The UN Security Council on Monday rejected a Russia-backed resolution calling for an international independent investigation into the blasts that severely damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines last autumn. Russian diplomats suggested that the outcome of the vote was the result of diplomatic pressure exerted by the West on other countries.

The draft resolution, which sought to establish an international independent commission to look into “all aspects of the act of sabotage” of the pipelines that directly linked Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea, as well as identify the attack’s sponsors and organizers, was supported by three countries (Russia, China, and Brazil). No country voted against the document, with 12 abstentions, resulting in the resolution being rejected.

In March 2003, the United States launched an invasion of Iraq on false pretenses and without a clear long-term strategy. Twenty years later, it is repeating many of the same mistakes in Ukraine.

This time, however, the stakes are much higher. The United States is no longer the undisputed superpower that it was in the early 2000s. Two decades of failed military interventions abroad, poor economic governance at home, and dysfunctional culture wars have significantly undermined its potential.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvKG00b_Ohg

(MORE TO COME)

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Pope Francis: Ukraine war is “fueled by imperial interests of several empires.”

No, the U.S. did not invade in the same way that Russia brutally invaded a year ago. But in other significant ways, America, with its massive flow of arms and weapons, is now in control of how this war ends—and when. 

It is a fiction of the highest order when President Biden confidently says that President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have to decide on negotiations for a settlement and ceasefire.

No rational person believes this.

By Blake Fleetwood / Original to ScheerPost

WHAT FOLLOWS IS THE GLORIOUS GARBAGE THAT THE WESTERN MEDIA INDULGE IN.... IT WOULD BE EASY TO ACCEPT IT AS REALITY — IF WE DID NOT KNOW IT WAS COMPLETELY DELUDED — AS PART OF AN IMPERIALISTIC HEGEMONIC GRAND SCHEME...

"Attention. Air raid alert," the voice says with a Jedi knight's gravitas. "Proceed to the nearest shelter."

It's a surreal moment in an already surreal war: the grave but calming baritone of actor Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker of Star Wars, urging people to take cover whenever Russia unleashes another aerial bombardment on Ukraine.

The intrusion of Hollywood science-fiction fantasy into the grim daily realities of war in Ukraine is a consequence of Hamill's decision to lend his famous voice to "Air Alert" — a downloadable app linked to Ukraine's air defence system.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has argued that the West should prepare for continued conflict in Ukraine and that member countries of the alliance will have to spend part of their GDP on defense spending and arms aid to be provided to Kiev. But Europeans and Americans cannot afford NATO's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to last too long.

"If the West wants a protracted war and it seems that it does, it is because it is afraid of the defeat which seems inevitable at this time, the defeat of NATO in its proxy war against the Ukraine!" Said to Sputnik Professor Stevan Gajiс, a research associate at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade.

Emmanuel Macron has defended the last-minute postponement of King Charles’s state visit to France next week, saying it would not have been “serious or good sense” for it to go ahead as it clashed with another national day of mass strikes and social unrest.

The king had been scheduled to arrive in France on Sunday on his first state visit as monarch. He was due to visit Paris and Bordeaux before heading to Germany on Wednesday.

Former Marine Corps officer Scott Ritter says the U.S.-led NATO military alliance is driving the war in Ukraine with the ultimate objective of defeating Russia.

The conflict is not about defending Ukraine as the Western media would tell us, it is and always has been about defeating Russia.

NATO is already now in a direct war with Russia and Russia has every right to strike targets in NATO countries like Germany and Poland that are acting as logistical centers in the supply of munitions to Ukraine.

TRUTH HURTS DELUSION

ILLUSIONS

FLATTENED CULTIVATED FIELDS OF BAD SEEDS

ROADS, TRACKS, HIGHWAYS, SCARS THAT CAN NEVER HEAL

ETCHED SHADOWS BECOME UNMOVABLE

MONKEYS VAPORISED

ROLLING HILLS BURN DRY MEDOWS DEAD COWS AWAIT THE MILKING 

TIME HAS NO DEEDS

HEAT UNBEARABLE

UNSTOPPABLE

                   Robert Urbanoski

The growing global influence of American entrepreneur Elon Musk through his companies including SpaceX and Tesla has been a headache for the administration of US President Joe Biden . The White House is very “tensed” due to a number of points, reports, in particular, the agency Bloomberg.

First, Biden’s inner circle fears that Elon Musk, as the CEO of several important government contractors and with federal security clearance and close ties to some of the top US political elites, is nonetheless promoting his own policy toward “Russian state media”, which runs counter to the official Washington one.

There are two Volodymyr Zelenskys: the one we have known since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, who has since been celebrated every day in the Western media as a hero with a spotless white (or green) vest; the other, who was less well-known prior to this significant escalation of the war, which, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, began in 2014. (Here are details on the actual start of this war in 2014).

The war crimes charges against Vladimir Putin brought by the International Criminal Court mean that the Russian leader, in theory, is unable to travel to two-thirds of the globe without risking arrest in the 123 countries that are parties to the United Nations treaty underpinning the court's operations and therefore obligated to detain him.

In practice, the situation is more complex — with some ICC member states condemning the arrest warrant, and others having set a precedent of flouting the court's orders.

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17 YEARS AGO WE PUBLISHED THIS CARTOON.... NOW, AS GOVERNMENTS COME AND GO, WE STILL HAVE THE SAME COMBO... SHIPS AND SUBMARINES.... AS LEAST THE PRICE THEN WAS NOT IN BILLIONS AND THE SUB WAS FIGURATIVE... BUT THIS TIME, THE BRIBERY IS US, PAYING THROUGH THE NOSE FOR SOMETHING USELESS: AUKUS SUBMARINES THAT WILL SPOIL THE FUTURE OF YOUR KIDS... SEE:

Defence Minister Richard Marles has now told us why we need nuclear submarines – not to defend Taiwan or attack China, but to defend our merchant shipping. Sounds credible until one does the maths.

By Percy Allan

French President Emmanuel Macron has stood by his controversial pension reform in his first public remarks since pushing the measure through without the approval of lawmakers. He said the move, which has deepened ongoing unrest in the country, had been postponed for way too long by his predecessors.

Macron was adamant about the decision to increase the retirement age in France from 62 to 64 during a televised interview on Wednesday, insisting the only mistake he had made was “failing to convince people” of its merits.

“When I started working, there were ten million retirees; today there are 17 million, and by 2030 there will be 20 million,” he said. “Do you really think we can continue with the same rules?”