'Slobodan Despot on the Parallels between Two Disintegrations, Yugoslavia and Ukraine,' translated on Dennis Riches's blog

Or, on the destruction of Yugoslavia, Ukraine, and ultimately, NATO’s credibility. Slobodan Despot on the Parallels between Two Disintegrations, Yugoslavia and Ukraine

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So not only has the US blocked ceasefire efforts, now they're blocking Palestine from joining the UN.

American maneuvers around the Panama Canal were anything but subtle, and political cartoons around the world mocked their blatant land grab:

{Buy me a coffee} {WHF} {Medium} {Looking Through the Past}

The United States Treasury has confirmed the removal of sanction imposed in 2003 through the publication of the final rule to remove the Zimbabwe Sanctions Regulations. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) issued the final rule to remove the Zimbabwe Sanctions Regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations yesterday. Last month, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order repealing the first order issued in March 2003 which blocked property of several political leaders in Zimbabwe for “undermining democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe.”

...

Ofac last month designated 11 individuals, including Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa, and three entities for their involvement in corruption or serious human rights abuse pursuant to executive order 13818, which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.

Mnangagwa last month became the first sitting head of State to be designated by the US under its Global Magnitsky Programme alongside wife Auxillia and Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga. Others are Defence minister Oppah Muchinguri, Midlands Provincial Affairs minister Owen Ncube, Central Intelligence Organisation deputy director Walter Tapfumaneyi, businessman Obey Chimuka and tycoon Kudakwashe Tagwirei as well as his wife Sandra. Sakunda and Fossil Group, companies that are linked to Tagwirei and Chimuka, were also put on the new list.

17/04/2024

Book Review: American Colonies

American Colonies, by Alan Taylor This book, the first volume in a series called the Penguin history of the United States, in which noted historian Eric Foner (noted for his writings on slavery and Reconstruction in particular) serves as the series editor, does not have an enviable position. There are a host of complications in writing about colonial history, including the complications of…

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Remember when the war in Ukraine started and all the libs went around replacing the Joe Brandon "I Did That!" stickers on American gas pumps with one of a heckin' Put-ler? Incredibly embarrassing.

You don't see as many of those these days so I think we should start doing that with a picture of Netanyahu. Gas is like $5 per barrel at this point and unlike every other gas crisis it's due to a very real blockaid in retaliation to us enabling his genocide and not strictly corporate price gouging. Real weird, actually, how both liberal and conservative media stopped complaining about gasoline prices ever since the invasion of Gaza. Guess acknowledging that Israel's actions and the violence necessary to maintain a settler-colonial hegemon might gradually disrupt the imperial core's consumption is a third rail they can't touch.

Like I don't know man $5 per gallon always seemed like the red line that none shall cross lest the economy and the sitting president crumble into dust. But the liberal powers that be very clearly just decided you know what we can take that hit if that means backing Zionism. And they really can't.

Permanent war psychopaths

The United States (US) leap-frogged competitors in the scramble for African minerals required to power the global energy transition when it signed an agreement with Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2022 for the development of a regional value chain in the electric vehicle battery sector.

The agreement challenged the dominance of China, South Africa, Hong Kong, Mauritius and India as the traditional consumers of Zambian copper, gold, lithium, cobalt and manganese exports.

It targeted large volumes of critical transition metals that occur in the Katanga Copperbelt, a mineral-rich strip stretching from Lualaba province in the south-eastern DRC to the Luapula province in northern Zambia.

According to the US state department, the agreement aimed to “facilitate the development of an integrated value chain for the production of electric vehicle batteries in the DRC and Zambia, ranging from raw material extraction, to processing, manufacturing and assembly”.

17/04/2024

The Western internet socialist move of seeing a nation or region that has become increasingly violent, authoritarian, theocratic, and misogynistic directly as a result of Western coups and government interference to destabilize that nation or region, and treating it like it's cool and based and should be supported for its human rights violations simply because the government has grown to resent the West, is another form of imperialism.

It is taking a nation, making it worse to live in, and then leaving and patting ourselves on the back for what is left behind and WHO is left behind. And it ultimately continues to deny the people living in those nations personhood and a voice, because their voices online get drowned out by these Western socialists.

A Western socialist who wants to be an ally should understand that as the ultimate perpetrators of this violence, we have no right to hold an opinion on the morality or lackthereof of the nations our government has destabilized. We should only be trying to uplift the voices of people living there or with direct connections, and advocating for things like antiimperialism, womens' rights, queer rights, and liberation for all people. If you see a Westerner talking about how "based" a place like Iran is, it is just as much the hand of imperialism as the neoliberal that decries the entire nation as part of an axis of evil with Russia and China. It is not your job as a Westerner to hold an opinion on it. It is not our culture but the culture has been tainted by and is revolting against Western imperialism and Cold War proxy wars.

It's the same as trying to talk about what Palestinians should do if/when Israel were to finally collapse. Not our place to hold an opinion on that. That is those peoples' businesses and their right to run their countries as they wish. You will scarce see these same people discuss Western, white nations in these kinds of binaries. There's a reason for that. They can comprehend that, for example, Finland may have many good policies but is not infallible as a state. But they only see these countries the West has historically brutalized, and continues to brutalize, as tools for their political gotchas. It is a smaller form of imperialism, but it's still imperialism.

Parody of a 1942 1 Paistre of 'French Indochina', 1946+

A propaganda leaflet said to be issued by either the Việt Minh (or French activists) during the First Indochina War (1946-54) to propagate the idea that the French should negotiate with them and Ho Chi Minh.

All of the original texts have been altered and new passages added:

A QUI LE CRIME PROFITE-T-IL ? = To whom does the crime benefit?;

IL FAUT METTRE FIN A LA GUERRE D'INDOCHINE = We must end the Indochina war;

IL FAUT NÉGOCIER AVEC HO CHI MINH = We must negotiate with Ho Chi Minh;

LE CODE PÉNAL PUNIT QUICONQUE TRAFIQUE DU SANG DES PEUPLES DANS UNE GUERRE CONTRAIRE A LA CONSTITUTION. = The Penal Code punishes anyone who traffics the blood of the peoples in a war contrary to the constitution.