Simon Jenkins: In Taiwan, as in Ukraine, the west is flirting with disaster
As to the CIA involvement in the global heroin trade, the less said the better. Maybe the freedom to die of heroin addiction is included in the western list of liberties
Meanwhile the totalitarian disdain for justice, human rights and truth has been exemplified by the Soviet (and post Soviet) regime; and the People's Republic of China as well. Apologists for these regimes should wake up and stop their stupid propaganda. Many may not recall the Chinese invasion of the DRV ('North Vietnam') in 1979, an attempt at military terrorism inspired by the DRV's overthrow of the brutal Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. The PRC treats Tibet like a colony, and has recently been found to be terrorizing the Uighur population.
Readers can study all this if they wish, I have posted about these matters often and will attach a few links. Here all I will say is this: these regimes are involved in war crimes and human rights violations on both a global and a continental scale. All these crimes are dressed up in doctrines which are pure propaganda - it's is the public willingness to tolerate lies and nonsense that is dangerous. The democratic minded public the world over should discard their stupid fascination with nationalism, which Einstein rightly called 'the measles of mankind'; and begin thinking and campaigning for global peace, disarmament and urgent action against global warming. War will poison the environment at an ever increasing pace. Stop this madness and stop telling lies about the beauty of communism, capitalism etc. Its all bullshit. DS
Simon Jenkins: In Taiwan, as in Ukraine, the west is flirting with disaster
Arguments in the foothills of war are always the same. Those for war shout loudest and beat their chests, eager for tanks to rumble and jets to roar. Those against are dismissed as wimps, appeasers and defeatists. When the trumpets sound and the drums beat, reason runs for cover.
The visit to Taiwan of the US congressional speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has been so blatantly provocative it seems little more than a midterm election stunt. She declares it “essential that America and her allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats”. China’s gross overreaction is a classic example of precipitate escalation. Yet when Joe Biden asserted that the US would defend Taiwan militarily, the president’s office instantly backtracked, reasserting a policy of “strategic ambiguity”. It remains the case that no one quite believes the US will go to war over Taiwan – so far.
A similar ambiguity infuses the west’s attitude towards Russia over Ukraine. The US and Britain reiterate that Russia “must fail and be seen to fail”. But can Russia really be relied on to tolerate ever greater destruction of its armaments without escalation? The west seems set on holding Ukraine to a drawn game, hoping to postpone some horrific penalty shootout. All Russia can do is perpetrate ever more atrocities to keep its team in play. Suppose it escalates something else?
These are the same uncertainties that overwhelmed European diplomacy in 1914. Rulers dithered while generals strutted and rattled sabres. Flags flew and newspapers filled with tallies of weaponry. Negotiations slithered into ultimatums. As the frontline pleaded for help, woe betide anyone who preached compromise. During the two east-west nuclear crises of the cold war, in 1962 over Cuba and 1983 over a false missile alarm, disaster was averted by informal lines of communication between Washington and Moscow. They worked. Those lines reportedly do not exist today. The eastern bloc is led by two autocrats, internally secure but paranoid about their borders...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/03/taiwan-nancy-pelosi-visit-ukraine-us
Alexandre Koyré The Political Function of
the Modern Lie
Julien Benda: Our age is the age of the intellectual organization
of political hatreds
STANISLAV MARKELOV - Patriotism as a
diagnosis
Victor Jara murder: ex-military officers sentenced in Chile for 1973 death
Andrew Bacevich: High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Fading American Century
Guantanamo Bay- Obama's shame: The
forgotten prisoners of America's own Gulag
Vanessa Thorpe: MI 6, the coup in Iran that changed
the Middle East, and the cover-up
Donald Trump's gift to America: Realizing we've
never been a liberal democracy. By PAUL ROSENBERG
Mauritius formally
challenges Britain’s ownership of Chagos Islands
The Break-Up of Britain / The US today resembles the Soviet Union just before it fell
Book
review: The Politics of Heroin - CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
Uki Goñi - A grandmother's 36-year hunt for the child stolen by the Argentinian junta
Zack Stanton: Violent Christian Extremism in the USA
Steve Bannon Documentary, 'The Brink',
Will Leave You Cold
Indigenous Americans demand a reckoning
with brutal colonial history
JAMES SPRINGER: Remembering the Fall of
Saigon, 45 years on
Chauncey
DeVega: Trump is mentally ill but our real sickness runs much deeper
Tom Engelhardt: Biden's indirect
admission highlights the steady decline of American empire
Lucian Truscott: Trump wants to end the
forever wars - except the one about oil and money
Diego
Garcia: the Chagos Islands 40 years on remain a black mark on Britain
Britain
'attempts to censor' US report on torture sites
Nuclear
Testing in the Marshall Islands: A Chronology of Events
The Nuclear History of Bikini Atoll
(PHOTOS)
Britain destroyed records of colonial
crimes
Bikini Atoll nuclear test: 60 years
later and islands still unliveable
Hedges: The Age of Self-Delusion
How With This Rage. BY CHRIS HEDGES (2005)
Chris Hedges: The Collective Suicide Machine
Jesus sermon from the Rev. Chris Hedges
'He killed
a party and a country': a Chinese insider hits out at Xi Jinping
The
Crises of Party Culture: by Yang Guang
Book review: The State as Faction: Mao’s Cultural Revolution
Book reviews - ‘Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962,’ by Yang Jisheng
The
Return of the Show Trial: China’s Televised “Confessions”. By Magnus Fiskesjö
