Tectonic shifts continue to rage through the world system with nation-states quickly recognizing that the “great game” as it has been played since the establishment of the Bretton Woods monetary system in the wake of the second World War, is over.

But empires never disappear without a fight, and the Anglo-American one is no exception, overplaying its hand, threatening and bluffing its way, right to the end.

End of an order

Tony Abbott, as prime minister nearly a decade ago, had more than a few bees under his bonnet. He thought his election had redeemed the nation from an intolerable scourge of a government of criminals. Other opposition leaders have engaged in this sort of hyperbole, but scarcely ever with the zeal and lack of restraint, of Abbott.

One example of how he had come to this conclusion involved the roof insulation scheme. Treasury proposed it as a good way of getting cash quickly into hundreds of communities when the 2008 global financial crisis threatened to seize up the money supply. A similar scheme involved pouring money into an instant program of building libraries and other facilities in primary and secondary schools.

By Jack Waterford

The ability of humans to believe whatever lie they want to believe never comes in lower than I expect, but it sometimes manages to come in even higher. Nowhere has that been more transparently true than in economics where everyday I read people in the financial media who must surely have IQs somewhere above a hundred but who write as if their brain were a rotten peanut inside a hollow shell. I call it economic denial, and this week provided some glaring examples around the hypersonic inflation data that came out and the sickly retail data. Yes, I said “sickly,” but you wouldn’t have guessed how negative it was by what you read.

Behind the militarese the professionals know this means that Australia will cough up as much money and forces as necessary to fight China in a high-intensity war on China’s doorstep.

In Washington, far from the people he serves, Australia’s Defence Minister Marles has unveiled a totemic security pivot for Australia, fraught with risk, costing far more than the kings-ransom nuclear submarines of AUKUS. Nobody can blame the previous government. The Albanese government is taking Australia deep into dangerous, fanciful security terrain in Asia without justification.

By Mike Gilligan

The West, in its intention to hurt Russia with sanctions, has shot itself in the foot, many media outlets have been writing for a while now. The result is high inflation, energy and food shortages, recession, and many political and social problems that Europeans don’t know how to deal with. The IMF itself admits that the promotion of a spiral of unilateral sanctions by Western countries threatens to increase inflation and a global recession.

The president of Mexico has revealed the contents of a personal letter he passed on to his US counterpart during their meeting last week. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador urged Joe Biden to intervene and dismiss charges against WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who faces the prospect of 175 years in American prison.

“I left a letter to the president about Assange, explaining that he did not commit any serious crime, did not cause anyone's death, did not violate any human rights and that he exercised his freedom, and that arresting him would mean a permanent affront to freedom of expression,” Lopez Obrador said at news conference on Monday.

“And I explained to [Biden] that Mexico offers protection and asylum to Julian Assange,” the Mexican president added.

Ouf! C’est presque fini!

Or is it?

Meteorologists here in southwest France are predicting we will have some mid-night relief from this unbearable “canicule” (that’s French for way too bloody hot).

The drop in temperature probably won’t last long, however – and, anyway, the news is little comfort for the thousands of evacuees crammed into school halls and worried their homes are about to be razed by bushfires.

More than a dozen heat records fell on Monday in what one meteorologist described as France’s “heat apocalypse”.

by Andrea Hamblin

As I write this from Bordeaux, it’s going on 10pm and still up over 40C. It feels like twice that, inside.

A Middle Eastern state that Joe Biden once vowed to make “pariah” has now become pivotal to the success of the US plot to encircle and defeat Russia, both militarily and economically. This, first and foremost, is the cardinal objective behind Biden’s ‘U-turn’ on his Saudia policy and meeting with a CIA-designated ‘murderer’, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (M.B.S.).

In another era, Vladimir Fedorovsky was among those who whispered advice into Mikhail Gorbachev's ear as the latter tried to reform the Soviet Union's communist regime from within.

He was with the Secretary General when he let the countries behind the Iron Curtain – Poland, East Germany and the others – distance themselves from Moscow. He was there also during the negotiations which made it possible to put an end to the cold war.

On the phone, the former diplomat says he was also there when James Baker, Secretary of State to George Bush Sr., promised Eduard Shevardnadze, then Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, that NATO would not was not going to expand an inch eastward after the frosty relationship ended. A promise denied since.

BY LAURA-JULIE PERREAULT

The latest formulation of a binary world pits the so-called democracies against the so-called autocrats. The United States is the self-designated champion of the former while China and Russia lead the array of autocrats. In effect, it’s a reversion to long-running democracy/capitalism vs Communism all-embracing conflict of the Cold War. Today’s version has even less authenticity than did its forerunner. It retains the advantage, though, of intellectual and diplomatic convenience while serving American global interests. 

An American orchestrated global to shape a ‘rules-based’ future world order is taken uncritically as the United States’ strategic imperative. The goal is to maximize its effectiveness by enlisting as many like-minded and like-interested countries as possible in a multifaceted campaign of suasion.

Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), a member of the select committee, has summed up the matter this way:

“[F]or four years, the Justice Department took the position that you can’t indict a sitting president. If the Department were now to take the position that you can’t investigate or indict a former president, then, a president becomes above the law. That’s a very dangerous idea that the founders would have never subscribed to.”

Joe Biden Suicide Bombs Summit Where He Was Supposed to be Begging for Oil and War Support

ANDREW ANGLIN

So, Joe Biden, the alleged President of America, was supposed to go to this meeting with the Arabs and beg them for oil.

Instead, the wacky sonovabitch strapped a bomb to his chest and ran into a crowd of sheiks, yelling “Ukrainia Akbar!” before clicking the detonator.

Reuters:

The West doesn’t have the stockpiles of weapons needed to sustain a prolonged war in Ukraine or elsewhere, the CEO of one of the Pentagon’s main defense contractors has warned.

The military-industrial complex therefore needs a “clear demand signal” from Western governments on what exactly it should produce and whether it will be purchased, Kathy Warden told the Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday.

“The most important thing now is to get a clear demand signal on what the sustained commitment is and the level of drawdown from those stockpiles is going to be,” she explained.

Existing weapon stockpiles were not designed for a prolonged conflict, Warden said. However, the West is not yet running out of arms for Ukraine.

For the first time in modern history the East can be on equal terms with the West, as the global dominance of the US and its allies comes to an end, former British prime minister Tony Blair has said.

Due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine, “for a large part of the Western population, living standards are stagnating,” Blair noted in his annual lecture at the Ditchley Foundation on Saturday.

“Western politics is in turmoil – more partisan, ugly, unproductive; and fueled by social media,” which affects both domestic and international affairs, Blair said, arguing that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine “should become a pivot point reviving our [Western] sense of mission.”

On July 2 Lysichansk came under Russian control:

This comes only a week after the cauldron around Lysichansk began to close. Until a few hours ago there was still a chance to flee from Lysichansk but the only passable road was under Russian fire. It is not know yet how many made it out or how many gave up and were taken prisoners.

Some of those who retreated went to Siversk some 20 kilometer west of Lysichansk. That city will be the next bigger target in that campaign sector.

The speed of this operation was much faster than the one in Mariupol. That points to diminished capabilities and soldier motivation of the Ukrainian forces.