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Dilemmas
We are experiencing times of global transition. Where we have been is self-evident. Where the world is headed remains obscure. Some states are implacably resisting that transition; others strive to foster a modified international system that conforms to emerging realities. The actions of governments in the two categories are reinforcing each other’s commitments to pursuing […]
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Arrest Warrants from The Hague
The slow, often grinding machinery of international law has just received a push along with the issuing of three arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court. They are for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and, rather incongruously, Hamas figure Mohammed Deif. The last issue is somewhat odd given claims […]
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Is Trump “the only hope we have”?
RT ran a headline: “Putin must be ‘adult in the room’ on Ukraine conflict.” This is according to left-leaning comedian and political commentator Jimmy Dore. “Joe Biden and the neo-cons in his administration have been constantly escalating war… What they’re trying to do is start a war that Donald Trump can’t stop,” warns Dore about […]
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The Ukraine War after the Penny Has Dropped Make that the Oreshnik
President Vladimir Putin has announced that serial production of the new Oreshnik hypersonic, intermediate range, 36-warhead missile has commenced. He made this announcement at a special public meeting with Defense Ministry officials in the Kremlin on Friday, November 22. “There are no means of countering such a missile; no means of intercepting it exist in […]
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Trump, AUKUS, and Australia’s Dim Servitors
There is something enormously satisfying about seeing those in the war racket worry that their assumptions on conflict have been upended. There they were, happily funding, planning and preparing to battle against threats imagined or otherwise, and there comes Donald Trump, malice and petulance combined, to pull the rug from under them again. What is […]
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Kiribati Has Benefitted from Abolishing Its Military

David Swanson asked me to write about Kiribati after I wrote to him to point out Costa Rica is not the only “full-fledged and totally independent country to be entirely demilitarised.” Kiribati, and other small countries I suspect, have no military. In Kiribati’s case this was a deliberate decision taken by the first President and […]
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On the Maryhouse Stage, Power Politics and War

Art work by Robert Shetterly, taken from the playbill for “Reap What You Sow” In mid-November, New York’s Catholic Worker community, located in lower Manhattan, opened their sizable auditorium to host “Reap What You Sow: Don’t Lose Heart!” a two act play with two actors which debuted, for two nights, on the Maryhouse stage. Prior […]
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Who Control’s Afghanistan’s Stolen Assets: A Factsheet
In August 2021, following the withdrawal of major U.S./NATO military forces from Afghanistan after two decades of occupation, Taliban forces took effective control over the country. In response, the United States seized the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank totaling around $7 billion. Half of that amount was transferred to the misleadingly named “Afghan Fund” in […]
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As Biden Leaves Office, the US Empire is Desperate to Maintain Its Hegemony
This November, US president Joe Biden will leave office with the world in turmoil and US fingerprints on the bodies of untold thousands across the globe: in Gaza and Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, Cuba and Venezuela, Pakistan and Haiti, and elsewhere. While Biden attempted to cast his foreign policy actions as defending “democracy” against “authoritarianism,” […]