hooked on lies and plunder while deftly manipulating selected liberals among the Russian elite.

The goal would be to appease Moscow with a few concessions, while crucially keeping Odessa, Nikolaev and Dnipro, and safeguarding what would be NATO’s access to the Black Sea.

All that while investing in rabid, resentful Poland to become an armed to the teeth EU military militia.

So any “negotiations” towards “peace” in fact mask a drive to postpone – just for a little while – the original masterplan: dismembering and destroying Russia.

The next few weeks are absolutely crucial. Putin and the Security Council certainly know what everyone else doesn’t – including Prighozin. The key take away is that the ground will start to be laid for US/NATO to eventually turn rump Ukraine, the Baltic lap dogs, rabid Poland and a few other extras into a sort of Fortress Eastern Europe engaged in a war of attrition against Russia with the potential to last decades.

That may be the ultimate argument for Russia to finally go for the jugular, as soon as possible. Otherwise the future will be bleak. Well, not so bleak. Remember Putin: “We haven’t even started anything yet” 🌚

💬 Pepe Escobar @rocknrollgeopolitics writes

#Ukraine #NATO #war

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🇷🇺 Russia shall not be fooled twice, writes Natasha Wright.

#Ukraine #NATO #war

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⚗️ Western media are now accusing Russian forces of preparing to use chemical weapons (CW) of mass destruction in Ukraine, thereby making the case for greater NATO military intervention.

The CW card is a complete dud. That Western media are playing it shows they are also complete duds, and that their role is as sinister as mass drug-dealing 🧪

💬 Read more by Finian Cunningham

#Ukraine #ChemicalWeapons

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🎱 The economic forces – those post war strong tailwinds – that have shaped the last 35 years, and which accelerated gilded journeys through the western ‘plentiful era’, are no longer blowing in a favourable direction. They were already slowing, but now are reversing.

The winds now have shifted 180° in direction – they are gusting headwinds. This is a structural shift within a long cycle. There are no quick ‘silver bullet’ solutions. The ‘Cabaret’ good-time years are gone. We will have to ‘make do’ with less; and consequent political volatility is inevitable.

China had earlier industrialized, giving us inflation-killing, cheap manufactures; Russia gave us the cheap energy that kept western economies (just) competitive, and (almost) inflation free. A ‘Frictionless Ease’ at that point characterised the movements of goods, capital, people – everything. Today however, it is Friction and Impediment that is prevalent.

The ‘turn’ began with the US determination to not allow an Asian ‘heartland’ to supplant it. But the shift has acquired its own powerful momentum, now generating severed trading blocs that are determined to shake free from ‘old hegemonies’.

There is no assurance at all that the tech prospect will materialise. It may, but it may not. And that is a huge gamble 🎲

💬 Alastair Crooke writes

#crisis #economy #NewWorldOrder

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🇹🇼 Taiwan has been obliged to give its American ally an extraordinary warning: don’t even think about blowing up our semiconductor industry.

The warning follows growing calls by U.S. politicians and military analysts that Washington should destroy the island’s vital technology sector in order to purportedly prevent China from gaining control of lucrative exports and as a way of damaging China’s economy.

Taiwan is facing the curse of being an ally of Uncle Sam in the same way that Germany and the rest of Europe have 🗿

💬 Read more by Finian Cunningham

#Taiwan #China #NewColdWar

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🧻 The scripted interview made some comical errors on Stoltenberg’s part, which he might not have made if it was real, Martin Jay writes.

#Stoltenberg #NATO

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🤞 At day’s end, we must choose one of two sides, the side of those, like the Palestinians and Russian speakers who resist, or of those who rob and murder them.

💬 Declan Hayes writes

#Diplomacy #EuropeanCommission #NATO

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