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"The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs provides deep insight into the technological evolution of weapons and its impact on international relations in the 20th and 21st centuries. The United States' efforts to preserve not just its dominance but the perception of its dominance are bound to fail for many important reasons. None are more important than what is often misidentified in the past American military-theoretical hypotheses as the future of warfare, known generically as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). This book explains why those hypotheses are failing and will continue to fail, and addresses the real RMA. In the end, technological development in weaponry as a response to tactical, operational and strategic requirements defines not only a nation's geopolitical status but determines the global order." P. [4] of cover
While the US portrays itself as a noble example of freedom and democracy, it has in fact led the world to greater inequality than ever before. But now, for the first time in decades, nations facing the brunt of its domination and exploitation have alternative, more tenable options in pursuit of development. Chinese finance is building badly-needed infrastructure where the West would not, Chinese commerce is providing a lifeline to countries the US has targeted for destruction, and Chinese industry is producing new sources of renewable and transition energy at an unparalleled rate. This book addresses: * China's development and political economy based on independent studies, statistical data, and comparative analysis * Current geopolitical conflicts and major developments and their relation to China * Chinese finance and its effect on the rest of the world, particularly Africa. * China's profound emphasis on environmentalism, renewable energy, and plan for the future Though it has yet to fully step into this role, the People's Republic of China has become the de facto leader of a future multipolar world. Why does the world need China? Inter alia: China is now one of the largest investors in peripheral countries, yet Chinese loans are distinguished from Western loans by having substantially lower interest, being focused on infrastructure construction rather than the extraction of rents, and never being used as political leverage to make its partners adopt harmful "structural adjustment" policies as Western loans are. From 2000 to 2020, the PRC has helped African countries build 13,000 kilometers of railways and 100,000 kilometers of highways. Chinese-financed development is so ubiquitous on the African continent that any large building or road longer than 3 kilometers are most likely built and engineered by Chinese firms. Most of these have been constructed as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, which began in 2013 and is still making increasing investments throughout the world. Yet according to trade statistics tracked by the World Bank, the value of exports from the Sub-Saharan Africa region to China as a share of the total have not risen since then; instead, the region of the world that has seen the largest increase in export share from SSA has been SSA itself. This means that greater regional connectivity, commerce, and intermediate manufacturing being done in Africa is having the long-term effect of industrializing the continent
The Rare Earths Era: Strategic Metals Dependency & World Order addresses the centrality of 17 rare metallic elements necessary to the manufacture of a vast panoply of products developed through modern technology and in use worldwideâ"from smartphones, televisions, computers, and medical scanners to components of the most modern weapons systems in Western arsenals. Rare earths are hence crucial to strategic planning, whether for business, combating climate change, warfare, or ascendancy in world order. Called "rare earths" because of the low concentration in which they are found, which makes their extraction polluting and difficult, the miraculous properties of these elements can endow other materials with an unalterable super magnetism, an amazing hardness or robustness, a unique luminescence or fluorescence, and a special conductivity. The world as we now experience, enjoy and understand it is absolutely dependent on access to these metals in order to produce today's technology. Without that, it's goodbye to modernity. Rare earths may be key to understanding some of the most pressing geopolitical issues of our time. This book addresses the following questions: * How did the world become so dependent and addicted to Chinese rare earth metals? * Will critical minerals provide China with geopolitical leverage? * How will the global needs for rare earths impact the transition to clean energy? * What is the environmental impact of rare earths? * What is the role of the strategic minerals in the de-dollarization process? * Will we see new wars over rare earths resources? * Are critical minerals really on the radar of Western politicians?
While Europe as a whole remains a first world economic power despite Brexit, it has been unable to build a truly democratic and efficient state or carry weight as a respected power on the international scene. Its splendid intellectual and artistic icons of the past two centuries are dimming in memory, leaving it no longer a radiant cultural Mecca for the world. Starting with Brexit in 2016, the European Union is now exposed to an array of dismantling forces, including the possibility of further exits, the organized opposition of populist parties, and popular uprisings like those of the Yellow Jackets in France. Mettan outlines the long history of attempts to unify the European continent, stretching from Charlemagne to Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin, predecessors to the current iteration. He specifies the routes they took, which were most promising and durable, and why they all collapsed. Strikingly, he compares Rome's early adulation and mimicry of ancient Greece, followed by its steady encroachment and final absorption of it, to the current trajectory of relations between Europe and the United States, noting the increasing penetration of American culture and exer-extending application of its laws. The European Union has allowed the United States to tell Europeans how they are to progress, with whom they are to collaborate, and against whom they should go to war. The problems confronting contemporary Europe are then examined in greater depth--its democratic "deficit"; the stifling primacy of economics and law over politics; the sprawling expansion of an ever unsatisfactory governing institutions; its inability to secure peace within its territory; and far from least, on the ongoing encroachment on its sovereignty by the United States. Europe faces two possible futures, Mettan concludes. It can choose to lapse into insignificance, subservient to ever increasing US demands and ascendancy, unable to address its unique concerns in defense or energy policy while being denied potential economic benefits from a rising China and forced into ever deeper and dangerous confrontation with Russia. Or Europeans, fully conscious of what is at stake, can face up to Europe's problems and create an institutional framework that will enable it to stave off its inevitable decline into vassalization--seizing the opportunity of the new space opened by the emerging Chinese power to create a truly democratic and sovereign federal union. Switzerland provides a model for that.
In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council created the mandate of the Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order. This book, based on the reports by Dr. Alfred de Zayas, the first mandate-holder (2012-2018), offers a brilliant and comprehensive critique of the UN system, addressing the changes that must be made in order to further the emergence of a democratic and equitable international order. De Zayas proposes concrete reforms of the UN system, notably the Security Council. He advocates recognition of peace as a human right, slashing military budgets, and establishing the right of self-determination as a conflict-prevention measure. As it concerns the global economy, he calls for reversing the adverse impacts of World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies, rendering free-trade agreements compatible with human rights, abolishing tax havens and ISDS, alleviating the foreign debt crisis, and criminalizing war-profiteers and pandemic vultures. He denounces unilateral coercive measures, economic sanctions and financial blockades, because they demonstrably have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The 2019 novel Corona Virus, now COVID-19, stole global headlines in the opening months of 2020, and its many impacts are still to play out. The common adage, "If the US sneezes, the world catches a cold" is now demonstrable in a multiplicity of ways, but it is China that has sneezed. This anthology provides insight into the nature of global pandemics such as SARS, MERS, Ebola and HIV/AIDs, then focuses on Wuhan, where COVID-19 broke out -- though patient zero is as yet unknown. It examines the massive effort that China has undertaken since the outbreak to contain its spread, and includes personal stories of the first lockdown experiences. But the impact may be even more grave on the global economy than it is on global health. National and international analysts address the economic impact both within China's industrial heartland and on global business, as borders close, entire regions are on lockdown, world airlines cancel flights, major US corporations in China shut their doors, factory floors empty. and global supply chains break down, millions lose their jobs and small businesses tank.. Stocks and the prices of gold and oil are impacted. Soon after the COVID-19 outbreak was announced and the extraordinary quarantine response by China was effected, it was learned that Event 201, a global coronavirus pandemic simulation was held just months earlier, in which a global coronavirus pandemic killed 65 million people. Many questions arise concerning BIg Pharma's push for vaccines, and the mainstream dismissal of the possibility of alternative treatments such as HCQ. Other disturbing questions have arisen: Has the disruption been overblown to inflict damage on China as part of a trade war? On the United States, which faces massive damage to its economy in the midst of an increasingly bitter political divide? What are the biowarfare implications -in the Wuhan instance, where China's first BSL-4 level laboratory is situated, or in the future in general, given the spread of BSL-4 level laboratories worldwide and most extensively the US, as states and private entities conduct research into germ warfare, including the use of bat-generated viruses, for both offensive and defensive purposes, putting the entire world at risk of accidental leakage or worse? Is this truly a pandemic -- or is it a plandemic, and if so, to what end? What are the likely consequences, intended and not.
The Iran nuclear deal was a crowning moment of international diplomacy, allowing the world to step away from the edge of a self-created abyss. Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from this agreement threatens to return the world to that precipice. Dealbreaker recounts how this deal was made, why it was broken, and what the consequences of that action could be. The United States and its ally, Israel, pulled no punches, using diplomatic pressure to impose crippling economic sanctions, and covert activities to sow disinformation, sabotage equipment and murder Iranian nuclear scientists in an effort to stop the Iranian nuclear program from going forward. Iran prevailed, confronting the United States with the choice of either going to war, or accepting the reality of an Iranian nuclear program. The Iranian nuclear deal was the result. But the deal had an Achilles heel--the disinformation campaign waged by the United States and Israel to paint the Iranian program as military in nature left a residue of uncertainty and fear that the detractors of the deal used to attack it as little more than a sham. Donald Trump decried the Iranian nuclear deal as a "failed agreement" and promised to tear it up if he were elected President. Trump prevailed in the election, and ended up being as good as his word, pulling America out of the Iranian nuclear deal on May 12, 2018. Dealbreaker explores the nuances of the Iranian nuclear program, exposing the duplicity and hypocrisy of American diplomacy, supported by Israel and abetted by Europe, that led to the need for the Iranian nuclear deal and eventually caused the demise of an agreement that was simultaneously "the deal of the century" and claimed to be fatally flawed.
This book "documents how the war industry commands the other two sides of the military-industrial-congressional triangle. It lays bare the multiple levers enabling the vast and proliferating war industry to wield undue influence, exploiting financial and legal structures, while co-opting Congress, academia, and the media. Spiked with insights into how corporate boardrooms view the troops, overseas bases, and warzones, it ... delineates how corporations reap enormous profits by providing a myriad of goods and services devoted to making war, which must be rationalized and used if the game is to go on"--
"Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have experienced life in Israel's prisons since 1967, as did many more in previous decades during the course of the ongoing Israeli military occupation. Yet rarely has the story of their experiences in Israeli jails been told by the prisoners themselves.... This book permits the reader to access the reality of Palestinian imprisonment as told by Palestinian prisoners themselves -- stories of appalling suffering and determination to reclaim their freedom."--
"Scorpion King: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump is a history of America's corrosive affair with nuclear weapons, and the failed efforts to curb this radioactive ardor through arms control. The book's title refers to the allusion by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the American atomic bomb, to dueling scorpions when discussing the deadly nuclear rivalry between the US and Soviet Union, and signals the dangers inherent in the resumption of the perilous US drive for nuclear supremacy. Providing a vivid and gripping A-Z history of America's deceptive use of arms control as a means of actually furthering its quest for nuclear dominance, Ritter sheds light on a contradictory US agenda little understood by the lay reader, while providing sufficient detail and context to engage the specialist. Originally published by Nation Books in 2010 under the title Dangerous Ground, this new version has been streamlined and significantly expanded to account for the failed arms control policies of the Obama administration, and the rejection of arms control as a policy during the first term of the Trump administration. The Trump administration has pulled out of one landmark arms control treaty, the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, and is threatening to let another, the 2010 New START treaty, expire. The terrifying Cuban missile crisis of 1962 demonstrated the apocalyptic folly of nuclear arsenals operating without limitation, and led to reciprocal constraints that moderated the nuclear ambitions of both the US and Soviet Union Those constraints, for the most part, no longer exist. The next missile crisis could prove terminal for humanity. Scorpion King is a book that can, and should, occupy the shelves of academic libraries, diplomats and military professionals, as well as make the reading lists of concerned citizens, given the dangerous state of US and Russian relations, now hovering on the cusp of a new and increasingly hazardous nuclear arms race. It provides a road map showing how we collectively returned to the nuclear cliff edge, and shines light on the possibility of an exit from a seemingly endless dark tunnel. Providing context for the forthcoming 2020 Review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Scorpion King is must reading for an imperilled world."--Publisher description
The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka, second edition, traces the ongoing engagement in the Sri Lankan conflict, from last year to the present pursuit of UN recognition of the Tamil genocide and call for reparations.
While exceptionalism is not unique to America, the intensity of this conviction and its global ramifications are. This has led the US to grossly misinterpret--sometimes deliberately--the causative factors of key events of the past two centuries, reaching the wrong conclusions and learning very wrong lessons. Nowhere has this been more manifest than in American military thought and its actual application of military power. Time after time the American military has failed to match lofty declarations about its superiority, producing instead a mediocre record of military accomplishments. Starting from the Korean War the United States hasn't won a single war against a technologically inferior, but mentally tough enemy. The technological dimension of American "strategy" has completely overshadowed any concern with the social, cultural, operational and even tactical requirements of military (and political) conflict. With a new Cold War with Russia emerging, the United States enters a new period of geopolitical turbulence completely unprepared in any meaningful way--intellectually, economically, militarily or culturally--to face a reality which has been hidden for the last 70+ years behind a strategically-crafted delusion concerning Russia, whose history the US viewed through a Solzhenitsified caricature kept alive by the powerful neocon lobby, which still today dominates US policy makers' minds. In Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning, Andrei Martyanov: - explores the dramatic difference between the Russian and US approach to warfare across the whole spectrum of activities from art and the economy, to the respective national cultures; - addresses Russia's new and elevated capacities in the areas of traditional warfare as well as recent developments in cyberwarfare and space, and Putin's latest revelations; - studies in depth several ways in which the US can simply stumble into conflict with Russia and what must be done to avoid it. Martyanov's former Soviet military background enables deep insight into the fundamental issues of warfare and military power as a function of national power--assessed correctly, not through the lens of Wall Street "economic" indices but through the numbers of enclosed technological cycles and culture, much of which has been shaped in Russia by continental warfare and which is practically absent in the US.
"Why do the USA, UK and Europe so hate Russia? How it is that Western antipathy, once thought due to anti-Communism, could be so easily revived over a crisis in distant Ukraine, against a Russia no longer communist? Why does the West accuse Russia of empire-building, when 15 states once part of the defunct Warsaw Pact are now part of NATO, and NATO troops now flank the Russian border? These are only some of the questions Creating Russophobia iinvestigates. Mettan begins by showing the strength of the prejudice against Russia through the Western response to a series of events: the Uberlingen mid-air collision, the Beslan hostage- taking, the Ossetia War, the Sochi Olympics and the crisis in Ukraine. He then delves into the historical, religious, ideological and geopolitical roots of the detestation of Russia in various European nations over thirteen centuries since Charlemagne competed with Byzantium. Mettan examines the geopolitical machinations expressed in those times through the medium of religion, leading to the great Christian schism between Germanic Rome and Byzantium and the European Crusades against Russian Orthodoxy. This history of taboos, prejudices and propaganda directed against the Orthodox Church provides the mythic foundations that shaped Western disdain for contemporary Russia. From the religious and imperial rivalry created by Charlemagne and the papacy to the genesis of French, English, German and then American Russophobia, the West has been engaged in more or less violent hostilities against Russia for a thousand years. Contemporary Russophobia is manufactured through the construction of an anti-Russian discourse in the media and the diplomatic world, and the fabrication and demonization of The Bad Guy, now personified by Vladimir Putin"--Provided by publisher.
This collection of Paul Roberts essays explores the dangers in Washington's imposition of vassalage and Washington's resurrection of distrust among nuclear powers, the very distrust that Reagan and Gorbachev worked to eliminate. He explains how the collapse of the Soviet Union removed the only check on Washington's ability to act unilaterally.
The current horrific malaise in the state of Iraq has its roots in the US-led destruction of Iraq in 1991, followed by a decade of harsh US-led international sanctions against the entire Iraqi population that killed millions -- one of the most heinous crimes of the 20th century. A second "shock and awe" war of aggression on Iraq in 2003 enabled the US/UK military occupation that ensued. Though based on fraudulent pretexts and later admitted as an illegal war by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the UN provided a veneer of legitimacy to what in effect would be the obliteration of an effective and functional modern state, redefining its national character via the redrafting of state policies and law, even deliberately sowing seeds that could lead to its future implosion. Volume II of Genocide in Iraq addresses Bremer's introduction of the imperialist design for Iraq as part of a wider strategy for the Middle East. It details the scale of post-2003 destruction and redesign, showing clearly how every step was intended to change Iraq irreversibly to a slave state of extreme neoliberal capitalism. It documents the extent of intentional and ongoing damage as it relates to killing, torture and displacement, cultural cleansing and genocide, and ensuing problems in health, child education, psychological well being, malnutrition, child disabilities, child iabor and mortality, as well as drug abuse and the impact on women. It tracks the divestment and disposal of Iraqi oil. These Nuremberg-level crimes are then reviewed in international legal context as the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity, and violations of the most basic of human rights, as it relates to the right of remedy, in the hope of providing guidance to Iraqi individuals or governments seeking recourse in future.
The imperial strategy of manipulating Muslims to promote imperial ends is at least two centuries old. Part I of this book addresses the colonial legacy, the meaning of jihad, and the parallel movements among Sunni and Shia to confront imperialism, Part II considers the main figures among the neo-Wahhabi" movement: Azzam, Bin Laden, and Zawahiri.
The anthrax letter attacks occurred from September through November of 2001, killing five and wounding many. The attacks were widely held to be the work of Muslims and were used to support the invasion of Afghanistan and, later, the invasion of Iraq. They were used explicitly and repeatedly to justify the passing of the Patriot Act. They were also meant to support withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, a withdrawal eagerly sought by the neoconservatives associated with the Project for a New American Century who wished to pursue their global agenda without obstruction from small states with WMD. In the early days of the attacks there were several perpetrator hypotheses in play. One that gained prominence was the Double Perpetrator hypothesis according to which Iraq had supplied the sophisticated anthrax spores while al-Qaeda had supplied the foot soldiers responsible for preparing and sending the letters. This hypothesis was eagerly reported by the mainstream media. It came to grief quickly when scientists discovered that the anthrax spores had a domestic source and appeared to come from the heart of the US military and intelligence communities. The FBI rapidly began a search for "the anthrax killer," promoting the idea that there was a lone wolf perpetrator within the military community--a renegade, an unbalanced person whose behavior revealed nothing of significance about structures and institutions of the deep state. In 2008 the Bureau named Dr. Bruce Ivins of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases as the "anthrax killer." Ivins had conveniently died a week before being named and could not fight back in court. Ivins remains the FBI's choice to this day: the case was closed in 2010. This book support with a great deal of evidence the following four assertions: (a) the anthrax letter attacks were carried out by a group of perpetrators, not by a "lone wolf;" (b) the group that perpetrated this crime was composed, in whole or in part, of deep insiders within the U.S. state apparatus; (c) these insiders were connected to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks; (d) the anthrax attacks were meant to play an important role in the strategy of redefinition through which the Cold War was replaced by a new global conflict framework, the Global War on Terror.
Isolated in their struggle and condemned by world opinion, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) nonetheless proved capable of withstanding all external forces, drawing large numbers of Tamils to support its cause. This book provides an insider's look at the motivations, issues and complexities of this largely secret civil war.
After centuries of slavery, apartheid and ethnocide, the silence is broken. One hundred million Dalits in India, the twentieth century's largest, most repressed minority, cry out for the ear of the world. Who are the Dalits" What does it mean to be labeled as an "untouchable"? Is there a relationship between Brahmanism and India's caste system, the modern Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy, and the colonial, US and South African policies promoting white supremacy. Does this book have special meaning for Black America?
Can we act quickly and wisely enough to prevent climate change -- better called climate disruption -- from destroying human civilization? There is no greater issue facing humanity today. This single source provides everything people need to know in order to enter into serious discussions and make good decisions: -The latest scientific information about the probable effects of the various types of climate disruption that threaten the very continuation of civilization. -The reasons why the media and governments have failed miserably to rein in global warming, even though scientists have been warning them for decades. -The additional challenges to saving civilization -- religious, moral, and economic. -The amazing transformation of solar, wind, and other types of clean energy during the past few years, making the transition from a fossil-fuel to a clean energy economy possible; and the falsity of the various claims that fossil-fuel companies and their (hired) minions have made to belittle clean energy. This book combines (1) the most extensive treatment of the causes and phenomena of climate change in combination with (2) an extensive treatment of social obstacles and challenges (fossil-fuel funded denialism, media failure, political failure, and moral, religious, and economic challenges), (3) the most extensive treatment of the needed transition from fossil-fuel energy to clean energy, and (4) the most extensive treatment of mobilization. It provides the most complete treatment of the various kinds of clean energy, and how they could combine to provide 80% clean energy by 2035 and 100% before 2050 (both U.S. and worldwide).
"Twenty-two geopolitical analysts provide an alternative vision to the fraudulent Western narrative on events in Ukraine and alert the world to the danger of a much wider war." --P. [4] of cover.
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