Germany just posted its first monthly trade deficit in three decades, and the head of the German Federation of Trade Unions has warned that key industries in the country may collapse permanently as a result of high energy prices and shortages. The golden era of the European Union’s economic locomotive has already come to an end. 

By Glenn Diesen

In case you haven't noticed, the wheels are falling off the global economy right now.

Since the late 1970s, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have written a series of books about the United States’ involvement in so-called “state terrorism.” Chomsky and Herman, in their publications, concluded that the global rise in state terror was the result of US foreign policy. The fact that the United States and its allies sponsored and used state terrorism on a “massive scale” during the Cold War is also acknowledged by Professor Ruth J. Blakeley from the University of Sheffield, as well as many other American analysts.

The global use of the ideology of terrorism in the interests of the US political elites began even before the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, when, with the support of American and NATO intelligence agencies, Washington’s interest began to shift from European neo-fascism to Islamic fundamentalism.

There are significant long-term consequences in the fiasco for the whole idea of synodality and co-responsibility in the Catholic Church in Australia.

The 43 bishops cast their deliberative votes this morning on Parts 3 and 4 of the Motions and Amendments, which had yesterday received qualified majorities (two-thirds). Part 3 passed without any fuss, but Part 4 on women’s place in the church was rejected. The room was stunned. Uproar broke out. Hearts were broken. When the Assembly resumed after morning tea a large group of women and some men, including a couple of bishops, refused to take their seats, standing in symbolic protest at the entry to the meeting room. I was proud to be a part of this action.

BY JOHN WARHURST

This is the state of our Western Anglo-Saxons today: confusion.

The definition of populism is conflicted by various populist trends. The right, the left, the LGBTiW+ (I have added the Wankers to the nomenclature), the traditional Christians versus the progressive and of course the warmongers versus the naked peaceniks, the lovely Democrats versus the nasty republicans, all with their arse in the air as they feed from the same capitalistic trough. 

Former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo gave a speech at the Hudson Institute last week that’s probably worth taking a look at just because of how much it reveals about the nature of the US empire and the corrupt institutions which influence its policies.

Pompeo is serving as a “Distinguished Fellow” at the Hudson Institute while he waits for the revolving door of the DC swamp to rotate him back into a federal government position. 

BY caitlin johnstone

The Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan, due to its relations with Tokyo, has long chosen to ignore the commemoration of Taiwan people's fight against the occupation by Japan in 1895.

It was in that year when the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki after losing the Sino-Japanese War, ceding Taiwan island to Japan.

The scale of the war was reflected in the casualties it caused. About 14,000 Taiwan people died, while the population of the island was 2.6 million at that time.

After more than a decade, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) updated its Strategic Concept to name China as a chief global security threat to our "values." In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused the alliance of promoting "conflict and confrontation."

Russia hasn't really started anything yet – Putin

The president cautioned Russia’s rivals against attempting to defeat it on the battlefield

Russia is ready to engage in peace negotiations with Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, warning that those who reject such prospects should realize that prolonging the ongoing conflict would only make such talks more difficult.

“We do not refuse to negotiate peace, but those who refuse should know that the longer they do, the more difficult it will be to negotiate,”Putin said, issuing a warning to those who might think Russia has already exhausted its capabilities amid the conflict.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy not far away, the Empire of Chaos launched the so-called “War on Terror” against an impoverished cemetery of empires at the crossroads of Central and South Asia.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has pushed back on a central pillar of US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, arguing it is overly simplistic to see modern geopolitics as a contest between democracies and authoritarian regimes such as China, given the world is “bloody messy”.

In a major foreign policy speech in Sydney, Ardern also appeared to take a softer line on China’s growing presence in the Pacific after attracting furious criticism from China during a recent visit to the US.

During her appearance at the Lowy Institute, Ardern said the war in Ukraine was “morally bankrupt and illegal” but it is wrong to characterise it as “the West versus Russia” or “democracy versus autocracy”.

If you think that in twenty years from now, China and Russia will be underfoot, you could be wrong. There is ten-million chances to one that you will be wrong. 

Russia and China are not going to go away. No matter the amount of containment you can think about the Sino-Russian problem, IT will not go away. Not only this, it is a historical problem created by the West as if we, the Westerners, had nothing better to do.

Step by step, the German SPD is abandoning all principles of peace policy

km. One thing first: It is not true that the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) abandoned its peace policy course only after 24 February 2022. Deviations from the peace policy course – which is actually a party principle – characterise the entire history of German social democracy: approval of the war credits in 1914, acceptance of German rearmament and NATO membership at the latest with the “Godesberg Programme” of 1959, active participation in the Kosovo war in 1999, which was contrary to international law, and the many speeches by prominent social democrats about “German responsibility” in recent years, to name just a few key words, have shown this.

The recent NATO summit held in Spain included as guests the nations of Australia, New Zealand and Japan. By expanding the invited countries, NATO was signaling that it was the longer confined to the North Atlantic, as its name consistently represents, but instead was expanding its sphere of influence to the Asia and Pacific region. The motives are obvious. It wishes to contain the inexorable rise of China, as the dominant power in Asia, and indeed, increasingly to the rest of the world.