Comments by "John Roberts" (@view1st) on "The Duran" channel.

  1. Let's hope it all goes well for relations between Russia and Kazakhstan and that both their economies thrive. Trade between Kazakhstan and Russia and Kazakhstan and the rest of the world will be good for everyone, leading to a welcome prosperity for all.
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  2. And I would add, the Americans.
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  3. If you want criticism go to the mainstream media, it's just a click away. These guys are stating facts. Facts, not lies. If you don't like their take on the facts you are welcome to go elsewhere.
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  4. It disgusts me that my country can stoop so low in its obeisance to the United States that it can engage in what to me at least seem to be blatantly illegal acts. Acts that furthermore completely undermine confidence and trust in the system.
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  5. Like Britain before it the USA wants to keep Germany from getting too powerful and too independent. Germany could be a major hub in China's Belt and Road Initiative and become the most powerful economic power in central and western Europe as a result but in the eyes of many that would give them too much leverage in the affairs of the European Union as well as increasing the political influence of both Russia and China at the expense of the USA. It would be a nightmare for the Anglosphere.
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  6. The US government has been taken over by second rate, ideologically‐driven incompetents whose only skills are in corruption.
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  7. A most interesting development seems to have taken place. Subtle but significant symbolism.
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  8. Britain living vicariously through the United States since world war 2.
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  9. Fiat money remember, dependent on the US dollar. If and when it goes, the Euro and Sterling will go with it. Each European country will then have to go back to their own non-fiat currencies backed by gold, silver and internal resources. When that happens I doubt any of them will be in a position to dictate to anyone.
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  10. The Russians and Chinese should work together to create their own SWIFT banking system and extend it as quickly as possible to the rest of the world; to internationalize it. — The Chinese should move to break the stranglehold of the United States dollar as soon as possible and create an internationally accepted replacement (not necessarily the Chinese Yuan). — The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative should be continued unabated and wherever possible it should be enhanced by the Russians attempting to do the same whenever and wherever possible (eg. Central Asia). In fact, the Chinese should strongly encourage the ability of countries in Latin America like Brazil and Argentina to develop their economies such that they can achieve genuine independence from the United States and western Europe. — China and Russia should seek to undermine key Western corporate controlled institutions in general so as to create a more multipolar world.
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  11. But hasn't the European Union always been a federalist project, dedicated to creating a centralised state of technocrats controlled by multinationals?
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  12. He obviously doesn't want to lose his job so he is bending in the wind. McCarthyism is still strong in American universities.
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  13. A US empire inflicted wound. The EU is an organisation created by the USA to control Europe and its agents of influence are doing just that: damaging European interests where they conflict with the geopolitical interests of their master.
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  14. It's a classic case of cold war politics overruling common sense economics.
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  15. What I fear is the effect of a dollar default on the British pound.
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  16. All theatre. Australia can’t act militarily in an independent manner without the permission and wherewithal of the USA and the USA doesn’t appear to want a hot war just yet. Of course, the Australian military, together with its intelligence apparatus, can invigilate it’s own government and subvert it on behalf of the the USA and its own plutocrats like the Murdoch’s, but, otherwise, it’s China has little to fear.
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  17. 04:21 If Poland is doing so well how come there are so many Polish economic migrants. Germany wants to turn — has turned — Poland into a quasi-colony, propping up the German economy. Germany is as successful as it currently is because of its domination of the EU. Same for France, though here again Germany has the upper hand because of its economy.
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  18. ​ @stanpennycook5414  US nukes. Can't be used without America's permission.
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  19. The USA is a country that seems at the political level in some regards to have lost its way, at least with regards China and Russia. It does not seem to have grasped how rapidly the world is changing and as a result it appears increasingly unable to deal with the reality of Asia's rise, Europe's increasing ambivalence to its dominance, Latin America's desire to be free from its hegemony and the eventual economic development of Africa and the Middle East, nor even of its own domestic economic and social problems.
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  20. I also think that North Stream 2 will come online sooner rather than later. Germany has a need for gas and Russia is nearby with ample supplies and can provide it comparatively cheaply, much cheaper than the USA using LNG tankers.
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  21.  @fightback397  and none of them could predict or stop 3 high rise steel framed skyscrapers collapsing at free fall speed into their own footprint nor, apparently, the rise of al‐Quaeda.
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  22. And that's why the USA through its lackeys in Europe are busy weakening the continent – they don't want competition.
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  23. It's more than likely that the USA has something to do with it as well because it doesn't want France to have influence or alternative sources of wealth and wants itself to be the greatest influence in the region. It is also a good thing in my opinion that Africa comes out from under the jackboot of France and gains as much independence from western Europe as possible.
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  24. Should Israel be engaged in a war that it looks like it's going to lose wouldn't the USA intervene in its favour? As Israel currently has a free hand with regards the cleansing of the Palestinians and has been vigorously thinning out their population I don't see how the situation could be described as a strategic defeat. Israel is basically carrying out a long term strategy of the USA (of which it is just a proxy) and that is control over West Asia's oil. Either now or sometime further down the line the oil, gas and access (canal or otherwise) will be under the control of the USA through its Israeli and/or Palestinian proxies.
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  25. The USA. That and Britain's economic system.
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  26. I'm sure — and certainly hoping — that a more sensible leadership will prevail.
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  27. They are the uber wealthy who want to instate neo‐feudalism.
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  28. It's a boycott and who knows how long it will last.
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  29. These aren't failures. These are fully intended consequences.
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  30. The European Union is the political-economic equivalent of NATO, carrying out the US empire's bidding, along with that of Germany and France (delegated power to control Europe on behalf of the USA) together with the Bank of International Settlements and corporate capitalism of the Western European banking centres.
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  31. But they won't call it that. They will call it a recession.
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  32. The aim of the USA is to split Europe from Asia (keeping Europe as a continent full of satellite states) while creating the conditions for a new cold war. Keeping Russia, China, Germany and France apart is and always has been the primary strategic goal of the Atlanticist Anglo-American alliance. MacKinder's Heartland versus the Rimland. A policy of preventing the integration of Europe and Asia such that they become one economic trading bloc, Eurasia, is what the USA and its satellite the United Kingdom pursue.
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  33. But that's assuming they didn't also have alternative aims, like disconnecting Russia from Europe and disrupting trade.
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  34. The IMF needs serious reform. Either that or a Chinese-Russian alternative that gives much fairer terms to developing countries. The IMF is just an extension of the treasury of the United States.
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  35. Money speaks where the conscience is silent.
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  36. Kazakhstan still needs to trade with other countries and if those foreign-owned businesses sabotage the country's trade I'm sure that they will quickly find themselves in trouble with the authorities and kicked out of the country.
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  37. Gas lighting is, I think, the term for it.
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  38.  @73elephants  The USA decided for us. Same for France. European colonialism was competition and we all know the USA doesn't like competition. Just look at Suez.
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  39. The USA determines policy vis-a-vis Russia and China and if there is no policy by the foreign office it's because there's no policy in the USA. If there is paralysis or indecision in the USA it will be reflected in Britain. Bad decisions by the Americans will simply be duplicated by Britain. A client state has to follow orders after all.
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  40. I wonder if this is designed to bring Russia into a new arms race or at least put pressure on them by forcing them to become involved, a sort of Afghanistan 2.0.
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  41. Does the USA really want another president with senile dementia ?
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  42.  Dickle Wiley&D  Tell that to the Iraqis when they were being sanctioned. 2 Million dead. Tell that to the Venezuelans. Yeah, embargoes and sanctions don't have any effect in your opinion. GFO.
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  43. The question is how long will China put up with dollar depreciation and subsidising a country that, on the surface at least, seems to be incredibly hostile to it, and how will effect international trade with the rest of the developed world when the decision is finally made to transition to a new international reserve currency. Will China let down the USA gently, perhaps by using the SDR's of the IMF to create a new international currency, or will it abruptly substitute its own?
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  44.  Dickle Wiley&D  Sanctions were also used against Zimbabwe too. It's hyperinflation didn't come out of nowhere. Then there's the after-effects of imperialism and the effects of ongoing neo-colonialism.
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  45. The province of Alberta? has just banned convoys and even gatherings to cheer them on. The government is definitely scared.
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  46. How great has been the role of the United States in the coup d'état in Niger? I don't think it would be too far a stretch to say that the USA would like to weaken the influence of France in country and Africa more generally in as much as France's national interests diverge from those of the USA.
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  47. Is this the same social credit score they excoriate the Chinese for?
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  48. The people who are in charge either don't know or don't care. Or they are simply being calculating.
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  49. I think they are trying to split them and play one off against the other like they did during the era of the Sino-Soviet split, but this time it's not really working because they now have a common interest in defending themselves against United States hegemony and fostering bilateral trade relations with each other.
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  50. 1:07 Putin is like Peter the Great but whereas Peter looked to the West, Putin looks to the East. What we may be seeing are far reaching economic, political and sociocultural changes in Russia every bit as momentous as those in the 17th century.
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  51. They both live in the past because the present is so unappealing.
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  52. Britian's quasi-democracy has been captured by the security apparatus of the USA that has infiltrated both media and government. Britain's political class has become a comprador class just like those in Latin America and Africa whereby the needs of a foreign power and it's paranoid military-industrial complex are given precedence over its own people as long as the wealthy elite can stay in power.
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  53. These laws were, firstly, to deligitimize Germany and Japan, secondly, to deligitimize the Soviet Union and, thirdly, to use as a legal instrument by the western powers to use against other countries (eg. Iraq in its invasion of Kuwait, or against Yugoslavia and Rwanda). It was never intended to be used against the start itself.
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  54. Agreed, fighting for an economic system that is inherently iniquitous and divisive is indeed strange given the alternatives.
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  55.  @truckerfromreno  But this time with all the paper safeguards in place to stop electoral fraud.
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  56.  @BillBeeby  Supposed to be. The operative word being "supposed".
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  57. And the members of the Project for the New American Century did too.
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  58. Like Britain, Australia is part of the 5‐eyes and thus highly integrated into its deep state structures and if this pseudo‐pandemic is something that's been planned by elements of the deep state (the way that 9/11 and the JFK/BK assassinations almost certainly were) then I think the actions of the Australian government are entirely explicable in terms of the country's state apparatus having being compromised by American deep state assets and agents of influence (like Rupert Murdoch).
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  59. Agreed. His plan – or rather the plan of those who put him in power – is far different from what is the official policies of the Labour Party (aka the Crypto-conservative Party).
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  60. Thanks! Great convo! 👍
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  61. Madness! Pure madness!
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  62. And the fact that the regime in Kiev is literally (neo-) fascist makes it even more incredible.
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  63. He shouldn't be given the Vatican's past record, e.g. supporting Mussolini in return for diplomatic recognition .
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  64.  @ramatgan1  only the USA has that privilege. Unfortunately.
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  65. Try using the button at top right (three parallel bars). Then select the 'Newest first'. This shows all the latest replies and not just the most liked.
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  66. Let's hope so.
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  67. He's not in charge; the USA is.
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  68. The British people won't be given a choice, either tweedledee or tweedledum.
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  69. It wasn't him, it was the hawks within the military-industrial complex who gave him no choice. US presidents are figureheads who do whatever faction in the Whitehouse and MIC have the upper hand.
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  70. Same in Afghanistan and in Nicaragua in the 1980's.
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  71. 11:33 No, countries should not borrow more and at interest from the the cartel of private banks operated by the BIS. They should set up their own banks in a like manner to China, banks that work in the interests of their own national economies. The EU is drowning in debt issued by private banks and in need to stop. A debt jubilee should be declared and certain debts declared odious and repudiated. — 16:40 the USA wants to save itself by using the EU as a continent of vassals under German dominance.
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  72. Ah, Alexander isn't blurred at the beginning. How nice. Interesting show as usual.👍
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  73. That's an interesting take on things. It might even be true up to a point.
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  74. Plaza Accords 1 & 2.
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  75. She's just following the EU's playbook. They do exactly the same thing. What can you expect from a remainer and staunch supporter of the EU.
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  76. I see the hand of the USA in this somewhere.
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  77. My understanding is that Greece is currently being run by a troika of EU-IMF-World Bank bureaucrats imposed by the globalist banksters after the Greek banking crisis deliberately caused by them and has long ago ceased to represent the the Greek electorate, neither properly reflecting public opinion nor caring much about the lives of the Greeks affected by the austerity measures they demanded.
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  78. Only out on paper. In reality we're still in.
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  79. The EU bends and breaks its own rules as it sees fit so I'm sure they'll find some way to get round this. Accommodating China's growing power is unavoidable, we're just waiting for Germany to get on board then everything will be fine (where Germany goes France will follow).
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  80. They can blame the country's problems on foreign sanctions. Remove those sanctions and the government may find itself weakened. External threats always create political solidarity among a people but the absence of such threats can lead to an unpopular government not having anyone else to blame for perceived failures but themselves.
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  81. 35% is still a large number of people, more than a third of the population, and certainly big enough to decisively influence any vote on the subject. Hopefully the Finnish government will not join NATO but will remain steadfastly neutral and if the Finnish government does eventually decide to join NATO it will allow Finns should certainly to vote in a referendum on the issue; politicians are not to be trusted.
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  82.  @oddvardmyrnes9040  Probably a spam bot created by the 5 eyes, activated by certain trigger words or subjects. Best to ignore them. You can usually spot them by their completely out of context content.
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  83. You must be joking! It's the 'Austrian' school of economics (neo-classical/neo-liberal/Washington Consensus/Chicago School; Hayek, Friedman, etc. ) that's got the USA and the European Union into this mess in the first place. This is the West using rentierism to suck the rest of the world dry, but the rest of the world aren't having it anymore and led by the likes of China and Russia are rebelling and slowly going their own way.
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  84. And its corporate deep state more relevant every day.
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  85. I'm given to understand that it's linked to the British and/or the US governments and has been used as a means of media influence. It's physical location and its legal status are largely irrelevant to the discussion as the intelligence services that are – allegedly – behind organisations like Bellingcat routinely use the law as a cover for their nefarious activities.
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  86.  @karamzing  He's probably the CIA's pointman in Finland.
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  87. All these protests may actually be part of a plan, a plan to create social unrest throughout Europe so as to justify state repression. The global elite (such as those who meet at Davos, for example) may now be implementing a series of pre‐planned colour revolutions in Europe and across the world. The people are being weaponised against the state and against themselves, the ultimate goal being a a West that is more like the USA and more amenable to the globalists agenda.
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  88. IQ is no standard by which to organise society. Indeed, having high intelligence is correlated with psychopathy. Psychopaths (serial murderers, for example) often have very high IQ's. In fact, certain countries of the world may be in the state there in because they have an unusually high number of these high-IQ people in positions of power. Putting logic and the ability to solve puzzles ahead of EQ (emotional quotient) tends to lead to individuals having less sympathy and less empathy (students of economics, for example). I catch the faint smell of eugenics in what you. say.
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  89. Together with France.
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  90. @lukasbauer8783 & @sylviam6535 So true!
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  91. What's the difference between Nordic and Scandinavian? Is one a geographical term and the other cultural?
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  92. I think he means the former.
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  93. I fear it's already too late for that. Ethiopia may already be a lost cause. All we need now is Turkey or Saudi Arabia to start sending their proxies to do the USA's bidding.
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  94. Are they deliberately trying to cause hyper-inflation? Is this the another Great Depression.
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  95. It's a popular movement. Simple as.
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  96. Cognitive dissonance is what they suffer from. And it does seem to lead to a kind of mass psychosis as they tie themselves in knots trying to justify two opposing ideas held within the same mind.
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  97. @Manuel Rizzo You seem to forget: the Romans invaded the lands of the Germanic peoples, as well as the area that would later became known to us in the West as the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantium.
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  98. They keep saying oil is running out and yet it never does. They seem to either find new oil fields to exploit or technical innovations that allow them to extract oil by different means (eg. fracking).
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  99. It would seem like democracy is flawed in both countries.
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  100. He's a former ambassador of the USA so quite naturally he will consciously or unconsciously support his country, right or wrong.
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  101. How is revealing unclassified information and open‐source material to the general public aiding America's enemies given that both Russia and China would already have had access to such information and thus full knowledge of America's clandestine activities? Even where the information was classified if what it reveals is blatant criminality on the part of those in power then under whistle-blower rules Julian Assange and his Wikileaks are doing the USA and the world a favour. If one's caught stealing elections Joe Biden style shouldn't Americans be told, don't they have a right to know? Should high crimes and misdemeanours (such as 9/11) be kept secret in the name of national security? If so, whose security? Certainly not that of the citizenry.
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  102. What's the difference between a civilizational state and a nation state?
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  103. "Over-capacity" used to be known as 'comparative advantage' back in the day and was something that Adam Smith and David Ricardo said countries should use to their advantage in commercial dealings with other countries. The United Kingdom certainly did so with opium.
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  104. The USA been preparing for war with everybody since at least 1948, especially China since 1949 and Russia (the USSR as it was known back then) since 1917. Nothing new here. Preparing for war is what all armies do but especially when they're imperialist, militarist or expansionist. And let's face it, as a crypto-fascist country the USA is, like National Socialist Germany, a war mongering country whose economic system, predatory capitalism, heavily relies on the expropriation and exploitation of other country's primary and secondary resources.
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  105.  @thucduyen9592  That's because neoclassical economics (neo‐liberalism) is an ideology masquerading as a scientific discipline.
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  106.  @hathawayrose2183  Because the British elite have been integrated into the American elite and form a comprador class of rentiers living off the backs of the rest of us and relying on Uncle Sam for protection. Like their Latin American, African and Asia counterparts, they couldn't give a damn about the suffering of their own people or the long term welfare of the country's economy. We saw this with Thatcher and then Blair.
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  107. But what is behind the scam — government or big business? And is it a criminal conspiracy that we are seeing here or just the workings of a market system, where the collective pursuit of a common goal (profit) makes it look like collusion is going on when really it's just random people or groups all making the same decisions simultaneously, as is the case when there is a run on the bank or a bear/bull market?
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  108. Maybe the Russians and Chinese can stop this by sending in mercenaries to help the African militaries and giving the governments of the region economic aid and development to counter the sanctions and bullying of the West. By creating a viable and sustainable alternative economic model to that of the neo-liberalism of the IMF Russia and China may be able to create a BRICS for Africa.
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  109. The Duran is pro‐Russia and pro‐China so is, almost by definition, anti‐neoconservative in so far as the neocons are supremacists who want to destroy both countries.
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  110. Forgiven... but not forgotten!
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  111. ​ @annat.869  I think it is more an economic issue than cultural: the American form of finance capitalism and military keynesianism is insatiable in its desire to appropriate the productive resources of the world and to keep the military‐industrial complex, the core of the American economy, functioning.
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  112. A most interesting discussion today, guys and one that is potentially very worrying. The USA really does seem to have a dysfunctional political system at the moment and the political infighting seems to be paralysing its ability to function cohesively regarding foreign policy. The question is whether the neocons are about to meet their götterdämmerung moment and, if so, what will replace them?
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  113. But you cannot separate the two. It's called political economy – the study of politics and economics and how they interact.
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  114. But (cynically?) encouraged by the West.
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  115. Mistakes do happen. The idea sounds quite good.
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  116. We are being isolated from each other by the USA and its most loyal clients.
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  117. More like they have paramilitaries (aka terrorists) who are ready to sabotage those pipelines of Russia.
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  118. Economic decline eventually brings political decline and internal dysfunction as sure as night follows day. And the USA IS in relative economic decline.
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  119. In all honesty you can't really blame them because the message of the mainstream is all pervasive. Again and again, wherever you look – TV, radio, magazines, newspapers – the voice of the status quo is blaring out twenty-four seven.
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  120. Our like Gaddafi. With or without the United States tacit support.
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  121. But didn't Britain withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights when it formally withdrew from the European Union (even if we are de facto still in that Union)? Surely, like the NPT, it doesn't apply to us. Like the USA, we're special by virtue of being the centre of the Anglosphere and as long as we cosy up to Uncle Sam we are immune to consequences.
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  122. A token display of firepower on the part of the Americans perhaps but nothing that would be too serious because they would almost certainly lose from a purely military viewpoint. And from a political and economic viewpoint it would be disastrous, both for the USA and the world economy.
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  123. The EU is like NATO: when you disagree with either you're basically disagreeing with the United States. Thus, the EU always was, and remains, an organisation which the USA uses to advance its agenda in Europe, hence the ministers of the EU carrying out policies that are inimical to the economic wellbeing of the various states in Europe.
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  124. It was a pure theatre of the absurd and used only for its symbolism. It was moreover – and more sinisterly, in my opinion – designed to undermine public confidence in, and especially non-European governmental support for, the court itself and cause division within Europe. Remember that this court could, theoretically and under certain circumstances, prosecute US military personnel for war crimes or crimes against humanity and the USA certainly doesn't want that. Undermining it therefore is something the Americans I imagine, would want to do and by issuing this arrest warrant for the president of Russia they have simultaneously achieved these goals (showing how politically biased it is and showing how impotent it is).
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  125. Does that include pre-Christian paganism?
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  126. The Enlightenment of, if I'm not mistaken, the 18th century (as measured by the Catholic Gregorian calendar). Rationalism and secular humanism were its gifts to humanity. That and a thing called the Reformation that by brought into question the authority and legitimacy of the Roman Catholic Church..
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  127.  @williampomplun6750  Marxist‽ I think you'll find this is all due entirely to capitalism, and an especially corrupt kind at that.
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  128. Like lust.
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  129. They do the same with China, accusing it of stealing everything, as if the Chinese are incapable of making anything themselves.
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  130. What are you going to do about it?
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  131. Kicking out the IMF and not following their neo‐liberal economic nostrums would be my advice.
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  132. In a formal democracy that doesn't matter. Only appearance matters.
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  133. It's just numbers on a computer screen. Like someone playing video games, it's just virtual money to them, money that seems to have no connection to the real world.
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  134. I fail to see any real connection to biology or genetics regarding the socio-economic-political system known as communism. And laws of nature, what are they?
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  135. Western Europe. Eastern Europe, with the exception of Russia, was basically a colony of the western part (eg. the Austro-Hungarian empire).
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  136. Trump is not in charge. No president of the USA is, nor has been since at least the 1960's; the foreign policy establishment assiduously catering to the needs of the corporations and military-security state are. It's they who set the agenda. The foreign policy of the United States has shown remarkable consistency during the last 50 years and isn't likely to change any time soon.
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  137. By modern I presume you mean western capitalist, a system that is essentially all about private property.
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  138. A dirty bomb would be no more dirty than depleted uranium or anti-personel mines, things the West has used.
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  139.  @smartchip  It could be that too. (Radioactive material spread over a large area by a conventional (non-nuclear) explosive).
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  140. For a country whose elite suffer from delusions of grandeur such lessons are hard to learn. I feel my country is like Italy under Mussolini, a country about to get itself into a whole lot of trouble and all because it refuses to acknowledge reality and thinks it can play with the big boys. Britain cannot punch above its weight on this one I fear.
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  141.  @loveblindhate9318  Russia is, was and always will be part of Europe; it's only the Americans and their British allies who want disunity in Europe because it furthers their interests. Sometimes it looks like a replay of the events that led to world war one are in the offing, this time with Russia playing the role of Germany and the USA playing the role of Great Britain.
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  142. I'm surprised to tell you the truth why we aren't seeing hyperinflation yet. For how long all this quantitative easing can be used to delay what for every other economy that's ever existed in the past has always been a disaster I don't know. Maybe the United States Federal Reserve have found a magic trick they aren't telling us about that will allow them to do what no other economy in history has been able to do. It's worrying to say the least.
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  143. Let's hope so.
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  144. A European army brings to mind the Warsaw Pact invading certain countries when they went against the will of the Soviet Union.
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  145. It's neither medication nor a vaccine as properly understood that is being forced upon vast numbers of the world's people. Rather, it's gene therapy that's being used (at least the western variants of these drugs). That's another probable reason that western governments don't want to use Russian or Chinese drugs because they are real vaccines that use traditional methods of virus suppression rather than the mRNA method that is being used — virtually without proper medical trials having been conducted first — by western pharmaceutical companies that are alleged to be linked to various hidden-in-plain-sight EU-UN/US deep state agendas.
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  146. Another alzeimers/dementia president‽
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  147. Rentier capitalism.
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  148. British — ostensibly applies to all people native to the British Isles (Scots, English, Welsh, Northern Irish) but in reality applies to the English. In fact, the English of ultimately foreign parentage located in the South of the country.
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  149. Exactly as the USA and the UK want it. They want Poland to be another Ukraine. World War 2 redux.
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  150. The UN is only a good as its members.
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  151. It threatened the interests of the rich ownership class who make up the greatest beneficiaries of capitalism and whose ideology forms the foundational bedrock upon which capitalism rests.
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  152. The Taliban are Afghans and Afghans have every right to rule over their own country, no?
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  153. ​​ @Pylypczak  Things scuba dive divers wear on their feet. I presume it's a metonym referring to ex-spcial ops navy divers.
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  154. Plausible. The deep state has a voracious appetite for plunder and so wishes to turn Ukraine into a centre for money laundering, drug smuggling, people trafficking and gun running, the quintessential tools the US kleptocracy needs to keep it from falling apart under the weight of its own corruption, that and using it as a base to destabilise the region.
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  155. And he was right. Every word.
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  156. To keep the Middle East divided and to control the flow of oil, gas and transit corridors while being able to intimidate countries of the region by having a military presence there is the permanent policy goal of the United States.
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  157. Or co-opted and if that fails marginalised.
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  158. He's right on some things and not on others.
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  159. They are both right wing [expletive]! What can you expect.
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  160. The Treaty of Westphalia all over again… and the British (read English) aren't invited but the French and Germans are. How galling.
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  161.  @PipinKratky821  It could indeed. There seems to be a growing consensus even among western commentators that the combined economies of Asia, a Chinese led South‐East in particular, are going to dominate the world by the end of this century and if that's the case then I think it's safe to assume that the international financial system will not remain unchanged. My guess is that in the not too distant future Asian currencies, particularly China's, will gain considerably more purchasing power vis‐a‐vis the US dollar, European Union euro and British pounds sterling.
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  162. Why is the Turkish lira losing its value in the first place?
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  163. This is what happens when countries don't practice import substitution and self‐sufficiency like they did prior to globalisation in the 19th century when the world was forced to open up their economies to the West and lost their economic independence and with it their sovereignty.
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  164. The Americans or British will spirit him away unless they too want to get rid of him.
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  165. Only if the EU breaks away from the influence of the USA and the Anglo-American axis and develops a life of its own under the dominating influence of a French‐German‐Russian axis.
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  166. Yes, that's exactly what they expect.
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  167.  @jameslum8822  Some sort of security guarantee will have to be given to Saudi Arabia by China and/or Russia. Just in case the USA tries any funny business. And if there are alternative suppliers of gas and oil Saudi Arabia's might decline in importance.
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  168. The real question is how much real power a sitting president in the USA has in comparison to the influence their cabinet/advisors have.
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  169. I don't know anything about currencies and how they work but it sounds plausible. I wonder if the USA is trying to save the the dollar by creating a dollar area like Britain created a sterling area in the 1930's based on a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The Chinese I think are trying something similar in China and may extend it to the rest of Asia. Maybe both the USA and China have already agreed, presumably with Russia and India, on a world central bank digital currency.
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  170. It's not ours, it's the USA's.
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  171. More likely that America wanted them to, together with the tax-avoiding City of London.
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  172. And the USA... does it need do bury Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Hiyak, Freidman, etc.?
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  173. I think they already are accepting Chinese Yuan as payment for some of their oil trade.
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  174. Their actions were motivated by practicality pragmatism and expediency, not altruism and its they appear in hindsight as benevolent that is due to pure chance.
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  175. It's good for suppressing internal opposition. The best equipment goes to the border guards on the Chinese-Indian border and they aren't expected to fight a sustained major war with China.
    2
  176. Probably too late.
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  177. Can't they artificially deflate their own currency, as by altering interest rates, etc.?
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  178.  @kalicom2937  Basically, the so-called Brexiteers are globalists. I say this because for the majority neo-liberalism is their ideology and this is an ideology which commits its adherents to a belief in free markets and laissez fair economic policies. The trouble with British neo-liberals, like neo-liberals everywhere, is they don't like being bound by rules (like those that prohibit money laundering or tax evasion) and as a result are chafing at the proverbial bit when it comes to the European Union trying to enact laws to curb their out-of-control greed. Don't get me wrong, the rest of the European Union are as corrupt as the British but they at least want to put some limits on the uncontrolled greed and lawlessness that is now so rampant that it threatens to undermine the whole system. The British and the Americans with their overweening sense of entitlement want to be to be able to live at everyone else's expense and the rest of Europe is, naturally, increasingly unwilling to let them get away with their free-loading.
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  179. It certainly seems to me that the USA sanctioning everyone has had as at least one of its aims the retardation of the economies of the European Union. These sanctions are definitely responsible for increasing the recent relative decline in competitiveness of countries like Germany vis‐à‐vis the USA, for instance. It is apparent to me that the USA does not want economically strong and independent allies but weak vassal states held captive by and dependent on itself.
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  180. Yes, clarification on the issue would be appreciated.
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  181. The markets for gold and silver are controlled and both should be higher in value were it not for them being kept artificially low so they won't be more valuable than the US dollar.
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  182.  @afshinshahzamani2297  Rulers dictate the rules, both moral and legal, under which the vast majority of us live. Why should we all be condemned for what society does in our name when society is largely a social construct resulting from the accumulated political decisions of an elite.
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  183. Just a pretext!
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  184. It's a cold war. Nothing more or less. A cold war. The USA wants to reunite the West against Russia and China just as it did the first time around. This time though the rest of the West will not be such willing members of a pro-US, anti-Russia/anti-China alliance so much as coerced or semi-coerced members of such a alliance, in much the same way as the colonies of Britain (such as Australia and Canada) had to join Britain against Germany whether they wanted to or not.
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  185. I disagree. This policy of non-alignment seems to have worked for India.
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  186. A negotiated settlement of the dispute would be preferable to both parties but I don't see Britain doing this unless the Argentinians convince them that they can deploy overwhelming force using modern weapons which the British military have no effective means of countering. Perhaps the Russians or Chinese can help the Argentinians in this regard by providing them with the proper weapons the way the USA and Britain do with Israel.
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  187.  @maxmadison5488  Not really necessary as they could just provide Argentina and other littoral states in South America with the right amount of long range anti-ship and anti-aircraft weapon systems to deter the British (and possibly the USA's) navy, but I think that neither the Chinese nor the Russians want to go down this route.
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  188. 1970's.
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  189. I trust Chat GP3 as much as I trust Wikipaedia. Useful, but only when corroborated by other, more trusted, sources (i.e. human).
    2
  190. Welcome New Year 2024! May it be more prosperous than the last.
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  191. The Olympics are to sport what the Eurovision song contest is to music.
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  192. The French will have to ask the USA's permission for an intervention. And that will come with a quid pro quo. As for a regional war, the USA would not necessarily mind such a thing as political instability and the economic turmoil that goes with it may be seen as in their interests in the medium term vis‐à‐vis Russia and China.
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  193. Could it be a deliberate leak; that this was a deliberate set up designed to embarrass the Germans and alarm the Russians?
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  194. It's made up of the countries of the entire world. Don't you think that a body that ostensibly represents the whole of humanity should have some say in how the world is run?
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  195. Aren't the French Foreign Legion mercenaries? So why are they attached to the French army? And are they considered French troops or mercenaries?
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  196.  @cybervigilante  To be fair, don't think most country's airforces are making purchases of this plane entirely of their own volition. I think they are being, shall we say, 'pressured' into it. That said, I can understand why the USA might not want its rivals establishing a foothold in such a sensitive, not to mention lucrative, market.
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  197. ... And also due to the fact that Russian advances in hypersonic missiles and electronic warfare technologies have made them obsolescent.
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  198. What changes have occurred that have made it worse, in your opinion?
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  199.  @solamano7239  Had two major continent-wide wars that allowed the USA to become top dog and overseas empires to slip from our grasp.
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  200. Who benefits? Look at his policies and see whether they oppose western interests in some way, primarily those of the United States.
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  201. And their usage rate?
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  202. The USA needs a 'Suez moment'.
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  203. This isn't about getting rid of imperialism, but about the USA pushing out France the way it pushed out Britain.
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  204. Under capitalism it is. Economic recessions and depressions are integral to the way the system functions, inevitably leading to collapse and, often, war.
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  205. А затем США воспользуются этим, чтобы показать, насколько Россия «империалистична».
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  206.  @mydancinglife730  Call out the army. That's what the English typically do.
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  207. They can't win because they are not directly at war themselves. They are fighting by proxy, mainly in providing logistical support (weapons, ammunition, supplies), intelligence and trainers/mercenaries, as well as by sanctions. None seriously want to escalate. It's the USA that's pushing Europe into a death spiral of self-destruction.
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  208. In a word: it's rigged.
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  209. Michelle, my belle. Bon en bon.
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  210. They are gaslighting us. They'll be telling us that up is down and left is right next.
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  211. Europe/European Union will certainly experience difficulties.
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  212. France should work to strengthen and stabilise the institutions of the EU and use it, together with Germany, to keep Europe peacefully united.
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  213. Probably because they are all appointed by the bankers in collaboration with the American deep state.
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  214. And sumptuary laws putting a cap on the number of wealthy politicians, preventing them from monopolising politics.
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  215. Britain did something similar regarding Japanese automobiles: made in kit form in Japan and assembled in Britain.
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  216. We'll put! The EU is too close for comfort already.
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  217. EEZ – are they violating international law?
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  218. The stark fact is that the entire American economy is driven by war and rent extraction. As an essentially bankrupt rentier economy whose fiat currency is based on fractional reserve banking the USA needs constant GDP growth to pay for its ever-growing debt that it owes the private banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve. However, because the debt compounds each year it becomes impossible to pay off leading the American government to print more money than is actually needed in the real economy leading to inflation.
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  219. In areas taken by the Russians I suppose they'll be incorporated into the regular armed forces or disarmed and sent back into civilian life.
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  220. If BRICS+ is what it claims to be, an economic grouping facilitating trade and economic development between its members and nothing more, then there exists no reason why Turkey cannot have a foot in both camps. BRICS+ appears to be inclusivist whereas the EU is exclusivist, wanting to impose either/or choices on governments. I think the core BRICS countries on the other hand are happy to let any country join once security issues are settled: no sanctions, boycotts or (proxy) wars between members; trade and commerce between states as free as possible; and definitely no sabotage of another's infrastructure.
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  221. To them politics is a profession, not a calling.
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  222. It's akin to the British and Americans being more concerned about an outbreak of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp thqn the gas chambers exterminating the inmates! Also, these polio vaccines might just turn out to be bioweapons in disguise. A discreet way of disposing of the Palestinians with added advantage of complete deniability. And how could anyone object?
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  223. It just goes to show how economically interconnected we all are and that sanctioning a major producer of the world's goods is ultimately counterproductive because indirectly their products are in everything, whether in the form of raw materials, material parts, or finished goods. As Russia and China are indisputably major producers, the former especially in raw materials and the latter especially in finished goods, it is stupid to sanction them unless one has a viable alternative to these country's exports.
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  224. The reasons sound plausible.
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  225. The Nobel committee have been nobbled by US (or their own) intelligence services.
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  226. The EU has always been a project of the USA in collaboration with the comprador sellouts of Europe, both acting on behalf of the rentier elites of the West. The EU is a monster that keeps on growing, just like the police-security state of the USA.
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  227. I think you're confusing the left with liberals. Liberals, however, aren't left. Not really.
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  228.  @informationretrieval5896  But is that left wing?
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  229.  @informationretrieval5896  I tend to agree.
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  230. True... only it's not Russian, it's German.
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  231. Or a second (post-) industrial revolution.
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  232. Doing America's bidding by making sure that Great Britain can never mount a military challenge, nor an economic one, to the USA or Europe and would no longer be politically sovereign but dependent on others. The USA's policy since world war 2.
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  233.  @rosomak8244  It would seem it is in the interests of neither Britain or the USA to ever allow meaningful political or economic integration between the eastern and western parts of Eurasia.
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  234. Committing suicide... or being murdered. Either way, at the behest of Uncle Sam.
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  235.  @kristinheartknaan  A tiny group of essentially fascist multi‐billionaires who have captured certain state institutions.
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  236. It seems to me to be as much about weakening Europe as it does Russia.
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  237.  @alexrandrerx3809  I should have said that what they say is an interpretation of the facts and I think that is all reality can be, an interpretation. Two people can look at a situation and quite easily draw diametrically opposite conclusions because it is not so such the facts themselves but their interpretation that is what makes someone appear for or against something. And, yes, I concur that to me too they consistently seem to interpret events in a manner that could be seen as pro‐Russian or pro‐Putin. Whether that means they are paid agents of the Kremlin or naive fellow travellers I can only guess. Maybe both, probably neither because interpretation of facts can only be taken so far and must ultimately conform to some underlying reality and in this case 'the West' (or whatever you want to call it) that is, the USA/NATO are the ones doing the expanding and not Russia and no matter how you spin things that is the incontrovertible fact of the matter. If you're going to talk honestly about politics or world affairs you have to 'speak truth to power' and describe situations as they are and if one side is consistently in the wrong (in repeatedly flouting international law, for instance) then you have to point this out. That is what The Duran is doing, in my honest opinion.
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  238.  @jjh8299  But is it a real pull out or are the Americans just going to keep mercenaries and Muslim militias from Saudi Arabia there who can play the role of Al-Quada bogeyman?
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  239.  @servantofmary  Muslim, Christian or Jewish? Shia, Sunni Islamic, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Ultra-Orthodox or Reform Jew? Are would you like the Hindu pantheon, God in the plural?
    2
  240. Maybe they are in their own way.
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  241. ​ @thepeter3116  Turkey in such a scenario will very probably practice 'benevolent neutrality', staying out of any direct confrontation with Russia while helping its NATO allies logistically and through intelligence sharing.
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  242. ​ @brandtbollers3183  Also in violation of the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) if strictly interpreted.
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  243.  @jovannysarabia6995  Money means nothing when you can print IOU's out of thin air and make others buy them.
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  244. Perhaps the reason there exists – at least according to Mr Mercouris – a certain uncharacteristic indecisiveness on the part of the United States towards the Israel-Palestine issue is because stategists within the so-called deep state are the ones actually calling the shots and that the political parties that hold formal power have effectively been sidelined and thus no longer have much say in the way things are done in quite the same way as they did before, and also that these elements desire things to remain just as they are (an overall policy of instability and tension in the Middle East, i.e. no peace between Israel and its neighbours).
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  245. Possibly the Iranian government would then come under increasing pressure to engage in political and economic reforms that they would find themselves unable to resist. They would no longer be able to blame sanctions on their perceived mishandling of the economy.
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  246. A conspiracy theory. 😂😮
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  247. Talking about on what subject? Please be more specific.
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  248. They were themselves hardliners.
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  249. The land territory is, I think, not really disputed, rather it's the waters off the coast that are disputed. AFAIK, the littoral or maritime borders between the two countries have always been disputed and have not been settled.
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  250. In Britain need to get back to coal. We have centuries worth of coal under our feet. To hell with the naysayers of the green movement. Maybe nuclear power as well where it makes economic sense, supplemented by hydroelectric, wind and wave. North Sea oil if possible too.
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  251. The aquifers in the area are being depleted at a faster rate than they are being replenished, the rivers aren't giving enough water to meet the areas needs, and there is drought.
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  252.  @BoleDaPole  Honest people don't dodge taxes. Nor do people of principle or conscience. And people (the reasonably well off) who earn enough money to live comfortably on also don't generally try to dodge their fair share of taxes, especially when they realise that those taxes are being used for socially useful or necessary things like public welfare, things that directly or indirectly benefit the majority of the nation's people. The very rich, on the other hand....
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  253.  @UFO_computers  Britain is a member of the Bank of International Settlements and as such has a currency that is under the control of a collection of private banks, subject to its rules and regulations. Like the Federal Reserve in the USA that also falls under the control of the BIS and is itself made up of a collection of private banks that forms a very exclusive club.
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  254.  @aaronwilkinson8963  Latin America & Middle East 1970's onwards. Eastern Europe 1990's onwards. East Asia 2000's onwards. The debt bondage of late stage rentier capitalism.
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  255. Estonian nationalists like those in Ukraine. Their resentment of history (the unfortunate domination of the country by the Russian empire and then the Soviet Union) has made them hostile to Russia and the Russians, especially their leadership. I think I understand their way of thinking and can sympathise with them to a certain degree but I nevertheless think they are overreacting. The fact that the leadership of Estonia are a comprador class put in power by the USA and its offshoot the EU also puts things into a little more context.
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  256. Does anyone know if any of these depleted uranium shells have been used in actual combat. As they are designed as anti-tank rounds have there been any tank-on-tank battles where they have been used?
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  257. Imperialism and colonialism cannot realistically be compared to a border skirmish. As for Tibet, it had been a vassal of China at least since the 16th century.
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  258. 12:22 The "western posture" Alexander M. is the American position. Europe just plays along.
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  259.  @rcmrcm3370  I didn't know that. What kind of sanctions did FDR employ against China.
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  260. The cold war in reverse, this time with China as the winner. It's like China is using judo, showing that the apparent strengths of the United States can actually be weaknesses if not used properly.
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  261. I've heard this argument a lot in the western press lately vis‐à‐vis Ukraine and Russia regarding the former joining NATO. It would seem, however, that when applied to official enemies there exists a double standard.
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  262. @Colonel Panic The American deep state, from which most of the globalists come and in whom they rely for their enforcement.
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  263. What they did to Greece was abhorrent. Hypocrites.
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  264. Outside of China and Russia, maybe India, or seems that it can. Even the aforementioned tend to generally stay within the geopolitical 'Overton window' set by the West and largely crafted in the USA and by the banking class.
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  265. He's making these comments to please his WEF masters. They are the ones who really control him. He's also probably trying to please the Americans.
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  266. The politicians in the Congress are sitting on the horns of a dilemma and whether they raise interest rates and cause hyperinflation or do nothing and have the dollar lose its value entirely and become worthless, at the end of the day the Federal Reserve Bank of America is fast approaching a fiscal cliff at the bottom of which lies an economic catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.
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  267. Out of curiosity, do you believe what Alexander said about Germany politics being very provincial with German politicians knowing a lot about local politics but not so much about politics outside of Germany?
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  268. They are a comprador class. They are as every bit obsequious as their counterparts in the Middle East and Latin America.
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  269. I think it's basically a made up story designed to serve as a pretext for a clamp down or to strengthen the position of the pseudo-left as a viable alternative to the right. Whatever, some agenda is being served.
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  270. We should all be relieved that this sad, sorry debacle is now at an end.
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  271. Stop counting. It's pointless. Money as conventionally understood becomes meaningless when it's all fiat and created out of nothing by the world's central bankers.
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  272. Abused by western Europeans – Anglo-Americans, Franco-Germans.
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  273. While the USA still has its military-industrial complex to threaten the world with.
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  274. As long as the Russians don't decisively deal with the Americans in Syria the region is likely to remain a thorn in the side of Russia, a drain on its resources and a block on economic development in the region. Russia should remember that the reason the USA won the first round of the cold war was because it destroyed their will to fight and their economy through decades long attrition — embargo, blockade, sanctions, arms race, propaganda war, terrorism, guerrilla war and the ever present threat of nuclear war. The USA doesn't have to win, it just bleeds Russia dry and slowly subvert it, seducing with false promises of a better life. Russia can't afford to pay that game twice. It needs to act now.
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  275.  @roti1122.youtube  Perhaps this was in their calculations. Hurting the allies of Russia and China, even if indirectly and in a manner that's not quite predictable, is something they may want. That and the usual callous indifference to the needs of the Global South on the part of the West.
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  276. People should stop blaming other countries for the rot within their own. This is all home grown and blame should be placed squarely where it belongs. Anything else is just distraction.
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  277. I don't think closing down sea routes simply to further US interests at the expense of everyone else would go down well with the rest of Asia.
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  278. All no doubt planned as part of the secret strategy of the USA. For them discord in Europe is preferable to unity if it involves the Russian Federation displacing the USA as the chief hegemon on the continent. The two main rivals currently challenging the supremacy of the USA are Russia and China and the prize that they are fighting for control over is Europe.
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  279. Khan should do what Erdoğan in Turkey did: purge the government and especially the army (assuming its politically possible).
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  280. What makes me afraid is that all the major players — China, Russia, India, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Japan — are all happy to go along with it. There is no pushback. None. There appears to be no communism, fascism, syndicalism, anarchism, or any other kind of viable ideological or philosophical alternative to the status quo like there was back in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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  281. They'll get it, either through Israel or through a collaborationist Palestinian Authority. At the very least they'll stop the Chinese and Russians and their allies from getting it.
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  282. Because their entire leadership is made up of people put in power by the USA's regime change apparatus. They were chosen precisely because they were hostile to Russia: political dissidents, disaffected youth, fake astroturf human rights organisations financed by the likes of USAID and NED, etc. Even Nazis and neo-Nazis. Basically anyone who was hostile to the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union and communism.
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  283. Basically it's: if the USA wants to compete with China it must become China. The USA basically wants to create a NAFTA for the EU, a system that helps the corporations in the USA at the expense of both Mexican and American workers.
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  284. With 'Made in the USA' (deep state) stamped on it.
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  285. I find the phrase "selling out to China" interesting. Is taking production orders from Chinese companies or the Chinese government (i.e. conducting normal commercial transactions), or allowing Chinese nationals/companies to own and operate German companies, selling out? Truly, would you use the same phrase when talking about, say, US-German commercial transactions?
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  286. Neither the mainland Chinese nor the island Chinese have any desire to be used as pawns in the USA's strategy of maintaining its unipolar hegemony in Asia and the Pacific. Rather, both sides want a negotiated and peaceful resolution to the problem.
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  287. But it's not just them. It's right across the board censorship and shadow banning, flagging, demonetization and reporting to authorities. Other, supposedly free, internet sites will also end up the same way.
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  288. The Israelis have already attacked Iran in various ways and the Russians did jack****. Irans's hands are tied by Russia's unwillingness to allow Iran to escalate. The same applies to Syria.
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  289. It originates in the USA as a direct result of the Democratic Party's abandoning of the working class, focusing instead on inconsequential social issues instead of issues about labour or class.
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  290. The former two but not the latter. Ghengis Khan and Kublai Khan conquered both countries. It was only later that the Chinese (Ming) and the Russians liberated themselves.
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  291. 0:20 All Russian oil... or just the oil that hasn't been sold by the Indians? These sanctions could be seen as sanctions not only on Russia but on India as well. It's as if Europe is hellbent on alienating China, India and Russia, 3 of the biggest markets and producers of commodities, and all behalf of the United States.
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  292. Sounds like Mr Mercouris is coming down with a cold. Could it be the 'vaccine' shots he's had?
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  293. All this brinkmanship by the USA in its attempt to recreate the freeze in relations that existed between European states during the cold war (establishment of american global hegemony) may lead to a major war, if only by accident.
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  294. And all of it will go to developing counterparts to Russia's hypersonic missiles, which the USA is desperate to emulate.
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  295. Voting machines... def rigged.
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  296.  @comingviking  Yes, but the Russians then run the risk of depending too much on the Chinese and being held hostage to fortune. Better to have a foot in both camps and not put all your eggs in one basket.
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  297. The EU is essentially a neo-liberal project and rose as neoliberalism rose and will fall as neoliberalism fall.
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  298. Canada will be invaded soon.
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  299. The United States has been planning to break up or otherwise subordinate Russia since at least the time of the Russian revolution in 1917 and certainly since the end of world war two. The USA became an empire in that time and like all empires views all other empires as rivals to be contained and if possible vanquished.
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  300. Saudi actions in manipulating oil prices helped bring down the Soviet Union. They tried the same tactic about 5 years ago but it didn't work the second time around.
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  301. Maybe he'll get the Gaddafi treatment. And Hillary will cry.
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  302. ​​​ @a.salmon8193 Our elites are so closely linked to the elites in the USA, our military and intelligence community so closely linked to their US counterparts, and the financial system and political economy so closely intertwined with that of the USA that what is happening over there is happening over here. The USA is basically suffering an economic depression every bit at bad as that of the 1930's and as a result people are bringing in to question the status quo and ominous signs of political instability are begining to creep into view. Basically a replay of the 1930's where fascist and capitalist reactionaries are becoming increasingly uneasy about the widespread disenchantment by ordinary people with the system and are reacting with increasing repression as the normal safety valves, balances and checks prove, like they did back then, inadequate. The far-reaching reforms that are necessary to deal with the crises effecting the economy and society are not permissible under current political arrangements.
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  303. If there were Russian atrocities I'm pretty sure the western media would have discovered them by now. As there is a glaring absence of such stories though I would assume that either the Russians are not committing atrocities to any appreciable degree, or for whatever reason western media aren't talking about them. I tend to go with the former rather than the latter.
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  304. China and Russia should step in and finance some secular army to deal with them.
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  305. "Main polluters in China." ... Manufacturing cheap products for western corporations.
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  306. I think you're referring to Latin America for the former and New Guinea/Papua New Guinea for the latter. Africa was not known for either. So tongue-in-cheek you are.
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  307.  @rgthomson100  Get lost, Thomson! This isn't communism. The British government, its aristocracy and its monarchy are right wing.
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  308. Yes, but it's not really hidden. It's the political domination of Europe and the maintenence of the military‐industrial complex that sustains the economy of the USA.
    1
  309. Whose invaded and occupied its neighbours in the last 50 years? Empirical observation will tell you.
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  310. Unfortunately for them, however, is that they can't realistically use their military on China and Russia, the ones who are primarily behind the drive to de-dollarize.
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  311.  @michaels4255  Do you mean trade unions fighting for the interests of their members, the working class, against the depredations of multi-millionaire capitalists; workers wanting to safeguard their jobs and standards of living in the steel, mining (coal), shipbuilding, automobile and other manufacturing industries against closures and cuts in pay by the parasitic rentier and banking class in The City who wanted a higher rate of profit than what industrial capitalism at the time could provide?
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  312. Could be! Apropos, the USA might say that its unfair for Canada to have a large chunk of Antarctica to itself under international treaty, especially if, and as, Antarctica warms up, the snow melts and Antarctica’s waters become ice free all year round. That’s almost certainly because of the resources there.
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  313. By the late 21st century they will have redefined democracy until it's almost the exact opposite of what it meant in the early 20th century.
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  314. I hate Mondays but generally love weekends.
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  315. Unfortunately I fear they are not being addressed.
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  316. Or maybe they were covering their tracks by eliminating units that had taken part in a false flag.
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  317. Now all the Russians have to do is shut down the other 500 biolabs located all over the world, including in its ally China.
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  318. If you ask me I think it's the USA that's behind most of this. The USA wants western Europe to break with Russia, in effect recreating the cold war. Having Britain destroy its relations with Russia is a good way of doing this. The USA wants to weaken Britain as well as Germany and use the EU to carry out its cold war 2.0 policies
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  319. Gaslighting at its finest. That's what the West is doing.
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  320. Are the Chinese preventing you sailing in the South China Sea? Are they stopping you fishing or exploiting the maritime resources within your recognised territorial waters (as opposed to disputed territory)?
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  321. But it's not in a civil war, it's under attack and invasion by neighbours and their military/paramilitary forces, acting by and large as proxies for the United States and its western European client states which will presumably benefit from this new source of (cheap?) energy while remaining dependent on the USA and its west Asian puppet states. It will without a doubt also effect Russia by creating an alternative to their energy, all the while increasing the USA's stranglehold on the world's sources of energy.
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  322. It's a balancing act for the countries you mentioned as they have a foot in both camps and alienating either too much would have negative consequences.
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  323. When does a recession become a depression and when does a depression become a global depression?
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  324. That would be the plan of the United States. Also in that plan: destroy all peer competitors. That includes Europe.
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  325. Wouldn't matter, the People's Republic of China can and sooner or later will make the microchips that the Republic of China currently make, so it would be pointless. That and the fact that it would potentially be seen as an act of war by the Chinese on both sides of the strait and thus would have undesirable consequences for the USA.
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  326. Not about the money. Face-saving.
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  327.  @geoffgriffiths3381  But like oil and gas, it's not necessarily about who makes it but who controls it that counts.
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  328. On 9/11 a coup took place within the government of the United States that effectively neutralised its legitimate power centres and replaced them with a cabal of coup plotters who had no idea how to control a country as complex as the USA. They thought they could run it like they run the CIA, compartmentalised and by committee. Unfortunately for them (and even more unfortunately for the people of the USA) they can't.
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  329. Old news. Tactical retreat; not retreat, not defeat.
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  330. He needs to get himself a better valet.
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  331. Disagree on your second paragraph because trade restrictions protect an economy from unfair or disadvantageous trade with others. If, for example, country 'A' produces food cheaper than country 'B' and sends that country's farmers bankrupt, not protecting your farming with trade restrictions is economic suicide and tantamount to a betrayal of your country.
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  332. Will the USA protect him like it protects other collaborators like Karzai of Afghanistan, or the ex-president of Yemen?
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  333.  @jckrulesisthebest110  But they achieved their goal, that of keeping the USA away from China's borders and establishing a buffer zone.
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  334. Actually, I think it's an improvement. It's less distracting.
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  335. The Americans are asking for the impossible. It will only be matter of time now before they demand Europe economically decouples from China and Russia even more; that they sanction themselves and make themselves dependent on the USA.
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  336. That question is akin to asking why countries don't just stop buying oil and gas from the Middle East or Venezuela; or why they don't stop buying gold from South Africa.
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  337. ... a wonderful job... of carrying out the USA's/ bankers plan.
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  338. Then the American satraps of the European Union and the IMF will step in while the USA gets back on its feet and creates some new currency system for Europe and the West that remains dominated by the USA.
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  339. The left? What left! After MI5/6 infiltrator Keir Starmer finished the purging of the Labour Party that the fake socialist Tony Blair started, there is precious little of the left left.
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  340. Will there be a second election? — Va fi alte alegeri?
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  341. For its access to the sea.
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  342. It's military‐industrial corporatism and the failed ideology of neo‐liberalism, problems associated with late stage/advanced capitalism, that are causing these problems and not socialism, communism or Marxism. Get your facts straight or you'll be in no position to rectify the wrongs inflicted on you by the system of Austrian economics imposed on you since Reagan.
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  343. Invading and occupying other countries and then suppressing revolts against your rule IS the very essence of "keeping countries down". And modernity – for whom?
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  344. He's been deeply indoctrinated.
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  345. You support le Pen?
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  346. I find your Soviet era communist references bizarre given the politics of the USA.
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  347. The fifty percent are slowly clawing their way back, led by China and India.
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  348. Wasn’t it Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney (probably two of the conspirators behind the fake flag of 9/11) who said that the US empire is involved in a multi-generational war that could last a century or longer?
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  349. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, et al now billionaires. Israel safe. Middle East destabilised. Russia's borders threatened. Opium flowing freely into black projects and propping up insolvent western banks. Creeping corporate coup d'etat begun in the 1960's, coming out of the closet in the 1980's, consolidating in the 1990's, now almost complete. Military-corporate-security state virtually in de facto control under Joe Biden. Democracy a sham. Such quaint notions as human rights, habeas corpus and the like legislated out of existence by things like the PATRIOT act. FEMA camps, like gulags and concentration laager, at the ready. Twenty-four seven surveillance. Lockdowns, curfews. False flags rehearsed and perfected (Murray Building bombing, Triple Towers, Boston marathon bombing). Etc., etc., etc.
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  350. The USA doesn't want Iran to exist. Israel is just the proxy of the USA, not unlike Ukraine.
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  351. Ukraine is a money laundering and gun running operation on a vast scale. It is used to finance the deep state which needs parallel streams of income matching those of the official state.
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  352. Is that the person who keeps predicting the end of China, a nation with at least 2,500 of history as an organised polity?
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  353. Western Europe to be precise. After all, Russia is and always has been an integral part of the wider West, cold war constructs aside.
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  354. US infiltrators.
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  355. Crimea was not Obama's to give in the first place and it is arrogant to assume otherwise. But just out of curiosity, what could Obama have done to stop the Russian Federation taking back territory that has historically been a part of itself for three hundred years bar the last thirty?
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  356. That's what the Americans want. The Russians would be helping the the USA cut Russia off from Europe. In effect Russia would be ceding the initiative to the USA by playing by their rules, they would be fighting on a battlefield of the Americans choosing, putting themselves at a decided disadvantage. That said, of course, the Russians ultimately may have no choice but to retaliate in kind because these are deliberate provocations designed to force the Russia's to do just that and such provocations cannot go unchallenged indefinitely.
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  357. Britain and the USA are both heading for default on their international debt obligations, the USA on its way to losing its place as the world's reserve currency (and the British pound will likely suffer too), and with their heavily financialised economies and diminished manufacturing capacities they will most likely be the OECD countries that will suffer the most during the economic depression and high inflation that's been predicted as due any time now. During this period I expect we will be seeing a considerable erosion of what most people in both countries consider traditional civil liberties. When capitalism and the private property rights of the wealthy begin to be questioned by enough people the rich and powerful look towards the state for protection. And we all know where that tends to lead us.
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  358. This time less religious.
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  359.  @antoniorsoftware  The West is intent on reducing the population of Africa.
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  360. What is meant: Won't allow the invasion of the remaining part of Gaza, not the part already invaded. Also, it won't allow the complete obliteration of Gaza, only its near obliteration. Like stopping the Indian Wars after most of them have been exterminated – too little, too late.
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  361. The USA is like Germany in world war one: who to attack first. For Germany it was France or Russia, for the USA it's China or Russia.
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  362. Do two wrongs make a right? Law is ultimately, like money, based in trust and when that trust is broken it is very hard to get it back. And also if a state begins breaking its own laws what does that say about it; it has in essence become lawless.
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  363. Maybe some faction is trying to embarrass Johnson and lay the groundwork for a possible attempt to replace him by creating a scandal. That or he did know in advance but is pretending otherwise. It could very well be that he is working with a group within the White House who wish to use Britain to do things that are too risky for America to be seen doing itself.
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  364. I would hope, despite the heinous crime she may have committed, that she has not been killed and that both her and (especially) her daughter are safe. Her innocence or guilt are for a court of law to determine. She may be being protected by the security services in a safe house and her death a cover story. Then again, if she is dead it may be that those same security services may be the one's that killed her. It is such a sad saga from beginning to end. Incidentally, does anyone know how her father, Alexander Dugin, is doing? I heard that he'd suffered a heart attack after witnessing the incident.
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  365. It's my opinion that the multiple crises increasingly besetting western Europe have their origins in the politically dysfunctional leadership of the USA. Because the governments of Europe are economically and politically compromised they are not able to respond to new circumstances, nor make political decisions that go against the USA.
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  366. Whose national security?
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  367. To negotiate (read demand) the opening of another base in the Philippines no doubt.
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  368. If the AfD desire to see Germany conduct a foreign policy independent of the USA, or for Germany to no longer be under the thumb of the USA, then it is inevitable that they will be, by hook or by crook, prevented from exercising any real power, irrespective of whether they are extreme right wing/neo-fascist or not. • • • Wenn die AfD wünscht, dass Deutschland eine von den USA unabhängige Außenpolitik betreibt oder dass Deutschland nicht mehr unter der Fuchtel der USA steht, dann ist es unvermeidlich, dass sie auf Biegen und Brechen daran gehindert wird, wirkliche Macht auszuüben , unabhängig davon, ob sie rechtsextrem/neofaschistisch sind oder nicht.
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  369. What's the difference between a depression and a recession?
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  370. You mean the way the asked Iran to play by the rules. How's that working? Playing by the rules, as unfair and rigged as they are, is still no guarantee that the USA will reciprocate in kind. The USA only plays by rules when those rules suit it, usually having itself written the rules, otherwise it only plays by rules when it is forced.
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  371. This happens when you take too many Covid shots.
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  372. What about Trump?
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  373. He serves the bankers. And the bankers don't care about the rest of us.
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  374. ​​ @iRelevant.47.system.boycott  Don't be so sure of that. It could be nothing more than just another organisation created by the globalists, an eastern version of the European Union.
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  375. What are ICANN and IANA?
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  376. Presidents of the USA do not necessarily have full control over setting the agenda in cases like this. Other state actors often have a bigger say.
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  377.  @loveblindhate9318  The 15th century was not the dark ages but the high middle ages.
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  378.  @loveblindhate9318  The 16th‐17th centuries are considered by most western historians as the beginnings of the early modern period and the one or two centuries immediately preceding it as the late – or high – middle ages. The dark ages were, at least in Europe, from the fall of the Roman empire in the 5th century to around the circa 7th century and certainly no later than the 10th. I think you are referring to the period western historians call the medieval period (10‐11th century to 15‐16th century) which is also known as the middle ages.
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  379. Starmer is an American-Israeli shill. That and probably a WEF/Davos shill as well.
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  380. They don't care. They threw Greece under the bus during the debt crisis they created and they'll do it again if it suits them.
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  381. Turkey? Isn't turkey within the western camp?
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  382. Britain earning brownie points from the USA.
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  383. If you ask me the only reason Turkey became hostile to Syria and invaded and occupied part of it in the first place was primarily because the United States wanted it. That and the US-sponsored Kurds doing things to provoke and antagonise Turkey (again, probably because the USA wanted Turkey to go into Syria) .
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  384. Hopefully, yes. Perhaps France needs another Dien Ben Phu moment but this time delivered by black sub-Saharan Africans. And maybe we can have a reprise of the Vietnam war where yet again the USA loses, but this time for good.
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  385. Maybe a Gorbachev-like figure will emerge in US politics who will engage in that country's equivalent of Glasnost and Perestroika, opening up the United States to the world (the East) the way that Russia opened up to the West, albeit without all the social dislocation that Russia experienced. A more moderate economic and political system on both sides of the Atlantic (and the Pacific too) might then emerge, one which can combine with other world powers in tackling global problems like hunger and homelessness.
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  386. What will the consequences be if the USA doesn't come to the negotiating table, doesn't agree on anything substantive? What options do the Russians have short of some sort of military action to discourage the USA from further attempts to subvert the countries that border Russia?
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  387. Eastern Europeans tend to be very pro-EU because as members of 'Second World' Europe and thus relatively underdeveloped their economies and comprador elites are dependent on the more developed 'First World' Europe for their standard of living. As a result western Europe (dominated by the USA) has established something akin to a quasi-colonial relationship with its eastern half. The media and education systems are very pro-EU and pro-NATO, staunchly anti-communist and generally right wing, and all, of course, under the thumb of western financial institutions such as the IMF and the watchful gaze of the deep state of the USA.
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  388. Fatwas can be reversed as circumstances change. It's not like it's written in stone. The declaration of no nuclear weapons development by Iran was for purposes of political expediency, nothing more; politics trumps theology every time. If Iran can develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them effectively to the West before it's destroyed, conquered or otherwise seriously degraded in the manner of Iraq and Libya then, rest assured, it will. The calculation of the Iranian leadership is one of can we get away with it, do we have enough time before we're stopped by preemptive nuclear, conventional or unconventional attack.
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  389. Bank of International Settlements.
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  390. Presumably it will be the Russians themselves that will be the ones operating the air defence system until the Iranians are fully trained in its use. Indeed, the technology may be too much of a security risk to allow otherwise (don't want the technology falling into the hands of the Israelis).
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  391. Agreed, but in all fairness ECOWAS is an African institution, albeit one that seems to be under the influence of certain western countries.
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  392. All states follow the same basic principles in their exercise of power and no state is going to interfere in another state's exercise of such power lest its own such exercise of power is also brought into question. So don't expect India, China, Russia, or anyone else to do anything beyond token criticism.
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  393. What side is China backing? Simple: itself.
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  394. To be fair Turkey stands at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and any leader of that country would have to vacillate and play a duplicitous game. As for Saudi Arabia, they are mere puppets of the USA unless Russia and/or China show a willingness to actively undermine the USA's influence.
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  395. They were used by western intelligence agencies as fronts to bring down the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and when they had served their purpose they were abandoned. Genuine opposition is quickly infiltrated, subverted and, if it survives at all, becomes controlled opposition.
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  396. Hopefully you're right!
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  397. China: hold my beer! Russia: hold my beer!
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  398. The USA is applying the same playbook in Europe that it applied in the Middle East and Latin America. The deep state of the USA wants to cause chaos in Europe and Asia and reduce the economies of both through war, corruption and bankruptcy to a status similar to what they had in the aftermath of world wars 1 & 2 with the USA coming out on top.
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  399. Is this brinkmanship designed to test how far Russia and China will tolerate the USA asserting its geopolitical interests over west Asia at their expense?
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  400. With indifference I should imagine. Now China, that's another story.
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  401.  @johnnyrvf  Though their interests may coincide to a degree I think that China will be more circumspect than Russia because I don't think it will be under as much pressure by the USA to conform as the latter, at least not initially, by virtue of its extensive trade with the US and the degree of interdependency that exists between them. That is, it will be much harder for the United States to disconnect from China as quickly or in the same manner as the way in which it has done with Russia; China's got a lot more power, both hard and soft, vis-a-vis the United States versus Russia, in my opinion.
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  402. Without Russian support he was doomed. The Russians in retrospect gave too little, too late, always half-heartedly and ultimately realised their mistake and called it quits. Like in Libya, they either were caught napping or were never fully committed in the first place (presumably because of the more immediate distraction of Ukraineright in their doorstep). Let's be honest with ourselves: Russia is not going to save the world. Russia is not some white knight on a horse who will save the pretty maiden from being ravished by the wolves.
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  403. All the ex‐Soviet/Warsaw Pact countries of eastern and central Europe were infiltrated by the intelligence assets of NATO and the USA and when the Berlin Wall fell those assets through their fake NGO's and western‐backed political parties and politicians orchestrated in effect a rapid series of what today would be called colour revolutions, putting into power pro‐NATO and pro‐EU governments (i.e. the military and political arms respectively of the USA), thus cementing the hegemony of the United States over the continent.
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  404. I wonder if the Germans will mutiny. Or defect. Or desert.
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  405. Who will they pay when Ukraine defaults, the USA?
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  406. It reminds me of the ancient Roman Republic and the peculiar way in which its government institutions incentivised the state to become ever more militaristic to the point that it became a tyranny and over time its economy collapsed because of its continuous war mongering and expansion of its empire to a size that it could not adequately defend.
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  407. A civil war? Ah! A few 'riots', the name given routinely to any disturbance in Britain involving more than a dozen people, isn't going to lead anywhere except a reduction in whatever civil liberties we have left. Why, these riots may even have been created by agents provocateurs and egged on by a certain political party and a certain news station, both of which suspiciously appeared recently on the British political scene seemingly out of nowhere, popularising just this sort of right wing nuttery and barely disguised crypto-fascism, routinely used as an excuse for curtailing civil rights (in so far as they exist where political threats to the status quo are concerned).
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  408. History is imbued with ideological, and philosophical undercurrents (implicit biases)that effect how world events are presented and cannot be separated from the sociocultural context of the country in which it is taught. It thus reflects a given culture's prejudices. What historians present as value-neutral incontrovertible historical facts are just intellectual constructs serving an ulterior agenda. The fact that no one is aware of it or wants to admit it does not make it less so. To wit, history is a weapon wielded by the state for its own purposes to indoctrinate those being taught a certain world view that furthers its goals.
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  409.  @uwekonnigsstaddt524  When will neoliberals and their pernicious ideology finally be discredited?
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  410. Some would say depression, though that word appears to be taboo.
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  411. India is still basically a non-aligned and neutral country. It keeps all sides happy but does not commit and it will take more than petty border disputes between India and China for there to be anything that will change that in the foreseeable future, in my opinion.
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  412. 14:59 Biden isn't in charge and doesn't make the decisions. His personal feelings are irrelevant. Those who are in charge have alienated their peer rivals, the Chinese and Russians due entirely to ideology and imperial hubris. The United States is like the late Roman empire in that it has lost its ability to negotiate with its potential enemies.
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  413. Ukraine might not want to nuke itself but the United States has no such qualms. And with the current Ukrainian government not really in charge (and probably sufficiently fanatical that, like the German government in the last stages of the 1939-1945 war, the Ukrainians apply a scorched earth to their own country) who knows.
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  414. The Spanish and Portuguese engaged in a genocide all of their own. That's why they had to bring in so many non-indigenous people (black Africans) to their colonies. The indigenous populations of the Americas collapsed whenever Europeans arrived.
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  415. Until somone like a Stalin comes along and wipes out in a serious of purges and show trials the Latin American equivalent of the Kulaks, modernising and industrialising the country and its armed forces at the same time and to a level commensurate with the West, these things will never end.
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  416. Fat chance. 🔸️🔹️🔸️🔹️🔸️ History may repeat, History may rhyme, But Britain, alas, Has run out of time. ⌛🕰⌛
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  417. Another fake party created by US intelligence agencies just like in Germany. Sorry Greens, you're already too late: Margaret Thatcher – herself liable to have been a US agent of influence (think Macron and the WEF) – destroyed Britain's coal industry long ago. Oh, you want to shut down our nuclear power plants as well? Isn't it coincidental, that's just the sort of thing the USA would want and this just plays right into their hands. And the raison d'être for such a party's existence is the pretext that CO² is causing anthropogenic climate change rather it being a possible cover for deliberate geo-engineering.
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  418. Legalised corruption & legalised tax evasion.
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  419. But it's not just quantity that matters. Quality is just a important, if not more so in these situations.
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  420. Something similar to the Swiss system of initiative and referenda should be introduced, along with a proportional representation system for at least the lower chamber of Parliament (preferably one the doesn't create the need for coalition governments).
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  421. And they are rigged.
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  422.  @Darkwintre  Who, Bercow or Corbyn?
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  423. Their enthusiasm for the revolution is waning. The Iranian government cannot, or will not, make the reforms that many people would like to see.
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  424. And the EU is its political wing. NATO was set up to stop the USSR from wresting militarily or by political subversion the USA's control of its newly acquired imperium in western Europe. Meanwhile, the European Union was set up to as a means of imposing the economic and political policies of the United States upon the continent and creating a captive market for its goods while simultaneously excluding and waging a sanctions war against the Soviet Union. The two institutions mutually reinforce each other and primarily serve U.S. interests and that's why the E.U. project is bad because as US political and economic power declines relative to the economies of its rivals the USA will weaponise the EU and use it against the peoples of Europe, exactly as it is currently doing with the United Nations (think pandemic treaty and lockdowns).
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  425. The USA wants another cold war, if not another world war. It wants an isolate Europe even more than it wants an isolated Russia and China. Can it have a repeat of the 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 wars – a double whammy to knock out the competition a second time?
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  426. Would that be "growth" based on misleading data by any chance?
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  427. Maybe something like this needs to happen I'm Australia? I think that their government is also going down the authoritarian path.
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  428. Well said.
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  429. Maybe it's a combination of the two.
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  430. In a word: destabilisation. Or 'low-intensity conflict' in military jargon.
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  431. Britain is basically the Saudi Arabia of the West, completely under the thumb of the USA; what the USA does Britain will try to emulate, thinking of itself as still a major player on the European scene and the world stage instead of the medium (and possibly declining) one that it really is. British brexit has hit Britain's influence within Europe hard and will probably hit our economy harder.
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  432. The English speaking world all practise neoliberalism, a crony capitalism that parasitizes the real economy and replaces it with a fake, ersatz economy based on rent seeking. That is what the United Kingdom is now suffering from: 4 decades of rentierism, aka Thatcherism.
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  433. I'm sure that the Americans know that it's not literally a memorial to John McCain. What it is though is that it's a symbol of America's historic role in Vietnam and thus is a press opportunity. □ I think that all this apparent crassness on the part of the US foreign policy establishment is quite deliberate, quite calculated, and part of some psy‐op to undermine relations between the USA and various Asian countries. It might be part of the attempt by the US to disentangle itself from China by alienating certain countries and creating a situation where no politician in the the USA can call for peace or de‐escalation, much like the Mccarthy era.
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  434. Too many ads, gentlemen! Too many ads!
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  435. As always!
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  436.  @kalicom2937  Do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Can't a country be both nationalist and globalist? - In the case of Great Britain for example, as an island, out of necessity trade with the rest of the world entails almost by default a globalist outlook. However, at the same time there still remains a strong desire to retain national sovereignty and control of the nation's borders.
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  437. The more I see how the USA conducts its foreign policy the more I tend to agree. The behaviour of the EU leadership makes me suspect that they are US intelligence assets as they are so completely under the thumb of the USA and so enthralled by the neoliberalism it espouses, putting the economic interests of that country in front of both that of their own as well as that of Europe as a whole. In Germany I suspect certain politicians, and maybe even entire political parties such as the Green Party, are US controlled.
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  438. I assume he's still being held prisoner in Ukraine. Hopefully he will be released soon.
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  439. Unless it leads to a shooting war then unfortunately the Russians can't do much about it other than launching a Europe-wide embargo of their own, which I am sure the EU would have already factored into their calculations. Also, the countries of the EU are hypocritical because they would only break their embargo by trading with third parties that would simply trade Russian goods through middlemen.
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  440. The needs or wants of the United States intelligence community/deep state are behind 'big tech' doing this so the idea that lawsuits and the like are going to have any significant effect in stopping spying or censorship, etc. in the long term are misplaced, in my opinion. Indeed, what's happening with big tech censorship by silicon valley is just one part of a much bigger and more comprehensive breakdown of the things we most typically associate with western democracy, effecting things like freedom of speech, the press, association, etc. and human rights more generally. I think it really began after 9/11 when a pretext was created by dark forces within the military-industrial-congressional complex but probably planned well in advance. Furthermore - and what's really worrying to me - is that these things will not just be confined to the USA but will be become worldwide, especially among the so-called 5 eyes and NATO, with Russia and China either actively or passively colluding. The US economy (or at least its currency) is going to crash sooner rather then later (though how far the show can go on is anybody's guess) and a new reserve currency is going to come to the fore with possibly grave consequences in the short term for the political stability of the USA and those countries whose economies are linked to it. It's inevitable, the powers that be know this, and they have contingency planned for it (fusion centres, homeland security, generalised surveillance, the PATRIOT act and similar legislation) in advance of the now very real possibility of an economic crash and subsequent dislocation of the global economy in the manner of the Great Depression of the 1930's.
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  441. Does the ad blocker also have ads? Is it free?
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  442. Does Rumble have no adverts?
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  443. Because the enormity of it all is too great to accept. The cognitive dissonance is too much. That and the sudden realisation that they can't do jack sh*t about any of it.
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  444. 3-5 statute miles.
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  445. No, the USA expelled the French through its proxies. It wants to dominate Africa in the same way as it dominates the Middle East. Africans can't do anything against the West without the USA's say-so.
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  446. The People's Republic of China should accelerate its introduction of a gold‐backed Yuan and a return to an international gold standard and in doing so force the USA to live within its means. The Russian Federation and PRC should thus work together in devising a joint comprehensive plan to deal with the USA in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The USA and its corporate banking sector, corporations and military‐industrial‐congressional complex want never‐ending war, underdevelopment, brain drain and debt bondage. This is immoral and not in the long term interests of anybody other than the blood thirsty and rapacious neocons and their plan for world domination.
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  447. The USA is stealing other people's gold and silver and other assets left, right and centre to build up its own reserves prior to the economic reset. Cryptocurrencies will be next.
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  448. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. If the USA (its elite) have decided on war then nothing Russia does will prevent it.
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  449. Communism failed you say? Russia went from being a semi-feudal autarchy to a modern superpower in the space of 40 years; China in the space of 30. Millions were lifted out of poverty and levels of literacy and health increased enormously. If anything it is capitalism that is failing. As for democracy, did we really ever have it? After all, capitalism (the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a plutocracy) is fundamentally at odds with democracy (wealth and power distributed among the many).
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  450. Ukraine needs a counter-coup to undo the one that the USA perpetrated. It then needs Russia and China to invest heavily in it and make it a success and use it as an example of how superior their models of political economy are over those of the United States and Great Britain (i.e. the two leading advocates of the neo-liberal order that has been and continues to be such a disaster for humanity).
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  451. Could be true. I think the USA (or the global elite) wants some kind of a war.
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  452. Gas prices are going through the roof where I live.
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  453. As Britain is no longer a member of the European Union does the European Court of Human Rights have any jurisdiction in this matter?
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  454. They are reflexively scared of being accused of peddling 'conspiracy theories' and of being 'cancelled' as a result. Unfortunately, they have to be careful of what they say to the point of self-censorship and sensitising their audiences to what is, and is not, permissible speech.
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  455. The so‐called green parties are all fake parties created to serve nefarious ends.
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  456.  @oliknowles7645  Their own, perhaps?
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  457. The Mexicans also made sacrifices too you know, probably greater than yours because that's why they are coming over the border as lower wages for you living in the first world equal even lower wages — or no jobs at all — for them. That said, these so‐called free trade agreements are basically about screwing the working class by cutting costs and putting down wages while increasing profits for the corporations.
    1
  458. You obviously do not know what communism is, otherwise you would not be making such an asinine comment.
    1
  459. @rubies200  Ecosocialism is capitalist corporations engaging in 'greenwashing', pretending to care about climate change while actually co-opting organisations that originally did care and turning them into just another means of making money, furthering their ends and neutralising any real threat to the status quo.
    1
  460. @rubies200  And you... a rightist? Being a rightist sounds much closer to being a fascist than a leftist sounds to being a communist.
    1
  461.  @rubies200  There isn't a point I need to prove, you've done that for me already [that you're misguided]. I bet you also believe in the horseshoe theory so beloved of the hard right: that communism and fascism end up being just the same as each other and that there is no real difference between the two?
    1
  462. "He could not say war because it is not." But it is. War ✖️ 'Unwise and illegal thing'. ✔️
    1
  463. But can't the USA just continue to print money or maybe just abolish the Federal Reserve and renationalise the currency?
    1
  464. An institution created by the West to advance the interests of capital.
    1
  465. I didn't know the money was never paid, nor that it was a lease and not free-hold. Why was the lease fee never paid or demanded?
    1
  466. The Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) it can be argued is such an organisation, albeit one that is much less bombastic in comparison to NATO. It concerns itself with security issues effecting Asia.
    1
  467. They are so hypocritical that I would not be at all surprised if they did.
    1
  468. Maybe what you call the middle class is/was just a temporary phenomenon thrown up by capitalism on the way to whatever end goal there may be.
    1
  469. It was designed to trap Europe in a political system created to advance corporate interests. It has been made has hard as possible for countries to fully extricate themselves from.
    1
  470. They are already attacking, it's just secret and behind the scenes using special forces, paramilitaries, terrorists, guerrillas and death squads. The overt presence is there just to deter the Chinese and (especially) the Russians the way that NATO did in Europe and SEATO did in Asia, allowing the USA to wreak havoc everywhere else knowing that there was precious little the Soviet Union could (or was willing) to do. Ultimately, Russia's inaction led its undoing, it being fatally weakened from within because they had adopted a 'siege mentality' from the Cuban missile crisis onwards, being content to hide behind the Iron Curtain, thinking they could win with words and moral suasion what only wars can win. In the end, like the city of Rome and the Great Wall of China, the gates were opened by traitors from within who had grown impatient with the promise of a better life under communism that never came.
    1
  471. He's the host and a good host is supposed to let guests speak their minds freely. The role of the host is not to stand in moral judgement of their guests but to have them answer pertinent questions and let the viewer decide.
    1
  472. More like a military-intelligence cabal working behind the scenes in lockstep with those parts of the U.S. economy that has most to gain from a hugely bloated military.
    1
  473. The European Union was always a project of the USA and its fellow travellers in Europe. It was not just a way of rebuilding western Europe after the war of 1939-1945, but also of stopping communism and socialism making inroads into post-war western Europe.
    1
  474. Probably put forward on the recommendation of US intelligence as a British equivalent of Barack Obama. We had the first woman prime minister (and most people of the real left know where that led) and now folks it's time for Britain to have a 'person of colour', a POC as they say in woke land, as our prime minister. Like his US counterpart a hopey, changey kinda guy, all appearance and no substance: the ideal candidate to advance the cause of neoliberalism under the cloak of inclusiveness. Attack him and you'll be accused of racism. But, hey, look folks, the City of London isn't racist, it's just allowed to be elected (in elections in which there's no real choice between candidates) the City's first POV so we can keep up with the Jones's across the pond. What next, the first transsexual, the first homosexual, the first non- binary? [I better shut now before I'm accused of lacking sufficiently in political correctness.]
    1
  475. Taxes? What taxes? Under neoliberalism taxes are paid by the poor, not the rich. The rich are allowed to park their money in offshore bank accounts.
    1
  476. He's ill and not feeling well. Cold and flu tend to make you like that, so it's not really his fault. He's had one too many Covid booster shots I think.
    1
  477. Only when the USA gets a Stalin or a Mao, a Castro or a Ho Chi Minh will the interests of the ordinary working class people of the United States be taken seriously.
    1
  478. It's more indicative in my opinion of indecision and even paralysis at the top. The Americans seem to be too divided, as if they've run out of politically viable options.
    1
  479. I'm given to understand that the president of the USA cannot commit regular troops without the authorisation by Congress (who won't give it) but that this doesn't apply to reservists (state militia). I don't know for sure though.
    1
  480.  @sislater6334  In theory, alas. If only it were also true in fact.
    1
  481. The USA wants to corral Europe and make them an economic dependency.
    1
  482. The USA is disrupting business and interfering with China's intentions regarding the New Silk Road. It is also interfering with normal political relations between countries.
    1
  483. I think it will be economics that finally tames the USA.
    1
  484. No, but it might trigger the destruction of Europe's economies to the benefit of the USA. And that's what the USA might want to do via its British proxy.
    1
  485. Certainly looks that way. The USA seems to be 'locking in' the economy of the European Union (at least its major economies) creating a dollar area like Britain did in the interwar period with sterling.
    1
  486.  @foodparadise5792  so say the libertards.
    1
  487. Seems like Pashinyan has been bought by the empire.
    1
  488. He's simply a mouthpiece for the USA and the City of London (banks and corporations).
    1
  489. Meanwhile Biden and son are walking free.
    1
  490. And we probably will if we can't jump back into bed with the European Union (not that the European Union would be in any better shape than the USA).
    1
  491. Making Europe more authoritarian, mirroring the conditions prevailing in the United States. As the United States becomes increasingly politically dysfunctional, exacerbated by its dire economic crisis, it has every likelihood of becoming a full-blown fascist tyranny in its attempts to hold itself together as a corporation masquerading as a state.
    1
  492. He's the modern equivalent of Herod 2nd Antipater, the one mentioned in the Bible. A ruthless and calculating ruler, and one totally unashamed of being a Roman collaborator.
    1
  493. Unfortunately, it would seem we humans cannot live in societies without some sort of 'group think' such as provided by ideology and religion, metaphysical systems of moral reasoning all predicated on first principles that tend to have no real foundation in reality and that commit the naturalistic fallacy of deriving an ought from an is.
    1
  494. Can the USA break be broken apart though? A diminished but still united USA is still powerful and can still rise again if not beaten decisively and broken up, either by internal forces or outside pressures. Just look at China as an example.
    1
  495. Perhaps president Erdogan would be better going to China than Saudi Arabia.
    1
  496. How you can imagine liberal/neo‐liberal globalists pursuing a communist path is beyond me. Fascist, right‐wing, rightist, conservative, Republican, Christian Democrat, etc. but left‐wing they aren't. The fact is Asia and Europe (which is with India but a subcontinent of Asia) are, potentially, drawing closer together to form a single trading block, Eurasia, which if ever realised to any great degree will most likely completely dominate the global economy, eclipsing that of all others combined. And naturally the USA doesn't want that and will do everything in its power to prevent it.
    1
  497.  @Salta0monte  Perhaps your right. Time will tell.
    1
  498.  @januarysson5633  That would be kind of like Uncle Sam cutting his wrists just to make a point.
    1
  499. When fighting Nazis it doesn't matter. One bit! Victory at any cost.
    1
  500. The two terms tend to be used interchangeably, the nuance between the two being that the neo-conservatives represent more the political and idelogical aspects and neo-liberals more the economic aspects of the Milton Friedman-Freidrich Hayek school of capitalism.
    1
  501. They pulled an Australia on Boris.
    1
  502. They have the mandate of heaven.
    1
  503.  Fermati Chebellosei  Ignorant of Swedish politics.
    1
  504. @Grim FPV a) Is that figure true? 40% sounds like an exaggeration. b) Does Sweden have an indigenous population in decline such that to maintain a healthy demography requires replenishment from outside?
    1
  505. What is Article 49, clause 3?
    1
  506. It prevents the United States from dominating Korea the way that it does Japan and represents an alternative to capitalism. It also doesn't have a Rothschild bank from which economic rents can be extracted. To cut a long story short, it's not controlled by global capital and finance. It also defeated the USA in the Korean war, just like Vietnam did (merely by surviving) and so acts as a constant reminder of the failure of the foreign policy of the United States.
    1
  507. This is all the USA's doing. It is the one that wants to revive the cold war and create divisions between countries.
    1
  508. The Chinese and think the Russians too are doing, or have already done, this.
    1
  509. Reminds me of the war against Yugoslavia when western Europe (NATO, EU) attacked a country in Eastern Europe.
    1
  510.  @discordantduck1808  The media and education system are all controlled by the same people who are causing all the hardship. The general populace is kept ignorant and distracted, protesting only about what they're told to protest about and protesting in the manner that their allowed.
    1
  511. Aren't eastern Europeans supposed to be wary of Russia?
    1
  512. Japan no more wants war with its closest neighbours than south Korea wants war with the north. Why would it go to war with one of its biggest trading partners over and island that it recognises as being a part of the PRC?
    1
  513. The power vacuum that there must be at the top is what's most alarming. Are decisions being taken by committee, or is there just a handful of people with no proper electoral legitimacy — possibly even one person — who are?
    1
  514. I don't think they're listening. I don't think they care.
    1
  515. Or overthrow it from within. But will Russia and China not take action to prevent it?
    1
  516. It's deliberate. It's controlled. It's a takeover by an elite.
    1
  517. Socialism? I'm sorry but I must politely disagree. You must have a pretty skewed idea of what socialism is if you think that is what is causing all the problems we now face. Socialism was comprehensively defeated during the cold war and what we are seeing is capitalism running amok because there no longer exists any counterbalancing system to to keep it in check.
    1
  518. Don't be fooled, these protests aren't about whether the state of Israel should exterminate or expel the indigenous Palestinians – on that all Israelis are agreed. The protests are about who's going to be in charge: religious fundamentalists, right wing radicals, or religious conservatives.
    1
  519. Probably a US‐controlled or Bank of International Settlements‐controlled digital currency.
    1
  520. From a man who played fast and loose with the constitution to turn a voluntary confederation of more or less independent and sovereign states into a unitary federation.
    1
  521. I think one of the aims of the USA is to destabilise Europe and cause dissension among the member states of the European Union.
    1
  522. But the USA does and it's ultimately about the USA securing energy for itself to enable it to continue the US dollar as, if not the world's reserve currency, then at least a major currency that will continue propping up its militarised economy. To wit, they want to continue to monopolise the energy reserves of the world and certainly secure the lion's share for themselves. Israel is merely a colony or extension of the USA and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they do not formerly incorporate it into the United States of America as the official 51st state of the Union soon.
    1
  523. It's a money laundering scheme for Biden and his crime family most probably.
    1
  524. I don't think that it's necessarily a case of these organisations being compromised regarding their apolitical nature, their impartiality, etc. because, at the end of the day it's the United States government that is seizing these internet domain names and websites and not the organisations themselves. These organisations, together with the basic architecture (physical infrastructure) of the internet, it's central core if you will, as I'm given to understand it are located within the territory of the USA itself and therefore fall under its legal jurisdiction. Whether the United States should have done what it has done and acted in the way that it has acted is another debate entirely but ICANN is not realistically in a position to refuse. I dare say that the SWIFT system used for country-to-country financial transactions is also in the exact same position in that neither organisation can stop the United States from taking these unilateral actions. That said, what the United States government has done is, in my opinion, deplorable and has completely undermined confidence in the country as a safe repository of the main transit nodes of the internet/world wide web and as Alexander Mercouris has rightly pointed out will only serve to encourage China and Russia and other countries to set up their own ICANN and create their own internet architecture/infrastructure independently of the USA, though how fast that can be achieved is anyone's guess as neither of the two ostensible adversaries of the USA seem to be in much of a hurry to do anything that really challenges America beyond their immediate interests. Great show as always, guys. Keep it up.
    1
  525. The tables have turned - Nemesis has finally caught up with Hubris.
    1
  526. There should be a mass walkout of the stadium he does and a 6 week boycott of any club or grounds that pull such a stunt.
    1
  527. When so‐called communists come to power (always in coalitions) their policies tend to be social democratic. Anything else will trigger a coup or sanctions. 'Liberal' democracy is a way of entrenching the dictorship of the bourgeoisie.
    1
  528. I'm sure the Russians are very interested in bringing this war to an end. The end will come but it cannot be rushed.
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  529. Well so far he has.
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  530. More like the European Union was designed to serve the interests of both Germany and the United States, France being and afterthought.
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  531. I don't think we should have exited the European Union myself. We're a shell of our former selves and don't have any significant manufacturing or industrial base to fall back besides services and tourism.
    1
  532. Agreed, but then it's not so much Europe sanctioning itself as the United States of America. The Eurocrats in Brussels are for the most part under the thumb of the USA. Weakening Europe/EU serves their political, economic and military interests.
    1
  533. It was the perfect money-laundering centre, a model for Eastern Europe of the kind of vassal state the USA wants.
    1
  534. True. When you live in a world of illusion crafted by the corporate media you lose your hold on reality. The USA is fast becoming a nation where, in the words of one of its CIA directors, "Everything the American public believe in will be false".
    1
  535. If only the USA had not tried (so hard) to destroy the Soviet Union and China and prevent nationalist movements in the global South it could have invested in its own people and be a better country.
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  536. His top diplomat Lavrov should definitely be nominated for the Nobel Prize, in my opinion.
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  537. I wish I could say I share your optimism but I'm afraid that the neocons may be too firmly ensconced in the US security‐intelligence apparatus. Maybe the armed forces or some other element of the United States polity who aren't as supportive of the neo‐liberals agenda could sabotage their apparent drive to war by refusing to go along with them but I wouldn't bet on it because these neocons and their proto‐neocon predecessors have been in power behind the scenes since at least the 1960's and not just since 9/11 or Ronald Reagan.
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  538. What do you mean by a "proactive foreign policy"? Proactive in what way?
    1
  539. As an aside what do you think of the relations between Russian and western Europe will be after all this is over? How do you see the new cold war panning out – another 75 years and then collapse, or the collapse of the USA and its system of client states in Europe?
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  540. That was the official rationale they gave at the time but we now know that the far more likely reason is that they had a new wonder weapon that they wanted to test, a weapon that would send the clearest possible signal to Russia not to even think about invading Japan or any part of Europe west of Germany and Austria.
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  541. Source?
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  542. They are money grubbers and they don't care. Neither does You Tube. Just have to look at Alex swanning around Europe at your expense.
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  543. Did you honestly think it would do anything else! This whole Ukraine affair has just been one big money laundering scheme, as was Afghanistan before it and probably Yugoslavia too.
    1
  544. The USA is sabotaging Europe and that includes Britain. The rulers of Britain are the servants of the USA and like the Germans (and it looks like the French, Australians and Canadians too) they are quite willing to carry out the destructive agenda of the Americans.
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  545. The Russians learned their lessons in Libya and Iraq regarding no‐fly zones.
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  546. Perhaps it doesn't want to become too involved in something it then cannot easily extricate itself from. In other words, it wants to keep its options open for as long as possible before committing itself to something that may be irrevocable. The consistently negative attitude of the USA and the EU towards China's BRI may also be having a dampening effect on India's enthusiasm for the project.
    1
  547. Isn't there any opposition to it with the Canadian parliament?
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  548. Is corruption reversible?
    1
  549. Carrying out the WEF's agenda? Practicing lock-downs?
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  550. Well put! Let's face it, he's in an advanced stage of dementia. No one in their right mind, and no self-respecting nation, allows a such a man to become president. But, obviously, he's not the president, someone else is and it is they that are making executive decisions for him, and for the whole nation. It's almost certainly a committee or inner circle and it would appear to me that whoever they are they are not up to the task, maybe because they are not wholly united or maybe because they lack the necessary political acumen. Maybe they're just incompetent or too inexperienced. Who knows. Trump would be better than what the USA has now but the Democrats are determined to not let him get another term as president so the United States is stuck with the status quo until a real contender for president emerges.
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  551. I'm surprised neither of them seem to be aware of this. I mean, can they be so naive? ❖ The Muslim Brotherhood like all the other Islamic fundamentalist movements are supported by the West as a means of destabilisation and as a means of putting pressure on civilian governments; if any of these countries interfere in the plans of western corporations they get couped or suddenly find their streets filled with demonstrators demanding their heads. If all else fails, the terrorists and paramilitaries (al-Shebab, Boko Haram, etc.) appear on the scene like they did in Libya and Syria.
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  552. Sooner or later he must. If he doesn't he will be replaced.
    1
  553. The USA could do what the Russians did and just quit. Apparently, they've been continuing to fight a war that ended in 1989 and now, like the Soviet Union, they're finding that they have gone bankrupt. The attempt by western elites to stop social justice movements like communism, socialism, decolonisation, anti-imperialism, civil and political rights for indigenous and colonised peoples is Sisyphean and will never be defeated as long as there exists oppression by inhuman economic, social and political systems like we have now.
    1
  554. The United Nations is just a talking shop, nothing more. Like all the other Bretton Woods institutions established after yet another European Civil War (WW 2) they serve the interests of those that created them, the countries of the West, the USA being foremost among them.
    1
  555. They can't be that mad, surely!
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  556. They expect Russia (or longer term, China) to pick up the tab some time in the future.
    1
  557. You're expecting too much. The major players will not allow something to exist that is outside their control, especially if it has the potential to cause radical or sudden political, social, or economic change. Globally, goverments will collude, like they have done with the so-called pandemic.
    1
  558. I think the Russians are of the opinion that they are basically fighting their own people so their reticence in not using full military force is understandable. That and the fact that they don't want to give NATO ammunition to use against them in the information war.
    1
  559. What did you expect from a former ambassador?
    1
  560. That's why they use the CPI, to understate the true figures. It's a trick that fools no one yet they still use it.
    1
  561.  @baruasafi5880  A loss of reserve currency status for the US dollar, together with a bout of high or hyper‐inflation would, I think, be enough to curb the enthusiasm for war and regime change, at least temporarily. After all, you can't go around the world bossing everybody around when you don't have the money to do so. Unfortunately, the bankers of the world and China seem much more likely to bail the country out and give it a free pass.
    1
  562. Not communist. Not by a long shot. Try corporatist. You'll be closer to the truth.
    1
  563. Competition AND cooperation; the two are not mutually exclusive.
    1
  564. Political West = European Union + North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. That is, a Europe under the hegemony of the United States of America with the United Kingdom, France and Germany playing the role of junior partners and keeping everyone else in line.
    1
  565. Or force them to become self-reliant, doing exactly what China and Russia are doing in response to US sanctions and thereby removing a potential source of leverage for Russia.
    1
  566. Maybe it's all part of a deliberate and long-term strategy of weakening Europe/European Union and making it more susceptible to political instability.
    1
  567. Seems that way, unfortunately.
    1
  568. Elite hegemony. The Chinese elite are part of the international elite.
    1
  569.  @chamberpot969  1. Taiwan is really nobody's business but China's. 2. There has been something of a re‐writing and whitewashing of the historical record regarding Neville Chamberlain, one that puts Britain in too good of a moral light vis‐a‐vis Germany, in much the same way that the USA is portrayed as being supposedly isolationist in the run up to world wars 1 & 2.
    1
  570.  @chamberpot969  "... a track record of ignoring international law." ... subjugation to China and slavery...." — Can you give examples? ¤ "China does not give a practical alternative..." — So bombing, droning, kidnapping, torturing and invading other countries and their citizens for their resources is a practical alternative? As opposed to building much needed infrastructure in foreign countries like roads, railways and ports, schools and hospitals? Endless war is a viable alternative to peace? ¤ And how can a country at one and the same time implicitly recognise a territory as belonging to another country while insisting that the selfsame territory is an independent country with right of secession?
    1
  571. It might help the bourses of New York, Frankfurt and Paris. If the USA wants to damage both the United Kingdom and the European Union then persuading its agents of influence in Europe to seize these Russian assets makes perfect sense. It also might make sense if the United Kingdom goes ahead with these sanctions while France and Germany do not. Voila, their arch rival has been smashed.
    1
  572. It all depends on how well integrated into the mainstream of society new immigrants are and how fast and to what extent they can assimilate to the dominant culture's values. The USA as an example has in recent history (turn of the 19th century) been a culture welcoming of immigrants (at least those from Europe, less so for those coming from elsewhere) so who knows how things will look by the end of this century for them. If we look at history as a guide though, the empire of ancient Rome was also initially able to absorb large scale immigration during its early years but becoming increasingly unable to assimilate newcomers as time went by. Perhaps the USA will be similar. I think the demographics of Black Americans and Hispanic Americans vis-a-vis White/European Americans is changing inexorably in favour of the former, but what the implications of this change are long-term who can say. Can one extrapolate to Ethiopia, I don't know.
    1
  573. Source?
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  574. I think – hope – it's all for show, to intimidate the Iranians and Syrians and, indirectly the Russians. Basically the Americans are saying stay out of the Middle East and allow Israel to complete its ethnic cleansing/ genocide of the Palestinians. It's also a way of telling America's 'allies' in the region (read client states) to fall in line.
    1
  575. Perhaps it's part of Make America Great Again (MAGA) — the re-shoring of US industry to the USA (or at least its subsidiaries located elswhere, eg. Mexico). Making the USA more powerful at the expense of Europe.
    1
  576. Until a crisis occurs, like the election of communists, socialists, republicans, radicals, etc.
    1
  577. But in America's case there appears to be such a thing as lunch on credit.
    1
  578. That's why on paper the United States has a bigger economy than China – because they are fiddling the figures. In reality it's probably China's economy that's bigger and the the USA is in second place and falling behind.
    1
  579. NATO was created after world war 2, long after the Soviet Union had given up any pretence beyond rhetoric of wanting to spread revolution worldwide. The Warsaw Pact was then created in response. It was always about the domination of Europe by the USA. The same goes for the European Union, the political‐economic counterpart of NATO. Don't forgot why the Soviet Union was in Europe post 1945.
    1
  580. This is what you get when two politicians with very limited popular support among the rank and file are shoe-horned into positions for which they are not really suited. Elements of the American deep state are what's really in charge after the recent, disputable election victory of the Democrat party and both the president and vice president are mere figureheads, placeholders.
    1
  581. One radar... out of how many?
    1
  582. The needy being the already super-wealthy billionaires.
    1
  583. But it was planned and is being implemented by the very same fascists of whom you speak (rentier monopoly capitalists), so I doubt very much a collapse brought about by them will be in anyone else's interests. The collapse needs to be prevented, financial stability restored and the plans of these wicked people foiled. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any viable labour, socialist or communist movement radical and progressive enough to undo 40+ years of neoliberalism, at least not without provoking the neoliberals into attempting extra-paliamentary means of continuing with their plans.
    1
  584. Remember, the European Union was set up post war with not a little help from the USA as one of the many ways it sought to control Europe and is still heavily influenced by them, albeit with a Germany that appears a little more assertive than hitherto on strategic issues relating to its economy.
    1
  585. Actually, I think many in Finland are secretly happy that Turkey is blocking their accession to NATO, and maybe even some people in the rest of Europe. I'm not so sure about Sweden. Besides, both countries are to all practical purposes already NATO members anyway so it's largely symbolic.
    1
  586. Beyond symbolic attacks Iran will – still – do nothing meaningful. The Russians will counsel strongly against it and like with Syria will be extremely reluctant to supply the Iranians with the means to decisively kick out the Americans and defeat Israel. Russia and China acknowledge that, like themselves, the USA has geostrategic interests in west Asia (eg. Saudi Arabia) and has lines that should not be crossed if a major war is to be avoided.
    1
  587. 16-18 is when you generally start work. Can you not work if you don't want to?
    1
  588. Even Russian propaganda can be true. Just ask the Germans in late 1944.
    1
  589. I would bet that at least half of the anti-Morales replies are computer generated automated responses and online cyber psychops personnel, with a scattering of people from NGO/intel-funded organisations and innocent people who are being lied to.
    1
  590. The USA won't really care. Indeed, it might even be behind the EU's collapse. The money for Ukraine is mostly money laundering anyway and as for the EU itself, it's just a gravy train for bureaucrats and MICIMATT agents of influence.
    1
  591. @John Dowds More like slightly to the left of Franco or some Latin American ruler would be a better comparison.
    1
  592. Perhaps the United States is thinking of stealing the pensions and gold reserves of Germany.
    1
  593. The German economy seems to have already suffered damage that will only get worse if remedial actions are not taken soon. They must reverse course immediately and stop implementing decisions made in Washington that serve the geopolitical interests of the USA much more than they do Germany's.
    1
  594. They know. They just don't care. It's a price worth paying, as Madeleine Albright might say. All part of the deep state strategy of the USA. The American deep state has plans for Europe and economic depression, de-industrialisation and authoritarianism are part of those plans.
    1
  595. @THE WHITE DEVIL Why do you say it was stolen?
    1
  596. You can bet your house that the French are in cahoots with the Americans to destabilise Ethiopia, Eritrea and their neighbours with the only bone of contention being where the interests of the USA and France are at odds.
    1
  597. ​ @РафаэльСаркисянц-ъ2т  Деньги для глубинного государства.
    1
  598. It was a sovereign state (past tense). The future status of what will exist of ukraine after this conflict is at this moment undecided.
    1
  599. The USA wants that; Israel is just a convenient means to achieve it.
    1
  600. Like NATO it was the Americans who created the EU. And the UN.
    1
  601. Law is whatever the powerful want it to be. Law ultimately rests on force.
    1
  602.  @Aurinkohirvi  Seems like someone is manipulating the figures. Anyway, I trust the Finnish people to make the right decision, come what may.
    1
  603. It wants to but is scared to. It is wavering and if it does not decide soon what it wants – war or peace – the initiative will be lost for good. And for a superpower not acting, even rashly, might just prove to be a strategic blunder of historic proportions.
    1
  604. Yea, I mean, nobody else lived there right? Like Australia, terra nulla and all that.
    1
  605. Under compulsion of the rentier bankers who stand to gain the most out of the crash of the industrial economies of the West. The debt bondage and hyperinflation they are causing will allow them to buy stock at cents on the dollar and consolidate their power such that they will end up owning everything.
    1
  606. Ironically, the biggest polluter is the military of United States.
    1
  607. Their economy is a war economy, just like Nazi Germany's. The politicians are also corrupt and many of them have financial interests in the places they subvert. That, plus the usual racism and cultural chauvinism of the West.
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  608. And what do the Holy Books of the other major religions have to say? Tis best not to use the collected stories of copper-age primitives living in caves in the Near East 4000 years ago to explain modern day events.
    1
  609. It's way past time that it happened. Like with NATO and possibly the European Union. Personally, I think the only really logical choice is India. Other less likely candidates are Brazil, Argentina, Japan and Germany with an alternative being to enlarge the Security Council, perhaps making sure that newer members have only a qualified veto power. Who do you think should replace team GB?
    1
  610.  @neilwalsh3977  Sure, why not. It's time the global South was represented.
    1
  611. China is pulling a Japan, but unlike the latter the USA can't impose a Plaza Accord on the Chinese. And goes for Russia.
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  612. His presidency reminds me of the presidency of the Soviet Union just before its breakup, the penultimate or antepenultimate president before the fall.
    1
  613. True. Even more visceral when applied to non-whites and non-Christians.
    1
  614. But they will.
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  615. "But they sure didn't expect...." Didn't they? Are you sure about that?
    1
  616. A rerun of history.
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  617. The two are unrelated and what Germany and the USA are doing is flagrantly illegal.
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  618.  @anonnemo2504  All these things have probably been planned for months or years in advance.
    1
  619. They can't use the D word, depression. At least not yet.
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  620. Competition for its own sake is not a good thing. Indeed in studies the converse, cooperation, tends to win out in the end. Also, as societies, we have evolved to the point where we can keep competition to a minimum within a social system that is overall cooperative and that can put a check on unhealthy types of competition.
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  621. Britain reminds me of Turkey.
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  622. Then the Africans will have Chinese financing, Chinese technology, Chinese medicine, Chinese university grants, etc. You'll just have shot yourself in the foot. The countries of Europe and North America need the resources of the African continent far more than Africa needs theirs. Indeed, without the resources of Asia and Africa many, if not most, of those goods we take for granted as being made in the West would have to be made elsewhere (eg. in Africa).
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  623.  @ljr6723  Do you mean the CIA-created Liberal Democrats?
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  624.  @servantofmary  But isn't the Roman Catholic faith derived from the Jewish faith by way of the Bible (Old Testament = Torah) and thus, as it predates Christianity, shouldn't Judaism be the One Truth?
    1
  625.  @servantofmary  And what of Orthodoxy?
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  626. Argumentum ad hominem is not a valid argument.
    1
  627. They seem to want to crash the European economies to the extent that they are dependent on the USA, incorporating them into an anti‐Sino‐Russian bloc totally subservient to US interests. Along with Africa – which may end up with the continent destabilised like the Middle East – and Latin America these countries will be used to prop up the US economy, perhaps using a currency that will be tied to the US dollar/banking system (eurodollar, like the sterling area that Britain operated in its colonies in the interwar years). In effect, the USA wants to create a system of captured markets where it can monopolise trade and keep China and Russia (India too) out and maintain trading privileges that favour itself at the expense of its 'colonies'.
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  628.  @DavyRo  It's what happens when a less powerful fascist clique are imposed on a country by another country that is also fascist. We see this in Latin America whenever a junta comes to power in a US-backed coup d'état. We also saw it in Ukraine during the 1940's under Stepan Bandeira. Usually such a government is unpopular and tends to rule by force rather than by general consent because the policies such governments have to adopt are almost always damaging to the interests of the majority of their own citizens, serving instead the interests of others. Traitorous collaborators is all they are.
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  629. I thick the Chinese and Russians will soon be setting up their own ratings agencies if they haven't done so already.
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  630. Or the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire à la ancient Rome.
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  631.  @sagaliv8864  It reminds me of how the federal government of the USA usurped the power of the states, resulting in a civil war. This is creeping federalism and the EU makes no secret of it.
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  632. I'm hoping the USA will come to its senses and kick out the neocons and neolibs before it goes bankrupt and descends into Third World status (or gets its equivalent of Adolf Hitler) in its mad obsession with attaining global hegemony.
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  633. The 'West' at this point is just simply the US hegemon. When we talk about 'the West' we are talking about the corporate and banking interests of the USA and, to a lesser extent, the City of London, home of liberalism and conservatism and of the industrial revolution.
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  634. Unless it's all for show and behind the scenes they support the USA and Israel for no other reason than they have no other options.
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  635. It's the global centralization of power in the hands of a corporate elite (those who exercise control over the monopolistic mega‐corporations and corporate banking institutions that now dominate the planet).
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  636. Probably just two states, the part that is western orientated and the part that is eastern (Russian) orientated. Lugansk and Donetsk (Donbass) are already to all practical purposes independent and though they are likely to remain within Ukraine they will probably retain a high degree of autonomy.
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  637. There is deliberate geo‐engineering of the climate going on using man‐made global warming/climate change as a cover story. Climate change is indeed man‐made but not in the way its been portrayed in the media. Could it be the the aim is to melt the polar ice caps and allow the USA, Russia and China to carve up the Arctic and Antarctic between them?
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  638. What is the Hamiltonian system?
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  639. "Chaotic" ? Maybe that's what they want you to believe. Myself, I think it's all been planned in advance.
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  640. When you seek to have total control over the whole world absolutely everything is your business. Simply by existing nations come under the paranoid eye of the corporate class and literally everything that happens, everything and anything, directly or indirectly, however tangentially, is perceived as having some effect, positive or negative, on their power. And who are the corporate class you may ask? Why, those who own and run the transnational corporations of course, the ones that ultimately own the world and every slave in it.
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  641. The USA is a war economy. It will stop when it can no longer finance its wars or when there are no more wars it can fight successfully (i.e. successful from the point of view of the military‐industrial complex in that it generates enough profit for the corporations, money laundering and profit for the banks, gun running for the arms dealers, drug smuggling for the CIA and FBI, insider trading for the elites and people trafficking for the its economy).
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  642.  @alfabravo80  Wasn't that a false flag? Allegedly. Perhaps I've been watching so many conspiracy videos that I'm turning into a conspiracy theorist myself.
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  643.  @secularbeast1751 » isn't the defeat of Germany and Italy and the discrediting of fascism in general more to do with that, especially in eastern Europe where the Soviets made quite sure neo-fascism and crypto-fascism (neo-liberalism) were suppressed (unlike in western Europe where they were reconstituted after the war by the USA to fight the left)?
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  644. So sanctions going right back to 1979 don't count then?
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  645. The 'remoaners' will find a way to get us back in.
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  646. A second Trump presidency is coming. Maybe he'll sort things out and "Make America Great Again".
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  647. Wait till you see the Germans waving the Israeli flag.
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  648. Wait till you see the German politicians waving the Israeli flag.
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  649. A false flag attack is not an attack on oneself by others but an attack on oneself by oneself and the actions of Hamas were likely just such a false flag.
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  650. In short, a neo-classical economist. In other words, a neo-liberal. Unfortunately, it's all but impossible to shake off your education and university economics departments are specifically places of indoctrination rather than learning because neo-liberals are very conscious that they are engaged in a culture war and the education system is a key component in their strategy of control. Modern Monetary Theory which is at the heart of neo-liberalism is more of an ideology than a theory and economists are ideologues rather than dispassionate pedagogues.
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  651. Yet it's my experience that a lot of people in the media are keen to downplay the radiological dangers of depleted uranium contamination.
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  652. But that would only play into the USA'S hands.
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  653. Cappies.
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  654. Doesn't need to as power long ago went from national parliaments to supranational bodies like the UN, EU, IMF, NATO and corporations like the City of London. And in the case of the 5-eyes that power has been ceded to the security apparatus of the United States.
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  655. What does Dnipro mean?
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  656. It is because it creates an idea of togetherness, of unity, of shared values and that feels good, even if it does not reflect reality very accurately. On an ideological level it divides us from them, the capitalist from the communists and fascist, the Muslims from the Christians, NATO from the Warsaw Pact, the good from the bad.
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  657. Don't worry everyone, the International Monetary Fund will soon get the problem under control. At the behest of the Bank of International Settlements that is made up of the top banking families, and in combination with the financial-industrial elites of the West that includes the heads of the fascistic corporations and the military-industrial-political-security complex/deep state of the USA, a new global currency will be created. The money in your pocket may even be temporarily abolished in favour of crypto-currencies/virtual money used to pay a basic guaranteed income. I'm sure the Chinese and Russians won't resist. Indeed, they are probably in on the plan.
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  658.  @UFO_computers  sovereign immunity. Also, effectively they make the law.
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  659. Leaving aside the idea that it was all a false flag, Hezbollah repeatedly made offers of peace and all were rejected. Israel will get peace only when the USA says so.
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  660. I think it has more to do with the split between East and West that occurred during the period that covers the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Reformation when the western half began to change and overtake the Eastern half in the social, political, economic and military spheres and speeded up even further following the industrial revolution and age of empires. The influence of Orthodoxy and Islam may also have set the East apart from the West.
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  661. Aren't Romanians Caucasian?
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  662. Like NATO, it's an Anglo-American Atlanticist project.
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  663. It certainly worked for them in the invasions of Napoleon and Hitler, as well as in the civil war that immediately followed and against the 8-nation counter-revolutionary alliance that tried to thwart it. Also in the birth of the country itself and its freeing from the Mongol yoke. Russia is not the USA, nor Britain. Russia is Russia.
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  664. And Agent Orange in Vietnam.
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  665. The Brexit party is basically a fake party, not unlike PODEMOS and SERIZA in Spain and Greece. I would even bet it may have been created by the intelligence services to complicate things. At best its a single-issue extension of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat parties.
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  666. To stay relevant after 1945 the United Kingdom accepted the suzereinty of the USA
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  667. It's trying to look good in the eyes of the USA. Britain's elite are very much motivated by the perceptions of their counterparts in the USA and want to curry favour with them, even if it means at times second‐guessing the White House and acting precipitously. In this case Britain's actions may be seen as reckless and ill‐advised but, notwithstanding, pleasing the USA is by now an almost ingrained habit on their part and by doing what the Americans want before they even ask (or even know themselves what they want) they hope to get doubly rewarded.
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  668. You mean like in the run-up to world war 2? Is history about to repeat itself?
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  669. The USA would appear to be getting closer and closer to an overt coup d'état with every year that passes and this incident appears to indicate a considerable weakening of the legitimacy and authority of the presidency. I dare say that it could be argued that a coup d'état has already taken place the USA a long time ago (either in 1963 or 2001) but that it was a slow‐motion coup done by elements of the intelligence community but still not accepted as such by American society. The next coup will likely be by the military and could either be in support of the previous coup/s or may even be against it (like the attempted coup in the Soviet Union against Gorbachev by elements wishing to defend the status quo.
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  670. As Alexander said "they [the neocons] have no reverse gear." They are staunch supporters of Israel and the Jewish and Christian Zionist banking families (belonging to such illustrious organisations as the Bank of International Settlements and the Federal Reserve) who are prospering at the expense of everyone else. If the USA fails in any major military way Israel is very likely to fail also, along with the banking families of the West, families who were behind two disastrous wars in Europe. The neocons of the USA care more about Israel and preserving the pro-bankers status quo than their own country.
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  671. Ah, a meme-mantra much loved by MGTOW's, libertarian-types and crypto-/neo-fascists. It's bullshit of course. If it were true the Roman empire would still be here.
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  672. The federal republic of the USA: a dozen slave owning, land stealing, genociding, tax dodging oligarchs deciding that private property rights (theirs!) takes precedence over everything – and I mean everything and everyone – else. Or put another way, a starving Palestinian peasant and a malnourished Muslim prole out-voting democratically a food hoarding multi-millionaire US-backed Jewish Israeli landowner representing only 5% of the population and forcing him to give up his sole ownership of thousands of acres of inefficiently used and stolen farmland and share its bountiful produce with the rest of society.
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  673. It's capitalism (especially the neoliberal variety) that's causing all of these problems. Don't go blaming communism or the Soviet Union for a failure that is entirely of America's own doing.
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  674. Perhaps you're right, but will the average person use these systems? Do they even use them now?
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  675. A reflection of some sort.
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  676. I suspect all this lack of trust between countries is all part of a deliberate strategy of tension on the part of the USA in its ongoing attempts to isolate the Russian Federation and sabotage any peaceful settlement of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine or normalisation of political and economic relations between the states of Europe and the Russian Federation. Erdoğan's apparent back-stabbing of Russia may be seen in this light. The USA wants to make it so there is zero trust between Russia and the EU and thus little incentive to cooperate on any matter that goes against the neocons preferred outcome. It wants Russia to think what's the point of negotiations when the other side has no intention of abiding by what's been agreed upon. I think the same strategy might have been applied to Iran as well.
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  677. I don't think the American people will re-elect Biden. His senility has advanced to such a degree that at this point I think he simply would not be a tenable candidate for president, not even as a figurehead.
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  678.  @badrulalam4077  Ethnic cleansing was done by all sides in the NATO war against Yugoslavia, not least by the US‐backed Albanian terrorists/paramilitaries in and around Kosovo. As for the 'genocide' that Serbians were purported to have been committing and that was used to justify NATO's aggression (after the EU's additional protocol, kept secret from the public, that was deliberately designed to be rejected to serve as a pretext) the UN found no credible evidence, either then or now.
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  679. I think they did it for effect.
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  680.  @HarrySmith-hr2iv  And they only landed because they didn't want Russia to take the whole damn lot and turn Europe red. They were quite happy to see Russia bled white until it dawned on them that, rather than lose, they were actually going to win.
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  681. Following. Definitely. The idea that Britain sets the agenda vis-a-vis the United States is simply not tenable in my opinion. If Britain's foreign policy seems muddled it's because the USA's foreign policy seems muddled. Britain has no real initiative of its own so must follow the signals coming from the USA and if those signals are confused so too will be Britain's.
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  682. I always knew they would. Russia asking too much... Or the USA not giving reasonable concessions?
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  683. It would be better if we were to develop our own industries and technologies so such vulnerabilities would be reduced to a minimum. Unfortunately, our rentier economy won't allow that, especially as long as we are under the thumb of the USA.
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  684. That's why they may be unlikely to do down it, contrary to what these two are saying. If they do attempt something it will very probably go off like a damp squib and will be pursued half-heartedly at best.
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  685. How long will this decline last and will there be a rise aftr reaching the nadir? And is it a relative decline or absolute?
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  686. Their political philosophy, neoliberalism, is based on parasitical rentierism whose basic premise is not to make an honest living from their own labour but to live off the labour of others, of the rent extracted from the productive forces of the economy. To these people imperialism on a global scale as a means of rent extraction – stealing other nation's resources – is natural. The West has been doing it through the various empires – Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, English – for 500 years and the USA as the latest iteration thinks it can do the same. But the world is changing and they have come rather late to the game.
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  687.  @rcmrcm3370  What are your sources?
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  688. "Approved by Parliament" and "Presented to Parliament for approval". Aren't they the same thing, or am I missing something?
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  689. Because he's a collaborator, a traitor, who has been put in power by a foreign government and serves its ends. Like Karzai of Afghanistan. Like Petain of Vichy France.
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  690. Maybe a government in exile is what they want. Like Guido in Venezuela.
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  691. With all due respect I think you should create a separate channel for content like this as turning this channel into a kind of history channel detracts, in my opinion, from what I think should be its true purpose, which I've always been given to understand was a venue to give viewers an insight into your particular thoughts on current geopolitical events of the day.
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  692. The former, yes. But the latter…. On that I'm not as certain.
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  693. The USA wants Europe to pay for an army to threaten and deter Russia, an imaginary threat, while it uses its own money to threaten and deter China, yet another imaginary threat (imaginary that is if you don't threaten them, otherwise the threat of retaliation becomes very real). Basically, the USA wants another cold war, albeit one on a shoestring budget due to straitened circumstances. The aim, I presume, is not so much actual readiness for war but grift, pure and simple. The military‐industrial complex of the USA is the core of its economy and, like cancer, it must grow else the whole thing collapses (a bit like Germany in the 1930's, which used pretty much the same military pump-priming to keep its economy growing. And we all know where that ended don't we?) Like western Europe prior to the Great War (1914-1918) the USA has grown fat off of the grift of its empire and doesn't want either the Russians and Chinese muscling in on the action (à la Germany vis‐à‐vis Britian's empire) or its neo-colonies from gaining genuine independence (à la France vis‐à‐vis Africa).
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  694. Will it all turn into a damp squib, like the protests in Canada?
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  695. The top members of the party may even be covert agents of influence doing the bidding of US intelligence because their policies are so self-evidently damaging to the German economy in the short and medium term. At least from the perspective of myself, an outsider I can barely conceive of it as being anything otherwise. These are policies so damaging to Germany yet so advantageous to that of the United States I find hard to believe that they are the result of incompetence or bad decisions on the part of Germany's leaders, even more so when one considers the systematic and comprehensive manner in which these policies are being implemented, with neither the general public nor the judicial and legislative branches of government seemingly having any power.
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  696. Truth be told, Britain doesn't want a united Europe, especially with Russia and Germany at the helm (possibly France too). Britain was the major instigator in two world wars (three if your consider the Napolionic wars) in its attempts to keep the continental powers from ever uniting or one power dominating the rest.
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  697. The truth be told we're probably still in something akin to the great depression of the 1930's, but one nobody will admit to. Because this depression has peaks and troughs just like a 'normal' economic cycle – such that we can be in or out of a recession at any one time – we can be fooled into thinking everything's okay, however, the overall trend is still economic stagnation (depression or prolonged economic recession).
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  698. Hong Kong was always Chinese, as was to the island of Taiwan (Formosa). Both were taken by imperialist powers (Britain and Japan), while Tibet had been a vassal state of China for several centuries prior to its formal conquest. That's not to say that China is not hegemonic but taking back territory what is generally understood as being parts of your country is not, strictly speaking, colonialism.
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  699. Do you remember 1947?
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  700. Because it might be, relatively speaking? At least regarding a potential NATO‐Russia conflict, but not regarding the current Ukraine‐Russia conflict.
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  701. The only reason Taiwan/ROC has two parties is because the KMT was becoming too assertive and independent (an unfortunate tendency of client states, eg Iraq, Saudi Arabia). Because of this the USA engineered the creation of a rival party which it could control. Hence what we have now, democracy. American style.
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  702. ​ @kathylarson8876  money laundering at its finest.
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  703. The Pentagon and the military-security sector of the military‐industrial complex want it. Trump is merely reflecting their opinions.
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  704. Liberal merely means capitalist. It's liberal only to the degree that it allows capitalists to have property rights and privileges those rights over all others. It's the 'haves' tolerating the 'have-nots' up to the point where they start demanding equality or equity, directly challenging private monopolies, whether in land, property or natural resources.
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  705. Growth for the sake of growth makes no sense. Indeed, it's one of the inherent failures of the capitalist system. Capitalism is filled with bubbles caused by unsustainable growth followed by inevitable collapse and stagnation and the problem of a communist system adopting elements of capitalism/corporatism is that begins to suffer from the same problems. Incidentally, what has communism (classical Marxism, neo‐Marxism) got to say about this? Under an orthodox interpretation of Marx (regarding the transition phase away from full capitalism to full communism when an economy is presumably in an ambiguous intermediate stage between the two) how should China proceed. Currently the Chinese government seems to have turned Marxism on its head: it's no longer feudalism turning into communism by way of an undesirable but necessary capitalism, but feudalism turning into capitalism (or late stage capitalism on the cusp of transitioning into who knows what) by means of communism.
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  706. The deep state of the USA has become the victim of its own success – too successful for its own good.
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  707. The USA doesn't want Europe to be an economic competitor so it's using its influence to have certain European politicians have their countries commit economic suicide to forestall this. Greater European independence from Washington or closer cooperation with Asia is something the US policy elite definitely don't want, especially if it means Russia growing stronger.
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  708. Don't subscribe to... or shouldn't – in an ideal world – subscribe to?
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  709. (Neo-) liberals control what you call "the West" and they are in no way Marxists. Certainly not in the manner that word is generally understood
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  710. He'll never be president again. Full stop.
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  711. The EU has always been a project of the USA in collaboration with the comprador sellouts of Europe, both acting on behalf of the rentier elites of the West. The EU is a monster that keeps on growing, just like the police-security state of the USA.
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  712. They are captured by the USA.
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  713. I'm sure the Russians want to cause as little damage to civilian infrastructure as possible and to keep civilian casualties to an absolute minimum. Minimising the hardships endured by Ukraine's civilian population is clearly good for public relations and also alienates them less.
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  714. What did he do wrong?
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  715. It seems that Russia and China are becoming more free in comparison to Britain and the USA. It's as if we won the cold war but lost the peace; we've successfully persuaded the Russians and the Chinese to adopt capitalism and the capitalist conception of representative (indirect) democracy while losing it ourselves.
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  716. Some countries will be in a much better position to survive the coming economic depression than others.
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  717. They seem to want a replay of world wars 1 & 2, a double whammy that brought Europe to its knees and if it happens a third time may very well finish the continent off for good as a competing centre of power. No rivals, no peer competitors... that's what the military‐industrial complex of the USA wants.
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  718. Why would they do that? I mean, what would be the point?
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  719. But now it has new, improved satellite killing weapons. It's a new arms race, and one the USA might just lose.
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  720. Retaliation...?
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  721. Putin is nearing retirement so there is little need for regime change as he will be gone soon (within the next 5 years or less I would reckon). What is more important is who will replace him when he eventually does go.
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  722. China's banks are private?
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  723. He has got away with it!
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  724. Why should they have defeated them? The Taliban, like ISIS, was created by the USA and served — and still serves — the geopolitical goals of the United States. And what does defeat even look like in the context of the proxy wars and cold wars now being fought? These wars aren't supposed to end definitively anyway but to continue in other places using other proxies indefinitely.
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  725. A significant defeat for the US navy in foreign or even international waters, especially if it can be seen as provocative or offensive, would be more likely to precipitate either a civil war or a coup d'état in the USA rather than an intensification of the conflict. Once you've proven decisively that the USA navy cannot operate with impunity in waters close to China or in the Asia-Pacific in general then any idea of strategically defeating China militarily is moot.
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  726. After being born and lived all their lives in Britain for two or more generations don't the children of the original immigrants become themselves indigenous? How many generations must pass before they are considered native and have as much right to influence the politics and culture of the nation as anyone else, especially if they become the majority?
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  727. Plutocracy cares only for itself. Wealthy people do not struggle to pay their bills like you and me and don't have to worry about being made homeless or going hungry or cold because they don't have enough money or the money that they do have has been devalued because of inflation.
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  728. Go take your hateful propaganda elsewhere! Troll.
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  729. It's all in the pipeline.
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  730. ​ @yurichtube1162  That is bullshit!
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  731. And what greater way to show to the voting public that democracy has become purely symbolic. Like the letters SPQR on Roman legion standards, something meaningless.
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  732. You'll be looking in vain. The only rallies you'll be seeing will be deep state approved, funded by the likes of George Soros and Bill Gates, and infiltrated from top to bottom by agents provocateurs. Spontaneous rallies that will be suppressed or turned 180° against themselves.
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  733. It's all a symptom of the USA's economic decline and government dysfunction. System entropy, basically. All systems eventually succumb and the USA is not immune. Britain is also suffering from system entropy.
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  734. Russia has presented Britain with a fait accompli that is not going to be reversed and therefore must be accepted. If only Britain's suzerein and ostensible ally the USA had not reneged on its promise not to push NATO eastwards and force Russia's hand by carrying out a coup d'etat in Ukraine. Realpolitik now demands a considerably more nuanced approach to Anglo‐Russian relations than has been seen of late based on a pragmatic understanding of exactly what Britain is capable of (and equally, what it is not capable of) and to resist, however tempting it may be, trying to 'punch above our weight' in a vainglorious attempt to impress others.
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  735. The West has never set the standards with regards moral behaviour. Never. Not even at its height. So don't go expecting it to start doing so now it's relative economic decline vis-a-vis Asia.
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  736. It shows the renaissance of Russia after the terrible nadir that was the 1990's. Russia has come back from the brink and once more is a major power on the world stage, alongside China, its ally.
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  737. Global food crisis – engineered by secret cabal who planned and intended this as part of a larger strategy... or just incidental and caused by war?
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  738. But everyone else is doing the same thing. It's a beggar thy neighbour world in which there is competitive devaluation of currencies because if a country allows its currency to become too expensive vis‐a‐vis another country's currency then its exports will become uncompetitive. That and the fact that at the moment there is a massive glut of oil and the oil producing countries do not want the price to go any lower.
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  739. Probably a massive intimidation exercise. I wonder what role the Saudis, Quataris Kuwaitis, etc. will play in all of this.
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  740. A basic tenet of neoliberalism is the reduction of social safety nets and welfare.
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  741. I think it's you who has a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism and its inherent tendency towards crisis.
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