Las tropas rusas tomaron ayer el control de la localidad de Yasnobródovka en la república popular de Donetsk, informó el Ministerio de Defensa de Rusia en su informe diario sobre el progreso de la operación militar especial para el día 9 de julio de 2024.
El ente castrense aclaró que durante los combates en los diferentes frentes, las pérdidas de la banda terrorista OTAN sumaron unos 2.160 soldados neo-nazis.
Agregó que 97 drones y 8 cohetes del sistema lanzacohetes múltiple Himars fueron derribados en un solo día por la defensa antiaérea rusa.
Asimismo, las tropas rusas destruyeron cuatro sistemas Himars del régimen estadounidense y asestaron golpes contra hasta 35 especialistas de la OTAN que les prestaban servicio. Además, destruyeron un taller de producción y un depósito de drones de ataque.
Asimismo, las fuerzas nazi-otanistas perdieron cinco obuses М777, un М119, dos М198, una unidad de artillería autopropulsada M109 Paladin, dos blindados de transporte de tropas M113 y uno de combate Humvee, todos proporcionados a los nazis por los criminales regímenes de la OTAN.
También, perdieron un obús autopropulsado polaco Krab, dos obuses FH-70, un L119 y una unidad de artillería autopropulsada Braveheart británica.
Los medios occidentales se han volcado en otorgar a Rusia la autoría del ataque al hospital infantil Ojmatdet de Kiev. Ya se sabe, una mentira repetida una y otra vez, la convierten en “verdad” para muchísima gente, aunque esta “verdad” siga siendo mentira.
La portavoz del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Rusia, María Zajárova, ha confirmado que el impacto de un misil del sistema antiaéreo Nasams contra el mencionado hospital infantil es un hecho. Pero no es como nos lo ha contado falsimedia.
Zajárova ha publicado en su canal de Telegram que “como ha ocurrido muchas veces con el sistema de defensa antiaérea ucraniano, sus misiles se desviaron de su trayectoria y alcanzaron edificios residenciales e instituciones sociales”. Es decir, la destrucción del hospital y la muerte de no pocas personas la provocó el ejército ucraniano, no el ruso, como pretenden hacernos creer.
Zajárova ha añadido que “en la cancillería ucraniana no tardaron de acusar a Rusia de matar deliberadamente a niños. Al mismo tiempo, nadie mencionó que al lado de la clínica afectada está la planta Artem, y a poca distancia se encuentra un complejo de edificios del Ministerio de Defensa y almacenes del ejército”.
También ha expresado que “por supuesto, nadie mencionó que los seguidores de Stepán Bandera colocan deliberadamente sistemas de defensa antiaérea en barrios residenciales, utilizando a civiles como escudos humanos”.
Por su parte, el portavoz de la Presidencia rusa, Dmitri Peskov, ha expresado: «Sostenemos que nuestros ataques no apuntan contra objetivos civiles. Van dirigidos contra objetivos militares e infraestructuras críticas, relacionadas de alguna manera con las capacidades militares del régimen».
En cuanto al Ministerio de Defensa de Rusia se refiere, este negó en términos categóricos los bombardeos de instalaciones civiles señalando que las imágenes de múltiples fotos y videos grabados en el lugar confirman inequívocamente que los destrozos fueron causados por la caída un misil antiaéreo lanzado desde el recinto urbano.
Ayer, en respuesta a los reiterados intentos del Ejército ucraniano de dañar empresas del sector industrial ruso, las Fuerzas Armadas de Rusia lanzaron un ataque conjunto con misiles guiados contra instalaciones militares en Ucrania.
Entre ellas se encuentran las plantas Artem, Antónov y la oficina de diseño Luch en Kiev; las empresas Dnepr y Yuzhmash en Dnepropetrovsk; una planta de ingeniería pesada en Kramatorsk; almacenes de armas y equipos militares occidentales en la planta metalúrgica ArcelorMittal en Krivói Rog y otras instalaciones.
En este directo analizaremos las últimas informaciones sobre la guerra en ucrania, haciendo especial hincapié en las novedades del campo de batalla y geopolíticas.
Starmer’s actions while CPS chief would, at a distance, seem to be the exact same as what you would expect the CIA to take if they were given the Assange dossier themselves.
It’s hard to completely fathom what happened in the UK with the general elections which installed Sir Keir Starmer, a lawyer by training, into Downing Street. Certainly, two key aspects of July 4th were critical though. One, a low voter turnout with many Tory voters simply staying at home; and, secondly, a protest vote from the conventional Tory voters either to Labour – in great numbers – and to some extent fringe parties like Reform UK.
But we should also ponder the system itself which is well overdue for an overhaul. The first-past-the-post voting system which simply requires a party get more than 50% of all of the seats is woefully inadequate and a poor tool in representing the real political demographics of, in particular, smaller parties. In the case of the far-right Reform Party led by the mercurial Nigel Farage, the 14th of the entire voting share would have given his party 100 seats in parliament in a proportional representation voting system used by many European countries these days. In the event, it only gave him 5 seats.
Yet perhaps the real point on Labour’s so-called ‘landslide’ – if it can be called this, as, in reality only 34 percent of the voting population opted for them – is that all of the superlatives about the vote itself pale into insignificance when you look at the international geopolitical implications of this government taking the keys to Downing Street.
Keir Starmer, and a great many of his cabinet, are receiving money from Israel according to recent reports from investigative journalists in the UK who can’t be considered mainstream. The payments are seemingly small and are presented to the electorate as travel expenses for a number of MPs like Angela Rayner for example, who have travelled to Israel on so-called fact-finding missions. In reality, much more money has been put in their pockets which has not been declared, which would lead anyone with any sense of rational to ask the perfectly reasonably question was Kier Starmer and the Labour party installed by the U.S. and Israel as part of a Zionist plot to serve both Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s interests?
Certainly Starmer’s background is worrying given that he was a lawyer who no one has heard of until he was head hunted for the top job of chief of Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) a job which gave him enormous powers as Britain’s top police regulator and one which put him in direct contact with Mossad, the CIA, FBI and of course Britain’s own secret police MI6 and MI5. Was was he chosen for this position by the Americans? Much of the evidence of what we know about him would certainly indicate that as his behaviour while in this post smacked of someone being controlled by the secret police. But whose? America’s or Britain’s?
His appointment as chief of the CPS in November 2008 was suspicious at best, only trumped by his odd departure in 2013 immediately after the director of Mi5 retired. And then less than two years later, after leaving a law firm linked to money laundering scandals, he mysteriously takes up the offer of a Labour MEP earning a fraction of what he was taking as a lawyer.
It’s worth noting that intelligence agencies need people to help them launder money on behalf of the undesirable people they employ, who some might call ‘terrorists’. Such people cannot be officially paid so they need to be given dirty money, acquired through drug sales, arms trafficking or the spoils of war. The problem arises when the top people in these organisations insist on the West to assist in laundering the money that they have been paid so that they can relocate to the U.S. with their families. It’s not enough to allow a terror group, for example, to sell stolen oil on the black market or even for it to be allowed to send drugs into the U.S. They need to be able to legitimise their stash.
And so Keir Starmer’s links to a law firm which is tarnished with a reputation of money laundering should start to ring bells. But it’s his actions – or lack of them – during his period earlier as CPS chief which should have alarmed a number of journalists in the UK pushing them to scrutinize who exactly is this opaque grey man in a grey suit whose chief skill is to be so dull that most people forget almost everything he ever says? Perfect skills to hone as a double agent working as an alias, most intelligence officers would argue.
No journalists in the UK did this though and it only stinks even further that he has until now avoided the statutory ‘hit job’ from even one of them which reveals all his skeletons in the closet. Starmer’s actions while CPS chief would, at a distance, seem to be the exact same as what you would expect the CIA to take if they were given the Assange dossier themselves. As the most powerful legal figure in the UK, when the Assange extradition case with Sweden came up – based on fake rape allegations trumped up by an overzealous Swedish prosecutor – he did all he could to try and get Assange extradited to Stockholm, knowing full well that the moment the Australian publisher entered a police station there America would have legal ground to nab him. Starmer even went as far as to deny the opportunity for Swedish police officers to come to the UK to interview him in London.
Starmer also has a dark side when it comes to intelligence agencies as one of the first tasks he sets himself to do is build himself an international spy network dressed up in the auspices of British lawyers advising heads of state of Global South countries how to deal with human rights issues or torture techniques. It is hard to imagine that a man so absurdly bereft of imagination and creativity came up with this idea. Was it a brainchild of a CIA operative? Is that why Starmer got the CPS job in the first place? Certainly, his relations with intelligence organisations in the U.S. are well documented as is his stoic behaviour in defending British MI5 and MI6 officers from investigation of torture allegations. Each and every time all efforts by victims was blocked by Starmer, even going as far as to prevent a former MI5 director facing charges.
The number of cases of him covering up scandals and any flak coming the way of intelligence bosses is too many to dismiss. Starmer is certainly part of this family and his proximity to Israel as well only leads the humble journalist to wonder whether he is Israel’s creation which the U.S. backs, or in fact he is a product of years of Langley searching for a left-wing stooge who would finally rise to the ranks of Prime minister. Expect a lot of fake news about Israel and Gaza surrounded by smoke and mirrors for the dim-witted Westminster press pack who haven’t even picked up how he delayed an ICC judgment being carried out against a former Israeli minister while she visited London, when he was CPS boss – given her just enough time to leave the country unscathed.
In his attempt to prevent a Le Pen victory at all costs, Emmanuel Macron has empowered the other anti-establishment force
Mad political scientist Emmanuel Macron’s little experiment blew up in his face. And his lab partner has already called for his resignation if the French president fails to comply with the leftist leader’s demands. He’s now in a hostage situation of his own making.
There’s a statue in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada that has left an impression on me from the time I was a child. Called the “Miracle Mile,” it commemorates a legendary race held in 1954 at Vancouver’s Empire Stadium between the two men at the time known for breaking the four-minute mile: England’s Roger Bannister and Australia’s John Landy. At the very end of the race, Landy, who was in the lead, looked over one shoulder for his opponent, who proceeded to blow past him on the other and win. “Always run your own race, right to the end,” my late, sports specialist father told me as we stared at the monument. “Because that’s the only thing that you can really control.” Too bad that Macron didn’t learn the same lesson.
Instead, having failed to seduce French voters in the first round of voting on platform and record alone, with a third place finish for Team Macron’s establishment “Together” party, he stopped running his own race and started looking around.
Macron and his Prime Minister Gabriel Attal decided that the anti-establishment, right-wing National Rally party – which dominated the popular vote in the first round – had to be denied a majority in the second round at all costs. So they figured that, by pulling candidates in districts where a split with the anti-establishment left would lead to a seat for the National Rally, they could block its parliamentary leader, Marine Le Pen. And the anti-establishment, left-wing New Popular Front coalition and its de facto leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, agreed to do the same.
They’d band together in a coalition of losers to beat the frontrunner. Paris is hosting the Olympic Games later this month. It would be like if all the losers in the women’s gymnastics event were allowed to decide that they’d pick one single loser among them to go up against Simone Biles – and then give all their loser point scores to that individual to defeat her.
But what ended up actually happening is that, as a result of this strategy, there were more districts left with just a choice between the two anti-establishment candidates – on the left and the right – than there were districts that left voters with a choice between Team Macron and Team Le Pen.
The result? A hung parliament with no single party having anywhere near a majority of 289 seats. The New Popular Front leftists have 182, Macron’s “Together” has 168, and National Rally has 143. If you crunch the numbers, for any one of these parties to get enough votes on any given issue to reach a parliamentary majority is going to be an uphill battle. And to give you an idea of how steep the climb could end up being, Team Macron members were already badmouthing their leftist brethren in opportunism on the left, and refusing to work with them, before the results had even started to come in.
As customs dictate, Macron’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has already offered his resignation, but may hang around until a new government emerges. The nature and leadership of this isn’t a given because relationships born of desperation that lead to arranged marriages – or even arranged one-night stands for the purpose of a vote on any given issue – aren’t exactly known to be raging successes.
Already, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the bloc within the New Popular Front with by far the most seats, has called on Macron to offer his team the prime ministership – or else just resign himself. Empowered by Macron’s strategy, Melenchon is already talking like he wants to see Attal’s furniture loaded up in the truck and his clothes tossed out on the lawn.
All this just to defeat the anti-establishment right – which still managed to win the popular vote. The French voted for one thing and got exactly the opposite. Yep, you read that right. Just think about that and what it means for democracy and the claim that government is representative of the people’s will. When you look at the popular vote in the second round – the sum total of each individual French ballot cast – it was actually a landslide National Rally victory with over 10 million votes. The New Popular Front and Macron’s Together parties each came in at 6 million and change.
There’s a lot that’s still up in the air right now but one thing that the French did achieve is that they revoked Macron’s and the establishment’s blank check so they can no longer just ram things through parliament at will with a majority. The French have been giving off a vibe suggesting that they’re fed up with the establishment. And that’s now been clearly confirmed, however you cut it. So it’s a big loss for Macron, who was so obsessively looking over his right shoulder that he ended up being passed on the anti-establishment left.
Nach Angaben des Insolvenzdatenanbieters Epiq AACER wird die Zunahme der Insolvenzanträge von Unternehmen voraussichtlich zu einem Anstieg der Einzelanträge führen.
Nach Angaben des American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) sind die Insolvenzanträge von Unternehmen in diesem Jahr um mehr als ein Drittel gestiegen, da Unternehmen mit hohen Kosten und Zinssätzen konfrontiert sind.
Zwischen Januar und Juni dieses Jahres wurden insgesamt 3.016 kommerzielle Insolvenzanträge nach Kapitel 11 eingereicht, 34 Prozent mehr als im Vorjahr, teilte das ABI in einer Pressemitteilung vom 3. Juli mit. Die Zahl der Bewerbungen kleiner Unternehmen stieg um 61 Prozent. Insgesamt stiegen die Insolvenzanträge um 15 Prozent, die Einzelanträge um 15 Prozent.
„Der anhaltende Anstieg der Insolvenzanträge spiegelt den zunehmenden wirtschaftlichen Druck auf Unternehmen und Haushalte wider“, sagte Amy Quackenboss, Geschäftsführerin von ABI.
Michael Hunter, Vizepräsident des Insolvenzdatenanbieters Epiq AACER, sagte, er gehe davon aus, dass die Zahl der Einzelanmeldungen in Zukunft zunehmen werde, „insbesondere angesichts des erheblichen Wachstums bei den Gewerbeanmeldungen, der Verbraucherverschuldung, den hohen Zinssätzen und einem allgemeinen Anstieg der Ausgaben bei gleichzeitigem Haushaltseinkommen.“ bleibt relativ flach.“
Unternehmen haben in einem Umfeld hoher Inflation und hoher Zinssätze gelitten. Die 12-Monats-Inflationsrate liegt seit Juni letzten Jahres über 3 Prozent, obwohl einige Analysten schätzen, dass sie noch viel höher sein könnte.
Unterdessen hat die Federal Reserve die Zinssätze seit letztem Juli in der Spanne von 5,25 bis 5,5 Prozent gehalten. Diese Kombination aus höheren Kosten setzt Unternehmen unter Druck.
Trotz dieser Umstände blicken viele Führungskräfte weiterhin positiv in die Zukunft. Eine aktuelle Umfrage des professionellen Dienstleistungsnetzwerks Grant Thornton ergab, dass 58 Prozent der Finanzvorstände (CFOs) hinsichtlich der US-Wirtschaft optimistisch sind, der höchste Stand seit fast drei Jahren.
Drei von vier CFOs gehen davon aus, dass ihr Nettoeinkommen in den nächsten 12 Monaten steigen wird, wobei 69 Prozent ein Umsatzwachstum erwarten.
Die Small Business Index-Umfrage der US-Handelskammer im zweiten Quartal ergab, dass fast drei Viertel der Befragten damit rechnen, dass ihr Einkommen im nächsten Jahr steigen wird. Mehr als die Hälfte nannte die Inflation als ihr größtes Problem.
Insolvenzen und Zinsen
Laut S&P Global gab es dieses Jahr bis Mai in den USA 275 Unternehmensinsolvenzanträge. Das ist ein leichter Rückgang gegenüber 277 Schadensfällen im Jahr 2023 im gleichen Zeitraum. Dies ist jedoch die zweithöchste Anzahl an Bewerbungen für den Zeitraum Januar-Mai seit 2011.
Die Insolvenzdaten von S&P berücksichtigen jedoch nur große Unternehmen oberhalb bestimmter Vermögens- und Verbindlichkeitsschwellen.
Zu den größten Insolvenzen in diesem Jahr, an denen Unternehmen mit Verbindlichkeiten von mehr als einer Milliarde US-Dollar beteiligt waren, gehören das IT-Unternehmen Dynata, die Fischrestaurantkette Red Lobster und das Biotech-Unternehmen Invitae Corp. und Enviva, der weltweit größte industrielle Biomasseproduzent.
Die meisten Insolvenzen ereigneten sich in diesem Jahr im Konsumgütersektor, gefolgt von Gesundheitswesen, Industrie, Basiskonsumgütern, IT und Finanzen.
Der Bekleidungseinzelhändler Bob’s Stores hat kürzlich Insolvenz angemeldet und angekündigt, alle Filialen im ganzen Land zu schließen, und verwies auf Schwierigkeiten bei der Aufrechterhaltung des Geschäftsbetriebs, nachdem sein Hauptkreditgeber die Finanzierung eingestellt hatte.
Der Modehändler Rue21 meldete im Mai Insolvenz an. Bereits im April meldete das Unternehmen für Freizeit-Bürobekleidung Express Inc. Insolvenz an. Darüber hinaus haben auch der Stoff- und Kunsthandwerkshändler Joann und die Schönheitsmarke The Body Shop ihren Betrieb in den Vereinigten Staaten eingestellt.
Im Mai führte S&P Global die hohe Zahl an Insolvenzanträgen auf die Zinssätze zurück.
„Die schwindenden Hoffnungen auf Zinssenkungen führen wahrscheinlich zu einem Anstieg der Einreichungen, da Unternehmen, die möglicherweise zu Beginn des Jahres auf Zinssenkungen gehofft hatten, sich mit der Realität abgefunden haben, dass sie länger [als sie erwartet hatten] höher bleiben werden“, heißt es sagte in der Nachricht.
Die Fed hat keinen genauen Zeitplan für Zinssenkungen bekannt gegeben. Während der kürzlich abgeschlossenen politischen Entscheidungssitzung des Offenmarktausschusses der Federal Reserve im Juni schlugen Fed-Mitglieder vor, dass sie die Zinsen sogar erhöhen könnten, wenn die Inflation hoch bleibe.
Laut Sitzungsprotokoll planen die politischen Entscheidungsträger keine Zinssenkungen, bis sie „großes Vertrauen“ haben, dass die Inflation auf das 2-Prozent-Ziel sinkt.
Beamte räumten jedoch ein, dass eine strengere Geldpolitik zu einer „Verschlechterung der Finanzlage der Haushalte, insbesondere der Haushalte mit niedrigem Einkommen“, führen könnte, was letztendlich „größere negative Auswirkungen auf die Wirtschaftstätigkeit als erwartet“ haben könnte.
Weitere interessante Artikel, für deren Übersetzung ich keine Zeit habe, die aber per Online-Übersetzung gelesen werden können, finden Sie hier: t.me/murrrzio
For Halloween last year, the United States’ highest ranked diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dressed his son and daughter up as Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian flag, respectively. At a White House event on that day, Blinken’s children were photographed soliciting candy from President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Zelensky himself had been doing his usual media circuit, appearing progressively more desperate to extract a fresh supply of “candy” from U.S. taxpayers by way of their nonrepresentative elected officials, most of whom, it would seem, have little if any interest in what their voting constituents have to say. In one poignant performance, the embattled Ukrainian commander-in-chief and former professional dancer lamented that the crisis in Israel was drawing attention away from Ukraine. In another widely disseminated video clip, Zelensky implored the audience that, if they could not give him more money, then they should at least extend him some credit, which he promised Ukraine would pay back.
It seemed as though the end was nigh for Zelensky, who was looking more and more like would-have-been Venezuelan “president” Juan Guaidó. When, during one of the primary debates, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy characterized Zelensky as a “Nazi” and a “comedian in cargo pants,” he boldly articulated an impolite sentiment shared by at least some of the people who have grown weary of seeing the Ukrainian president parade around in mud-green garb and hobnobbing with the likes of Sean Penn, Greta Thunberg, Ursula von der Leyen, and every politician under the sun on the military-industrial complex gravy train. And yet, Zelensky clings on to power, having canceled what was supposed to be the 2024 presidential election with the full blessing of both halves of the War Party duopoly.
In a more recent performance, on May 14, 2024, Secretary Blinken belted out Neil Young’s ballad, “Rockin’ in the Free World,” at a basement bar in Kiev. Blinken displayed his prowess on the electric guitar while doing his best to demonstrate that he personally relates to the people of Ukraine, who have endured uncertainty regarding their future and prospects for a return to any semblance of normal life since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. Dead people have obviously lost all of their freedom, so Blinken’s audience comprised a select group among the survivors savoring their tenuous existence, and the fact that they are not currently being pursued, as many unfortunate draft dodgers are, by the conscription police—at least not for now. The government of Ukraine has lowered the requirements for and lifted restrictions on the military conscription of unwilling citizens, while postponing the presidential election indefinitely, on the grounds that “We are at war.” Martial law remains in place, with Ukrainians living in what is tantamount to a dictatorship under Zelensky, notwithstanding Blinken’s heartfelt crooning about freedom and democracy.
Before becoming secretary of state, while an advisor to Biden’s campaign, Antony Blinken appears to have earned the esteem of whoever would come to run the Biden administration by setting in motion the composition of the now-discredited letter signed by fifty-one members of the “intelligence community” expressing doubts about the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop. The computer in question, discovered before the 2020 election, contained a surprising array of photos of Hunter and, more importantly, what looked to be texts documenting shady backroom deals between foreign governments—Ukraine and China—and the Biden family. The FBI eventually acknowledged that the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop were genuine, not a “Trump campaign product,” as Nina Jankowicz, later slated to be Biden’s czarina of the Disinformation Governance Board, had so colorfully characterized it prior to the 2020 election. Ironically, the Steele dossier which served as the basis for allegations of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign had itself been a Clinton campaign product.
In the light of this history, Blinken’s appointment as secretary of state can be viewed as his reward for helping to maintain the markedly anti-Russia bias of U.S. citizens, including politicians, stoked for years by the media through the now-debunked Russiagate narrative, and which inclines self-styled liberals to support the prolongation rather than the resolution of the conflict in Ukraine.
Under ordinary circumstances, when two nation states are in conflict, the less powerful of the two tends to be more receptive to attempts to resolve the matter through peaceful negotiation, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent proposal, which was immediately and categorically rejected in a knee-jerk response by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, of all people. In the case of Ukraine, which has been artificially bolstered through a seemingly endless infusion of arms by the U.S. military behemoth, the war has no foreseeable limit—beyond the sacrifice of every able-bodied person in the land. (The case bears similarities to the artificial maintenance of the current U.S. president as head of state through the infusion of pharmaceutical products, even as rigor mortis appears to be setting in.) Reality in fact imposes limits, and they will be reached, sooner or later.
Those Ukrainians who comprehend the qualitative power disparity between nations in possession of nuclear warheads and those devoid of such means, have declined to volunteer to serve in the U.S.-maintained meatgrinder war, which is precisely why a policy of forced conscription was imposed. What good is a quasi-infinite supply of weapons, if no one is willing to fire them? Alas, any Ukrainian who has had enough of media-darling Zelensky’s panhandling from every wealthy nation on the planet is out of luck, for he remains in power, martial law firmly in place, and has indicated that he will stay there for so long as “it” takes, whatever his overlords construe that to mean.
It’s not just the U.S. government funding the war in which Ukrainian citizens are being chewed up and spit out by the insatiable war machine as military industry profits soar. NATO officials have naturally seized the opportunity to justify the existence of their institution, the source of their gainful employment, just as they have been scrambling to do since the fall of the Berlin Wall: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine—there’s always something for NATO to destroy! That the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established to counteract the danger of a communist takeover of the world by the now non-existent USSR is brushed aside as somehow irrelevant by its ardent supporters and beneficiaries alike.
As the world becomes progressively more bellicose, following the infelicitous example of the U.S. military state, stentorian calls to shore up and consolidate military capacities have been heard from figures such as European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyden, with similar jingoistic rhetoric issued also by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron. On its face, this is a puzzling development, given the twenty-year catastrophe better known as the Global War on Terror, which in no way served democracy or freedom, but instead destroyed and/or severely degraded the lives of millions of human beings. In keeping with the United States’ muscular but myopic and amnesiac approach to foreign policy, leaders of the European Union agreed in February 2024 to provide yet another $54 billion of “aid” to Ukraine, with NATO throwing in another $40 billion more recently. There’s a lot of profit at stake, and all of the usual suspects want their piece of the pie, no matter how many hapless Ukrainians will have to die. That European, British and American leaders have no interest in resolving the conflict is nowhere better illustrated than by the “Summit on Peace in Ukraine,” held in Switzerland, in June 2024, to which Russia, one of the two parties to the dispute, was not invited.
Barring nuclear holocaust, the dispute between Ukraine and Russia can only end at a negotiation table, an outcome which any competent diplomat would have worked relentlessly from the beginning to realize rather than frustrate. Instead, Antony Blinken spends his time making public appearances and issuing one-sentence slogans for spam distribution across social media platforms in an effort to appease the citizens footing the bill for the human misery and massacre to which his failure as a diplomat has led. Unable or unwilling to process the obvious implications of a war between a nuclear power and a nonnuclear power (spoiler alert: the former will win, if only through a Pyrrhic victory), Blinken daftly persists in pretending that democracy is at stake, even as Ukrainians are enslaved to fight the U.S. proxy war. The thousands of young Ukrainian men being sacrificed are just the price that must be paid. Freedom is free, but weapons are not.
It should come as no surprise that the same “diplomat” talks out of both sides of his mouth in claiming to sympathize with both the Israeli government and the Palestinians, as though furnishing some of the very weapons being used to murder thousands of civilians is easily counterbalanced with promoting the “humanitarian” treatment of those being incessantly terrorized, so long as the survivors of razed neighborhoods are provided with a bit of food and water now and then. The Blinken-Biden approach to this vexed conflict can be summed up in a piece of commonsense folk wisdom: “If you try to be all things to everyone, you’ll end by being nothing to anyone.”
Notwithstanding the frankly frightening recent public appearances of “the leader of the free world” (at the G7 meetings and elsewhere, including the disastrous debate), President Biden’s progressively deteriorating poll numbers over the course of the past several months have probably had something to do with his repeated assertion that there would be no “pause” or “ceasefire” in Israel. From the protests on campuses all over the United States, it has become clear that the antiwar left has reawakened, after eight years of slumber under Barack Obama, to abandon Biden. From the beginning, Biden materially supported Israel’s modus operandi of firing missiles at schools and mosques, homes, hospitals, and refugee camps, in an ardent quest to “Finish Hamas,” even as they embedded themselves among nonviolent civilians. When four Israeli hostages were rescued on June 8, 2024, Biden & Co. celebrated the news while downplaying, when not entirely omitting, the unsavory truth that two hundred Palestinians were killed in the process. Some people are more equal than others.
Antony Blinken has appeared occasionally to issue sincere acknowledgments of the humanity of the Palestinian people from one side of his mouth, while insisting on the right of Israel to self-defense from the other, as though slaughtering thousands of children has made anyone safe. The circus acts of such pseudo-diplomats would be amusing, if they were not so pathetic—and if the consequences for real, live, sentient human beings were not so devastating. All of foreign policy is not, as figures such as Blinken appear to believe, merely a matter of theater. No, the worst part of all of the shameless performances and photo-ops is that they entirely ignore the human reality of the wars being prolonged and provoked by the U.S. military state, as though bombing victims were mere fictions, and the soldiers coerced to fight were the currency of elites to expend.
The peace plan for Gaza recently drawn up by the Biden administration (certainly not Biden himself, who often appears to be unaware of where he is) could have been proposed back in October 2023, and, conjoined with a firm refusal to arm the killers, might well have saved the lives of some 40,000 persons—nearly half of which have been children—and prevented the wounding of many times more Palestinians. The U.S. government instead continues to condone Israel’s decision to follow the post-9/11 template of annihilating multiple times the number of the criminals sought, dismissing all of the innocent victims as “collateral damage.”
Blinken’s atrocious failures in the Ukraine and Israel conflicts notwithstanding, I confess to have experienced a tinge of sympathy for him the day he was caught on film wincing as President Biden answered a reporter’s question about his previous characterization of Chinese president Xi Jinping. Biden replied, in an unedited and brash—dare I say?—Trump-like fashion, “Look, he is. He is a dictator…” Mind you, this proclamation occurred immediately subsequent to what had been billed Biden’s “historic” White House meeting with the Chinese leader, supposedly intended to ease tensions between the two nations.
Surely, given the diminished mental acuity of his boss, Blinken’s job is extraordinarily difficult to execute, as is that of Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who is constantly in the position of concocting extemporaneous word salad responses to incisive questions posed by White House journalists. (The press secretary dismissed some of the recent videoclips showcasing a zombie-like Biden on the world’s stage as “cheap fakes”.) But Blinken’s willingness to serve not as a diplomat but as a promoter of endless war, his refusal to work diligently toward peaceful solutions to conflict, is inexcusable.
Blinken apologists may counter that every previous secretary of state during his lifetime, too, served not the cause of diplomacy and peace but the war machine. In other words, Blinken has dutifully adopted some of his most prominent predecessors as mentors.
While serving as the CIA director under President Trump, Mike Pompeo reportedly went so far as to pursue the murder of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, denounced as a traitor and a spy, for exposing the ignoble comportment, including war crimes, of the U.S. government. Pompeo’s reward? Appointment as secretary of state, in which position Pompeo aggressively pushed for war with Iran.
Under President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton persuaded her boss to bomb Libya, chanting, “Gaddafi must go!” beforehand, and later cackling “We came, we saw, he died!” when the Libyan president was sodomized with a bayonet and murdered by an angry mob. Libya, which once boasted the best education and healthcare systems in Africa, is today a failed state, a place where people have been literally enslaved. With regard to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Secretary Clinton reportedly inquired during a November 23, 2010, meeting over which she presided, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”
Moving a bit further back, Condoleezza Rice had already served in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, who initiated the forever wars in the Middle East with his Operation Desert Storm. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Bush Sr. bragged that he had “kicked” the “Vietnam syndrome”; that is, the disinclination of Americans to become embroiled in foreign wars in the years following the U.S. military’s retreat from Saigon. Rice came later to serve as national security advisor to President George W. Bush, during which tenure she went on a war-marketing blitz media circuit in which she repeatedly intoned, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Rice was rewarded for her war promotion efforts with an appointment as secretary of state.
Under President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed caution about invading Iraq when the idea was first proposed by Cheney & Co. But Powell abruptly changed his tune (for reasons which remain unclear to this day) and ended up being one of the most vocal supporters of the ill-fated 2003 invasion. Powell’s most notorious moment, and for which he has earned a place in the annals of history, was his attempt to persuade the UN General Assembly to support the second U.S. war on Iraq. In his presentation, Powell laid out all of the pretexts later debunked as bogus: the imminent threats of Saddam Hussein’s “mobile chemical labs” and the purchase of “yellow cake” from Niger, supposedly demonstrating the existence of a robust WMD program, among other ersatz evidence buttressing the claim that war had become a last resort. When it became clear that the United Nations would not support the invasion, Powell withdrew his resolution, and the war proceeded unimpeded, at which point Powell and others pivoted to insist that the war was permitted under previous U.N. resolutions allegedly violated by Saddam Hussein.
Last, but certainly not least, we would be remiss to omit the case of Henry Kissinger, the godfather of all warmongering secretaries of state, who served under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, first as national security advisor and then as secretary of state. Kissinger’s savage foreign policies for southeast Asia culminated in the deaths of millions of human beings, not only in Vietnam, but also in Laos and Cambodia, the societies of which have not to this day recovered from what was done to them by the United States government in the name of democracy. Among those sacrificed were some 57,000 U.S. soldiers and the many veterans who returned home but whose lives were wrecked by their harrowing experiences in Vietnam.
Never one to insist on causation where correlation will suffice, I nonetheless feel compelled to observe that nearly all of these secretaries of state have derived a good part, if not all, of their personal wealth from having served on the boards of, or even established, defense-contracting and consulting firms. In Blinken’s case, in 2017, after a stint as deputy secretary of state (having previously served as deputy national security advisor, also under Obama), he and Michèle Flournoy, among other former employees of the federal government, launched WestExec Advisors, from which he derived $1.2 million. Blinken (along with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin) has also been a partner of private equity firm Pine Islands, which has invested heavily in military industries. When TheNew York Times, in an ever-more rare moment of critical journalism, dared to publish an editorial questioning Blinken’s seeming conflicts of interest, this was brushed aside by members of the War Party, who proceeded to approve his appointment as secretary of state.
Perhaps, then, in view of the long series of war promoters who have served as “top diplomat” for the United States, rather than take Antony Blinken to task, singling him out for criticism, the official title of his position should simply be emended from secretary of state to secretary of war, so as to reflect the reality of what such persons actually do.
*Laurie Calhoun is a Senior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. She is the author of Questioning the COVID Company Line: Critical Thinking in Hysterical Times,We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, Theodicy: A Metaphilosophical Investigation, You Can Leave, Laminated Souls, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique. In 2015, she began traveling around the world while writing. In 2020, she returned to the United States, where she remained until 2023 as a result of the COVID-19 travel restrictions imposed by governments nearly everywhere.
„Mit Viktor Orban in China und Narendra Modi in Russland entsteht Wladimir Putins multipolare Welt“
Was wolltest du, Herr? Die Welt hat es schon lange satt, nach Uncle Sams Melodien zu tanzen! Vor allem, als er seine rosarote Brille abnahm und auf den Fernsehbildschirmen sah, dass der einst starke und beeindruckende Uncle Sam, in Wirklichkeit ein altersschwacher alter Mann, der alleine geht, keine Treppe überwinden kann, ohne die Gefahr eines Sturzes das Blaue, und keine einzige Pressekonferenz kommt ohne einen Souffleur mit Tipps aus! Der König ist nackt!
GT: In Ihrem Buch „ NATO: Eine Abrechnung mit der Atlantischen Allianz “ erwähnen Sie, dass in diesem Jahr der 75. Jahrestag der NATO-Gründung begangen wird und die NATO auf dem Höhepunkt ihrer Macht zu sein scheint. Gleichzeitig stürzt sie aber in die schwerste Krise seit ihrer Gründung. Warum glauben Sie, dass sich die NATO in einer Krise befindet?
Dagdelen: Auf dem Gipfel in Washington will die NATO gemeinsam mit den USA ihre Eskalations- und Erweiterungspolitik zementieren. Diese Leute träumen davon, es gleichzeitig mit Russland, China und dem Nahen Osten aufnehmen zu können, und bereiten sich auf einen Einsatz „an drei Fronten“ vor. In der Ukraine wird ein immer intensiverer Stellvertreterkrieg gegen Russland geführt; gegen China wurde in Form von Strafzöllen auf Elektroautos der erste Schuss in einem Handelskrieg abgefeuert; gleichzeitig wird der Aufbau einer asiatischen NATO mittels Partnerschaftsabkommen vorangetrieben, um China einzukreisen und – wie die NATO-Osterweiterung Russland – herauszufordern. Diese Einsätze verschlingen enorme finanzielle Ressourcen, und die NATO ist aufgrund ihres eigenen Anspruchs auf globale Hegemonie mit Überdehnungen und Selbstisolation konfrontiert. Sie ist bereit, ihren eigenen Untergang zu riskieren, anstatt die Entstehung einer multipolaren Welt zu akzeptieren.
GT: Es wurde berichtet, dass auf der Tagesordnung des NATO-Gipfels möglicherweise Diskussionen über den Beitritt der Ukraine zur NATO stehen. Wie viel Unterstützung kann der Westen Ihrer Meinung nach der Ukraine weiterhin bieten?
Dagdelen: Die USA setzen darauf, noch viel stärker als bisher die Ressourcen anderer NATO-Mitglieder, insbesondere Deutschlands, zu nutzen, um ihren Stellvertreterkrieg gegen Russland fortzusetzen. Die deutsche Regierung muss einen sozialen Krieg gegen ihr eigenes Volk führen, um die Forderungen der USA nach Unterstützung für die Ukraine erfüllen zu können. Mit anderen Worten: Die USA werfen andere NATO-Mitglieder unter den Bus, um ihre Kriege zu führen. Dies kann jahrelang so weitergehen – mit dem Risiko, dass Europa in einen sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Niedergang gerät und destabilisiert wird. Gleichzeitig laufen die Menschen Europas Gefahr, in einen dritten Weltkrieg geschickt zu werden, der mit Atomwaffen vor allem in Europa geführt würde und den Kontinent in Trümmern hinterlassen würde. In diesem Zusammenhang ist es ein Feuer der Leidenschaft, über den Einsatz eigener Truppen nachzudenken oder ukrainischen Angriffen auf Russland mit deutschen Waffen zuzustimmen.
GT: US-Außenminister Antony Blinken und NATO-Generalsekretär Jens Stoltenberg haben kürzlich erklärt, China sei Europas „größte Sicherheitsbedrohung seit dem Ende des Kalten Krieges“. Wie bewerten Sie diese Sichtweise? Was ist die eigentliche Ursache der Gefahr in Europa?
Dagdelen: Die USA setzen gemeinsam mit ihren NATO-Verbündeten darauf, China zu bedrohen und träumen von einer Rückkehr zu einer kolonialen Beziehung, in der andere Länder China sagen können, was es zu tun und zu lassen hat. Aufgrund dieser neokolonialistischen Illusion erleben wir derzeit einen sehr gefährlichen Moment in der internationalen Politik. Das Ziel ist, die Fähigkeit zu einem noch härteren Wirtschaftskrieg zu haben und Russland international zu isolieren, in dem Glauben, eine Atommacht könne zu Fall gebracht werden. Die Idee ist, Russland zu ruinieren, um es dann mit China aufzunehmen, in der Hoffnung, die alte, jetzt verblassende Hegemonie wiederzuerlangen. Diese Weltanschauung ignoriert die Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre. Sie richtet sich jedoch nicht nur gegen China, sondern soll auch Länder wie Indien und Vietnam gefügig machen und es der NATO ermöglichen, sie für ihre eigenen Interessen einzuspannen.
GT: Einige Beobachter glauben, dass sich die NATO von einem regionalen Sicherheitsbündnis zu einer globalen Organisation entwickelt. Welche Auswirkungen hat die NATO-Erweiterung Ihrer Meinung nach auf die Welt? Hat die NATO-Erweiterung Europa sicherer gemacht?
Dagdelen: Die Osterweiterung der NATO ist der Hauptgrund für den heutigen Konflikt in Europa. Die USA haben beschlossen, Russland an seinen Grenzen herauszufordern, was auf dem amerikanischen Kontinent in Bezug auf die US-Grenze nie toleriert wurde – siehe die Reaktion in der Kubakrise 1962. Wer Frieden will, muss diese NATO-Erweiterung stoppen. Das gleiche Konzept der Herausforderung soll nun gegen China eingesetzt werden, in diesem Stadium noch über Sicherheitspartnerschaften mit Australien, Neuseeland, Japan und Südkorea und unter Einbeziehung der Philippinen und der Insel Taiwan. Gleichzeitig fördern die USA die militärische Zusammenarbeit zwischen Japan und den Philippinen, um eine Front gegen China aufzubauen. Die NATO unter der Führung der USA arbeitet mit Japan zusammen, was Japan zum Hauptstaat gegen China in Asien machen würde, so wie Deutschland in Europa Russland gegenübersteht.
GT: Die NATO behauptet, ein Verteidigungsbündnis mit demokratischen Werten und einem Bekenntnis zu den Menschenrechten zu sein, doch sie hat ständig Kriege auf der ganzen Welt angezettelt. Wie sehen Sie diesen Widerspruch und was ist das Wesen der NATO?
Dagdelen:Die Kernaufgabe der Nato ist es, die hegemonialen Ambitionen der USA zu unterstützen. Die drei Mythen, die diese Aufgabe verschleiern sollen, geben vor, die Nato stehe für Völkerrecht, Demokratie und Menschenrechte. Sie zerfallen angesichts der Realität: Allein die USA haben in den letzten 20 Jahren in ihren illegalen Kriegen 4,5 Millionen Menschen getötet. Was die Menschenrechte betrifft, so stehen nicht nur die Verletzungen der sozialen Grundrechte von Millionen Bürgern der Nato-Staaten im Mittelpunkt, sondern beispielsweise auch der US-Betrieb des Folterlagers Guantánamo Bay.
GT: Seit Ausbruch der Ukraine-Krise sind die Militärausgaben der Nato deutlich gestiegen. Was haben die steigenden Militärausgaben Deutschland und anderen europäischen Ländern gebracht? Kann die kontinuierliche Steigerung der Militärausgaben die Nato wirklich „größer, stärker und geeinter“ machen als jemals zuvor?
Dagdelen: Die Aufrüstung begann bereits 2014, als sich die Nato-Mitglieder auf das Zwei-Prozent-Ziel einigten. Für Deutschland beispielsweise bedeutete dies eine massive Steigerung der Rüstungsausgaben – Geld, das jetzt in den Bereichen Bildung, Gesundheit und Infrastruktur fehlt. Es besteht die Illusion, dass die identifizierten Feinde Russland und China wie die Sowjetunion durch ein Wettrüsten in den Ruin getrieben, gezwungen werden könnten, immer mehr Ressourcen für Rüstung auszugeben und so letztlich von innen heraus destabilisiert werden könnten. Nur scheint die Geschichte diesmal in die andere Richtung zu laufen und es werden letztlich nur unsere eigenen Gesellschaften destabilisiert.
GT: Deutschland, Frankreich und Spanien werden Japan besuchen, um an einer gemeinsamen Militärübung teilzunehmen. Wie sehen Sie die Militärübungen der NATO-Länder im asiatisch-pazifischen Raum? Wenn die NATO sich in den asiatisch-pazifischen Raum ausdehnt, dient dies den Interessen Europas?
Dagdelen: Die NATO wird nun die hegemonialen Ambitionen der USA im Indo-Pazifik massiv unterstützen. Dies soll den USA helfen, Ressourcen zu sparen. Dabei geht es darum, Länder wie Japan, Südkorea und sogar die Philippinen gezielt in die Konfrontation mit China zu drängen. Um sie zu bewaffnen oder sie bei als Manöver getarnten Drohgebärden zu unterstützen, steht die Intensivierung der militärischen Zusammenarbeit im Mittelpunkt. Deutschlands Aufgabe ist es, die Philippinen als Frontstaat gegen China zu stärken. Dies ist eine desaströse Strategie – im Grunde stützt ein Vasallenstaat den anderen. Der Preis für Frieden und Sicherheit in Europa und Asien ist extrem hoch. Deutschland und Europa brauchen eine andere Außenpolitik, die gute Beziehungen zu Russland und China einschließt und sich nicht länger dem Hegemoniestreben der USA unterordnen lässt.
Der Friedensstifter 