The two-hour December 7th Biden-Putin conversation (via video-conference) focused mainly on the conflict between Ukraine and its breakaway former Donbass region, which is in Ukraine’s far east and borders on Russia. In order to understand the conversation, some basic history that produced the current situation there needs to be stated, because this...
With large-scale protests against war and austerity engulfing the streets of Western (EU) countries, the political elite, in full-fledged panic mode, launched a propaganda stunt by indicting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Lvova-Belova is the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights. She and...
Peace groups in all three nations need to rally against provocative alliance that is a pivotal component of war planning. The AUKUS pact (military initiative among Australia, the UK and U.S.) came out of nowhere in 2021 when Australia broke a $A90 billion contract to buy French submarines. Instead, it signed...
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley claimed last week that China was close to a “sputnik moment” due to its successful test of a hypersonic missile. However, U.S. space-based early warning systems can detect hypersonic missiles, marking them as no threat at all. General Mark Milley, Chairman of the...
Filipinos Don’t Want to Be Used as a “Footstool for American Power Projection and Provocation” Says Filipino Peace Activist This past month, more than 3,000 U.S. and Filipino soldiers participated in a three-week live-fire military exercise called Balikatan, which included a drill to blow up a mock Chinese warship in...
Operation Beluga Helped Condition the Public to Support the New Cold War On November 1, 2006, a former Russian spy turned British MI6 agent, Alexander “Sasha” Litvinenko, was poisoned with polonium while meeting with two alleged Russian agents, Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, and an Italian security consultant, Mario...
Andrew Fowler’s book Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco That Sank Australia’s Sovereignty (Melbourne University Press, 2024) was not written by a member of the peace movement. That is both a strength and a weakness. A strength, because Andrew Fowler is an award-winning investigative journalist, who has worked in mainstream Australian...
Just 15 years ago, Chinese consumers were flocking to Western brands. Now they prefer Chinese ones. The fate of the Starbucks Group is telling: Sales and profits in its current 7,300 stores in China are declining. The Chinese are not drinking less coffee, but prefer Chinese brands, partly because they...
Lloyd’s of London and Bermuda-based Arch Insurance deny the €400 million claim by Nord Stream AG, arguing their policies do not provide coverage for the 2022 underwater explosions that ruptured the natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea because the damage was inflicted by “a government.” But “the defendants’ argument...
The U.S. scored a public relations coup with Kamila Valieva’s humiliation In the winter of 2021-22, while figure skaters were competing in North America and Europe and preparing for the Beijing Winter Olympics, the tensions around Ukraine were building. NATO-trained Ukrainian troops were intensifying attacks on the border of the breakaway...