Saturday 27th of April 2024
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it's a beautiful thing, the destruction of worlds…….

The recent pact between China and the Solomon Islands has exposed the manifest hypocrisy with which the United States and Australia view their relationship with smaller members of the Pacific community. The Solomon Islands have recently signed a security deal with China. The details of the arrangement have not been publicly disclosed, but it is believed to provide for periodic visits by Chinese warships to the small Pacific Island nation, and for the provision of Chinese assistance in maintaining public order.

 

BY James O’Neill

 

For the Solomons, the deal represents a further stage in a remarkable turnaround in their relationship with China. Until 2019 the Solomons was one of the few remaining countries in the world that recognised the island of Taiwan as the legitimate rulers of China. That observed position was clearly unsustainable, and the recognition of the Peoples Republic of China as the legitimate rulers of the whole of China, which includes the island of Taiwan, was a recognition of reality.

The recent pact signed between the PRC and the Solomons has given rise to the expected flurry of hypocrisy from the United States and Australia, with both nations assuming an attitude that they are the only ones to dictate who the island nation may be governed by, who they may enter contracts with, and under what conditions.

According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 29 April 2022, reliably reflecting the Australian government’s position as it usually does, invoked memories of the World War II battle of the Guadalcanal by United States forces in 1944 to justify the United States position that the Chinese should never be allowed to establish a base in the country.

United States Congressman Joe Courtney was quoted as saying that the Chinese-Solomon Islands deal “deeply concerned” the United States and that the United States and its allies (a reference to Australia) should do more to “safeguard the region”.

The United States Congressman invoked memories of the battle of Guadalcanal where 2000 United States marines died in the battle to justify the continued United States interest in the country. The signing of the China-Solomons deal so alarmed the Americans that they dispatched two of their high-level representatives to the island what was an obvious attempt to persuade (or threaten) the Islanders against the deal with China.

Unnamed Australian security experts were quoted as being alarmed that the Chinese government was taking advantage of the interregnum until the forthcoming (May 2022) general election to be held in Australia, which they described as a “military foothold” in the nation. There are a number of issues raised by the United States and Australian response to the possible military presence of Chinese forces in the islands.

The first is that the Solomons are located 2000 km north east of the Australian mainland. They are hardly a close neighbour whose military agreement should raise any concern for Australia. Not the least of the objections to the Australian presence is that it totally overlooks the Australian and United States presence in the South China Sea, which is a lot less than 2000 km from the Chinese border whose coastline traverses part of that sea. That presence, under the manifestly false claim of insuring “freedom of navigation” represents a clear and present danger to China.

The hostile view of Australia to China is further exhibited by the presence of Australian warships in the narrow strip of waterway between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. That waterway is a vital part of China’s communication link with Asia and up to and including the African coast.

Australia’s professed concern about the Chinese move to the Solomons representing a threat to their sea links to the United States rings especially hollow in the light of the blatantly anti-China moves of their own naval forces.

Also on Friday, the Prime Minister of the Solomons, Manasseh Sogevare accused Australia of hypocrisy, saying that they should have been more transparent with other Pacific nations when it signed the so-called AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom and United States) pact before criticising the new Honiara-Beijing deal of secrecy. Mr Sogevare told his parliament that the Solomons and other members of the Pacific should have been consulted to ensure the AUKUS treaty was transparent, since it would affect the “Pacific family” by allowing nuclear submarines in Pacific waters.

He has a point. Hypocrisy is not too strong a word to use to describe the manufactured outrage in the Australian government that the Solomons should have the temerity to exhibit a show of independence and to make an arrangement with China that they see as protecting and promoting their self-interest.

It is a lesson that the Australian and United States governments have difficulty in accepting. The Solomons are entitled to make decisions that they perceive to be in their national interest. Appeals to American sacrifices in a war now 77 years ago are rightly seen as a manufactured reason to interfere in the self-governance of an independent country.

The sooner the Americans and Australians recognise that Pacific nations do not exist to meet their manufacture reasons for confronting China the better we will all be.

 

 

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2022/05/04/australia-and-the-united-states-seek-to-create-a-crisis-in-the-pacific/

 

GusNote: "it's a beautiful thing, the destruction of worlds……." is a misquote from George Orwell's 1984.

 

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frivolity of a dangerous senile empire…….

Blinded by what Barbara Tuchman calls “the bellicose frivolity of senile empires,” we are marching ominously towards war with Russia. 

How else might we explain Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s public declaration that the U.S. goal is to “weaken Russia” and Joe Biden’s request for another $33 billion in “emergency” military and economic aid (half of what Russia spent on its military in 2021) for Ukraine?

The same cabal of generals and politicians that drained the state of trillions of dollars in the debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Somalia and learned nothing from the nightmare of Vietnam, revel in the illusion of their omnipotence. They have no interest in a diplomatic solution. There are billions in profits to be made in arms sales. There is political posturing to be done. There are generals itching to pull the trigger. Why have all these high-priced and technologically advanced weapons systems if you can’t use them? Why not show the world this time around that the U.S. still dominates the globe? 

The masters of war require an enemy. When an enemy cannot be found, as George Orwell understood in Nineteen Eighty-Four, an enemy is manufactured. That enemy can become an ally overnight – we allied ourselves with Iran in the Middle East to fight the Taliban and later the Caliphate – before instantly reinstated Iran as the incarnation of evil. The enemy is not about logic or geopolitical necessity. It is about stoking the fear and hatred that fuels perpetual war. 

In 1989, I covered the revolutions that toppled the communist dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe.  President Mikhail Gorbachev, like his successor Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin in the early stages of his rule, hoped to integrate Russia into the Western alliance.

War Industry Needed Antagonistic Russia 

But the war industry places profits before national defense. It needed an antagonistic Russia to push the expansion of NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany in violation of a promise made to Moscow. There were billions of dollars to be made from a Russian enemy, as there are billions more to be made from the proxy war in Ukraine.

There would be no “peace dividend” at the end of the Cold War. The war industry was determined to continue to bleed the U.S. dry and amass its obscene profits. They provoked and antagonized Russia until Russia filled its preordained role.

The humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan and two decades of military disasters in the Middle East have magically been atoned for in Ukraine, although the U.S. and its allies have yet to place any troops on Ukrainian soil. The U.S. has taken ownership of the Ukrainians, as it did with the mujahideen it funded to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

 

 

“For the first time in decades, an American president is showing that he, and only he, can lead the free world,” wrote George Packer, one of the most ardent cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, in The Atlantic magazine.

“NATO has been revitalized, the United States has reclaimed a mantle of leadership that some feared had vanished in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the European Union has found a unity and purpose that eluded it for most of its existence,” The New York Times crowed.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, The New York Times wrote, carries around a map of Ukraine, marked with tactical details. “With aides, he drills down for details about the location and combat readiness of specific Russian ground units and ship movements,” the paper noted.

Former NATO commander Richard Shirreff told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program the West should prepare to fight Russia.

“The worst case is war with Russia,” he said. “By gearing itself up for the worst case, it is most likely to deter Putin because ultimately Putin respects strength.”

More Weapons Mean More Fighting

War is a drug. It cripples your body. It fogs your brain. It reduces you to poverty. But each new hit sends you back to the euphoric heights where you began.  

More weapons mean more fighting. More fighting means more death and destruction. More death and destruction mean more antagonization of Moscow. More antagonization of Moscow means we circle closer and closer to open warfare with Russia.

Following Ukraine’s strikes on Russian military and energy facilities, Moscow threatened to attack incoming NATO weapons shipments. Reeling from sanctions, Moscow halted gas supplies to two European countries. It warned that the risk of a nuclear war is very “real” and that any direct foreign intervention in Ukraine would provoke a “lightning fast” response.

As Finland and Sweden debate joining NATO, Russia has called further expansion of NATO another dangerous act of aggression, which of course it is. There is mounting pressure for a no-fly zone, a move that would trigger direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, as would a Russian attack on a NATO arms convoy in a Ukrainian neighbor country. Putin’s revanchism is matched by our own.

The disorganization, ineptitude, and low morale of the Russian army conscripts, along with the repeated intelligence failures by the Russian high command, apparently convinced Russia would roll over Ukraine in a few days, exposes the lie that Russia is a global menace.

Russia’s 40-mile long convoy of stalled tanks and trucks, broken down and out of fuel, on the muddy road to Kiev was not an image of cutting-edge military prowess. 

Russia has been unable to overwhelm a poorly equipped and numerically inferior force in Ukraine, many of whose troops have little or no military training. Russia poses no threat to the NATO alliance or the United States, barring a nuclear attack.

“The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself,” historian Andrew Bacevich writes.

But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public. Russia must be inflated to become a global menace, despite nine weeks of humiliating military failures.

A Russian monster is the raison d’être for increased military spending and the further projection of American power abroad, especially against China. Militarists need a mortal enemy. That enemy may be a chimera, but it will always be led by the new Hitler. The new Hitler was once Saddam Hussein. Today it is Vladimir Putin. Tomorrow it will be Xi Jinping. You can’t drain and impoverish the nation to feed an insatiable military machine unless you make its people afraid, even of phantoms.

Climate, the Real Existential Crisis

The war in Ukraine is intimately linked to the real existential crisis we face — the climate crisis. The latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warns that greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, and be nearly halved this decade, to thwart global catastrophe.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres characterized the report as “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” Triggered by war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices have pushed the U.S. and other countries to call on domestic oil producers to increase fossil fuel extraction and exacerbate the climate crisis. Oil and gas lobbyists are demanding the Biden administration lift prohibitions on offshore drilling and on federal lands.

Black and brown people, who suffered in the brutal wars in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria, without the Western support and sympathy shown white Ukrainians, will again be targeted. The Indian subcontinent is currently plagued with temperatures as high as 116.6 degrees, power outages of 10 to 14 hours a day and dying fields of crops. An estimated 143 million people will be displaced over the next 30 years, nearly all from Africa, South Asia and Latin America, the IPCC writes.

These endless conflicts will inevitably militarize our response to the climate breakdown. Absent measures and resources to halt the rise in global temperatures, curtail our reliance on fossil fuels, foster a plant-based diet and curb profligate consumption, nations will increasingly use their militaries to hoard diminishing natural resources, including food and water.

Russia and Ukraine account for 30 percent of all wheat traded on world markets. Since the invasion, the price of wheat has gone up by between 50 and 65 per cent in commodities exchanges. This is a hint of what is to come.

The Ukraine war is part of a world order where the rule of law has been jettisoned for aggressive, preemptive war; a criminal act of aggression. These wars bring with them black sites, kidnapping, torture, targeted assassinations, censorship and arbitrary detention.

Rogue private contractors, along with covert intelligence paramilitary units, carry out off-the-book-war crimes. Russia’s Wagner Group (The name Wagner is supposedly the call sign of its founder and commander, an ex-GRU officer called Dmitry Utkin, who reportedly has Waffen-SS insignia tattooed on his collarbones) or the U.S. mercenary group Academi, founded by the Christian Right leader Erik Prince, function as little more than death squads. 

War is a spectacular form of social control. It secures a blind, unquestioning mass consent propped up by what Pankaj Mishra calls an “infotainment media” that “works up citizens into a state of paranoid patriotism,” while “a service class of intellectuals talks up the American Revolution and the international liberal order.”

In The London Review of Books, Mishra wrote:

“Humiliation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at home by Trump, demoralised the exporters of democracy and capitalism. But Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine have now given them an opportunity to make America seem great again. The Russian bear has long guaranteed, more reliably than ‘Islamofascism’ or China, income, and identity to many in the military-industrial and intellectual-industrial complex. An aging centrist establishment — battered by the far right, harangued by post-Occupy and post-BLM young leftists, frustrated by legislative stalemate in Washington — seems suddenly galvanised by the prospect of defining themselves through a new cold war.”

This world of fantasy is sustained by myths — the myth that the people of Afghanistan and Iraq would welcome invading forces as liberators, that Ukraine is not a real nation, that Ukrainians see themselves as pan-Russians, that all that stands between Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, Somalis, Yemenis and Libyans and ourselves are terrorists, that all that stands between Putin and Ukrainians are neo-Nazis and their supporters in the West.

Those that challenge these fantasies, whether in Russia or the U.S., are attacked, marginalized, and censored. Few notice. The dream is more appealing than reality. Step-by-step these blinded, bloodied cyclops of war stumble forward leaving mounds of corpses in their wake.

 

 

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR.  He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

Author’s Note to Readers: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waiver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.

 

 

 

This column is from Scheerpost, for which Chris Hedges writes a regular column. Click here to sign up for email alerts.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/05/03/chris-hedges-the-age-of-self-delusion/

 

 

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multipolar reality….

 

BY Vladimir Odintsov

 

Unlike Europe, Russia did not leave a colonial imprint on the Arab world. Moreover, it was Moscow that in the previous century was actively involved in decolonization, in freeing many Arab states from their previous political and economic dependence on the West, in creating their own economies and policies independent of Europe. Russian-Arab cooperation received a boost in 2000, when Vladimir Putin came to power. Relations with Iraq, Algeria and Syria began to develop actively, and Moscow has adopted a balanced position on the Palestinian question, in contrast to Western countries, which in recent decades have emphasized unilateral support for Israel.

That is why the Arab states, which are openly interested in the birth of the multipolar world order, are eager today to develop relations and cooperate in various fields with Russia. Russia is also extending its arms towards the Arab world, realizing that mutual interests lie in the field of economy and security, Rai Al Youm says. Moreover, interaction is based on mutual respect, not the cowboy culture that has dominated relations with the West in recent years. Meanwhile, the Arabs are aware that they also must take the lead in building a strategic relationship with the growing Russian-Chinese axis, and a number of countries in the Arab world have already begun to conclude an increasing number of economic partnership agreements with Moscow and Beijing. Among them are Algeria, Kuwait and Iran, and there is no doubt that common interests are at the forefront of the process. This interaction is based on mutual respect rather than the hegemony of one side, as has been practiced in the past and is still practiced by a number of Western powers today.

A striking example of the progressive development of relations is the recent contacts between Algeria and Moscow, which have been very active and fruitful in developing trade, economic, political and strategic cooperation. Algeria is one of Russia’s top three trading partners in Africa. It maintains neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine crisis and has stated the willingness of the League of Arab States (LAS) to serve as a platform for talks between Moscow and Kiev.

The gas crisis in Europe and Russia’s special operation to denazify Ukraine have further drawn international attention to Algeria of late. The US, France, Italy and Germany have become active in the search for alternatives to Russian gas, with a particular focus on Algeria, while also pursuing another explicit objective: to achieve, through Algerian acceptance of Western proposals, damage to Russian-Algerian relations. But despite all the material benefits Algeria could receive from Europe seeking to reduce its dependence on Russian gas, Algeria has refused such Western insistence on offsetting Russian gas supplies, choosing not to betray its ally since the Soviet Union and not to stab it in the back.

Today, bilateral relations between Algeria and Moscow continue to strengthen. The Declaration on Strategic Partnership, signed on April 4, 2001, has promoted political dialogue and cooperation ever since. However, the sides are in the process of preparing a new such document, which will reflect the “new quality of bilateral relations,” as Algerian Ambassador to Russia Smail Benamara said on the sidelines of the XIII International Economic Summit “Russia – Islamic World: Kazansummit 2022” on May 20. According to him, the document is likely to be signed during the visit of Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to Russia in the near future, following an invitation already extended by President Putin. As the Algerian diplomat underlined, the current ties, for example in the military and technical field, are very long and deep, and it is not only arms procurement, but also exercises, cooperation and information exchange.

In an interview with Izvestia on May 11, the Russian ambassador to Algeria, Igor Belyaev, also told about the intense political dialogue between the two countries, which is developing an ascendant relationship. “Our leaders are exchanging messages, making phone calls. Most recently, on April 18, Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Abdelmadjid Tebboune,” the diplomat said. Belyaev stressed that Russia and Algeria have many themes for interaction, and that the countries’ positions on various international and regional problems coincide.

As Al-Quds Al-Arabi noted, relations with Moscow are very important for Algeria, which is the third largest importer of Russian arms in the world. It buys fighters, transport aircraft, helicopters, tanks, air defense systems and submarines (which now total six). Algeria also buys more than half of the wheat from Russia.

However, it is not just about arms and wheat, but also about the position of the US and Europe (especially the Spanish government) on the Algerian-Moroccan conflict over Western Sahara, because of which the Algerian authorities have many reasons to be unhappy with Western diplomacy.

In addition, bilateral cooperation in the oil and gas sector has been developing successfully: in September 2021 Algeria and Russia’s Gazprom signed an agreement to develop full-scale cooperation in the exploration, production, transport, processing and sale of hydrocarbons. They are jointly developing the El Assel site in Algeria. The field is expected to be commissioned in 2025.

On May 10, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov paid a working visit to Algeria during which several new arms deals were announced, including the purchase by Algeria of advanced Russian weaponry, including Su-35 fighter jets. It should be recalled that the strategic partnership between Moscow and Algeria has led to the cancellation of more than 50% of arms deals from the United States.

In addition to the Russian foreign minister, a Russian delegation headed by Viktor Bondarev, chairman of the Federation Council defense committee, also visited Algeria recently. During this trip, he met with Ramtan Lamamra, Algeria’s foreign minister, and Mohamed Salah bin Bisha, secretary-general of the Ministry of Defense. An agreement was reached to intensify bilateral security cooperation, discussing the development and strengthening of bilateral cooperation on the basis of agreements signed earlier between the upper houses of parliaments – the Council of the Nation of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria and the Federation Council of the Russian Federation.

 

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2022/05/25/relations-between-russia-and-algeria-are-developing-rapidly/

 

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SEE ALSO: the carnival of NATO psyops…

 

 

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