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America’s extreme meritocrats vastly over­estimate their capabilities…

A 10-minute miscommunication on Slack between journalists at the Associated Press resulted in an erroneous report last week that appeared momentarily to bring tensions between NATO and Russia to their highest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Despite the breakdown of relations between Russia and the seven other Arctic states, there is still limited room to restore cooperation today – primarily between non-state actors. As the Arctic faces a climate emergency that threatens the whole world, cooperation in research to understand the dramatic changes unfolding in the region, in environmental protection, and in joint climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts remain imperative for all involved.

Clare Daly is an Irish politician who has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland for the Dublin constituency since July 2019. She is a member of Independents 4 Change, part of The Left in the European Parliament Since becoming a Member of the European Parliament, Clare has gained international attention for her radical advocacy for peace and justice. At India and Global Left, we discuss with Clare her recent speech on the European Parliament regarding state sponsor of terrorism that went viral. We talk to Clare on Irish politics, European sentiment on the war in Ukraine, role of NATO and the Global South, prospect of nuclear escalation and rise of anti -immigration sentiment in Europe.

Now that there is a consensus that the incident was a stray Ukrainian missile, it seems highly improbable that the Ukrainian government and some of their lobbyists in D.C. didn’t know that. It is almost impossible to conceive that a leader of a country at war had not received the frontline information from his battlefield command about the trajectory of the misfired border air-defense missile around the same time that he and his government were making statements about the urgency of NATO imposing collective defense.

In the parlance of D.C., it appears a clear case of deliberate “disinformation.” It is, quite frankly, unlikely that the Ukrainian government and military did not know that they were calling for what would have effectively amounted to a world war.

This week—only two weeks after 30 progressives in Congress were shouted down for raising the subject of Ukraine peace talks—talking about peace talks became respectable. There was a flurry of reports about Biden administration officials discussing them—with each other and with Ukrainian officials. The question was what to make of it all, and answering the question called for the kind of detective skills employed by Kremlinologists during Cold War I.

People who criticize such reporting often argue that multiple sources is an adequate remedy, but AP would eventually cite three U.S. government officials. AP rules say reporters can only grant anonymity to a source if “the source is reliable”. But if they prove themselves to not be reliable, shouldn’t the anonymity be rescinded?

Calls for diplomacy aren’t part of a “colonial reflex.” But rejecting them might just be.
 

Washington must be more cognizant of tendencies toward threat inflation. As I explain in research for Brown University’s Cost of War project, this involves the United States being careful about assessing Russian military weaknesses against Europe’s simultaneous military strengths, as well as the nuclear paradox that results from this sharp asymmetry.

The secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, former KGB counterintelligence officer and longstanding associate of President Putin, travelled to Tehran last Wednesday.

Patrushev called on President Ebrahim Raisi and held detailed discussions with Admiral Ali Shamkhani, the representative of the Supreme leader and secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. The visit marks a defining moment in the Russia-China partnership and plants a signpost on the trajectory of the war in Ukraine.

It might be time to give diplomacy a chance in the Ukraine war.

“When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize the moment.” The author of that statement wasn’t a peace activist or a squishy liberal. It was Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has reportedly been pushing the Biden administration to press Ukraine to seek a diplomatic end to the war.

To most governments and populations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the war looks like a mundane power struggle between Russia and a Western client state, not an existential fight for global order and international law.

 

In a wide ranging discussion, Tulsi Gabbard and Jeffrey Sachs discuss nuclear escalation, the general ignorance of political decision makers, the ineptitude of Congress and the press, and the corrosive influence of the neocons.

‘Definitely a sign that the US is preparing for a long war in Ukraine and long-term military competition with Russia.’

 

The time is long overdue for American officials to put the American people first.
 

It is the macroeconomic course of Western nations, and above all the United States, that has become the root cause of most of the current problems.

Proxy wars represent a most dangerous game in great power competition. Danger here has two dimensions. First, easy and early success can trigger strategic euphoria in the proxy-master. The empire can be swept up by the tantalizing prospect of a great strategic victory, paying a small price in treasure and nothing of its own blood. This leads directly to occluded judgment. Victory, so desired, is suddenly believed to be almost at hand, so why not pile on, and bring a hated rival quickly to defeat? This dynamic leads to“opportunistic escalation”.

A Finnish police chief claimed that guns are illegally circulating in Europe

 

Plainly put, wittingly or unwittingly, the U.S. is going up the escalation ladder.