America’s grand strategy, its long-term blueprint for advancing national interests and countering major adversaries, is in total disarray. Top officials lurch from crisis to crisis, improvising strategies as they go, but rarely pursuing a consistent set of policies. Some blame this indecisiveness on a lack of resolve at the White House, but the real reason lies deeper. It lurks in a disagreement …
IMF Violates IMF Rules, to Continue Ukraine Bailouts By Eric Zuesse
The IMF, whose bailout operations are absorbed by the taxpayers in the member countries whenever a particular bailed-out nation defaults, announced on Friday, June 19th, that it will “continue to support Ukraine through its Lending-into-Arrears Policy even in the event that a negotiated agreement with creditors in line with the program cannot be reached in a timely manner.” Though this new “Lending-into-Arrears” policy violates …
Europe’s New Geopolitical Tensions Add to Global Instability By Michael Werbowski
The proverbial doomsday clock is ticking away in Europe. You can hear it getting louder each day? Just this week the Air Force Secretary Deborah James stated the U.S. considers deploying a squadron of F-22 Raptor fighter jets to Europe, in response to what the “western alliance” perceives as being stepped-up “aggression” by Russia in the region. In her stark …
IMF Double Standards: Ukraine and Greece By RT
Despite the grievous state of the Ukrainian economy, the IMF said it will continue to lend money to Ukraine, so Kiev can complete economic restructuring. “In the event that a negotiated settlement with private creditors is not reached and the country determines that it cannot service its debt, the Fund can lend to Ukraine consistent with its Lending-into-Arrears Policy,” IMF …
Poll finds mass opposition in Europe to war drive vs. Russia over Ukraine By Alex Lantier
The findings of a poll published yesterday by the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center, showing broad opposition in Europe to a NATO war with Russia, underscore the anti-democratic character of the US-led war drive against Russia over Ukraine. The poll was formulated to elicit answers as favorable as possible to US and NATO policy, particularly in regard to a possible …
March Toward Global War by NORMAN POLLACK
The New York Times (NYT) is a trusted source of Administration thinking, particularly in foreign policy, more, an uncanny, sensitive barometer of deep-lying structural-military-diplomatic events which are presently culminating, beyond the New Cold War brewing since Clinton’s international posture in Europe and the Pacific, in the actuality of heated confrontation directed against both Russia and China. Under Obama, the page …
Neocon Fugitive Given Ukraine Province By Robert Parry
The latest political move by the U.S.-backed “pro-democracy” regime in Ukraine was to foist on the people of Odessa the autocratic Georgian ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili, a neoconservative favorite and currently a fugitive from his own country which is seeking him on charges of human rights violations and embezzlement. New York Times correspondent David M. Herszenhorn justified this imposition of a …
Challenging Operation Vulture in Ukraine by MICHAEL HUDSON
Ukraine’s collapse since the February 2014 coup has become an umbrella for grabitization. Collateral damage in this free-for-all has been labor. Many workers are simply not getting paid, and what actually is being paid is often illegally low. Employers are taking whatever money is in their business accounts and squirreling it away – preferably abroad, or at least in foreign currency. Wage …
Kiev’s Repression of Anti-Fascism in Odessa – ERIC DRAITSER
There is a common misconception in the West that there is only one war in Ukraine: a war between the anti-Kiev rebels of the East, and the US-backed government in Kiev. While this conflict, with all its attendant geopolitical and strategic implications has stolen the majority of the headlines, there is another war raging in the country – a war …
Why the US is Finally Talking to Russia – Pepe Escobar
So a woman walks into a room… That’s how quite a few jokes usually start. In our case, self-appointed Queen of Nulandistan Victoria “F**k the EU” walks into a room in Moscow to talk to Russian deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Grigory Karasin. A joke? Oh no; that really happened. Why? Let’s start with the official reactions. Karasin qualified …