Strategic Culture Foundation

2022-05-03 10:45:24 Whether it is in the Ukraine, Western Sahara or now Taiwan, what we are witnessing are the early stages of a poorly construed PR campaign which will, in fact, reinstate Trump.

Joe Biden confirming that he will run as a presidential candidate in 2024 is disturbing on a number of levels. Chiefly, that it will keep the American people locked into a voting system which is entirely based on personalities resorting to the ‘voting out’ of one over the other – rather than a more intelligent, less binary preferred method of choosing a president. The same we have just seen in France with Le Pen beaten by Macron who will be grateful for the votes he wouldn’t normally have got, if it were not those voting against Le Pen.

In the case of Biden, it absolutely guarantees that Trump will run himself once again. This, in itself, is a divisive point as many will wonder if Trump came back, would he be the same as he was before on foreign policy or will he be bolder? Despite what many might think, his track record on foreign policy was very much despondent, even cowardly some might argue. Although he pulled America out of the JCPOA Iran deal, he decided most emphatically not to go to war with the regime in Tehran when provoked. Similarly, despite the war of words with China, Trump was not at all gung-ho with Beijing compared to the Biden administration.

And so, will a calmer, more sober approach to tackling America’s foreign policy black holes – Ukraine, China and the Middle East in general – be a winning ticket for Trump?

Martin Jay writes: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/05/02/biden-moves-foreign-policy-circuit-are-those-an-old-man-who-has-lost-sense-realities/

#Diplomacy #Trump #Biden #UnitedStates

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-05-03 09:45:15 The crises are running, faster and faster, well beyond the abilities of EU rigid structures and mindsets to respond.

The French election result has again demonstrated the hard-edged rigidities of European society which make the prospect of strong purposeful (i.e. transformative) government, of the ilk of say a de Gaulle, almost impossible to emerge today at national level. However, when such national rigidities are taken in combination with the European supra-national, ‘once size fits none’ institutional EU incapacity to respond to the specifics of complex situations, we get ‘full on’ immobilism – the impossibility to change policy in any way meaningfully, in the majority of EU states.

Europe has chugged along for a decade with its managerial ‘Merkellism’ which can be defined as an ingrained reluctance to take hard decisions; to punt problems off by spreading ‘gravy’ liberally around; and in tilting – one way or the other – to Left or Right accordingly, as the wind blows. It has been a time of easy decisions, on top of easy decisions, and little by way of solving structural problems.

This has however, taken the EU into a blind alley – precisely when it faces war in Europe, and when the fires of grave inflation already have been lit, with flames licking skywards, exposing domestic electorates to their harsh vicissitudes.

Macron is widely unpopular in France.

Read more by Alastair Crooke: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/05/02/the-blind-alleys-of-european-politics/

#France #EU #Macron #LePen

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-05-02 23:45:12 TikTok has become an enormously influential medium that reaches over one billion people worldwide.

Having control over its algorithm or content moderation means the ability to set the terms of global debate and decide what people see. And what they don’t.

By Alan Macleod: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/05/01/the-nato-to-tiktok-pipeline-why-is-tiktok-employing-so-many-national-security-agents/

#BigTech #NATO #SocialMedia #TikTok

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-05-02 23:15:29 "Under an ubiquitous, toxic atmosphere of cognitive dissonance drenched in Russophobia, it’s absolutely impossible to have a meaningful discussion on finer points of Russian history and culture across the NATO space – a phenomenon I’m experiencing back in Paris right now, fresh from a long stint in Istanbul.

At best, in a semblance of civilized dialogue, Russia is pigeonholed in the reductionist view of a threatening, irrational, ever-expanding empire – a way more wicked version of Ancient Rome, Achaemenid Persia, Ottoman Turkey or Mughal India.

The fall of the USSR a little over three decades ago did hurl Russia back three centuries – to its borders in the 17th century. Russia, historically, had been interpreted as a secular empire – immense, multiple and multinational. This is all informed by history, very much alive even today in the Russian collective unconscious."

Pepe Escobar writes: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/05/01/clash-of-christianities-why-europe-cannot-understand-russia/

#Russophobia #Ukraine #West

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-05-02 22:56:17 Though Ukraine still suffers the fallout from that foolish war to end all wars, the criminal stupidity over Kola of these NATO handmaidens will all but ensure that the fallout for all of them will be nuclear.

Read more by Declan Hayes: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/05/01/will-finland-warrior-women-cross-russia-kola-rubicon/

#NATO #BalticSea #Finland

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-05-02 22:51:32 The NATO edifice of lies, nurtured for decades, is more fragile than ever, Werner Rügemer writes.

After the 2nd World War in 1945 the USA knew: There is no danger from the weakened Soviet Union. But with the pincer grip of the Marshall Plan and NATO, the USA integrated the Western, Northern and Southern European countries into its economic and military expansion. Ex-Nazis and ex-Nazi collaborators were promoted, on the other hand anti-fascist parties, movements, persons were eliminated, infiltrated, bought.

At the same time, the U.S. also helped the governments to fight against liberation movements in the colonies – also because of raw materials for US corporations. After 1990, the founding lie and thus the military-capitalist pincer grip was continued with the “eastward expansion”: Always first NATO membership, then EU membership.

This includes the dismantling of prosperity and freedom for the majority populations: The EU and more and more US corporations, investors and consultants are organizing Americanization with working poor, working sick as well as legalized and illegal labor migration – at the same time militarization and hostility against Russia is being expanded: Domination of Eurasia from Lisbon to Vladivostok was the plan from the beginning.

We bring a chapter from the book by Werner Rügemer: Imperium EU – Labor Injustice, Crisis, New Resistances, tredition 2021. Of course, the war in Ukraine does not play a role in it yet, but it becomes explainable in some respects. Sources have been omitted.

Read more: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/05/01/nato-the-founding-lie/

#NATO

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-05-02 12:45:14 The argument that Assange operated as a journalist and exercised his right to freedom of speech, has very little gravitas with the western mindset.

Whether you love or loathe Julian Assange, the decision by a British court to allow a U.S. extradition process is morally repugnant and wrong on so many levels. Assange will now have approximately four weeks to wait and see whether the British government itself signs off on his extradition or not – at which point he can decide to appeal.

But the treatment of the Australian publisher and his fate drives home a fundamental point about how democracy and freedom of speech barely make it to the list of priorities in western countries when governments hijack a political cause for their own tawdry agendas.

Read more by Martin Jay: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/04/30/assange-now-hostage-triumph-of-evil-decision-send-him-to-us-jail-but-politics-can-still-save-him/

#HumanRights #Journalism #Assange #Wikileaks

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-05-02 11:45:22 Russian Gas for Europe: What Is Changing?

Reacting to the sanctions war unleashed by the West, Russia announced new payment terms for its gas. Customers should open an account with Gazprombank in Russia.

Payments are made in foreign currency – dollars or euros, converted into rubles according to the current exchange rate, and transferred to different Gazprom accounts.

That’s in stark contrast to what the United States was forcing the Europeans to do: pay for Russian gas in Gazprom accounts in Europe, which would then be instantly frozen.

Follow this link to find the full high-res infographic.

You are free to repost, reproduce and print this infographic.

#Crisis #Energy #EuropeanUnion #Gazprom

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-05-02 10:45:23 Journalism’s best days are long gone. And, unless NATO’s journalists have a collective Damascene moment, they too will deservedly go the way of the dodo.

Writes Declan Hayes: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/04/30/journalism-an-endangered-species/

#Journalism #MassMedia

@strategic_culture Open / Comment

2022-05-02 10:00:34 While many of us celebrate the sale of Twitter, let’s never forget the adage, ‘if it appears too good to be true, it probably is.’

Everything that is wrong about our modern times became apparent this week as the entrepreneur Elon Musk bought out Twitter for $44 bln, triggering a global meltdown as liberals feared their favorite toy had been lost to rightwing forces forever.

Unfortunately, the story is more complex than that

Read more by Robert Bridge: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/04/29/its-too-early-celebrate-elon-musk-purchase-twitter/

#ElonMusk #Neoliberalism #SocialMedia #Twitter

@strategic_culture Open / Comment