Težko je verjeti, dokler ne slišiš iz njihovih lastnih ust. Vojna v Ukrajini je po besedah senatorja Grahama vojna za redke minerale (vredne nekaj tisoč milijard dolarjev) in najboljša naložba ZDA, ki v ej bojni ne bo izguvila nobenega vojaka.
Kaj pa Ukrajina in njeni ljudje? Ah, lahko so srečni, da se bojujejo za ameriške politične in gospodarske namene. Do zadnjega Ukrajinca.
Čas za osvežitev poznavanja zgodovine.
Main findings:
- The expulsion of Jews from Judea did not happen.
- Many Judean Jews accepted Islam and are the ancestors of today’s Palestinians.
- The “nation-race” of Jews with a common origin doesn’t exist and the “Jewish diaspora” is a modern invention.
- The ancestors of European Jews mostly converted to Judaism and have no origin in Palestine.
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Shlomo Sand is a Jewish Professor of History at Tel Aviv University
Spodaj je izvleček iz dobre recenzije zadnje knjige Noama Chomskega in Nathana J. Robinsona “The Myth of American Idealism”. Chomsky in Robinson še enkrat več razzbijata mit, da ameriško zunanjo poolitiko vodijo dobri nameni in moralna načela in da so slabe stvari, ki se zgodijo, zgolj nezaželene stranske posledice. Nasprotno – ameriška zunanja politika je to, kar se kaže tudi navzven: brutalno uveljavljanje ameriške globalne hegemonije z vsemi sredstvi.
Seveda ni zanemarljivo, da je recenzijo napisal Stephen M. Walt, profesor politologije na univerzi Harvard in eden izmed vodilnih teoretikov realizma v mednarodnih odnosih (sicer tudi skupaj z Johnom Mearsheimerjem soavtor knjige “The Israel Lobby”.
For more than half a century, Noam Chomsky has been arguably the world’s most persistent, uncompromising, and intellectually respected critic of contemporary U.S. foreign policy. In a steady stream of books, articles, interviews, and speeches, he has repeatedly sought to expose Washington’s costly and inhumane approach to the rest of the world, an approach he believes has harmed millions and is contrary to the United States’ professed values. As co-author Nathan J. Robinson writes in the preface, The Myth of American Idealism was written to “draw insights from across [Chomsky’s] body of work into a single volume that could introduce people to his central critiques of U.S. foreign policy.” It accomplishes that task admirably.
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The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World, Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, Penguin, 416 pp., $32, October 2024.
As the title suggests, the central target of the book is the claim that U.S. foreign policy is guided by the lofty ideals of democracy, freedom, the rule of law, human rights, etc. For those who subscribe to this view, the damage the United States has sometimes inflicted on other countries was the unintended and much regretted result of actions taken for noble purposes and with the best of intentions. Americans are constantly reminded by their leaders that they are an “indispensable nation” and “the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known,” and assured that moral principles will be at the “center of U.S. foreign policy.” Such self-congratulatory justifications are then endlessly echoed by a chorus of politicians and establishment intellectuals.
Marko Golob
»Rusi se vojne bojijo, vendar so nanjo pripravljeni, Zahod se vojne ne boji, vendar nanjo ni pripravljen«. (The Saker)
Gornji stavek švicarskega generalštabnega častnika, obveščevalnega oficirja in lastnika zdaj že diskontinuiranega in nekoč popularnega bloga The Saker Andreja Rajevskega mi že dolgo odzvanja, zadnje čase toliko bolj. Ob tem se spomnim pogovora s slovenskim ministrom po uradnem obisku v Rusiji in srečanju s predsednikom Putinom še v času, ko odnosi Rusije z Zahodom še niso bili tako napeti in se je z Rusijo, nekdaj našo pomembno trgovinsko partnerico, še dalo (uspešno) poslovati. Minister, ki je promoviral našo avtomobilsko industrijo in možnosti našega sodelovanja z rusko industrijo, je bil o zadevi (tudi zaradi najinih pogovorov) dobro seznanjen. Kot dober poznavalec ekonomije in Rusije pa je vseeno vprašal – navajam po spominu:
»Slovenci smo seveda pripravljeni na sodelovanje pri razvoju ruske avtomobilske industrije, ampak vseeno se sprašujemo, zakaj Rusija glede na kapacitete in tehnološki nivo svoje strojne industrije ne vlaga sama več v razvoj te industrijske veje.«
Odgovor Putina, to je bilo še pred 2014, je bil:
»Najprej moramo poskrbeti za obrambo, potem bo prišla na vrsto tudi industrija za izboljšanje življenskega standarda.«
Odgovor kaže, kako zelo se je Rusija že več kot pred desetletjem zavedala prihajajočega konflikta z Zahodom in kako temeljito sistematično in dolgoročno se je pripravljala nanj. Pa ne samo ona.
Leaked files show top UK military figures conspired to carry out the Kerch bridge bombing, covertly train “Gladio”-style stay-behind forces in Ukraine, and groom the British public for a drop in living standards caused by the proxy war against Russia.
Emails and internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal details of a cabal of British military and intelligence veterans which plotted to escalate and prolong the Ukraine proxy war “at all costs.” Convened under the direction of the British Ministry of Defense in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the cell referred to itself as Project Alchemy. As British leadership sabotaged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow, the cell put forward an array of plans “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”
The leaks obtained by The Grayzone expose a hidden hand behind Britain’s policy in Ukraine, showing in unusually granular detail how it aimed to engineer a long, grinding war through covert operations that stretched the bounds of legality.
This video is a must-watch. I rarely agree with @brhodes
But he’s 100% correct here.
He says he’ll “always be haunted” by a comment that Xi Jinping made to Obama in 2016 when referring to Trump: “If an immature leader throws the world into chaos, the world will know who to blame”.
Why does it haunt him? Because in his words “we’ve kind of been dealing with that ever since”.
He mocks Biden’s foreign policy of trying to restore a “Liberal rules-based order with the U.S. at the center of it” (i.e. U.S. primacy) as “designed for the world that doesn’t exist anymore”. Remember Rhodes was Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, so it’s quite something to hear him say that…
Opomnik:
Kako je lahko neka država pri vseh ključnih dogodkih v zgodovini vedno izbere napačno stran?
Zadnja Gallupova raziskava javnega mnenja med Ukrajinci je pokazala, da si več kot 52 % Ukrajincev želi konca vojne in mirovna pogajanja, tudi za ceno izgube ozemelj, le 37 % bi jih nadaljevalo z vojno. Problem je, ker to mnenje ukrajinskega naroda nikogar ne zanima – ne zanima nelegalnega predsednika Zelenskega, ki po preteku mandata ne želi razpisati volitev, ne zanima Bidnove administracije, ki sponzorira vojno, ne zanima ZDA in Francije, ki sponzorirata vojno, ne zanima evropskih voditeljev, ki sponzorirajo vojno in ne zanima zahodnih medijev, ki tudi papagajsko ponavljajo propagando, s katero sponzorirajo vojno.
Še več, v paniki, da bi se morda vojna prehitro končala, so ameriška, britanska in francoska vlada naredile še korak naprej k eskalaciji vojne z odobritvijo, da lahko ukrajinske sile zahodne rakete daljšega dometa uporabijo tudi za napade na cilje globoko na ruskem ozemlju. S čimer so ogrozile varnost evropskih držav, od koder prihajajo te rakete.
Data via Gallup. Graph adapted by Clark McGillis.
Odlično branje. Z nemškim gospodarskim zatonom je zašla tudi nemška politična teža. Z njo pa tudi evropska.
Until recently, Germany appeared to be a paragon of economic and political success. Angela Merkel was widely seen as the true ‘leader of the free world’, and Germany’s export-driven economic model seemed to deliver prosperity. But recent events – from Germany’s dependence on Russian gas to its car industry’s delays in the race to electric – have undermined this view.
In Kaput, Wolfgang Münchau argues that the weaknesses of Germany’s economy have, in fact, been brewing for decades. The neo-mercantilist policies of the German state, driven by close connections between the country’s industrial and political elite, have left Germany technologically behind over-reliant on authoritarian Russia and China – and with little sign of being able to adapt to the digital realities of the 21st century.
Na Amazonu je v prodaji paperback, na kindle verzijo bo treba še počakati
Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, may be regretting his decision to attend a 2017 conference held by the California Federation of Republican Women. His sexual encounter with one of those Republican women (which happened, as the Wall Street Journal notes, while he was “in the midst of getting a divorce from his second wife after fathering a child with a producer at the network”) led to a sexual assault allegation, and a subsequent hush-money payment, that have together complicated his path to the Pentagon.
But maybe Hegseth should consider this scandal a blessing. If it weren’t for the questions being raised about past sexual transgressions, more attention might be paid to questions that bear more directly on his qualifications to head the Defense Department. There’s the lack of managerial experience in a man who aspires to run the world’s largest military. There’s the fact that he has repeatedly spoken up in defense of US servicemen who had committed vicious war crimes. And then there’s the thing that has gotten the least attention of all but may be the most important of all: Hegseth’s warped views about Islam—views that, if he becomes secretary of defense, could exacerbate conflicts and even create new ones.
In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth argues that Islam “has been at war with its enemies—meaning all ‘infidels’—since it was founded, and it will never stop.” In truth, the Islamic empires of the past—from the seventh century through the early twentieth century—typically included large populations of non-Muslims who practiced their religions in peace, in keeping with Islamic doctrine, so long as they paid a special tax called a jizya. This may not sound progressive by modern standards, but if you compare, say, the treatment of Spanish Jews under Islamic rule to their treatment under subsequent Christian rule, you’ll see that things could have been much worse.
DAMIJAN blog 
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