alanjjohnstone
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Despondency and despair are not an option, despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges.
We are fighting for not just ourselves but for our children and their children. We cannot turn our backs on future generations. There is too much at stake.
Frederick Douglass stated that “knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
Solidarity must go beyond words and appeals. We must go beyond capitalism and its nation-states. We have to determine our own collective future. We must connect vital human needs, desires and hopes in a way that will persuade people to assert their voices and actions in the building of a new mass movement for a democratic socialist society.
Lifting away Zelensky’s halo
“…The portrait of the Ukraine president as a democratic paragon whitewashes the real Zelensky and conceals a vast web of corruption and international skullduggery of which Ukraine is situated in the center.
Understanding the real Zelensky, requires seeing him as a creation of Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. He is, in truth, a puppet of intrigue…”Who is being intransigent?
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was quoted on Friday as saying his country and the United States were very close to a deal to revive the 2015 accord, but that Tehran needed U.S. guarantees to avoid getting “bitten twice”.
“We have a ready text in front of us and we agree on more than 95 to 96 percent of its content, but there’s still an important flaw in this text: we need to get the full economic benefits of the agreement. We don’t want to be bitten twice,” Iranian media quoted Amirabdollahian as saying
Grayzone tends to follow the anti-American, anti-imperialist agenda.
Rather than a plague on both houses, they can be viewed as taking sides.
In the Ukraine war, they have strange bed-fellows, the isolationist America First followers
Saudi Arabia ignores Biden’s call for increased oil production.
If he is re-elected, Trump and his supporters plan purging thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology.
https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term
Biden initially picked much of the low-hanging fruit from the misery of the Trump years. He revived the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and returned the United States to the Paris climate accords; the World Health Organization; and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.
But Biden has been timid in addressing the worst aspects of Trump’s legacy in international security.
Trump’s vindictive tariffs on Chinese imports are still in place, although removing them would have improved Sino-American bilateral relations and alleviated the inflationary spiral in the U.S. economy. A return to the Iran nuclear accord would have created the opportunity for improving U.S. relations with Iran
The West does not have the stockpiles of weapons needed to sustain a prolonged military campaign in Ukraine or elsewhere, the CEO of Northrop Grumman, 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 purchasedhttps://www.ft.com/content/0f987ebb-963b-4702-b3b5-ea0336785bab?curator=biztoc.com
The warning from Northrop Grumman was echoed by another prime contractor, which has started procuring components now in expectation there will be contracts for more weapons but with the risk that they are not ultimately used, according to one of its executives.
An article on AUKUS and how little the change of Australia’s government has changed the situation
Rojava has dropped out of the top talking points for the libertarian progressive left, no doubt influenced by the Kurdish alliance with the USA and even Assad.
This article commemorates its 10-year anniversary
Rojava has dropped out of the top talking points for the libertarian progressive left, no doubt influenced by the Kurdish alliance with the USA and even Assad.
This article commemorates its 10-year anniversary
More promising is that RMT is distancing itself from political parties.
It has withdrawn from TUSC
[Lynch] “…reportedly argued the RMT should not be currently affiliated to any party, and that candidates seeking support should come to the union, not the union go to them…”
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1404/one-foot-in-the-grave/
Jonathan Cook on the Forde Report
Forde Inquiry exposes Labour’s biggest problem: Keir Starmer
“…the 138-page report is unlikely to ease tensions in Labour. Its resolute both-sidism spreads the blame around equally, and in the process ensures no one will be satisfied. But Forde’s seeming even-handedness is, in fact, a continuation of factionalism by other means. The report’s implausible premise is that Corbyn and a handful of staff in the leader’s office wielded as much factional power as the combined might of Labour HQ, the parliamentary party and the entire media establishment. Each side was apparently equally obstructive and uncooperative; each fed the other’s political paranoia.
That misrepresents the true balance of power in Labour – and the reason why Corbyn spent his years as leader permanently on the defensive, battling internal revolts and media firestorms…”A new Reformation?
https://www.dw.com/en/vatican-slams-german-reformers-warns-of-potential-for-schism/a-62559108
Members of the Synodal Path, a group made up of equal numbers of German bishops and lay Catholics, meet regularly. In February, they called on the Catholic Church to allow priests to marry, women to become deacons, and same-sex couples to receive the Church’s blessing. The German group also calls for ordinary Catholics to have more of a say in how the Church operates.
The Vatican warned German reformers they had no authority to instruct bishops on moral or doctrinal matters.
Speaking on behalf of the Synodal Path, Chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference Georg Bätzig and President of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) Irme Stetter-Karp, said it is their “responsibility to clearly point out where change is needed.” …the problems they are addressing are not unique to Germany, but common to dioceses all over the world.
