Strategic Culture Foundation

2021-05-13 17:51:05 Washington has re-established the “space race” by creation of the Space Force intended to “control the ultimate high ground,” Brian Cloughley writes.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/11/keep-weapons-out-of-space-the-new-war-fighting-domain/ Open / Comment

2021-05-09 23:53:54 Biden chose an astoundingly stupid and arrogant policy of the U.S.&UK imperium, instead of criticizing and renouncing his immediate predecessors’ policies on these matters.

On June 18th, Iran will hold its Presidential election. The current Government is led by Iran’s moderates, who are the people that aren’t closed-minded to the possibility of America’s being less than 100% determined to take back Iran as America had grabbed that country in the 1953 U.S. coup there, which ended Iran’s democracy and installed the brutal and much-hated fascist Shah Reza Pahlevi. The non-moderates in Iran will not negotiate with the United States, and never did. Restoration of the Iran deal will be impossible if the non-moderates again win power there. But we have only until before that June 18th election to restore it, if it is to be done at all. Read more by Eric Zuesse

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/09/way-out-of-impasse-between-iran-us/ Open / Comment

2021-05-09 23:51:49 The shift of paradigm centred on the U.S. pivot away from West Asia naturally impacts on Iran’s JCPOA calculus, Alastair Crooke writes.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. The concept is imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings, and though this, in itself, would be unlikely to cause a tornado, nonetheless small events can cause cascades of change within a complex system. And so to Europe, where Germany is changing. The Green Party is flapping its wings in the spatial void left by Merkel’s expected departure. And though the Party, some years ago, was almost wholly Corbinite (i.e. classic anti-establishment), today, beneath its liberal surface, the Green rhetoric is something different – It is fiercely North Atlanticist, pro-NATO and anti-Russian (even quasi neo-liberal).

Today, the European political zeitgeist is changing. It is soaking up the Biden ‘we must join together to curb Chinese and Russian behaviours’ meme. Of course, this shift cannot all be laid at the door of the German Greens; nonetheless, they seem destined to emerge with a pivotal role in the polity of the pivotal EU state, as the Green emergence becomes somehow iconic of the butterfly wing effect.

The language of a human rights ideology defined in a multitude of gender and diversity iterations has seized the Brussels discourse. Some might welcome this development in principle, viewing it as righting ancient injustices. However, it should be understood that it is rooted not so much in human compassion, but is firmly seated in power dynamics, and, what’s more, a particularly dangerous set of power dynamics.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/08/butterfly-effect-re-setting-global-paradigm/ Open / Comment

2021-05-09 23:49:11 Moscow knows what Washington has not yet learnt: it’s not just one guy, it’s a whole country and sugar hits don’t last.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/08/why-moscow-doesnt-just-knock-him-over/ Open / Comment

2021-05-08 18:06:57 Red Lines host Anya Parampil explores an internal USAID report admitting the agency’s policy on Venezuela was driven by the State Department and National Security Council’s push for regime change.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/07/usaid-admits-to-venezuela-regime-change-fraud/ Open / Comment

2021-05-08 18:03:25 From “kill-zones” to “waterbeds,” the giants of the digital marketplace have ways of making you squirm.

The 2020 House report on competition in digital markets was damning in its content but feeble in its consequences, and the reason may be found within the report. At some point a particularly abusive tactic of Amazon is noted.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/07/big-tech-monopoly-creep/ Open / Comment

2021-05-07 22:08:57 Strategic Culture Foundation pinned « American global power is in direct contradiction to the democratic needs of a multipolar planet. The United States and its “junior partner” Britain this week expressed their desire for a new Cold War with Russia and China – albeit surreptitiously, and…» Open / Comment

2021-05-07 22:08:51 American global power is in direct contradiction to the democratic needs of a multipolar planet.

The United States and its “junior partner” Britain this week expressed their desire for a new Cold War with Russia and China – albeit surreptitiously, and dressed up in virtuous language.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was speaking with his British counterpart Dominic Raab ahead of a G7 summit for foreign ministers held in London this week. The two diplomats called for G7 nations and partners to band together more tightly in order to confront China and Russia. To that end, delegates from Australia, India, South Korea, and South Africa were invited to attend the summit.

We should take a moment to note how provocative and gratuitous such an appeal is, if not downright criminal. Global security is being made a plaything for Western politics. Read more in this week's Editorial

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/07/history-repeats-why-washington-london-crave-new-cold-war/ Open / Comment

2021-05-07 22:02:19 Vaccine diplomacy is indeed a reality, and one that is severely mismanaged to the benefit of countries that boast allegiances.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic remains a news item. Testimony given during a recent senate inquiry by former Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta exposes how Bolsonaro was aware of risking people’s lives to the point of death with his approach that ridiculed science. “I warned him systematically, with projections even,” Mandetta stated, as he explained that the fatality statistics prediction presented to Bolsonaro was close to the death toll in Brazil last year.

As the vaccine race started, Brazil engaged diplomatically with Russia, seeking to import the Sputnik V vaccine, which was authorised for use in Russia since August 2020.

The Sputnik V vaccine is being used in 62 countries across the world, mostly sought by developing countries as these have been politically disadvantaged due to a lower threshold of diplomatic engagement. It is still pending official recognition by the World Health Organisation and the European Medicines Agency, yet a study by the leading health journal The Lancet, states that the Sputnik V vaccine has an efficacy rate of 91.6% after taking the first dose, in terms of preventing Covid19.

However, Brazil’s national health service agency, Anvisa, rejected the use of Sputnik V, citing a “lack of consistent and reliable data”, questions over vaccine production as well as Russia’s refusal, according to Anvisa, to allow Brazilian regulators to visit the vaccine production sites. Russia rejected the claims and described the decision as political, citing U.S. interference back in 2020 which advised Brazil to reject the Russian vaccine. Read more by Ramona Wadi

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/07/without-access-sputnik-v-vaccine-brazil-turns-us-eu-for-surplus-doses/ Open / Comment

2021-05-07 21:54:15 Can the President even stop cycles of police violence with bureaucracy? Open / Comment