Someone photoshop this on top of it. I think it's 1937

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"An Israeli security source further confirmed to the Maariv newspaper that “the transfer of nine armored vehicles provided by the Americans to the Palestinian Authority is clearly in Israel’s national security interests.”

What can we conclude? The US and Israel do not object to arming the PA if the weapons are directed against resistance cells in the occupied West Bank. The existence of the Palestinian Authority is necessary for Israel as it can reach places that Israeli special units cannot. The PA is a tool that the Israeli National Security Council (the Cabinet) relies on, which explains why on July 9, 2023, the Cabinet held an emergency meeting to approve urgent assistance to save it.

This assistance relies on and mandates the performance of Mahmoud Abbas’ security apparatus to protect settlers when they wander into the occupied West Bank, to thwart resistance cells from carrying out their operations, and to arrest individuals Israel cannot reach.

To carry out this mission, the PA needs weapons, which the US provides and Israel agrees to lend or transfer, under two conditions:

Restricting their distribution to “some Palestinian security agencies,” whose loyalty to Israel is guaranteed. Using them exclusively for “counterterrorism activities.” The Israeli army made a radio broadcast on September 13, 2023, that the occupation government has agreed to transfer weapons and military equipment to the PA on a number of conditions, as part of a series of steps to support the Palestinian Authority and increase security coordination with it.

The broadcast quoted Israeli security officials as saying: “This step is part of a program of assistance to strengthen the Palestinian Authority, and is conditioned upon two things: demonstrating operational achievements by the Palestinian Authority (especially in Jenin), and the official return of security coordination with Israel.”

According to the settler media, the deal includes armored vehicles and at least 1,500 pieces of weaponry, including M-16 rifles enhanced with laser sights and Kalashnikov rifles.

The PA requested these weapons over a year ago, but Israel rejected the request. The approval has now come following the Aqaba and Sharm el-Sheikh summits, held in February and March respectively, at the request of Washington. The goal of these summits was to develop a comprehensive strategy to “pacify” the resistance in the West Bank.

Why do we care about this news? Israeli and US support for the PA comes in the context of arrangements that the US is making in the Arab world that seek to ensure the “integration between Israel and Arab and Muslim-majority states, as exemplified by the Abraham Accords, other normalization agreements, and the Negev Forum.”

Achieving this goal is impossible without achieving “calm” in the Palestinian territories. This “calm” means implementing all US-Israeli projects to deliver a final blow to the Palestinian cause, by turning the occupied West Bank into “Israeli land” and permanently eliminating the Right of Return.

To ensure this “calm,” Israel and the US must rely on the PA’s security agencies and support them financially and militarily."

"Mezher emphasized that “the resistance fighters need protection in the face of Israeli aggression and the policy of assassinations,” noting that “the Israeli enemy believes that through raids and arrests in the West Bank, it can weaken the resistance.”

“All attempts by the Israeli enemy in the West Bank fail, as hundreds of young people are joining the resistance forces,” he continued. “The resistance operations that confuse the Israeli enemy are continuing and renewed on a daily basis.”

Mezher also stressed that “the qualitative and continuous development of the resistance adds new elements in confronting the Israeli enemy… this battle with the enemy is long and requires accumulation, development, and gathering of all components of power.”

“The resistance is recording great victories,” Mezher added. “It will lead to the enemy’s departure from our land, like how the occupation had to leave the Gaza Strip. The enemy must retreat and think about withdrawing from the occupied West Bank. This is an important step that we are working on, and all resistance forces must unite in that.”

“The continuation of resistance in the West Bank and its escalation and development could force the enemy to retreat and withdraw,” he added."

"...The 21st century must be our century. We have to promote practical cooperation of greater impact, of a higher level in education, in science and technology. Science and technology cannot be separated from education. We have to link it and we have to promote practical cooperation between regions, between countries. And we have to ask our brothers and sisters who have made more progress to help each other. We have to ask for more support, more help. I have just arrived from China, and one is truly impressed by the scientific and technological advances in all fields of social life, of economic life, of the life of society.

We have to ask the new emerging powers that occupy a fundamental space in this 21st century and are part of our family, such as China, India, among others, to allow us to make more progress in access to knowledge, to technology. Applied to health, a fundamental element. Applied to agriculture and food production. Applied to the development of industry, applied to the development and management of outer space, which we cannot do without no matter how small our countries may be. Knowledge, science and technology have been applied to telecommunications, social networks and the Internet.

If there is something where there is a marked gap and that all our peoples know it, it is the management of the internet. Who manages the internet? Who produces the internet? Who has imposed with the hegemony of the internet the social networks that today circulate in all our countries without any type of regulation of legislation, any type of control? That as well as the social networks can impact, as they impact today in a dominant and fundamental way, the social and communicational life of our countries, without the possibility that the national states can have some kind of orientation, regulation, as would be necessary. So it is necessary to prioritize the application of knowledge to science and technology to achieve communicational independence in the phenomenon of the internet and social networks...."

Old article still relevant.

"Even if Ukraine ends up fractured, under a US-selected military commander, permanently polluted with mines and depleted uranium dust, with a collapsed infrastructure and half of its prior population - even then, Ukraine can still be seen as an American forward base in the coming decade. It cannot be spoken - but that is the 'win' scenario for the Pentagon and US defense contractors, and it is quite achievable – and creative politicians and strategists will claim that this "successful outcome" was created for them by Russia's SMO,"

"On 17 September 2016 a carefully planned US-led air raid on Jabal al Tharda (Mount Tharda), overlooking Deir Ezzor airport, slaughtered over 100 Syrian soldiers and delivered control of the mountain to DAESH / ISIS. After that surprise attack, the terrorist group held the mountain for almost a year, but did not manage to take the airport or the entire city. US-led forces admitted the attack but claimed it was all a ‘mistake’. However uncontested facts, eye witness accounts and critical circumstances show that was a lie. This article sets out the evidence of this crime, in context of Washington’s historical use of mercenaries for covert actions, linked to the doctrine of ‘plausible deniability’.

Syrian eyewitness accounts from Deir Ezzor deepen and confirm this simple fact: the US-led air raid on Syrian forces at Jabal al Tharda on 17 September 2016 was no ‘mistake’ but a well-planned and effective intervention on behalf of the terrorist group ISIS (DAESH in Arabic). After days of careful surveillance a devastating missile attack followed by machine gunning of the remaining Syrian soldiers helped ISIS take control of the strategic mountain, that same day.

Mercenary forces – like ISIS and the other jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria – were a staple of US intervention during the early decades of the cold war, deployed in more than 25 conflicts, such as those of the Congo, Angola and Nicaragua. Whatever their claimed aims and ideologies, they allowed for the ‘multiplication’ of US power and were associated with the doctrine of ‘plausible deniability’, where the ‘formal’ denial of the mastermind role in covert operations minimised damage to domestic public opinion and international relations (Voss 2016: 37-40). That doctrine was discussed during the 1976 Church Committee hearings into CIA covert operations (especially assassinations and coups) and resurfaced during the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s (Hart 2005; Dorn 2010). The key idea behind the doctrine is to be able “to use violence without directly incriminating the [contracting out] regime” (Ron 2002). The use of terrorist proxy armies in Iraq and Syria, both overtly and covertly supported by US forces, is thoroughly consistent with this history.

..."

A group of Palestinian American compradors denounce PA puppet Abbas for so-called "antisemitic comments" but say nothing about Abbas collaboration with the occupation and receiving American weapons. Really shows class priorities.

This explains quite well:

"Resistance News Network rejects the detached “intellectuals” who have rushed to the defense of the zionist camp.

In the past day, a number of Palestinian careerists and NGO contributors have signed an open letter condemning comprador Mahmoud Abbas.

The condemnation of the US- and zionist-backed Abbas was not for the deaths of revolutionaries like Nizar Banat. The letter did not mention the Palestinians currently languishing in PA prisons, nor did the letter even broach the subject of continued PA security coordination with the zionists.

Instead, the letter charged that Mahmoud Abbas is antisemitic following comments he made about the validity of the exploited Holocaust narrative. Whether this charge is true or not does not matter; the signatories of this letter had nothing to say when Abbas sold the land and blood of Palestinians to the enemy.

The stratagem of such a statement, which was endorsed by zionists, is evident in the signatories and their sponsors. They have all interacted with the tentacles of J Street and liberal zionist networks. It is widely known that Mahmoud Abbas does not represent the Palestinian liberation movement. However, because normalizers and zionists are invested in the PA, they express a need to steer it and critique it according to their shared agendas. Only they hold the PA valid, while liberators insist on its dismantlement.

There is no further analysis to be had on this subject. The long-rejected burden of defense against charges of antisemitism is unjustly imposed on Palestinians facing occupation by Jewish supremacists. Those writers who rushed to the aid of zionists, parroting their talking points, made their position and their hypocrisy clear. In the context of revolutionary knowledge and thought, there can be no tolerance for betrayal or compromise."

"...

So far, the planet has been laid to waste, and society pays for the waste in money and lost years of life. As the input and output of production, social nature was commodified and priced. Before the dying forests, there were societies obliterated for a price. It takes machine and labor to kill forests and people, and these are industries with moneyed output that went for a price. Scalping the native Indian for a dollar is a case in point. These waste industries are also pedestals for production in the North.

Since war and pollution sell, capital produces more waste than good things. Such waste accumulation involves a process of destruction of man and nature wherein the commodified waste registers for a price convenient to capital across the time spectrum. One can imagine how the difficulty of future production arising from wars and climate degradation raises future prices and, by implication, raises current prices.

In this, one ought to recall that it is wasted lives as the ubiquitous commodity, and not nature, which are the principal source of surplus value that become profits. Society immerses itself in the production and consumption of waste, otherwise a process of auto-consumption. To excessively deplete oneself for living wages is the source of the economic surplus. Laterally, the most basic commodity, such as food, is laden with pollutants and serves as a surrogate war machine that shortens life expectancy. The commodity consumes the consumer in an act of production. The product, in this case, is the premature death of the consumer.

The social acceptance of waste as a consumption item reinforces the waste reproductive cycle while eroding the independence from want that fosters social emancipation. What is of dis-use value to society has been construed as a necessary measure of survival on the basis of fabricated scarcity. Whether by choice or coercion, society overproduces and consumes what is fatal to its longevity.

Since the market is the gyroscope of social reproduction, the waste commodity rules over society and its resource allocation decisions. Social labor, or the physical and mental effort workers invest in the production of commodities, also creates pollutants or waste. These, in turn, become a machine for which capital has not paid and which shortens the lives of labor.

Society labors to self-destruct in shorter periods to lessen its living costs and raise profits over its lifecycle. In addition to the labor effort expropriated and embedded in the private means of production (dead labor in Marxian terminology), capital has a freebie offshoot in a sickened nature it has produced that cuts life expectancy short. In a state of socialist ideological defeatism, waste is construed as wealth, and production for profits becomes a process of auto-consumption.

In a polarized world, the North/South divide delineates the structures of capital from those of labor. The associated balance of power, including the ideological balance, also serves to determine the terms of exchange. That less is paid to the South for its resources may be attributed to the ideological potency of capital. For society to consume or be consumed by the waste-imbued commodity is not owed to capital’s theoretical rigor.

People have been beaten into submission, once and again, before they come to accept the industries of war and pollution as a necessary evil that they must pay for. Wars make up the medium through which dominant ideology, including the neoliberal order, is reconstituted as the weight of history. Violence foregrounds the submission of society. For capital to metabolize man and nature in social production at rates that take out of social nature more than it puts back into it, it must subdue global society, especially the South. Capital pays more to the Northern working class, not as counter value for its productivity, it does so because the Northern working class shares with capital its basis of social reproduction, which is to live off the dividends of the South.

Capital’s ideological reign relies on wars and a continuous re-adjustment of the balance of power against the South. The South must be beaten into subservience or acknowledge that it cannot break through the imposing power structure, or in other words, against the weight of history. Such wars are a magnified reflection of the fact that capital must cut its expenditure on Southern society, which happens when people die prematurely, in order to sell to the upper consuming tier of global society. Capital’s cost-cutting measures arising upon competition antecede its desire to raise incomes in order to sell to a larger upper tier. This formula, the antecedence of production over consumption, including the positive spinoffs from the production of waste upon profits, makes the destruction of social nature a sine qua non for social reproduction.

With social nature being the unity of man with nature, to which man is organic and subject, the destruction of nature becomes an end in itself. To consume nature on the cheap is to consume humans on the cheap. Long before the climate calamity, colonized peoples as subjects of nature, have been consumed or wasted for a price. Only under capitalism, the waste of human lives for a buck constitutes the basis of accumulation. The war industry, in particular, forms the initial building block to the process of production and consumption under capital. War is not ten or twenty percent of production, it is the predicate in the commodification of social processes. Capital totalizes and commodifies all that comes its way. It commodifies people, air and water. Even health and education, as ideologically steered spheres of production under capital, widen the chasm between North and South, and ensure that the gap between potential life expectancy and actually lived lives is larger. Correlatedly with the structural power divide between North and South, and while the North accumulates by the immiseration of the South, health and education contribute to the formation of Northern soldiers and civil society apparatuses which entrench the waste accumulation. With the North living off the South, the consumption process turns into a cannibalistic order in which the North, defined as the class whose potential unfolds on metabolizing more of social nature, grows by the eradication of the South.

The rule of the commodity dictates the de-reproduction of labor. As commodification proceeds, sentience vanishes, and so go with it the ethics that evolve on the basis of the existential condition. People turned into commodities do not feel to be empathetic with others. Commodification lays the groundwork for converting living labor literally into dead labor – man becomes thing.

While the capitalist adheres to the market diktat and acts like a thing bereft of feeling, which also means bereft of ethics, Northern laboring classes, whose parasitism centers on living off the proceeds of the wasted South, also become things. Their potential is not to shed capital, but to work with it to self-reproduce by cannibalizing the Southern classes. While class lines crisscross the national boundaries, the latter classes reproduce by gaining independence from capital. As the planet altogether sinks, the process of auto-consumption becomes a process of auto-exploitation, rooted in the self-consumption of a society absorbed or beaten into the acceptance of waste.

Over the life cycle of society, as opposed to the hours worked in factories, the premature death of society, the prematurely wasted man, becomes the source of value. In the time of social reproduction, in contrast to the time of social production measured in quarterly or yearly output, it is all of society as the set of social relations, which labors to produce, in contrast to the single worker spending eight hours on the job. It should be noted that the price and accounting systems are constructed by capital to efface social production (society produces) and replace it with an abstract and hypothetical-time producer. In social reproduction, the rate of surplus value that undergirds the profit rate may be measured by rate of premature death relative to the longevity experienced in the more advanced countries.

...

The so-called democratic societies of the North, in particular, its social democratic platforms, are in command of a history that annihilated nearly a billion people in colonial wars since the sixteenth century. Meanwhile, Western democracies are set to bring the planet to the point of unlivability. The obvious methodological fallacy that the perfect market, which surfaces as innately imperfect in logic and outcome, escapes the imagination of the North because it is vested in the waste. While the long-term trends indicate that the 'healthier' an economy gets, the sicker society gets, the salient reasoning remains irreconcilable with the facts because it is based on narrow class interests that rationalize waste by class-imposed normative values.

Under the mantra of class-obedient social science, as the world overproduces and suffers from crises of overproduction, harming social nature in order to efficiently produce becomes necessary to sustain an ‘overpopulated’ world. While scarcity and overpopulation are concepts that fly in the face of the facts, the ethic of the capital class boils down to thinning down the world population in order to reduce an otherwise unsuitable harm to more people. True, one must ensure the welfare of more people in any policy, but the mainstream falsifies initial reality/assumptions to achieve its profit goals.

The destruction of the climate has a great deal to do with capitalist overproduction. As waste lowers costs and also sells, the overproduction of wasted nature and man becomes the mainstay of capital. Overproduction implicates the South by the degree to which the North needs to maintain salient profit rates. Super-exploitation is not only about the 12-hour shifts in Third World sweatshops, it is more about shortening the life expectancy of Southern society. This latter process was witnessed in primitive accumulation as slavery and genocide, and it continues to date as structural genocide, or the invisible premature deaths and the deaths from wars and their reverberations.

The North boasts about its commitment to environmentalism, however, such is a scare tactic that raises prices in the present in relation to the difficulty of future production. Prices are malleable symbols. Most commodities, for instance, have a spot and a future price, while the picture of prices in social reproduction is way more fluid. Most waste sickens people and raises their medical bills, which means that society ends up footing the bill for the waste. The price of medication is not imputed in the polluted commodity, yet in reality, it is there. It is easy to see that capital makes a killing as people die earlier and pay to treat themselves while doing so. Capital gains by commodifying the waste, and, more so, it now funnels resources to green bonds against the future damage it creates.

To inject political instability in the South is a precondition that enables the mechanism of resource extraction. To this end, wars as a domain of militaristic accumulation serve to consolidate the power structure fueling waste accumulation. Wars are themselves production processes whose products are premature dead people. Each victim of war was mown down by a war machine operated by a worker-soldier working for a wage, while the victim also labors in self-defense, while his corpse counts as an output going for a given price.

The financialization of war implies that the earnings of war-finance are earmarked against the war dead. In addition to war, the international institutions that carry the banner of development infiltrate developing state infrastructure to weaken regulations and make resource depletion occur at a faster pace. For instance, the green revolution has forced many farmers into debt -- including in India, where farmers' suicides have soared. The green revolution has increased poor countries' exposure to economic vulnerabilities by introducing new dependencies (i.e. technologies, fertilizers, seeds). These disruptions often lead to political turmoil, and in the displacement of many, governments find themselves incapable of solving emerging security issues. Moreover, climate change disrupts food production in the South, uproots labor from the land into redundancy, and creates new avenues for conflict. As it increases the risk of food insecurity, climate change is also enabling the North to weaponize food against the South. "

Tweet (watch the attached video)

"30 years ago today, the Oslo Accords 'peace agreement' was signed between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzakth Rabin and head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Arafat at the White House.

This amounted to the recognition of the lsraeli occupation, and the establishment of the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority (PA), which until today continues to coordinate with the occupation and suppress the Palestinian resistance on Israel's behalf."

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What happened to Poland?!

Also 💀🙈😳

"Those who place themselves on the ideological right in several European countries are more likely to express a positive view of the alliance than those on the left. However, in the U.S. and Canada, this pattern is reversed: Those on the left are more likely to say they have a favorable opinion of NATO."

Conclusion:

"In the foregoing, we reviewed the experiences of communist party leaders who miscalculated the political situation and clashed with national revolutionary movements hostile to colonialism and imperialism. This was caused by the fact that these leaders were affected by their bureaucratic party experiences and dogmatic and Eurocentric background that made them project preconceived ideas that were inconsistent with the reality of their societies. This led to the aforementioned mistakes, which contributed in some instances to the failure of the revolutionary movements in their fight against imperialism, especially in the case of Che Guevara in Bolivia and in occupied Palestine against Zionism."

Global Times:

"Japan's decision to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea is a significant concern for global marine safety and human survival. In recent days, opposition and criticism, both domestically and internationally, have grown stronger, particularly since Japan began the discharge on August 24. To divert attention, however, Japan is attempting to portray itself as a victim of intentional targeting by China, rather than accepting responsibility as the perpetrator. In the face of Japan's audacity, we must continue to firmly oppose its dumping actions. Moreover, it is crucial that we unite all available forces worldwide to prevent Japan from inflicting devastating harm on the oceans.

How to do that? Some steps may be worth pondering.

First, we should strengthen communication with the fishing associations, environmental organizations, and the public of the countries affected by Japan's nuclear-contaminated water dumping. In recent days, peoples in South Korea and Japan have held rallies to expose the dangers of dumping nuclear-contaminated water into the sea and condemn the Japanese government's decision to do so. Individuals from many concerned countries, including the Philippines, Pacific island countries, and representatives from various international organizations, have also raised doubts and criticisms regarding Japan's plan to dump nuclear-contaminated water into the sea. Those forces that have voiced legitimate opposition for self-interest and global maritime security are the ones with whom we should strengthen cooperation and unite.

Second, worldwide environmentalists and environmental organizations who have been focusing on nuclear safety and marine environment protection should be invited to make serious science-based analyses about the nuclear water dumping in front of cameras, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times.

People around the world genuinely need to understand what kind of water is being discharged. Cooling water of normal nuclear plants has no direct contact with the nuclear reactor fuel cores. The Fukushima nuclear contaminated water, however, is totally different, as it has direct contact with contamination from the melted-down cores of three reactors and is severely contaminated with many radionuclides. Japan has said it has treated the water using Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) technology. Yet so far, growing concerns have been raised that APLS is far from sufficient. Not to mention that some radionuclides, such as Carbon-14, Iodine-129, and Cesium-137, can move up in the food chain and cause damage to human DNA. Against this backdrop, environmentalists, experts, and organizations studying marine ecosystems from across the globe should be encouraged to respond to the concerns about the impact of the nuclear water release on the food chain and human health.

Third, journalists from around the world should be allowed to visit Fukushima, Japan, for unrestricted reporting, Shen suggested.

Recently, when some Chinese journalists visited Fukushima, they were told that smartphones, laptops and cameras are not allowed. What is Japan trying to hide? Japan has chosen to dump nuclear water at a cost of 3.4 billion yen (about $23.22 million), while at the same time seeking 70.1 billion yen to tackle so-called disinformation, or in other words, to counteract the negative press about Japan's nuclear-contaminated water discharge. How is this possible?

Japanese fishermen have been the most vocal opponents of the plan to dump nuclear water. Tokyo has disregarded their concerns, sacrificing the interests of its own fishermen and putting the health of its own people at risk. No matter how much Japan will invest in propaganda, it can hardly conceal its image of being an authoritarian state with a meaningless electoral process.

Organizing joint on-site sampling and investigations among countries and international organizations is also an option. Shen suggests that BRICS countries and the Global South could carry out joint marine scientific expeditions, deploying research platforms or unmanned implants near Japan to conduct real-time independent sampling and monitoring. The results should be publicly compared with the data from Japan and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). If the standards are not met, the dumping should be halted.

Economically, countries can seek compensation from Japanese government or Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) based on international law for potential trans-boundary damage caused by the dumping of nuclear-contaminated water. This will make Japan realize that the cost of discharging outweighs Japan's selfish benefits.

This month as Japan started intentionally polluting the maritime environment with radioactive wastewater, a new catastrophe has emerged, with the potential to last for 30 years, 40 years, or indefinitely. But one thing should be certain - the release of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater should not mark the end of the story. The international community has a chance to make some joint efforts to stop the uncontrollable situation and protect people.

We are not inciting anti-Japanese sentiment, as our target is always Japan's irresponsible dumping actions. What we are doing is urging Japan to stop its wrongdoing, cancel the ocean discharge plan, for the sake of protecting the oceans for the common interests of humanity across generations. The next time when some politicians, especially those from the West, want to talk about "de-risking," they should bear in mind that the biggest risk in the world today is radioactive pollution brought by Japan. That is the one and only thing in urgent need of de-risking. "

"Algeria's long-awaited ascension to BRICS+ failed to materialize last week during the bloc's summit in South Africa, as Arabic media says India used its veto against the North African nation at the request of France.

Informed sources that spoke with Algeria's Dzair Tube say French intelligence contacted their Indian counterparts ahead of the BRICS+ summit to urge New Delhi into vetoing Algeria's entry to the bloc, describing the move as “revenge” for Algiers' growing influence in the Sahel region “at the expense” of France and as a way to slow down burgeoning ties between Algeria and China.

Tensions between Paris and Algiers spiked after a military junta ousted the French-backed government in Niger, in the latest example of a growing anti-west movement in the Sahel. Since then, Algeria has opposed an ECOWAS military operation in Niger, emphasized the role of diplomacy in bringing about a peaceful solution to the crisis, and refused permission for French military aircraft to fly over Algerian airspace.

The French plot took shape in the wake of a failed bid by President Emmanuel Macron to attend the summit in South Africa.

India saw an opportunity in the request from Paris, as officials were reportedly offered western help to “fill the void” left in former French colonies that have recently risen against neocolonial rule and extend its influence in a vital continent for BRICS+.

While France has maintained close ties with successive Indian governments for decades – being the only European permanent member of the UN Security Council that supported India's nuclearization in 1998 – their relationship has grown closer under Macron, who in 2019 supported India's position at the UN over occupied Kashmir and has sealed multiple defense agreements with the South Asian nation.

In 2018, Macron declared during a visit to India that France “must be India’s best partner in Europe and its gateway to the European continent.”

Nonetheless, India's veto against Algeria led to a dispute with China during the voting process, which reportedly almost caused the “ failure of the Johannesburg summit.” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also opposed Algeria's entry, according to Anadolu Agency.

..."

" ... Understanding “Queerness” in India: Not a Global Identity

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The queer movements in the west have deeply informed the understanding of gender in the colonized world. Marx showed that capital is not merely value but is a social relationship emergent from the method with which it appropriates surplus value in production, through which it continuously produces more capital. As capitalism is now firmly in the stage of imperialism, there is a continuous export of capital from the monopoly capitalists in the ‘developed’ world to the former colonies. This capital brings with itself distorted social relations which affect all aspect of life to subvert our understanding of reality in the service of further capital production, including that of gender. This understanding forces us to then look at the history of South Asia to find the particularities of these distortions in our understanding of the term ‘queerness’ itself and its ahistorical nature on a global scale.

South Asia, like all other societies, displayed its own unique development of gender based on the particularities of the time. There is historical mention of the existence of hijras, kinnars, jogappas, khwaja saras, aravanis etc. as gendered social groups beyond the binary understanding of gender as male and female. One finds that various members of these gendered groups not only had a social function in feudal society in terms of a mythological existence but also an active role in the courts of the feudal ruling classes. Many hijras were engaged in the feudal mode of production as tax collectors for the zamindars, even amassing means of production by ways of gifts.4 Khwaja saras found themselves in the roles of guards, both to emperors as well as their harems, holding an important social role in the Mughal court, with their own unique culture centered around their role in these societies. Khwaja saras function can be enunciated by the fact that many found themselves holding high zat ranking within the Mughal mansabdari system, a system which determined the position of a government or military officer by way of the amount of zat points they hold. The mansabdari system organized the militaristic nobility of the Mughal empire and determined how feudal surplus extracted through taxes would trickle down among the nobility in the form of allowances, military holdings and even land governorship. Khwaja saras like Etmad Khan and Firoz Khan found themselves with the high zat ranking of 3000 while others like Khwaja Agah would become commanders of garrisons.5 Others also played an active role in the Mughal court in other ways as well, either as domestic workers serving the emperor and their families or as brokers who would maintain the existence of khwaja saras within the court.6 Apart from this, these gendered communities would also have a lot of mythical value attached to them, with many being considered as deities along with others being provided sole access to being allowed to tend to shrines. The entrenchment and positions of these gender groups in feudal society is apparent and there is a clear role in the production process which they play. Europeans like Francisco Pelsaert expressed their shock at witnessing this, which serves as a point of enquiry into the different development of gender within South Asian society in contrast with European society.

The demarcation between the development gender is also demarcated by the changes in the relations of production in each society. As pointed out previously, capital is in itself a social relation but the production of surplus capital itself occurs on the basis of relations of production, or in simple terms: class relations. Within European society, mercantile capital would gradually develop into industrial capital, categorized what is termed as the industrial revolution which in reality coincided with the larger bourgeois revolution in European society, marked by the eradication of feudalism in European and the onset of capitalism. The bourgeois democratic revolution not just transformed the economic aspect of life but would pervade in all aspects of life, including the family which would transform into a rigid monogamous and heterosexual structure wherein the role of each gender would be deeply entrenched in the production process, namely in the production of surplus (male gender) and reproduction of labour itself (women and children). Here, capitalism served as a progressive force in overthrowing feudalism but also created new social realities. This process was not allowed to occur in large parts of the world, with European capitalism developing from the stage of industrial capital marked by domestic competition to a period of monopolies where finance capital was exported to the rest of the world, in the stage of capitalism termed as imperialism. Imperialism, functioning by way of colonialism, introduced a distorted form of changes in relations of production wherein instead of the eradication of feudalism, imperialist finance capital would align with the feudal lords to both sustain the positions of feudal lords within society as well as perpetuate ‘development’ in a manner which most benefits the extraction and export of resources as part of the colonial process. Colonialism introduced a backward form of capitalism in India wherein instead of overthrowing feudalism, foreign capital would align itself with feudalism and create new distorted relations of production. This is entirely in contrast to the type of trajectory that occurred in Europe, where capitalism initially played a progressive role.

The colonial project also aimed to transform society in a manner which best facilitates its own interests and creates the best conditions for extraction of resources from the colonies. So there were multiple reforms that the colonial project undertook to transform the colonies into the ‘ideal’ islands for plunder, particularly when it comes to gender. There was a strong pushback against gender groups which did not fall into the European understanding of ‘male’ and ‘female’ in the form of their marginalization from the production process and the legal outlawing of their existence under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871.7 Important to note is that this attack sharpened after the Indian war of independence in 1857, wherein anti-colonial, nationalist and peasant forces were defeated, and large-scale social reforms were undertaken to better transform the old feudal society in a manner where it can better serve the cause of imperialism. This saw the imposition of an understanding of gender which is imported by way of imperialist capital itself, that of rigid binary genders. But the outlawing of other gendered communities and social groups does not necessarily see their elimination, given the fact that feudalism was never overthrown the way it happened in European society. Instead, we find Indian society mired by this contradiction wherein the alliance of imperialist forces with feudal landlord class is reflected in all aspects of life. Simply put, this provides us with a society which attempts to be deeply binary while simultaneously seeing the presence of gender groups which developed under feudalism such as the hijras who continue to have both internal practices as well as a larger social position that is derived from feudal society. This is reflected in the hijra guru-chela system (master-apprentice) as well as in the biggest practice that fuels the hijra economic and social life, that of badhai. Under this practice, hijras make their way into celebrations held on hetero-normative occasions such as that of childbirth and weddings and perform a variety of activities like dances, songs and prayers. They would then provide blessings to the occasion and in return for those blessings, they are provided with gifts either in the form of cash or goods.8 The practice is deeply feudal, from its rituals to the medium of exchange being undertaken. Hijras are also engaged in begging as well as sex work as their other activities for subsistence, pushing them into a lumpen class background in certain spaces but even this status requires more enquiry, given the fact that the process of begging itself is still driven by feudal values associated with hijras in that being cursed by them and displeasing them is considered highly inauspicious.9

The marginalization of these gendered groups in this manner did not really change after the transfer of power to Indian big bourgeoisie in 1947. The Indian big bourgeoisie and its nexus with the landlord class continues the marginalization and oppression that occurred in with the onslaught of colonialism. This contradiction wherein feudal gendered groups exist in sharp contrast with the cisgender groups is observed in various countries which underwent colonization too. Nigerian scholar Oyerunki Oyewumi would argue that within the Yoruba community that occupies various countries in Africa, the stratification of gender and the understanding of gender as it is in the present is the product of colonization, with the new stratification unable to reconcile with the plurality of gender prior to colonization.10 Similarly in Philippines, among the Bigus people, among the Javanese people, among the Iban people, various gender groups are found like the bakla, the bissu, the warok and the manang bali which represent similar situations all over South-East Asia too. But as capitalist society in the ‘developed’ world change along with a loosening of the rigid family structure, gendered oppression creates new understandings of what it means to be queer.

....

Individuality, Sexual Anarchy and Imperialist Distortion of Culture

The hyperfixation on the individual experience is a continuous trend that is a definitive part of how neoliberalism distorts the social relations for persons. For the expansion of the market, there is a need to create more identities to sell commodities to and neoliberalism facilitates this by way of creating new identities continuously, even though they may not be completely defined at all. The individual becomes an alienated being within the social reality and the politics reflects it wherein the individual’s experience is given primacy over the totality of things that impress upon the individual. This creates further identitarian politics, wherein queer theory continues to create more and more new gender, sexual, romantic etc. identities purely out of random individual experiences over an objective understanding of reality. To cater to this, the market has hundreds of different queer flags and other commodities for people who align with those identities. This distorts not only how gender plays out in the lives of people as a form of oppression but also creates further silos within silos to individualize oppression along the lines of identities conceived arbitrarily. For example, the Indian Trans Act itself plays out this confusion by listing the existence of hijras, kinnars, transgender persons, intersex persons, genderqueer persons etc. under the umbrella term transgender or third gender. While many such terms represent a material existence of gender, all of them concrete and different from the ambiguous third gender term, as elaborated upon previously, terms like genderqueer are somehow also lumped into this arrangement wherein genderqueer can itself mean anything, from transgender person to non-binary to even its own unique term separate from those two. By creating such arbitrary lines within the queer space, the focus is then on how the individual ‘feels’ regarding their oppression and on nomenclature instead of how gendered and sexual oppression metes out its violence against them on the scale of a collective. Nomenclature itself becomes a point of expression, resistance and liberation. Not only do these silos alienate the individual, they alienate the already individualized queer movement from engagement with larger people’s struggles. Simply put, such nomenclature, even the practice of changing pronouns may provide one momentary comfort from gender dysphoria, a product of gender oppression, but it will not end said oppression itself.

As mentioned previously, the imperialist capital also distorts social reality and creates an inorganic culture around itself that deeply affects classes within a society wherein said capital is taking up space. This has created a culture centered around individuality and nomenclature but also a culture reliant on desire of a few. Since ignorance of the violence that informs who and what is desirable itself is pervasive, desire becomes individualistic and leads to sexual anarchy. The agency to engage in sex, let alone the ability to consent to sex in a patriarchal society is restricted to few classes. The ability to enjoy sex is also reliant on the amount of leisure-time one receives in their work-day. Since the bourgeois classes in a country like India also have the ability to create more leisure-time for themselves, in contrast to the majority of the Indian population, the question of enjoyable sex, the ability to consent to such sex and the agency to have multiple sexual partners is also a class question. The ignorance of class within queer political spaces also leads to the misconstrued understanding of queerness as the right to pursue desire in an anarchic manner. This manifests into anarchic sexual relationships, where sexual relationships are pursued in a manner which is ignorant of these questions and reduces sex to a market in itself comprised of various partners. Tinder, Bumble, Hinge etc. are mere manifestations of such marketplaces. In such a marketplace, each partner is seen as a commodity to be exploited by way of sex. Such spaces and the anarchic sexual relationships pursued within them are themselves manifestations of the distortions introduced by way of imperialist capital and its effect on culture and life. It is no wonder that the desirable bodies shaped within these spaces are marked deeply by caste and the class of those people these spaces are open to, that is, the bourgeois classes. Reduction of queerness to sexual anarchy is a bourgeois practice, backed strongly by feudal and imperialist forces to provide a few with the space to partake in such reduction.

This subversion of reform, expression of individuality, comfort and accommodation, all of which are already limited to the bourgeois classes, as a form of change, hinders our ability to truly rid ourselves of oppression.

..."

"Washington's plan in Syria has three axes: forcing Moscow to bring in more forces to Syria to relieve pressure on Ukraine, blocking the Iranian presence in Syria, and cutting off Iran's supply of advanced missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon."

"A leader in an armed faction in northwestern Iraq said he believes that the strategic objective of the operation was to “change the rules of engagement with the Russians in Syria.”

The Russian air force operates in eastern Syria to support Syrian forces fighting ISIS. This has put Russian planes in close proximity to US drones flying out of the Al-Tanf base on the Syria-Iraq border, which is occupied by US forces and allied proxy militias known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

According to Iraqi sources, “the Americans will also try to cut off the Iranian supply route towards Syria and Lebanon, through Iraqi territory (...). This is all we know so far.”

US and allied proxy forces occupy all border crossings between Syria and Iraq except at Al-Bukamal. Israeli officials claim the crossing is part of a “land bridge” used by Iran to move personnel and advanced weapons into Syria to confront Israel.

Despite the recent US troop movements, a leader in the Coordination Framework, a coalition of Shia forces opposed to the US presence in Iraq, said: “The faction leaders recently discussed information about the American moves, and received an Iranian message that what the Americans are doing - whatever it is - is not a cause for concern.”

On 20 August, US Central Command (CENTCOM) denied it was making any changes in the mission of the US Army in northern Syria or Iraq, including attempting to cut off the Iraq-Syria border crossing at Al-Bukamal.

CENTCOM claimed it was moving troops on the Syrian-Iraqi border, but only “in order for the outgoing unit to redeploy and the incoming personnel to assume responsibility,” as part of “a relief in place and transfer of authority.”

US troops have illegally occupied parts of northeast and east Syria since partnering with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in 2015 to fight ISIS. Once the organization was defeated, US forces remained in Syria, denying the government in Damascus access to the country’s most important oil and grain-producing regions. This gives the US government leverage against the Syrian government moving forward, helping the US enforce harsh economic sanctions and hinder post-war reconstruction in the areas under government control.

US planners initially supported ISIS and other Al-Qaeda-affiliated extremist groups in Syria starting in 2011. Russian and Syrian officials allege that the US continues to support ISIS in Syria. The organization no longer holds territory but has intensified its guerrilla attacks on the Syrian army in recent weeks, killing large numbers of Syrian soldiers."

Video: US occupation forces moving a lot of gear

What's behind the US military surge in West Asia?

"In order to counter an emerging multipolar order and its impact on West Asia, it appears that Washington’s agenda is now set on doubling down on its pre-existing regional objectives. With the advent of the Chinese-brokered rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the heat has been on the US government to accomplish what the Biden administration views as a crowning achievement in the region: Israeli-Saudi normalization.

Short of this, to maintain the dominance of the collective west over the region, the immediate hurdle is overcoming the influences of Iran and Russia. This is why the occupation of roughly a third of Syrian territory by the US and its proxies, along with the imposition of deadly sanctions on Damascus, has become crucial in undermining the strength of its adversaries.

By keeping Syria divided and weakening the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the US is able to prevent the restoration of the Syrian state that now falls firmly under the Russian and Iranian spheres of influence.

Moreover, the recent tentative agreement between Washington and Tehran, which aimed to unlock billions in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for the release of five American prisoners, holds the potential to pave a path toward the revival of discussions to reinstate the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

While the US’s ability to secure a renewed nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic could hypothetically create a conducive environment for Saudi-Israeli normalization, the looming specter of a potential Republican victory in the 2024 US elections may cast uncertainty over this prospect.

The use of sanctions, along with hostile intelligence measures and the deployment of troops closer to the Persian Gulf, all signal a US intent to prevent a further diminishment of their role in the region. In the wake of the Ukraine conflict, the White House's capacity to exert its once-dominant presence in West Asia has encountered challenges, potentially prompting the current assertive stance by the US. "

"...

Between the two devastating bombings too, the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria and immediately began obliterating the mighty Kwantung Army.

The Japanese were already well aware Washington was willing and able to raze their country to the ground.

On March 9th, 1945, the US Air Force firebombed Tokyo, which incinerated 16 square miles of the city, killed 100,000 and left one million residents homeless.

It remains today the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. A staggering 99.5% of the city of Toyama was destroyed in a US firebombing attack on August 1st.

Yet, records of an urgent meeting held by Japanese officials on the morning of August 9th indicate that Tokyo’s overwhelming concern was the Soviet invasion.

The atomic bomb that struck Hiroshima three days earlier was barely discussed.

Concurrently, Japan’s Supreme War Council also met. An army representative declared that they had intelligence suggesting the US possessed 100 more atomic bombs, and Tokyo was their next target.

The prospect troubled attendees significantly less than the Red Army’s presence in Manchuria.

The Soviet invasion was pivotal to Tokyo’s August 10th acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened “utter destruction of the Japanese homeland” in lieu of unconditional surrender.

Three days later, Japanese premier Kantaro Suzuki explained that rapid capitulation was vital as, “the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido. This would destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war.”

Accordingly, for many years, a nuclear weapons exhibit at the National Museum of the US Navy was replete with a plaque, which stated:

“The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria changed their minds.”

That plaque has now vanished. So too has all consideration of the Soviet Union’s enormous contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in Western public consciousness.

This is no accident. Opinion polls in the immediate aftermath of the conflict show Europeans were contemporaneously under no illusion that Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini would’ve prevailed, were it not for the incalculable sacrifice of the Soviet people and Red Army.

The role of Britain and the US was considered effectively irrelevant.

Fittingly, one of the key mechanisms through which the US manipulates global audiences about the realities of World War II - and much, much else besides - is cinema.

The CIA, FBI, Pentagon, and individual branches of the US military all boast dedicated “entertainment liaison offices”, which over the past century have influenced the content of thousands of movies, documentaries, TV serials and other entertainment products.

As a result, a highly specific version of reality past and present, reflecting Washington’s national security interests, is constantly broadcast internationally."

"The death of Arab orthodox communism has been a gradual process. It started as early as 1947, when Arab communists — out of strict loyalty to the motherland of communism, the U.S.S.R. — supported the partition plan for Palestine, thereby ceding part of the historic Palestinian homeland to Zionist forces.

Arab people were furious that Arab political parties would accept a partial occupation of Palestine — an occupation that necessitated, according to the partition plan — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian natives. Arab communists never recovered and were accused by their Arab nationalist enemies of being out of touch, and even of betrayal.

The organization of Arab communists was tightly in the hands of the Soviet Union, and local communists were expected to comply with Moscow’s wishes regardless of whether those wishes offended Arab political sensibilities. Arab communists have ever since been trying to justify the partition plan and some still defend it.

While Arab nationalist parties and organizations were preaching armed struggle as the only way to recover Palestine, the head of the Lebanese Communist Party, Farajalla Al-Hilu, spoke in 1942 of a “political conflict” with Zionism, not a military one. Arab communists were late in adopting armed struggle — even as a slogan — out of deference to their Soviet sponsors.

...

But Arab communists also betrayed their own cause: they never strove to develop their own version of local communism and did not, in their indoctrination campaigns, attempt to marry communist ideology with Arab culture and heritage.

Their reading materials covered only the West. They failed to produce programs and agendas that reflected local needs and realties. Progress Publishers (the publishing arm of the U.S.S.R.) produced Arabic translations of communist literature, but the translations were woefully inadequate and censorship was employed in the translations. ... Arab communists also opposed Nasser when he was the champion — in the Arab world and beyond — of the anti-Western camp in the world. At a time when Nasser was leading a real revolution in Egypt, Egyptian communists were joining forces with right-wing parties in calling for political elections. Those elections would have certainly returned the traditional right-wing parties to power.

Nasser, while not a communist, achieved more for the Egyptian working and peasant class, than all the efforts of Arab communists. It was rather inexplicable that communists in Arab countries would not join forces with the most progressive project in the contemporary history of the Arab world.

Later, Egyptian communists had no problem aligning themselves with dictators against the Muslim Brotherhood. Many leftists supported the regime of Abdul-Fattah Sisi in order to undermine the representative powers of the Muslim Brotherhood, who won the first free election in Egyptian history after the collapse of the Husni Mubarak regime in 2011.

Since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Arab communists have been trying to shed their ideology. In Syria, communist leader Riad Al-Turk called for Western intervention in the Middle East, while the other branch of the Syrian communist party of Khalid Bakdash supported the Syrian regime.

The Iraqi Communist Party joined the occupation council which was set up by the American colonial power after 2003 invasion. Paul Bremer actually praised the Iraqi communists for their cooperation with the occupiers.

The Sudanese Communist Party has recently called for intervention by “the international community” — a sinister code for NATO and its allies.

In Lebanon, the communists have been split. Early in 2005, many Lebanese communists who had been coopted by the right-wing billionaire Rafiq Hariri joined the right-wing coalition known as March 14. Communist Action Organization and the Yasar Dimiqrati (two organizations with Marxist pasts) were a mere tool for Hariri (an MP from Yasar Dimuqrati was elected to parliament in 2005 on the list of the Hariri family).

The mainstream Lebanese Communist Party stayed outside that framework and supported resistance against Israel. But since 2019, the Lebanese Communist Party has developed into another version of a liberal NGO and seems to be copying the model of liberal Yasar Dimuqrati. It even held “coordination sessions” with the right-wing, anti-communist, Phalanges Party, during the protests that followed the Lebanese collapse in 2019.

And in the last two years, the party has distanced itself from the resistance against Israel and bogusly claimed that leftist parties did much of the resistance against Tel Aviv.

There are still active communist parties today in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Morocco, as well as Marxist or progressive leftist parties in many Arab countries. But many are shedding the communist label and picking Che Guevara as their symbol because he is good looking and does not bring up the baggage that Marx or Lenin brings.

Arab communism is dead, and neoliberal forces rise with various slogans — some from the right and some from the left. The cause of the left is more imperative than ever, but Arab communists have become least qualified to carry it out."

Excerpted with emphasis:

"In a 2014 report titled “The EU’s Energy Security Made Urgent by the Crimean Crisis,” the EU Parliament outlined the challenges that lay ahead of enforcing sanctions on Russia. An interesting aspect of this report conveys salient aspects of the bloc's decision-making. By contrasting both the short-term and long-term implications of anti-Russian sanctions on the bloc's economy, we may discern the rationale for the EU's decision: in the short-term, the EU would be faced with “several obstacles” linked to the construction of new import terminals, the conversion of electric plants to other energy sources, the substitution of Russian gas imports with those from Norway, Algeria, and Qatar which would result in external shocks and “recession effects” to the EU economy, while in the long-term, the sanctions promise to strengthen Europe’s security, forging trade alliances with “new countries,” increasing renewable energy production, and other means of reducing energy dependency to Russia.

The point remains that Europe restructures power balances by forcing countries into submission and drawing future resources for cheap costs. The principle governing the EU’s decision-making is that the temporary erosion of European welfare – the current security of Europe’s working classes -- is meant to strengthen the bloc’s autonomy and boost European working class and capital security in the long run. The European working class continues to partner with capital since its colonial wars and it benefits from the power generated imperialist dividends. That rationale is the very same one being applied in the context of the Ukrainian conflict -- that the temporary contraction of the Eurozone is meant to enhance Europe's security and economy in the long run.

... Knowing well the consequences that bear upon its economy, namely the decoupling from Russian gas and Russian investments, it is instinctive to assume that the EU has beaten a new record for the most irrational decision-making. But arithmetic imposed on processes is misleading and considering the dynamic picture, more power garnered by Europe will resituate it at the helm of the international order. Once in power, Europe dictates to the world its terms of trade. When we consider the social aspects involved in the price formation of commodities -- which in this particular context involves the sale of Russian gas for cheap prices, a decapitated Russia will sell its future gas for prices even lower than they were prior to the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict.

This is important to consider because price formation is relative to the structures of power, which emanates from the resultant of social or power relations. Market powers provide the social context in which people come to relate to one another, and thus, how the terms of exchange are legitimized. As a matter of fact, the reason why Russian gas became so cheap after the Soviet Union collapsed is owed to the ideological defeat of the Soviet ideology. The establishment of the petrodollar system in 1973 was a turning point in history which saw the US consolidate the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency, causing a severe drop in the Soviet Union's income and affecting the bloc's ability to sustain itself as a autonomous economy.

The history of Europe provides context to how the European working class relates to the capitalists of Europe. To a large extent, the working class of Europe has always been the soldiers of the Empire. By committing crimes against humanity, colonizing peoples, pillaging their resources, and carrying out genocides and ethnocides of immeasurable scale, the European working class reproduces itself by war just as capital does.

The EU has done well at washing the blood off its hands from centuries of looting and pillaging the South as it continues to vaunt its image of moral and cultural superiority and has done so by masterfully subjugating the discourse on human rights to serve its own ends. So much of Europe's wealth was in fact generated by the relation of looting the South. The European working class makes a living out of killing by increasing its power and partnership with capital. But the presence of a strong Russia has always posed a threat to Western interests, especially as it holds sway over Eurasia.

With the ideological defeat of the Soviet Union and the ongoing expansion of NATO, this pattern continues to take hold in the 21st century. But with the US bearing a leadership role within the alliance, many come to view the EU as being dragged into a war that is not theirs. Whether the US is exerting pressure on the EU or not, it is a certainty that whatever decisions being made are meant to safeguard the rules-based order -- an order characterized by the primacy of Western culture and civilization over that of the South, which in turn pays dividends to the European working class itself.

Simply put, it would be far off the mark to assume that the US bears full responsibility for a conflict that the EU has supposedly nothing to do with. Not only the Western alliance is all one and the same, but the imperialism-based order renders war as the only viable option against an autonomous Russia. Rivaling the primacy of the rules-based order is rivaling the terms of exchange as defined by the West, and rivaling the terms of exchange is rivaling US-EU military superiority.

The same applies in the context of waging a trade war with China. Reports have claimed that the US has been pressuring the EU to decouple from China. But neither the EU nor the US has thus far dared to initiate such a move. It is an indisputable certainty that doing so would wreak havoc on Western businesses that rely on Chinese supply chains and manufacturing power. But it is precisely this overreliance on China that the West is aiming to overturn.

Nevertheless, with resistance enacted by Russia and other global players, the prospects for a world where development would break off from waste accumulation -- the production sphere of global industries that drive the destruction of the Global South -- seem to be coming further in sight."