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the american hegemony will last beyond...?THE WESTERN WORLD HAS BEEN IN THE CLUTCHES OF THE AMERICAN CONTROL SINCE AT LEAST 1917. THE AMERICAN HEGEMONY EVOLVED FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776 REJECTION OF ENGLISH COLONIALISM, AND THROUGH MANY FLUCTUATIONS LIKE THE COLOURS ON A SOAP BUBBLE, AMERICA EVOLVED INTO A FULL-BLOWN CENTRIC MASTER OF THE WESTERN WORLD, LIKE AN ENGLISH COLONIALISM, WITH SOME NUANCES. WE HAVE FOLLOWED ALL THESE EVOLUTIONARY EVENTS INVOLVING MAINLY WARS AND DECREES, LIKE THE MONROE DOCTRINE, TO MAKE PEOPLE SUBMIT, WHICH LED TO TODAY’S AMERICAN DISINTEGRATION OF ITS UNIPOLARITY INTO OTHERS SEEKING MULTIPOLARITY — MAINLY THROUGH RUSSIA AND CHINA. THIS DISINTEGRATION IS RESENTED BY THE AMERICAN EMPIRE… THE AMERICAN HEGEMONY, A DAUGHTER OF THE ANGLOSAXON COLONIAL HEGEMONY, HAD BECOME AN EMPIRE — A MILITARY, A CULTURAL AND A FINANCIAL EMPIRE — NOW RESISTED BY NATIONS THAT HAVE THE DESIRE OF INDEPENDENCE…
MANY DECENT ANALYSTS SEE THE PRESENT UKRAINE “PROBLEM” AS THE MAIN TURNING POINT OF THE AMERICAN DEMISE, THOUGH THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IS TRYING ALL THE TRICKS IN THE BOOKS TO PREVAIL IN THIS CONFLICT, MAINLY THROUGH ITS PROPAGANDA AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MANIPULATION MACHINES — THAT COULD LEAD TO THE ULTIMATE MADNESS OF A NUCLEAR CONFLICT, IN WHICH EUROPE WOULD HAVE FRONT SEAT. THE EMPIRE HAD BEEN SUCCESSFUL TIL — ACCORDING TO “THE END OF HISTORY” PROFESSOR FRANCIS FUKUYAMA — THE FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 2007-09… AS AN ASIDE, WE HAVE MADE THE OUTRAGEOUS SUGGESTION THAT CHINA HAD INSTIGATED THIS CRISIS AND WE STICK BY IT… WE THINK THAT WE ARE 99 PER CENT CORRECT. THIS WAS THE PINPRICK THAT BLEW UP THE AMERICAN BUBBLE, LIKE IN SLOW MOTION… IT STARTED THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE TRUST IN AMERICA — A TRUST CAREFULLY CULTIVATED WITH GUNS, CASH AND CULTURAL “CHEWING GUMS”, THAT APPEARED AS WHAT IT WAS: AN ARTFUL DECEPTION DESIGNED TO CONTROL — AND STEAL. THERE ARE STILL NATIONS READY TO FALL FOR THE TRICKS, WHILE OTHERS WANT TO JOIN THE OTHER SIDE — THE MORE DEMOCRATIC BRICS…
THE AMERICAN EMPIRE HAD BECOME FASCIST. NOT ONLY THIS, SINCE AFTER WW2, THE AMERICANS CULTIVATED THE NAZIS IN GERMANY, AND IN UKRAINE, TO DEFEAT “COMMUNISM”, I.E. RUSSIA. ANY DIRTY TRICKS WERE USED BY THE EMPIRE, WHILE SENDING AMERICAN TOURISTS IN SHORTS AND HAWAIIAN SHIRTS TO VISIT EUROPE LIKE LITTLE CAESARS SURVEYING A CONQUERED DECAYING CONTINENT. AND CONQUERED EUROPE HAS BEEN, THROUGH THE EMPIRE MARSHALL PLAN AND INSTALLATION OF MILITARY BASES, EVERYWHERE — UNTIL THE GENERAL, GENERAL DE GAULLE, CHARLES, KICKED THE US OUT IN 1964… BUT THIS WAS AN ISOLATED CASE. THE FRENCH KNEW THAT THE AMERICAN FASCISM HAD REPLACED THE GERMAN FASCISM, WHILE THE REST OF EUROPE WAS MORE AFRAID (MADE TO BE BY THE AMERICAN PROPAGANDA AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MACHINES) OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNISM… BY THE TIME OF THE SARKOZY PRESIDENCY, THE FRENCH HAD FORGOTTEN. PROPAGANDA IS POWERFUL. IT IS DESIGNED TO MAKE YOUR BELIEVE ESCARGOTS, BEEF BOURGUIGNON, Veau en papillote AND FROG-LEGS ARE INFERIOR TO MCDONALD’S… MEANWHILE, ALL THE EUROPEAN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS WERE SLOWLY MODIFIED TO SUIT THE AMERICAN “MODEL” OF GREED. THE US DOLLAR HAD TO BE KING. THE US DOLLAR WAS FASCIST — A TOOL OF THE AMERICAN FASCISM. MEANWHILE THE PROPAGANDA, HEADQUARTERED IN THE PENTAGON AND ITS OFFICES IN HOLLYWOOD, WOULD GLORIFY THE EMPIRE AND GIVE YOU PATS ON THE BACK FOR BEING A GOOD DOG… SOMETIMES, IT WAS A BELLY RUB.
FOR AUSTRALIA, THIS BELLY RUB COMES AT A PRICE… AND PENNY WONG’S “FLATTITUDES” ARE SIMILAR TO THOSE OF THE PREVIOUS PRIME MINISTER, I FORGOT HIS NAME (AH YES IT WAS … SCOTTY MORRISON) IN REGARD TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, APART FROM HER MONOTONOUS LOWKEY HUBRISTIC VOICE. WE’RE PAYING NOW FOR FUTURE DELIVERIES OF SUBS THAT MAY SINK (OR WILL BE OBSOLETE) THE DAY THEY LEAVE THEIR CONSTRUCTION SITES. AS WELL, LIKE GERMANY, WE ARE HELD UP FOR RANSOM WITH AMERICAN MILITARY BASES, INCLUDING THE CONTROVERSIAL PINE GAP, WHICH WHITLAM WANTED TO EITHER CONTROL OR SHUT DOWN, POSSIBLY A STANCE THAT GOT HIM FIRED BY THE CIA — VIA THE LONDONIAN CROWN… AUSTRALIA, LIKE AMERICA, IS A COUNTRY BASED ON CONQUERED LANDS — AND THAT’S THAT. THIS CONQUERING SPIRIT, DILUTED WITH ACTS OF BRAVERY FROM “OUR” SOLDIERS PLASTERED ON WAR MEMORIALS FOR USELESS WARS MAKE US FORGET THE UNDERLYING HISTORY.
SO, HOW IS THE AMERICAN EMPIRE GOING TO COLLAPSE? IS THE AMERICAN EMPIRE GOING TO COLLAPSE, OR SHRINK TO A LITTLE SPACE OF WHITE MEN, NOW DRESSED IN RAINBOW COLOURS? OR FIGHT LIKE DEMON IN HEAVEN?
AMERICANS LOVE COMPETITION, BUT HATE COMPETITORS…
WHOEVER ORGANISED THE RETREAT FROM KABUL SHOULD HAVE BEEN COURT-MARSHALLED — OR SENT TO PRISON. NOT. THE GUY IN CHIEF WAS BIDEN AND HE IS HAILED AS A GOD DESPITE NOT BEING ABLE TO STAND UP AND UTTER TWO WORDS THAT MAKE SENSE. HE’S BEEN DECLARED AN OLD FOGGY WHO CAN’T REMEMBER ANYTHING…
LUCKILY, BIDEN DOES NOT RUN AMERICA… UNLUCKILY, THE PENTAGON DOES. AND THIS SPELLS MORE TROUBLES THAN PIRAÑAS IN A SWIMMING POOL.
AMEN… GUS LEONISKY, POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951. FIERCE ATHEIST.
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SO HERE ARE A FEW ARTICLES: By Francis Fukuyama: senior fellow at Stanford University The horrifying images of desperate Afghans trying to get out of Kabul after the Western-backed government collapsed in August seemed to signify a major juncture in world history, as America turned away from the world. Yet in truth, the end of the American era had come much earlier. The long-term sources of American weakness and decline are more domestic than international. The country will remain a great power for many years, but just how influential it will be depends on its ability to fix its internal problems, rather than its foreign policy. The peak period of American hegemony lasted less than 20 years, from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the financial crisis of 2007-09. The country was dominant in many domains of power—military, economic, political and cultural. The height of American hubris was the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when it hoped to remake not just Iraq and Afghanistan (invaded two years before), but the whole Middle East. America overestimated the effectiveness of military power to bring about deep political change, even as it underestimated the impact of its free-market economic model on global finance. The decade ended with its troops bogged down in two counterinsurgency wars, and a financial crisis that accentuated the inequalities American-led globalisation had brought about.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/american-hegemony-myth-and-reality/ Part I. For many outside the US, news that America’s era of supremacy was over might produce more relief than regret. As any recent poll will show you, the US reign of power has not been a popular one. America is more mistrusted and more reviled, in more places around the world, than it has ever been in its history. But while it is clear that the international environment—especially in the Middle East—has shifted in ways that constrain US power today, I do not believe it is proper to call 2006 the year that America lost its supremacy in international affairs. In fact US supremacy was never as total, or as meaningful, as either its admirers or its enemies claimed. What has diminished over the past few years has not been US power itself, but rather our perceptions of that power and what it can do. Nowhere have the limits of American hegemony been more clearly on display, and with more serious results, than in the Middle East over the past four years. Iraq is the area where the real limits of American hegemony are most evident. Since the US and its allies invaded Iraq and overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein, America’s position in the region has shifted from advantageous to disadvantaged, from nearly unstoppable to deeply restrained. The decline in America’s ability to influence events in the Middle East has not come about because America’s military capabilities or economic capacity have declined. Rather, American influence in the region has been sapped by the failure of efforts at political reconstruction in Iraq, by war-weariness at home, by relative neglect of the Arab-Israeli peace process, and by the effect of US regional policies on the influence of Iran. The result of these developments is the emergence of a new fault line in the region. In the Middle East today, we can see an emerging struggle for power between an Iranian-led bloc of mainly Shia actors, and a bloc of Sunni forces led by the Arab states of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The sectarian killing in Iraq has fed, and been fed by, this broader regional contest. But the conflict is not as simple as the one described by US President George W. Bush in announcing his surge strategy for Iraq, which he called a conflict between radicals and moderates. Each bloc encompasses both moderates and extremists, severely complicating the effort to pursue a coherent US strategy to bolster moderates at the expense of extremists. It took a war to expose this new sectarian fault line. For some time Arab leaders in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan had been warning that a “Shiite crescent” was spreading its influence across the region. Iraq’s descent into civil war and Iran’s defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons fed these Arab concerns. But it was only in 2006 that these leaders rang alarm bells: when Hezbollah provoked a confrontation with Israel in Lebanon, and when the Assad regime in Damascus blocked Egypt from organizing a prisoner exchange to calm tensions in the Gaza Strip.
GUSNOTE: THE ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN 2007...
I REPEAT: DESPITE WHAT THE WESTERN BOFFINS CLAIM, PUTIN IS A MAN OF PEACE AND FAIRNESS, WHILE NAPOLEON WAS A MAN OF WAR AND LOOTING. BOTH HAVE HAD TO STRUGGLE AGAINST THE ENGLISH HEGEMONY... NAPOLEON FAILED. PUTIN IS WINNING AND WE (THE WEST) HATE HIM FOR THIS.... THINK ABOUT IT... Meanwhile THE ANGLOSAXON/AMERICAN HEGEMONY DEFEATED NAPOLEON AND HITLER (THE RUSSIANS DID BOTH ACTUALLY), BUT THE AMERICAN EMPIRE SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO DEFEAT THE RUSSIAN/CHINESE COMBO... THE AMERICAN EMPIRE WILL TRY HARD NONETHELESS — USING AUSTRALIA AS A BARKING DOG PROXY, FIRST....
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.... (HE'S IN PRISON IN THE UK..... THIS MAKE THE UK LOOK CROOK... DEAR FAIR JUSTICE, DO SOMETHING TO GET HIM OUT FREE... )
SEE ALSO" white saviours .....
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COL. MAJ. AMADOU Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to the national television network on Saturday to denounce the United States and end the long-standing counterterrorism partnership between the two countries.
“The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees,” he said, declaring that the security pact, in effect since 2012, violated Niger’s constitution.
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/niger-junta-throws-us-troops-drone-base/?
America’s legacy media and political ruling class have thrown a predictably massive hissy fit over last weekend’s Russian election, insisting that President Vladimir Putin’s landslide victory was “preordained” and “stage-managed.”
Every protest and anti-Putin statement before, during, and after the election was amplified. Every allegation of misconduct was reported with zero scrutiny or skepticism. Washington and its allies decried the results, arguing that the vote wasn’t free or fair. UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron went so far as to call it “illegal.”
The pearl-clutching over Russia’s vote was the most intense I’ve ever seen over a foreign election. It was so inordinate, in fact, that it reminded me of the nonstop media coverage last month after Russian political activist Alexey Navalny died in a Siberian penal colony. The same media that showed no concern over the death of US journalist Gonzalo Lira in a Ukrainian jail – after he had been tortured, at American taxpayer expense, for daring to criticize the Kiev regime – huffed and puffed for weeks about the death of a Russian citizen in a Russian prison.
https://www.rt.com/news/594563-washington-putins-victory-elections/
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has insisted that Ukraine’s Western backers will not be sending troops to “die for Donbass,” and they should not needlessly frighten their citizens by hyping the prospect of a direct conflict with Russia.
“I have heard some voices saying ‘war is imminent’,” Borrell told reporters on Thursday before attending the European Council summit in Brussels. “Well, thank God, war is not imminent. We live in peace. We support Ukraine. We are not part of this war; we just support Ukraine.”
The summit is focused largely on efforts to ramp up European support for Kiev amid struggles by US President Joe Biden to secure congressional approval for additional Ukraine aid. Borrell said the aid push is not a question of sending US or European troops to “die for Donbass.” Rather, the aim is to help Ukrainians, so they will not be killed fighting in Donbass.
https://www.rt.com/news/594647-eu-borrell-downplays-russian-war-threat/
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CIA in ukraine.....
CIA in Ukraine: Why is this not seen as provocation?
An explosive new NYT report shows how Washington needlessly fed into Russia’s worst fears and precipitated the invasion, justified or notBY MARK EPISKOPOS
The White House’s messaging on the Ukraine war is built around two simple-yet-powerful adjectives: “We are united in our condemnation,” said President Joe Biden almost two years ago in a joint statement with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, “of Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.”
The “unjustified and unprovoked” line has been used numerous times by a chorus of top U.S. officials and allies, quickly becoming a rhetorical mainstay of Biden’s maximum pressure campaign against the Kremlin.
This messaging conflates two important, yet fundamentally different issues. There is little question that Russia’s invasion has wrought a horrific human toll on Ukraine and upended European security in ways that few anticipated prior to February 2022. But it is also not without its context, which includes a litany of grievances that — however unjustified from the perspective of the West — constitute what the Kremlin saw as sufficient provocation to initiate the most destructive war in Europe since 1945.
An explosive New York Times exposé by Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz sheds light on major developments preceding the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to the report, the Ukrainian government entered into a wide-ranging partnership with the CIA against Russia. This cooperation, which involved the establishment of as many as 12 secret CIA “forward operating bases” along Ukraine’s border with Russia, began not with Russia’s 2022 invasion, but just over 10 years ago.
Within days of the February 2014 Euromaidan Revolution that culminated with the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych and ushered in a firmly pro-Western government, the newly appointed head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, reportedly proposed a “three-way partnership” with the CIA and MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence service. Ukrainian security officials gradually proved their value to the U.S. by feeding the CIA intelligence on Russia, including “secret documents about the Russian Navy,” leading to the establishment of CIA bases in Ukraine to coordinate activities against Russia and various training programs for Ukrainian commandos and other elite units.
A graduate of one such CIA training program, then-Lt. Col. Kyrylo Budanov, went on to become the chief of Ukrainian military intelligence.
Kyiv routinely pushed this relationship’s boundaries, violating the Obama administration’s red lines around lethal operations by carrying out assassinations of high-profile Russian fighters on territory controlled by Russian-aligned separatists. The Kyiv-CIA partnership deepened under the Trump administration, yet again putting the lie to the baseless idea that former President Trump was somehow amenable to Russia’s interests while in office.
As Budanov reportedly put it, “It only strengthened. It grew systematically. The cooperation expanded to additional spheres and became more large-scale.” This cooperation, as painstakingly outlined by the Times, went far beyond helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia in a narrow, technical sense — rather, Ukraine was drawn into a Western coalition for the purpose of waging a broad-based shadow war against Russia.
The New York Times’ exposé offers no shortage of disturbing implications. Ukraine is, needless to say, a sovereign state in charge of determining its own security arrangements. The underlying issue is not whether Ukraine is within its rights to enter into this kind of relationship with the CIA, as it obviously is, nor is it whether the Maidan Revolution put Ukraine on a certain path toward political cooperation with Western entities.
The problem, rather, is one of basic security perceptions. Moscow repeatedly warned — for many years before 2014 — that it was and remains prepared to take drastic action to prevent Ukraine from being used by the West as a forward operating base against Russia. Yet that, as recounted in lurid detail by The New York Times, is precisely what has happened over the past 10 years.
The fact that Ukraine has not just willingly but enthusiastically submitted to this arrangement is immaterial to Russia’s core concerns. Nor can this issue be entirely reduced to NATO membership: Ukraine can play the role of an anti-Russian outpost on NATO’s eastern flank without ever formally joining the alliance, and this, too, is unacceptable to the Kremlin.
Justification is by nature a subjective exercise, but there can be little question that the activities described in this exposé constitute, from the Kremlin’s perspective, a dire provocation and would be seen as such by the United States if the situation were reversed and a rival superpower established such bases in Mexico. This perception is an inseparable part of the military and political context that shaped this war’s outbreak. It can be dismissed as paranoid, but if so it is a paranoia common to all security establishments.
It is unclear what concrete U.S. interests these joint intelligence activities served. They certainly did not facilitate de-escalation between Moscow and Kyiv or promote regional stability, goals ostensibly shared by the Obama and Trump administrations. On the other hand, it is quite easy to see how Kyiv’s deepening relationship with the CIA needlessly fed into Moscow’s worst security fears and precipitated its conclusion — whether justified or not — that it must act decisively in the face of an implacable conflict with the West over Ukraine.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/cia-ukraine-russia/
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IT IS NOT UNCLEAR what concrete U.S. interests these joint intelligence activities served... THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IS USING ALL THE TRICKS POSSIBLE IN ORDER TO DESTROY RUSSIA. DESTROY RUSSIA AND TAKE OVER THE HEARTLAND IS THE AIM OF "THE GAME" OF EMPIRE....