Biden’s decline has been known to friends and insiders for months.

Readers of this column know that President Joe Biden’s drift into blankness has been ongoing for months, as he and his foreign policy aides have been urging a ceasefire that will not happen in Gaza while continuing to supply the weapons that make a ceasefire less likely. There’s a similar paradox in Ukraine, where Biden has been financing a war that cannot be won and refusing to participate in negotiations that could end the slaughter.

‘She eats Russians for breakfast’: Who is Kaja Kallas, the EU’s next foreign policy chief?
The hawkish Estonian prime minister is leaving a political crisis at home to take the top diplomatic post in Brussels

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has been nominated by the leaders of EU member states to become the next high representative for security and foreign policy.

The politician – selected to speak for Brussels internationally and balance conflicting interests in the EU – has a reputation as an uncompromising hawk on Russia.

Before beginning a five-year term, Kallas will need approval from the European Parliament, whose members are expected to vote on her appointment in July, a step widely seen as a formality. 

In a landmark decision, the Argentine Chamber of Deputies approved the Law of Foundations and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines, known as Ley de Bases. This approval marks a victory for President Javier Milei's administration, aiming to steer the nation towards economic stability and prosperity.

In the history of human societies, the concentration of power in the hands of a privileged minority is a recurring phenomenon that raises fundamental questions about the nature of power, social justice and the foundations of democracy. Oligarchies, these systems where a restricted elite exercises a disproportionate influence on the political and economic life of a country, embody this tendency towards the crystallization of power.

Since 1917, America has vowed to destroy Russia by whatever means… It is one of the main steps towards conquering the entire world. Conquering the world is the aim of the American Empire. One of the next step for the American Empire is the destruction of China… We know.

The present war in Ukraine was NOT unprovoked, but followed the long-held American plan of achieving the destruction of Russia. Russia is fighting back.

This modern momentum against Russia mostly started during WW2, by secretly encouraging Hitler to invade Russia, despite the agreement of non-aggression between Russia (Stalin) and Germany (Hitler).

Ukraine is preparing a “comprehensive plan” for ending the conflict with Russia that should be ready by the end of the year, Vladimir Zelensky has said.

Zelensky made the comments at a press conference in Kiev, after meeting Slovenian President Natasa Pirc Musar on Friday.

“We will also work out all other points of the Peace Formula and prepare a comprehensive plan that will be on the table before our partners,” Zelensky said. “It is very important for us to show a plan to end the war that will be supported by the majority of the world. This is the diplomatic path we are working on.”

While Peter Dutton gets headlines for his nuclear fairytale and the Labor Government presses on with its AUKUS submarines, the fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the Pilbara in 1956 finally reaches court. Sue Roff reports from London.

In 1956, on the remote Montebello Islands off Western Australia, an atomic bomb was tested. It was supposed to be no more than 50 kilotons, but in fact measured 98 kilotons, or more than six times the strength of the bomb dropped over Hiroshima in 1945.

     by Sue Rabbitt Roff

The USA has shot itself in the head with its own wonder weapon. The most powerful weapon in the US arsenal is not F-16 jets, Himar missiles, or any of the other conventional war toys. Real US power resides in the US dollar.

By increasingly weaponizing the dollar and access to the dollar-denominated global trading system, America has taken to the greenback with a blowtorch that will trigger a reckoning for the ages. It is a classic case of imperial overreach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Nqbo2oUgI&t=1534s

2024 is going to be an inflection point for humanity. But it is also going to be a major test not just of liberal democracy as a political system, but for human civilisation as a whole.

Over 80 countries – more than half the world's population – are holding elections this year that could be pivotal for the future of democracy.

Paris | Marine Le Pen says French President Emmanuel Macron’s accusations that the agendas of the far-right National Rally and leftist alliance could lead to “civil war” indicate that he knows he is going to lose the upcoming legislative vote that begins on Sunday.

“He always campaigned saying ‘it’s me or chaos’,” Ms Le Pen said on RTL radio on Tuesday. “It’s a very weak argument that shows that he thinks he’s lost this election.”

Mr Macron on Monday said that the way the far-right and far-left blocs pit people against each other could lead to a dangerous domestic situation.

We live in a world of make-believe politics, a world where strings pulled in the interests of the super-rich are ever more visible. 

And yet we are expected to pretend we cannot see those strings. More astonishing still, many people really do seem blind to the puppet show.

By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net

The dark machinery of empire, whose mendacity and savagery Julian Assange exposed to the world, spent 14 years trying to destroy him. They cut him off from his funding, canceling his bank accounts and credit cards. They invented bogus allegations of sexual assault to get him extradited to Sweden, where he would then be shipped to the U.S. 

“The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.” – Shanghai Communique, United States government, 1972

In his essay, Sleepwalking Towards War, eminent Yale scholar Odd Arne Westad provides a compelling insight into today’s tensions between the United States and China. Locating the geopolitical landscape of the rising power of China with the declining power of the United States, Westad traces the structural roots of the conflict and makes an analogy with the events and attitudes that led Britain and Germany to disastrous war in 1914.