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Geopolitics of Natural Resources and the Ukrainian Conflict
Ukraine has about 20.000 deposits of 116 different mineral resources...
by Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović
Geopolitics is an approach to politics that stresses the features imposed on foreign policy by geographical location, environment, and natural resources. Geopolitics as a discipline contributes to the emphasis on continuity in contemporary political realism. The focal idea of geopolitics is that those who control the Eurasian landmass (Heartland) dominate global politics. Regarding this idea, Ukraine has always been a significant part of Heartland. Therefore, many great powers have been fighting to impose their control over the territory of contemporary Ukraine (or part of it) from the Middle Ages up to today (for instance, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden, Vikings, Ottoman Empire). Nevertheless, Ukraine up to 1923 (the creation of the USSR) was just a geographical notion but not a political-administrative subject.
The pre-2014 Ukraine was a country covering a huge territory of East Europe from the Carpathian Mt. in the west to the Donets River in the east being bounded by the Black Sea in the south. The neighbors were and still are Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Belarus, Russia, Moldova, and Romania. After the dissolution of the USSR after Cold War 1.0, an independent (Greater) Ukraine took necessary measures in order to as possible as reduce its economic dependence on Russia as well as on other ex-Soviet republics. For instance, such measures included an agreement to import the oil from Iran instead of from Russia. However, the exploitation of natural/mineral resources has been neglected while heavy industry, including iron and steel production, machinery, and transport production followed by aircraft, chemicals, and consumer goods, became an industrial priority. In essence, the food and textile industries are very important while grain is of crucial agricultural and export importance in the Ukrainian economy. However, in general, Ukrainian agriculture became very much damaged because of the 1986 nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl as the large cultivating area became contaminated.
NATO: Not A Tenable Option
By David Swanson,
World BEYOND War
When NATO gathered in Washington D.C. several weeks ago, we held a counter-summit and a rally, did a bunch of interviews, wrote a bunch of articles, etc. All the videos and reports are at nonatoyespeace.org to watch and read at your convenience. I won’t try to read them to you. We had a minimal impact on U.S. and global communications about the NATO summit. We promoted Sevim Dagdelen’s book which is a bestseller in Germany. We promoted my and Medea Benjamin’s book, which is now being published in more nations. I have an absurdly short article on what’s wrong with NATO coming out in Congressional Quarterly.
NATO didn’t do much at its summit other than celebrate and commit to more of the same. It declared Ukrainian NATO membership to be irreversible, which didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen and didn’t mean that it would happen and didn’t mean anything else. The U.S. media interest was almost exclusively in terms of what the events might mean for the years-long presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Biden called Zelensky Putin and Harris Trump, and generally appeared befuddled. So, a change of face was seriously considered and eventually made, with Kamala Harris now promising the most lethal fighting force in the world and eternal devotion to NATO. But no question was ever raised about Biden’s support for NATO or his pretense that Trump is an enemy of NATO, even though Biden’s big claim was to have increased NATO military spending (something Trump did more of than Biden — Trump who now demands 3% of GDP) and to have added more NATO members (something made possible if not inevitable by a war that could have easily been avoided, and something likely to contribute to the vicious cycle of arms races, wars, and the risk of nuclear apocalypse).
The 2024 US Presidential Election Has Already Been Stolen
Newsweek reports: “Kamala Harris Overtakes Donald Trump in New Poll.”
Paul Craig Roberts
On August 28, I listed some of the electoral procedures Democrats are putting in place in order to steal the November presidential election:
Minneapolis has designated those who entered the US illegally “justice impacted individuals” and put them into a protected class which apparently includes the right to vote.
The DNC has filed a lawsuit against the Georgia Election Board to block the rule that requires counties to ensure the accuracy of the votes prior to certification. If you remember, this was a question in the 2020 election when Georgia and other states’ votes were certified without authentication.
In Wayne County, Michigan, the 19th most populous county in the US (there are 3,244 counties in the US) which includes Detroit, Warren, and Dearborn, 98% of the poll watchers appointed to oversee the 2024 presidential vote are Democrats.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned the ban against ballot drop boxes that allow fraudulent ballots to enter the vote count. Here is the NBC News headline: “Wisconsin Supreme Court overturns ruling that barred most ballot drop boxes”
Wall Street Journal Lauds America’s ‘Extreme Renters Who Own Nothing,’ Including Their Own Clothes
Catucci and her boyfriend, Eric, actually do own their Subaru Outback.
by Jacob M. Thompson
With everything becoming so expensive and inflated in the United States and western nations, combined with a severe home affordability crisis, and companies shifting their models to reflect subscription, renting and leasing services, more and more people are becoming forever renters “who own nothing;” to the extreme end where some no longer even own basics such as the shirts off their backs, utensils, and other common items that normally would be owned.
The World Economic Forum has prophesized that this would be exactly the case by 2030. In 2015, the WEF published an essay that expressed what life would probably be like in 2030. The result were many people living in smart cities, living in shared, communal buildings that no one owned; and every single item one could think of was rented, shared, and delivered by drone. This since deleted essay partly reads:
Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city – or should I say, “our city”. I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.
It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.
America’s Reckoning With Reality
Americans want to know what is happening to their country.
Douglas Macgregor
The major parties’ national conventions paper over the facts of the Uniparty’s anti-American agenda.
The Republican and Democratic National Conventions, always heavy on glamor and light on substance, are over. It’s time to move beyond sloganeering and address reality.
In the United States, the price of food is up 21 percent in three years. Thirty-year mortgage rates were 3.7 percent; they are now 7 percent. Rents are skyrocketing, car loan delinquencies are rising and, last year, there were at least 150,000 reports of American children going missing in what is becoming a child-trafficking emergency.
Millions of Americans think that our society is experiencing a moral collapse. Divorce is widespread, single parents struggle to raise children, drug abuse is rampant, suicide rates are high, and the rule of law is collapsing across the country.
Is it really a surprise that Americans doubt their institutions, their courts, even the leadership of their own armed forces? Americans feel disconnected from their collective, national identity. Shamed into isolation and self-hatred under the oppressive weight of mass-media, pop-culture, and official deceit, Americans feel helpless to stop their freefall into nihilism—the belief in nothing, not justice or beauty, no divine influence, just nothing.
Americans feel like their homeland is being transformed into a wasteland. More and more Americans think that taxation without representation is the norm in all 50 states, not just in DC. Voting for one or another of the major parties, Democrats or Republicans, does little to arrest the nation’s descent into chaos.
The Fed Returns to Liquidity. Will It Elect Kamala?
To be honest, nothing remains of the United States of America. There is
nothing here but a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel in which
people live inside a narrative of lies.
Paul Craig Roberts
In previous years I regularly reported on the monthly jobs reports. I explained that most of the jobs gains were in lowly paid service jobs, that many and even most of the jobs were part time, and that the jobs numbers were not the same as employment numbers as many of the newly employed held two of the new part time jobs in order to make ends meet. I pointed out that none, absolutely none, of the “better jobs” promised to the manufacturing work force whose jobs were offshored ever appeared.
I also pointed out that the inflation numbers were a hoax and gave the reasons why, and I pointed out that the claimed jobs gains were always later quietly adjusted to lower numbers.
Nothing has changed. In fact, it has gotten worse. The US Department of Labor just admitted that it overestimated the jobs gain from March 2023 through March 2024 by 818,000 jobs that never existed.
If you will remember, these non-existent jobs were part of the inflation hype that relied on “strong employment growth” to keep interest rates high. Some readers might remember that I pointed out that the inflation was due to the Covid lockdowns that destroyed businesses, supply chains, and that prices went up because of shortages, not because of inflation.
But in America truth no longer matters. The narrative, not truth, is in control, and the narrative was that a hot job market driven by 818,000 non-existent jobs was driving inflation.
Crackdown on Ukraine’s largest church is ‘full-fledged Satanism’ – Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev attends a church service in 2015.
rt.com
Vladimir Zelensky and his Western backers are responsible for the suppression, the former Russian president has said.
Kiev’s Western backers are supporting its “satanic” crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claimed on Friday.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law that prohibits “Russia-linked” religious organizations. The self-governed UOC, which has historical and spiritual ties with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), is understood to be the primary target of the legislation. Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, said he holds Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky accountable for the crackdown.
Pyotr Poroshenko, Zelensky’s predecessor, caused a major religious schism in Ukraine when he orchestrated the creation of the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine in late 2018 as part of his failed reelection campaign, Medvedev pointed out. Under Zelensky, however, “the destruction of the Orthodox faith in Ukraine and the persecution of Christians for their faith started,” culminating in the new law, the former Russian leader argued.
What Happened to Countries that Invaded Russia Throughout History
Russia's first king, Alexander Nevsky, halted the advance of the German
Teutonic Order in 1242, destroying them in the 'Battle on the Ice'.
Editor thepeoplesvoice.org
America told Ukraine to invade the Russian city of Kursk, and across the Russian border the Ukrainians and American mercenaries went, some twenty to thirty miles into Russia to take Russian territory and kill Russian civilians. Although they're only a few miles from the border and Ukraine, they may as well be a thousand miles from home. Let's examine what happened to countries that invaded Russia throughout history.
In the mid 13th century Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, sent his son Jochi with 100,000, Mongol warriors to conquer the lands of what is now Siberia, Central Russia, and Eastern Europe. The Mongols defeated the small poorly prepared forces of the Russian princes, who prior to the formation of the Russian state were at war with each other.
In 1237, the Mongols, led by Batu Khan, again invaded Kievan Rus’ looting and burning all the main Russian cities: Ryazan’, Kolomna, Moscow, Vladimir, and Tver. The invasion continued until 1242. It took 100 years for Russia to recover from the damage done by Batu Khan.
In 1243, Yaroslav II of Vladimir was the first Russian prince to receive permission to rule Russia only after swearing his allegiance to Batu Khan. The Yaroslav II rule of the Russian state began 250 years before America was discovered by Colombus in 1492, and 534 years before America would declare its independence from great Briton in 1776.
The Western World Has Succumbed to Tyranny
"I Was Arrested at Heathrow Airport as a “Terrorist” for My Journalism
August 20, 2024. My name is Richard Thomas Medhurst. I am an
internationally accredited journalist from the United Kingdom."
Paul Craig Roberts
We can add Richard Medhurst to Tulsi Gabbard, Scott Ritter, Amb. Craig Murray, Julian Assange, and many others who are harassed, arrested, imprisoned by police state authorities in the US, UK, EU, and Canada for practicing the disappearing profession of journalism. When Richard Medhurst can be arrested in a London airport for “expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization,” we know freedom is dead and journalism no longer exists. All that Western journalists are permitted to do today is to support the official lies in the official narratives that are used to construct the false reality in which we live.
We no longer have the BBC, the New York Times, the London Times, ABC, NBC, CBS to hold government accountable. What we have are propaganda ministries that support official narratives. The job of the Western media is to lie to the people in behalf of the establishment that rules them.
As the growing intimidation of alternative media makes clear, the ability to express truth is rapidly disappearing in the Western world. Soon we will be locked into The Matrix, only there will be no superhuman opposition.
It has been years since we could believe one word that we hear from the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, the London Times, Telegraph, The Guardian, or the main European media sources.
The notion that the West is free is a joke. When there is no free expression there is only tyranny. And that is what the Western world is. A tyranny.
Why the Genocide Continues
Why does the killing never end?
By David Swanson
According to the New York Times, U.S. officials say there’s no excuse, on the warmakers’ own terms, for the genocide they are arming:
“Israel has achieved all that it can militarily in Gaza, according to senior American officials, who say continued bombings are only increasing risks to civilians while the possibility of further weakening Hamas has diminished. . . . William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, is due in Qatar on Thursday. Brett McGurk, President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, has headed to Egypt and Qatar. Amos Hochstein, a senior White House adviser, landed in Lebanon. One of the messages the officials are expected to deliver is that there is little more Israel can accomplish against Hamas.”
But there’s another message they’re delivering:
the weapons will never stop flowing from the United States to Israel.
According to opinion polls, the majority of U.S. voters want the weapons shipments to stop now and have wanted that for some time.
But there’s another message many of them are delivering:
OMG it’s so awesome how Kamala tells peace advocates to shut up, she and Walz bring joy to my life like like like like yeah you know?
